by Rex Stout
As for people who might have had a motive for killing him, she had supplied the names of four men with whom he had been on bad terms, and they had been looked into, but none of them seemed very promising. One of them had merely got sore because Molloy had refused to pay on a bet the terms of which had been disputed, and the others weren’t much better. It had to be a guy who had not only croaked Molloy but had also gone to a lot of trouble to see that someone else got hooked for it, specifically Peter Hays, and that called for a real character.
In the taxi on my way uptown, if someone had hopped in and offered me ten to one that we had grabbed the short end of the stick, I would have passed. I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
Number 171 East 52nd Street was an old walk-up which had had a thorough job of upgrading, inside and out, along with the houses on either side. They had all been painted an elegant gray, one with yellow trim, one with blue, and one with green. In the vestibule I pushed the button at the top of the row, marked MOLLOY, took the receiver from the hook and put it to my ear, and in a moment was asked who it was. I gave my name, and, when the latch clicked, pushed the door open, entered, and took the do-it-yourself elevator to the fifth floor. Emerging, I took a look around, noting where the stairs were. After all, this was the scene of the crime, and I was a detective. Hearing my name called, I turned. She was standing in the doorway.
She was only eight steps away, and by the time I reached her I had made a decision which sometimes, with one female or another, may take me hours or even days. I wanted no part of her. The reason I wanted no part was that just one look had made it plain that if I permitted myself to want a part it would be extremely difficult to keep from going on and wanting the whole; and that was highly inadvisable in the circumstances. For one thing, it wouldn’t have been fair to P.H., handicapped as he was. This would have to be strictly business, not only outwardly but inwardly. I admit I smiled at her as she moved aside to let me enter, but it was merely a professional smile.
The room she led me into, after I put my coat and hat on a chair in the foyer, was a large and attractive living room with three windows. It was the room that P.H. had entered to find a corpse-if you’re on our side. The rugs and furniture had been selected by her. Don’t ask me how I know that; I was there and saw them, and saw her with them. She went to a chair over near a window, and, invited, I moved one around to face her. She said that Mr. Freyer had told her on the phone that he was consulting with Nero Wolfe, and that Mr. Wolfe wanted to send his assistant, Mr. Goodwin, to have a talk with her, and that was all she knew. She did not add, “What do you want?”
“I don’t know exactly how to begin,” I told her, “because we have different opinions on a very important point. Mr. Freyer and Mr. Wolfe and I all think Peter Hays didn’t kill your husband, and you think he did.”
She jerked her chin up. “Why do you say that?”
“Because there’s no use beating around the bush. You think it because there’s nothing else for you to think, and anyhow you’re not really thinking. You’ve been hit so hard that you’re too numb to think. We’re not. Our minds are free and we’re trying to use them. But we’d like to be sure on one point: if we prove we’re right, if we get him cleared-I don’t say it looks very hopeful, but if we do-would you like that or wouldn’t you?”
“Oh!” she cried. Her jaw loosened. She said, “Oh,” again, but it was only a whisper.
“I’ll call that a yes,” I said. “Then just forget our difference of opinion, because opinions don’t count anyway. Mr. Freyer spent five hours with Nero Wolfe today, and Mr. Wolfe is going to try to find evidence that will clear Peter Hays. He has seen reports of your conversations with Freyer, but they didn’t help any. Since you were Molloy’s secretary for a year and his wife for three years, Mr. Wolfe thinks it likely-or, say, possible-that at some time you saw or heard something that would help. Remember he is assuming that someone else killed Molloy. He thinks it’s very improbable that a situation existed which resulted in Molloy’s murder, and that he never said or did anything in your presence that had a bearing on it.”
She shook her head, not at me but at fate. “If he did,” she said, “I didn’t know it.”
