Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 27

by Three Witnesses

As we hit the level of the lower hall Victor Talento’s door opened, and he emerged and spoke. “The District Attorney’s office phoned. Are you through with me? They want me down there.”

  “We’re through,” Purley rumbled. “We can run you down.”

  Talento said that would be fine and he would be ready in a minute. Purley told Loftus to give me Bootsy, and he handed me the leash.

  “I am willing,” I said helpfully, “to give you a detailed analysis of the dog’s conduct. It will take about a week.”

  “Go to hell,” Purley growled, “and take the goddam dog along.”

  I departed. Outside the morning was still fine. The presence of two PD cars in front of the scene of a murder had attracted a small gathering, and Bootsy and I were objects of interest as we appeared and started off. We both ignored the stares. We moseyed along, in no hurry, stopping now and then to give Bootsy a chance to inspect something if he felt inclined. At the fourth or fifth stop, more than a block away, I saw the quartet leaving number 29. Stebbins and Talento took one car and Loftus and the colleague the other, and they rolled off.

  I shortened up on Bootsy a little, walked him west until an empty taxi appeared, stopped it and got in, took a five-dollar bill from my wallet, and handed it to the hackie.

  “Thanks,” he said with feeling. “For what, down payment on the cab?”

  “You’ll earn it, brother,” I assured him. “Is there somewhere within a block or so of Arbor and Court where you can park for anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours?”

  “Not three hours for a finif.”

  “Of course not.” I got another five and gave it to him. “I doubt if it will be that long.”

  “There’s a parking lot not too far. On the street without a passenger I’ll be solicited.”

  “You’ll have a passenger—the dog. I prefer the street. He’s a nice dog. When I return I’ll be reasonable. Let’s see what we can find.”

  He pulled the lever and we moved. There are darned few legal parking spaces in all Manhattan at that time of day, and we cruised around several corners before we found one, on Court Street two blocks from Arbor. He backed into it and I got out, leaving the windows down three inches. I told him I’d be back when he saw me, and headed south, turning right at the second corner.

  There was no police car at 29 Arbor, and no gathering. That was satisfactory. Entering the vestibule, I pushed the button under Meegan and put my hand on the knob. No click. Pushing twice more and still getting no response, I tried Aland’s button, and that worked. After a short wait the click came, and I shoved the door open, entered, mounted two flights, went to the door, and knocked with authority.

  The squeaky voice came through. “Who is it?”

  “Goodwin. I was just here with the others. I haven’t got the dog. Open up.”

  The door swung slowly to a crack, and then wider. Jerome Aland was still in his gaudy pajamas. “For God’s sake,” he squeaked, “what do you want now? I need some sleep!”

  I didn’t apologize. “I was going to ask you some questions when I was here before,” I told him, “but the dog complicated it. It won’t take long.” Since he wasn’t polite enough to move aside, I had to brush him, skinny as he was, as I went in. “Which way?”

  He slid past me, and I followed him across to chairs. They were the kind of chairs that made Jewel Jones hate furnished apartments, and the rest of the furniture didn’t help any. He sat on the edge of one and demanded, “All right, what?”

  It was a little tricky. Since he was assuming I was one of the Homicide personnel, it wouldn’t do for me to know either too much or too little. It would be risky to mention Jewel Jones, because the cops might not have got around to her at all.

  “I’m checking some points,” I told him. “How long has Richard Meegan occupied the apartment below you?”

  “Hell, I’ve told you that a dozen times.”

  “Not me. I said I’m checking. How long?”

  “Nine days. He took it a week ago Tuesday.”

  “Who was the previous tenant? Just before him.”

  “There wasn’t any. It was empty.”

  “Empty ever since you’ve been here?”

  “No, I’ve told you, a girl had it, but she moved out about three months ago. Her name is Jewel Jones, and she’s a fine artist, and she got me my job at the night club where I work now.” His mouth worked. “I know what you’re doing, you’re trying to make it nasty, and you’re trying to catch me getting my facts twisted. Bringing that dog here to growl at me—can I help it if I don’t like dogs?”

