“You said that before.” Wolfe was at them now. “Even if everyone had keys, I don’t believe it and neither would anyone else.” His eyes came to me. “Archie. Would you?”
“I’d have to see a movie of it,” I admitted.
“You see?” he demanded of them. “Mr. Goodwin isn’t prejudiced against you — on the contrary. He’s ready to fight fire for you; see how he gets behind on his notes for the pleasure of watching you look at each other. But he agrees with me that you’re lying. Since no one else could have put the gun on the floor, one of you did. I have to know about it. The circumstances may have made it imperative for you, or you thought they did.”
He looked at Fred. “Suppose you opened a drawer of Mrs. Mion’s dresser to get smelling salts, and the gun was there, with an odor showing it had been recently fired — put there, you would instantly conjecture, by someone to direct suspicion at her. What would you naturally do? Exactly what you did do: take it upstairs and put it beside the body, without letting her know about it. Or—”
“Rot,” Fred said harshly. “Absolute rot.”
Wolfe looked at Peggy. “Or suppose it was you who found it there in your bedroom, after he had gone downstairs. Naturally you would have—”
“This is absurd,” Peggy said with spirit. “How could it have been in my bedroom unless I put it there? My husband was alive at five-thirty, and I got home before that, and was right there, in the living room and my room, until Fred came at seven o’clock. So unless you assume—”
“Very well,” Wolfe conceded. “Not the bedroom. But somewhere. I can’t proceed until I get this from one of you. Confound it, the gun didn’t fly. I expect plenty of lies from the others, at least one of them, but I want the truth from you.”
“You’ve got it,” Fred declared.
“No. I haven’t.”