That was the point, Cramer did know him. There was the stage, all set. There were Mrs. Jerome and Leo and Cherry and Emil Hatch, and the empty chairs, and above all, there was the fact that he had been expected. He wouldn’t have taken Wolfe’s word for that; he wouldn’t have taken Wolfe’s word for anything; but whenever he appeared on our stoop not expected I always left the chain-bolt on until he had stated his business and I had reported to Wolfe. And if he had been expected there was no telling what Wolfe had ready to spring. So Cramer gave up the bark and merely growled, “I want to talk with you.”
“Certainly.” Wolfe indicated the red leather chair, which Cherry had vacated. “Be seated.”
“Not here. Alone.”
Wolfe shook his head. “It would be a waste of time. This way is better and quicker. You know quite well, sir, it was a mistake to barge in here and roar at me that you are running my house. Either go, with whomever you can lawfully take, or sit down while I tell you who killed Kurt Bottweill.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “Your chair.”
Cramer’s round red face had been redder than normal from the outside cold, and now was redder still. He glanced around, compressed his lips until he didn’t have any, and went to the red leather chair and sat.
VIII
Wolfe sent his eyes around as I circled to my desk. Saul had got to a chair in the rear after all, but Stebbins had too and was at his elbow. Margot had passed in front of the Jeromes and Emil Hatch to get to the chair at the end nearest me, and Cherry and Al Kiernan were at the other end, a little back of the others. Hatch had finished his Korbeloff and put the glass on the floor, but Cherry and the Jeromes were hanging on to their tall ones.
Wolfe’s eyes came to rest on Cramer and he spoke. “I must confess that I stretched it a little. I can’t tell you, at the moment, who killed Bottweill; I have only a supposition; but soon I can, and will. First some facts for you. I assume you know that for the past two months Mr. Goodwin has been seeing something of Miss Dickey. He says she dances well.”
“Yeah.” Cramer’s voice came over sandpaper of the roughest grit. “You can save that for later. I want to know if you sent Panzer to meet—”
Wolfe cut him off. “You will. I’m headed for that. But you may prefer this firsthand. Archie, if you please. What Miss Dickey asked you to do last Monday evening, and what happened.”
I cleared my throat. “We were dancing at the Flamingo Club. She said Bottweill had been telling her for a year that he would marry her next week, but next week never came, and she was going to have a showdown with him. She asked me to get a blank marriage license and fill it out for her and me and give it to her, and she would show it to Bottweill and tell him now or never. I got the blank on Tuesday, and filled it in, and Wednesday I gave it to her.”
I stopped. Wolfe prompted me. “And yesterday afternoon?”
“She told me that the license trick had worked perfectly. That was about a minute before Bottweill entered the studio. I said in my statement to the District Attorney that she told me Bottweill was going to marry her, but I didn’t mention the license. It was immaterial.”
“Did she tell you what happened to the license?”
So we were emptying the bag. I nodded. “She said Bottweill had torn it up and put the pieces in the wastebasket by the desk in his office. The night before. Thursday evening.”
“And what did you do when you went to the office after Bottweill had died?”
“I dumped the wastebasket and put the stuff back in it, piece by piece. No part of the license was there.”
“You made sure of that?”
“Yes.”
Wolfe left me and asked Cramer, “Any questions?”
“No. He lied in his statement. I’ll attend to that later. What I want—”
Margot Dickey blurted, “Then Cherry took it!” She craned her neck to see across the others. “You took it, you slut!”
“I did not.” The steel was in Cherry’s chirp again. Her eyes didn’t leave Wolfe, and she told him, “I’m not going to wait any longer—”
“Miss Quon!” he snapped. “I’m doing this.” He returned to Cramer. “Now another fact. Yesterday I had a luncheon appointment with Mr. Bottweill at Rusterman’s restaurant. He had once dined at my table and wished to reciprocate. Shortly before I left to keep the appointment he phoned to ask me to do him a favor. He said he was extremely busy and might be a few minutes late, and he needed a pair of white cotton gloves, medium size, for a man, and would I stop at some shop on the way and get them. It struck me as a peculiar request, but he was a peculiar man. Since Mr. Goodwin had chores to do, and I will not ride in taxicabs if there is any alternative, I had engaged a car at Baxter’s, and the chauffeur recommended a shop on Eighth Avenue between Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Streets. We stopped there and I bought the gloves.”
Cramer’s eyes were such narrow slits that none of the blue-gray showed. He wasn’t buying any part of it, which was unjustified, since some of it was true.
Wolfe went on. “At the lunch table I gave the gloves to Mr. Bottweill, and he explained, somewhat vaguely, what he wanted them for. I gathered that he had taken pity on some vagabond he had seen on a park bench, and had hired him to serve refreshments at his office party, costumed as Santa Claus, and had decided that the only way to make his hands presentable was to have him wear gloves. You shake your head, Mr. Cramer?”
“You’re damn right I do. You would have reported that. No reason on earth not to. Go ahead and finish.”
