by Rex Stout
“As you please. As you must.”
“It doesn’t matter. I went back to bed, but I didn’t sleep. I wasn’t afraid I might do something in my sleep, I was afraid of what my mind might do. I had found out that I couldn’t manage my mind. So yesterday afternoon I decided I would fix it so my mind would have to quit. I would tell someone all about it and then the plan wouldn’t work, and no plan would work so I wouldn’t get caught. Telling a friend wouldn’t do, not a real friend, because that would leave a loophole. Of course I couldn’t tell the police. I have no pastor because I don’t go to church. Then I thought of you, and I phoned for an appointment, and here I am. That’s all, except this: I want you to promise that if my husband is shot and killed you will tell the police about my coming here and what I said.”
Wolfe grunted.
She unlocked her fingers, straightened her shoulders, and took a long deep breathin with her mouth closed and out with it open. “There!” she said. “That’s it.”
Wolfe was regarding her. “I engaged only to listen,” he said, “but I must offer a comment. Your stratagem should be effective as a self-deterrent, but what if someone else shoots him? And I report this conversation to the police. You’ll be in a pickle.”
“Not if I didn’t do it.”
“Pfui. Of course you will, unless the culprit is soon exposed.”
“If I didn’t do it I wouldn’t care.” She extended a hand, palm up. “Mr. Wolfe. After I decided to tell you and made the appointment, I had the first good night’s sleep I have had for a month. No one is going to shoot him. I want you to promise, so I can’t.”
“I advise you not to insist on a promise.”
“I must! I must know!”
“Very well.” His shoulders went up a quarter of an inch and down again.
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
She opened her bag, a large tan leather one, and took out a checkfold and a pen. “I would rather make it a check than cash,” she said, “so it will be on record. Is a check all right?”
“Certainly.”
“I mentioned a hundred dollars to Mr. Goodwin. Will that be enough?”
He said yes, and she wrote, resting the check on the side of the bag. To save her the trouble of getting up to hand it over I went and took it, but when she had closed the bag she arose anyway, and was turning to get her coat from the back of the chair when Wolfe spoke.
“Ten minutes of your half-hour is left, Mrs. Hazen, if you have any use for it.”
“No, thank you. I just realized that wasn’t exactly the truth, what I told Mr. Goodwin, that I only wanted to tell you something. I wanted you to promise something too. I do thank you and I won’t take-oh! You say I have ten minutes?” She glanced at her wrist. She turned to me. “I would love to see the orchids-just a quick look. If you would, Mr. Goodwin?”
“It will be a pleasure,” I said, and meant it, but Wolfe was pushing back his chair. “Mr. Goodwin doesn’t owe you the ten minutes. I do,” he said, lifting his bulk. “Come with me. You won’t need your coat.” He headed for the door. She gave me a glance with a suggestion of a smile, and followed him out. The sound came from the hall of the elevator door opening and closing.
I had no kick coming. The ten thousand orchids in the three plant rooms up on the roof of the old brownstone were his, not mine. He did like to show them off-so would you if they were yours-but that wasn’t why he had intervened. He had some letters to dictate, and he thought that if I took her up to look at the orchids there was no telling when we would come back down. Years ago he decided, on insufficient evidence, that I forget about time when I am with an attractive young woman, and once he has decided something that settles it.
The phone rang. I got it at my desk and told it, “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.” It was a man over in Jersey who makes sausage to Wolfe’s specifica-tions, wanting to know if we were ready for a shipment, and I switched it to Fritz in the kitchen. Thinking there was no better way for a licensed detective to fill idle time than by snooping, I picked up the mink coat for an inspection. When I saw that the label said Bergmann I decided that inspection would be superfluous and put it back on the chair. I picked up the gun that she wasn’t going to shoot her husband with. It was a Drexel.32, nice and clean, and the cylinder was full of cartridges, nothing for a lady with no permit to be toting around town. I inspected her check, East Side Bank and Trust Company, signed Lucy Hazen, and went and put it in the safe. After glancing at my watch, I turned on the radio for the noon news, and stood and stretched while I listened to it. Algeria was boiling. A building contrac-tor on Staten Island denied that he had had favors from a politician. Fidel Castro was telling the Cuban people that the people who ran the United States government were a bunch of bums (my translation). Then:
“The body of a man named Barry Hazen was found this morning in an alley between two buildings on Norton Street in the lower West Side of Manhattan. He had been shot in the back and had been dead for some hours. No further details are available at present. Mr. Hazen was a well-known public-relations counselor. The Democratic leaders in Congress have apparently decided to center their fire-”
I turned it off.
Chapter 2
I went and picked up the gun and smelled it, the barrel tip and the sides. That was silly but natural. When you would like to know if a gun has been fired recently you smell it automatically, but it doesn’t mean a thing unless it has just been fired, say within thirty minutes, and there has been no opportunity to clean it. I stood with it in my hand, looking at it, and then put it in a drawer of my desk. Her bag was there on the red leather chair, and I opened it and removed the contents. There were all the items you would expect a woman who wore Bergmann mink to have with her, but nothing more. I got the gun from the drawer, removed the cartridges, and examined them with a glass, to see if one of them, or maybe two, was brighter and newer than the others. They all looked alike. As I was returning the gun to the drawer the sound came from the elevator descending, its thud at the bottom, and the door opening. They entered, Mrs. Hazen in front, and she crossed to the red leather chair, picked up her bag, turned to Wolfe’s desk, and then turned to me.
