Fletch’s Fortune

Thirty-three

1:30 P.M.

MY EIGHT TERMS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Address by Leona Hatch

Main Dining Room

Fletch said, “Mrs. March, I’ve been trying to understand why you murdered your husband.”

Sitting in a chair across the coffee table from him in Suite 12, her expression changed little. Perhaps her eyes grew a little wider.

“And,” Fletch said, “I think I do understand.”

He had appeared at her door, carrying the marvelous machine.

She had answered the door, still dressed in black, having returned from the memorial service shortly before. Near the door was a luncheon tray waiting to be taken away.

At first, she looked at him in surprise, as it was an unseemly time to call. Then she obviously remembered he had promised they would talk again about his working for March Newspapers. And the suitcase in his hand suggested he was about to leave.

He said nothing.

Sitting on the divan, he placed the marvelous machine flat on the coffee table.

Now he was opening it.

“Statistically, of course,” he said, “in the case of a domestic murder—and this is a domestic murder—when a husband or wife is murdered, chances of the spouse being the murderer are something over seventy percent.”

Perhaps her eyes widened again when she saw that what was in the suitcase was a tape recorder.

“Which is why,” Fletch said, “you chose to murder your husband here at the convention, where you knew your husband would be surrounded by people who had reason to hate him to the point of murder.”

Her back was straight Her hands were folded in her lap.

“Listen to this.”

Fletch started the tape recorder.

It was the tape of Lydia March being questioned by Captain Neale, edited:

“At what time did you wake up, Mrs. March?”

“I’m not sure. Seven-fifteen? Seven-twenty? I heard the door to the suite close.”

“That was me, Mister Neale,” Junior said. “I went down to the lobby to get the newspapers.”

“Walter had left his bed. It’s always been a thing with him to be up a little earlier than I. A masculine thing. I heard him moving around the bathroom. I lay in bed a little while, a few minutes, really, waiting for him to be done.”

“The bathroom door was closed?”

“Yes. In a moment I heard the television here in the living room go on, softly—one of those morning news and features network shows Walter always hated so much—so I got up and went into the bathroom.”

“Excuse me. How did your husband get from the bathroom to the living room without coming back through your bedroom?”

“He went through Junior’s bedroom, of course. He didn’t want to disturb me?.”

“… Okay. You were in the bathroom. The television was playing softly in the living room.…”

“I heard the door to the suite close again, so I thought Walter had gone down for coffee.”

“Had the television gone off?”

“No.”

“So, actually, someone could have come into the suite at that point.”

“No. At first, I thought Junior might have come back, but he couldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t hear them talking.”

“Would they have been talking? Necessarily?”

“Of course.…”

“So, Mrs. March, you think you heard the suite door close again, but your husband hadn’t left the suite, and you think no one entered the suite because you didn’t hear talking?”

“I guess that’s right I could be mistaken, of course. I’m trying to reconstruct.”

“Pardon, but where were you physically in the bathroom when you heard the door close the second time?”

“I was getting into the tub.…”

“… You had already run the tub?”

“Yes. While I was brushing my teeth. And all that.”

“So there must have been a period of time, while the tub was running, that you couldn’t have heard anything from the living room—not the front door, not the television, not talking?”

“I suppose not.”

“So the second time you heard the door close, when you were getting into the tub, you actually could have been hearing someone leave the suite.”

“Oh, my. That’s right Of course.”

“It would explain your son’s not having returned, your husband’s not having left, and your not hearing talking.”

“How clever you are….”

Fletch switched off the marvelous machine.

Listening, Lydia March’s eyes had gone back and forth from the slowly revolving tape reel to Fletch’s face.

Fletch said, “When I first arrived at Hendricks Plantation, and Helena Williams was telling me about the murder, I noticed she particularly mentioned what you had heard from the bathroom. I think she said something about your hearing gurgling and thinking it was the tub drain. Not precisely what you said here. But Helena could have reported what you heard from the bathroom only if you had made a point of telling her.”

Fletch rested his back against a divan pillow.

“Captain Neale wasn’t a bit clever,” he said. “He never went into the bathroom to discover what could be heard from there.

“I did.”

“Last night, when I came to visit you, you and Jake Williams were talking here in the living room. I went into the bathroom. The doors of both bedrooms to the living room were open—which gave me a much better chance to hear than you supposedly had. I closed both bathroom doors. I did not run water. I did not flush the toilet. I listened.

“Mrs. March, I could not hear you and Jake talking. You could not have heard the television, especially on low.

“I did not hear Jake leave the suite. You could not have heard the door closing—as you said you did.

“Perhaps your hearing is better than mine, but my hearing is forty years younger than yours.

“As Oscar Perlman might say, I have twenty-twenty hearing.

“Mrs. March, the closets to both bedrooms are between the bathroom and the living room. Architects do this on purpose, so you cannot hear.

“You made too much of an issue of the front door of the suite being open. You gave evidence you couldn’t have had. It was important for you to convince everyone that you heard the door close when Junior left the suite, but that it was open when you came into the living room.

“You lied.

“Why?

“Despite everything we know about your husband, how badly he treated people, his private detectives, his sense of security, you had to convince people he had opened the door to someone else, who stabbed him in the back.

“Simplicity. The simple truth is that there were two of you in a suite, with the door to the corridor closed and locked, and one of you was stabbed.

