Black Orchids

by Rex Stout

  “Nothing of the sort!” Larry blurted indignantly. “We don’t know that one of us sent those letters! Neither do you!”

  “Put it this way, Mr. Huddleston.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “I make statements. You suspect belief. In the end there will be a verdict, and you will concur or not. X sent those letters. Then he-I am forced thus to exclude women, at least temporarily, by the pronominal inadequacy of our language-then he became dissatisfied with the results, or something happened, no matter which. In any case, X decided on something more concrete and conclusive. Murder. The technique was unquestionably suggested by the recent death of Miss Horrocks by tetanus. A small amount of material procured at the stable, immersed in water, furnished the required emulsion. It was strained and mixed with argyrol, the mixture was put in a bottle with an iodine label, and the bottle was substituted for the iodine bottle in the cabinet in Miss Huddleston’s bathroom. But-”

  “Her bathroom?” Maryella was incredulous again.

  “Yes, Miss Timms. But X was not one to wait indefinitely for some accidental disjunction in Miss Huddleston’s skin. He carried the preparations further, by smashing her bottle of bath salts and inserting a sliver of glass among the bristles of her bath brush. Beautifully simple. It would be supposed that the sliver lodged there when the bottle broke. If she saw it and removed it, no harm done, try again. If she didn’t see it, she would cut herself, and there was the iodine bottle-”

  “Nuts!” Larry exploded. “You can’t possibly-”

  “No?” Wolfe snapped. “Archie, if you please?”

  I took it from my pocket and handed it to him, and he displayed it to them between his thumb and forefinger. “Here it is. The identical piece of glass.”

  They craned their necks. Brady stretched clear out of his chair, demanding, “How in the name of God-”

  “Sit down, Dr. Brady. How did I get it? We’ll come to that. Those were the preparations. But chance intervened, to make better ones. That very afternoon, on the terrace, a tray of glasses was upset and the pieces flew everywhere. X conceived a brilliant improvisation on the spot. Helping to collect the pieces, he deposited one in Miss Huddleston’s slipper, and, entering the house on an errand, as all of you did in connection with that minor catastrophe, he ran upstairs and removed the sliver of glass from the bath brush, and got the bogus bottle of iodine, took it downstairs, and placed it in the cupboard in the living room, removing the genuine one kept there. For an active person half a minute, at most a minute, did for that.”

  Wolfe sighed. “As you know, it worked. Miss Huddleston stuck her foot in the slipper and cut her toe, her brother brought the iodine, Dr. Brady applied it, and she got tetanus and died.” His eyes darted to Brady. “By the way, doctor, that suggests a question. Is it worthy of remark that you failed to notice the absence of the characteristic odor of iodine? I merely ask.”

  Brady was looking grim. “As far as I am concerned,” he said acidly, “it remains to be proven that the bottle did not contain iodine, and therefore-”

  “Nonsense. I told you on the phone. The piece of turf where the chimpanzee poured some of the contents has been analyzed. Argyrol, no iodine, and a surfeit of tetanus germs. The police have it. I tell you, I tell all of you, that however disagreeable you may find this inquiry as I pursue it, it would be vastly more disagreeable if the police were doing it. Your alternative-”

  The doorbell called me away, since Fritz had been told to leave it to me. I dashed out, not wanting to miss anything crucial, and naturally took the precaution, under the circumstances, of pulling the curtain aside for a peek through the glass. It was well that I did. I never saw the stoop more officially populated. Inspector Cramer, Lieutenant Rowcliff, and Sergeant Stebbins! I slipped the chain bolt in place, which would let the door come only five inches, turned the lock and the knob and pulled, and spoke through the crack:

  “They don’t live here any more.”

  “Listen, you goddamn squirt,” Cramer said impolitely. “Open the door!”

  “Can’t. The hinge is broke.”

  “I say open up! We know they’re here!”

