I still hadn’t labeled him. My first impression, months ago, had been that he was one of them, but that had been wrong. He was a man all right, but the question was what kind. About average in height, round but not pudgy, maybe forty-two or -three, his fine black hair slicked back so that he looked balder than he was, he was nothing great to look at, but he had something, not only for women but for men too. Wolfe had once invited him to stay for dinner, and they had talked about the scrolls from the Dead Sea. I had seen him twice at baseball games. His label would have to wait.
As I joined them at the bar, where Santa Claus was pouring Mumms Cordon Rouge, Bottweill squinted at me a moment and then grinned. “Goodwin! You here? Good! Edith, your pet sleuth!”
Mrs. Perry Porter Jerome, reaching for a glass, stopped her hand to look at me. “Who asked you?” she demanded, then went on, with no room for a reply, “Cherry, I suppose. Cherry is a blessing. Leo, quit tugging at me. Very well, take it. It’s warm in here.” She let her son pull her coat off, then reached for a glass. By the time Leo got back from depositing the mink on the divan we all had glasses, and when he had his we raised them, and our eyes went to Bottweill.
His eyes flashed around. “There are times,” he said, “when love takes over. There are times—”
“Wait a minute,” Alfred Kiernan cut in. “You enjoy it too. You don’t like this stuff.”
“I can stand a sip, Al.”
“But you won’t enjoy it. Wait.” Kiernan put his glass on the bar and marched to the door on the left and on out. In five seconds he was back, with a bottle in his hand, and as he rejoined us and asked Santa Claus for a glass I saw the Pernod label. He pulled the cork, which had been pulled before, filled the glass halfway, and held it out to Bottweill. “There,” he said. “That will make it unanimous.”
“Thanks, Al.” Bottweill took it. “My secret public vice.” He raised the glass. “I repeat, there are times when love takes over. (Santa Claus, where is yours? but I suppose you can’t drink through that mask.) There are times when all the little demons disappear down their ratholes, and ugliness itself takes on the shape of beauty; when the darkest corner is touched by light; when the coldest heart feels the glow of warmth; when the trumpet call of good will and good cheer drowns out all the Babel of mean little noises. This is such a time. Merry Christmas! Merry merry merry!”
I was ready to touch glasses, but both the angel and the boss steered theirs to their lips, so I and the others followed suit. I thought Bottweill’s eloquence deserved more than a sip, so I took a healthy gulp, and from the corner of my eye I saw that he was doing likewise with the Pernod. As I lowered the glass my eyes went to Mrs. Jerome, as she spoke.
“That was lovely,” she declared. “Simply lovely. I must write it down and have it printed. That part about the trumpet call—Kurt! What is it? Kurt!”
He had dropped the glass and was clutching his throat with both hands. As I moved he turned loose of his throat, thrust his arms out, and let out a yell. I think he yelled, “Merry!” but I wasn’t really listening. Others started for him too, but my reflexes were better trained for emergencies than any of theirs, so I got him first. As I got my arms around him he started choking and gurgling, and a spasm went over him from head to foot that nearly loosened my grip. They were making noises, but no screams, and someone was clawing at my arm. As I was telling them to get back and give me room, he was suddenly a dead weight, and I almost went down with him and might have if Kiernan hadn’t grabbed his arm.
I called, “Get a doctor!” and Cherry ran to a table where there was a gold-leaf phone. Kiernan and I let Bottweill down on the rug. He was out, breathing fast and hard, but as I was straightening his head his breathing slowed down and foam showed on his lips. Mrs. Jerome was commanding us, “Do something, do something!”
There was nothing to do and I knew it. While I was holding on to him I had got a whiff of his breath, and now, kneeling, I leaned over to get my nose an inch from his, and I knew that smell, and it takes a big dose to hit that quick and hard. Kiernan was loosening Bottweill’s tie and collar. Cherry Quon called to us that she had tried a doctor and couldn’t get him and was trying another. Margot was squatting at Bottweill’s feet, taking his shoes off, and I could have told her she might as well let him die with his boots on but didn’t. I had two fingers on his wrist and my other hand inside his shirt, and could feel him going.
