The chief frowned. “Is there nothing I can do to talk you out of continuing what may be a fruitless investigation?”
“No, sir. If indeed my quest proves fruitless, I will have wasted my time and you will have been shown to be correct.”
“May I ask what evidence you have that Mr. Mulgrew was murdered?”
“I have none, sir,” Wolfe said, flipping a palm. “But like Mr. Goodwin, I have an itch that must be scratched.”
“This all sounds pretty vague, and I have the general well-being of this community to consider. I am concerned that as long as you and Mr. Goodwin remain here, there will be those who feel a murderer is at large among us. And human nature being what it is, there will also be those who think they know the identity of the murderer. Fingers will get pointed, rumors will be rampant, and the town will be the worse for it.”
“You have raised a valid issue, sir,” Wolfe said. “We shall expedite our investigation and keep you apprised of developments.”
“I am still not the least bit happy, but as long as you break no laws, there is little I can do to stop you unless I receive complaints about your behavior,” Blankenship said, rising to leave. “Thank you once again for your hospitality, Mrs. Goodwin.”
Chapter 31
After the chief left, Wolfe turned to my mother. “Mrs. Goodwin, if you will excuse us, I need to confer with Archie and Saul in my room.”
“Would you like me to bring some beer up for you?” she asked.
“They can do that. We have imposed far too much upon your hospitality as it is.”
“I’m not complaining in the least. It is nice to have the house full and active. As I have mentioned, my other children—and their children as well—do not come often, so this is a welcome change for me.”
“Are you suggesting we behave like children?” I asked.
“No, I am not, Archie Goodwin. I have found the goings-on fascinating. That session you just had with Chief Blankenship, for instance, was an eye-opener for me, Mr. Wolfe. I believe that poor man is terribly worried that his suicide theory is about to go up in smoke.”
“You are most perceptive,” Wolfe said. “The chief is patently shaken and wishes we interlopers would evaporate.”
“But you won’t.”
“No, madam, we won’t. Not yet.”
Saul and I pulled chairs into Wolfe’s bedroom from adjoining rooms as he popped open one of the chilled beers we had brought up.
“If we were to have a gathering of the principals here—one more test of your mother’s hospitality—do you two think you could round up everybody and deliver them?”
“It would be a tall order,” I said, “both persuasively and logistically. That does not mean it’s impossible, though.”
“I agree with Archie,” Saul put in. “Over the years, we’ve delivered a lot of people to the brownstone who didn’t want to go, but we have managed to get them there without hardly ever resorting to rough stuff.”
“Hardly ever?” Wolfe posed, eyebrows raised.
“Well, a few have needed some . . . extra incentive to visit you, but not many of them.”
“Very well, then, I . . .”
Wolfe stopped in midsentence, and the reason quickly became clear to me, if not to Saul. His eyes were closed, and he began the exercise that always made my mouth dry as a desert.
“My God, is he okay?” Saul whispered. “Is he having some kind of a stroke or—”
“Maybe a stroke of genius. You don’t have to whisper. Where he is now, he can’t hear you,” I said as we watched Wolfe pull his lips in and push them out, again and again.
“I’ve told you about this before, although until today, you have never seen it,” I said to Saul. “It can go on for as few as several minutes and as long as almost an hour. There’s nothing we can do right now but wait. The odd thing is, the lip business usually occurs first, and then Wolfe tells me to bring everybody together for the showdown. This time it’s happened in the opposite order, which makes me think he knew one of his lip moments was coming.”
“I will be damned,” Saul said. “I need a drink.”
“Go downstairs and get yourself a scotch. You now know where it is. I’ll keep watch here.”
“Hell no, I can wait.” We both sat, watching Wolfe and wondering when he would rejoin us. Seventeen minutes later, he opened his eyes, blinked twice, and made a face.
“Pah, I have been a lackwit! The answer was right there in front of me, clear as crystal, yet I ignored it. You supplied a detailed road map,” he said to me, “and I was blind to its explicit directions. I chastise myself for my opacity and beg you to accept an apology.”
