Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 18

by Curtains for Three

  “She’s all right,” I assured them and pushed off, thinking there were a lot of names in this world that could stand a reshuffle. Calling that overweight narrow-eyed pearl-and-mink proprietor Mimi was a paradox.

  I moved around among the guests, being gracious. Fully aware that I was not equipped with a Geiger counter that would flash a signal if and when I established a contact with a strangler, the fact remained that I had been known to have hunches, and it would be something for my scrapbook if I picked one as the killer of Doris Hatten and it turned out later to be sunfast.

  Cynthia Brown hadn’t given me the Hatten, only the Doris, but with the context that was enough. At the time it had happened, some five months ago, early in October, the papers had given it a big play of course. She had been strangled with her own scarf, of white silk with the Declaration of Independence printed on it, in her cozy fifth-floor apartment in the West Seventies, and the scarf had been left around her neck, knotted at the back. The cops had never got within a mile of charging anyone, and Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Homicide had told me that they had never even found out who was paying the rent, but there was no law against Purley being discreet.

  I kept on the go through the plant rooms, leaving all switches open for a hunch. Some of them were plainly preposterous, but with everyone else I made an opportunity to exchange some words, fullface and close up. That took time, and it was no help to my current and chronic campaign for a raise in wages, since it was the women, not the men, that Wolfe wanted off his neck. I stuck at it anyhow. It was true that if Cynthia was on the level, and if she hadn’t changed her mind by the time I got Wolfe in to her, we would soon have specifications, but I had had that tingle at the bottom of my spine and I was stubborn.

  As I say, it took time, and meanwhile five o’clock came and went, and the crowd thinned out. Going on five-thirty the remaining groups seemed to get the idea all at once that time was up and made for the entrance to the stairs. I was in the moderate room when it happened, and the first thing I knew I was alone there, except for a guy at the north bench, studying a row of dowianas. He didn’t interest me, as I had already canvassed him and crossed him off as the wrong type for a strangler, but as I glanced his way he suddenly bent forward to pick up a pot with a flowering plant, and as he did so I felt my back stiffening. The stiffening was a reflex, but I knew what had caused it: the way his fingers closed around the pot, especially the thumbs. No matter how careful you are of other people’s property, you don’t pick up a five-inch pot as if you were going to squeeze the life out of it.

  I made my way around to him. When I got there he was holding the pot so that the flowers were only a few inches from his eyes.

  “Nice flower,” I said brightly.

  He nodded. “What color do you call the sepals?”

  “Nankeen yellow.”

  He leaned to put the pot back, still choking it. I swiveled my head. The only people in sight, beyond the glass partition between us and the cool room, were Nero Wolfe and a small group of guests, among whom were the Orwin trio and Bill McNab, the garden editor of the Gazette. As I turned my head back to my man he straightened up, pivoted on his heel, and marched off without a word. Whatever else he might or might not have been guilty of, he certainly had bad manners.

  I followed him, on into the warm room and through, out to the landing, and down the three flights of stairs. Along the main hall I was courteous enough not to step on his heel, but a lengthened stride would have reached it. The hall was next to empty. A woman, ready for the street in a caracul coat, was standing there, and Saul Panzer was posted near the front door with nothing to do. I followed my man on into the front room, the cloakroom, where Fritz Brenner was helping a guest on with his coat. Of course the racks were practically bare, and with one glance my man saw his property and went to get it. His coat was a brown tweed that had been through a lot more than one winter. I stepped forward to help, but he ignored me without even bothering to shake his head. I was beginning to feel hurt. When he emerged to the hall I was beside him, and as he moved to the front door I spoke.

  “Excuse me, but we’re checking guests out as well as in. Your name, please?”

  “Ridiculous,” he said curtly, and reached for the knob, pulled the door open, and crossed the sill. Saul, knowing I must have had a reason for wanting to check him out, was at my elbow, and we stood watching his back as he descended the seven steps of the stoop.

  “Tail?” Saul muttered at me.

