by Rex Stout
Wolfe’s head was tilted back to squint up at her. “I decline your invitation, Miss Jackson,” he said, “but I wish you well. I have the impression that your opinion of our fellow beings and their qualities is somewhat similar to mine.” He got to his feet. He almost never stands for comers or goers, male or female. And he actually repeated it. “I wish you well, madam.”
“Big man,” she said. She turned. “You come, Archie. That Panzer’s a rat.”
Chapter 9
Forty-seven hours later, at nine o’clock Thursday evening, Wolfe put his coffee cup down and said, “Four days and nights of nothingness.” I put my cup down and said, “No argument.” Actually there could have been one. There had been plenty of nothingness in results, but not in efforts. Somewhere in the nine notebooks here on my table – I write these reports on my own machine up in my room, not in the office – are the names of four males and six females, supplied by Jaquette-Jackson when she came to look at the orchids Wednesday afternoon, who had been seen by Saul and Fred. For something to bite on, hopeless. Of course anything is possible. It was possible that one of the women had thought that Isabel had pinched her lipstick and had gone to get it and got mad and bopped her, or that one of the men hated Rudyard Kipling and couldn’t stand a woman who had him bound in leather, but you need something better than ten billion possibles to get your teeth into. Any little piece of straw will do, but you have to have something.
For instance, statistics. There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
I admit this is the second kind: out of every thousand murders committed by amateurs, eighty-three are a woman killing another woman because she has taken her husband, or part of him. Therefore, from the statistical point of view, on the list of names we had collected the only one with a worthy known motive was Mrs. Avery Ballou, and that automatically gave her top billing. The difficulty was the approach. If I went and asked her if she had known that her husband had for three years been reading Kipling’s poems to the woman who had been murdered last week, Ballou would never speak to us again, and we might need him for something. So after breakfast Wednesday morning I rang Lily Rowan and asked her if she had ever met Mrs. Avery Ballou, and she said no, and from the little she knew about her she didn’t particularly care to.
“Then I won’t insist,” I said. “But I need to find out if I want to meet her. This is strictly private. I don’t need a detailed resume, just a sketch, especially what her main interests are. For instance, if she collects autographs of famous private detectives, that would be perfect.”
“She can’t be that sappy.”
I said she might do worse and it was a rush order, and an hour later she called me back. She had more than I needed, and I’ll omit most of it. Mrs. Ballou had been Minerva Chadwick of the steel and railroad Chadwicks. She had married Ballou in 1936. Their son and two daughters were married. Her friends called her Minna. She never gave big parties but liked to have a few friends in for dinner. She was an Episcopalian but seldom went to church. She didn’t like Paris much and she hated Florida. She liked horses and had four Arabians, but her special interest was Irish wolfhounds, and she had either twelve or fourteen…
I have wasted my space and your time, since obviously it was Irish wolfhounds. About all I knew about them was that they are big, so I called a man I know who knows dogs and got a few facts, and then rang the listed number of the Ballou house on 67th Street. When a voice like a butler said, “Mrs. Ballou’s residence,” I told him my name was Archibald Goodwin and I would like to make an appointment with Mrs. Ballou to ask her advice about an Irish wolfhound. He said she was not then available and he would give her the message, and I gave him my phone number. Toward noon a call came, a businesslike female voice who said she was Miss Corcoran, Mrs. Ballou’s secretary, and what kind of advice did I want about an Irish wolfhound. I told her I was thinking of buying one, and I didn’t know which of the commercial kennels had the best ones, and a friend had told me that Mrs. Ballou knew more about it than anyone else in the country; and she said if I came at five o’clock Mrs. Ballou would see me. That was okay, since Jackson-Jaquette was due at two-thirty to look at orchids.
