Plot It Yourself

by Rex Stout

  They twisted around.

  “In front at the left,” Wolfe told them, “is Miss Theodolinda Bonner. Beside her is Miss Sally Corbett. In the rear at the left is Mr Saul Panzer, next to him is Mr Fred Durkin, and at the right is Mr Orrie Cather. I should explain that before they went on their separate errands they were supplied with photographs of Alice Porter, procured by Mr Panzer at a newspaper office. I’m going to ask them to report to you, Mr Cather?”

  Orrie got up and went to the corner of Wolfe’s desk and stood facing the committee. “My job,” he said, “was to find out if she had ever been in contact with Simon Jacobs. Of course the best place to start was with the widow. I went to the apartment on Twenty-first Street and there was no one there. I asked around among the other tenants, and I-”

  “Briefly, Orrie. Just the meat.”

  “Yes, sir. I finally found her at a friend’s house in New Jersey. She didn’t want to talk, and I had a time with her. I showed her the photograph, and she recognized it. She had seen the subject twice about three years ago. The subject had come to the apartment to see her husband and had stayed quite a while both times, two hours or more. She didn’t know what they had talked about. Her husband had told her it was about some stories for a magazine. I tried to get her more exact on the time, but the closest she could come was that it was in the spring of 1956 and the two visits were about three weeks apart. Her husband hadn’t told her the name of the subject.”

  Wolfe asked, “Was her recognition of the photograph at all doubtful?”

  “No, she was positive. She recognized it right away. She said she-”

  Alice Porter blurted, “You’re a liar! I never went to see Simon Jacobs! I never saw him anywhere!”

  “You’ll get a turn, Miss Porter,” Wolfe told her. “As long a turn as you want. That will do, Orrie. Miss Corbett?”

  Sally Corbett was one of the two women who, a couple of years back, had made me feel that there might be some flaw in my attitude toward female dicks. The other one was Dol Bonner. Their physical characteristics, including their faces, were quite different, but were both of a description that makes a woman looked at from a personal viewpoint; and they were good operatives. Sally went and took Orrie’s place at the corner of Wolfe’s desk, turned her head to look at him, got a nod, and faced the audience.

  “My job was the same as Mr Cather’s,” she said, “except that it was with Jane Ogilvy instead of Simon Jacobs. I didn’t get to see Mrs Ogilvy, Jane’s mother, until this afternoon. I showed her the photograph and asked her if she had ever seen the subject. After studying it she said she was pretty sure she had. She said that one day more than two years ago the subject had come to see her daughter, and they had gone to the cloister. If you have read the newspapers you know about the building that Jane called the cloister. In half an hour or so they returned to the house because the electric heater in the cloister was out of order. They went up to Jane’s room and were there for three hours or more. Mrs Ogilvy didn’t learn the subject’s name and never saw her again. By association with other matters she figured that it was in February, 1957 that the subject had come to see her daughter. She didn’t make the identification positive, but she said she could, one way or the other, if she saw the subject in person instead of a photograph.”

  I turned my head for a look at Alice Porter. She was on the edge of the chair, rigid, her eyes half closed, her head thrust forward, and her lips parted with the tip of her tongue showing. She was looking at Wolfe, oblivious of the eight pairs of eyes, including mine, that were aimed at her. When Sally Corbett returned to her chair and Fred Durkin took her place at the corner of Wolfe’s desk, Alice Porter s gaze didn’t leave Wolfe, even when Fred spoke.

  “I had Kenneth Rennert,” Fred said, “and the trouble was there wasn’t any widow or mother or anyone like that. I saw about twenty people, other tenants in the building and the building superintendent, and friends and acquaintances, but none of them recognized the subject from the photograph. From two or three of them I got a steer to a restaurant on Fifty-second Street, the Pot-au-Feu, where Rennert often ate lunch and sometimes dinner, and that was the only place I got anything at all. One of the waiters, the one that had the table where Rennert usually sat, thought the subject had been there twice with Rennert, once for lunch and once for dinner. He was cagey. Of course he knew Rennert had been murdered. He might have opened up more if I had slipped him a twenty, but of course that was out. He thought it had been in the late winter or spring last year. He thought if he saw the subject he could tell better than from a photograph. He had liked Rennert. The only reason he talked at all was because I told him it might help to get the murderer. I think if he was sure of that and if he saw the subject in person-”

  Wolfe stopped him. “That will serve, Fred. The ifs are ahead of us. Mr Panzer?” As Fred went back to his chair and Saul came forward, Wolfe told the committee, “I should explain that Mr Panzer’s assignment was of a different nature. It was given to him because it required illegal entry to a private dwelling. Yes, Saul?”

