Wolfe turned. “Mr. Brucker?”
Brucker was the one I favored. It will sometimes happen, when a group of people are under the blazing light of a murder job, that they all look alike to you, but not often. Usually, sometimes for a reason you can name and sometimes not, you have a favorite, and mine in this case was Jay L. Brucker, the president. I didn’t know why, but it could have been his long pale face and long thin nose, which reminded me of a bird I had once worked for during summer vacation in Ohio in my high school days, who had diddled me out of forty cents; or again it could have been the way he had looked at Daphne O’Neil, Tuesday afternoon in the Softdown conference room. There is no law against a man showing his admiration for works of nature, but it had been only a few hours since he had heard of the death of Priscilla Eads, and it wouldn’t have hurt him any to wait till sundown to start gloating.
He wasn’t gloating now. He was the only one who had had three drinks — a good shot of rye each time, with a splash of water — and I had noticed that when he conveyed the glass to his lips his hand trembled.
“I would like to tell—” he started. It didn’t come through well, and he cleared his throat twice and started over. “I would like to tell you, Mr. Wolfe, that I regard this action by Mrs. Jaffee as completely justified. My opinion was that the stock should be placed in escrow until the matter of Miss Eads’s death has been satisfactorily cleared up, but the others objected that sometimes a murder is not solved for months or even years, and sometimes never. I had to admit that their position had some validity, but so has Mrs. Jaffee’s, and it should be possible to arrive at a compromise. I do not resent the interest you are taking in the matter. I would welcome and appreciate your assistance in arranging a compromise.”
Wolfe shook his head. “You’re wasting time, sir. I’m an investigator, not a negotiator. I’m after a murderer. Is it you? I don’t know, but you do. I ask you to speak to that.”
“I would be glad to” — he cleared his throat again — “if I thought I knew anything that would help you to arrive at the truth. I’m just a plodding, hard-working businessman, Mr. Wolfe; there’s nothing brilliant or spectacular about me the way there is about you. I remember a day back in nineteen thirty-two, the worst year for American business in this century. I was an awkward young fellow, had been with Softdown just three years, had started there when I finished college. It was a cold December day, a couple of weeks before Christmas, and I was in a gloomy frame of mind. Word had got around that on account of business conditions further retrenchment had been decided on, and at the end of the year several of us in my section would be dropped.”
“If you think this is pertinent,” Wolfe muttered.
“I do, yes, sir. On that cold December day Mrs. Eads had come to the office to see Mr. Eads about something, and had brought with her Priscilla, their little five-year-old daughter, a lovely little girl. Priscilla remained out on the floor while her mother went into her father’s office, walking around looking at people and things, as children will; and I happened to be there, and she came up to me and asked what my name was, and I told her, Jay. Do you know what she said?”
He waited for a reply, and Wolfe, coerced, said, “No.”
“She said, ‘Jay? You don’t look like a bluejay!’ She was simply irresistible. I had been busy that morning with some tests of a new yarn we were considering, and I had a little of it in my pocket, just a few short strands of bright green, and I took it and tied it loosely around her neck and told her that was a beautiful necklace I was giving her for Christmas, and I took her to a mirror on the wall and held her up so she could look at it.”