You probably have no strong desire to spend another couple of hours with either Julie Jaquette or Miss Jackson, and I have already reported on the ten names I got from her, so I’ll skip it and give you the pleasure of meeting Minna Ballou. The setting and supporting cast were fully up to expectations: the butler who let me in, with keen, careful eyes that sized me up in two seconds; the mat that protected the first six feet of the rug in the reception hall, bigger than the 14-by-26 Keraghan in Wolfe’s office; the uniformed maid who turned her nose up as she took my hat and coat; the wide marble stairs; the elevator with red lacquered panels; the middle-aged gray-haired gray-eyed Miss Corcoran, who was there when I stepped out on the fourth floor; the room she took me to, with a desk and typewriter and cabinets to the left, and a couch and soft chairs and a coffee table to the right. Pictures of dogs and horses were spotted around, but my glance caught no picture of Avery Ballou. His wife was stretched out on the couch, on her back, with what I would call a faded red bathrobe reaching down nearly to her ankles. As we entered she turned her head and said, “I hoped you wouldn’t come. I’m tired.” She pointed to a chair near the foot of the couch. “Sit there.”
I obeyed the order and was facing her. She had thin lips and a thin nose, and a twist of her dyed brown hair straggled down her forehead. She was barefooted and her toes bulged. I smiled at her cordially.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she demanded.
“If you’re not too tired,” I said, “I suppose Miss Corcoran told you what I said on the phone. Actually it’s a friend of mine who wants to get an Irish wolfhound. She has a place up in Westchester. I live in town, and I guess a city apartment is no place for an Irish wolfhound.”
“It certainly isn’t.”
“Somebody told her she should get one from Ireland.”
“Who told her that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Whoever it was, he’s a fool. Commercial breeders in Ireland have very inferior stock. The best wolfhound breeder in the world is Florence Nagle in England, but she’s not commercial, and she’s very particular whom she sells to. All good breeders are. Of course I’m not commercial either, I sell only as a very special favor. I love wolfhounds and they love me. When I’m there, eight of them sleep in my bedroom.”
I smiled nicely. “Does your husband like that?”
“I doubt if he even knows it. He wouldn’t know a wolfhound from an ostrich. What’s your friend’s name?”
“Lily Rowan. Her place is near Katonah.”
“Why does she want a wolfhound?”
“Well, partly for protection. There are no close neighbors.”
“That reason’s not good enough. You have to love them. You have to like it when a tail knocks over a vase or a lamp. Does she know that a good male weighs up to a hundred and thirty pounds, and when he rears up he’s six feet six? Does she know that when he leaps at you because he loves you, you go down? Does she know that he has to run three miles a day and you have to tailgate him behind a station wagon? Tell her to get just a dog, a Great Dane or a Doberman.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s very smart, Mrs. Ballou.”
“I do. Why not?”
“Because you ought to realize that Miss Rowan is all set to love an Irish wolfhound. Look at the trouble she’s taking. She finds out about kennels, but that doesn’t satisfy her, and she hears that the person who knows most about it is you, and she gets me to try to see you, because she thinks a man would stand a better chance with you than another woman. I told her she could do it herself by seeing your husband, but she didn’t know if he was interested in wolfhounds. Apparently he isn’t.”
She closed her eyes and opened them again. “My husband is interested in absolutely nothing but finance and what he calls th
e structure of economics. What’s the name of that Englishwoman who writes books about it?”
“Barbara Ward.”
She nodded. “She might interest him, but no other woman would. What’s your friend’s name?”
“Lily Rowan.”
“Yes. I’m tired. You seem to have some sense. Do you think a wolfhound would be happy with her?”
“I do, or I wouldn’t be here.”
“Does she want a male or a bitch?”
“I was told to ask you. Which would you advise?”
“It depends. I would have to know… she lives in the country?”
“Not in the winter. She has an apartment in town.” I didn’t add that her penthouse was about four hundred yards from where I was sitting.
“I would have to see her.” She turned her head. “Celia, have you got that name? Lucy Rowan?”
Miss Corcoran, at the desk, said yes, she had it, and Mrs. Ballou returned to me. “Tell her to call Miss Corcoran. That’s what she should have done instead of bothering you. I didn’t get your name… it doesn’t matter.” She shut her eyes.
