Over My Dead Body

by Over My Dead Body (lit)

  He went back to his chair and sat there a minute chewing his lip. “That’s just fine,” he said. “The case is as good as solved. I won’t have to go to any bother about it.”

  “Indeed,” Wolfe murmured.

  “Yes indeed. Three Federals have blown in up there. Anybody might suppose that a murder in Manhattan is the business of the homicide squad of which I happen to be the head, but who am I compared with a G-man? If we throw them out on their tail, the commissioner will say tut-tut, we’ve got to co-operate. It has two pleasant aspects. First, it means an entirely new angle we haven’t even suspected, and that’s a cheerful idea. Second, whoever solves it and however and whenever, the G-men will grab the credit. They always do.”

  “Now, Inspector,” I remonstrated. “A G-man is the representative of the American people, in fact it would hardly be going too far to say that a G-man is America—”

  “Shut up. I wish you’d get an F.B.I. job yourself and they’d send you to Alaska. I can pull you in, you know.”

  “If you can it’s news to me. Who made any law about an innocent man being overcome with repugnance at the sight of blood and taking a taxi home?”

  “Where did you see any blood?”

  “I didn’t. Figure of speech.”

  “Metonymy,” Wolfe muttered.

  “Kid me. I like it.” Cramer glared at Wolfe. “So you’ve got a client.”

  Wolfe made a face. “Tentatively I have. Archie accepted the commission. I say tentatively, because I have never met her. When I’ve seen her and talked with her I shall know whether she’s guilty or not.”

  “You admit she may be.”

  “Certainly she may be.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “May I made a suggestion, Mr Cramer? If you want consilience. It would be doubly unprofitable for you to question me, since you have stated that you will believe nothing I tell you, and since all those people are strangers to me and I am completely ignorant of what went on.”

  “You say.”

  “Yes, sir, I say. But it might help for me to question you. It would certainly help me, and in the long run it might even help you.”

  “Great idea. Wonderful idea.”

  “I think so.”

  Cramer put his mangled cigar in the tray, got out another one and stuck it in his mouth. “Shoot.”

  “Thank you. First, of course, achieved results. Have you arrested anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Have you found adequate motive?”

  “No.”

  “Are there any definite conclusions in your mind?”

  “No. Nor indefinite either.”

  “I see. No indictments from the mechanical routine—fingerprints, photographs, blabbing objects?”

  “No. There’s one object, and maybe two, that ought to be there and we can’t find it. Do you know anything about fencing?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Nothing whatever.”

  “Well, the thing he was killed with is called an épée. It’s triangular in section, with no cutting edge, and the point is so blunted that if you thrust at a man hard enough to go through him it would merely break the blade, which is quite flexible. In fencing, they fasten a little steel button on the end, and the button has three tiny points. The points are only to show on your opponent’s jacket when you’ve made a hit; the thick body of the button wouldn’t permit the épée to pierce through the pad they wear or the mask over their face.”

  I said, “He didn’t have any mask on.”

  “I know he didn’t, so he wasn’t actually fencing at the moment he was killed. Miltan says no one ever fences with the épée without a mask. The one Ludlow had been wearing was on a bench over by the wall. And the épée that was sticking through him had no button on it, just the blunted end, and it couldn’t possibly have pierced him like that. But there was that thing in the cabinet in the office which Mrs Miltan discovered was missing while your Mr Goodwin was present. Which she calls a culdymore. You talk French; you can say it better than I can.”

  “Col de mort.”

  “Right. Anyone could have taken it from the cabinet. The chances are a million to one it was used on the épée that killed Ludlow. At a distance of a few feet, and especially with the épée in motion, he would never have seen it was that and not the ordinary fencing button. But the culdymore was not on the épée. So it had been removed. So everyone was searched and twenty men went through that joint like molasses through cheese-cloth. They didn’t find it. One person and only one had left that building, namely Goodwin here. You don’t imagine he took it with him for a souvenir?”