“Of course you didn’t. If you had you would have told Freyer. Mr. Wolfe wants to try to dig it up. He couldn’t ask you to come to his office so he could start the digging himself, because he has to spend two hours every afternoon playing with orchids, and at six o’clock he has a conference scheduled with four of his men who are going to be given other assignments-on this case. So he sent me to start in with you. I’ll tell you how it works by giving you an example. Once I saw him spend eight hours questioning a young woman about everything and nothing. She wasn’t suspected of anything; he was merely hoping to get some little fact that would give him a start. At the end of eight hours he got it: she had once seen a newspaper with a piece cut out of the front page. With that fact for a start, he got proof that a man had committed a murder. That’s how it works. We’ll start at the beginning, when you were Molloy’s secretary, and I’ll ask questions. We’ll keep at it as long as you can stand it.”
“It seems-” Her hand fluttered. I caught myself noticing how nice her hands were, and had to remind myself that that had all been decided. She said, “It seems so empty. I mean I’m empty.”
“You’re not really empty, you’re full. When and where did you first meet Molloy?”
“That was four years ago,” she said. “The way you-what you want to try-wouldn’t it be better to start later? If there was a situation, the way you say, it would have been more recent, wouldn’t it?”
“You never know, Mrs. Molloy.” It seemed stiff to be calling her Mrs. Molloy. She fully deserved to be called Selma. “Anyhow, I have my instructions from Mr. Wolfe-and by the way, I skipped something. I was to tell you how simple it could have been. Say I decided to kill Molloy and frame Peter Hays for it. The drugstore on the corner is perfectly placed for me. Having learned that you are out for the evening and Molloy is alone in the apartment, at nine o’clock I phone Peter Hays from the booth in the drugstore and tell him-Freyer has told you what Peter says I told him. Then I cross the street to his house, am admitted by Molloy, shoot him, leave the gun here on a chair, knowing it can’t be traced, go back down to the street, watch the entrance from a nearby spot until I see Hays arrive in a taxi and enter the building, return to the drugstore, and phone the police that a shot has just been fired on the top floor of One-seventy-one East Fifty-second Street. You couldn’t ask for anything simpler than that.”
She was squinting at me, concentrating. It gave the corners of her eyes a little upturn. “I see,” she said. “Then you’re not just-” She stopped.
“Just playing games? No. We really mean it. Settle back and relax a little. When and where did you first meet Molloy?”
She interlaced her fingers. No relaxing. “I wanted another job. I was modeling and didn’t like it, and I knew shorthand. An agency sent me to his office, and he hired me.”
“Had you ever heard of him before?”
“No.”
“What did he pay you?”
“I started at sixty, and in about two months he raised it to seventy.”
“When did he begin to show a personal interest in you?”
“Why-almost right away. The second week he asked me to have dinner with him. I didn’t accept, and I liked the way he took it. He knew how to be nice when he wanted to. He always was nice to me until after we were married.”
“Exactly what were your duties? I know what you told Freyer, but we’re going to fill in.”
“There weren’t many duties, really-I mean there wasn’t much work. I opened the office in the morning-usually he didn’t come in until around eleven o’clock. I wrote his letters, but that didn’t amount to much, and answered the phone, and did the filing, what there was of it. He opened the mail himself.”
“Did you keep his books?”
; “I don’t think he had any books. I never saw any.”
“Did you draw his checks?”
“I didn’t at first, but later he asked me to sometimes.”
“Where did he keep his checkbook?”
“In a drawer of his desk that he kept locked. There wasn’t any safe in the office.”
“Did you do any personal chores for him? Like getting prizefight tickets or buying neckties?”
“No. Or very seldom. He did things like that himself.”
“Had he ever been married before?”
“No. He said he hadn’t.”
“Did you go to prizefights with him?”
“Sometimes I did, not often. I didn’t like them. And later, the last two years, we didn’t go places together much.”
“Let’s stick to the first year, while you were working for him. Were there many callers at the office?”
“Not many, no. Many days there weren’t any.”
“How many in an average week, would you say?”
“Perhaps-” She thought. “I don’t know, perhaps eight or nine. Maybe a dozen.”