I arose and stood, thinking it would be better manners to thank her with her eyes open, but they didn’t open, so I said thank you, and she said with her eyes shut, “I thought you had gone.” If I had been an Irish wolfhound I would have wagged my tail as I left the room and knocked something over. Miss Corcoran, who accompanied me to the elevator to see that I entered it, told me that between ten and eleven in the morning would be the best time for Miss Rowan to phone.
I hadn’t had a decent walk since Saturday, it wasn’t five-thirty yet, and I might as well save taxi fare. But first there was a phone call to make, so I went to Madison Avenue, found a booth, got Lily Rowan, explained the situation, and said that she had better ring Miss Corcoran in the morning and tell her she had decided to get a dachshund instead. What she said was irrelevant and personal. Outside again, I turned my collar up and put gloves on. Winter was going all out.
If you have the impression that the help was doing all the work, Saul and Fred after the ten names I had got from Julie Jaquette and me cornering a jealous wife, no indeed. When I entered the office at a quarter past six there was Wolfe at his desk with a book, and I saw at a glance that it wasn’t Invitation to an Inquest. It was The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, so I tiptoed across to my desk, not to disturb him. When he finished a paragraph and looked up I asked, “Wouldn’t you get the feel better if you read aloud? Pretend I’m her.”
He ignored it and demanded, “Have you done any better?”
“No, sir. Unless we want an Irish wolfhound for stalking. Mrs. Ballou is scratched. Even if someone had told her all about it, full details, she couldn’t have gone there and settled Isabel Kerr because (a) she would have been too tired, and (b) she would have forgotten the name and address. Of course Miss Jackson has broadened your understanding of women, and you may not agree.”
I reported. It was so brief that he hadn’t much more than got comfortably arranged, leaning back with his eyes closed, when I reached the end, the phone call to Lily Rowan.
“There is one difference between you and her,” I said. “You shut your eyes to concentrate on what I’m saying, and she shuts hers to hope I’m not there. She didn’t even notice that I dragged her husband in by the heels, twice. I swear I could have told her all about Isabel Kerr and the pink bedroom, and when he came home from work she wouldn’t have bothered to mention it to him.”
He grunted and opened his eyes. “How could eight dogs that size possibly spend the night in her bedroom?” he demanded.
I nodded. “That worried me too. If you figure an average of two square yards to a dog, and maybe more if -”
The doorbell rang, and I went. It was a man in a heavy brown tweed overcoat and a smooth dark blue narrow-rimmed hat, which was ridiculous, and I guessed it was one of the bozos Saul or Fred had flushed. But when I opened the door he said, “I am Dr. Gamm. Theodore Gamm, M.D. Are you the man who called on Mr. and Mrs. Fleming Monday afternoon?” I told him yes, and he said, “I insist on seeing Nero Wolfe,” and would have walked right through me if I hadn’t sidestepped.
Of course that isn’t the way to do it. You merely say something first and then you insist. He wasn’t even built for it, after he peeled his coat off. He was round all over, round-shouldered and round-hipped and round-faced, and the bald top of his head was barely up to my chin. I put him in the front room, took the long route to the office, by the hall, and told Wolfe that Dr. Theodore Gamm insisted on asking him why he had sent me to see Mr. and Mrs. Fleming. He looked at the clock and growled, “Dinner in half an hour.” I said that Mrs. Ballou had taken me only ten minutes, went and opened the connecting door, and brought him in. As I motioned him to the red leather chair Wolfe said something about twenty minutes. That chair is deep, and when he found that his feet weren’t on the floor he slid forward, pinned his eyes on Wolfe, and said, “You’re grossly overweight.”
Wolfe nodded. “Seventy pounds. Perhaps eighty. Death will see to that. Does it concern you?”
“Yes, it does.” He curled his pudgy hands over the ends of the chair arms. “Any conflict with natural health is an impertinence, and I resent it.” His voice was bigger than he was. “It is my concern for health that brought me here – the health of one of my patients, Mrs. Barry Fleming. You sent a man – that man” – his eyes darted to me and back to Wolfe – “to torment her. She was already in a state of strain, and now she threatens to collapse. Can you justify it?”