  I shook my head and was parting my lips to mutter something back, when a sound came from behind us that made us both whirl around—a screech from a woman, not loud but full of feeling. As we whirled, Fritz and the guest he had been serving came out of the front room, and all four of us saw the woman in the caracul coat come running out of the office into the hall. She kept coming, gasping something, and the guest, making a noise like an alarmed male, moved to meet her. I moved faster, needing about eight jumps to the office door and two inside. There I stopped.

  Of course I knew the thing on the floor was Cynthia, but only because I had left her in there in those clothes. With the face blue and contorted, the tongue halfway out, and the eyes popping, it could have been almost anybody. I knelt and slipped my hand inside her dress front, kept it there ten seconds, and felt nothing.

  Saul’s voice came from behind. “I’m here.”

  I got up and went to the phone on my desk and started dialing, telling Saul, “No one leaves. We’ll keep what we’ve got. Have the door open for Doc Vollmer.” After only two whirs the nurse answered, and put Vollmer on, and I snapped it at him. “Doc, Archie Goodwin. Come on the run. Strangled woman. Yeah, strangled.”

  I pushed the phone back, reached for the house phone and buzzed the plant rooms, and after a wait had Wolfe’s irritated bark in my ear. “Yes?”

  “I’m in the office. You’d better come down. That prospective client I mentioned is here on the floor, strangled. I think she’s gone, but I’ve sent for Vollmer.”

  “Is this flummery?” he roared.

  “No, sir. Come down and look at her and then ask me.”

  The connection went. He had slammed it down. I got a sheet of thin tissue paper from a drawer, tore off a corner, and went and placed it carefully over Cynthia’s mouth and nostrils. In ten seconds it hadn’t stirred.

  Voices had been sounding from the hall. Now one of them entered the office. Its owner was the guest who had been in the cloakroom with Fritz when the screech came. He was a chunky broad-shouldered guy with sharp domineering dark eyes and arms like a gorilla’s. His voice was going strong as he started toward me from the door, but it stopped when he had come far enough to get a good look at the object on the floor.

  “My God,” he said huskily.

  “Yes, sir,” I agreed.

  “How did it happen?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  He made his eyes come away from it and up until they met mine, and I gave him an A for control. It really was a sight.

  “The man at the door won’t let us leave,” he stated.

  “No, sir. You can see why.”

  “I certainly can.” His eyes stayed with me, however. “But we know nothing about it. My name is Carlisle, Homer N. Carlisle. I am the executive vice-president of the North American Foods Company. My wife was merely acting under impulse; she wanted to see the office of Nero Wolfe, and she opened the door and entered. She’s sorry she did, and so am I. We have an appointment, and there’s no reason why we should be detained.”

  “I’m sorry too,” I told him. “But one thing, if nothing else—your wife discovered the body. We’re stuck worse than you are, with a corpse here in our office, and we haven’t even got a wife who had an impulse. We got it for nothing. So I guess—Hello, Doc.”

  Vollmer, entering and nodding at me on the fly, was panting a little as he set his black case on the floor and knelt beside it. His house was down the street a
nd he had had only two hundred yards to trot, but he was taking on weight. As he opened the case and got out the stethoscope, Homer Carlisle stood and watched with his lips pressed tight, and I did likewise until I heard the sound of Wolfe’s elevator. Crossing to the door and into the hall, I surveyed the terrain. Toward the front Saul and Fritz were calming down the woman in the caracul coat, now Mrs. Carlisle to me. Nero Wolfe and Mrs. Mimi Orwin were emerging from the elevator. Four guests were coming down the stairs: Gene Orwin, Colonel Percy Brown, Bill McNab, and a middle-aged male with a mop of black hair.

  I stayed by the office door to block the quartet on the stairs. As Wolfe headed for me, Mrs. Carlisle darted to him and grabbed his arm. “I only wanted to see your office! I want to go! I’m not—”

  As she pulled at him and sputtered, I noted a detail. The caracul coat was unfastened, and the ends of a silk scarf, figured and gaily colored, were flying loose. Since at least half of the female guests had sported scarfs, I mention it only to be honest and admit that I had got touchy on that subject.

