by Rex Stout
“Shut up, Cece,” Beverly Kent ordered him, not diplomatic at all. “Let Paul tell him.”
The lawyer did so. “Your insinuation,” Schuster said, “that we have entered into a conspiracy to buy you off is totally unwarranted. Or to bully you. We came because we feel, with reason, that our rights of privacy are being violated without provocation or just cause, and that you are responsible. We doubt if you can justify that responsibility, but we thought you should have a chance to do so before we consider what steps may be taken legally in the matter.”
“Pfui,” Wolfe said.
“An expression of contempt is hardly an adequate justification, Mr Wolfe.”
“I didn’t intend it to be, sir.” Wolfe leaned back and clasped his fingers at the apex of his central mound. “This is futile, gentlemen, both for you and for me. Neither of us can possibly be gratified. You want a stop put to your involvement in a murder inquiry, and my concern is to involve you as deeply as possible-the innocent along with-”
“Why?” Schuster demanded. “Why are you concerned?”
“Because Mr Goodwin’s professional reputation and competence have been challenged, and by extension my own. You invoked respondeat superior; I will not only answer, I will act. That the innocent must be involved along with the guilty is regrettable but unavoidable. So you can’t get what you want, but no more can I. What I want is a path to a fact. I want to know if one of you has buried in his past a fact that will account for his resort to murder to get rid of Faith Usher, and if so, which. Manifestly you are not going to sit here and submit to a day-long inquisition by me, and even if you did, the likelihood that one of you would betray the existence of such a fact is minute. So, as I say, this is futile both for you and for me. I wish you good day only as a matter of form.”
But it wasn’t quite that simple. They had come for a showdown, and they weren’t going to be bowed out with a “good day” as a matter of form-at least, three of them weren’t. They got pretty well worked up before they left. Schuster forgot all about saying that they hadn’t come to present a threat. Kent went far beyond the bounds of what I would call diplomacy. Cecil Grantham blew his top, at one point even pounding the top of Wolfe’s desk with his fist. I was on my feet, to be handy in case one of them lost control and picked up a chair to throw but my attention was mainly on our client. He was out of luck. For the sake of appearance he sort of tried to join in, but his heart wasn’t in it, and all he could manage was a mumble now and then. He didn’t leave his chair until Cecil headed for the door, followed by Kent, and then, not wanting to be the last one out, he jumped up and went. I stepped to the hall to see that no one took my new hat in the excitement, went and tried the door after they were out, and returned to the office.
I expected to see Wolfe leaning back with his eyes closed, but no. He was sitting up straight, glaring at space. He transferred the glare to me.
“This is grotesque,” he growled.
“It certainly is,” I agreed warmly. “Four of the suspects come to see you uninvited, all set for a good long heart-to-heart talk, and what do they get? Bounced. The trouble is, one of them was our client, and he may think we’re loafing on the job.”
“Bah. When the men phone tell them to come in at three. No. At two-thirty. No. At two o’clock. We’ll have lunch early. I’ll tell Fritz.” He got up and marched out.
I felt uplifted. That he was calling the men in for new instructions was promising. That he had changed it from three o’clock, when his lunch would have been settled, to two-thirty, when digestion would have barely started, was impressive. That he had advanced it again, to two, with an early lunch, was inspiring. And then to go to tell Fritz instead of ringing for him-all hell was popping.
Chapter Ten
“How many times,” Wolfe asked, “have you heard me confess that I am a witling?”
Fred Durkin grinned. A joke was a joke. Orrie Gather smiled. He was even handsomer when he smiled, but not necessarily braver. Saul Panzer said, “Three times when you meant it, and twice when you didn’t.”
“You never disappoint me, Saul.” Wolfe was doing his best to be sociable. He had just crossed the hall from the dining-room. With Fred and Orrie he wouldn’t have strained himself, but Saul had his high regard. “This, then,” he said, “makes four times that I have meant it and this time my fault was so egregious that I made myself pay for it. The only civilized way to spend the hour after lunch is with a book, but I have just swallowed my last bite of cheese cake, and here I am working. You must bear with me. I am paying a deserved penalty.”
