“We can run over there if you like, but I’ve pretty well gone through it, and there wasn’t much to begin with—mostly papers, the majority of which Hale had already graded. He kept most of his files at home.”
I told him I’d like to take a look anyway, so we walked back to his house and got the Mercedes. Markham’s office was just down the corridor from Cortland’s in Richardson Hall. The place was small, but infinitely neater than either Cortland’s or Elena Moreau’s. Markham’s name was still on the door, but there wasn’t much else to indicate who the tenant had been.
Twenty minutes later, I’d gone through the desk drawers and bookshelves, and I felt as frustrated as I had at his house. Walking out of the building, I asked Cortland if anybody else had helped clean out Markham’s office.
“No, just me, at least as far as I know. Because I was his closest friend, as well as executor, Orville had the good sense to suggest I be the one to sift through Hale’s things here. In fact, I plan to move out what little you saw there by next week, so the space can be utilized by somebody else. Space is always at a premium here on campus. Frankly, it’s a depressing chore, but I guess I’d resent anybody else doing it.”
I sympathized with Cortland—after all, he was talking about the man who had been, as he said, his closest friend, not to mention his mentor. I dropped him off back at his house and told him that Leander Bach was going to visit Wolfe on Sunday, and ended by giving him the stock line that he’d be hearing from us shortly. The fact that we’d be talking to Bach made him brighten slightly, but I sensed that the little guy was beginning to have doubts about having hired us.
As I headed out of Prescott for the third time in four days, I thought fleetingly about crossing the Hudson and aiming the Mercedes north toward a certain oasis on the Dutchess County side of the river. But I vetoed the idea of making a surprise appearance. I’d probably end up thinking about the case while I was there, and Lily’s the kind who thrives on undivided attention. For that matter, I’m the kind who likes to give it to her.
SEVENTEEN
I GOT BACK TO THE BROWNSTONE at just after four, which of course meant the office was empty because the owner of the establishment was up communing with his orchids. Out in the kitchen, Fritz was doing some communing of his own, with the shrimp that would be tonight’s entrée. I gave him a nod and took a carton of milk from the refrigerator; I needed something cool and soothing after the drive.
“I saved some of the marrow dumplings from lunch,” he said, turning from his work. He knows I devour them by the plateful.
“Well, even though I stopped for a ham sandwich, and even though it’s only three hours till dinner…why not?” I said with a grin, as much to please Fritz as to make my stomach happy. Two things in particular cause Fritz Brenner to fret: One, long dry spells when Wolfe isn’t working, because that means money isn’t flowing in to pay the mountain of expenses it takes to keep the brownstone running; and two, my eating habits when I’m away from home. And right now, Fritz was in a double-fret. I put half of it to rest by attacking the dumplings he’d saved and kept heated, declaring them as good as any he’d ever made. The other half I dealt with by telling him we were well on our way to solving the murder of Hale Markham.
Okay, so I was playing games with the truth, but what harm did it do? It sent Fritz happily back to the shrimp, and after all, there was a reasonable likelihood Wolfe would push the right buttons soon, wasn’t there? At least that’s what I told myself as I worked my way through the plate of dumplings.
Back in the office, fuller and more mellow, I parked in front of the computer, which sits on a small table next to my desk, and started feeding it Markham’s floppy disks, figuring I’d at least have something to report to Wolfe when he came down from the plant rooms at six. I put one, labeled SENIOR SEMINAR LECTURES 1, into the PC and scrolled quickly, wondering as I read how Markham could possibly make some of this stuff interesting to his students. I went through every one of the lecture disks, and then moved on to the excitement of his monthly budgets, utilities bills, notes on various articles that would never be written, and securities portfolios and checking and savings accounts, which showed him to be comfortably set, if not exactly in the Rockefeller category. I’d gone through probably half of the stack when I heard the whirring of the elevator and, surprised, looked at my watch, which told me it was almost ninety seconds past six.