  “You do in a pig’s eye. The things you don’t know. If you’ve got one, show it. No? No warrant? And all the judges out to lunch-”

  “By God, if you think-”

  “I don’t. Mr. Wolfe thinks. All I have is brute force. Like this-”

  I banged the door to, made sure the lock had caught, went to the kitchen and stood on a chair and removed a screw, bolted the back door and told Fritz to leave it that way, and returned to the office. Wolfe stopped talking to look at me. I nodded, and told him as I crossed to my chair:

  “Three irate men. They’ll probably return with legalities.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Cramer, Rowcliff, Stebbins.”

  “Ha.” Wolfe looked gratified. “Disconnect the bell.”

  “Done.”

  “Bolt the back door.”

  “Done.”

  “Good.” He addressed them: “An inspector, a lieutenant, and a sergeant of police have this building under siege. Since they are investigating murder, and since all of the persons involved have been collected here by me and they know it, my bolted doors will irritate them almost beyond endurance. I shall let them enter when I am ready, not before. If any of you wish to leave now, Mr. Goodwin will let you out to the street. Do you?”

  Nobody moved or spoke, or breathed.

  Wolfe nodded. “During your absence, Archie, Dr. Brady stated that outdoors on that terrace, with a breeze going, it is not likely that the absence of the iodine odor would have been noticed by him, or by anyone. Is that correct, doctor?”

  “Yes,” Brady said curtly.

  “Very well. I agree with you.” Wolfe surveyed the ijroup. “So X’s improvisation was a success. Later, of:ourse, he replaced the genuine iodine in the cupboard and removed the bogus. From his standpoint, it was next to perfect. It might indeed have been perfect, invulnerable to any inquest, if the chimpanzee hadn’t poured some of that mixture on the grass. I don’t know why X didn’t attend to that; there was plenty of time, whole days and nights; possible he hadn’t seen the chimpanzee doing it, or maybe he didn’t realize the danger. And we know he was foolhardy. He should certainly have disposed of the bogus iodine and the piece of glass he had removed from Miss Huddleston’s bath brush when it was no longer needed, but he didn’t. He-”

  “How do you know he didn’t?” Larry demanded.

  “Because he kept them. He must have kept them, since he used them. Yesterday he put the bogus iodine in the cabinet in Miss Nichols’ bathroom, and the piece of glass in tier bath brush.”

  I was watching them all at once, or trying to, but he or she was too good for me. The one who wasn’t surprised and startled put on so good an imitation of it that I was no better off than I was before. Wolfe was taking them in too, his narrowed eyes the only moving part of him, his arms folded, his chin on his necktie.

  “And,” he rumbled, “it worked. This morning. Miss Nichols got in the tub, cut her arm, took the bottle from the cabinet, and applied the stuff-”

  “Good God!” Brady was out of his chair. “Then she must-”

  Wolfe pushed a palm at him. “Calm yourself, doctor. Antitoxin has been administered.”

  “By whom?”

  “By a qualified person. Please be seated. Thank you. Miss Nichols does not need your professional services, but I would like to use your professional knowledge. First-Archie, have you got that brush?”

  It was on my desk, still wrapped in the paper Hoskins had got for me. I removed the paper and offered the brush to Wolfe, but instead of taking it he asked me:

  “You use a bath brush, don’t you? Show us how you manipulate it. On your arm.”

  Accustomed as I was to loony orders from him, I merely obeyed. I started at the wrist and made vigorous sweeps to the shoulder and back.

  “That will do, thank you.-No doubt all of you, if you use bath brushes, wield
them in a similar manner. Not, that is, with a circular motion, or around the arm, but lengthwise, up and down. So the cut on Miss Nichols’s arm, as Mr. Goodwin described it to me, runs lengthwise, about halfway between the wrist and the elbow. Is that correct, Miss Nichols?”

  Janet nodded, cleared her throat, and said, “Yes,” in a small voice.

  “And it’s about an inch long. A little less?”

  “Yes.”

  Wolfe turned to Brady. “Now for you, sir. Your professional knowledge. To establish a premise invulnerable to assault. Why did Miss Nichols carve a gash nearly an inch long on her arm? Why didn’t she jerk the brush away the moment she felt her skin being ruptured?”

  “Why?” Brady was scowling at him. “For the obvious reason that she didn’t feel it.”

  “Didn’t feel it?”

