Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. She sat straight and motionless, her eyes level at him, the lips of her proud mouth perhaps a little tighter than ordinary. He went on, “And sure enough, the need arose. It was a double emergency. Mr. Gebert conceived the idea of marrying the heiress before she came of age, and insisted on the help of your influence and authority. What was worse, Mr. McNair began to get his scruples mixed up. He did not tell me the precise nature of the demands he made, but I believe I can guess them. He wanted to buy his daughter back again. Didn’t he? He had made even a greater success in New York than in London, and so had plenty of money. True, he was still bound by the agreement he had made with you in 1917, but I suspect he had succeeded in persuading himself that there was a higher obligation, both to his paternal emotions and to Glenna herself. No doubt he was outraged by Mr. Gebert’s impudent aspiration to marry Glenna and by your seeming acquiescence.
“You were certainly up against it, I can see that. After all your ingenuity and devotion and vigilance, and twenty years of control of a handsome income. With Mr. Gebert insisting on having her for a wife, and Mr. McNair demanding her for a daughter, and both of them threatening you daily with exposure, the surprising thing is that you found time for the deliberate cunning you employed. It is easy to see why you took Mr. McNair first. If you had killed Gebert, McNair would have known the truth of it no matter what your precautions, and would have acted at once. So your first effort was the poisoned candy for McNair, with the poison in the Jordan almonds, which you knew he was fond of. He escaped that; it killed an innocent young woman instead. He knew of course what it meant. Here I permit myself another surmise: my guess is that Mr. McNair, being a sentimental man, decided to reclaim his daughter on her real twenty-first birthday, April second. But knowing your resourcefulness, and fearing that you might somehow get him before then, he made certain arrangements in his will and in an interview with me. The latter, alas, was not completed; your second attempt, the imitation aspirin tablets, intervened. And just in the nick of time! Just when he was on the verge — Miss McNair! I beg you...”
Glenna McNair disregarded him. I suppose she didn’t hear him. She was on her feet, turned away from him, facing the woman with the straight back and proud mouth whom for so many years she had called mother. She took three steps toward her. Cramer was up too, beside her; and Lew Frost was there with a hand on her arm. With a convulsive movement she shook his hand off without looking at him; she was staring at Mrs. Frost. A little quiver ran over her, then she stood still and said in a half-choked voice:
“He was my father, and you killed him. You killed my father. Oh!” The quiver again, and she stopped for it. “You... you woman! ”
Llewellyn sputtered at Wolfe, “This is enough for her — good God, you shouldn’t have let her be here — I’ll take her home—”
Wolfe said curtly, “She has no home. None this side of Scotland. Miss McNair, I beg you. Sit down. You and I are doing a job. Aren’t we? Let’s finish it. Let’s do it right, for your father’s sake. Come.”
She quivered once more, shook off Lew’s hand again, and then turned and got to her chair and sat down. She looked at Wolfe: “All right. I don’t want anybody to touch me. But it’s all over, isn’t it?”
Wolfe shook his head. “Not quite. We’ll go on to the end.” He straightened out a finger to aim it at Mrs. Frost. “You, madam, have a little more to hear. Having got rid of Mr. McNair, you may even have had the idea that you could stop there. But that was bad calculation, unworthy of you, for naturally Mr. Gebert knew what had happened and began at once to put pressure on you. He was even foolhardy about it, for that was his humor; he told Mr. Goodwin that you had murdered Mr. McNair. He presumed, I suppose, that Mr. Goodwin did not know French, and did not know that calida, your name, is a Latin word meaning ‘ardently.’ No doubt he meant merely to startle you. He did indeed startle you, with such success that you killed him the next day. I have not yet congratulated you on the technique of that effort, but I assure you—”
“Please!” It was Mrs. Frost. We all looked at her. She had her chin up, her eyes at Wolfe, and didn’t seem ready to do any quivering. “Need I listen to your... need I listen to that?” Her head pivoted for the eyes to aim at Cramer. “You are a police inspector. Do you realize what this man is saying to me? Are you responsible for it? Are you... am I charged with anything?”
Cramer said in a heavy official tone, “It looks like you’re apt to be. Frankly, you’ll stay right here until I have a chance to look over some evidence. I can tell you now, formally, don’t say anything you don’t want used against you.”