“Yes,” I said. “If I had wanted to make something up I could have done better than that.”
Before the night shift was through I met other acquaintances, after we got down to Centre Street. Not Hester Livsey. The dick who was sent for her came back with a report that her mother, with whom she lived in Brooklyn, had stated that her daughter was not there and had not been home that evening because she had gone straight from work to Grand Central to catch a train, to spend the week-end with friends in Westport, Connecticut. She had furnished the name of the friends, and they had been phoned to. No answer. But Cramer and his boys were moving fast and in all directions. They had phoned the Westport police, who had made a call on the friends and reported back that Hester Livsey was there, snug in bed, having arrived on a train that had reached Westport at one-nine A.M. Since it takes around seventy minutes, not eight hours, for a train to go from Grand Central to Westport, the caller had insisted on speaking to Miss Livsey and had done so. She had stated that she had decided to take a later train and that how she had spent the evening in New York was her own business. Told of the death of Kerr Naylor, she repeated her statement, and said that she knew nothing about Mr. Naylor and that her association with him was extremely remote, since he was head of a large department and she was merely a stenographer. Asked if she would return to New York in the morning so the police could talk with her, she refused, saying that she couldn’t possibly tell them anything helpful.
There was a report from a sergeant who had had a chat with Sumner Hoff in his apartment in the East Fifties. Hoff had been able to contribute nothing, but was quite willing, as a responsible citizen, to co-operate with the police in the investigation of a crime—which sounded to me like a distinct and encouraging improvement in his manners.
Bell ringing and door knocking had produced no results at the Greenwich Village room-and-bath tenanted by Rosa Bendini. In her case there was no mother around to get information from, and no one else in the building knew where Rosa was. I had a healthy conviction, knowing as I do what a liking for companionship can lead to, that when Rosa showed up her mind would be a blank as to where she had spent Friday night, but that was one of the things I didn’t communicate to Cramer, not wanting to lower his opinion of American womanhood. They thought they might find her with her husband, where he lived with his folks on Washington Heights, but no. Harold Anthony, hauled out of bed, dressed and came down to Centre Street without being asked. His story was that he hadn’t seen Rosa since Wednesday evening, when she had left him and me to fight it out on the sidewalk in front of Wolfe’s house; and as for him, he didn’t know Kerr Naylor from Adam, and had spent Friday evening at a basketball game at the Garden, where he had gone by his lonesome, and had then walked all the way home—some six miles—to use up energy.
I asked him, “So you got some energy back in the short space of forty-eight hours? After what I took out of you?”
“What the hell,” he bragged, “I’d forgotten about that the next day. What do they want Rosa for? Are they fools enough to think she would kill a man? What have they got?”
He had actually come clear down to Centre Street at that time of night through anxiety for his wife! Loyalty is a very fine thing, but it shouldn’t be allowed to get the bit between its teeth. I told him not to worry, the cops were just shaking it all through a sieve. Regarding his energy, I didn’t believe him. Three of my kidney punches do not kill a man, but neither do they fade utterly from recollection the next day.
But that was along toward the end. Before that we had had a session with Ben Frenkel, one of the first things after our arrival at O’Hara’s office. At the moment Cramer was seated at the big desk and I was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder at the carbon copy of my reports to Naylor-Kerr, which I had stopped off at Wolfe’s office to get. A dick towed Frenkel in and planted him in a chair at the end of the desk. I had thought his hair was undisciplined when he came to see me on Thursday, but now no two hairs were parallel. He was trying to look nowhere and at no one, which really cannot be done unless you go at it with all your might and shut your eyes.
“Hello there,” I said.
He returned no sign of recognition.
Cramer growled at him, “You’re Benjamin Frenkel?”
“Yes, that’s my name.”
“Are you under the impression that you killed Kerr Naylor?”
Frenkel gawked at him, then made another try at looking at nothing, and did not speak.
“Well, are you?”
Frenkel looked straight at me and cried, “You rat! I told you that in confidence!”
“You did not,” I denied. “I told you I couldn’t keep a confession of murder confidential.”
“I didn’t confess to a murder!”
“Then do it now,” Cramer urged. “Confess now. Come on, let’s have it, get it off your chest, you’ll feel better.”
That didn’t work at all. Put straight that way, an invitation to confess to murder seemed to be just what he had wanted for his birthday. He quit trying to look at nothing, his big bony shoulders went to the back of the chair for normal support, and his voice, though still intense, had no note of panic at all as he said:
“I was told I had to come here to answer questions. What are the questions?” He smiled sweetly and sadly.
Cramer asked the questions and he replied. He had last seen Kerr Naylor around three o’clock Friday afternoon, at the office, and knew nothing of him since that hour. After work he had gone to his room on Ninety-fourth Street, bathed and changed his clothes, eaten dinner alone in a restaurant around the corner on Broadway, and taken the subway downtown to call for a young woman who lived on Twenty-first Street with whom he had an engagement for the evening. He preferred not to mention her name. They had gone to Moonlight, on Fiftieth Street, and stayed there, dancing, until after twelve. He had taken the young woman home and then gone home himself, arriving about one o’clock. He would not give the young woman’s name because there was no reason why he should. If for any good reason it became necessary the name would be forthcoming.
