Chapter 18 Chapter Eighteen

Mimi greeted me with both of my hands. "It's very kind of you to forgive me, Nick, and you've always been so good to me. I don't know what happened to me that Monday night." I said, "Okay, it's fine." Her face was pinker than usual and smoothed, making her look younger.Those blue eyes were also very bright.But her hands holding me were very cold.She was very nervous with excitement, but I couldn't figure out why she was so excited. She added: "It's very kind of Mrs. Zun to forgive me." "forget it." "Nick, what happens to the police if they conceal someone's murder?"

"They would--in the jargon--could convict you of an accomplice if they wanted to." "Even if you later voluntarily changed your mind and gave them evidence, would that be the case?" "They still do, but they generally don't do that." She looked around the house, as if to make sure that no one else was there, and then said, "Julia was killed by Clyde. I found the evidence, but I hid it. What will the police do to me?" "If you turn in the evidence, they'll probably just give you a good beating. Clyde was your husband once, and you're close enough to him that a jury probably wouldn't blame you for taking the side of him—unless, of course. They have reason to think you have other motives."

She deliberately asked coldly: "Then you think so too?" "I haven't figured it out yet," I replied. "I suppose you were trying to use this criminal evidence to blackmail him once you could get in touch with him. Now something else happened to change your mind. " She shaped her right hand into a claw, and her pointed nails touched my face.She grinned and gritted her teeth. I gripped her wrist tightly. "Women are getting rough," I said in what sounded like a worried voice. "I just left a woman throwing a frying pan at a man." She smiled, though her eyes didn't change: "You're a horrible guy, you always think bad of me, don't you?" I let go of her wrist, and she rubbed the deep imprints my fingers had left on it. .

"Which woman threw the frying pan?" she asked. "Is it a woman I know?" "Not Nora, if that's what you mean. Have the police arrested Victor—Kristan Rosewater—Jorgenson?" "what?" She was momentarily bewildered, which I believed, though I could not help being surprised by her behavior and my own confidence in her. "Jorgenson is Rosewater," I said. "You remember him, and I think you know." "You mean that horrible guy who used to—" "right." "I don't believe it." She stood up and clenched her hands, "I don't believe it, I don't believe it." She had a frightened expression on her face, and her nervous voice was as unreal as a ventriloquist's voice, "I don't believe it."

"That's pretty plausible," I said.She didn't listen to me, and turned to the window, where she stood with her back to me. I said, "There's a car out there with two or three guys who look like plainclothes cops, and Jorgenson's going to arrest him when he shows up—" She turned to me and asked sternly, "Are you sure it's Rosewater?" The horror had mostly faded from her face, and her voice was at least somewhat normal again. "The police are sure of that." She and I looked at each other, each thinking.I was thinking that she was no longer worried that it was Jorgenson who killed Julia Wolfe, or even that he might be arrested, but that Jorgenson married her was just a plot against Weinant first step.

I smiled knowingly—not because the idea was funny, but because it came out of nowhere—and she smiled wonderingly too. "I don't believe it," she said again, her voice becoming very gentle now, "it won't count until he tells me himself." "He told you, and then what?" She shrugged, her lower lip trembling slightly: "He is my husband." This would have been a ridiculous remark, but it disgusted me.I said, "Mimi, I'm Nick, you remember me, Nick--K." "I know you never thought I was a good woman," she said heavily. "You thought I was—"

"Okay, okay, don't mention it anymore. Let's talk about the evidence that you found Weinant's murder." "Okay, but—" she said, turning away.When she turned around again, her lips were trembling again, "That was a lie, Nick. I found nothing." She approached me, "There is no reason for Clyde to write to Alice and Macaulay, okay To make everybody doubt me, so I thought I'd make something up to make him unlucky, because I really think—I mean, really think—that he killed Miss Wolfe just because—" "So what did you make up?" I asked.

"I—I haven't made it up yet. I want to know what the police would think of—the things I just asked you about. I might pretend that the other two were on the phone and I was alone in Wolfe When I was in the girl's room, she woke up for a while and told me that Weinant had killed her." "You didn't say what you heard and kept silent, you just said you found something and hid it." "But I haven't really decided I-" "When did you hear about Weinant's letter to Macaulay?" "This afternoon," she replied, "there was a man from the police."

"Did he ask Rosewater about anything?" "He asked me if I knew him or heard of him. I said no and I think I'm telling the truth." "You may be," I said, "and I now believe for the first time that you are telling the truth when you say you have found some kind of evidence against Weinant." She widened her eyes: "I don't understand." "I don't understand either, but it could be like this: You may have discovered something and decided to hide it, perhaps trying to take this opportunity to make a deal with Weinant and blackmail him, but his few letters later The letter caused all eyes to turn to look at you, and you decided to give up the idea of ​​getting money, and to take the evidence to the police, to get revenge on him and to protect yourself; and at last you heard that Jorgenson was Rosewater, So he changed his mind and hid it again, this time not for money, but to try to make Jorgenson come to a bad end, and punish him for marrying you not for love but as a trick to get revenge on Wei Nante .”