Wolfe trooped in and gave me a questioning look as he lowered his bulk into the desk chair and rang for beer. “In answer to your familiar ‘what-the-hell-are-you-doing?’ expression, I’ve been having a riveting time here at the computer,” I told him. “What would you like to know about Hale Markham? I can tell you that he bought three suits in the last year, two at Reed and Struthers right here on Fifth Avenue and one at the Pickwick Shop in Prescott, and that they cost a combined total of seven hundred seventy-four dollars and change. He also bought six ties at Reed and Struthers which totaled just over ninety-two dollars. His electric bills for the first eight months of the year were—”
“Archie!” It wasn’t a bellow, but it had some force.
“Yes, sir?”
“I realize this monologue is a form of therapy for you, but I am not a therapist. Report.”
With that, I gave him the day’s activities in Prescott, which of course weren’t much. Wolfe listened and drank beer, eyeing his book several times during my narrative. When I finished, he frowned and leaned back in his one-of-a-kind chair. “What did you say to Mr. Cortland when you left him today?”
“The usual,” I answered. “That we’d be back to him, and that we would be meeting with Bach tomorrow. It took all my willpower to keep from telling him you were about to crack this thing wide open and name a murderer at a televised press conference tomorrow in the Javits Convention Center. Did I do right?” That was for the therapy crack.
Not surprisingly, I got another frown. “Pfui. It appears that you have a lot more disks to go through,” Wolfe observed, opening his book. I decided to let him have the last word and went back to the computerized version of “This Is Your Life, Hale Markham.” I scrolled through the last year’s register of personal checks; a five-year financial reporting of his speeches, for which he charged a minimum $2,500; and the text of what apparently was his standard speech, titled “Daring to Draw the Line Against the Left.”
“You know,” I said, turning to face Wolfe, “Markham’s really made it easy for a biographer. He’s got so damn much detail about himself here—there’s even a disk listing the volumes he’s checked out of the library.” All I got from behind the book was a grunt, so I went back to discovering such things as how much the great conservative philosopher spent on new underwear and socks in a twelvemonth.
That grunt was the only noise I got out of Wolfe on the Markham affair for the next twenty-seven hours. Business is out as a subject of conversation during meals, of course, but even after dinner Saturday, he refused to talk to me about anything remotely connected with the case, hiding instead behind his book and later wrestling with a London Times crossword puzzle. Sunday was more of the same, with himself steadfastly ignoring my attempts to bring up what I had thought was a job we had undertaken. By midafternoon I gave up and went to a movie, leaving the lord of the manor to his book, the Sunday papers, another crossword puzzle, and some puttering in the kitchen, Fritz having taken the day off.
I got back to the brownstone at five-forty after stopping for a slice of peach pie and a glass of milk on the way home from the movie, one of those avenging-veteran-returns-to-Southeast-Asia shoot-’em-ups that was worth about a third of the admission price. But at least it took my mind off the problem at hand for a couple of hours.
I strolled into the office to find that Wolfe was having no trouble at all keeping his mind off the problem at hand. He was sitting at his desk chuckling—that’s right, chuckling—at something he was reading in the New York Times Magazine, which turned out to be Russell Baker’s column. “I can’t tell you h
ow pleased I am to see that you’re having a good time,” I said as I slid into my desk chair. “I assume you haven’t forgotten that the plutocratic Mr. Bach will be stopping by later.”
“I have not forgotten,” he answered without looking up. I still wasn’t getting anywhere drawing him into conversation, so I turned my attention to the computer, trying to decide whether to have at the last few Markham disks. After about a half-minute of debating with myself, I figured I might just as well get it over with, so I plunged ahead on the one marked LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT, which I had purposely been saving, just so I had something to look forward to. It was identical to the copy Cortland had sent us in the mail: The majority of the estate, including the house, went to his niece, with ten grand earmarked for Cortland and thousands more doled out to several politically conservative organizations. I had half expected to see Elena Moreau’s name somewhere along the way, but other than Cortland, there was no mention of anyone or any organization at Prescott U. I considered interrupting Wolfe with this piece of information but checked myself; I was tired of trying to get him to take his brain out of neutral, or maybe it was reverse that he was stuck in.
