by Rex Stout
He wouldn’t have settled back if he had been the only city employee present, since he knew that almost certainly some fur was going to fly. Sergeant Purley Stebbins was there at his right on a chair against the wall. Purley never sits with his back to anyone, even his superior officer, if he can help it. James Neville Vance was on a chair facing Wolfe’s desk, between Cramer and me. Rita Fougere was on the couch at the left of my desk, and Saul and Fred and Orrie were grouped over by the big globe.
“There won’t be many questions,” Wolfe told Cramer. “Nothing remains to be satisfied but my curiosity on a point or two.” His head turned. “Mr. Vance, only you can satisfy it.” To me: “Archie?”
I regretted having to take my eyes away from Vance. Not that I thought he needed watching; it was just that I wanted to. You can learn things, or you think you can, from the face of a man who knows something is headed for him but doesn’t know exactly what and is trying to be ready to meet it. Up to that point Vance’s face hadn’t increased my knowledge of human nature. His lips were drawn in tight, and that made his oversized chin even more out of proportion. When Wolfe cued me I had to leave it. I got the seven ties from a drawer, put them in a row on Wolfe’s desk, and stood by.
“Those,” Wolfe told Vance, “are the seven ties that remained on the rack in your closet. I produce them-”
A growl from Cramer stopped him. It would have stopped anybody. It became words. “So you did. Stebbins, take Mr. Vance out to the car. I want to talk to Wolfe.”
“No,” Wolfe snapped. “I said there would be no illegal entry and there wasn’t. Mr. Goodwin, accompanied by Mr. Panzer, Mr. Durkin, and Mr. Cather, rang the bell at Mr. Vance’s apartment and were admitted by Mrs. Fougere. She was in the apartment with Mr. Vance’s knowledge and consent, having gone there earlier to talk with him. When an officer came to take him to you she remained, with no objection from him. Is that correct, Mrs. Fougere?”
“Yes.” It came out a whisper, and she repeated it. “Yes.” That time it was a croak.
“Is that correct, Mr. Vance?”
Vance’s drawn-in lips opened and then closed. “I don’t think…” he mumbled. He raised his voice. “I’m not going to answer that.”
“You might answer me,” Cramer said. “Is it correct?”
“I prefer not to answer.”
“Then I’ll proceed,” Wolfe said. “I produce these seven ties merely to establish them.” He opened a drawer and produced Exhibit A. “Here is an eighth tie. Pinned to it is a statement written and signed by Mr. Panzer, on your stationery. I’ll read it.” He did so. “Have you any comment?”
No comment. No response.
“Let me see that,” Cramer growled. Of course he would; that’s why I was standing by. I took it from Wolfe and handed it over. He read the statement, twisted around for a look at Saul, and twisted the other way to hand the exhibit to Stebbins.
“It’s just as well I haven’t many questions,” Wolfe told Vance, “since apparently the few I do have won’t be answered. I’ll try answering them myself, and if you care to correct me, do so. I invite interruptions.”
He cocked his head. “You realize, sir, that the facts are manifest. The problem is not what you did, or when or how, but why. As for when, you typed that envelope and message to Mr. Goodwin, using your own stationery and having found or made an opportunity to use Mr. Kirk’s typewriter, at least three weeks ago, since that machine wasn’t available after July nineteenth. Mr. Kirk’s disposing of it just then was of course coincidental. So your undertaking was not only premeditated, it was carefully planned. Also you retrieved the tie you had given Mr. Kirk before he moved from his apartment. Using the typewriter and retrieving the tie of course presented no difficulty, since you owned the house and had master keys. Any comment?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll continue. Only the whys are left, and I’ll leave the most important one, why you killed her, to the last. For some of them I can offer only conjecture-for instance, why you wished to implicate Mr. Kirk. It may have been a fatuous effort to divert attention from yourself, or, more likely, you merely wanted it known that Mrs. Kirk had not been the victim of some chance intruder, or you had an animus against Mr. Kirk. Any of those would serve. For other whys I can do better than conjecture. Why did you take a tie from your closet and hide it in your studio? That was part of the design to implicate Mr. Kirk, and it was rather shrewd. You calculated-”
“I didn’t,” Vance blurted. “Kirk did that, he must have. You say it was found in a piano score?”