  Wolfe, who had already been too close to too many women that day to suit him, tried to jerk away, but she hung on. She was the big-boned flat-chested athletic type, and it could have been quite a tussle, with him weighing twice as much as her and four times as big around, if Saul hadn’t rescued him by coming in between and prying her loose. That didn’t stop her tongue, but Wolfe ignored it and came on toward me.

  “Has Dr. Vollmer come?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The executive vice-president emerged from the office, talking. “Mr. Wolfe, my name is Homer N. Carlisle and I insist—”

  “Shut up,” Wolfe growled. On the sill of the door to the office, he faced the audience. “Flower lovers,” he said with bitter scorn. “You told me, Mr. McNab, a distinguished group of sincere and devoted gardeners. Pfui! Saul!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you armed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Put them all in the dining room and keep them there. Let no one touch anything around this door, especially the knob. Archie, come with me.”

  He wheeled and entered the office. Following, I used my foot to swing the door nearly shut, leaving no crack but not latching it. When I turned Vollmer was standing, facing Wolfe’s scowl.

  “Well?” Wolfe demanded.

  “Dead,” Vollmer told him. “With asphyxiation from strangling sometimes you can do something, but it wasn’t even worth trying.”

  “How long ago?”

  “I don’t know, but not more than an hour or two. Two hours at the outside, probably less.”

  Wolfe looked at the thing on the floor, with no change in his scowl, and back at Doc. “You say strangling. Finger marks?”

  “No. A constricting band of something with pressure below the hyoid bone. Not a stiff or narrow band; something soft like a strip of cloth—say a scarf.”

  Wolfe switched to me. “You didn’t notify the police.”

  “No, sir.” I glanced at Vollmer and back. “I need a word.”

  “I suppose so.” He spoke to Doc. “If you will leave us for a moment? The front room?”

  Vollmer hesitated, uncomfortable. “As a doctor called to a violent death I’d catch hell. Of course I could say—”

  “Then go to a corner and cover your ears.”

  He did so. He went to the farthest corner, the angle made by the partition of the bathroom, pressed his palms to his ears, and stood facing us.

  I addressed Wolfe with a lowered voice. “I was here, and she came in. She was either scared good or putting on a very fine act. Apparently it wasn’t an act, and I now think I should have alerted Saul and Fritz, but it doesn’t matter what I now think. Last October a woman named Doris Hatten was killed—strangled—in her apartment. No one got elected. Remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “She said she was a friend of Doris Hatten’s and was at her apartment that day and saw the man that did the strangling, and that he was here this afternoon. She said he was aware that she had recognized him, that’s why she was scared, and she wanted to get you to help by telling him that we were wise and he’d better lay off. No wonder I didn’t gulp it down. I realize that you dislike complications and therefore might want to scratch this out, but at the end she touched a soft spot by saying that she had enjoyed my company, so I prefer to open up to the cops.”

  “Then do so. Confound it!”

  I went to the phone and started dialing Watkins 9-8241. Doc Vollmer came out of his corner and went to get his black case from the floor and put it on a chair. Wolfe was pathetic. He moved around behind his desk and lowered himself into his own oversized custom-made number, the only spot on earth where he was ever completely comfortable, but there smack in front of him was the object on the floor, so after a moment he made a face, got back onto his feet, grunted like an outraged boar, went across to the other side of the room to the shelves, and inspected the backbones of books.

  But even that pitiful diversion got interrupted. As I finished with my phone call and hung up, sudden sounds of commotion came from the hall. Dashing across, getting fingernails on the edge of the door and pulling it open, and passing through, I saw trouble. A group was gathered in the open doorway of the dining room, which was across the hall. Saul Panzer went bounding past me toward the front. At the front door Colonel Percy Brown was stiff-arming Fritz Brenner with one hand and reaching for the doorknob with the other. Fritz, who is chef and housekeeper, is not supposed to double in acrobatics, but he did fine. Dropping to the floor, he grabbed the colonel’s ankles and jerked his feet out from under him. Then I was there, and Saul with his gun out; and there with us was the guest with the mop of black hair.