What about his impression that he had killed Waldo Moore?
That, he had decided, was one of the mental vagaries to which high-strung men like him were subject. He had often been bothered by them. Once he had become obsessed with the idea that he was secretly a Nazi, and had gone to a Bund meeting at Yorkville to get rid of it. He did not state categorically, but strongly implied, that his coming to me had been the same thing as his going to a Bund meeting, which did not increase my affection for him.
Hadn’t he come to me only for one purpose, to find out if Naylor had mentioned his name in connection with Moore’s death?
No, that wasn’t true. He hadn’t even thought of that until it occurred to him during the conversation.
Did he know Gwynne Ferris?
Yes, she was one of the stenographers in the stock department.
Had he spoken with her on Friday?
Possibly; he didn’t remember.
Hadn’t she told him that Naylor had stated that he knew who had killed Waldo Moore?
No, not that he remembered. But of course, he added, he had known that Mr. Naylor had made that statement. Everybody did. It was being discussed all over the department.
That was news to me. I goggled at him. I took it away from Cramer and demanded, “When?”
“Why, today. Yesterday. Friday.”
“Who did Naylor make the statement to?”
“I don’t know—that is, I only know what I heard. The way I got it, he made it to you and you reported it to the president’s office.”
“Who did you get it from?”
“I don’t remember.” Frenkel had reverted to form. His rumble was low from deep in his throat and his eyes were probing me again. “It is not a quality of my mind to cling to factual details like that. Whereas matters which have an intellectual content—”
“Nuts,” Cramer said in bitter disgust. He had thought for one
shining moment that he had a confession coming, and now this blah. He aimed a half-chewed cigar at Frenkel’s face, brandished it, and asserted:
“Gwynne Ferris told you. Didn’t she?”
“I said she didn’t.”
“And I say she did! I happen to know—What do you want?”
The question was for a city employee who had approached the desk. He answered it. “Sergeant Gottlieb is here, sir, with the Ferris woman.”
Cramer scowled at him. “Keep her until I get through—no. Wait.” He looked at Frenkel and then at me. “Why not?”
“Sure, why not?” I agreed.
Cramer told the dick, “Bring her in here.”
21.
Gwynne Ferris entered, not aware or not caring that a detective sergeant was right behind her elbow, halted a moment to survey the big room, and then approached us at the desk.
“Hello, Ben,” she said in her sweet musical voice. “Of ill the terrible things, but what are you here for?” Not waiting for a reply, her glance darted to Cramer and then to me. “Oh, then you are a policeman!”
She was, I admitted, equal to any situation, and that applied not only to her nerves but also to her appearance. Routed out by a cop at four in the morning, getting dressed while he waited, and brought down to headquarters in a police car, she looked as fresh and pure and beautiful as she had when she had raised her clear blue eyes to mine and told me she couldn’t spell.
“Sit down, Miss Ferris,” Cramer told her.
“Thank you,” she said sarcastically, and sat, on a chair a couple of paces from Frenkel’s. “You look terrible, Ben. Have you had any sleep at all?”
“Yes,” Frenkel rumbled from a mile down.
Gwynne spoke to Cramer and me. “The reason I asked him that, I saw him only a few hours ago. We were dancing. But I suppose he’s told you that already. It’s a good thing tomorrow isn’t a workday. Are you an inspector, Mr. Truett, or what?”
“This is unspeakable, utterly unspeakable,” Ben Frenkel declared with deep intensity. “I didn’t tell them who I went dancing with because I thought they’d be after you to verify it, and they did it anyway, for no reason on earth. Were they decent about it? Were they rough with you?”
Harry Anthony had been anxious about Rosa, and here was Frenkel, being anxious about Gwynne. I made a note to quit trying to understand women and start trying to understand men.
“No, he was really very courteous about it,” Gwynne testified generously.
Cramer had been glancing from one to the other. He opened up. “So you two were together all evening. Is that right, Frenkel?”
“Yes. Since Miss Ferris has told you so.”
“Not just since she has told me so. Were you?”
“Yes.”
“Did Mr. Frenkel take you home, Miss Ferris?”
“Certainly he did!”
“What time did you get home?”
“When was it, Ben, about—”
“I asked you.”
“Well, it was a quarter to one when I got upstairs to my room. I went up alone of course. We talked a while downstairs.”
Cramer surprised me. He was seldom plain nasty, leaving that to the boys, but now he barked at her, “When Waldo Moore took you home you didn’t go upstairs alone, did you?”
Ben Frenkel sprang from his chair with his fists doubled up and his eyes blazing. A dick standing in the rear moved forward. I tightened up a little myself, not knowing how far Frenkel’s impulses might go. But evidently Gwynne did, for she was on her feet and in front of him, with her hands up to grasp his coat lapels.
“Now, Ben, honey.” When she put: appeal in her voice it could have been used for a welding torch. “You know that isn’t so, haven’t I told you? He’s just being malicious.” She put pressure on him. “Sit down and don’t even hear things like that.” His knees started to give, she maintained the pressure, and he was back in his chair.