“Easily.” Wolfe’s brows were up. “Both the intention and the deed, but it’s the deed you challenge. Mrs. Fleming’s state of strain was partly from the shock of her sister’s death, but mostly from the fear that her way of life would be exposed. Mr. Goodwin rendered her a service by making it clear that the exposure is inevitable unless certain steps are taken. That should propel her not to collapse, but to action, if she is -”
“What kind of action?”
“The only kind that could be effective. Did she tell you all that Mr. Goodwin said?”
“Her husband did. That if the man they have arrested, Orrie Cather, is tried, everything about Isabel will come out. That Cather is innocent, and the only hope is to get enough evidence to make them release him. You call that a service, to tell her that?”
“If it’s valid, yes. It’s obvious. Do you question it?”
“Yes. I think it was a cheap trick. Why do you say Cather is innocent? Can you prove it?”
“No, but I intend to.”
“I don’t believe it. I think you’re merely trying to raise enough dust to make it hard to convict him. There is no reason why you should want to do Mrs. Fleming a service, but if you did want to you could. You could persuade Cather and his lawyer to make it unnecessary for certain facts to be brought out at his trial. I know you won’t, but you could.”
“You would like me to?”
“Certainly. For Mrs. Fleming that – it might save her life.”
“But you know I won’t?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you bother to come?”
“She asked me to. They both did. They think it was just a trick, your sending him with that hogwash, and so do I. Why do you say Cather is innocent?”
Wolfe squinted at him. “You should arrange your mind better, Doctor. As Mr. Goodwin explained to Mrs. Fleming, it will serve her interest if Mr. Cather is innocent, but you don’t like that. You contend. Is it possible that you are less concerned about your patient’s health than about your own? Did you kill Isabel Kerr?”
Gamm goggled. “Why, you -” He swallowed. “Damn your impertinence!”
“Naturally you damn it. But since I have assumed that Mr. Cather did not kill her, for reasons I prefer not to disclose, I need to know who did. As a man whose repeated advances to her were spurned, you are eligible. Persistent mortification can become insupportable. It’s a question of character and temperament, and I know nothing of yours; I wou
ld have to consult people who know you well – for instance, Mr. and Mrs. Fleming. But I can collect facts. Where were you last Saturday morning from eight o’clock to noon? If you can establish -”
He stopped because his audience was going. Dr. Gamm didn’t have the figure or the style for an impressive exit, it was more like a waddle, but it got him to the door and on through. I took my time rising and crossing to the hall, and got there just as he was opening the front door. When he was out and the door closed I went back in, raised my arms for a good stretch and an uncovered yawn, and said, “Another one down. He wouldn’t have walked out, he wouldn’t have dared, until he found out if you have anything and how much. Or tried to.”
Wolfe’s lips were tight. He loosened them to say, “He’s either a murderer or a jackass.”
“Then he’s a jackass. It seems to me -”
The phone rang and I went and got it. It was Saul, reporting on a couple of names. I told him we could match him and wished him better luck tomorrow.
He didn’t have it, and neither did we. Thursday was even emptier than Wednesday, though I tried hard because Wolfe had paid me a compliment. Partly he was merely desperate, but the fact remains that Wednesday evening he told me to go and give the neighborhood a play. It was the first time he had ever sent me on something that Saul had already covered, and I admit it would have been highly satisfactory to get a break – for example, a janitor across the street who had seen a stranger enter that building Saturday morning, a stranger who could have been Dr. Gamm or Stella Fleming or Barry Fleming or Julie Jaquette, or even Avery or Minna Ballou. Or even just a stranger, to try to find. What the hell, there are only twelve million people in the metropolitan area. Actually it was a farce without a laugh. Not only had Saul and Fred seen everyone, but also the cops had worked it hard, trying to find somebody who could put Orrie Cather there. During the long day I spoke with more than forty people, all ages and sizes and colors, and they had already been spoken to so often that they had their answers down pat. At six-thirty I called it a week and went home to dinner. The only thing that had happened there was that Parker had called to say that he had seen Orrie again, and had talked with an assistant district attorney, and he still thought it was inadvisable to start action to get him out on bail.