  Wolfe smiled slightly. “I wouldn’t suppose so. Thrown out of a window perhaps?”

  “It could have been. They’re still looking, in the damn dark with flashlights. Also for the other objects which may be missing. Miss Tormic has an idea a glove is gone, one of the ladies’-size fencing gauntlets, from the cupboard in the locker room. Miss Lovchen and the dame that calls herself Zorka don’t think so. Mrs Miltan won’t commit herself. Nobody seems to know for sure exactly how many there were.”

  “What about the button that had to be removed from the épée before the col de mort could be used?”

  “They’re all over the place. Right in the fencing rooms in drawers.”

  “Would the handle of the épée show fingerprints if it had been grasped without a glove?”

  “No. Wrapped with cord or something for a grip.”

  “Well.” Wolfe looked sympathetic. “The only two objects that might have helped aren’t there. I’ll promise you one thing, Mr Cramer, if Archie did take them away I shall see that they are handed over to you as soon as we finish with them. But to go on, how many persons were in the building at the time the body was found?”

  “Counting everybody, twenty-six.”

  “How many have you eliminated?”

  “All but eight or nine.”

  “Namely?”

  “First and foremost, the one who was fencing with him. Your client.”

  “I wouldn’t expect that. If she is still my client after I see her I’ll eliminate her myself. The others?”

  “Mr and Mrs Miltan. They alibi each other, which would be a drug on the market at two for a nickel. The girl that came to see you, Carla Lovchen. That’s four. She had been fencing with Driscoll, but they had quit and had gone to the locker rooms, and she could have sneaked to the end room and done it. Driscoll. He’s unlikely but not eliminated. Zorka. She was in the big room on that floor with a young man named Ted Gill. He claims not to be a fencer and was in there with her learning how to start.”

  I said, “It was him that was with Belinda Reade yesterday when they saw our client in the hall as she was going to the locker room not to pinch Driscoll’s diamonds.”

  “Right. Then there’s the Reade girl and young Barrett. They were moving around and it’s hard to tell. Of course if it’s Donald Barrett you can have it. Also there’s a kind of a man named Rudolph Faber.”

  “The chinless wonder.”

  “Not original but good. It’s him, by the way, that’s responsible for the fact that there’s been no arrest. How many does that make?”

  “Ten.”

  “Then it’s ten. And no discovered motive in the whole damn bunch. I wouldn’t—”

  The phone rang. I performed and, after a moment, beckoned to Cramer.

  “For you. It’s the boss.”

  “Who?”

  “The police commissioner, by gum.”

  He got up, said in a resigned tone, “Oh, poop,” and came and took it.

  Chapter Six

  That telephone conversation was in two sections. During the first section, which was prolonged, Cramer was doing the talking, in a respectfully belligerent tone, reporting on the situation and the regrettable lack of progress to date. During the second, which was shorter, he was listening and apparently to something not especially cheerful, judging from the inflection of his grunts, and from the expression on his face when he finally cut the connex
ion and returned to his chair.

  He sat and scowled.

  Wolfe said, “You were lamenting the lack of motive.”

  “What?” He looked at Wolfe. “Yeah. I’d give my afternoon off to know what you know right now.”

  “It would cost you more than an afternoon, Mr Cramer. I read a lot of books.”

  “To hell with books. I am fully aware that you’ve got some kind of a line on this thing and I haven’t; I knew that as soon as I heard about Goodwin. If it ever did any good to look at your face, I’d look at it while I’m telling you that the commissioner just informed me that he had a phone call ten minutes ago from the British Consul-General. The consul stated that he was shocked and concerned to learn of the sudden and violent death of a British subject named Percy Ludlow and he hoped that no effort would be spared and so forth.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “I’m afraid my face wouldn’t help you any on that. My sole reaction is the thought that the British Consul-General must have remarkable channels of information. It’s half past ten at night. The murder occurred only four hours ago.”

