Death on Deadline - Robert Goldsborough Page 0,76

in as they tried to outshout one another.

“Quiet!” Wolfe spat. It wasn’t a bellow, but close, and it did the trick. “Does anyone seriously doubt this woman’s word? I understand she had been in Mrs. Haverhill’s employ for approximately twenty years.”

Nobody said anything, although Scott was wearing what I’d define as a smirk. It was hard to believe Harriet would have turned her paper over to him.

“Wait a minute,” Cramer objected. “If that’s true, it would have given Harriet Haverhill, let’s see . . . more than fifty-two percent.”

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “a controlling interest.”

MacLaren looked ill.

“But the suicide . . .” It was Donna, and if she’d been in a comic strip, she would have had a question mark above her head.

Wolfe inhaled several cubic feet of air and let them out slowly. “Again, Mrs. Palmer, there was no suicide. Quite the opposite. Mrs. Haverhill was herself bent on ending the life of someone else.” That raised the noise level again, but Wolfe silenced it by bringing his palm down hard enough to rattle the Laelia cattleya in the vase on the desk top.

“The bullet that ended her life”—he paused for effect—”was intended for her killer.”

Donna cut in again. “You mean Harriet was going to . . . ?” Her mouth started to form a word, but nothing came out.

“She was,” Wolfe stated. “You might find that difficult to believe, and it might well have been, under normal circumstances. I am constrained from divulging specifics,” he said, looking levelly at Cramer, “but she knew her own death was imminent. What punishment could the law mete out to her that would override the sentence under which she already lived? And by taking this action, she would rid the world of what she considered an unspeakable vermin.”

“I assume we’re going to get some kind of explanation of all this gibberish,” David said. His hands were shaking. His wife started fussing over him again.

“You will, sir,” Wolfe replied. “Getting back to mathematics, I realized that the swing of Scott Haverhill’s ten percent of the Gazette shares to her side made Mrs. Haverhill the majority holder again. That fact must have been immensely satisfying to her as she awaited the arrival of her nemesis last Friday.

“Mr. MacLaren was on time for his appointment— we and the police have Miss Barwell’s word on that.”

“And mine too!” MacLaren said. His eyes blazed at Wolfe. A muscle was twitching in his cheek.

“Just so. We also have your word, sir, that the conversation was far from pleasant. What we don’t have is an accurate report of that conversation.”

“See here—”

“You’ll have time to talk.” Wolfe scowled. “Let me reconstruct the dialogue, at least in a general way. You probably spoke first, from a position of strength, claiming to have a majority of the shares, and if what you have said at other times is true, you offered to buy Mrs. Haverhill’s stock as well.

“This would of course have been an additional affront to her, but she still had a trump card and she played it, undoubtedly relishing the moment. She crowed about Scott’s almost certain defection from your camp.

“But you, sir, were able to overruff, and you did. You informed her of another defection, but one from her camp, which shifted the balance back, giving you barely more than fifty percent.”

“This is ridiculous,” MacLaren shouted, starting to rise, but Purley Stebbins moved up from the back of the room and told him softly but firmly to sit down. MacLaren sat, grabbing his knees.

“Ridiculous? We’ll see,” Wolfe answered. “After you dropped your bombshell, the conversation deteriorated to little more than a shouting duel, and you left her office. She was in a fury, understandably. She had been betrayed, and she phoned her Judas, asking—probably demanding—his presence in her office.

“Her animosity was so intense that reason deserted her, and the long-forgotten pistol in her desk drawer came to mind. When the turncoat arrived, she confronted him with her knowledge of his defection and took the gun from the drawer or some other place of concealment. However, he moved quickly—after all, his life was on the line. He managed to wrest the gun from her, and one of two things happened: either he shot her intentionally or the weapon discharged during the struggle, firing the fatal shell. Then he—”

“Stop!” The shriek was so piercing that everyone in the room recoiled. “Stop, stop, stop!” Elliot Dean held his hands over his ears and shook his head as if he were having a spasm.