“Where’s the gun?” she asked. “I’m taking it.”
“There has been a development, Mrs. Hazen.” I was facing her at arm’s length. “I turned on the radio for the news, and he said that-I’ll repeat it verbatim. He said, The body of a man named Barry Hazen was found this morning in an alley between two buildings on Norton Street in lower Manhattan. He had been shot in the back and had been dead for some hours. No further details are available at present. Mr. Hazen was a public-relations counselor.’ That’s what he said.”
She was gawking at me. “You’re m-m-m-m-” She started over. “You’re making it up.”
“No. That’s what he said. Your husband has been shot dead.”
The bag slipped from her hand to the floor and her face went white and stiff. I had seen people turn pale before, but I had never seen blood leave skin so thoroughly and so fast. She backed up an unsteady step, and I took her arm and eased her into the chair. Wolfe, who had stopped in the center of the room, snapped at me, “Get something. Brandy.”
I moved, but she said, “Not for me. He said that?”
“Yes.”
“He’s dead. He’s dead?”
“Yes.”
She rammed her fists against her temples and pounded them. Wolfe said, “I’ll be in the kitchen,” and turned to go. To him a woman overwhelmed, no matter by what, is merely a woman having a fit, and it’s too much for him. But I said, “Hold it, she’ll be all right in a minute,” and he came and looked down at her, let out a growl, went to his chair, and sat.
“I want to phone somebody,” she said. “I have to know. Who can I phone?” Her fists were in her lap.
“A shot of brandy or whisky wouldn’t hurt,” I told her.
“I don’t want anything. Who can I phone?”
&
nbsp; “Nobody.” Wolfe was curt. “Not just now.”
Her head jerked to him. “Why not?”
“Because he must first consider whether / should phone-phone the police to report what you have told me. I promised to. Archie. Where’s the gun?”
“In my desk drawer.”
“Has it been fired recently?”
“No telling. If so it’s been cleaned. It’s fully loaded and the cartridges all look alike.”
“Did she shoot him?”
That was routine; he merely wanted my opinion as a qualified expert on women. His over-all estimate of me and my relations with females is full of contradictions, but that doesn’t bother him. “For a quick guess,” I said, “no. To make it final I would need facts.”
“So would I. Did you shoot your husband, Mrs. Hazen?”
She shook her head.
“I prefer to hear it if you can speak. Did you shoot him?”
“No.” She had to push it out.
“Since my promise was to you, you may of course release me from it. Do you wish me to phone the po-lice?”
“Not now.” The blood was beginning to creep back into her skin. “You don’t have to now. You won’t ever have to. He’s dead, and I didn’t kill him.” She rose to her feet, not very steady, but not staggering. “That’s all over now.”
“Sit down.” It was a command. “It’s not so simple. When the police ask you where you were this morning from eleven o’clock on what will you say? Confound it, quit propping yourself on my desk and sit down! That’s better. What will you say?”
“Why���” She was on the edge of the chair. “Will they ask me that?”
“Certainly. Unless they already have the murderer and the evidence beyond all question, and that’s too much to hope for. You will have to account for every minute since you last saw your husband. Did you come here in a cab?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll say so. You’ll have to. And when they ask why you came to see me what will you say?”
She shook her head. She looked at me and back at him. “Oh,” she said. “You’ll have to tell me what to say.”
He nodded. “I expected that.” His head turned. “Archie. What grounds have you for your guess?”
I was back in my chair. “Partly personal,” I told him, “and partly professional. Personal, my general impres-sion of her, and specifically her smile when I let her in. Professional, two points. First, if she shot him last night after making an appointment with you and then came here with that jabber, she is either completely loony or the trickiest specimen I have ever laid eyes on, and I’ll buy neither one. Second, and this is really it, her face when she realized he was dead. She might fake a faint or the staggers or even some fancy hysterics, but no woman alive could make her blood go like that. I said I would need facts to make it final, but I should have said I would need facts, and good ones, to make me guess again.”
Wolfe grunted and turned to her with a scowl. “Granting that Mr. Goodwin’s grounds are valid, what then? When the police leam that the widow of a man murdered last night came to see me this morning they will harass me beyond tolerance. I owe you nothing. You are not my client. You have paid me a hundred dollars for half an hour of my time, now stretched to more than an hour, and released me from my promise, so that incident is closed. You asked me to tell you what to say when they ask you what you came here for, but they will also ask me. What if you fail to follow my advice and my account differs from yours? Why should I take that risk? I can see no alternative-What are you doing now?”
She had opened her bag and was taking out the checkfold and pen. “I’m going to write a check,” she said. “Then I’ll be your client. What shall I��� how much?”
He nodded. “I expected that too. It won’t do. I am not a blackmailer. I take pay for services, not for forbear-ance, and you may not need my services. If you do, we’ll see. Will you answer some questions?”
