“That? Merely the possibility that we were encountering a degree of vindictive finesse never before reached in our experience. Chapin’s hatred, diluted of course, extended from the uncle to the niece. He learned of the large sum she would receive in insurance, and in planning Hibbard’s murder planned also that the body would not be discovered; and the insurance money would not be paid her.”
“It would some day.”
“But even a delay in an enemy’s good fortune is at least a minor pleasure. Worth such a finesse if you have it in you. That was the possibility. And another one: let us say Chapin himself was the beneficiary. Miss Hibbard was sure he would kill her uncle, would evade discovery, and would collect a huge fortune for his pains. The thought was intolerable. So she killed her uncle herself — he was about to die in any event — and disposed of the body so that it could not be found. You might go into that with her this evening.”
I said, “You think I won’t? I’ll get her alibi.”
Chapter 4
There was plenty doing Saturday evening and Sunday. I saw Evelyn Hibbard and had three hours with her, and got Saul and Fred and the other boys lined up, and had a lot of fun on the telephone, and finally got hold of Higgam the bank guy late Sunday evening after he returned from a Long Island week-end. The phone calls were from members of the league who had got the telegrams. There were five or six that phoned, various kinds; some scared, some sore, and one that was apparently just curious. I had made several copies of the list, and as the phone calls came I checked them off on one and made notes. The original, Hibbard’s, had a date at the top, February 16, 1931, and was typewritten. Some of the addresses had been changed later with a pen, so evidently it had been kept up-to-date. Four of the names had no addresses at all, and of course I didn’t know which ones were dead. The list was like this, leaving out the addresses and putting in the business or profession as we got it Monday from the bank:
Andrew Hibbard, psychologist Ferdinand Bowen, stockbroker Loring A. Burton, doctor Eugene Dreyer, art dealer Alexander Drummond, florist George R. Pratt, politician Nicholas Cabot, lawyer Augustus Farrell, architect Wm. R. Harrison, judge Fillmore Collard, textile-mill owner Edwin Robert Byron, magazine editor L. M. Irving, social worker Lewis Palmer, Federal Housing Administration Julius Adler, lawyer Theodore Gaines, banker Pitney Scott, taxi-driver Michael Ayers, newspaperman Arthur Kommers, sales manager Wallace McKenna, congressman from Illinois Sidney Lang, real estate Roland Erskine, actor Leopold Elkus, surgeon F. L. Ingalls, travel bureau Archibald Mollison, professor Richard M. Tuttle, boys’ school T. R. Donovan Phillip Leonard Allan W. Gardner Hans Weber
For the last four there were no addresses, and I couldn’t find them in the New York or suburban phone books, so I couldn’t ask the bank for a report. Offhand, I thought, reading the names and considering that they were all Harvard men, which meant starting better than scratch on the average, offhand it looked pretty juicy; but the bank reports would settle that. It was fun stalling them on the phone.
But the real fun Sunday came in the middle of the afternoon. Someone had leaked on Hibbard’s disappearance and the Sunday papers had it, though they didn’t give it a heavy play. When the doorbell rang around three o’clock and I answered it because I happened to be handy and Fritz was busy out back, and I saw two huskies standing there shoulder to shoulder, I surmised at first glance it was a couple of bureau dicks and someone had got curious about me up at Hibbard’s the night before. Then I recognized one of them and threw the door wide with a grin.
“Hello, hello. You late from church?”