Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 27

by Three Witnesses

  “Could he?”

  “He didn’t to them, but he did to me later, when they let me see him.”

  “How did he account for it?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t like to, but I have to. He had remembered that last Friday afternoon, when he went to a conference at Jim Beebe’s office, he had left one of his cards there on Jim’s desk.”

  “Who was at the conference?”

  “Besides Paul—and Jim, of course—there were Sidney’s Aunt Margaret—Mrs. Savage—and Dick Savage, and Ann and her husband, Norman Horne.”

  “Were you there?”

  “No. I—I didn’t want to go. I had had enough of all the talk.”

  “You say he left one of his cards on Mr. Beebe’s desk. Do you mean he remembers that the card was on the desk when he left the conference?”

  “Yes, he’s pretty sure it was, but anyway, he left first. All the others were still there.”

  “Has Mr. Aubry now told the police of this?”

  “I don’t think so. He thought he wouldn’t, because he thought it would look as if he were trying to accuse one of Sidney’s relatives, and that would hurt more than it would help. That was why I didn’t like to tell you about it, but I knew I had to.”

  Wolfe grunted. “You did indeed, madam. You are in no position to afford the niceties of decent reticence. Since your husband was almost certainly killed by someone who was mortally inconvenienced by his resurrection, and we are excluding you and Mr. Aubry, his other heirs invite scrutiny and will get it. According to what Mr. Aubry told me yesterday, there are three of them: Mrs. Savage, her son, and her daughter. Where is Mr. Savage?”

  “He died years ago. Mrs. Savage is Sidney’s mother’s sister.”

  “She got, as did her son and her daughter, nearly a third of a million. What did that sum mean to her? What were her circumstances?”

  “I guess it meant a great deal. She wasn’t well off.”

  “What was she living on?”

  “Well—Sidney had been helping her.”

  Wolfe tightened his lips and turned a palm up. “My dear madam. Be as delicate as you please about judgments, but I merely want facts. Must I drag them out of you? A plain question: was Mrs. Savage living on Mr. Karnow’s bounty?”

  She swallowed. “Yes.”

  “What has she done with her legacy? Has she conserved it? The fact as you know it.”

  “No, she hasn’t.” Caroline’s chin lifted a little. “You’re quite right, I’m being silly—and anyway, lots of people know all about it. Mrs. Savage bought a house in New York, and last winter she bought a villa in southern France, and she wears expensive clothes and gives big parties. I don’t know how much she has left. Dick had a job with a downtown broker, but he quit when he got the inheritance from Sidney, and he is still looking for something to do. He is—well, he likes to be with women. It’s hard to be fair to Ann because she has wasted herself. She is beautiful and clever, and she’s only twenty-six, but there she is, married to Norman Horne, just throwing herself away.”

  “What does Mr. Horne do?”

  “He tells people about the time twelve years ago when he scored four touchdowns for Yale against Princeton.”

  “Is that lucrative?”

  “No. He says he isn’t fitted for a commercial society. I can’t stand him, and I don’t understand how Ann can. They live in an apartment on Park Avenue, and she pays the rent, and as far as I know she pays everything. She must.”

  “Well.” Wolfe sighed. “So that’s the job. While Mr. Aubry’s motive was admittedly more powerful than theirs, since he stood to lose not only his fortune but also his wife, they were by no means immune to temptation. How much have you been associating with them the past two years?”

  “Not much. With Aunt Margaret and Dick almost not at all. I used to see Ann fairly often, but very little since she married Norman Horne.”

  “When was that marriage?”

  “Two years ago. Soon after the estate was distributed.” She stopped, and then decided to go on. “That was one of Ann’s unpredictable somersaults. She was engaged to Jim Beebe—announced publicly, and the date set—and then, without even bothering to break it off, she married Norman Horne.”

  “Was Mr. Horne a friend of your husband’s?”

  “No, they never met. Ann found Norman—I don’t know where. They wouldn’t have been friends even if they had met, because Sidney wouldn’t have liked him. There weren’t many people Sidney did like.”