Wolfe nodded. “That’s your rebuttal, naturally. You intended the necktie maneuver to appear as a clumsy stratagem by Mr. Kirk to implicate you. So of course a tie had to be missing from the rack in your closet. But if Mr. Kirk had taken it he wouldn’t have hidden it in your studio; he would have destroyed it. Why then didn’t you destroy it? You know; I don’t; but I can guess. You thought it possible that the situation might so develop that you could somehow use it, so why not keep it?”
Wolfe’s shoulders went up a quarter of an inch and down again. “Another why: why did you send the tie to Mr. Goodwin? Of course you had to send it to someone, an essential step in the scheme to involve Mr. Kirk, but why Mr. Goodwin? That’s the point I’m chiefly curious about, and I would sincerely appreciate an answer. Why did you send the tie to Mr. Goodwin?”
“I didn’t.”
“Very well, I can’t insist. It’s only that he is my confidential assistant, and I would like to know how you got the strange notion that he would best serve your purpose. He is inquisitive, impetuous, alert, skeptical, pertinacious, and resourceful-the worst choice you could possibly have made. One more why before the last and crucial one: why did you phone Mr. Goodwin to burn the tie? That was unnecessary, because his curiosity was sufficiently aroused without that added fillip; and it was witless, because whoever phoned must have known that he had not already phoned you or gone to see you, and only you could have known that. Do you wish to comment?”
“I didn’t phone him.”
I must say that Vance was showing more gumption than I had expected. By letting Wolfe talk he was finding out exactly how deep the hole was, and he was saying nothing.
Wolfe turned a hand over. “Now the primary why: why did you kill her? I learned yesterday that you probably had an adequate motive, but as I told Mr. Cramer, that was only hearsay. I had to have a demonstrable fact, an act or an object, and you supplied it. Not yesterday or today; you supplied it Tuesday afternoon when, after killing Mrs. Kirk, you stooped over her battered skull, or knelt or squatted, and cut off a lock of her hair, choosing one that had her blood on it. With a knife, or scissors? Did you stoop, or squat, or kneel?”
Vance’s lips moved, but no sound came. Unquestionably he was trying to say “I didn’t” but couldn’t make it.
Wolfe grunted. “I said a demonstrable fact. To demonstrate is to establish as true, and I’ll establish it. Mr. Goodwin found the lock of hair, caked with blood, some two hours ago, in a drawer in your bedroom. He called it a keepsake, but a keepsake is something given and kept for the sake of the giver, a token of friendship. Trophy would be a better term.” He opened a desk drawer.
I can move fast and so can Purley Stebbins, but we both misjudged James Neville Vance, at least I did. When he started up at sight of the glove Wolfe took from the drawer I started too, but I wasn’t expecting him to dart like lightning, and he did; and he got the glove, snatched it out of Wolfe’s hand. Of course he didn’t keep it long. I came from his left side and Purley from his right, and since he had the glove in his right hand it was Purley who got his wrist and twisted it, and the glove dropped to the floor.
Cramer picked it up. Purley had Vance by the right arm, and I had him by the left.
Wolfe stood up. “It’s in the glove,” he told Cramer. “Mr. Goodwin, will furnish any details you require, and Mrs. Fougere.” He headed for the door. The clock said 5:22. His schedule had hit a snag, but by gum it wasn’t
wrecked.
10
A LITTLE BEFORE FIVE o’clock one afternoon last week the doorbell rang, and through the one-way glass I saw Martin Kirk on the stoop, his overcoat collar turned up and his hat on tight. When I opened the door snow came whirling in. Obviously he was calling on me, not Wolfe, since he knew the schedule, and I was glad to see an ex-client who had paid his bill promptly, so I took his hat and coat and put them on the rack, and ushered him to the office and a chair. When we had exchanged a few remarks about the weather, and his health and mine, and Wolfe’s, and he had declined an offer of a drink, he said he saw that Vance’s lawyer was trying a new approach on an appeal, and I said yeah, when you’ve got money you can do a lot of dodging. With that disposed of, he said he often wondered where he would be now if he hadn’t come straight to Wolfe from the DA’s office that day in August.
