Wingate house hold help. We had proof no one lied, but little else.
I hoped Joe would have better luck discovering information that would help us. He was attending Dr. Fields’s autopsy of Sarah Wingate, which had been scheduled early, at five o’clock this morning. With a sigh of frustration, I turned to place the folder in my file cabinet when the steady sound of footsteps on the stairwell informed me that my visitor had arrived.
In stepped a middle-aged man with a meticulously trimmed mustache and dark hair just beginning to gray around the temples. He was fashionably dressed; his expensive leather shoes were polished to a high gloss and his coat was made of fine, soft, dark wool. He immediately took full mea sure of me with intense blue eyes, and flashed a charismatic smile that revealed perfectly white, even teeth. When he spoke, his voice was very smooth and cultured, reflecting a muted European accent.
“Detective Ziele, I presume?” He gripped my right hand and shook it firmly—too firmly. Through sheer willpower, I forced myself not to wince. “I am Alistair Sinclair. You should call me Alistair.”
In manner and voice, he seemed far more cosmopolitan than his English name had led me to expect. I would learn in coming days that he had traveled extensively in addition to spending part of his childhood in Rome.
He removed his coat and hat. “May I?” He gestured toward the wooden coat rack by the door.
“Please,” I said.
“It was good of you to meet me on such short notice; I can imagine how busy you are after yesterday’s events. I promise to take up no more of your time than necessary.”
I made a polite reply, even as I reflected that his telegram had given me little choice in the matter.
“Shall we sit?” Although he claimed the guest chair across from my desk, Alistair conducted himself as though the office were his and not mine. Yet once we were seated, facing one another, he regarded me silently and seemed unsure how to proceed.
“I admit—I was surprised to hear from you last night,” I began. “Never mind your claim to have important information about a suspect, I can’t make out how you got word of this murder so quickly.”
“Ah, yes.” He leaned back easily, having anticipated the question. “I’ve found it very useful over the years to develop good sources of information—among the police, the press, the fire wardens. In this case,” he confided, “it was one of my newspaper contacts at the World who came through with news of the murder last night. Amazing, given how preoccupied they were with yesterday’s election.” He nodded to the Times article on my desk. “But those fellows are unstoppable when it comes to newsgathering.” He smiled congenially, assuming we understood each other.
“True enough,” I said. News reporters could be downright predatory. I knew not all of them were so single-minded in their pursuit of a story as to behave indecently, but I did not hold them in high regard.
“How much did you learn about yesterday’s murder?” I asked. I wanted to be sure he knew what he was talking about and was not wasting my time.
He folded his arms in front of him and recited the facts of the case. “A young woman, mid-twenties, was killed late afternoon at a local residence. She suffered multiple lacerations and bruising.” He went on to detail other relevant facts that allayed any doubts I had about his being fully informed.
“And what about this local case attracts the attention of a professor from Columbia Law School?”
He looked at me with both surprise and respect, for he had told me nothing of who he was or what he did for a living. “It would appear you have cultivated your own sources of information. Those individuals who described you as exceptionally smart and resourceful were quite right.”
I never would have put it that way. And I was very curious as to whom he had spoken about me. But I could not give Alistair the satisfaction of knowing it.
My own inquiry into his background had been rather simple: A brief telephone call last night to the Seventh Precinct had produced a basic outline of Alistair Sinclair’s life. Personally, he had recently celebrated his fifty-second birthday; socially, he was from a wealthy family who counted themselves among Mrs. Astor’s New York Four Hundred; and professionally, he held advanced degrees from both Harvard and Columbia, where he had spent the past ten years as part of their