I went back to the remaining disks, from which I learned that the professor was one tough grader. Of the fifty-seven students he had at the time of his death, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, only three were in the A range as of September twenty-first, the last date marks were entered in the computer. I wasn’t surprised to learn that one of those A’s belonged to Gretchen Frazier. That, too, was a fact I decided Wolfe would have to do without for now.
The weekday routine in the brownstone doesn’t apply on Sundays, with meals pretty much catch-as-catch-can. I knew Wolfe would be improvising in the kitchen whenever his stomach started snarling at him, and I was in no mood to eat in his company, let alone share one of his experimental concoctions, so I marched out and constructed a cucumber-and-shrimp sandwich for myself while he was still rooted to his office chair. I ate the sandwich at the small table where I have breakfast and chased it with a glass of milk, then went up to my room to rest and meditate.
Lying on my back on the bed, I went over where we were: Hale Markham found dead of a broken neck at the bottom of Caldwell’s Gash, almost surely pushed. A fistful of people probably not sorry he was dead—among them the president of the university, whose principal donor had been driven away by Markham’s verbal assaults; the donor, a multimillionaire industrialist, who had been held up to ridicule by Markham; the chairman of his department, whom Markham had professionally humiliated; and a fellow professor and former friend, who claimed to be afraid Markham would do him some form of bodily harm.
And then there were two attractive women, one young, one not-so-young, each of whom obviously had more than a passing interest in the virile old professor. And he obviously had had more than a passing interest in both of them as well, a situation not normally conducive to peaceful relations, academic or otherwise.
I must have turned things over in my mind several times, but I wasn’t getting anywhere, and at some point I dozed off, because the next time I looked at my watch it was eight-twenty. I jumped up, went to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face and brush my hair, then put on a fresh blue shirt, maroon tie, and my gray herring-bone sportcoat, the one Lily once said makes me look almost professorial.
Down in the office, I of course found Wolfe behind his desk. By now he had polished off the Sunday papers, and likely a meal of his own devising, and was wading into a new book, The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom. “I assume we’ll offer liquid refreshments to our guests?” I asked.
He looked up and dipped his head an eighth of an inch, then went back to his reading.
“My, we’re in a chatty mood. You must be saving up all your bons mots for our esteemed visitor.”
“Archie, if you must use non-English phrases, pronounce them correctly. The ‘t’ and the ‘s’ in the second word are silent.”
“Thanks, I needed that to keep me humble.”
Wolfe set his book on the desk and looked up with raised eyebrows. “I sincerely doubt that you and humility will ever have so much as a nodding acquaintance.” With that, he heaved himself upright and marched out, undoubtedly in a quest for beer. Life gets complicated for him when Fritz isn’t around. I took the opportunity to set up a bar on the table in the corner, stocking it with Scotch, gin, bourbon, and mixes, as well as carafes of red and white wine that I got from the kitchen.
Wolfe had returned from his beer run and was settled back into his chair when the doorbell rang. It was nine-oh-one by my watch, which is always right. “He’s not only rich, he’s prompt,” I said as I went out to the front hall.
I peered through the one-way glass in our front door and allowed as how the man on the stoop looked pretty much like the Leander Bach whose picture I’d been seeing in newspapers for years: the well-tended mane of snow-white hair, the angular, ruddy face with piercing eyes, a shade of blue that even Jack Benny would have envied, and the strong chin. He was standing as straight as a cadet, and I had to admit that he looked good for a guy on the threshold of eighty.
His personal assistant looked good herself. Miss Carswell, first name as yet unknown, had honey-colored hair and a nicely arranged set of facial features that included eyes as green as her employer’s were blue. If I had a Miss Carswell, I’d probably take her everywhere with me, too.
“Mr. Bach, Miss Carswell, please come in,” I said, using my best let’s-be-friends smile as I swung the door open. “I’m Archie Goodwin, Mr. Wolfe’s assistant.”