“Look,” I said, “you’ve said that before. I have all the time there is and I enjoy your company, but you didn’t come all the way here through the worst storm this winter just to chew the fat. Something on your mind?”
He nodded. “I thought you might know-might have an idea.”
“I seldom do, but it’s possible.”
“It’s Rita. You know she’s in Reno?”
“Yes, I’ve had a card from her.”
“Well, I phoned her yesterday. There’s some good ski slopes not far from Reno, and I told her I might go out for a week or so and we could give them a try. She said no. A flat no.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know how to ski.”
“Sure she does. She’s good, very good.” He uncrossed his legs and crossed them again. “I came to see you because- Well, frankly, I thought that maybe you and she have a-an understanding. I used to think she liked me all right-nothing more than that, but I thought she liked me. I know she was a friend in need, I know what she did that day in Vance’s apartment, but ever since then she has shied off from me. And I know she thinks you’re quite a guy. Well… if you have got an understanding with her I want to congratulate you. Of course, her too.”
I cleared my throat. “Many thanks,” I said, “for the compliment. It’s nice to know that she thinks I’m quite a guy, but it’s nothing more than that. There’s not only no understanding, there’s no misunderstanding. It’s possible that she actually likes you. It’s possible that she would enjoy skiing with you, though in my opinion anyone who enjoys skiing is hard up for something to enjoy, but a woman in the process of getting a divorce is apt to be skittish. She either thinks she has been swindled or she feels like a used car. Do you want my advice?”
“Yes.”
“Go to Reno unannounced. Tell her you want her to go skiing with you because if you tumble and break a leg, as you probably will, she is the only one you can rely on to bring help. If after a week or so you want to tell her there are other reasons, and there are other reasons, she may possibly be willing to listen. She might even enjoy it. You have nothing to lose but a week or so unless you break your neck.”
His jaw was working exactly the way it had that day six months back, but otherwise his appearance was very different. “All right,” he said. “I’m glad I came. I’ll go tomorrow.”
“That’s the spirit. I don’t suppose you’d consider playing pinochle with her, or dancing or going for a walk, instead of skiing?”
“No. I’m not a good dancer.”
“Okay. We’ll drink to it.” I got up. “Scotch and water, I believe?”
“Yes please. No ice. I think you’re quite a guy too, Goodwin.”
“So do I.” I went to the kitchen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
REX STOUT, the creator of Nero Wolfe, was born in Noblesville, Indiana, in 1886, the sixth of nine children of John and Lucetta Todhunter Stout, both Quakers. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Wakarusa, Kansas. He was educated in a country school, but, by the age of nine, was recognized throughout the state as a prodigy in arithmetic. Mr. Stout briefly attended the University of Kansas, but left to enlist in the Navy, and spent the next two years as a warrant officer on board President Theodore Roosevelt’s yacht. When he left the Navy in 1908, Rex Stout began to write freelance articles, worked as a sightseeing guide and as an itinerant bookkeeper. Later he devised and implemented a school banking system which was installed in four hundred cities and towns throughout the country. In 1927 Mr. Stout retired from the world of finance and, with the proceeds of his banking scheme, left for Paris to write serious fiction. He wrote three novels that received favorable reviews before turning to detective fiction. His first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance, appeared in 1934. It was followed by many others, among them, Too Many Cooks, The Silent Speaker, If Death Ever Slept, The Doorbell Rang and Please Pass the Guilt, which established Nero Wolfe as a leading character on a par with Erle Stanley Gardner’s famous protagonist, Perry Mason. During World War II, Rex Stout waged a personal campaign against Nazism as chairman of the War Writers’ Board, master of ceremonies of the radio program “Speaking of Liberty” and as a member of several national committees. After the war, he turned his attention to mobilizing public opinion against the wartime use of thermonuclear devices, was an active leader in the Authors’ Guild and resumed writing his Nero Wolfe novels. All together, his Nero Wolfe novels have been translated into twenty-two languages and have sold more than forty-five million copies. Rex Stout died in 1975 at the age of eighty-eight. A month before his death, he published his forty-sixth Nero Wolfe novel, A Family Affair.
This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character herein and any person, living or dead, any such resemblance is purely coincidental.
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