“And if so?” Wolfe was testy. “Why are you tolerating this? Because if the message did mean me I’m the crux, and your only alternative is to cart me downtown, and that would merely make me mum, and you know it.” He drank beer and put the glass down. “However, maybe we can expedite it without too great a risk. Tell your men who are now interviewing these people to be alert for something connected with the figure six. They must give no hint of it, they must themselves not mention it, but if the figure six appears in any segment of the interview they should concentrate on that segment until it is exhausted. They all know, I presume, of Heller’s suspicion that one of his clients had committed a serious crime?”
“They know that Goodwin says so. What’s this about six?”
Wolfe shook his head. “That will have to do. Even that may be foolhardy, since they’re your men, not mine.”
“Winslow’s uncle died six years ago and left him six cents.”
“I’m quite aware of it. You say that is being investigated. Do you want Mr. Goodwin to pass this word?”
Cramer said no thanks, he would, and left the room.
By the time he returned, citizen number two had been brought in by Stebbins, introduced to Wolfe, and seated where Winslow had been. She was Susan Maturo. She looked fully as harassed as she had that morning, but I wouldn’t say much more so. There was now, of course, a new aspect to the matter: did she look harassed or guilty? She was undeniably attractive, but so had Maude Vail been, and she had poisoned two husbands. There was the consideration that if Heller had been killed by the client whom he suspected of having committed a crime, it must have been a client he had seen previously at least once, or how could he have got grounds for a suspicion; and, according to Susan Maturo, she had never called on Heller before and had never seen him. But actually that eliminated neither her nor Agatha Abbey, who also claimed that that morning had been her first visit. It was known that Heller had sometimes made engagements by telephone to meet prospective clients elsewhere, and Miss Maturo and Miss Abbey might well have been among that number.
Opening up on her, Wolfe was not too belligerent, probably because she had accepted an offer of beer and, after drinking some, had licked her lips. It pleases him when people share his joys.
“You are aware, Miss Maturo,” he told her, “that you are in a class by yourself. The evidence indicates that Mr. Heller was killed by one of the six people who entered that building this morning to call on him, and you are the only one of the six who departed before eleven o’clock, Mr. Heller’s appointment hour. Your explanation of your departure as given in your statement is close to incoherent. Can’t you improve on it?”
She looked at me. I did not throw her a kiss, but neither did I glower. “I’ve reported what you told me,” I assured her, “exactly as you said it.”