“Sir,” Bach said with a businesslike nod, giving me a firm handshake. “Annette Carswell, nice to meet you,” his companion said with a slight smile and a strong grip of her own. I helped her off with her coat and turned to Bach, but he already had his dark camel’s hair topcoat off and onto one of the hooks in the hall. I gestured them toward the office, where I made the introductions.
Wolfe nodded, first to Bach and then to Annette—in my mind, she and I were already on a first-name basis—in such a way that they realized handshakes were to be dispensed with. I steered him to the red leather chair and her to one of the yellow chairs, giving me an opportunity to study her profile.
“I appreciate your indulging me by accepting my invitation,” Wolfe said, taking them both in with the statement. “Will you have something to drink? As you see, I’m having beer.”
“Thanks,” the tycoon said hoarsely. “Scotch with a couple splashes of water, no ice. Time was when I’d never let water screw up a fine whiskey, but age has made me change my drinking habits—as well as a lot of other habits, for that matter. Hell, I shouldn’t even have a watered-down drink, but I will.” I looked at Annette, and she mouthed the words “white wine,” so I hied myself over to the table to fill their orders, plus two fingers of Scotch on the rocks for myself, to be sociable.
“I didn’t mind coming at all,” Bach was saying as I served the drinks. “I’m glad for the chance to meet you. You’ve got one hell of a reputation.”
“As do you, sir,” Wolfe said, dipping his head.
Bach laughed, slapping the knee of his custom-tailored gray pinstripe. “Shoot, here we are being polite when we both know damn well that we’ve each learned as much as possible about the other bozo. Like a good poker player, I always like to size up the people I’m sitting down with, and I suspect you do too.”
“I cannot relate directly to your analogy—Mr. Goodwin is the poker player in this household—but I won’t deny that I know a good deal about you,” Wolfe said. “Much of it I’ve simply absorbed through the years from newspapers, magazines, and books—including your autobiography.”
“Ah, you read Maverick Mogul, did you? What did you think of it? Be honest now.”
“I am always honest, unless of course necessity dictates otherwise. I found the philosophy intriguing, if flawed; the narrative of your life and career interesting and sometimes compelling; the writing appallingly pedes
trian.”
“Hah!” Bach roared, slapping his knee again and grinning. “I like a man who speaks his piece and speaks it straight. For the record, I didn’t write the damn thing myself. I hired one of those cursed ghostwriters, and I regretted it almost from the word go. It served me right for being lazy. I could have written it better myself. And saved several thousand smackers in the bargain.”
“I should hope so,” Wolfe remarked.
“As for what I know about you, sir,” Bach said, unfazed, “I confess I did some boning up for tonight. I’ve learned through sources, it doesn’t matter where, that you are one smart cookie, well-read, arrogant, tough, liberal in your politics, and that the rates you charge would make an Abu Dhabi oil sheik howl, but that your clients almost always pay up without squawking.”
I had all I could do to keep from laughing. First it was Cortland and his vocabulary, and now Bach and his candor. Wolfe never had had it laid out for him quite this way, and in his own office, no less. I almost felt like I should be paying admission.
One corner of Wolfe’s mouth twitched slightly. “I must demur on the liberal designation,” he said. “While it is true that I have espoused certain causes and principles that have come to be known popularly, if not always accurately, as ‘liberal,’ I wear no label, and never will.”
“Well said,” Bach answered promptly, taking a sip of his drink and nodding. “I don’t wear any labels myself, although it’s hardly a secret that I’m, shall we say, to the left of the yellow line. But to read some of the newspaper columnists, you’d think I was a member of the politburo. I know damn well it’s partly because of all the trips I’ve made to the U.S.S.R., and the fact that I’ve learned to get along with a lot of those people. Hell, I like a lot of them. And I’m proud to do business with them. And I think doing business with them is part of the bridge building that will lead to peace. The right-wingers can’t stand that kind of talk, though.”
The Bloodied Ivy (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 3) Page 15