  The committee had Saul’s profile because he was turned to face Alice Porter. “Yesterday evening,” he said, “as instructed, I drove to Alice Porter’s home near Carmel, arriving at twelve minutes past ten. I opened the door with a key, one of an assortment I had, and entered, and made a search. On a shelf in a cupboard I found some sheets of paper with typewriting, clipped together, twenty-five pages. The first page was headed ‘Opportunity Knocks,’ and below that it said ‘By Alice Porter.’ It was an original, not a carbon. I have delivered it to Mr Wolfe.”

  He glanced at Wolfe, and Wolfe spoke. “It’s here in a drawer of my desk. I have read it. In plot and characters and action it is identical with the story, ‘Opportunity Knocks,’ by Alice Porter, the manuscript of which was found in a file in the office of the Victory Press. But that one, the one found in the file, was written in Alice Porter’s natural style, the style of her published book, The Moth That Ate Peanuts , whereas this one, the one found by Mr Panzer in Miss Porter’s house, was written in her assumed style, the one she had used for the three stories on which the previous claims had been based. Call them A and B. The obvious inference is that in writing the story that was to be the basis for her claim against Amy Wynn she had tried both styles, A and B, and had decided, for whatever reason, to use the one in style B. What else did you find, Saul?”

  Saul’s eyes were again on Alice Porter. “That was all in the house,” he said. “But she had gone to New York with Mr Goodwin in his car, so her car was there, and I searched it. Under the front seat, wrapped in newspaper, I found a knife, a kitchen knife with a black handle. Its blade is seven inches long and an inch wide. I have delivered it to Mr Wolfe. If he has examined it with-”

  He sprang forward. Alice Porter had bounced out of her chair and dived for Amy Wynn, her arms stretched and her fingers curved to claws. I was right there, so I had her right arm half a second before Saul got her left one, but she had moved so fast that the fingernails of her left hand got to Amy Wynn’s face before we jerked her back. Philip Harvey, on Amy Wynn’s right, had lunged forward to intervene, and Reuben Imhof, back of Amy Wynn, was on his feet, bending over her. Alice Porter was trying to wriggle loose, but Saul and I had her back against Wolfe’s desk, and she gave it up and started yapping. She glared at Amy Wynn and yapped, “You dirty sneak, you double-crosser, you dirty sneak, you double-”

  “Turn her around,” Wolfe snapped. Saul and I obeyed. He eyed her. “Are you demented?” he demanded.

  No answer. She was panting. “Why assault Miss Wynn?” he demanded. “She didn’t corner you. I did.”

  She spoke. “I’m not cornered. Tell them to let go of me.”

  “Will you control yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  Saul and I let go but stayed between her and Amy Wynn, and Harvey and Imhof were there too. She moved, back to her chair, and sat. She looked at Wolfe. “I don’t know if you’re in it with her,” she said, “bu
t if you are you’ll regret it. She’s a liar and a murderer and now she thinks she can frame me for it, but she can’t. Neither can you. That’s all lies about my seeing those people. I never saw any of them. And if that story was found in my house and that knife was found in my car she put them there. Or you did.”

  “Are you saying that Amy Wynn killed Simon Jacobs and Jane Ogilvy and Kenneth Rennert?”

  “I am. I wish to God I had never seen her. She’s a liar and a sneak and a double-crosser and a murderer, and I can prove it.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t worry, I can prove it. I’ve got the typewriter that she used to write that story, ‘There Is Only Love,’ when she got me to make that claim against Ellen Sturdevant. And I know how she planted it in a bureau drawer in Ellen Sturdevant’s house. And that’s all I’m going to tell you. And if you’re in it with her you’re going to regret it.” She stood up, bumping me. “You get out of my way.” Saul and I stayed put.