When I could feel nothing I abandoned the chest and wrist, took his hand, which was a fist, straightened the middle finger, and pressed its nail with my thumbtip until it was white. When I removed my thumb the nail stayed white. Dropping the hand, I yanked a little cluster of fibers from the rug, told Kiernan not to move, placed the fibers against Bottweill’s nostrils, fastened my eyes on them, and held my breath for thirty seconds. The fibers didn’t move.
I stood up and spoke. “His heart has stopped and he’s not breathing. If a doctor came within three minutes and washed out his stomach with chemicals he wouldn’t have with him, there might be one chance in a thousand. As it is—”
“Can’t you do something?” Mrs. Jerome squawked.
“Not for him, no. I’m not an officer of the law, but I’m a licensed detective, and I’m supposed to know how to act in these circumstances, and I’ll get it if I don’t follow the rules. Of course—”
“Do something!” Mrs. Jerome squawked.
Kiernan’s voice came from behind me. “He’s dead.”
I didn’t turn to ask what test he had used. “Of course,” I told them, “his drink was poisoned. Until the police come no one will touch anything, especially the bottle of Pernod, and no one will leave this room. You will—”
I stopped dead. Then I demanded, “Where is Santa Claus?”
Their heads turned to look at the bar. No bartender. On the chance that it had been too much for him, I pushed between Leo Jerome and Emil Hatch to step to the end of the bar, but he wasn’t on the floor either.
I wheeled. “Did anyone see him go?”
They hadn’t. Hatch said, “He didn’t take the elevator. I’m sure he didn’t. He must have—” He started off.
I blocked him. “You stay here. I’ll take a look. Kiernan, phone the police. Spring seven-three-one-hundred.”
I made for the door on the left and passed through, pulling it shut as I went, and was in Bottweill’s office, which I had seen before. It was one-fourth the size of the studio, and much more subdued, but was by no means squalid. I crossed to the far end, saw through the glass panel that Bottweill’s private elevator wasn’t there, and pressed the button. A clank and a whirr came from inside the shaft, and it was coming. When it was up and had jolted to a stop I opened the door, and there on the floor was Santa Claus, but only the outside of him. He had molted. Jacket, breeches, mask, wig … I didn’t check to see if it was all there, because I had another errand and not much time for it.
Propping the elevator door open with a chair, I went and circled around Bottweill’s big gold-leaf desk to his gold-leaf wastebasket. It was one-third full. Bending, I started to paw, decided that was inefficient, picked it up and dumped it, and began tossing things back in one by one. Some of the items were torn pieces of paper, but none of them came from a marriage license. When I had finished I stayed down a moment, squatting, wondering if I had hurried too much and possibly missed it, and I might have gone through it again if I hadn’t heard a faint noise from the studio that sounded like the elevator door opening. I went to the door to the studio and opened it, and as I crossed the sill two uniformed cops were deciding whether to give their first glance to the dead or the living.
* * *
III
Three hours later we were seated, more or less in a group, and my old friend and foe, Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Homicide, stood surveying us, his square jaw jutting and his big burly frame erect.
He spoke. “Mr. Kiernan and Mr. Hatch will be taken to the District Attorney’s office for further questioning. The rest of you can go for the p
resent, but you will keep yourselves available at the addresses you have given. Before you go I want to ask you again, here together, about the man who was here as Santa Claus. You have all claimed you know nothing about him. Do you still claim that?”
It was twenty minutes to seven. Some two dozen city employees—medical examiner, photographer, fingerprinters, meat-basket bearers, the whole kaboodle—had finished the on-the-scene routine, including private interviews with the eyewitnesses. I had made the highest score, having had sessions with Stebbins, a precinct man, and Inspector Cramer, who had departed around five o’clock to organize the hunt for Santa Claus.
“I’m not objecting,” Kiernan told Stebbins, “to going to the District Attorney’s office. I’m not objecting to anything. But we’ve told you all we can, I know I have. It seems to me your job is to find him.”
