Death on Deadline (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 2)

by Robert Goldsborough

  “All right,” he said. “That ad you bought in today’s Times—I could sue you.”

  “That would be futile. There’s not an actionable word in the text, and you know it.”

  “I’m not so sure.” MacLaren’s smile was disarming. “Anyway, that’s not why I’ve come. I demand to know what you’re up to.”

  “I should be asking that question,” Wolfe purred.

  “I think it’s pretty obvious. You read the papers and watch TV. And you talked about it in your ad. I want the New York Gazette. No secret there.”

  “How close are you to getting it?”

  “I’m not prepared to discuss that right now.” MacLaren grinned coolly at Wolfe. “The record shows that I usually get what I want, though. Don’t bet against me.”

  “Indeed I won’t,” Wolfe said. “Assuming your success—which I’m not yet prepared to do—how do you plan to change the paper?”

  “I don’t have to answer that, but I will; the Gazette will remain the same as it is now.”

  “Flummery!” Wolfe spat.

  I expected a violent reaction from MacLaren, but got another smile instead. “Actually, I can see one change,” he said, massaging his chin. “It just occurred to me. How would you like to be a Gazette columnist—three times a week?”

  “More flummery,” Wolfe grunted.

  “Not at all,” MacLaren said. “You could write on anything you felt like. You’d be syndicated nationally, of course. And here in New York, we’d promote you like crazy,” he went on, sweeping his arm in an arc. “TV commercials, radio spots, billboards saying ‘Nero Wolfe—only in the Gazette!’ Millions would read you daily. And—”

  “Enough!” Wolfe showed him a palm. “You wouldn’t want me on your payroll for long, sir. My first column would be devoted to castigating you and the caliber of your newspapers.”

  “So much the better!” MacLaren countered heartily. This was beginning to get interesting. “Great publicity for me. For you. For the Gazette. Name your salary.”

  Wolfe sat rigid in his chair. “Sir, enough of this bavardage. We’re wasting each other’s time.”

  “Why don’t you like my papers?” MacLaren demanded, leaning forward in the chair with his hands on the arms.

  “Come now, sir. You know the answer. They’re execrable examples of journalism.”

  “Readers in eight countries don’t agree,” MacLaren said, still smiling but sticking out his long chin. “Together, the MacLaren Organisation papers sell more than seven million copies a day. There’s not another newspaper group in the world that can claim a circulation total even close to that, and many of them have far more papers than we do. I know what the public wants, and our circulation proves it.”

  “What it proves is that the public, or at least part of it, likes pictures of nubile women in states of undress and page-three stories about the peccadilloes of movie and television performers,” Wolfe remarked dryly.

  MacLaren ignored the comments and charged on. “As for your statement in the Times about our not winning Pulitzers, you should be aware that those things are handed out to the same papers every year. It doesn’t matter what their entries are.”

  “Could it be that those papers consistently do the best work?” Wolfe queried softly.

  “Ah,” MacLaren sighed, doing another arc-sweep with his hand. “The fact is, I’m not part of the old-boy network of editors and publishers who give these awards to each other. We haven’t won any Pulitzers because of that and for an even more basic reason: we never send any entries in. I have no respect whatever for these prizes, and I’ve said so publicly often enough.”

  Wolfe’s eyes narrowed. “Mr. MacLaren, you don’t yet have control of the Gazette or you wouldn’t be here. I doubt that you’re even close to acquiring the paper.”

  MacLaren did some squinting of his own, then broke into another grin. “You don’t know that, you can’t. You’re fishing. It’s a ploy, a very transparent one at that, to get me to tell you exactly how many shares are committed to me. No doubt she put you up to it.”

  “She?”

  “Really, Wolfe. Ingenuousness doesn’t become you. I know that Harriet Haverhill was here earlier today, never mind how. I’m damned if I’m going to become naked before mine enemies.”

  “Henry the Eighth,” Wolfe said.