  Wolfe’s tone sharpened. “I’m not in it with her, Miss Porter. On the contrary, I’m in it with you, up to a point. I ask one question, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t answer it. Did you write an account of your association with Miss Wynn, put it in an envelope, and entrust the envelope to someone with instructions that it was to be opened if and when you died?”

  She stared. She sat down. “How did you know that?”

  “I didn’t. I surmised it. It was the simplest and best way to account for your remaining alive and not in trepidation. Where is it? You might as well tell me, now that its contents are no longer a secret. You have just revealed them, their essence. Where is it?”

  “A woman named Garvin has it. Mrs Ruth Garvin.”

  “Very well.” Wolfe leaned back and took a breath. “It would have made things easier for both of us if you had been candid with me last evening. It would have saved me the trouble of all this hocus-pocus to force you to speak up. Miss Wynn did not put a manuscript in your house or a knife in your car. Mr Panzer did not go there last evening. He spent the day composing and typing the kind of story he described because I thought you might demand to see it. He also bought the kind of knife he described.”

  Alice Porter was staring again. “Then that was all lies. Then you were in it.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “If by ‘in it’ you mean a conspiracy with Miss Wynn to make you pay for her crimes, no. If you mean a trap to force the truth out of you, yes. As for Mr Cather and Miss Corbett and Mr Durkin, they told no lies; they merely permitted you to infer that the photographs they showed to various people were of you, but they weren’t. They were photographs of Amy Wynn-and by the way, we can now hear from Miss Bonner. You needn’t leave your chair. Miss Bonner. Report briefly.”

  Dol Bonner cleared her throat. “I showed a photograph of Amy Wynn to the woman who runs Collander House on West Eighty-second Street, Mrs Ruth Garvin. She said that Amy Wynn lived there for three months in the winter of 1954 and ‘55, and that Alice Porter also lived there at that time. Is that enough?”

  “For the present, yes.” Wolfe’s eyes moved to take in his client, the committee. “That, I think, should suffice. I have established a link between Miss Wynn and each of her four accomplices. You have heard Miss Porter. If you wish, I can proceed to collect ample evidence to persuade a jury to convict Miss Wynn of her swindles, but it would be a waste of your money and my time, since she will go to trial not for extortion, but for murder, and that is not your concern. The police and the District Attorney will attend to that. As for-”

  Reuben Imhof suddenly exploded. “I can’t believe it!” he cried. “By God, I can’t believe it!” He appealed to Amy Wynn. “For God’s sake, Amy! Say something! Don’t just sit there! Say something!”

  I was back in my chair, and by stretching an arm I could have touched her. She hadn’t moved a muscle since Wolfe had asked Alice Porter about the envelope. Her hands were pressed flat against her breasts, as if to hold them up, and her shoulders were pulled back, far back. Down her right cheek, from just below the eye almost to her jaw, were two red streaks where Alice Porter’s nails had scraped. She paid no attention to Imhof and probably she didn’t hear him. Her eyes were fixed on Wolfe. Her lips moved but there was no sound. Someone muttered something. Mortimer Oshin took his empty glass from the stand, went to the table at the far wall, poured a triple portion of brandy, took a swallow, and came back.

  Amy Wynn spoke to Wolfe, her voice so low that it was just audible. “You knew that first day,” she said. “The first time we came. Didn’t you?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “No, madam. I had no inkling. I am not clairvoyant.”

  “When did you know?” She might have been in a trance.

  “Last evening. Alice Porter gave me the hint, unwittingly. When I showed her that her position was untenable and told her that I would advise you to prosecute, she was not concerned, she said you wouldn’t dare, but when I added that I would also advise Mr Imhof to prosecute she took alarm. That was highly suggestive. Upon consideration I sent her home, and I did something I might have done much sooner if there had been the faintest reason to suspect you. I read your book. Knock at My Door , or enough of it to conclude that you had written the stories on which the first three claims had been based. That was manifest from the characteristics of your style.”

  Her head moved, slowly, from side to side. “No,” she said. “You knew before that. You knew the third time we were here. You said it was possible it was one of us.”

  “That was only talk. At that point anything was possible.”