  “Did he like his relatives?”

  “No—if you want facts. He didn’t. He saw very little of them.”

  “I see.” Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes, and his lips began to work, pushing out and then pulling in, out and in, out and in. He only does that when he has something substantial to churn around in his skull. But that time I thought he was being a little premature, since he hadn’t even seen them yet, not one. Caroline started to say something, but I shook my head at her, and she subsided.

  Finally Wolfe opened his eyes and spoke. “You understand, madam, that the circumstances—particularly the finding of Mr. Aubry’s card, bearing his fingerprints, on the body—warrant an explicit assumption: that your husband was killed by one of the six persons present at the conference in Mr. Beebe’s office Friday afternoon; and, eliminating Mr. Aubry, five are left. You know them all, if not intimately at least familiarly, and I ask you: is one of them more likely than another? For any reason at all?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Do we have to—is this the only way?”

  “It is. That’s our assumption until it’s discredited. I want your best answer.”

  “I don’t know,” she insisted.

  I decided to contribute. “I doubt,” I put in, “if this would be a good buy at a nickel, but this morning at the DA’s office I met the whole bunch. I had a little chat with Mrs. Horne, who seems to like gags, and when the others appeared she introduced me to them. She told them I was going to give her the third degree, and she added, I quote, ‘I expect I’ll go to pieces and confess—’ Unquote. At that point Horne put his hand on her mouth and told her she talked too much. Mrs. Savage said it was her sense of humor.”

  “That’s like Ann,” Caroline said. “Exactly like her, at her worst.”

  Wolfe grunted. “Mr. Goodwin has a knack for putting women at their worst. He’s no help, and neither are you. You seem not to realize that unless I can expose one of those five as the murderer of your husband, Mr. Aubry is almost certainly doomed.”

  “I do realize it. It’s awful, but I do.” Her lips tightened. In a moment she spoke. “And I want to help! All night I was trying to think, and one thing I thought of—what Sidney said in his letter about something that would shock me. You said yesterday it’s not simple to disinherit a wife, but couldn’t he have done it some other way? Couldn’t he have signed something that would give someone a claim on the estate, perhaps the whole thing? Isn’t there some way he could have arranged for the—shock?”

  “Conceivably,” Wolfe admitted. “But there would have had to be an authentic transfer of ownership and possession, and there wasn’t. Or if he established a trust it would have had to be legally recorded, and the estate would never have been distributed. You’ll have to do better than that.” He cleared his throat explosively and straightened up. “Very well. I must tackle them. Will you please have them here at six o’clock, madam? All of them?”

  Her eyes widened at him. “Me? Bring them here?”

  “Certainly.”

  “But I can’t! How? What could I say? I can’t tell them that you think one of them killed Sidney, and you want—No! I can’t!” She came forward in the chair. “Don’t you see it’s just impossible? Anyhow, they wouldn’t come!”

  Wolfe turned. “Archie. You’ll have to get them. I prefer six o’clock, but if that isn’t feasible after dinner will do.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “Phone Mr. Parker and make an appointment for Mrs. Karnow. Phone Saul and tell him
I want him here as soon as possible. Then lunch. After lunch, proceed.” He turned to the client. “Will you join us, madam? Fritz’s rice-and-mushroom fritters are, if I may say so, palatable.”

  IV

  Since this is a democracy, thank God, please prepare to vote. All those in favor of my describing in full detail my efforts to the utmost, lasting a good five hours, to fill Wolfe’s order for three males and two females, say aye. I hear none. Since my eardrums are sensitive I won’t ask for the noes.

  Then I’ll sketch it. James M. Beebe, I found, was not one of the machines in one of the huge legal factories that occupy so many floors in so many of New York’s skyscrapers. He was soloing it in a modest space on the tenth floor of a midtown building. The woman in the little anteroom, the only visible or audible employee, with a typewriter on her left and a telephone on her right, said Mr. Beebe would be back soon, and, if you call thirty-five minutes soon, he was.

