They both said yes.
“Have the police reopened it? Or is gossip at work?”
They both said no.
“Then let’s get on. Where’s the trouble?”
“It’s us,” Peggy said.
“Why? What’s wrong with you?”
“Everything.” She gestured. “No. I don’t mean that—not everything, just one thing. After my husband’s death and the—the routine investigation, I went away for a while. When I came back—for the past two months Fred and I have been together some, but it wasn’t right—I mean we didn’t feel right. Day before yesterday, Friday, I went to friends in Connecticut for the weekend, and he was there. Neither of us knew the other was coming. We talked it out yesterday and last night and this morning, and we decided to come and ask you to help us—anyway, I did, and he wouldn’t let me come alone.”
Peggy leaned forward and was in deadly earnest. “You must help us, Mr. Wolfe. I love him so much—so much!—and he says he loves me, and I know he does! Yesterday afternoon we decided we would get married in October, and then last night we got started talking—but it isn’t what we say, it’s what is in our eyes when we look at each other. We just can’t get married with that back of our eyes and trying to hide it—”
A little shiver went over her. “For years—forever? We can’t! We know we can’t—it would be horrible! What it is, it’s a question: who killed Alberto? Did he? Did I? I don’t really think he did, and he doesn’t really think I did—I hope he doesn’t—but it’s there back of our eyes, and we know it is!”
She extended both hands. “We want you to find out!”
Wolfe snorted. “Nonsense. You need a spanking or a psychiatrist. The police may have shortcomings, but they’re not nincompoops. If they’re satisfied—”
“But that’s it! They wouldn’t be satisfied if we had told the truth!”
“Oh.” Wolfe’s brows went up. “You lied to them?”
“Yes. Or if we didn’t lie, anyhow we didn’t tell them the truth. We didn’t tell them that when we first went in together and saw him, there was no gun lying there. There was no gun in sight.”
“Indeed. How sure are you?”
“Absolutely positive. I never saw anything clearer than I saw that—that sight—all of it. There was no gun.”
Wolfe snapped at Weppler, “You agree, sir?”
“Yes. She’s right.”
Wolfe sighed. “Well,” he conceded, “I can see that you’re really in trouble. Spanking wouldn’t help.”
I shifted in my chair on account of a tingle at the lower part of my spine. Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street was an interesting place to live and work—for Fritz Brenner, the chef and housekeeper, for Theodore Horstmann, who fed and nursed the ten thousand orchids in the plant rooms up on the roof, and for me, Archie Goodwin, whose main field of operations was the big office on the ground floor. Naturally I thought my job the most interesting, since a confidential assistant to a famous private detective is constantly getting an earful of all kinds of troubles and problems—everything from a missing necklace to a new blackmail gimmick. Very few clients actually bored me. But only one kind of case gave me that tingle in the spine: murder. And if this pair of lovebirds were talking straight, this was it.
II
I had filled two notebooks when they left, more than two hours later.
If they had thought it through before they phoned for an appointment with Wolfe, they wouldn’t have phoned. All they wanted, as Wolfe pointed out, was the moon. They wanted him, first, to investigate a four-month-old murder without letting on there had been one; second, to prove that neither of them had killed Alberto Mion, which could be done only by finding out who had; and third, in case he concluded that one of them had done it, to file it away and forget it. Not that they put it that way, since their story was that they were both absolutely innocent, but that was what it amounted to.
Wolfe made it good and plain. “If I take the job,” he told them, “and find evidence to convict someone of murder, no matter who, the use I make of it will be solely in my discretion. I am neither an Astraea nor a sadist, but I like my door open. But if you want to drop it now, here’s your check, and Mr. Goodwin’s notebooks will be destroyed. We can forget you have been here, and shall.”