  “I was sure you knew,” she insisted. “I was sure you had read my book. That was what I’d been afraid of since the second time we came, when you told us about comparing the stories. That was when I realized how stupid I had been not to write them in a different style, but you see I didn’t really know I had a style. I thought only good writers had a style. But I was stupid. That was my big mistake. Wasn’t it?”

  They were all staring at her, and no wonder. From her tone and her expression you might have thought Wolfe was conducting a class in the technique of writing and she was anxious to learn. “I doubt if it could properly be called a mistake,” he said. “A little thoughtless, perhaps. After all, no one had ever compared the stories before I did, and I wouldn’t have compared them with your book if I hadn’t got that hint from Miss Porter. Indeed, Miss Wynn, I wouldn’t say that you made any mistakes at all.”

  “Of course I did.” She was quietly indignant. “You’re just being polite. All my life I’ve been making mistakes. The biggest one was when I decided I was going to be a writer, but of course I was young then. You don’t mind if I talk about it? I want to.”

  “Go ahead. But fourteen people are listening.”

  “It’s you I want to talk to. I’ve been wanting to ever since the first time we came and I thought you knew. If I had talked to you then I wouldn’t have had to-to do what I did. But I didn’t think you would say I didn’t make any mistakes. I shouldn’t have told Alice about you. You told us when you started, I mean when you started today, that she gave it away that she knew about our hiring you when Mr Goodwin told her he had an offer from a newspaper, and so your attention was focused on her. But I had made the worst mistake with her before that, when she claimed my book was plagiarized from a story she wrote. Of course I know that was poetic justice. I know I deserved it. But after so many years, when I actually had a book published, and the first printing sold out, and then three more printings, and it was actually third on the best-seller list, and then my publisher got that letter from Alice, I lost my head. That was an awful mistake. I should have told her I wouldn’t pay her anything, not a cent. I should have dared her to try to make me. But I was so scared I gave in to her. Wasn’t that a mistake?”

  Wolfe grunted. “If so, not an egregious one. She had the upper hand-especially after the manuscript of her story was found in a file in your publisher’s office.”

  “But that was part of the mistake, m
y putting it there. She made me. She said if I didn’t she would tell everything-about the claim against Ellen Sturdevant, and of course that would bring it out about the others. And she told me-”

  “My God.” Reuben Imhof groaned. He had gripped her arm. “Amy, look at me. Damn it, look at me! You put that manuscript in that file?”

  “You’re hurting my arm,” she said.

  “Look at me! You did that?”

  “I’m talking to Mr Wolfe.”

  “Incredible.” He groaned again. He let go of her arm. “Absolutely incredible.”

  Wolfe asked, “You were saying, Miss Wynn?”

  “I was saying that she told me about what she had put in an envelope and left with somebody to be opened if she died. I don’t see how you can say I didn’t make any mistakes. I hadn’t realized how dangerous it was for her to have the typewriter I used to write that story for her to use, ‘There Is Only Love.’ We thought it would be a good idea for her to have it because she was supposed to have written the story, but I hadn’t realized that it could be traced to me because I had bought it. I had bought it secondhand, but typewriters have numbers on them somewhere. You can’t say I didn’t make any mistakes. You ought to say I didn’t do anything right. Did I?”

  “If by ‘right’ you mean ‘well,’ you did indeed.”

  “What? What did I do well? Tell me.”

  “It would take an hour, Miss Wynn. You did a thousand things well. Your conception and execution of the swindles were impeccable, providing for all details and avoiding all pitfalls. Your choice of accomplices was admirable. Your handling of the situation these past two weeks has been superb. I have had some experience with people under stress wearing masks, both men and women, and I have never seen finer performances than yours-the first time you called on me with your fellow committee members, two weeks ago today, when I questioned you at some length; the second time, when Mr Oshin made his suggestion about Simon Jacobs and asked you to contribute ten thousand dollars; later that day at Mr Imhofs office when Mr Goodwin was told of the discovery of the manuscript which you had yourself put in the file; the third time you came with the committee, when the question whether to dismiss me was debated; the meeting of that council yesterday, when that question was again discussed in my presence-your performance on all of those occasions was extraordinary.”