  “Nothing remarkable about it. He heard it on a radio news bulletin.”

  “The source of the news was you or your staff?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Then you had discovered that Ludlow was a British subject?”

  “No. No one up there knew much about him. Men are out on that now.”

  “Then obviously it’s remarkable. The radio tells the consul merely that a man named Percy Ludlow had been killed at a dancing and fencing studio on 48th Street, and he knows at once that the victim was a British subject. Not only that, he doesn’t wait until morning, when the usual conventional communication could be sent to the police from his office, but immediately phones the commissioner himself. So either Mr Ludlow was himself important or he was concerned in important business. Maybe the consul could supply some details.”

  “Much obliged. The commissioner has a date with him at eleven o’clock. Meanwhile how about supplying a few yourself?”

  “I don’t know any. I heard Mr Ludlow’s name for the first time shortly before six o’clock this afternoon.”

  “You say. All right, to hell with you and your client both. I don’t kick on any ordinary murder, it’s my job and I try to handle it, but I hate these damn foreign mix-ups. Look at those two girls, they barely speak English, and if they want to monkey around playing with swords why can’t they stay where they belong and do it there? Look at Miltan, I suppose some kind of a Frenchman, and his wife. Look at Zorka. Then look at that Rudolph Faber guy, he reminds me of the cartoons of Prussian officers at the time of the World War. And now the Federals are up there horning in, and this Consul-General informs us that even the dead man wasn’t a plain honest-to-God American—”

  “From old Ireland,” I slipped in.

  “Shut up. You know what I mean. I don’t care if the background is wop or mick or kike or dago or yankee or square-head or dutch colonial, so long as it’s American. Give me an American murder with an American motive and an American weapon, and I’ll deal with it. But these damn alien trimmings, épées and culdymores and consuls calling up about their damn subjects—and moreover, why I was fool enough to expect anything here is beyond me. I should have had you tagged and hauled in and let you wait in a cold hall until sunrise.”

  He appeared to be preparing to leave his chair. Wolfe displayed a palm.

  “Please, Mr Cramer. Good heavens, the corpse is barely cooled off. Would you mind telling me how Mr Faber made himself responsible for the fact that there’s been no arrest? I think that was how you put it.”

  “I might and I might not. Do you know Faber?”

  “I’ve said all those people are strangers to me. I tell only useful lies, and only those not easily exposed.”

  “Okay. I would have arrested your client—I’m pretty sure I would—if it hadn’t been for Faber.”

  “Then I’m in debt to him.”

  “You sure are. Except for lack of motive, which might have been supplied and still may be, it looked like Miss Tormic. She admitted she was in there fencing with Ludlow. There was no evidence of anyone else having entered the room, though of course someone could have done so unobserved. Miss Tormic said that when she left the room Ludlow said he would stay and fool with the dummy a while. A dummy is a thing fastened to the wall with a mechanical arm that you can hook a sword on to. She said she went to the locker room and left her pad and glove and mask, and then—”

  “What about her épée?”

  “She said she left it in the fencing room. There’s a dozen or more in there on a rack. There was one with a button on it lying on the floor not far from Ludlow’s body, presumably the one he had been using. Ludlow had no mask on, but of course it could have been slipped off after he was killed. I see no reason why it should have been, unless to make it look as if he hadn’t been fencing at the moment it happened. Nor was there any reason for removing the culdymore as far as I can see except to play hide and seek with it. But about Faber. He was downstairs in a dancing room with Zorka until she went with Ted Gill to show him how to hold a sword. Then he went up and changed to fencing clothes, intending to get Carla Lovchen to fence with him as soon as she was through with Driscoll. He was hanging around the upper hall when Miss Tormic came out of the end room, and Ludlow was there too, opening the door for her to leave. Ludlow called to ask Faber if he cared to fence a little, and Faber said no. He says, Ludlow said all right, he’d practise his wrist on the dummy, and went back in the end room, closing the door, and Faber and Miss Tormic went to an alcove at the other end of the hall and sat and smoked a couple of cigarettes. They were still there when the porter entered the end room to clean up, thinking it was empty, and saw the body and came out squealing. They ran to see what it was, and other people appeared from all directions.”