She smiled calmly and asked, "You really think I can do anything, don't you?" "It doesn't matter," I replied, "what matters is that you might end up in jail for it." She screamed, silently but frighteningly, and the frightened look on her face was incomparable to the present one.She grabbed the lapel of my blouse, tugged, and yelled, "Don't say that, please don't say that. Say you don't think that's going to happen." She was shaking, and I caught her in my arm. so as not to fall. We didn't hear Gilbert come in. He coughed and asked, "Are you feeling well, Mom?"

Slowly letting her hands down from my collar, she took a step back and said, "Your mother is a confused woman." She was still shaking, but she smiled at me and said jokingly, "You bastard, you really screwed me up." Terrified." I apologize.Gilbert put his coat and hat on a chair, and looked from his mother to me with polite interest.Obviously since neither of us would say anything to him, he coughed again, said, "Nice to meet you," and came over to shake my hand.I said I was glad to see him too. Mimi said: "Your eyes look tired, you must have been reading all afternoon without glasses." She shook her head and said to me, "He is as irrational as his father." "Any news from Dad?" he asked. "Nothing but a false report of his suicide," I replied. "I suppose you've heard that it was a lie, too." "Yes," he hesitated, "I want to talk to you for a few minutes before you go." "of course can." "But don't you see him now, dear?" said Mimi, "is there some secret between you two that I shouldn't know?" Her tone was not serious, and her whole body stopped shaking . "You'll be bored." He took up his coat and hat, nodded at me, and went out of the room. Mimi shook her head again and said, "I don't understand this kid at all. I wonder what he would think of the picture of us just now." She didn't seem particularly worried, and then asked more seriously, "Why did you just Say something like that, Nick?" "Where is your final fate—?" "Forget it, don't talk about it." She shuddered. "I don't want to hear it. Can you stay for dinner? I may be alone at home." "Sorry, no. Now let's talk about the evidence you found." "I really didn't find anything. That's a lie." She frowned solemnly. "Don't look at me like that. It's really a lie." "So you brought me here just to lie to me?" I asked, "but why did you change your mind?" She giggled: "You must really like me, Nick, or you wouldn't be so bad-tempered." Unable to grasp the reasoning, I said, "Well, I'll see what Gilbert wants from me." "I want you to stay." "I'm sorry, no," I said again, "where can I find him?" "Second door over there—are they really going to arrest Chris?" "That depends on how he answers them," I said to her. "If he doesn't think about it, he'd better be honest." "Oh, he'll—" She paused, keeping her eyes on me. "You're not playing tricks on me, are you? Is he really Rosewater?" "The police are sure." "But the guy who came here this afternoon didn't ask a word about Chris," she retorted, "he just asked me if I knew—" "They weren't sure at the time," I explained, "it was just an idea." "But now they're sure?" I nodded. "How did they find out?" "From a girl he knew," I replied. "Who?" Her eyes were slightly gloomy, but her voice was under control. "Can't remember her name." Then I said honestly, "It's the girl who gave his alibi." "Alibi?" she asked angrily. "Are you trying to tell me the police would believe a woman like her?" "What kind of woman?" "You know what I mean." "I don't understand. Do you know that girl?" "I don't know," she said angrily, as if I had insulted her.She narrowed her eyes.It was almost a whisper, "Nick, do you think Chris killed Julia?" "Why would he do that?" "If he married me to get revenge on Clyde," she said, "and—you know he did encourage me to come here and try to get some money out of Clyde. Maybe I came up with the idea." —I can't tell—he did push me to do it anyway. Later, if Chris met Julia, she knew him, because they both worked for Clyde at the same time. Chris knew that I I was going to see Julia in the afternoon, and I was afraid that if I pissed her off she would tell me of his tricks, so--could that be the case?" "That doesn't make sense at all. Besides, you left here with him that afternoon. He won't have time—" "But the taxi I was in was going very slowly," she said, "and I might have stopped there for a while—I think I did. I got out and went to a pharmacy to get some aspirin." She nodded all the time, "I remember I went." "And he knows you're going to stop on the way, because you told him," I suggested, "but you can't be so obsessed with it. Murder is a serious thing. You can't just because someone tricked you frame people." "Tricking?" she asked, staring at me. "Well, that..." She began to lash out at Jorgenson with all the nasty, obscene, and even insulting words, her voice getting louder and louder, and finally coming straight at me. face screaming. She stopped to catch her breath, and I said, "That's a good call, but—" "He didn't even have the guts to suggest that I might have killed her," she said to me. "He didn't have the guts to question me, but he kept bringing up the subject, and finally I told him explicitly—well, I didn't." That." "That's not what you were going to say in the first place. What did you make clear to him?" She stomped her feet: "Don't make things difficult for me!" "Well, you deserve it," I said, "and I didn't come here." I got up to get my hat and coat. She came after me and grabbed my arm. "Nick, don't go. I'm sorry. It's all because of my bad temper. I don't know if I should—" At this time, Gilbert walked in and said, "I will walk with you for a while." Mimi glared at him angrily: "You have been eavesdropping." "Then what can I do? How can I not hear you yelling?" he asked. "Can I have some money?" "We're not done talking yet," she said. I check my watch. "I have to go, Mimi. I have an appointment and I'm late." "The date is over, can you come back?" "If it's not too late, but don't wait for me." "I'll wait for you at home," she said, "it doesn't matter how late it is." I said it depends.She gave Gilbert some money, and he and I went downstairs together.