  “You damn fool,” I told the colonel as he sat up. “If you’d got outdoors Saul would have winged you.”

  “Guilt,” said the black-haired guest emphatically. “The compression got unbearable and he exploded. I was watching him. I’m a psychiatrist.”

  “Good for you.” I took his elbow and turned him. “Go back in and watch all of ’em. With that wall mirror you can include yourself.”

  “This is illegal,” stated Colonel Brown, who had scrambled to his feet and was short of breath.

  Saul herded them to the rear. Fritz got hold of my sleeve. “Archie, I’ve got to ask Mr. Wolfe about dinner.”

  “Nuts,” I said savagely. “By dinnertime this place will be more crowded than it was this afternoon. Company is coming, sent by the city. It’s a good thing we have a cloakroom ready.”

  “But he has to eat; you know that. I should have the ducks in the oven now. If I have to stay here at the door and attack people as they try to leave, what will he eat?”

  “Nuts,” I said. I patted him on the shoulder. “Excuse my manners, Fritz, I’m upset. I’ve just strangled a young woman.”

  “Nuts,” he said scornfully.

  “I might as well have,” I declared.

  The doorbell rang. I reached for the switch and turned on the stoop light and looked through the panel of one-way glass. It was the first consignment of cops.

  III

  In my opinion Inspector Cramer made a mistake. Opinion, hell, of course he did. It is true that in a room where a murder has occurred the city scientists—measurers, sniffers, print-takers, specialists, photographers—may shoot the works, and they do. But except in rare circumstances the job shouldn’t take all week, and in the case of our office a couple of hours should have been ample. In fact, it was. By eight o’clock the scientists were through. But Cramer, like a sap, gave the order to seal it up until further notice, in Wolfe’s hearing. He knew damn well that Wolfe spent as least three hundred evenings a year in there, in the only chair and under the only light that he really liked, and that was why he did it. It was a mistake. If he hadn’t made it, Wolfe might have called his attention to a certain fact as soon as Wolfe saw it himself, and Cramer would have been saved a lot of trouble.

  The two of them got the fact at the same time
, from me. We were in the dining room—this was shortly after the scientists had got busy in the office, and the guests, under guard, had been shunted to the front room—and I was relating my conversation with Cynthia Brown. They wanted all of it, or Cramer did rather, and they got it. Whatever else my years as Wolfe’s assistant may have done for me or to me, they have practically turned me into a tape recorder, and Wolfe and Cramer didn’t get a rewrite of that conversation, they got the real thing, word for word. They also got the rest of my afternoon, complete. When I finished, Cramer had a slew of questions, but Wolfe not a one. Maybe he had already focused on the fact above referred to, but neither Cramer nor I had. The shorthand dick seated at one end of the dining table had the fact too, in his notebook along with the rest of it, but he wasn’t supposed to focus.

  Cramer called a recess on the questions to take steps. He called men in and gave orders. Colonel Brown was to be photographed and fingerprinted and headquarters records were to be checked for him and Cynthia. The file on the murder of Doris Hatten was to be brought to him at once. The lab reports were to be rushed. Saul Panzer and Fritz Brenner were to be brought in.

  They came. Fritz stood like a soldier at attention, grim and grave. Saul, only five feet seven, with the sharpest eyes and one of the biggest noses I have ever seen, in his unpressed brown suit, and his necktie crooked—he stood like Saul, not slouching and not stiff. He would stand like that if he were being awarded the Medal of Honor or if he were in front of a firing squad.

  Of course Cramer knew both of them. He picked on Saul. “You and Fritz were in the hall all afternoon?”

  Saul nodded. “The hall and the front room, yes.”

  “Who did you see enter or leave the office?”

  “I saw Archie go in about four o’clock—I was just coming out of the front room with someone’s hat and coat. I saw Mrs. Carlisle come out just after she screamed. In between those two I saw no one either enter or leave. We were busy most of the time, either in the hall or the front room.”

  Cramer grunted. “How about you, Fritz?”