That was one of the moments when they were within an ace of getting up and going, especially Fred Weppler, but they didn’t. They looked at each other, and it was all in their eyes. By that time I had about decided I liked them both pretty well and was even beginning to admire them, they were so damn determined to get loose from the trap they were in. When they looked at each other like that their eyes said, “Let’s go and be together, my darling love, and forget this—come on, come on.” Then they said, “It will be so wonderful!” Then they said, “Yes, oh yes, but—But we don’t want it wonderful for a day or a week; it must be always wonderful—and we know …”
It took strong muscles to hold onto it like that, not to mention horse sense, and several times I caught myself feeling sentimental about it. Then of course there was the check for five grand on Wolfe’s desk.
The notebooks were full of assorted matters. There were a thousand details which might or might not turn out to be pertinent, such as the mutual dislike between Peggy Mion and Rupert Grove, her husband’s manager, or the occasion of Gifford James socking Alberto Mion in front of witnesses, or the attitudes of various persons toward Mion’s demand for damages; but you couldn’t use it all, and Wolfe himself never needed more than a fraction of it, so I’ll pick and choose. Of course the gun was Exhibit A. It was a new one, having been bought by Mion the day after Gifford James had plugged him and hurt his larynx—not, he had announced, for vengeance on James but for future protection. He had carried it in a pocket whenever he went out, and at home had kept it in the studio, lying on the base of a bust of Caruso. So far as known, it had never fired but one bullet, the one that killed Mion.
When Dr. Lloyd had arrived and Weppler had taken him to the studio the gun was lying on the floor not far from Mion’s knee. Dr. Lloyd’s hand had started for it but had been withdrawn without touching it, so it had been there when the law came. Peggy was positive it had not been there when she and Fred had entered, and he agreed. The cops had made no announcement about fingerprints, which wasn’t surprising since none are hardly ever found on a gun that are any good. Throughout the two hours and a half, Wolfe kept darting back to the gun, but it simply didn’t have wings.
The picture of the day and the day’s people was all filled in. The morning seemed irrelevant, so it started at lunch time with five of them there: Mion, Peggy, Fred, one Adele Bosley, and Dr. Lloyd. It was more professional than social. Fred had been invited because Mion wanted to sell him the idea of writing a piece for the Gazette saying that the rumors that Mion would never be able to sing again were malicious hooey. Adele Bosley, who was in charge of public relations for the Metropolitan Opera, had come to help work on Fred. Dr. Lloyd had been asked so he could assure Weppler that the operation he had performed on Mion’s larynx had been successful and it was a good bet that by the time the opera season opened in November the great tenor would be as good as ever. Nothing special had happened except that Fred had agreed to do the piece. Adele Bosley and Lloyd had left, and Mion had gone up to the soundproofed studio, and Fred and Peggy had looked at each other and suddenly discovered the most important fact of life since the Garden of Eden.
An hour or so later there had been another gathering, this time up in the studio, around half-past three, but neither Fred nor Peggy had been present. By then Fred had walked himself calm and phoned Peggy, and she had gone to meet him in the park, so their information on the meeting in the studio was hearsay. Besides Mion and Dr. Lloyd there had been four people: Adele Bosley for operatic public relations; Mr. Rupert Grove, Mion’s manager; Mr. Gifford James, the baritone who had socked Mion in the neck six weeks previously; and Judge Henry Arnold, James’ lawyer. This aff
air had been even less social than the lunch, having been arranged to discuss a formal request that Mion had made of Gifford James for the payment of a quarter of a million bucks for the damage to Mion’s larynx.
Fred’s and Peggy’s hearsay had it that the conference had been fairly hot at points, with the temperature boosted right at the beginning by Mion’s getting the gun from Caruso’s bust and placing it on a table at his elbow. On the details of its course they were pretty sketchy, since they hadn’t been there, but anyhow the gun hadn’t been fired. Also there was plenty of evidence that Mion was alive and well—except for his larynx—when the party broke up. He had made two phone calls after the conference had ended, one to his barber and one to a wealthy female opera patron; his manager, Rupert Grove, had phoned him a little later; and around five-thirty he had phoned downstairs to the maid to bring him a bottle of vermouth and some ice, which she had done. She had taken the tray into the studio, and he had been upright and intact.
