The Twelve Crimes of Christmas by Martin H. Greenberg et al (Ed) Read Free Book Online

been taking her here and there, some
six or eight times altogether. Monday evening at the Flamingo Club she asked me
to do her a favor. She said Bottweill was giving her a runaround, that he had
been going to marry her for a year but kept stalling, and she wanted to do
something. She said Cherry Quon was making a play for him, and she didn’t
intend to let Cherry take the rail. She asked me to get a marriage-license
blank and fill it out for her and me and give it to her. She would show it to
Bottweill and tell him now or never. It struck me as a good deed with no risk
involved, and, as I say, she is a good dancer. Tuesday afternoon I got a blank,
no matter how, and that evening, up in my room, I filled it in, including a
fancy signature.”
    Wolfe
made a noise.
    “That’s
all,” I said, “except that I want to make it clear that I had no intention of
showing it to you. I did that on the spur of the moment when you picked up your
book. Your memory is as good as mine. Also, to close it up, no doubt you
noticed that today just before Bottweill and Mrs. Jerome joined the party
Margot and I stepped aside for a little chat. She told me the license did the
trick. Her words were, ‘Perfect, simply perfect.’ She said that last evening,
in his office, he tore the license up and put the pieces in his wastebasket.
That’s okay, the cops didn’t find them. I looked before they came, and the
pieces weren’t there.”
    His
mouth was working, but he didn’t open it. He didn’t dare. He would have liked
to tear into me, to tell me that my insufferable flummery had got him into this
awful mess, but if he did so, he would be dragging in the aspect he didn’t want
mentioned. He saw that in time, and saw that I saw it. His mouth worked, but
that was all. Finally he spoke.
    “Then
you are not on intimate terms with Miss Dickey.”
    “No,
sir.”
    “Even
so, she must have spoken of that establishment and those people.”
    “Some,
yes.”
    “And
one of them killed Bottweill. The poison was put in the bottle between two-ten,
when I saw him take a drink, and three-thirty, when Kiernan went and got the
bottle. No one came up in the private elevator during the half-hour or more I
was in the dressing room. I was getting into that costume and gave no heed to
footsteps or other sounds in the office, but the elevator shaft adjoins the
dressing room, and I would have heard it. It is a strong probability that the
opportunity was even narrower, that the poison was put in the bottle while I
was in the dressing room, since three of them were in the office with Bottweill
when I left. It must be assumed that one of those three, or one of the three in
the studio, had grasped an earlier opportunity. What about them?”
    “Not
much. Mostly from Monday evening, when Margot was talking about Bottweill. So
it’s all hearsay, from her. Mrs. Jerome has put half a million in the business—probably
you should divide that by two at least—and thinks she owns him. Or thought. She
was jealous of Margot and Cherry. As for Leo, if his mother was dishing out the
dough he expected to inherit to a guy who was trying to corner the world’s
supply of gold leaf, and possibly might also marry him, and if he knew about
the jar of poison in the workshop, he might have been tempted. Kiernan, I don’t
know, but from a remark Margot made and from the way he looked at Cherry this
afternoon, I suspect he would like to mix some Irish with her Chinese and
Indian and Dutch, and if he thought Bottweill had him stymied he might have
been tempted to. So much for hearsay.”
    “Mr.
Hatch?”
    “Nothing
on him from Margot, but, dealing with him during the tapestry job, I wouldn’t
have been surprised if he had wiped out the whole bunch on general principles.
His heart pumps acid instead of blood. He’s a creative artist, he told me so.
He practically told me that he was responsible for the success of that
enterprise but got no credit. He didn’t tell me that he regarded