  “Certainly not. I don’t know what premise you’re trying to establish, but with the bristles rubbing her skin there would be no feeling of the sharp glass cutting her. None whatever. She wouldn’t know she had been cut until she saw the blood.”

  “Indeed.” Wolfe looked disappointed. “You’re sure of hat? You’d testify to it?”

  “I would. Positively.”

  “And any other doctor would?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then we’ll have to take it that way. Those, then, are he facts. I have finished. Now it’s your turn to talk. All of ���ou. Of course this is highly unorthodox, all of you to-;ether like this, but it would take too long to do it properly,

  ingly.”

  He leaned back and joined his finger tips at the apex of is central magnificence. “Miss Timms, we’ll start with you. Talk, please.”

  Maryella said nothing. She seemed to be meeting his gaze, but she didn’t speak.

  “Well, Miss,Timms?”

  “I don’t know-” she tried to clear the huskiness from her voice-“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “Nonsense,” Wolf said sharply. “You know quite well. you are an intelligent woman. You’ve been living in that house two years. It is likely that ill feeling or fear, any motion whatever, was born in one of these people and extended to the enormity of homicide, and you were totally unaware of it? I don’t believe it. I want you to tell me the things that I would drag out of you if I kept you here all afternoon firing questions at you.”

  Maryella shook her head. “You couldn’t drag anything out of me that’s not in me.”

  “You won’t talk?”

  “I can’t talk.” Maryella did not look happy. “When I’ve got nothing to say.”

  Wolfe’s eyes left her. “Miss Nichols?”

  Janet shook her head.

  “I won’t repeat it. I’m saying to you what I said to Miss Timms.”

  “I know you are.” Janet swallowed and went on in a thin voice, “I can’t tell you anything, honestly I can’t.”

  “Not even who tried to kill you? You have no idea who tried to kill you this morning?”

  “No-I haven’t. That’s what frightened me so much. I don’t know who it was.”

  Wolfe grunted, and turned to Larry. “Mr. Huddleston?”

  “I don’t know a damn thing,” Larry said gruffly.

  “You don’t. Dr. Brady?”

  “It seems to me,” Brady said coolly, “that you stopped before you were through. You said you know who murdered Miss Huddleston. If-”

  “I prefer to do it this way, doctor. Have you anything to tell me?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing with any bearing on any aspect of this business?”

  “No.”

  Wolfe’s eyes went to Daniel “Mr. Huddleston, you have already talked, to me and to the police. Have you anything new to say?”

  “I don’t think I have,” Daniel said slowly. He looked more miserable than anyone else. “I agree with Dr. Brady that if you-”

  “I would expect you to,” Wolfe snapped. His glance swept the arc. “I warn all you, with of course one exception, that the police will worm it out of you and it will be a distressing experience. They will make no distinction between relevancies and irrelevancies. They will, for example, impute significance to the fact that Miss Timms has been trying to captivate Mr. Larry Huddleston with her charms-”

  “I have not!” Maryella cried indignantly. “Whatever-”

  “Yes, you have. At least you did on Tuesday, August 19th. Mr. Goodwin is a good reporter. Sitting on the arm of his chair. Ogling him-”

  “I wasn’t! I wasn’t trying to captivate him-”

  “Do you love him? Desire him? Fancy him?”

  “I certainly don’t!”

  “Then the police will be doubly suspicious. They will suspect that you were after him for his aunt’s money. And speaking of money, some of you must know that Miss Huddleston’s brother was getting money from her and dissatisfied with what he got. Yet you refuse to tell me-”

  “I wasn’t dissatisfied,” Daniel broke in. His face flushed and his voice rose. “You have no right to make insinuations-”

  “I’m not making insinuations.” Wolfe was crisp. “I am showing you the sort of thing the police will get their teeth into. They are quite capable of supposing you were blackmailing your sister-”

  “Blackmail!” Daniel squealed indignantly. “She gave it to me for research-”

  “Research!” his nephew blurted with a sneer. “Research! The Elixir of Life! Step right up, gents���”

  Daniel sprang to his feet, and for a second I thought his intention was to commit mayhem on Larry, but it seemed he merely was arising to make a speech.

