“Yeah. I’ve said that before too.”
“But Mr. Linville had not recognized him?”
“Seems like you’re telling it.”
“I’d like to hear it again from you, sir.”
Halliburton took a breath and clenched his teeth. “Sparky didn’t recognize Goodwin. He’d never met him and I guess he’d never seen his picture—or if he had, it didn’t register. Satisfied?”
“Thank you,” Wolfe said, his eyes sweeping the room. “Let me now suggest what transpired after Mr. Linville and Mr. Halliburton walked away from Morgana’s. Mr. Halliburton was probably quick to point out that their harasser had been none other than Archie Goodwin, the well-known private investigator. At which point Mr. Linville, who was known to indulge in braggadocio over what he considered his amorous exploits, made the connection, boasting to his companion that Mr. Goodwin must have been seeking some form of reprisal because of the forcible advances he, Linville, had made to the niece of Mr. Goodwin’s longtime friend Miss Rowan.”
“You’re just guessing,” Halliburton snorted.
“An educated guess. What Mr. Linville said, and the insolent way in which he said it, enraged you, sir.”
“Why the hell should it enrage me?” Halliburton shot back, sitting up straight and squaring his shoulders. “What Sparky did was his business. He had his life and I had mine.”
“You also had something in common, however, and that was that you both knew Miss James. But while Mr. Linville’s relationship with her had been characterized by violence and, ultimately on her part, loathing, yours was one of affection, albeit unrequited.”
“I don’t know where you got that,” Halliburton squeaked, looking at the tips of his shoes. His ears were redder than Cramer’s face had been earlier.
“I got it from Mr. Goodwin’s observations of your reactions when he visited you yesterday,” Wolfe said. “He reported that your feelings for the young woman were perspicuous.”
“Hallie didn’t say anything to me about his feelings,” Noreen put in. “In fact, we only met a couple of times.”
“You hear that, Wolfe?” Cramer snapped. “How could this guy”—he gestured toward Halliburton—“have been so worked up if they barely knew each other?”
Wolfe considered him dourly. “Did not the young Dante see his Beatrice but twice? Yet that was enough to stir a passion that belongs to the ages. Likely, Mr. Halliburton did not express his feelings because he doubted their reciprocation. In any event, he held Miss James in high esteem, and when he learned from his friend of a conquest that—”
“God, do we have to go into this much detail?” It was Lily, grimacing.
Wolfe considered her, leaned back, and closed his eyes for ten seconds. “Madam,” he asked Noreen, “do you wish me to continue, or do you feel I have shown disdain for propriety?”
“No—please go on. It’s all right, Aunt Lily,” she said, struggling to control her facial expression. “I’ve been getting myself ready for something like this for a long time. I’m okay … really.” Lily sent her the kind of smile I’ve gotten from the same source several times when I was particularly dejected. I hoped it worked as well for Noreen as it has for me.
Wolfe leaned forward, looking from face to face, eyes wide. “I have a client,” he said acidly, “and I intend to represent her. Does anyone dispute or challenge that intention?”
The room was quiet—including Cramer, who looked as if he wanted to chew up a whole box of cigars. “Very well,” Wolfe went on, “as I started to say, when Mr. Halliburton learned of his friend’s escapade, he became enraged, at least internally. I daresay within seconds after he heard the story, he began planning violent action. And—”
“This stinks!” Halliburton shouted, tacking on the same word he had used that night in front of Morgana’s. But while I had started to take a swing at him for such talk, Wolfe reacted by bending down behind his desk—no easy feat for someone of his configuration. When he reappeared, he was holding the tire iron I had gotten from the trunk of the Mercedes. He had wrapped it in one of his handkerchiefs so that his hand did not come in contact with the metal, and he set it carefully on his blotter without a word, turning back to Halliburton.
“Now, sir,” he said, “as I was about to—”
“What’s … that?” The kid’s eyes were so wide I could see white all around the irises.
“A tire iron, of course. Now, as—”
“No-o-o!” Halliburton sprang to his feet, wailing. “You can’t prove it! You don’t know what really happened. You had to be there. Sparky kept on bragging that he did … You know, he was a … When I hit him with that thing, he …” He was babbling, then hyperventilating, his eyes darting from face to face, his palms up. “Noreen, I … I …” He ran down like a music box in need of winding and stood in front of her, tears streaming down his cheeks. Purley Stebbins, who had leapt to Halliburton’s side the instant he popped up, was now calmly giving him the “You-have-the-right-to-remain-silent …” spiel while getting his cuffs ready.