“Maybe it’s our fault too.” Saul suggested. “We had an order and we didn’t fill it.”
“No,” Wolfe said emphatically. “I can’t grab for the straw of your charity. I am an ass. If any share of the fault is yours it lies in this, that when I explained the situation to you Wednesday evening and gave you your assignments none of you reminded me of my maxim that nothing is to be expected of tagging the footsteps of the police. That’s what you’ve been doing, at my direction, and it was folly. There are scores of them, and only three of you. You have been merely looking under stones that they have already turned. I am an ass.”
“Maybe there’s no other stones to try,” Orrie observed.
“Of course there are. There always are.” Wolfe took time to breathe. More oxygen was always needed after a meal unless he relaxed with a book. “I have an excuse, naturally, that one approach was closed to my ingenuity. By Mr Cramer’s account, and Archie didn’t challenge it, no one could possibly have poisoned that glass of champagne with any assurance that it would get to Miss Usher. I could have tackled that problem only by a minute examination of everyone who was there, and most of them were not available to me. Sooner or later it must be solved, but only after disclosure of a motive. That was the only feasible approach open to me, to find the motive, and you know what I did. I sent you men to flounder around on ground that the police had already covered, or were covering. Pfui.”
“I saw four people,” Fred protested, “that the cops hadn’t got to.”
“And learned?”
“Well-nothing.”
Wolfe nodded. “So. The quarry, as I told you Wednesday evening, was evidence of some significant association of one of those people with Miss Usher. That was a legitimate line of inquiry, but it was precisely the one the police were following, and I offer my apologies. We shall now try another line, where you will at least be on fresh ground. I want to see Faith Usher’s mother. You are to find her and bring her.”
Fred and Orrie pulled out their notebooks. Saul had one but rarely used it. The one inside his skull was usually all he needed.
“You won’t need notes,” Wolfe said. “There is nothing to note except the bare fact that Miss Usher’s mother is alive and must be somewhere. This may lead nowhere, but it is not a resort to desperation. Whatever circumstance in Miss Usher’s life resulted in her death, she must have been emotionally involved, and I have been apprised of only two phenomena which importantly engaged her emotions. One was her experience with the man who begot her infant. A talk with him might be fruitful, but if he can be found the police will find him; of course they’re trying to. The other was her relationship with her mother. Mrs Irwin, of Grantham House, told Archie that she had formed the conclusion, from talking with Miss Usher, that her mother was alive and that she hated her. And yesterday Miss Helen Yarmis, with whom Miss Usher shared an apartment the last seven months of her life, told me that Miss Usher had come home from work one day with a headache and had said that she had encountered her mother on the street and there had been a scene, and she had had to run to get away from her; and that she wished her mother was dead. Miss Yannis’s choice of words.”
Fred, writing in his notebook, looked up. “Does she spell Irwin with an E or an I?”
Wolfe always tried to be patient with Fred, but there was a limit. “As you prefer,” he said. “Why spell it at all? I’ve told you all she said that is relevant, a
nd all that I know. I will add that I doubt if either Mrs Irwin or Miss Yarmis mentioned Miss Usher’s mother to the police, so in looking for her you shouldn’t be jostled.”
“Is her name Usher?” Orrie asked. Of course Saul wouldn’t have asked it, and neither would Fred.
“You should learn to listen, Orrie,” Wolfe told him. “I said that’s all I know. And no more is to be expected from either Mrs Irwin or Miss Yarmis. They know no more.” His eyes went to Saul. “You will direct the search, using Fred and Orrie as occasions arise.”
“Do we keep covered?” Saul asked.
“Preferably, yes. But don’t preserve your cover at the cost of missing your mark.”
“I took a look,” I said, “at the Manhattan phone book when I got back from Grantham House yesterday. A dozen Ushers are listed. Of course she doesn’t have to be named Usher, and she doesn’t have to live in Manhattan, and she doesn’t have to have a phone. It wouldn’t take Fred and Orrie long to check the dozen. I can call Lon Cohen at the Gazette. He might have gone after the mother for an exclusive and a picture.”
“Sure,” Saul agreed. “If it weren’t for cover my first stop would be the morgue. Even if her daughter hated her, the mother may have claimed the body. But they know me there, and Fred and Orrie too, and of course they know Archie.”