“Do you mean to say,” Mrs. Jerome demanded, “that no one knows anything at all about him?”
“So they say,” Purley told her. “No one even knew there was going to be a Santa Claus, so they say. He was brought to this room by Bottweill, about a quarter to three, from his office. The idea is that Bottweill himself had arranged for him, and he came up in the private elevator and put on the costume in Bottweill’s office. You may as well know there is some corroboration of that. We have found out where the costume came from—Burleson’s on Forty-sixth Street. Bottweill phoned them yesterday afternoon and ordered it sent here, marked personal. Miss Quon admits receiving the package and taking it to Bottweill in his office.”
For a cop, you never just state a fact, or report it or declare it or say it. You admit it.
“We are also,” Purley admitted, “covering agencies which might have supplied a man to act Santa Claus, but that’s a big order. If Bottweill got a man through an agency there’s no telling what he got. If it was a man with a record, when he saw trouble coming he beat it. With everybody’s attention on Bottweill, he sneaked out, got his clothes, whatever he had taken off, in Bottweill’s office, and went down in the elevator he had come up in. He shed the costume on the way down and after he was down, and left it in the elevator. If that was it, if he was just a man Bottweill hired, he wouldn’t have had any reason to kill him—and besides, he wouldn’t have known that Bottweill’s only drink was Pernod, and he wouldn’t have known where the poison was.”
“Also,” Emil Hatch said, sourer than ever, “if he was just hired for the job he was a damn fool to sneak out. He might have known he’d be found. So he wasn’t just hired. He was someone who knew Bottweill, and knew about the Pernod and the poison, and had some good reason for wanting to kill him. You’re wasting your time on the agencies.”
Stebbins lifted his heavy broad shoulders and dropped them. “We waste most of our time, Mr. Hatch. Maybe he was too scared to think. I just want you to understand that if we find him and that’s how Bottweill got him, it’s going to be hard to believe that he put poison in that bottle, but somebody did. I want you to understand that so you’ll understand why you are all to be available at the addresses you have given. Don’t make any mistake about that.”
“Do you mean,” Mrs. Jerome demanded, “that we are under suspicion? That I and my son are under suspicion?”
Purley opened his mouth and shut it again. With that kind he always had trouble with his impulses. He wanted to say, “You’re goddam right you are.” He did say, “I mean we’re going to find that Santa Claus, and when we do we’ll see. If we can’t see him for it we’ll have to look further, and we’ll expect all of you to help us. I’m taking it for granted you’ll all want to help. Don’t you want to, Mrs. Jerome?”
“I would help if I could, but I know nothing about it. I only know that my very dear friend is dead, and I don’t intend to be abused and threatened. What about the poison?”
“You know about it. You have been questioned about it.”
“I know I have, but what about it?”
“It must have been apparent from the questions. The medical examiner thinks it was cyanide and expects the autopsy to verify it. Emil Hatch uses potassium cyanide in his work with metals and plating, and there is a large jar of it on a cupboard shelf in the workshop one floor below, and there is a stair from Bottweill’s office to the workroom. Anyone who knew that, and who also knew that Bottweill kept a case of Pernod in a cabinet in his office, and an open bottle of it in a drawer of his desk, couldn’t have asked for a better setup. Four of you have admitted knowing both of those things. Three of you—Mrs. Jerome, Leo Jerome, and Archie Goodwin—admit they knew about the Pernod but deny they knew about the potassium cyanide. That will—”
“That’s not true! She did know about it!”
Mrs. Perry Porter Jerome’s hand shot out across her son’s knees and slapped Cherry Quon’s cheek or mouth or both. Her son grabbed her arm. Alfred Kiernan sprang to his feet, and for a second I thought he was going to sock Mrs. Jerome, and he did too, and possibly would have if Margot Dickey hadn’t jerked at his coattail. Cherry put her hand to her face but, except for that, didn’t move.
“Sit down,” Stebbins told Kiernan. “Take it easy. Miss Quon, you say that Mrs. Jerome knew about the potassium cyanide?”
