“Yes, sir. That man you wanted — Vedder — he’s here.”
“Then I’ll take him first.”
VI
Up in the plant rooms Malcolm Vedder had caught my eye by the way he picked up a flowerpot and held it. As he took a chair across the dining table from Cramer and me, I still thought he was worth another good look, but after his answer to Cramer’s third question I relaxed and concentrated on my sandwiches. He was an actor and had had parts in three Broadway plays. Of course that explained it. No actor would pick up a flowerpot just normally, like you or me. He would have to dramatize it some way, and Vedder had happened to choose a way that looked to me like fingers closing around a throat.
Now he was dramatizing this by being wrought up and indignant about the cops dragging him into an investigation of a sensational murder. He kept running the long fingers of both his elegant hands through his hair in a way that looked familiar, and I remembered I had seen him the year before as the artist guy in The Primitives.
“Typical!” he told Cramer, his eyes flashing and his voice throaty with feeling. “Typical of police clumsiness! Pulling me into this! The newspapermen out front recognized me, of course, and the damned photographers! My God!”
“Yeah,” Cramer said sympathetically. “It’ll be tough for an actor, having your picture in the paper. We need help, us clumsy police, and you were among those present. You’re a member of this flower club?”
No, Vedder said, he wasn’t. He had come with a friend, a Mrs. Beauchamp, and when she had left to keep an appointment he had remained to look at more orchids. If only he had departed with her he would have avoided this dreadful publicity. They had arrived about three-thirty, and he had remained in the plant rooms continuously until leaving with me at his heels. He had seen no one that he had ever known or seen before, except Mrs. Beauchamp. He knew nothing of any Cynthia Brown or Colonel Percy Brown. Cramer went through all the regulation questions and got all the expected negatives, until he suddenly asked, “Did you know Doris Hatten?”
Vedder frowned. “Who?”
“Doris Hatten. She was also—”