It was decided, by Wolfe naturally, that that risk should be taken only after other tries had failed, and that calling Lon Cohen should obviously come first, and I dialled and got him. It was a little complicated. He had rung me a couple of times to try to talk me into the eye-witness story, and now my calling to ask if he had dug up Faith Usher’s mother aroused all his professional instincts. Was Wolfe working on the case, and if so, on behalf of whom? Had someone made me a better offer for a story, and did I want the mother so I could put her in, and who had offered me how much? I had to spread the salve thick, and assure him that I wouldn’t dream of letting anyone but the Gazette get my by-line, and promise that if and when we had anything fit for publication he would get it, before he would answer my simple question.
I hung up and swivelled to report. “You can skip the morgue. A woman went there Wednesday afternoon to claim the body. Name, Marjorie Betz. B-E-T-Z. Address, Eight-twelve West Eighty-seventh Street, Manhattan. She had a letter signed by Elaine Usher, mother of Faith Usher, same address. By her instructions the body was delivered this morning to the Metropolitan Crematory on Thirty-ninth Street. A Gazette man has seen Marjorie Betz, but she clammed up and is staying clammed. She says Elaine Usher went somewhere Wednesday night and she doesn’t know where she is. The Gazette hasn’t been able to find her, and Lon thinks nobody else has. End of chapter.”
“Fine,” Saul said. “Nobody skips for nothing.”
“Find her,” Wolfe ordered. “Bring her. Use any inducement that seems likely to-”
The phone rang, and I swivelled and got it.
“Nero Wolfe’s office, Arch-”
“Goodwin?”
“Yes.”
“This is Laidlaw. I’ve got to see Wolfe. Quick.”
“He’s here. Come ahead.”
“I’m afraid to. I just left the District Attorney’s office and got a taxi, and I’m being followed. I was on my way to see Wolfe about what happened at the District Attorney’s office but now I can’t because they mustn’t know I’m running to Wolfe. What do I do?”
“Any one of a dozen things. Shaking a tail is a cinch, but of course you haven’t had any practice. Where are you?”
“In a booth in a drugstore on Seventh Avenue near Sixteenth Street.”
“Have you dismissed your taxi?”
“Yes. I thought that was better.”
“It was. How many men are in the taxi tailing you?”
“Two.”
“Then they mean it. Okay, so do we. First, have a Coke or something to give me time to get a car-say, six or seven minutes. Then take a taxi to Two-fourteen East Twenty-eighth Street. The Perlman Paper Company is there on the ground floor.” I spelled Perlman. “Got that?”
“Yes.”
“Go in and ask for Abe and say to him, ‘Archie wants some more candy.’ What are you going to say to him?”
“Archie wants some more candy.”
“Right. He’ll take you on through to Twenty-seventh Street, and when you emerge I’ll be there in front, either at the curb or double-parked, in a grey Heron sedan. Don’t hand Abe anything, he wouldn’t like it. This is part of our personalized service.”
“What if Abe isn’t there?”
“He will be, but if he isn’t don’t mention candy to anyone else. Find a booth and ring Mr Wolfe.”
I hung up, scribbled “Laidlaw” on my pad, tore the sheet off, and got up and handed it to Wolfe. “He wants to see you quick,” I said, “and needs transportation. I’ll be back with him in half an hour or less.”
He nodded, crumpled the sheet, and dropped it in his wastebasket; and I wished the trio luck on their mother hunt and went.
At the garage, at the corner of Tenth Avenue, I used the three minutes while Hank was bringing the car down to go to the phone in the office and ring the Perlman Paper Company, and got Abe. He said he had been wondering when I would want more candy and would be glad to fill the order.
The detailing operation went fine, without a hitch. Going crosstown on Thirty-fourth Street, it was a temptation to swing down Park or Lexington to Twenty-eighth, so as to pass Number 214 and see if I recognized the two in the taxi, but since they might also recognize me I vetoed it and gave them plenty of room by continuing to Second Avenue before turning downtown, then west on Twenty-seventh. It was at the rear entrance on Twenty-seventh that the Perlman Paper Company did its loading and unloading, but no truck was there when I arrived, and I rolled to the curb at 2:49, just nineteen minutes since Laidlaw had phoned, and at 2:52 here he came trotting across the sidewalk. I opened the door and he piled in.