She returned to hers and told Cramer, “There was a lot of malicious talk about me and Waldo Moore, and this is what I get for it. I know better than to lose my temper over those kind of things any more. I just ignore it.”
So Cramer’s nastiness had paid no dividend. He shifted his ground and asked, “Why were you so anxious to know what Goodwin was reporting about Moore’s death?”
“Goodwin? What Goodwin?”
“Truett,” I explained. “Me. My name’s Goodwin.”
“Oh! I’m glad you told me. Then you were sailing under false—”
“I asked you,” Cramer rasped, “why you were so anxious to know what he had found out about Moore’s death.”
“I wasn’t anxious. Not at all.”
“Then why did you sneak into his room and go through his papers?”
“I didn’t!” She looked at me reproachfully. “Did you tell him that? After I explained that I thought you might still be waiting for me, and you were gone, and I thought perhaps you had left some work—”
“Yeah,” Cramer cut her off, “I’ve heard that before. You’re sticking to that, are you?”
“Why, it’s the truth!” She was marvelous when she was showing forbearance in the face of injustice being done her. So marvelous that I would have liked to cut her into thin slices and broil her.
Cramer gazed at her. “Listen to me, Miss Ferris,” he said in a different and calmer tone. “That sort of thing was okay as long as it was just a matter of investigating a death that might have been an accident that took place months ago. As long as that was all it amounted to there was nothing wrong especially about your not telling the truth when Goodwin asked why you looked at his papers. But now it’s different, now we know it was murder, and that’s what I’m telling you, it was murder. That changes the whole thing, doesn’t it? Don’t you want to help? If you’re not involved in it yourself, and I don’t think you are, shouldn’t you help out by telling us why you did that?”
“What is all this,” Frenkel demanded, evidently on speaking terms again, “about her looking at papers? What papers?”
He got no reply.
Gwynne appealed to Cramer, “I have to tell the truth, don’t I? It wouldn’t help for me to tell a lie, would it?”
Cramer gave up and exploded at her, “Who did you tell about it?”
“About what?”
“What you saw in that report! About Naylor saying he knew who killed Moore! Who did you tell?”
“Let me see.” The frown appeared on her forehead. She had to think hard. “One of the girls, which one was it, and I mentioned it to one of the men too—it was—no, it wasn’t Mr. Henderson—” She looked at Cramer apologetically. “I guess I can’t remember.”
Deputy Commissioner O’Hara strode into the room. It was his office.
Cramer arose and said grimly, “We’ll go into another room to finish our talk, Miss Ferris. We’re through with you for now, Mr. Frenkel, but we may need you at any time. Keep us informed where you are.”
O’Hara said, “You’re Archie Goodwin? I want to talk with you.”
I’ve already told about that.
22.
As I said, I didn’t get out of bed Saturday until nearly noon. My face was no longer in a condition to cause boys on the street to make comments, but it took me longer than usual to shave, and also my movements under the shower were a little cautious and deliberate. So by the time I got downstairs Fritz was about ready to dish up lunch. Because I didn’t feel like breaking my fast with Rognons aux Montagnes, which is lamb kidneys cooked with broth and red wine, not to mention assorted spices, and because Wolfe would not permit talk of business during a meal, and because I wanted to look at the morning papers and couldn’t if I sat at the table with him, I ate in the kitchen. Fritz, who understands me, had fresh hot oatmeal ready, the chill off my bottle of cream, the eggs waiting in the pan, the ham sliced thin for the broiler, the pancake batter mixed, the griddle hot, and the coffee steaming. I made a pass as if to kiss him on the cheek, he kept me off with a twenty-inch pointed knif
e, and I sat down and started the campaign against starvation with the Times propped up in front of me.
After lunch, or breakfast, depending on which room you ate in, I went to the office and before long Wolfe joined me. From the expression on his face I gathered that coolness was absent from our relationship until the next one, now that he had surrendered on the typewriter, but if he thought I was going to reciprocate by surrendering on the new car he should have known me better. However, I decided not to bring it up immediately after his lunch. He got adjusted in his made-to-order chair behind his desk and asked:
“What have they decided about Mr. Naylor? Death by misadventure?”
“No, sir. They think someone tried to hurt him. At that, Cramer shows signs of having a noodle. He can discover nothing on Thirty-ninth Street, or in that neighborhood, that would account for Naylor being there. Also, he refuses to believe that Naylor obligingly lay on the pavement, and lay still, so the driver of the car could make the wheels hit exactly the same spots, his head and legs, that had been hit on Moore. He concludes that Naylor was killed somewhere else, probably by a blow or blows on the head, that the body was taken to Thirty-ninth Street in the car and deposited on the pavement and the car driven over it, and that the car wheels smashing the head obliterated the mark or marks of the blow or blows that killed him. The scientists are going over the inside of the car with microscopes for evidence that the body was carried in it. Cramer doesn’t say so out loud, but he’s wishing to God he had done likewise with the car that killed Moore.”
“Has anyone been arrested?”
“Not up to six o’clock, when I left. Deputy Commissioner O’Hara wanted to arrest me, but Cramer needed me. I was very helpful.”
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