  The inner room he led me to must have been a little cramped with a conference of six people. Its furniture was adequate but by no means ornate. Beebe, who had looked runty alongside Mrs. Savage, could not be called impressive seated at his desk, with a large percentage of the area of his thin face taken up by the black-rimmed glasses. When I showed him my credentials, a note signed by Caroline Karnow saying that Nero Wolfe was acting for her, and told him that Wolfe would like to discuss the situation with those chiefly concerned at his office that afternoon or evening, he said that he understood that the police investigation was making progress, and that he questioned the wisdom of an investigation of a murder by a private detective.

  Wise or not, I said, Mrs. Karnow surely had the right to hire Wolfe if she wanted to. He conceded that. Also surely the widow of his former friend and client might reasonably expect him to cooperate in her effort to discover the truth. Wasn’t that so?

  He looked uncomfortable. He saw that a pencil on his desk was not in its proper place, and moved it, and studied it a while to decide if that was the best spot after all. At length he came back to me.

  “It’s like this, Mr. Goodwin,” he piped. “I sympathize deeply with Mrs. Karnow, of course. But any obligation I am under is not to her, but to my late friend and client, Sidney Karnow. I certainly will do anything I can to help discover the truth, but it is justifiable to suppose that in employing Nero Wolfe Mrs. Karnow’s primary purpose, if not her sole purpose, is to save Paul Aubry. As an officer of the law I cannot conscientiously participate in that. I am not Aubry’s attorney. I beg you to understand.”

  I kept after him. He stood pat. Finally, following instructions from Wolfe, I put a question to him.

  “I suppose,” I said, “you won’t mind helping to clear up a detail. At a conference in this room last Friday afternoon Aubry left one of his business cards on your desk. It was there when he left. What happened to it?”

  He cocked his head and frowned. “Here on my desk?”

  “Right.”

  The frown deepened. “I’m trying to remember— yes, I do remember. He suggested I might phone him later, and he put it there.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you phone him?”

  “No. As it turned out, there was no occasion to.”

  “Would you mind seeing if the card is around? It’s fairly important.”

  “Why is it important?”

  “That’s a long story. But I would like very much to see that card. Will you take a look?”

  He wasn’t enthusiastic about it, but he obliged. He looked among and under things on top of his desk, including the blotter, in the desk drawers, and around the room some—as, for instance, on top of a filing cabinet. I got down on my knees to see under the desk. No card.

  I scrambled to my feet. “May I ask your secretary?”

  “What’s this all about?” he demanded.

  “Nothing you would care to participate in. But the easiest way to get rid of me is to humor me on this one little detail.”

  He lifted the phone and spoke to it, and in a moment the door opened and the employee entered. He told her I wanted to ask her something, and I did so. She said she knew nothing about any card of Paul Aubry’s. She had never seen one, on Beebe’s desk or anywhere else, last Friday or any other day. That settled, she backed out, pulling the door with her.

  “It’s a little discouraging,” I told Beebe. “I was counting on collecting that card. Are you sure you don’t remember seeing one of the others pick it up?”

  “I’ve told you all I remember—that Aubry put a card on my desk.”

  “Was there an opportunity for one of them to pick it up without your noticing?”

  “There might have been. I don’t know what you’re trying to establish, Mr. Goodwin, but I will not be led by you to a commitment, even here privately. Probably during the meeting here on Friday I had occasion to leave this chair to get something from my files. I won’t say that gave someone an opportunity to remove something from my desk, but I can’t prohibit you from saying so.” He got to his feet. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

  “So am I,” I said emphatically.

  I arose and turned to go, but halfway to the door his voice came. “Mr. Goodwin.”

  I turned. He had left his chair and was standing at the end of the desk, stiff and straight. “I’m a lawyer,” he said in a different tone, “but I am also a man. Speaking as a man, I ask you to consider my position. My friend and client has been murdered, and the police are apparently convinced that they have the murderer in custody. Nero Wolfe, acting for Mrs. Karnow, wants to prove them wrong. His only hope of success is to fasten the guilt elsewhere. Isn’t that the situation?”