“I’ll finish this first. I didn’t report it because I thought you would find the murderer without it. It was practically certain that the vagabond had merely skedaddled out of fright, since he couldn’t possibly have known of the jar of poison in the workshop, not to mention other considerations. And as you know, I have a strong aversion to involvement in matters where I have no concern or interest. You can of course check this—with the staff at Rusterman’s, my presence there with Mr. Bottweill, and with the chauffeur, my conferring with him about the gloves and our stopping at the shop to buy them.”
“You’re reporting it now.”
“I am indeed.” Wolfe was unruffled. “Because I understood from Mr. Goodwin that you were extending and intensifying your search for the man who was there as Santa Claus, and with your army and your resources it probably wouldn’t take you long when the holiday had ended to learn where the gloves were bought and get a description of the man who bought them. My physique is not unique, but it is—uncommon, and the only question was how long it would take you to get to me, and then I would be under inquisition. Obviously I had to report the episode to you and suffer your rebuke for not reporting it earlier, but I wanted to make it as tolerable as possible. I had one big advantage: I knew that the man who acted Santa Claus was almost certainly not the murderer, and I decided to use it. I needed first to have a talk with one of those people, and I did so, with Miss Quon, who came here last evening.”
“Why Miss Quon?”
Wolfe turned a hand over. “When I have finished you can decide whether such details are important. With her I discussed her associates at that place and their relationships, and I became satisfied that Bottweill had in fact decided to marry her. That was all. You can also decide later whether it is worthwhile to ask her to corroborate that, and I have no doubt she will.”
He was looking at Cherry, of course, for any sign of danger. She started to blurt it out once, and might again. But, meeting his gaze, she didn’t move a muscle.
Wolfe returned to Cramer. “This morning I acted. Mr. Goodwin was absent, at the District Attorney’s office, so I called in Mr. Panzer. After spending an hour with me here he went to do some errands. The first one was to learn whether Bottweill’s wastebasket had been emptied since his conversation with Miss Dickey in his office Thursday evening. As you know, Mr. Panzer is highly competent. Through Miss Quon he got the name and address of the cleaning woman, found her and talked with her, and was told that the wastebasket had been empti
ed at about six o’clock Thursday afternoon and not since then. Meanwhile I—”
“Cherry took it—the pieces,” Margot said.
Wolfe ignored her. “Meanwhile I was phoning everyone concerned—Mrs. Jerome and her son, Miss Dickey, Miss Quon, Mr. Hatch, and Mr. Kiernan—and inviting them to come here for a conference at six-fifteen. I told them that Mr. Goodwin had information which he intended to give the police, which was not true, and that I thought it best to discuss it first with them.”
“I told you so,” Hatch muttered.
Wolfe ignored him too. “Mr. Panzer’s second errand, or series of errands, was the delivery of some messages. He had written them in longhand, at my dictation here this morning, on plain sheets of paper, and had addressed plain envelopes. They were identical and ran as follows:
“When I was there yesterday putting on my costume I saw you through a crack in the door and I saw what you did. Do you want me to tell the cops? Be at Grand Central information booth upper level at 6:30 today. I’ll come up to you and say ‘Saint Nick.’ ”
“By God,” Cramer said, “you admit it.”
Wolfe nodded. “I proclaim it. The messages were signed ‘Santa Claus.’ Mr. Panzer accompanied the messenger who took them to the persons I have named, and made sure they were delivered. They were not so much shots at random as they may appear. If one of those people had killed Bottweill it was extremely likely that the poison had been put in the bottle while the vagabond was donning the Santa Claus costume; Miss Quon had told me, as no doubt she has told you, that Bottweill invariably took a drink of Pernod when he returned from lunch; and, since the appearance of Santa Claus at the party had been a surprise to all of them, and none of them knew who he was, it was highly probable that the murderer would believe he had been observed and would be irresistibly impelled to meet the writer of the message. So it was a reasonable assumption that one of the shots would reach its target. The question was, which one?”
Wolfe stopped to pour beer. He did pour it, but I suspected that what he really stopped for was to offer an opening for comment or protest. No one had any, not even Cramer. They all just sat and gazed at him. I was thinking that he had neatly skipped one detail: that the message from Santa Claus had not gone to Cherry Quon. She knew too much about him.
Wolfe put the bottle down and turned to go on to Cramer. “There was the possibility, of course, that more than one of them would go to you with the message, but even if you decided, because it had been sent to more than one, that it was some hoax, you would want to know who perpetrated it, and you would send one of them to the rendezvous under surveillance. Any one or more, excepting the murderer, might go to you, or none might; and surely only the murderer would go to the rendezvous without first consulting you. So if one of those six people was guilty, and if it had been possible for Santa Claus to observe him, disclosure seemed next to certain. Saul, you may now report. What happened? You were in the vicinity of the information booth shortly before six-thirty?”