What was I going to say to that, especially because, as usual, he was so far ahead of me that I had no idea where we were going? “I think Saul and I need something liquid,” I said as Wolfe reached for his beer.
“Yes, yes, get your drinks, and then we will talk,” Wolfe said.
Once we were all settled, Wolfe took a deep breath, letting the air out slowly. “Archie, do you think your mother will abide our having a gathering in her living room?”
“By that, I assume you mean a gathering in which you will identify a murderer?”
“Confound it, of course that is what I mean!”
“I believe she’ll abide it, to use your term, but I will find out,” I replied. I went downstairs and found Mom in the kitchen cleaning up the dinner dishes.
“What can I get you, dear?” she asked, drying her hands on a towel.
“I wonder if we might be able to use the living room to . . . well—”
“To have Mr. Wolfe gather everyone and name a murderer?”
“Well, yes.”
“Of course that’s all right. It’s a big room, which is part of the reason your father and I bought the house in the first place. I’ve been in Mr. Wolfe’s office in the brownstone, and if that has been big enough to handle a crowd, I’m sure this will work as well.”
I gave her a hug and went back up to tell Wolfe. “Very well,” he said. “We will draw up the guest list.”
“You’re assuming we can get all the principals to show up,” I said.
“Let us proceed on that assumption. As we discussed, you have been successful at this endeavor in the past.”
“There’s a first time for everything. But okay, let’s plunge ahead.”
“I’ll take notes,” Saul said, pulling a pad and pencil from his shirt pocket.
“We will want to invite Purcell, Mapes, Kiefer, Newman, and Carrie Yeager,” I said.
“Add Miss Newman and Miss Padgett to the list as well,” Wolfe put in.
“Do you really want Katie Padgett in the room?” I asked him. “As sure as we are sitting here, she will try to take over and start asking questions.”
“She will not,” Wolfe replied, leaving no room for discussion. “The police chief should be present as well, and he would be well advised to bring along a fellow officer.”
“Shades of when you have Cramer and Stebbins sit in—or stand in—on your sessions back home,” Saul said. “This could be like old times.”
“Maybe,” Wolfe replied with a shrug. “Archie, do you believe we can bring everyone together by tomorrow evening at nine o’clock?”
“I would like to say yes, but I can’t guarantee it. One of them, Carrie Yeager, lives in another state, although Saul could go down and get her, and on the way back pick up Newman, who lives some miles south of town. That would leave me to pick up his granddaughter, Donna Newman. She has a place several miles west of here.”
Wolfe glowered at his beer. “Use your intelligence as guided by your experience,” he grumped, using more or less the same words he has thrown at me on more occasions than I can count.
“Aye, aye, boss,” I replied, knowing how much Wolfe hates the b-word. Saul and I then took our drinks an
d left him to his beer and his book.
Downstairs in the living room, I turned to Saul. “I didn’t mean to act like I was running this show, so I am not sure how you feel about going down to Charleston to pick up Miss Yeager—assuming she will allow herself to be picked up—and then getting Lester Newman on the return trip. I’ve got addresses and phone numbers for both of them.”
“Hell, I know my role here, and I don’t mind it one bit, Archie. When I call these two, I suppose I will tell them Wolfe is going to reveal the murderer of Mulgrew, right?”
“That’s what I’m going to say to the people I’ll be calling. The whole thing is a long shot, especially since we’re asking them to show up here tomorrow night.”
“What’s your own plan of action?” Saul asked.
“In the morning, I’m going to telephone Katie Padgett, girl reporter, who’s miffed at me right now but who may be of use to us. My immediate plan is to finish this drink and call it a night.”
Chapter 32
After breakfast the next day, I immediately went to the phone and called the Trumpet office. I was put through to Katie, who was less than enthused to hear my voice. “Yes?” she said with an arctic tone.
“I thought you would be interested to know that tonight Nero Wolfe is going to reveal the murderer of Logan Mulgrew.”
“Just what are you trying to pull, Archie?” she said.