“Who did it?”

He leaned forward again, and again pressed the PLAY button on the tape recorder.

Lydia March’s voice came from the speakers:

“… There was a man in the corridor, walking away, lighting a cigar as he walked… I didn’t know who he was, from behind… I ran toward him… then I realized who he was.…”

“Mrs. March. Who was the man in the corridor?”

“Perlman. Oscar Perlman.”

“The humorist?”

“If you say so.…”

Fletch switched off the machine again.

He said, “Mrs. March, you made three mistakes in laying down potential evidence that Oscar Perlman is your husband’s murderer.

“The first isn’t very serious. Perlman says he was playing poker until five-thirty in the morning and then slept late. That he was playing poker until five-thirty in the morning can be confirmed, and I suppose Neale has done so. He could have gotten up, murdered your husband, and gone back to bed, or whatever, but it doesn’t seem likely.

“A much more serious mistake you made is in the timing of it all.

“According to your story, someone stabbed your husband in the living room. Sitting in the bathtub, you heard choking, whatever, called out, got out of the tub, grabbed a towel, went into the bedroom, saw your husband stagger in from the living room, roll off the bed, drive the scissors deeper into his back, arch up, et cetera, and die. Then you ran through the bedroom, the living room, and into the corridor.

“And you try to indicate that the man who might have stabbed your husband is—just at that point—still in the corridor, walking away?

“You lied.

“Why?

“The third mistake you made in saying Oscar Perlman was in the corridor outside the suite is most serious.

“But I’ll come back to that.”

Again, Fletch settled himself on the divan.

He said, “Unfortunately for you, the people who had the best motives and opportunity to kill your husband are all highly skilled at handling an interview. They’re all reporters. Rolly Wisham, for example, did nothing to divert suspicion from himself. Oscar Perlman didn’t even pretend he had an alibi. Lewis Graham didn’t hesitate to be open—almost indict himself. Even Crystal Faoni was quick to realize she was a possible suspect—and didn’t hesitate to admit it. Perhaps it was unconscious on their parts, but I think they all have enough experience to have realized instinctively they had all been set up as clay pigeons.

“By you. By your choice of the time and the place of the murder.

“I always look for the controlling intelligence behind anything and everything. In this case, it was yours.

“Why? Why, why, why?”

Lydia March continued sitting primly in her chair. Her head had raised slightly, and she was looking somewhat down her nose at him.

“In October, 1928, you married Walter March, who was due to graduate from Princeton in June, 1929.

“Odd. Especially in those days. Not to have waited for graduation.

“Not so odd. Junior was born five months later, in March, 1929.

“What was the expression for it in those days? A shotgun marriage?

“Was Walter March the father of your child?

“Or, being the heir to a newspaper fortune, was he just the best catch around?

“Were you sure Walter was the father? Was he?

“You’re a wily woman, Mrs. March.

“You remained married to Walter March for fifty years. Never had another child.

“There was an enormous newspaper fortune to be inherited.

“But Walter was an old war-horse. He wouldn’t give up. Perfect health. He announced his retirement once, and then, when Junior goofed up, didn’t retire.

“And all this time, as Junior was getting to be fifty years old, losing his wife, his family, drinking more and more, you saw him becoming weaker and weaker, wasting away.”

Fletch stared a long moment at the floor.

Finally, he said, “There is a time for fathers to move aside, to quit, to die, to leave room for their sons to grow.

“Even if they are just the image of the father, rather than the blood-father.

“Walter wasn’t moving aside.

“Did he somehow know, instinctively, Walter, Junior, wasn’t his son?”

Fletch jerked the marvelous machine’s wire from the wall socket.

“You killed your husband to save your son.”

He was wrapping up the wire. “Do you know your husband had another son? His name is Joseph Molinaro. Your husband had him with Eleanor Earles, I guess, while she was a student at Barnard.

“And did you know that Joseph Molinaro is here?

“He came here to see your husband.

“Maybe another son on the horizon—if you knew it—made you even more desperate to protect your own son.”

Fletch closed and latched the cover of the suitcase.

“Of course, I’m going to have to talk with Captain Neale—if you don’t first.

“By the way,” he said. “Thanks for the job offer.

“Same way you Marches do everything. Either buy people off, or blackmail them into a corner.

“After more than a century of this, you have a most uncanny instinct as to whom to buy off or blackmail.”

He stood up and picked up the suitcase.

“Oh,” he said. “The third, most terrible mistake you made in saying Oscar Perlman was in the corridor was that you said it in Junior’s presence.

“The big idiot has blown the game again.

“He’s gone and told Captain Neale that Perlman had an appointment to see your husband at eight o’clock Monday morning.”

Lydia was looking up at Fletch from her chair.

Her expression did not change at all.

Fletch said, “You don’t understand the significance of that, do you?”

Her expression still didn’t change.

“Again, Junior was overdoing the clever bit Why would he lie to support you, unless he knows you were lying?

“He knows you killed your husband.”

Her eyes lowered, slowly.

Her lips tightened, and turned down at their corners.

Her eyes settled on her hands, in her lap.

Slowly, her hands opened, and turned palms up.

“Mrs. March,” Fletch said. “You’re killing your son.”

Fletch was almost back to his room, carrying the marvelous machine, before he realized that during the time he had just spent with her, Lydia March had not said one word.