“Take the first week you were there. You were new then and noticing things. How many callers were there the first week, and who were they?”
She opened her eyes at me. Wide open, they were quite different from when they were squinting. I merely noted that fact professionally. “But Mr. Goodwin,” she said, “that’s impossible. It was four years ago!”
I nodded. “That’s just a warm-up. Before we’re through you’ll be remembering lots of things you would have thought impossible, and most of them will be irrelevant and immaterial. I hope not all of them. Try it. Callers the first week.”
We kept at it for nearly two hours, and she did her best. She enjoyed none of it, and some of it was really painful, when we were on the latter part of the year, the period when she was cottoning to Molloy, or thought she was, and was making up her mind to marry him. She would have preferred to let the incidents of that period stay where they were, down in the cellar. I won’t say it hurt me as much as it did her, since with me it was strictly business, but it was no picnic. Finally she said she didn’t think she could go on, and I said we had barely started.
“Then tomorrow?” she asked. “I don’t know why, but this seems to be tougher than it was with the police and the District Attorney. That seems strange, since they were enemies and you’re a friend-you are a friend, aren’t you?”
It was a trap, and I dodged it. “I want what you want,” I told her.
“I know you do, but I just can’t go on. Tomorrow?”
“Sure. Tomorrow morning. But I’ll have some other errands, so it will have to be with Mr. Wolfe. Could you be at his office at eleven o’clock?”
“I suppose I could, but I’d rather go on with you.”
“He’s not so bad. If he growls just ignore it. He’ll dig up something quicker than I would, in order to get rid of you. He doesn’t appreciate women, and I do.” I got out a card and handed it to her. “There’s the address. Tomorrow at eleven?”
She said yes, and got up to see me to the door, but I told her that with a friend it wasn’t necessary.
Chapter 7
WHEN I GOT BACK to 35th Street it was half-past six and the conference was in full swing.
I was pleased to see that Saul Panzer was in the red leather chair. Unquestionably Johnny Keems had made a go for it, and Wolfe himself must have shooed him off. Johnny, who at one time, under delusions of grandeur, had decided my job would look better on him or he would look better on it, no matter which, but had found it necessary to abandon the idea, was a pretty good operative but had to be handled. Fred Durkin, big and burly and bald, knows exactly what he can expect of his brains and what he can’t, which is more than you can say for a lot of people with a bigger supply. Orrie Cather is smart, both in action and in appearance. As for Saul Panzer, I thoroughly approve of his preference for free-lancing, since if he decided he wanted my job he would get it-or anybody else’s.
Saul, as I say, was in the red leather chair, and the others had three of the yellow ones in a row facing Wolfe’s desk. I got greetings and returned them, and circled around to my place. Wolfe remarked that he hadn’t expected me so early.
“I tired her out,” I told him. “Her heart was willing but her mind was weak. She’ll be here at eleven in the morning. Do you want it now?”
“If you got anything promising.”
“I don’t know whether I did or not. We were at it nearly two hours, and mostly it was just stirring up the dust, but there were a couple of things, maybe three, that you might want to hear. One day in the fall of nineteen fifty-two, she thinks it was October, a man called at the office, and there was a row that developed into combat. She heard a crash and went in, and the caller was flat on the floor. Molloy told her he would handle it, and she returned to the other room, and pretty soon the caller came out on his feet and left. She doesn’t know his name, and she didn’t hear what the row was about because the door between the rooms was shut.”
Wolfe grunted. “I hope we’re not reduced to that. And?”
“This one was earlier. In the early summer. For a period of about two weeks a woman phoned the office nearly every day. If Molloy was out she left word for him to call Janet. If Molloy was in and took the call he told her he couldn’t discuss the matter on the phone and rang off. Then the calls stopped and Janet was never heard from again.”
“Does Mrs. Molloy know what she wanted to discuss?”
“No. She never listened in. She wouldn’t.”
He sent me a sharp glance. “Are you bewitched again?”
