The Thin Man (2 page)

Herbert Macaulay, Wynant’s attorney, told the police that he had not seen the inventor since October. He stated that Wynant called him on the telephone yesterday and made an appointment, but failed to keep it; and disclaimed any knowledge of his client’s whereabouts. Miss Wolf, Macaulay stated, had been in the inventor’s employ for the past eight years. The attorney said he knew nothing about the dead woman’s family or private affairs and could throw no light on her murder.

The bullet-wounds could not have been self-inflicted, according to …

The rest of it was the usual police department handout.

“Do you suppose he killed her?” Nora asked when I put the paper down again.

“Wynant? I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s batty as hell.”

“Did you know her?”

“Yes. How about a drop of something to cut the phlegm?”

“What was she like?”

“Not bad,” I said. “She wasn’t bad-looking and she had a lot of sense and a lot of nerve—and it took both to live with that guy.”

“She lived with him?”

“Yes. I want a drink, please. That is, it was like that when I knew them.”

“Why don’t you have some breakfast first? Was she in love with him or was it just business?”

“I don’t know. It’s too early for breakfast.”

When Nora opened the door to go out, the dog came in and put her front feet on the bed, her face in my face. I rubbed her head and tried to remember something Wynant had once said to
me, something about women and dogs. It was not the woman-spaniel-walnut-tree line. I could not remember what it was, but there seemed to be some point in trying to remember. Nora returned with two drinks and another question: “What’s he like?”

“Tall—over six feet—and one of the thinnest men I’ve ever seen. He must be about fifty now, and his hair was almost white when I knew him. Usually needs a haircut, ragged brindle mustache, bites his fingernails.” I pushed the dog away to reach for my drink.

“Sounds lovely. What were you doing with him?”

“A fellow who’d worked for him accused him of stealing some kind of invention from him. Rosewater was his name. He tried to shake Wynant down by threatening to shoot him, bomb his house, kidnap his children, cut his wife’s throat—I don’t know what all—if he didn’t come across. We never caught him—must’ve scared him off. Anyway, the threats stopped and nothing happened.”

Nora stopped drinking to ask: “Did Wynant really steal it?”

“Tch, tch, tch,” I said. “This is Christmas Eve: try to think good of your fellow man.”

That afternoon I took Asta for a walk, explained to two people that she was a Schnauzer and not a cross between a Scottie and an Irish terrier, stopped at Jim’s for a couple of drinks, ran into Larry Crowley, and brought him back to the Normandie with me. Nora was pouring cocktails for the Quinns, Margot Innes, a man whose name I did not catch, and Dorothy Wynant. Dorothy said she wanted to talk to me, so we carried our cocktails into the bedroom.

She came to the point right away. “Do you think my father killed her, Nick?”

“No,” I said. “Why should I?”

“Well, the police have— Listen, she was his mistress, wasn’t she?”

I nodded. “When I knew them.”

She stared at her glass while saying, “He’s my father. I never liked him. I never liked Mamma.” She looked up at me. “I don’t like Gilbert.” Gilbert was her brother.

“Don’t let that worry you. Lots of people don’t like their relatives.”

“Do you like them?”

“My relatives?”

“Mine.” She scowled at me. “And stop talking to me as if I was still twelve.”

“It’s not that,” I explained. “I’m getting tight.”

“Well, do you?”

I shook my head. “You were all right, just a spoiled kid. I could get along without the rest of them.”

“What’s the matter with us?” she asked, not argumentatively, but as if she really wanted to know.

“Different things. Your—”

Harrison Quinn opened the door and said: “Come on over and play some Ping-Pong, Nick.”

“In a little while.”

“Bring Beautiful along.” He leered at Dorothy and went away.

She said: “I don’t suppose you know Jorgensen.”

“I know a Nels Jorgensen.”

“Some people have all the luck. This one’s named Christian. He’s a honey. That’s Mamma—divorces a lunatic and marries a gigolo.” Her eyes became wet. She caught her breath in a sob and asked: “What am I going to do, Nick?” Her voice was a frightened child’s.

I put an arm around her and made what I hoped were comforting sounds. She cried on my lapel. The telephone beside the bed began to ring. In the next room “Rise and Shine” was coming through the radio. My glass was empty. I said: “Walk out on them.”

She sobbed again. “You can’t walk out on yourself.”

“Maybe I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please don’t tease me,” she said humbly.

Nora, coming in to answer the telephone, looked questioningly at me. I made a face at her over the girl’s head. When Nora said “Hello” into the telephone, the girl stepped quickly back away from me and blushed. “I—I’m sorry,” she stammered, “I didn’t—”

Nora smiled sympathetically at her. I said: “Don’t be a dope.” The girl found her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes with it.

Nora spoke into the telephone. “Yes … I’ll see if he’s in.
Who’s calling, please?” She put a hand over the mouthpiece and addressed me: “It’s a man named Norman. Do you want to talk to him?”

I said I didn’t know and took the telephone. “Hello.”

A somewhat harsh voice said: “Mr. Charles? … Mr. Charles, I understand that you were formerly connected with the Trans-American Detective Agency.”

“Who is this?” I asked.

“My name is Albert Norman, Mr. Charles, which probably means nothing to you, but I would like to lay a proposition before you. I am sure you will—”

“What kind of a proposition?”

“I can’t discuss it over the phone, Mr. Charles, but if you will give me half an hour of your time, I can promise—”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m pretty busy and—”

“But, Mr. Charles, this is—” Then there was a loud noise: it could have been a shot or something falling or anything else that would make a loud noise. I said, “Hello,” a couple of times, got no answer, and hung up.