“Of course. But I’ve taken more than my half an hour, and I owe you-”
“No. If you didn’t shoot your husband we have both been snared by circumstance. First, instead of a question, a statement: you can’t take the gun. The gun stays here. Now. When and where did-”
“But I’m going to put it back where I got it!”
“No. I accept Mr. Goodwin’s guess as a hypothesis, but I can’t let you take the gun. When and where did you last see your husband?”
“Last night. At home. We had people for dinner.”
“Details. How many people? Their names.”
“They were clients of Barry’s, important clients-all but one. Mrs. Victor Oliver. Anne Talbot, Mrs. Henry Lewis Talbot. Jules Khoury. Ambrose Perdis. Ted-Theodore Weed-he’s not a client, he works for Barry. Seven, counting Barry and me.”
“When did the guests leave?”
“I don’t know exactly. Barry had told me he was going to discuss something with them, and I wouldn’t be needed, and after the coffee I left. That’s when I last saw him, there with them. I went upstairs to my bedroom.”
“Did you hear him when he went up to bed?”
“No. There’s a spare bedroom between his room and mine. And I was played out. I told you, I had the first good night’s sleep I have had for a month.”
“You didn’t see him this morning?” “No. He wasn’t there. He rises early. The maid who-oh. Oh!”
“What?”
“Nothing-nothing that matters to you. I am not liking myself, Mr. Wolfe. I said he rises early, but now I can say he rose early, and I wanted to sing it. I did! No one is good enough to have a right to be glad that someone has died. The Lord knows I’m not. What if I never loved him? What if I married him because-”
Wolfe cut her off. “If you please. You’ll have plenty of time for that. About the maid?”
She swallowed with her lips pressed tight. “I’m sorry. The maid who sleeps in and gets breakfast said he hadn’t come down, and she had gone up and the door of his room was open and his bed hadn’t been slept in. He had done that before, not very often, once or twice a month.”
“Without telling you where he was going or, afterwards, where he had been?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know or can you guess where he went last night, or with whom, or to whom?”
“No. I have no idea.”
“I am still assuming that you didn’t kill him, but how vulnerable are you? Were you continually in your house-it is a house, not an apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Were you in it continually from the time you went to your bedroom last night until you left this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Would the maid have heard you if you had gone out during the night? Sneaked out, and later in again?”
“I don’t think so. Her room is in the basement.”
Wolfe nodded. “You are vulnerable. What time did you leave this morning?”
“At five minutes past eleven. I wanted to be sure to get here on time.”
“When did you take the gun from the drawer in your husband’s room?” “Just before I left. I didn’t decide to bring it until the last minute.”
“How many people know that you despised your husband?”
She gazed at him, not blinking, no reply.
“‘Despise’ is your word, Mrs. Hazen. It is not ade-quate. No one kills a man, or wants to, merely because she despises him. But I’m not going into that; it could take all day. How many people know that you despised him?”
“I don’t think anyone does.” It was barely audible, and I have good ears. “I have never told anyone, not even my best friend. She may have suspected, I suppose she did.”
“Pfui.” Wolfe flipped a hand. “Your maid knows, for one, if she’s not a dolt. She is of course being questioned at this moment. Was your husband wealthy?”
“I don’t know. He had a large income, he must have, he was free with money. He owned the house.”
“Any children?”
“No.”
“You will inherit?”
Her eyes flashed. “Mr. Wolfe, this is ridiculous! I don’t want anything from him!”
“I am merely examining your position. You will inherit?”
“Yes. He told me I would.”
“Didn’t he know you despised him?”
“He was incapable of believing that anyone could despise him. I suppose he was a psychopath. I looked up psychopathy in the dictionary.”
“No doubt that was a help.” He looked up at the wall clock. “I presume you will now go home. Since you must tell the police that you were here you might as well say that you learned of your husband’s death from my radio; it will save you the bother of feigning surprise and shock.” He eyed her. “I said you would be in a pickle, and you are. When I asked what you wanted of me, I shall say that you consulted me in confidence and I will reveal nothing of your conversation. It will be a little ticklish, but until and unless you are arrested on a charge of murder the pressure will not be intolerable. So you may tell them as much about your visit here, or as little, as you please.”
She opened her bag. “I’m going to write a check. You must take it. You must!”
“No. You may not be in jeopardy. They may get the murderer today or tomorrow. If they do I may send you a bill for the extra hour; it will depend on my mood. If they don’t, and you wish to engage my services, and Mr. Goodwin’s guess has not been discredited, we’ll see.” He pushed his chair back and stood up.
She rose to her feet, steady this time, and I went and held her coat for her.
Chapter 3
When I returned to the office after letting her out, Wolfe had straightened up in his chair to lean forward, and, with his head cocked, was sniffing the air. For a second I thought he was pretending that our ex-client had polluted the atmosphere with perfume, but then I realized that he was merely trying to catch an odor from the kitchen, where Fritz was baking scallops in shells-or probably, since I could catch the odor without sniffing, he was deciding whether Fritz had used only shallots in the sauce or had added an onion. By the time I got to my chair he had settled it; anyway, he turned to me.