  “You’re up on your Shakespeare,” MacLaren said approvingly. “End of Act Three. Poor stupid Cardinal Wolsey to his servant Cromwell. I’m not about to make Wolsey’s mistake. I bid you good night, sir,” he said as he got up to go. “And I do wish you’d reconsider being our columnist. It would be a brilliant coup—for both of us.” Wolfe looked grumpily at MacLaren but said nothing as we walked out of the office. I followed him to the hall and held the door as he strode out and down the steps to the Lincoln, where George presumably was still licking his wounds.

  “The legend grows,” I said when I returned to the office. “First, Sixty Minutes calls, and now a nationally syndicated newspaper column. All you need is a guest spot with Johnny Carson, and there’ll be no other mountains to climb. Move over, Iacocca.”

  “Do something about your face!” he snarled. “You look like an alley brawler.”

  I’d forgotten my cheek, and I turned to go upstairs to clean it up.

  “Archie!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You fought outside earlier.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well?”

  “I guess I was just a little quicker,” I said, trying to sound modest but not too modest. “It comes from eating right, sleeping well, and thinking pure thoughts.”

  He tried to scowl, but gave himself away when the folds in his cheeks deepened. I thought he was going to say “satisfactory,” but he checked himself and reached for his book.

  “Good night,” I said, and went upstairs. When I saw myself in the mirror, I realized I was no bargain to look at. I cleaned the cut, slapped a bandage on it, and fell into bed. I don’t remember hitting the pillow.

  Eight

  FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS, I was jumpy, although weeks later, when I told Wolfe about my uneasiness, he shrugged. “It’s only in retrospect that you think you sensed tragedy,” he said. “You are much too impulsive and spontaneous to possess anything that could be termed prescience. Intuition is the partner of introspection, and you certainly are not blessed with the latter.”

  I considered arguing with him, but I would then and there have had to look up a couple of the words he used, which would have shot my timing, so I let it drop.

  Whether he believes it or not, I did have bad vibes all of Thursday and Friday. I couldn’t blame it on anything going on in the brownstone. The operation was normal, unless you count the pitcher of orange juice that slipped out of Fritz’s hand and smashed on the kitchen floor. With Wolfe, it was the usual routine—baby-sitting the orchids, reading, and beer, sandwiched around his meals. A few more phone calls about the ad rolled in, but they weren’t worth mentioning.

  Our Thursday-night poker game did get canceled, however. Saul was working on a case over in New Jersey, and figured he’d be tied up well into the night. I went out anyway; my cheek looked almost normal, and Lily let me drag her to the Mets game at Shea, where they got pounded by the Cubs. The best part was that the game was over early enough for us to do some dancing at the Churchill. Friday, I spent most of the morning typing Wolfe’s correspondence, including the monthly check he sends to a cousin in Montenegro, and balancing the books, and the most exciting thing about the afternoon was getting a haircut while listening to Charley the barber filibuster on why private cars should be barred from Manhattan.

  Friday night, Lily and I went to dinner at Rusterman’s, which was my payback for getting her to go to the game the night before. I didn’t mind a bit, though—we had veal marsala, and it was superb as usual, almost up to Fritz’s standards. I thought I was doing a good job of covering up my jitters, but I should have known better.

  “You’ve got some
thing on your mind, lover,” Lily said, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand as those dark blue eyes went right through me. “Want to tell kindly old Dr. Rowan about it?”

  “I would, but there’s really nothing to tell,” I said with a grin. “I’ve just got this feeling, this … premonition about the Gazette.” With that, I filled her in on the events of the last few days, including the Times ad, which she had seen.

  After I finished, she made a contribution, giving me a rundown on Carolyn Haverhill, whom she knew from several charities the two had worked on. “Really a take-charge type,” Lily said approvingly. “Whenever we’ve served on boards together, she’s ended up being chairman. Seems to thrive on the responsibility. I’ve wondered a few times whether Carolyn might end up running the Gazette someday—especially after meeting her husband.”

  “I think her mother-in-law wonders the same thing,” I said, “or at least wishes for it.”

