“Well—” Wolfe considered. “It’s a little difficult. You’re probably not familiar with the details, since it was so long ago and was recorded as suicide.”
“I remember it fairly well. As you say, he was famous. Go right ahead.”
Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes. “Interrupt me if you need to. I had six people here for a talk last evening.” He pronounced their names and identified them. “Five of them were present at a conference in Mion’s studio which ended two hours before he was found dead. The sixth, Miss James, banged on the studio door at a quarter past six and got no reply, presumably because he was dead then. My conclusion that Mion was murdered is based on things I have heard said. I’m not going to repeat them to you — because it would take too long, because it’s a question of emphasis and interpretation, and because you have already heard them.”
“I wasn’t here last evening,” Cramer said dryly.
“So you weren’t. Instead of ‘you,’ I should have said the Police Department. It must all be in the files. They were questioned at the time it happened, and told their stories as they have now told them to me. You can get it there. Have you ever known me to have to eat my words?”
“I’ve seen times when I would have liked to shove them down your throat.”
“But you never have. Here are three more I shall not eat: Mion was murdered. I won’t tell you, now, how I reached that conclusion; study your files.”
Cramer was keeping himself under restraint. “I don’t have to study them,” he declared, “for one detail — how he was killed. Are you saying he fired the gun himself but was driven to it?”
“No. The murderer fired the gun.”
“It must have been quite a murderer. It’s quite a trick to pry a guy’s mouth open and stick a gun in it without getting bit. Would you mind naming him?”