Black Widow Author:Patrick Quentin Is it ever possible for an attractive man to convince the world that he is not a philanderer? This is the interesting moral question posed in dramatic terms in the latest Peter Duluth story. — Peter met Nanny while his wife, Iris, was away on a short vacation. Peter felt sorry for the girl. She seemed so young, so defenseless, such a NICE kid.... more » And perhaps he was a bit flattered by her obvious admiration of his own importance in the world of the theatre. He took her out to dinner a couple of times and to a nightclub once. He even let her use his apartment occasionally during the day so that she might write. Her own place was was so small, and dingy, and noisy. He didn't even bother to tell Iris anything about Nanny in his letters; she was so unimportant.
She became very important when she was found dead in his apartment. Ar first it looked like suicide, and the reasons seemed so obvious: a little affair, and Peter must have made promises and must have broken them. Typical.
When Peter denied these implications, nobody even pretended to believe him. For a while Iris did, because she wanted to, but then she got a letter that Nanny had mailed before her death. That was the clincher. Iris moved out.
Then the police began to think maybe it wasn't suicide-maybe it was murder, it also seemed pretty obvious who the murderer was.
It was at this point that Peter began to fight. He was the only person in the world who knew that the whole story was a lie, that Nanny hadn't died for love of him, and that he certainly hadn't murdered her. He began to dig up facts about Nanny, facts that proved she hadn't been so young and defenseless and nice, facts that made her murder the inevitable result of her life. Facts that led Peter to the one person who had to be the murderer.« less