  “That,” he said, his jaw quivering with anger, “is a downright lie! My motivation and my methods are both strictly scientific. Elixir of Life is a romantic and inadmissible conception. The proper scientific term is ‘catholicon.’ My sister agreed with me, and being a woman of imagination and insight, for years she generously financed-”

  “Catholicon!” Wolfe was staring at him incredulously. “And I said you were capable of using your brains!”

  “I assure you, sir-”

  “Don’t try. Sit down.” Wolfe was disgusted. “I don’t care if you wasted your sister’s money, but there are some things you people know that I do care about, and you are foolish not to tell me.” He wiggled a finger at Brady. “You, doctor, should be ashamed of yourself. You ought to know better. It is idiotic to withhold facts which are bound to be uncovered sooner or later. You said you had nothing to tell me with any bearing on any aspect of this business. What about the box of stable refuse you procured for the stated purpose of extracting tetanus germs from it?”

  Daniel made a noise and turned his head to fix Brady with a stare. Brady was taken aback, but not as much as might have been expected. He regarded Wolfe a moment and then said quietly, “I admit I should have told you that.”

  “Is that all you have to say about it? Why didn’t you tell the police when they first started to investigate?”

  “Because I thought there was nothing to investigate. I continued to think so until this morning, when you phoned me. It would have served no useful purpose-”

  “What did you do with that stuff?”

  “I took it to the office and did some experiments with two of my colleagues. We were settling an argument. Then we destroyed it. All of it.”

  “Did any of these people know about it?”

  “I don’t-” Brady frowned. “Yes, I remember-I discussed it. Telling them how dangerous any small cut might be-”

  “Not me,” Daniel said grimly. “If I had known you did that-”

  They glared at each other. Daniel muttered something and sat down.

  The phone rang, and I swiveled and got it. It was Doc Vollmer, and I nodded to Wolfe and he took it. When he hung up he told them:

  “The bottle from which Miss Nichols treated her wound this morning contained enough tetanus germs to destroy the population of a city, properly distributed.” He focused on Brady. “You may have some idea, doctor, how t
he police would regard that episode, especially if you had withheld it. It would give you no end of trouble. In a thing like this evasion or concealment should never be attempted without the guidance of an expert. By the way, how long had you known Miss Huddleston?”

  “I had known her casually for some time. Several years.”

  “How long intimately?”

  “I wouldn’t say I knew her intimately. A couple of months ago I formed the habit of going there rather often.”

  “What made you form the habit? Did you fall in love with her?”

  “With whom?”

  “Miss Huddleston.”

  “Certainly not.” Brady looked not only astonished but insulted. “She was old enough to be my mother.”

  “Then why did you suddenly start going there?”

  “Why-a man goes places, that’s all.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Not in an emotional vacuum. Was it greed or parsimony? Free horseback rides? I doubt it; your income is probably adequate. Mere convenience? No; it was out of your way, quite a bother. My guess, to employ the conventional euphemism, is love. Had you fallen in love with Miss Nichols?”

  “No.”

  “Then what? I assure you, doctor, I am doing this much more tactfully than the police would. What was it?”

  A funny look appeared on Brady’s face. Or a series of looks. First it was denial, then hesitation, then embarrassment, then do or die. All the time his eyes were straight at Wolfe. Suddenly he said, in a voice louder than he had been using, “I had fallen in love with Miss Timms. Violently.”

  “Oh!” Maryella exclaimed in amazement. “You certainly never-”

  “Don’t interrupt, please,” Wolfe said testily. “Had you notified Miss Timms of your condition?”

  “No, I hadn’t.” Brady stuck to his guns. “I was afraid to. She was so-I didn’t suppose-she’s a terrible flirt-”

  “That’s not true! You know mighty well-”

  “Please!” Wolfe was peremptory. His glance shot from right to left and back again. “So all but one of you knew of Dr. Brady’s procuring that box of material from the stable, and all withheld the information from me. You’re hopeless. Let’s try another one, more specific. The day Miss Huddleston came here, she told me that Miss Nichols had a grievance against her, and she suspected her of sending those anonymous letters. I ask all of you-including you, Miss Nichols-what was that grievance?”