Where Is Bianca? by Ellery Queen

her.”
    â€œOh, no?” squealed Peggy Simpson. “Look at my arm!” It was bruised.
    â€œYou look at it. I’m sick of it, and you.”
    â€œThat’s enough,” Corrigan said. “What’s this all about?”
    â€œHe came in and started beating on me,” Peggy Simpson sniveled. “For no reason at all! He’s a crazy man. Crazy, I tell you.”
    â€œNo reason?” Proehl snarled; he was still feeling his neck. “I found out she’d been to the police. I wanted to know what kind of tale she’d been carrying. She accused me to my face of killing Noreen Gardner.”
    â€œI didn’t say you meant to kill her,” the girl wept. “I just said you couldn’t keep your hands off her, that you knew you were losing her to some big wheel in the theater she’d met, and maybe you’d lost your head. He always does, Captain Corrigan. He never ended an affair with a girl pleasantly in his life. He’s overpossessive and unreasonably jealous, and he has a homicidal temper.”
    Proehl started toward her. Corrigan stepped in front of him.
    â€œSit down.”
    Proehl stood unyieldingly, breathing murder. Corrigan put his fingertips on the enormous chest and applied pressure. The man sat down on a studio couch with a crash.
    â€œCan you account for your whereabouts the night Noreen Gardner disappeared?”
    â€œThis is no courtroom!”
    â€œLook,” Corrigan said. “I’ve got too much on my mind to play patty-cake with the likes of you. If you won’t answer my questions here, maybe you’ll change your mind at headquarters. Which will it be?”
    â€œI was seeing a man uptown that night,” Proehl growled, “trying to raise additional backing for the new Weatherly play.”
    â€œYou’re trying to hit the big time, is that it?”
    â€œWhat producer isn’t? I’d give my right arm to produce a Broadway smash. But I didn’t do anything to Noreen Gardner. If she’s really dead, find the operator who was feeding her that line about his important connections in first-line theater. The bastard who turned Noreen against her friends.”
    Proehl was pounding the arm of the couch with a big fat fist. Corrigan watched the show for a few moments. Then he said, “Any idea who this man is, Proehl?”
    â€œBy God, I wish I had! The snake-tongued sonofabitch is probably married and he’ll spit on Noreen when she palls on him. But she’s too stupid to size him up. Or she doesn’t care.”
    â€œDid Noreen ever mention a Nancy Gavin to you?”
    â€œNancy Gavin? Never heard.”
    â€œWhat do you know about Noreen’s background?”
    â€œWho the hell cares about her background? I don’t ask to see their A.K.C. papers.”
    â€œHow did you meet her?”
    â€œI was working out of a theater on Bleecker Street. Converted old store building.” Proehl’s little eyes shimmered violently. “Filthy rat’s nest! Trying to make do with makeshift scenery … idiots and kooks to work with! The same damn old miserable story.”
    â€œYou met her in this theater?”
    Proehl got up and walked heavily to the window, ignoring Peggy Simpson as he passed her. “Noreen answered a casting call. She read for me, and I knew I was in luck. A kid had shown up who could really act. I didn’t ask her any questions about herself, so I can’t tell you anything about her. To a producer a find like Noreen is money in the bank. The only thing I wanted to do was hold on to her.”
    Proehl turned from the window. He looked drained suddenly. His jowls sagged. His color was bad. Corrigan had seen many a man who looked like that just before a suicide attempt He’s manic, Corrigan thought. Way up there one minute, in hell the next.
    â€œBut you came here to talk to Peggy,” Travers Proehl said. He was quite listless now. “Do you