Free Murder Is Served by Frances Lockridge Page B

became as tragic as its contours allowed.
    â€œBut everything!” he said. “But all! It is a catastrophe!”
    â€œAnd you had no—well, personal animosity against Mr. Mott?” Bill said. “No dislike? No rivalry, say?”
    Maillaux looked astonished. He shook his head with energy.
    â€œBut we were friends,” he said. “We were associates. Would I permit myself—?”
    â€œPerhaps not,” Bill said.
    â€œIn addition, there was no cause,” Maillaux said. “For the girls I do not compete, you perceive? It is not that I—however—I am of an age, no?”
    Bill Weigand was not entirely convinced, but he did not argue. He did not think that M. Maillaux had quarreled with Tony Mott over a girl.
    â€œRight,” Bill said. “As long as you didn’t kill him, don’t worry.”
    â€œBut,” Maillaux said, and looked very worried, “I find the body? Yes?”
    Bill sighed faintly.
    â€œEven so,” he said. “Even so, M. Maillaux. If you had no reason—yes?”
    The last was to Mullins, who had reappeared at the door.
    â€œThere’s a girl,” Mullins said. “The hat-check girl. She wants to tell you something. She keeps saying she has to leave and—”
    â€œAll right,” Bill said. “Let her in, Sergeant.” Maillaux started to get up. “Stay if you don’t mind,” Bill said. He smiled. “Sobering influence,” he said, remembering the hat-check girl. Cecily Breakwell floated in. She was a little flushed and seemed excited. She saw Maillaux and did sober.
    â€œLieutenant!” she said. “I have to tell you—”
    She was pretty, quick, consciously (Bill Weigand thought) piquant. She seemed to poise, temporarily, in front of the desk. Bill stood up, indicated a chair. She poised, temporarily, in the chair.
    â€œIt’s dreadful,” she said. “Really dreadful. To think of Mr. Mott—”
    â€œYes,” Bill said. “You wanted to tell me—?”
    â€œShe hated him,” Cecily Breakwell said. The words seemed to scamper out of her small, pretty mouth. “I have to tell you. I didn’t want to but I said to myself, ‘Cecily, you have to tell the police, you really have to’ because it isn’t anything that they would—”
    She stopped and looked at Bill Weigand with her lips slightly parted. She looked at Maillaux.
    â€œI’m terribly afraid I’m excited,” she said. “Terribly excited. It’s nerving myself to it, you know. Because Peggy is so sweet, really. I keep telling myself she couldn’t have meant what she wrote. About hating Mr. Mott, you know. About wanting to kill him. But that’s what she did write, for Professor Leonard’s class in psychology. In the term paper, you know.”
    â€œPeggy,” Bill said. “That would be Mrs. Mott?”
    â€œOh yes,” Cecily said. “They were separated, you know, and she hated him. And when we had to write this paper about emotions, she wrote about how she hated him. I sit next to her, you know, and I couldn’t help glancing at her paper and it was dreadful. Frightening, you know, because it sounded so much as if she meant it.”
    â€œThis paper,” Weigand said. “A kind of an examination?”
    â€œOh yes,” Cecily said. “For the term grade, you know.”
    â€œShe wrote about hating Mr. Mott? By name? I mean, she mentioned who it was she hated?”
    Cecily looked for a moment as if she were thinking.
    â€œOh I think so,” she said. “I’m almost sure. And anyway, I knew, of course. And then in the elevator she said something about it to Mr. Carey—about what she’d written, you know—and then looked as if she wished she hadn’t. Mr. Carey said, ‘For God’s sake’ or something like that and was very angry at her.”
    â€œMr.