“Not a thing, other than the truth. I thought you might like to be present when my boss, genius that he is, does the pulling—as in a name, out of a hat —you might say.”
“Well, I already know who the killer is, as you are aware. And I assume Nero Wolfe and I have the same individual in mind.”
“I cannot answer that. My boss does not let me in on his thought processes, so I don’t know who he has in mind.”
“I’m sorry, but I have a difficult time believing that.”
“Believe it or not, as you choose. Anyway, he plans to share his thoughts tonight, here in my mother’s house, at nine.”
“Who else will be there?”
“Assuming they all come, everyone who has an interest in the case. They will all be invited.”
“Does that include those who might be considered suspects?” Katie asked.
“It does.”
“Including Carrie Yeager?”
“Do you feel she might be considered a suspect?”
That drew a dry laugh that contained no humor. “Of course.”
“Then you have answered your own question. By the way, I never did ask what happened when you telephoned Donna Newman to ‘smooth things over’ after my less-than-successful visit with her.”
“She did seem a little upset when I talked to her later that same day, but since then I think she has softened as regards any anger she had toward you.”
“The reason I ask is because I feel you are in a better position than me to invite her to come here tonight. I would be happy to go out to Selkirk and pick her up.”
“I’ll give her a call, but I don’t think you picking her up will be necessary. She does have her own car. Anything you want me to tell her about what to expect tonight—assuming she can make it?”
“Pretty much the same thing I said to you.”
“In other words, she should expect Nero Wolfe to finger Carrie Yeager?”
“Those are your words, not mine. Let me know what you find out from Miss Newman of Selkirk.” I then turned the telephone over to Saul, whose assignment was to call both Miss Yeager in Charleston and Lester Newman in Waverly.
“All right, Archie,” he told me fifteen minutes later. “I got hold of both of them, and they are coming tonight, but it wasn’t easy. The Yeager woman couldn’t see the point of the ‘exercise,’ as she called it. She is still in that same apartment building where you visited her, and she is also still angry about the visit she had from Katie Padgett and ‘some photographer,’ as she put it. She said Katie was quite rude and that her questions were somewhat ‘suggestive and insulting,’ to use her words.”
“As that ‘some photographer’ Carrie Yeager referred to, I would agree that Katie was aggressive in her questioning. How did you persuade her to come tonight?”
“I told her Mr. Wolfe was an eminently fair man, and that he was determined to establish once and for all the circumstances of Logan Mulgrew’s death and put all rumors to rest. She seemed to like that approach.”
“And what about Lester Newman?”
“He didn’t want to come, either,” Saul said. “He is a bitter man, as I’m sure you learned when you spent time with him. But when I told him Nero Wolfe, a famous New York detective, was going to find Mulgrew’s murderer, he brightened up and said, ‘By God, if he does that, I’ll want to pin one of my medals on that man. Whoever killed my miserable brother-in-law deserves an award.’”
“That sounds like Newman, all right,” I said.
“There’s something else, Archie. As much as this old guy hated Mulgrew, he seems to hate the Yeager woman just as much. I think it would be a big mistake for me to drive them up here in the same car.”
“You’re right, and I should have realized that,” I told him. “If you are willing to go all the way to Charleston for Carrie Yeager, I’ll drive down and pick up Newman. It will be bad enough when they’re in the same room here at Mom’s house. Because of the distance down to West Virginia, you’ll have to leave here early this afternoon.”
“I don’t mind, and that’s new territory for me. I love driving.”
“I do, too. Now I’ve got to be calling the rest of our audience and hope that Katie Padgett can talk Miss Newman into showing up.”
I was able, with some verbal arm-twisting, to get both Charles Purcell and Harold Mapes to make an appearance tonight, but I ran into a stone wall with my old sparring partner, Eldon Kiefer. “Why in the hell should I show up for some detective’s performance?” he demanded. “I’m just glad Mulgrew is dead, that miserable bastard.”
