Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Bradford Ames slowly circled the apartment, stopping to glance at the titles of the books on the shelf, staring at a picture on the wall.

"What are you looking for?" asked Sergeant Schroeder.

"I don't know." Ames shook his head. "I don't have any idea, that hassock, the cleaning woman says it wasn't there when she left?"

"That's what she said."

"And the pipe and the ashtray, she's positive they weren't there?"

"Just the pipe," said Schroeder. "She said she cleaned the ashtray and doesn't remember whether there was a pipe in it, but if so she'd have returned it to the rack."

"It's true, Sergeant, as a bachelor of long standing, I can testify to the fact that cleaning women always clean ashtrays whether they need cleaning or not."

"Wives, too."

"Is that so?" he said abstractedly. "Well, Sergeant, I'm inclined to believe her."

"And you didn't before?" asked Schroeder in surprise. "Why?"

"Because if her story is true, then the whole thing just doesn't add up."

"Why not?" Ames raised a pudgy finger. "She says she left here a little before three, maybe ten to, we know the bomb went off just after three, that means Hendryx had to go to his apartment, pull over the hassock, select a book from the shelf, light his pipe, sit down to read and then hightail it back to his office in time to get killed by the statue— all in fifteen minutes."

"He could have been smoking the pipe when he came in."

"Good point, and yet not so good, because there are half a dozen matches in that ashtray."

"They do it all the time." said Schroeder. "They smoke more matches than they do tobacco, are you saying it couldn't be done in fifteen minutes?"

"Well, it's possible," said Ames. "But that's all it is— possible, in the sense of racing against a stopwatch. Does it satisfy you?"

"No, it doesn't, sir," admitted the sergeant. "But you know what they say: when you've ruled out everything else, what's left has to be the answer, then again. Mrs. O'Rourke could have been fudging a little on the time and actually left quite a bit earlier. But why would she lie about it?" Ames shrugged. "They always fib. If they answer the phone in your absence, they always pretend they can't hear, or the connection is bad, rather than go to the trouble of getting a pencil and taking down the message properly, and when they break things, they hide them instead of telling you. I had one who would put something she'd broken where I'd be sure to trip over it and think I did it myself."

"We could question her again," Schroeder suggested. Ames agreed that was in order.

"What about the medical examiner?" asked the sergeant. "Did you get him to admit he'd made a mistake?"

Ames shook his head. "No, he insists the time is correct as he gave it."

"Then it doesn't make sense, none of it." said Schroeder, shaking his head. Ames chuckled. "Sergeant, let me tell you something about doctors' testimony as to the time of death, there never was one I couldn't have tied into knots on cross-examination on the witness stand. I never do, of course, because usually they're on my side; but you have only to check the literature to find there is enormous variation in the process of departing this world, the doctor says that death occurred, say, between two-ten and two-forty, as here. So you ask if it couldn't have been just a little earlier and a little later, say from two-five to two forty-five, and of course he has to admit that it's possible. So you keep extending it five minutes at a time until he calls a halt and says, no, it couldn't have been as early as that or as late as that. But by that time the jury is a little suspicious of him, and then you ask why he said between two-ten and two- forty when he now admits it could have been between a quarter of two and a quarter past three. Even if he manages to keep cool— and there's a good chance that he won't— the jury may think he's not such an objective, scientific witness after all, but he's only trying to help the side that's paying him."

"Well then!"

"Now. Sergeant." Ames cautioned, "that's only legal pyrotechnics. If he were a good man and knew his business, I'd know he was telling the truth even while I was making hash out of him."

Schroeder was thoroughly confused. "Then is he mistaken or isn't he?"

Ames began to stride about the room as he tried to organize his thoughts. "That's a problem. Sergeant. Because if the medical examiner is right, we've got to find another reason besides the explosion for that statue falling. I suppose there could be reverberations from a passing truck or sonic boom of a passing jet— but surely those have happened before and the statue hasn't fallen. No, the only possibility that seems to make sense to me is that someone pulled it down. Deliberately, and that would be murder, not felony murder, not an accident occuring during the commission of a felony, but out-and-out murder."

"We could backtrack Hendryx on the chance that someone might have wanted him dead." suggested the sergeant.

Ames nodded vigorously. "Yes, do that. By all means. I'd question everyone who was in the building that afternoon. I'd also question the people in his department. I'd especially want to know why he didn't have a desk in the English office along with the rest of the department."

"All right, sir, I'll get on with it."