“Yes, sir. It took four seconds, even before she spoke. From now on you’ll pay me but I’ll really be working for her. I want her to be happy. When that’s attended to I’ll go off to some island and mope.” Orrie Cather laughed, and Johnny Keems tittered. I ignored them and went on. “The third thing was in February or March nineteen fifty-three, not long before they were married. Molloy phoned around noon and said he had expected to come to the office but couldn’t make it. His ticket for a hockey game that night was in a drawer of his desk, and he asked her to get it and send it to him by messenger at a downtown restaurant. He said it was in a small blue envelope in the drawer. She went to the drawer and found the envelope, and noticed that it had been through the mail and slit open. Inside there were two things: the hockey ticket and a blue slip of paper, which she glanced at. It was a bill from the Metropolitan Safe Deposit Company for rent of a safe-deposit box, made out to Richard Randall. It caught her eye because she had once thought she might marry a man named Randall but had decided not to. She put it back in the envelope, which was addressed to Richard Randall, but if she noticed the address she has forgotten it. She had forgotten the whole incident until we dug it up.”
“At least,” Wolfe said, “if it’s worth a question we know where to ask it. Anything else?”
“I don’t think so. Unless you want the works.”
“Not now.” He turned to the others. “Now that you’ve heard Archie, you gentlemen are up to date. Have you any more questions?”
Johnny Keems cleared his throat. “One thing. I don’t get the idea of Hays being innocent. I only know what I read in the papers, but it certainly didn’t take the jury very long.”
“You’ll have to take that from me.” Wolfe was brusque. You have to be brusque with Johnny. He turned to me. “I’ve explained the situation to them in some detail, but I have not mentioned our client’s name or the nature of his interest. We’ll keep that to ourselves. Any more questions?”
There were none.
“Then we’ll proceed to assignments. Archie, what about phone booths in the neighborhood?”
“The drugstore that Freyer mentioned is the nearest place with a booth. I didn’t look around much.”
He went to Durkin. “Fred, you will try that. The phone call to Peter Hays, at nine o’clock, was probably made from nearby, and the one to t
he police, at nine-eighteen, had to be made as quickly as possible after Peter Hays was seen entering the building. The hope is of course forlorn, since more than three months have passed, but you can try it. The drugstore seems the likeliest, but cover the neighborhood. If both phone calls were made from the same place, it’s possible you can jog someone’s memory. Start this evening, at once. The calls were made in the evening. Any questions?”
“No, sir. I’ve got it.” Fred never takes his eyes off of Wolfe. I think he’s expecting him to sprout either a horn or a halo, I’m not sure which, and doesn’t want to miss it. “Shall I go now?”
“No, you might as well stay till we’re through.” Wolfe went to Cather. “Orrie, you will look into Molloy’s business operations and associates and his financial standing. Mr. Freyer will see you at his office at ten in the morning. He’ll give you whatever information he has, and you will start with that. Getting access to Molloy’s records and papers will be rather complicated.”
“If he kept books,” I said, “they weren’t in his office. At least Mrs. Molloy never saw them, and there was no safe.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe’s brows went up. “A real-estate brokerage business and no books? I think, Archie, I’d better have a full report on the dust you stirred up.” He returned to Orrie. “Since Molloy died intestate, as far as is known, his widow’s rights are paramount in such matters as access to his records and papers, but they should be exercised as legal procedure provides. Mr. Freyer says that Mrs. Molloy has no attorney, and I’m going to suggest to her that she retain Mr. Parker. Mr. Freyer thinks it inadvisable to suggest him, and I agree. If Molloy kept no records in his office you will first have to find them. Any questions?”
Orrie shook his head. “Not now. I may have after I’ve talked with Freyer. If I do I’ll phone you.”
Wolfe made a face. Except in emergencies the boys never call between nine and eleven in the morning or four and six in the afternoon, when he is up in the plant rooms, but even so the damn phone rings when he’s deep in a book or working a crossword or busy in the kitchen with Fritz, and he hates it. He went to Keems.