Free The Seventh Bullet by Daniel D. Victor Page A

expect to learn more from her husband. I was well aware that the man whose tongue might be silenced by a domineering woman might have it loosened quickly with the help of a seductive liquor.
    We each clipped a cigar that Mrs. Frevert had kindly provided and partook of the port. I wanted to keep my wits clear but knew that I would have to appear a willing drinking partner to create the camaraderie that would encourage revelation.
    Beveridge leaned back in his chair and, forming his mouth into a tiny O, puffed a circular cloud of white cigar smoke over the table. Then, like a satisfied author completing a well-wrought sentence with a flourishing exclamation mark, he punctuated his effort by driving a remaining blast of smoke through the centre of the evanescent ring. From the casual manner in which he enjoyed his tobacco, it was clear that Beveridge had said all that he cared to for that evening on the subject of Phillips’s demise. It was equally clear from the way Frevert would stare into his crystal snifter and then glance in my direction that he had not.
    “Mr. Frevert,” I encouraged, “I sense that you wish to say more than you have.”
    He looked up at me and then at Beveridge. “It’s not easy forme to talk in front of Carolyn,” he said. “Bev knows. She simply overpowers me. That’s why I couldn’t speak out against her brother’s coming to live with us—first back in Cincinnati and then here in New York. Twelve years on and off the three of us were living together. Then finally I couldn’t take it any more.” Here he slapped the open palm of his hand down onto the table; a moment later he was carefully straightening the resultant ripple in the white cloth. “I never did know just what was going on between the two of them—if you know what I mean—but I had my suspicions.”
    Sherlock Holmes might have pretended not to be shocked by Mr. Frevert’s innuendo, but I was not so competent an actor. I could not —would not—allow him to utter such an insinuation uncontested. I put down my glass and demanded an instant apology. “Mr. Frevert, how can you impugn the reputation of your gracious wife? Not to mention a dead man who can no longer defend his honour! And in front of Senator Beveridge!”
    Frevert’s droopy eyes opened wide at my outburst, but almost immediately they resumed their previous attitude. “I had no intention of shocking you, Dr. Watson, but you must understand that my wife and her brother were very, very close. Bev knows. Ask their sister Eva. She thought that Carolyn was keeping Graham from the rest of the family on purpose. They seldom made it to family gatherings, and till the day he died they were hardly ever apart. Even when they were separated, they corresponded daily. Why, they dressed up for dinner every night!”
    “There’s nothing outrageous about dressing for dinner,” I maintained.
    Frevert took another sip of his port as if to fortify himself. “Maybe not,” he said, “but when brother and sister are drinkingchampagne every evening and then remaining together all the night, I think there’s something terribly wrong.”
    During Frevert’s and my entire exchange, Beveridge sat smoking his cigar. No doubt he had heard it all before.
    “Oh, come, sir,” I said, “I’m sure there’s a plausible explanation.”
    “Of course. Of course. He was writing all night, they said, and she was sorting and arranging his files. Perfectly natural, they said.”
    “You disagree?”
    “All I can tell you, Dr. Watson, is that I finally had to leave. We hadn’t been living together as man and wife for quite a while anyway.”
    But a few hours ago I didn’t know this man, and now I was learning his most intimate secrets.
    “You’d never see Graham with a girl. Oh, he’d escort some pretty young lady to a fashionable soirée every so often—or take along his sister. But he was never really interested in the fairer sex. You’re a doctor; you know what I mean.”
    Although