  After dessert, Lily suggested more dancing at the Churchill, but I begged off. “I can’t believe it, Escamillo,” she said, using the nickname she’d tagged me with years ago after I’d outsmarted her from a slightly irate bull in a pasture. “Don’t you know it’s the woman who’s supposed to use the headache excuse? I can’t remember the last time you turned down a chance to go dancing—at least with me. Shocking.”

  I apologized and set things right by agreeing to a firm, no-excuses-allowed date for dancing the next Friday. I saw Lily as far as the lobby of her building while the cab waited, and I was back at the brownstone before eleven-thirty.

  Wolfe was parked in the office with a half-full glass of beer and the London Sunday Times crossword puzzle.

  “Any calls?” I asked, easing into my desk chair.

  “No.” He looked up and then turned back to his puzzle.

  “Sorry to interrupt you. I know how important your little diversions are.”

  He glared and started to say something, when he looked toward the doorway. I turned and saw Fritz standing there.

  “Pardon me,” he said, “but something has happened. You would want to know about it.”

  “Yes?” Wolfe said.

  “I was down in my room, listening to the news on the radio. One of those newspaper people who was here the other day is dead.”

  “My God, somebody got MacLaren,” I said.

  “No, Archie.” Fritz looked pale. “It was the lady, Mrs. Haverhill. She killed herself. With a gun.”

  “What?” Wolfe bellowed.

  “A suicide,” Fritz answered. “So they said on the news. In her office at the paper.”

  “Impossible.” Wolfe set his jaw and shook his head, totally dismissing the idea.

  “What do you mean?” I snapped. “I know you don’t always believe the media, but are you saying the station made this up?”

  “I mean it’s inconceivable that that woman killed herself. She was murdered—you know it and I know it.”

  “Please explain to me how I know it.”

  “Archie, I suggest you do a little reflecting, challenging as that may be.” He tossed the puzzle aside, levering himself to his feet, and headed for the door.

  “You mean that’s it? You’re going to bed? No further comment, nothing?”

  He stopped his one-seventh of a ton in the doorway. “What would you suggest? The woman is dead. Tomorrow is soon enough to discuss it. Good night.”

  “I’m sure glad you’re not letting this get to you,” I said to his back. “If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s hysterics. Thank heaven …” I let it trail off, because I’d lost my audience. The elevator door shut, and the motor groaned as it carried its passenger to the second floor.

  Nine

  THE NEXT MORNING, SATURDAY, MY alarm clock’s wail interrupted an interlude with a chestnut-haired nymph under a tree on a grassy hillside. She was about to murmur something in my ear when the siren went off, and I cursed as I punched it into silence. It wasn’t until I’d gotten my feet planted on the floor that I remembered Fritz’s bulletin the night before, and then I swore again.

  I was still exercising my vocabulary when I got down to the kitchen, where the hot griddle cakes, link sausages, English muffins, orange juice, and a pot of coffee were waiting. I nodded to Fritz and sat at my small table, where as usual he had the Times propped up on a rack. Harriet Haverhill’s suicide was on the front page, of course, although the article was fairly short—probably because her death was discovered too close to deadline time to permit more.

  I read through the piece three times, and committed the following basic information to memory: (1) Harriet Haverhill, age 72, was found dead in her office at the Gazette at seven-forty by a security guard making his customary rounds; (2) she had a single bullet wound in her right temple; (3) a .32-caliber automatic was clutched in her right hand; (4) no suicide note had been found; (5) she had spent most of the day in individual meetings with other principal owners of the Gazette and with newspaper magnate Ian MacLaren; (6) these meetings were presumably to discuss MacLaren’s desire to add the paper to his collection; and (7) “sources close to Mrs. Haverhill” said she had seemed in good spirits throughout the day.

  As I reread the article and finished my breakfast, I could feel Fritz’s eyes boring in on me. “Well?” I said, turning to face him.

  He blushed and looked apologetic. “Archie, he wants to see you up in his room, as soon as possible.”