  Wolfe, who had closed his eyes, opened them to slits. “I see,” he murmured. “You couldn’t very well have arrested her after that, even if you had known she was my client. From where they sat did they have a view of the hall?”

  “No, there’s a corner.”

  “How long were they sitting there before the rumpus?”

  “Fifteen to twenty minutes.”

  “Did anyone see them?”

  “Yes. Donald Barrett. He was looking for Miss Tormic to ask her to have dinner with him. He went to the door of the ladies’ locker room, and Miss Lovchen told him Miss Tormic wasn’t there. He found them in the alcove, and was still with them five minutes later when the yelling started.”

  “He hadn’t looked for her in the end room?”

  “No. Miss Lovchen told him she had stopped in the locker room and left her pad and glove and mask, so he presumed she wasn’t fencing.”

  After a little silence Wolfe heaved a sigh. “Well,” he said irritably but mildly, “I don’t see why the devil you resent my client. She seems to be wrapped in a mantle of innocence from head to foot.”

  “Sure, it’s simply beautiful.” Cramer abruptly got up. “But . . . there’s a couple of little things. So far as is known, she and no one else was in that room with him, and for the purpose of lunging at him with an épée. Then the alibi Faber gives her is one of those neat babies that could be 99 per cent true and still be a phoney. All you’ve to subtract would be the part about his seeing and speaking with Ludlow as Miss Tormic left the end room. I don’t claim to know any reason why Faber—”

  The interruption was the entrance of Fritz. Inside the door a pace he halted to get a nod from Wolfe, and then advanced to the desk and extended the card tray. Wolfe took the card, glanced at it, and elevated his brows.

  He told Fritz to stand by, and looked up at Cramer, who was standing, speculatively.

  “You know,” he said, “since you’re leaving anyway, I could easily finesse around you by having this caller shown into the front room until you’re gone. But I really do like to co-operate when I can. One of your ten inmates up there has got lo
ose. Unless they’ve let him go in order to follow him. which I believe is a usual tactic.”

  “Which one?”

  Wolfe glanced at the card again. “Mr Rudolph Faber.”

  “You don’t say.” Cramer stared at Wolfe’s face for seven seconds. “This is a hell of time of night for a complete stranger to be making an unexpected call.”

  “It certainly is. Show him in, please, Fritz.”

  Cramer turned to face the door.

  I chalked up one for the chinless wonder. He may have been shy on chin, but his nerve was okay. While there may have been no reason why the unlooked-for sight of Inspector Cramer’s visage should have paralysed him with terror, it must have been at least quite a surprise, but he did no shrinking or blanching. He merely halted in a manner that should have made his heels click but didn’t, lifted a brow, and then marched on.

  Cramer grunted something at him, grunted a good-night to Wolfe and me, and tramped out. I got up to greet the newcomer, leaving the front hall politeness to Fritz. Wolfe submitted to a handshake and motioned the caller to the chair that was still warm after Cramer. Faber thanked him and blinked at him, and then turned on me and demanded:

  “How did you get away up there? Bribe the cop?”

  I could have told, just looking at him, that that was the tone he would use asking a question. A tone that took it for granted any question he asked was going to be answered just because he asked it. I don’t like it and I know of no way anybody is ever going to make me like it.

  I said, “Write me special delivery and I’ll refer the matter to my secretary’s secretary.”

  His forehead wrinkled in displeasure. “Now, my man—”

  “Not on your life. Not your man. I belong to me. This is the United States of America. I’m Nero Wolfe’s employee, bodyguard, office manager, and wage slave, but I can quit any minute. I’m my own man. I don’t know in what part of the world the door is that your key fits, but—”