Necks were twisted for a view of Saul Panzer. He nodded. “Yes, sir. At six-twenty. Within three minutes I had recognized three Homicide men scattered around in different spots. I don’t know if they recognized me or not. At six twenty-eight I saw Alfred Kiernan walk up near the booth and stand there, about ten feet away from it. I was just about to go and speak to him when I saw Margot Dickey coming up from the Forty-second Street side. She approached to within thirty feet of the booth and stood looking around. Following your instructions in case more than one of them appeared and Miss Dickey was one of them, I went to her and said, ‘Saint Nick.’ She said, ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ I said, ‘Excuse me, I’ll be right back,’ and went over to Alfred Kiernan and said to him, ‘Saint Nick.’ As soon as I said that he raised a hand to his ear, and then here they came, the three I had recognized and two more, and then Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins. I was afraid Miss Dickey would run, and she did start to, but they had seen me speak to her, and two of them stopped her and had her.”
Saul halted because of an interruption. Purley Stebbins, seated next to him, got up and stepped over to Margot Dickey and stood there behind her chair. To me it seemed unnecessary, since I was sitting not much more than arm’s length from her and might have been trusted to grab her if she tried to start anything, but Purley is never very considerate of other people’s feelings, especially mine.
Saul resumed, “Naturally it was Miss Dickey I was interested in, since they had moved in on a signal from Kiernan. But they had her, so that was okay. They took us to a room back of the parcel room and started in on me, and I followed your instructions. I told them I would answer no questions, would say nothing whatever, except in the presence of Nero Wolfe, because I was acting under your orders. When they saw I meant it they took us out to two police cars and brought us here. Anything else?”
“No,” Wolfe told him. “Satisfactory.” He turned to Cramer. “I assume Mr. Panzer is correct in concluding that Mr. Kiernan gave your men a signal. So Mr. Kiernan had gone to you with the message?”
“Yes.” Cramer had taken a cigar from his pocket and was squeezing it in his hand. He does that sometimes when he would like to squeeze Wolfe’s throat instead. “So had three of the others—Mrs. Jerome, her son, and Hatch.”
“But Miss Dickey hadn’t?”
“No. Neither had Miss Quon.”
“Miss Quon was probably reluctant, understandably. She told me last evening that the police’s ideas of Orientals are very primitive. As for Miss Dickey, I may say that I am not surprised. For a reason that does not concern you, I am even a little gratified. I have told you that she told Mr. Goodwin that Bottweill had torn up the marriage license and put the pieces in his wastebasket, and they weren’t there when Mr. Goodwin looked for them, and the wastebasket hadn’t been emptied since early Thursday evening. It was difficult to conceive a reason for anyone to fish around in the wastebasket to remove those pieces, so presumably Miss Dickey lied; and if she lied about the license, the rest of what she told Mr. Goodwin was under suspicion.”
Wolfe upturned a palm. “Why would she tell him that Bottweill was going to marry her if it wasn’t true? Surely a stupid thing to do, since he would inevitably learn the truth. But it wasn’t so stupid if she knew that Bottweill would soon die; indeed it was far from stupid if she had already put the poison in the bottle; it would purge her of motive, or at least help. It was a fair surmise that at their meeting in his office Thursday evening Bottweill had told her, not that he would marry her, but that he had decided to marry Miss Quon, and she decided to kill him and proceeded to do so. And it must be admitted that she would probably never have been exposed but for the complications injected by Santa Claus and my resulting intervention. Have you any comment, Miss Dickey?”
Cramer left his chair, commanding her, “Don’t answer! I’m running this now,” but she spoke.
“Cherry took those pieces from the wastebasket! She did it! She killed him!” She started up, but Purley had her arm and Cramer told her, moving for her, “She didn’t go there to meet a blackmailer, and you did. Look in her bag, Purley. I’ll watch her.”
IX
Cherry Quon was back in the red leather chair. The others had gone, and she and Wolfe and I were alone. They hadn’t put cuffs on Margot Dickey, but Purley had kept hold of her arm as they crossed the threshold, with Cramer right behind. Saul Panzer, no longer in custody, had gone along by request. Mrs. Jerome and Leo had been the first to leave. Kiernan had asked Cherry if he could take her home, but Wolfe had said no, he wanted to speak with her privately, and Kiernan and Hatch had left together, which showed a fine Christmas spirit, since Hatch had made no exceptions when he said he despised all of them.
Cherry was on the edge of the chair, spine straight, hands together in her lap. “You didn’t do it the way I said,” she chirped, without steel.
“No,” Wolfe agreed, “but I did it.” He was curt. “You ignored one complication, the possibility that you killed Bottw
eill yourself. I didn’t, I assure you. I couldn’t very well send you one of the notes from Santa Claus, under the circumstances; but if those notes had flushed no prey, if none of them had gone to the rendezvous without first notifying the police, I would have assumed that you were guilty and would have proceeded to expose you. How, I don’t know; I let that wait on the event; and now that Miss Dickey has taken the bait and betrayed herself it doesn’t matter.”
Her eyes had widened. “You really thought I might have killed Kurt?”
“Certainly. A woman capable of trying to blackmail me to manufacture evidence of murder would be capable of anything. And, speaking of evidence, while there can be no certainty about a jury’s decision when a personable young woman is on trial for murder, now that Miss Dickey is manifestly guilty you may be sure that Mr. Cramer will dig up all he can get, and there should be enough. That brings me to the point I wanted to speak about. In the quest for evidence you will all be questioned exhaustively and repeatedly. It will—”
The Twelve Crimes of Christmas Page 7