  He ran his fingers, both hands, through his hair. When the hair was messed good he gestured like a night-club performer. “Die like a dog,” he said. “That’s what Phil did, died like a dog. Poor Phil, I wouldn’t want to see that again.”

  “You said,” I ventured, “that you and he were good friends.”

  His head jerked up. “I did not. Did I say that?”

  “More or less. Maybe not in those words. Why, weren’t you?”

  “We were not. I haven’t got any good friends.”

  “You just said that the girl that used to live here got you a job. That sounds like a good friend. Or did she owe you something?”

  “Not a damn thing. Why do you keep bringing her up?”

  “I didn’t bring her up, you did. I only asked who was the former tenant in the apartment below you. Why, would you rather keep her out of it?”

  “I don’t have to keep her out. She’s not in it.”

  “Perhaps not. Did she know Philip Kampf?”

  “I guess so. Sure she did.”

  “How well did she know him?”

  He shook his head. “Now you’re getting personal, and I’m the wrong person. If Phil was alive you could ask him, and he might tell you. Me, I don’t know.”

  I smiled at him. “All that does, Mr. Aland, is make me curious. Somebody in this house murdered Kampf. So we ask you questions, and when we come to one you shy at, naturally we wonder why. If you don’t like talking about Kampf and that girl, think what it could mean. For instance, it could mean that the girl was yours, and Kampf took her away from you, and that was why you killed him when he came here yesterday. Or it could—”

  “She wasn’t mine!”

  “Uh-huh. Or it could mean that although she wasn’t yours, you were under a deep obligation to her, and Kampf had given her a dirty deal, or he was threatening her with something, and she wanted him disposed of, and you obliged. Or of course it could be merely that Kampf had something on you.”

  He had his head tilted back so he could look down on me. “You’re in the wrong racket,” he asserted. “You ought to be writing TV scripts.”

  I stuck with him only a few more minutes, having got all I could hope for under the circumstances. Since I was letting him assume that I was a city employee, I couldn’t very well try to pry him loose for a trip to Wolfe’s place. Also I had two more calls to make, and there was no telling when I might be interrupted by a phone call or a courier to one of them from downtown. The only further item I gathered from Jerome Aland was that he wasn’t trying to get from under by slipping in any insinuations about his co-tenants. He had no opinions or ideas about who had killed poor Phil. When I left he stood up, but he let me go and open the door for myself.

  I went down a flight, to Meegan’s door, and knocked and waited. Just as I was raising a fist to make it louder and better there were footsteps inside, and the door opened. Meegan was still in his shirt sleeves and still uncombed.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “Back again,” I said firmly but not offensively. “With a few questions. If you don’t mind?”

  “You know damn well I mind.”

  “Naturally. Mr. Talento has been called down to the District Attorney’s office. This might possibly save you another trip there.”

  He sidestepped, and I went in. The room was the same size and shape as Aland’s, above, and the furniture, though different, was no
more desirable. The table against a wall was lopsided—probably the one that Jewel Jones hoped they had fixed for him. I took a chair at its end, and he took another and sat frowning at me.

  “Haven’t I seen you before?” he wanted to know.

  “Sure, we were here with the dog.”

  “I mean before that. Wasn’t it you in Nero Wolfe’s office yesterday?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How come?”

  I raised my brows. “Haven’t you got the lines crossed, Mr. Meegan? I’m here to ask questions, not to answer them. I was in Wolfe’s office on business. I often am. Now—”

  “He’s a fat, arrogant halfwit!”

  “You may be right. He’s certainly arrogant. Now, I’m here on business.” I got out my notebook and pencil. “You moved into this place nine days ago. Please tell me exactly how you came to take this apartment.”

  He glared. “I’ve told it at least three times.”

  “I know. This is the way it’s done. I’m not trying to catch you in some little discrepancy, but you could have omitted something important. Just assume I haven’t heard it before. Go ahead.”