  I started to ask why he hadn’t told me that when I came down, but checked myself. Among the many things Wolfe and Fritz agree on is that a meal should never be interrupted or delayed for business, and I appreciate that line of thinking, at least where it concerns my breakfast. I took a last swig of coffee, went up one flight, knocked, and was commanded to enter.

  Wolfe sat at the table by the window, barefoot and looking even larger than he usually does in the office, probably because the yellow dressing gown and the yellow silk pajamas under it seem to magnify his size, and that’s a lot to magnify. He finished a blueberry muffin and set to polishing off the shirred eggs. “You’ve seen the Times?” he said between bites, gesturing toward his own copy that lay folded on the corner of the table.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He made a face. “A skeletal report. Call Mr. Cohen. Get him to show you the office where she was murdered. I want a complete description. Also, I must see Mrs. Haverhill’s stepchildren, as well as the nephew and Mr. Bishop.”

  “Separately or together?”

  “I prefer them separately, and—”

  “And how am I supposed to lure them here?” I cut in. “Run another ad in the Times?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Actually, your sarcasm is not far off the mark. I was about to suggest that if any one of them balks, say I’m considering an advertisement that would promise a reward for information about Mrs. Haverhill’s murder.”

  “At this rate, you’ll become one of the Times’s top ten advertisers, right up there with Bloomingdale’s and Saks.”

  Wolfe took a sip of chocolate. “I’m not going to place such an advertisement, but the threat alone will be sufficient to get each one of them here.”

  “In that case, it should be a snap. When do you want them?”

  “You know my schedule as well as I do,” he said airily, reaching for the Times. “Let that alone govern you.”

  There had to be a good comeback to that, but I was damned if I could think of one, so I closed the door hard behind me, not quite a slam, and went down to the office. I got Lon on the second ring.

  “Archie, this place is an asylum. I can’t talk. What’s on your mind?” Behind him, the Gazette sounded like the Tower of Babel. When I told him I wanted to see Mrs. Haverhill’s office, he said the police were still climbing all over it but probably would clear out by noon. “How does this request of yours tie in with Wolfe’s ad?” he said in a voice that was now almost a shout.

  “Look, I’ll fill you in as much as I can when I get there,” I said, raising my own voice so he could hear
me above the journalistic din. “Give me a time.”

  He said twelve, and I said I’d be there at the stroke of the hour. I then set to figuring out how I was going to get the various younger Haverhills plus Carl Bishop to appear as ordered at Thirty-fifth Street. After fifteen minutes of seeking inspiration from the globe, the bookshelves, the sofa, the safe, and almost every other object in the room, I snapped my fingers. I had the answer. And it could be done, I bet myself, without a single telephone call.

  In the kitchen, Fritz was working on lunch—sweetbreads amandine in patty shells. “Save some for me for later,” I told him as I refilled my coffee cup from the pot on the stove. “I’m going to be out at mealtime, but I don’t want to be robbed of my fair share.”

  Fritz smiled as he always does when his cooking gets a compliment, but then a frown took over. “Archie, are you going out because of … Mrs. Haverhill?”

  “What you’re really asking is: ‘Are we working on a case?’ The answer is yes and no. Yes, Mr. Wolfe is interested in her death. No, we don’t have a client, and therefore, we don’t have any prospects of a fee.”

  Fritz’s gloom deepened. “The papers say she killed herself.”

  “Mr. Wolfe doesn’t believe that.”

  “What do you think, Archie?”

  “Look, I’m not paid to think, and according to Mr. Wolfe, if I were, I’d be getting my checks from the state unemployment office. I’m paid to run errands, chase down clues, and haul everyone from Jimmy the Greek to Queen Elizabeth back here so His Lordship can grill them in the ease and comfort of his own home.”

  That little speech made me feel good, although it didn’t do much for Fritz, who turned back to his work with a mopey mug. I carried my coffee to the office, where I cleaned up some paperwork, changed the typewriter ribbon, and otherwise tried finding innovative ways of keeping busy. By ten-thirty I decided I needed air. I wasn’t anxious to be around when Wolfe came down from the plant rooms; the next time I saw him, I wanted to report some kind of progress.