That will give us the night if we need it. Of course, Mr. Fyfe, there are several points I could go into with you now – for instance, the situation you found when you returned to the apartment from the theater, and your brother Bertram’s reconciliation with his family – but I have an appointment; and besides, they can be explored more fully this evening. For the present, please give Mr. Goodwin the addresses and phone numbers of everyone involved.” He moved his vast bulk forward in his chair to pick up the penknife and start rubbing it gently on the oilstone. He had undertaken that job, and by gum he intended to finish it.

“I described the situation,” Fyfe said in a sharper tone. “I invited the inference that Paul had stayed at the apartment in order to approach the nurse. I wholly disapprove of his method of approaching women. I have said he is impetuous.”

Wolfe was feeling the knife’s edge tenderly with a thumb.

“What is the point,” Fyfe asked, “about the reconciliation?”

“Only that you used the word.” Wolfe was honing again. “What needed to be reconciled? It may be irrelevant, but so are most points raised in an investigation. It can wait till this evening.”

Fyfe was frowning. “It’s an old sore,” he said, the sharpness gone and his voice tired again. “It may not be irrelevant, because it may partly account for Paul’s attitude. Also I suppose we’re over-sensitive about any threat of scandal. Pneumonia is a touchy subject with us. My father died of pneumonia twenty years ago, but it was thought by the police he was murdered. Not only by the police. He was in a ground-floor bedroom in our house at Mount Kisco, and it was January, and on a stormy night, extremely cold, someone raised two windows and left them wide open. I found him dead at five o’clock in the morning. Snow was drifted a foot deep on the floor and there was snow on the bed.