  “Oh, my God.” His head dropped and his lips tightened. Normally he might not have been a bad-looking guy, with blond hair and gray eyes and a long bony face, but now, having spent the night, or most of it, with Homicide and the DA, he looked it, especially his eyes, which were red and puffy.

  He lifted his head. “I’m a commercial photographer—in Pittsburgh. Two years ago I married a girl named Margaret Ryan. Seven months later she left me. I didn’t know whether she went alone or with somebody. She just left. She left Pittsburgh too, or anyway I couldn’t find her there, and her family never saw her or heard from her. About five months later, about a year ago, a man I know, a businessman I do work for, came back from a trip to New York and said he’d seen her in a theater here with a man. He went and spoke to her, but she claimed he was mistaken. He was sure it was her. I came to New York and spent a week looking around but didn’t find her. I didn’t go to the police because I didn’t want to. You want a better reason, but that’s mine.”

  “I’ll skip that.” I was writing in the notebook. “Go ahead.”

  “Two weeks ago I went to look at a show of pictures at the Institute in Pittsburgh. There was a painting there, an oil, a big one. It was called ‘Three Young Mares at Pasture,’ and it was an interior, a room, with three women in it. One of them was on a couch, and two of them were on a rug on the floor. They were eating apples. The one on the couch was my wife. I was sure of it the minute I saw her, and after I stood and studied it I was even surer. There was absolutely no doubt of it.”

  “We’re not challenging that,” I assured him. “What did you do?”

  “The artist’s signature looked like Chapple, but of course the catalogue settled that. It was Ross Chaffee. I went to the Institute office and asked about him. They thought he lived in New York but weren’t sure. I had some work on hand I had to finish, and it took a couple of days, and then I came to New York. I had no trouble finding Ross Chaffee; he was in the phone book. I went to see him at his studio—here in this house. First I told him I was interested in that figure in his painting, that I thought she would be just right to model for some photographs I wanted to do, but he said that his opinion of photography as a medium was such that he wouldn’t care to supply models for it, and he was bowing me out, so I told him how it was. I told him the whole thing. Then he was different. He sympathized with me and said he would be glad to help me if he could, but he had painted that picture more than a year ago, and he used so many different models for his pictures that it was impossible to remember which was which.”

  Meegan stopped, and I looked up from the notebook. He said aggressively, “I’m repeating that that sounded phony to me.”

  “Go right ahead. You’re telling it.”

  “I say it was phony. A photographer might use hundreds of models in a year, and he might forget, but not a painter. Not a picture like that. I got a little tactless with him, and then I apologized. He said he might be able to refresh his memory and asked me to phone him the next day. Instead of phoning I went back the next day to see him, but he said he simply couldn’t remember and doubted if he ever could. I didn’t get tactless again. Coming in the house, I had noticed a sign that there was a furnished apartment to let, and when I left Chaffee I found the janitor and rented it, and went to my hotel for my bags and moved in. I knew damn well my wife had modeled for that picture, and I knew I could find her. I wanted to be as close as I could to Chaffee and the people who came to see him.”

  I wanted something too. I wanted to say that he must have had a photograph of his wife along and that I would like to see it, but of course I didn’t dare, since it was a cinch that he had already either given it to the cops, or refused to, or claimed he didn’t have one. So I merely asked, “What progress did you make?”

  “Not much. I tried to get friendly with Chaffee but didn’t get very far. I met the other two tenants, Talento and Aland, but that didn’t get me anywhere. Finally I decided I would have to get some expert help, and that was why I went to see Nero Wolfe. You were there, you know how that came out—that big blob.”

  I nodded. “He has dropsy of the ego. What did you want him to do?”

  “I’ve told you.”

  “Tell it again.”

  “I was going to have him tap Chaffee’s phone.”

  “That’s illegal,” I said severely.

  “All right, I didn’t do it.”