I was careful to get all the names spelled right in my notebook, since it seemed likely the job would be to get one of them tagged for murder, and I was especially careful with the last one that got in: Clara James, Gifford’s daughter. There were three spotlights on her. First, the reason for James’ assault on Mion had been his knowledge or suspicion—Fred and Peggy weren’t sure which—that Mion had stepped over the line with James’ daughter. Second, her name had ended the list, got by Fred from the doorman and elevator man, of people who had called that afternoon. They said she had come about a quarter past six and had got off at the floor the studio was on, the thirteenth, and had summoned the elevator to the twelfth floor a little later, maybe ten minutes, and had left. The third spotlight was directed by Peggy, who had stayed in the park a while after Fred had marched off, and had then returned home, arriving around five o’clock. She had not gone up to the studio and had not seen her husband. Sometime after six, she thought around half-past, she had answered the doorbell herself because the maid had been in the kitchen with the cook. It was Clara James. She was pale and tense, but she was always pale and tense. She had asked for Alberto, and Peggy had said she thought he was up in the studio, and Clara had said no, he wasn’t there, and never mind. When Clara went for the elevator button, Peggy had shut the door, not wanting company anyway, and particularly not Clara James.
Some half an hour later Fred showed up, and they ascended to the studio together and found that Alberto was there all right, but no longer upright or intact.
That picture left room for a whole night of questions, but Wolfe concentrated on what he regarded as the essentials. Even so, we went into the third hour and the third notebook. He completely ignored some spots that I thought needed filling in; for instance, had Alberto had a habit of stepping over the line with other men’s daughters and/or wives, and if so, names please. From things they said I gathered that Alberto had been broad-minded about other men’s women, but apparently Wolfe wasn’t interested. Along toward the end he was back on the gun again, and when they had nothing new to offer he scowled and got caustic. When they stayed glued he finally snapped at them, “Which one of you is lying?”
They looked hurt. “That won’t get you anywhere,” Fred Weppler said bitterly, “or us either.”
“It would be silly,” Peggy Mion protested, “to come here and give you that check and then lie to you. Wouldn’t it?”
“Then you’re silly,” Wolfe said coldly. He pointed a finger at her. “Look here. All of this might be worked out, none of it is preposterous, except one thing. Who put the gun on the floor beside the body? When you two entered the studio it wasn’t there; you both swear to that, and I accept it. You left and started downstairs; you fell, and he carried you to your room. You weren’t unconscious. Were you?”
“No.” Peggy was meeting his gaze. “I could have walked, but he—he wanted to carry me.”
“No doubt. He did so. You stayed in your room. He went to the ground floor to compile a list of those who had made themselves available as murder suspects—showing admirable foresight, by the way—came back up and phoned the police and then the doctor, who arrived without delay since he lived in the building. Not more than fifteen minutes intervened between the moment you and Mr. Weppler left the studio and the moment he and the doctor entered. The door from the studio to the public hall on the thirteenth floor has a lock that is automatic with the closing of the door, and the door was closed and locked. No one could possibly have entered during the fifteen minutes. You say that you had left your bed and gone to the living room, and that no one could have used that route without being seen by you. The maid and cook were in the kitchen, unaware of what was going on. So no one entered the studio and placed the gun on the floor.”
“Someone did,” Fred said doggedly.
Peggy insisted, “We don’t know who had a key.”
“You said that before.” Wolfe was at them now. “Even if everyone had keys, I don’t believe it and neither would anyone else.” His eyes came to me. “Archie. Would you?”
“I’d have to see a movie of it,” I admitted.
“You see?” he demanded of them. “Mr. Goodwin isn’t prejudiced against you—on the contrary. He’s ready to fight fire for you; see how he gets behind on his notes for the pleasure of watching you look at each other. But he agrees with me that you’re lying. Since no one else could have put the gun on the floor, one of you did. I have to know about it. The circumstances may have made it imperative for you, or you thought they did.”
