The top floor was quite different from the others. I don’t know what his living quarters in front were like, but the studio, in the rear, was big and high and anything but crummy. There were sculptures around, big and little, and canvases of all sizes were stacked and propped against racks. The walls were covered with drapes, solid gray, with nothing on them. Each of two easels — one much larger than the other — held a canvas that had been worked on. There were several plain chairs and two upholstered ones, and an oversized divan, nearly square. I had been steered to one of the upholstered numbers, and Chaffee, still in his smock, had moved a plain one to sit facing me.
“Only don’t prolong it unnecessarily,” he requested.
I said I wouldn’t. “There are a couple of points,” I told him, “that we wonder about a little. Of course it could be merely a coincidence that Richard Meegan came to town looking for his wife, and came to see you, and rented an apartment here just nine days before Kampf was murdered, but a coincidence like that will have to stand some going over. Frankly, Mr. Chaffee, there are those, and I happen to be one of them, who find it hard to believe that you couldn’t remember who modeled for an important figure in a picture you painted. I know what you say, but it’s still hard to believe.”
“My dear sir.” Chaffee was smiling. “Then you must think I’m lying.”
“I didn’t say so.”
“But you do, of course.” He shrugged. “To what end? What deep design am I cherishing?”
“I wouldn’t know. You say you wanted to help Meegan find his wife.”
“No, not that I wanted to. I was willing to. He was a horrible nuisance.”
“He must have been a first-class pest.”
“He was. He is.”