Free Death of an Angel by Frances Lockridge Page B

the door to let you in? ”
    For an instant, Bill thought, Wyatt’s eyes went blank. But of this he could not be sure. Then Wyatt’s eyes widened, his eyebrows went up, his long face was all surprise.
    â€œI don’t know why she’d say that,” Wyatt said. “Must have got things mixed up. It started after I got inside. Where this cat had been.” He snapped his fingers, absently. “Hell,” he said, “whatever it is doesn’t come through a closed door.”
    He looked intently at Weigand. He said, “What are you getting at, captain?”
    â€œBefore you got there,” Bill told him, “there was someone on the floor above. With Mr. Fitch. With him when he took poison. Probably gave him the poison. And—the cat had been up there recently, Mr. Wyatt.”
    There was a longish pause.
    â€œSo,” Wyatt said then. “Well, I hadn’t, captain. This missus—what did you say her name was?” Bill told him. “She’s got it mixed up.”
    â€œPerhaps.”
    â€œI’d settle for that,” Wyatt told him. “Pretty much have to, won’t you? I say one thing. She says another. Doesn’t get you anywhere, does it?”
    â€œIt raises a question,” Bill told him.
    â€œAnd—I’ve answered it. I didn’t poison the polo player.”
    â€œAnd you weren’t on the second floor?”
    â€œSure I was. I went up with this Mrs. Hemmins and—”
    â€œYou know what I mean. Before that.”
    â€œNo.”
    The answer was unhesitating.

5
    Saturday, 11:00 P.M. to Sunday, 12:20 A.M.
    They had not let it stop there. For more than an hour after Sam Wyatt’s unhesitating denial that he had gone alone to the second floor of Fitch’s duplex, they had taken him over it. But it could not be argued that they had made perceptible progress.
    Wyatt had no convenient proof that he could not have been at the apartment some time before he rang the downstairs doorbell and was let in by Mrs. Hemmins—could not have been in Fitch’s study, and Fitch’s serving pantry, long enough to have concocted, and served, the “eye-opener” which had permanently closed Bradley Fitch’s eyes; could not, with the poison’s effect already apparent, have left that floor, gone down in the automatic elevator, got himself readmitted. He said that he had left his apartment and walked the few blocks to the Park Avenue apartment house, that he had gone up immediately and rung immediately, and been let in by Mrs. Hemmins within a few seconds.
    But he could not prove this. He had not kept precise track of time. He had not, so far as he knew, been noticed going out and, while this would be checked, checking would hardly help. (It is seldom that anyone says, “Oh, there goes Mr. Jones. It is now precisely ten-eighteen and one half.”) He had not, walking that day quiet streets of Manhattan’s upper East Side, encountered anyone he knew. He had not seen the doorman at the Park Avenue apartment house. “Probably off getting someone a cab.”
    Wyatt had been entirely reasonable. He had appeared entirely co-operative. Several times, he expressed regret that he could not be more helpful. Once he said, obviously, that had he known about all this in advance, he would have used a stop-watch. “Except I haven’t got one.”
    He had been equally reasonable about the cocktail napkin with the neat “N” in a corner. He had not, at first, recognized the napkin. Prompted, he had agreed that (if the captain said so) it might well be a belonging of Mr. and Mrs. North, and that he might, absentmindedly, have put it in his pocket when he left their apartment the evening before. He had done things like that before. This time, he might very easily have done it. “All I was thinking of was getting out of there. Three cats.”
    He was surprised that the napkin had been found in