  “Roughly, yes.”

  “And you ask me to cooperate. You mentioned a conference in this office last Friday. Besides myself, there were five people here—you know who they were. None of them was, or is, my client. They were all dismayed by the return of Sidney Karnow alive. They were all in dread of personal financial calamity. They all asked me, one way or another, to intercede for them. I have of course given this information to the police, and I see no impropriety in my giving it also to Nero Wolfe. Beyond that I have absolutely no information or evidence that could possibly help him. I tell you frankly, if Paul Aubry is guilty I hope he is convicted and punished; but if one of the others is guilty I hope he—or she—is punished, and if I knew anything operant to that end I certainly would not withhold it.”

  He lifted a hand and dropped it. “All I’m trying to say—as a lawyer I’m not supposed to be vindictive, but as a man perhaps I am a little. Whoever killed Sidney Karnow should be punished.” He turned and went back to his chair.

  “A damn fine sentiment,” I agreed, and left him.

  On the way to the next customer I found a booth and phoned Wolfe a report. All I got in return was a series of grunts.

  The house Mrs. Savage had bought was in the Sixties, over east of Lexington Avenue. I am not an expert on Manhattan real estate, but after a look at the narrow gray brick three-layer item my guess was that it had set her back not more than a tenth of her three hundred thousand, not counting the mortgage. When there was no answer to my rings I felt cheated. I hadn’t expected anything as lavish as a dolled-up butler, but not even a maid to receive detectives?

  It was only a ten-minute walk to the Park Avenue address of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Horne. My luck stayed stubborn. The hallman said they were both out, phoned up at my request, and got no answer.

  I like to walk around Manhattan, catching glimpses of its wild life, the pigeons and cats and girls, but that day I overdid it, back and forth between my two objectives. Finally, from an ambush in a hamburger hell on Sixty-eighth Street, where I was sipping a glass of milk, I saw Aunt Margaret navigate the sidewalk across the street and enter the gray brick. I finished the milk, crossed over, and pushed the button.

  She opened the door a few inches, thought she saw a journalist, said, “I have nothing to say,” and
would have closed the door if it hadn’t been for my foot.

  “Wait a minute,” I objected. “We’ve been introduced—by your daughter, this morning. The name is Archie Goodwin.”

  She let the door come another inch for a better view of me, and the pressure of my foot kept it going. I crossed the threshold.

  “Of course,” she said. “We were rude to you, weren’t we? The reason I said I have nothing to say, they tell me that’s what I must say to everybody, but it’s quite true that my daughter introduced you, and we were rude. What do you want?”

  She sounded to me like a godsend. If I could kidnap her and get her down to the office, and phone the rest of them that we had her and she was being very helpful, it was a good bet that they would come on the run to yank her out of our clutches.

  I gave her a friendly eye and a warm smile. “I’ll tell you, Mrs. Savage. As your daughter told you, I work for Nero Wolfe. He thinks there are some aspects of this situation that haven’t been sufficiently considered. To mention only one, there’s the legal principle that a criminal may not profit by his crime. If it should be proved that Aubry killed your nephew, and that Mrs. Karnow was an accessory, what happens to her half of the estate? Does it go to you and your son and daughter, or what? That’s the sort of thing Mr. Wolfe wants to discuss with you. If you’ll come on down to his office with me, he’s waiting there for you. He wants to know how you feel about it, and he wants your advice. It will only take us—”

  A roar came from above. “What’s going on, Mumsy?”

  Heavy feet were descending stairs behind Mrs. Savage in a hurry. She turned. “Oh, Dickie? I supposed you were asleep.”

  He was in a silk dressing gown that must have accounted for at least two Cs of Cousin Sidney’s dough. I could have choked him. He had been there all the time. After ignoring all my bell ringing for the past two hours, here he was horning in just when I was getting a good start on a snatch.