He looked upset. “Relax,” I told him as I fed gas. “A tail is a trifle. They won’t go in to ask about you for at least half an hour, if at all, and Abe will say he took you to the rear to show you some stock, and you left that way.”
“It’s not the tail. I want to see Wolfe.” His tone indicated that his plan was to get him down and tramp on him, so I left him to his mood. Crossing town, I considered whether there was enough of a chance that the brownstone was under surveillance to warrant taking him in the back way, through the passage between buildings on Thirty-fourth Street, decided no, and went up Eighth Avenue to Thirty-fifth. As usual, there was no space open in front of the brownstone, so I went on to the garage and left the car, and walked back with him. When we entered the office I was at his heels. He didn’t have the build to get Wolfe’s bulk down and trample on it without help, but after all, he was the only one of the bunch, as it stood then, who had had dealings with Faith Usher that might have produced a motive for murder, and if a man has once murdered you never know what he’ll do next.
He didn’t move a finger. In fact, he didn’t even move his tongue. He stood at the corner of Wolfe’s desk looking down at him, and after five seconds I realized that he was too mad, or too scared, or both, to speak, and I took his elbow and eased him to the red leather chair and into it.
“Well, sir?” Wolfe asked.
The client pushed his hair back, though he must have known by then that it was a waste of energy. “I may be wrong,” he croaked. “I hope to God I am. Did you send a note to the District Attorney telling him that I am the father of Faith Usher’s child?”
“No.” Wolfe’s lips tightened. “I did not.”
Laidlaw’s head jerked to me. “Did you?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Have you told anybody? Either of you?”
“Plainly,” Wolfe said, “you are distressed and so must be indulged. But nothing has happened to release either Mr Goodwin or me from our pledge of confidence. If and when it does you will first be notified. I suggest that you retire and cool off a little.�
�
“Cool off, hell.” The client rubbed the chair arms with his palms, eyeing Wolfe. “Then it wasn’t you. All right. When I left here this morning I went to my office, and my secretary said the District Attorney’s office had been trying to reach me, and I phoned and was told they wanted to see me immediately, and I went. I was taken in to Bowen, the District Attorney himself, and he asked if I wished to change my statement that I had never met Faith Usher before Tuesday evening, and I said no. Then he showed me a note that he said had come in the mail. It was typewritten. There wasn’t any signature. It said, ‘Have you found out yet that Edwin Laidlaw is the father of Faith Usher’s baby? Ask him about his trip to Canada in August nineteen fifty-six.’ Bowen didn’t let me take it. He held on to it. I sat and stared at it.”
Wolfe grunted. “It was worth a stare, even if it had been false. Did you collapse?”
“No! By God, I didn’t! I don’t think I decided what to do while I sat there staring at it; I think my subconscious mind had already decided what to do. Sitting there staring at it, I was too stunned to decide anything, so I must have already decided that the only thing to do was refuse to answer any questions about anything at all, and that’s what I did. I said just one thing: that whoever sent that note had libelled me and I had a right to find out who it was, and to do that I would have to have the note, but of course they wouldn’t give it to me. They wouldn’t even give me a copy. They kept at me for two hours, and when I left I was followed.”
“You admitted nothing?”
“No.”
“Not even that you had taken a trip to Canada in August of nineteen fifty-six?”
“No. I admitted nothing. I didn’t answer a single question.”
“Satisfactory,” Wolfe said. “Highly satisfactory. This is indeed welcome, Mr Laidlaw. We have-”
“Welcome!” the client squawked. “Welcome?”
“Certainly. We have at last goaded someone to action. I am gratified. If there was any small shadow of doubt that Miss Usher was murdered, this removes it. They have all claimed to have had no knowledge of Miss Usher prior to that party; one of them lied, he has been driven to move. True, it is still possible that you yourself are the culprit, but I now think it extremely improbable. I prefer to take it that the murderer has felt compelled to create a diversion, and that is most gratifying. Now he is doomed.”