He looked at Fred. “Suppose you opened a drawer of Mrs. Mion’s dresser to get smelling salts, and the gun was there, with an odor showing it had been recently fired—put there, you would instantly conjecture, by someone to direct suspicion at her. What would you naturally do? Exactly what you did do: take it upstairs and put it beside the body, without letting her know about it. Or—”
“Rot,” Fred said harshly. “Absolute rot.”
Wolfe looked at Peggy. “Or suppose it was you who found it there in your bedroom, after he had gone downstairs. Naturally you would have—”
“This is absurd,” Peggy said with spirit. “How could it have been in my bedroom unless I put it there? My husband was alive at five-thirty, and I got home before that, and was right there, in the living room and my room, until Fred came at seven o’clock. So unless you assume—”
“Very well,” Wolfe conceded. “Not the bedroom. But somewhere. I can’t proceed until I get this from one of you. Confound it, the gun didn’t fly. I expect plenty of lies from the others, at least one of them, but I want the truth from you.”
“You’ve got it,” Fred declared.
“No. I haven’t.”
“Then it’s a stalemate.” Fred stood up. “Well, Peggy?”
They looked at each other, and their eyes went through the performance again. When they got to the place in the script where it said, “It must be wonderful always,” Fred sat down.
But Wolfe, having no part in the script, horned in. “A stalemate,” he said dryly, “ends the game, I believe.”
Plainly it was up to me. If Wolfe openly committed himself to no dice nothing would budge him. I arose, got the pretty pink check from his desk, put it on mine, placed a paperweight on it, sat down, and grinned at him.
“Granted that you’re dead right,” I observed, “which is not what you call apodictical, someday we ought to make up a list of the clients that have sat here and lied to us. There was Mike Walsh, and Calida Frost, and that cafeteria guy, Pratt—oh, dozens. But their money was good, and I didn’t get so far behind with my notes that I couldn’t catch up. All that for nothing?”
“About those notes,” Fred Weppler said firmly. “I want to make something clear.”
Wolfe looked at him.
He looked back. “We came here,” he said, “to tell you in confidence about a problem and get you to investigate. Your accusing us of lying makes me wonder if we ought to go on, but if Mrs. Mion wants to I’m willing. But I want to make it
plain that if you divulge what we’ve told you, if you tell the police or anyone else that we said there was no gun there when we went in, we’ll deny it in spite of your damn notes. We’ll deny it and stick to it!” He looked at his girl. “We’ve got to, Peggy! All right?”
“He wouldn’t tell the police,” Peggy declared, with fair conviction.
“Maybe not. But if he does, you’ll stick with me on the denial. Won’t you?”
“Certainly I will,” she promised, as if he had asked her to help kill a rattlesnake.
Wolfe was taking them in, with his lips tightened. Obviously, with the check on my desk on its way to the bank, he had decided to add them to the list of clients who told lies and go on from there. He forced his eyes wide open to rest them, let them half close again, and spoke.
“We’ll settle that along with other things before we’re through,” he asserted. “You realize, of course, that I’m assuming your innocence, but I’ve made a thousand wrong assumptions before now so they’re not worth much. Has either of you a notion of who killed Mr. Mion?”
They both said no.
He grunted. “I have.”
They opened their eyes at him.
He nodded. “It’s only another assumption, but I like it. It will take work to validate it. To begin with, I must see the people you have mentioned—all six of them—and I would prefer not to string it out. Since you don’t want them told that I’m investigating a murder, we must devise a stratagem. Did your husband leave a will, Mrs. Mion?”
She nodded and said yes.
“Are you the heir?”
“Yes, I—” She gestured. “I don’t need it and don’t want it.”
“But it’s yours. That will do nicely. An asset of the estate is the expectation of damages to be paid by Mr. James for his assault on Mr. Mion. You may properly claim that asset. The six people I want to see were all concerned in that affair, one way or another. I’ll write them immediately, mailing the letter tonight special delivery, telling them that I represent you in the matter and would like them to call at my office tomorrow evening.”
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