  I flipped a page of the notebook. “Go back a little. During that week, besides the tenants here, how many of Chaffee’s friends and acquaintances did you meet?”

  “Just two, as I’ve told you. A young woman, a model, in his studio one day, and I don’t remember her name, and a man that was there another day, a man that Chaffee said buys his pictures. His name was Braunstein.”

  “You’re leaving out Philip Kampf.”

  Meegan leaned forward and put a fist on the table. “Yes, and I’m going to leave him out. I never saw him or heard of him.”

  “What would you say if I said you were seen with him?”

  “I’d say you were a dirty liar!” The red eyes looked redder. “As if I wasn’t already having enough trouble, now you set on me about a murder of a man I never heard of! You bring a dog here and tell me to pat it, for God’s sake!”

  I nodded. “That’s your hard luck, Mr. Meegan. You’re not the first man that’s had a murder for company without inviting it.” I closed the notebook and put it in my pocket. “You’d better find some way of handling your troubles without having people’s phones tapped.” I arose. “Stick around, please. You may be wanted downtown anyhow.”

  He went to open the door for me. I would have liked to get more details of his progress with Ross Chaffee, or lack of it, and his contacts with the other two tenants, but it seemed more important to have some words with Chaffee before I got interrupted. As I mounted the two flights to the top floor my wristwatch said twenty-eight minutes past ten.

  V

  “I know there’s no use complaining,” Ross Chaffee said, “about these interruptions to my work. Under the circumstances.” He was being very gracious about it.

  The top floor was quite different from the others. I don’t know what his living quarters in front were like, but the studio, in the rear, was big and high and anything but crummy. There were sculptures around, big and little, and canvases of all sizes were stacked and propped against racks. The walls were covered with drapes, solid gray, with nothing on them. Each of two easels—one much larger than the other—held a canvas that had been worked on. There were several plain chairs and two upholstered ones, and an oversized divan, nearly square. I had been steered to one of the upholstered numbers, and Chaffee, still in his smock, had moved a plain one to sit facing me.

  “Only don’t prolong it unnecessarily,” he requested.

  I said I wouldn’t. “There are a cou
ple of points,” I told him, “that we wonder about a little. Of course it could be merely a coincidence that Richard Meegan came to town looking for his wife, and came to see you, and rented an apartment here just nine days before Kampf was murdered, but a coincidence like that will have to stand some going over. Frankly, Mr. Chaffee, there are those, and I happen to be one of them, who find it hard to believe that you couldn’t remember who modeled for an important figure in a picture you painted. I know what you say, but it’s still hard to believe.”

  “My dear sir.” Chaffee was smiling. “Then you must think I’m lying.”

  “I didn’t say so.”

  “But you do, of course.” He shrugged. “To what end? What deep design am I cherishing?”

  “I wouldn’t know. You say you wanted to help Meegan find his wife.”

  “No, not that I wanted to. I was willing to. He was a horrible nuisance.”

  “He must have been a first-class pest.”

  “He was. He is.”

  “It should have been worth some effort to get rid of him. Did you make any?”

  “I have explained what I did—in a statement, and signed it. I have nothing to add. I tried to refresh my memory. One of your colleagues suggested that I might have gone to Pittsburgh to look at the picture. I suppose he was being funny.”

  A flicker of annoyance in his fine dark eyes, which were as clear and bright as if he had had a good eight hours of innocent slumber, warned me that I was supposed to have read his statement, and if I aroused a suspicion that I hadn’t he might get personal.

  I gave him an earnest eye. “Look, Mr. Chaffee. This thing is bad for all concerned. It will get worse instead of better until we find out who killed Kampf. You men in this house must know things about one another, and maybe some things connected with Kampf, that you’re not telling. I don’t expect a man like you to pass out dirt just for the hell of it, but any dirt that’s connected with this murder is going to come out, and if you know of any and are keeping it to yourself you’re a bigger fool than you look.”

  “Quite a speech.” He was smiling again.

  “Thanks. You make one.”