Nora had Dorothy over in front of a looking-glass soothing her with powder and rouge. I said, “A guy selling insurance,” and we went into the living-room for a drink. Some more people had come in. I spoke to them. Harrison Quinn left the sofa where he had been sitting with Margot Innes and said: “Now Ping-Pong.” Asta jumped up and punched me in the belly with her front feet. I shut off the radio and poured myself a cocktail. The man whose name I had not caught was saying: “Comes the revolution and we’ll all be lined up against the wall—first thing.” He seemed to think it was a good idea.

Quinn came over to refill his glass. He looked towards the bedroom door. “Where’d you find the little blonde?”

“Used to bounce it on my knee.”

“Which knee?” he asked. “Could I touch it?”

Nora and Dorothy came out of the bedroom. I saw an afternoon paper on the radio and picked it up. Headlines said:

Nora, at my elbow, spoke in a low voice: “I asked her to have dinner with us. Be nice to the child”—Nora was twenty-six—“she’s all upset.”

“Whatever you say.” I turned around. Dorothy, across the room, was laughing at something Quinn was telling her. “But if you get mixed up in people’s troubles, don’t expect me to kiss you where you’re hurt.”

“I won’t. You’re a sweet old fool. Don’t read that here now.” She took the newspaper away from me and stuck it out of sight behind the radio.

Nora could not sleep that night. She read Chaliapin’s memoirs until I began to doze and then woke me up by asking: “Are you asleep?” I said I was. She lit a cigarette for me, one for herself. “Don’t you ever think you’d like to go back to detecting once in a while just for the fun of it? You know, when something special comes up, like the Lindb—”

“Darling,” I said, “my guess is that Wynant killed her, and the police’ll catch him without my help. Anyway, it’s nothing in my life.”

“I didn’t mean just that, but—”

“But besides I haven’t the time: I’m too busy trying to see that you don’t lose any of the money I married you for.” I kissed her. “Don’t you think maybe a drink would help you to sleep?”

“No, thanks.”

“Maybe it would if I took one.” When I brought my Scotch and soda back to bed, she was frowning into space. I said: “She’s cute, but she’s cuckoo. She wouldn’t be his daughter if she wasn’t. You can’t tell how much of what she says is what she thinks and you can’t tell how much of what she thinks ever really happened. I like her, but I think you’re letting—”

“I’m not sure I like her,” Nora said thoughtfully, “she’s probably
a little bastard, but if a quarter of what she told us is true, she’s in a tough spot.”

“There’s nothing I can do to help her.”

“She thinks you can.”

“And so do you, which shows that no matter what you think, you can always get somebody else to go along with you.”

Nora sighed. “I wish you were sober enough to talk to.” She leaned over to take a sip of my drink. “I’ll give you your Christmas present now if you’ll give me mine.”

I shook my head. “At breakfast.”

“But it’s Christmas now.”

“Breakfast.”

“Whatever you’re giving me,” she said, “I hope I don’t like it.”

“You’ll have to keep them anyway, because the man at the Aquarium said he positively wouldn’t take them back. He said they’d already bitten the tails off the—”

“It wouldn’t hurt you any to find out if you can help her, would it? She’s got so much confidence in you, Nicky.”

“Everybody trusts Greeks.”

“Please.”

“You just want to poke your nose into things that—”

“I meant to ask you: did his wife know the Wolf girl was his mistress?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t like her.”

“What’s the wife like?”

“I don’t know—a woman.”

“Good-looking?”

“Used to be very.”

“She old?”

“Forty, forty-two. Cut it out, Nora. You don’t want any part of it. Let the Charleses stick to the Charleses’ troubles and the Wynants stick to the Wynants’.”

She pouted. “Maybe that drink would help me.”

I got out of bed and mixed her a drink. As I brought it into
the bedroom, the telephone began to ring. I looked at my watch on the table. It was nearly five o’clock.

Nora was talking into the telephone: “Hello…. Yes, speaking.” She looked sidewise at me. I shook my head no. “Yes…. Why, certainly…. Yes, certainly.” She put the telephone down and grinned at me.

“You’re wonderful,” I said. “Now what?”

“Dorothy’s coming up. I think she’s tight.”

“That’s great.” I picked up my bathrobe. “I was afraid I was going to have to go to sleep.”

She was bending over looking for her slippers. “Don’t be such an old fluff. You can sleep all day.” She found her slippers and stood up in them. “Is she really as afraid of her mother as she says?”

“If she’s got any sense. Mimi’s poison.”

Nora screwed up her dark eyes at me and asked slowly: “What are you holding out on me?”

“Oh, dear,” I said, “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you. Dorothy is really my daughter. I didn’t know what I was doing, Nora. It was spring in Venice and I was so young and there was a moon over the—”

“Be funny. Don’t you want something to eat?”

“If you do. What do you want?”

“Raw chopped beef sandwich with a lot of onion and some coffee.”

Dorothy arrived while I was telephoning an all-night delicatessen. When I went into the living-room, she stood up with some difficulty and said: “I’m awfully sorry, Nick, to keep bothering you and Nora like this, but I can’t go home this way tonight. I can’t. I’m afraid to. I don’t know what’d happen to me, what I’d do. Please don’t make me.” She was very drunk. Asta sniffed at her ankles.

I said: “Sh-h-h. You’re all right here. Sit down. There’ll be some coffee in a little while. Where’d you get the snoutful?”