“Of course she did.” Cherry’s chirp was pitched lower than normal, but it was still a chirp. “In the workshop one day I heard Mr. Hatch telling her how he used it and how careful he had to be.”
“Mr. Hatch? Do you verify—”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Jerome snapped. “What if he did? Perhaps he did. I had forgotten all about it. I told you I won’t tolerate this abuse!”
Purley eyed her. “Look here, Mrs. Jerome. When we find that Santa Claus, if it was someone who knew Bottweill and had a motive, that may settle it. If not, it won’t help anyone to talk about abuse, and that includes you. So far as I know now, only one of you has told us a lie. You. That’s on the record. I’m telling you, and all of you, lies only make it harder for you, but sometimes they make it easier for us. I’ll leave it at that for now. Mr. Kiernan and Mr. Hatch, these men”—he aimed a thumb over his shoulder at two dicks standing back of him—“will take you downtown. The rest of you can go, but remember what I said. Goodwin, I want to see you.”
He had already seen me, but I wouldn’t make a point of it. Kiernan, however, had a point to make, and made it: he had to leave last so he could lock up. It was so arranged. The three women, Leo Jerome, and Stebbins and I took the elevator down, leaving the two dicks with Kiernan and Hatch. Down the sidewalk, as they headed in different directions, I could see no sign of tails taking after them. It was still snowing, a fine prospect for Christmas and the street cleaners. There were two police cars at the curb, and Purley went to one and opened the door and motioned to me to get in.
I objected. “If I’m invited downtown too I’m willing to oblige, but I’m going to eat first. I damn near starved to death there once.”
“You’re not wanted downtown, not right now. Get in out of the snow.”
I did so, and slid across under the wheel to make room for him. He needs room. He joined me and pulled the door shut.
“If we’re going to sit here,” I suggested, “we might as well be rolling. Don’t bother to cross town, just drop me at Thirty-fifth.”
He objected. “I don’t like to drive and talk. Or listen. What were you doing there today?”
“I’ve told you. Having fun. Three kinds of champagne. Miss Dickey invited me.”
“I’m giving you another chance. You were the only outsider there. Why? You’re nothing special to Miss Dickey. She was going to marry Bottweill. Why?”
“Ask her.”
“We have asked her. She says there was no particular reason, she knew Bottweill liked you, and they’ve regarded you as one of them since you found some tapestries for them. She stuttered around about it. What I say, any time I find you anywhere near a murder, I want to know. I’m giving you another chance.”
So she hadn’t mentioned the marriage license. Good for her. I would rather ha
ve eaten all the snow that had fallen since noon than explain that damn license to Sergeant Stebbins or Inspector Cramer. That was why I had gone through the wastebasket. “Thanks for the chance,” I told him, “but I can’t use it. I’ve told you everything I saw and heard there today.” That put me in a class with Mrs. Jerome, since I had left out my little talk with Margot. “I’ve told you all I know about those people. Lay off and go find your murderer.”
“I know you, Goodwin.”
“Yeah, you’ve even called me Archie. I treasure that memory.”
“I know you.” His head was turned on his bull neck, and our eyes were meeting. “Do you expect me to believe that guy got out of that room and away without you knowing it?”
“Nuts. I was kneeling on the floor, watching a man die, and they were around us. Anyway, you’re just talking to hear yourself. You don’t think I was accessory to the murder or to the murderer’s escape.”
“I didn’t say I did. Even if he was wearing gloves—and what for if not to leave no prints?—I don’t say he was the murderer. But if you knew who he was and didn’t want him involved in it and let him get away, and if you let us wear out our ankles looking for him, what about that?”
“That would be bad. If I asked my advice I would be against it.”
“Goddam it,” he barked, “do you know who he is?”
“No.”
“Did you or Wolfe have anything to do with getting him there?”
“No.”
“All right, pile out. They’ll be wanting you downtown.”
“I hope not tonight. I’m tired.” I opened the door. “You have my address.” I stepped out into the snow, and he started the engine and rolled off.
The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Page 98