I tried further to persuade Kiefer, even giving him Mom’s address, but if anything, he got more hostile as the conversation went on. “Listen, Goodwin, I saw all that I ever want to of you in that bar the other night. You can go straight to hell, as far as I’m concerned. And that goes for anybody else who ever had anything to do with Logan Damned Mulgrew.”
I started to tell him I never had anything to do with Mulgrew myself, but I realized I was wasting my breath on Kiefer, and we slammed down our receivers simultaneously. Not thirty seconds had passed when the telephone rang. Mom was upstairs, so I answered it.
“Archie,” Katie Padgett said in a tense tone, “Donna Newman told me she would come tonight, and she is as anxious as I am to see how this all plays out, although I think I know, and so does she, exactly what will happen. I gave her the address.”
“Good. Do you have a ride yourself?”
“Donna said she would pick me up, so we’ll be coming together. I’ll see you just before nine.”
I went upstairs and gave Wolfe my report. “So Mr. Kiefer claims he won’t come tonight, but for once, Archie, I will give you odds on something, rather than the other way around,” he said. “Three-to-one he shows up. He cannot afford to stay away.”
“I won’t take the bet, in part because I hope you’re right,” I said. “What about the police chief?”
“Confound it, I had better speak to him. Is there a telephone on this floor?”
When I told him no, he made a face, rose, and trudged down the stairs. I found the number of the police department in the directory and made the call, handing him the receiver. I wished we were at home in New York so I could listen on another phone, but no such luck here.
“This is Nero Wolfe. I would like to speak to Chief Blankenship. Yes . . . I will wait . . . Hello, sir . . . Yes, I am telephoning from the home of Mr. Goodwin’s mother . . .Yes, I . . . Pardon my interr
uption, sir, but I have a message for you. Tonight at nine o’clock, I will be gathering those individuals most identified with Mr. Mulgrew and his death, and I will be naming a murderer . . . Unorthodox? I suppose so, sir, and . . . Mr. Blankenship, if you please, let me finish! I am breaking no laws, nor do I intend to take any public credit for unmasking the killer of Mr. Mulgrew.”
Wolfe sighed and held the phone away from his ear as Blankenship went on with what seemed to be a rant. Gradually he ran down like an alarm clock, and Wolfe began speaking:
“Sir, before you interrupted me, I was about to suggest you might like to be present here tonight. And you might also want to bring an associate . . . No, I certainly am not trying to tell you how to conduct your business; far be it from me to suggest such . . . No, sir, I will not change my mind. The evening is already planned and the invitations have been issued . . . No, sir, I do not think I am behaving in a high-handed manner. And in answer to your question, I am not representing a client in this endeavor . . . Believe what you will, sir, but that happens to be the truth . . . Yes, nine o’clock.” Wolfe handed me the receiver, which I cradled. “The man may not be an imbecile, but he certainly carries some of the traits of one.”
“He is out of his depth here, as I’m sure has become obvious to you,” I remarked. “Early on, he got it in his head that Mulgrew shot himself, and he can’t let go of that position, thinking that he will lose face.”
“We will do our best to show Mr. Blankenship the error of his ways,” Wolfe said. I wanted to ask him who he was going to finger for the murder, as I still hadn’t doped it out, but I decided to let him have his fun. Although he would deny it, Wolfe loves to orchestrate these revelatory evenings with a flair for the dramatic.
Chapter 33
After lunch, Saul Panzer hopped into the Heron and steered it south. Destination: Charleston, capital of West Virginia, where he would pick up Carrie Yeager—so we hoped—and bring her to our cozy little gathering.
As Wolfe would want to drink beer during the evening, he charged me with ensuring that a variety of beverages would also be available for our guests. To my surprise, Mom really did have quite a variety of liquor in the house. “As you know, I’m not much of a drinker myself, Archie,” she said, “but I like to keep alcohol on hand for guests. It often seems unnecessary, though, because most of the people who do stop by or come over for church meetings don’t do much if any drinking, either. After all, I don’t run with what might be called ‘a fast crowd.’”
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