Noreen went around Halliburton to her brother and knelt in front of him, burying her face in his lap and sobbing, while Doyle James stood over her silently, an arm on her shoulder. Megan was crying now too, and so was Lily. Waterworks from any one of them would have unsettled Wolfe, but all this was more than enough to drive him from the room. He was barely noticed as he rose, moved around his desk, and marched into the hall, turning toward the kitchen. That’s just like him, leaving me to mop up his messes.
TWENTY-THREE
“THAT WAS A PRETTY SLEAZY stunt with the tire iron,” Cramer said, leaning back in the red leather chair and taking a healthy swallow of beer. “I should have known you were up to something when you asked to have Goodwin get a look at the piece of metal that was used on Linville.”
The creases in Wolfe’s cheeks deepened, which for him is a smile. He was feeling good now, some fifteen hours after putting the finger on Todd Halliburton. When the tension had abated last night and most of our guests had left, Wolfe returned to his office and was handed a check by Doyle James on behalf of his daughter, which I deposited this morning at our neighborhood branch of the Metropolitan Trust Company. And now, at twelve-forty, after his morning frolic upstairs with his orchids, he was anticipating the baked scallops that he’d be consuming in less than an hour.
“Come, Inspector,” he said, “surely you have on occasion employed even sleazier stunts, to use your terminology.”
“Whatever works—within the law, of course,” Cramer said defensively.
“Precisely. And as you no doubt are aware, I would not have used the artifice I did had the guilty individual been, say, Mrs. James, or Mr. Pamsett, or even Doyle James. They would not have reacted satisfactorily for my—or perhaps I should say our—purposes. But it was clear to me, having had Mr. Halliburton described in such detail to me by Mr. Goodwin, that his emotional constitution made him particularly vulnerable to this approach.”
“Well, it sure as hell worked,” Cramer conceded without even a trace of resentment in his voice. “You’ve got to feel pretty good about this one. And for that matter, so do I, for reasons we both know. And to top everything off, after we took Halliburton downtown, he babbled damn near all night about how he’d wasted Linville—who supposedly had been his friend, for God’s sake. In fact, the more he talked, the prouder he sounded; I think he’s convinced that he did society a service. He refused counsel, and the poor guy brought in from the public defender’s office to represent him couldn’t shut him up. The kid wants his trial tomorrow so he can plead guilty to any charge and get it over with. Doesn’t seem to care what happens to him.”
“The murderer as self-styled hero,” Wolfe observed. “Not an altogether unusual reaction. Mr. Cramer, I invite you to join us for lunch. We’re having baked scallops.”
Cramer squinted at his beer glass before drinking. “You know, that’s the best offer I’ve had in weeks,” he said, turning to me and winking.
<
br /> “Archie, please tell Fritz to put on another plate,” Wolfe said. Which goes to show just how good a mood he really was in.
TWENTY-FOUR
AS I HAD PROMISED, THE Gazette got its scoop. I called Lon Monday night after the dust cleared, finally reaching him at home, and gave him the details plus plenty of color and several quotes from Wolfe. It made for good reading in the Tuesday afternoon edition, which Wolfe and I both devoured after Cramer left, his belly full of scallops. Seeing as how the story broke too late for the morning papers, the Gazette gave it especially big play, with an uppercase banner headline reading NEW CONFESSION IN LINVILLE CASE! along with a major story, two sidebars, and lots of pictures, including one of Wolfe with a caption that referred to him as a “master sleuth.”
Halliburton’s family eventually found him a big-time defense lawyer who managed to make an insanity plea hold up, which didn’t go down well with the press or Linville’s family, to say nothing of the D.A.’s office. He is now boarding with the state at one of its high-security facilities for the mentally disturbed.
After the hubbub surrounding the trial died down, Michael James admitted to his family that he had indeed fabricated his story because of his fear that one of them—he wouldn’t say which he thought it was—had killed Linville to avenge Noreen. One piece of positive fallout, according to Lily, is that Michael and his mother were tearfully reconciled and seem to be getting along better than they have in years.
Noreen appears to have recovered from her own trauma nicely, which is all the more surprising considering that her ordeal got spread all over the press and TV. She dropped Rojek soon after Halliburton’s trial, telling her aunt that she thought he was “too shallow.” And now, Lily tells me, she’s about to take a new job with a publishing company in Chicago, which has offered her far greater editing responsibilities than she ever had with Melbourne Books. “I’ll miss Noreen, but it’ll do her good to get away from New York—and particularly her mother,” was Lily’s observation.
I certainly can’t disagree with that.
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The Last Coincidence (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 4) Page 17