Helen Frost put level eyes on him, with a little crease in her brow between them. She said quietly, “My cousin told us you wished to ask us about — about Molly Lauck.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe leaned back, warily, to see if the chair would take it. There was no creak, and he settled. “Understand this, Miss Frost: I am a detective. Therefore, while I may be accused of incompetence or stupidity, I may not be charged with impertinence. However nonsensical or irrelevant my questions may seem to you, they may be filled with the deepest significance and the most sinister implications. That is the tradition of my profession. As a matter of fact, I was merely making an effort to get acquainted with you.”
Her eyes stayed level. “I am doing this as a favor to my cousin Lew. He didn’t ask me to get acquainted.” She swallowed. “He asked me to answer questions about last Monday.”
Wolfe leaned forward and snapped, “Only as a favor to your cousin? Wasn’t Molly Lauck your friend? Wasn’t she murdered? You aren’t interested in helping with that?”
It didn’t jolt her much. She swallowed again, but stayed steady. “Interested — yes. Of course. But I’ve told the police — I don’t see what Lew — I don’t see why you—” She stopped herself and jerked her head up and demanded, “Haven’t I said I’ll answer your questions? It’s awful — it’s an awful thing—”
“So it is.” Wolfe turned abruptly to the blonde. “Miss Mitchell. I understand that at twenty minutes past four last Monday afternoon, a week ago yesterday, you and Miss Frost took the elevator together, downstairs, and got out at this floor. Right?”
She nodded.
“And there was no one up here; that is, you saw no one. You walked down the corridor to the fifth door on the left, across the corridor from Mr. McNair’s office, and entered that room, which is an apartment used as a rest room for the four models who work here. Molly Lauck was in there. Right?”
She nodded again. Wolfe said, “Tell me what happened.”
The blonde took a breath. “Well, we started to talk about the show and the customers and so on. Nothing special. We did that about three minutes, and then suddenly Molly said she forgot, and she reached under a coat and pulled out a box—”