by Rex Stout
Arbor Street, in the Village, was only three minutes away, and at that time of night on Easter Sunday there was no competition. When I pulled up at the curb in front of 116 she had the door open and was out the instant I stopped, but then she stuck her head back in and was smiling at me, or thought she was. It wasn’t much of a smile, but she tried. “Thank you anyway,” she said. “I’ll sleep on it, if I can sleep.”
I waited until she was inside, then headed uptown, drove to the garage and left the car, walked around the corner to the brownstone, and mounted the stoop, but when I used my key on the door it opened only to a two-inch gap. The chain-bolt was on. I pushed the button, and when I had to wait a full minute I knew it would be not Fritz but Wolfe. The bolt clanked and the door swung open and I entered.
“No?” he said in a tone of relief. Of course that was to be expected. I will not say that he would rather be arrested for flower-stealing than tackle a woman, but he was relieved. Postpone the evil hour.
“I got her,” I said, taking off my coat, “and I had her in the car. But she balked, and even if I had got her here she would have cracked, so I took her home. I’ll try her in the morning. Anything new?”
“No.”
“Has Tabby stirred?”
“No. I wish I had never heard of orchids.”
I gawked. “You are in pain. The worst we can get is thirty days, and they might even let Fritz bring us things.” He was pushing the button to open his elevator door. “If they take away our licenses we can peddle orchids,” I said to cheer him up, and went to the office to lock the safe.
Chapter 6
MONDAY MORNING I WASN’T at home when the invitation came, by phone, for me to call the DA’s office. At eight-fifteen, after breakfasting in the kitchen as usual, and dialing Iris Innes’ number and getting no answer, and going up to Wolfe’s room, accompanied by Fritz with Wolfe’s breakfast tray, to get instructions, and mounting another flight to tell Tabby good morning and finding him still in bed, I went down to the office, got the roll of film from the drawer, and left the house for a morning walk. Finding it cloudy and windy and raw, I buttoned my topcoat.
Surequick Pix, on Fortieth Street near Lexington, was supposed to be open at nine o’clock, but the door was locked and I had to wait. When the guy came he apparently resented me for finding him late, so I apologized and he promised to have the transparencies ready by five o’clock. That was the best I could get. I left the film, went and found a phone booth, rang Iris Innes, again got no answer, and dialed the number I knew best.
In a moment Wolfe’s voice, grumpy as always when he is disturbed in the plant rooms, was in my ear. “Yes?”
“I can get the pictures at five o’clock. No answer at Iris Innes’s number. I told Fritz to keep an eye and an ear on Tabby. Do I proceed?”
“No. You are wanted at the District Attorney’s office and I suppose you’ll have to go.”
“I could have forgotten to phone in.”
“No. Go. You might learn something.” He hung up.
From there on that day was one long dismal fizzle. No working detective ever detected less in nine straight hours than I did that Monday. The first two were spent in going down to Leonard Street for an extended talk with a dick and an assistant DA, which satisfied nobody. When I refused to furnish any biographical details except those connected with the proceedings in front of Saint Thomas’s they thought they would charge me as a material witness, but since that would accomplish nothing beyond putting me to the trouble and expense of getting bail, and might possibly mean future trouble for them, they skipped it. The main ruckus was about the film. I admitted that I had removed it from the camera before surrendering the camera to Cramer. They claimed that the film was evidence and I was withholding it. I claimed that while the camera might conceivably be evidence, since they were assuming that the murder weapon had been shot from a camera, the film was absolutely out of it, and it was my property, and if they tried taking it with a writ I knew a lawyer. I conceded that if, when the film was developed, anything showed that might be evidence, as for instance a needle in flight, it would be my duty to produce it. Finally the assistant DA, fed up, told me to beat it but keep myself available, and when I said I would be moving around on errands he instructed me to ring him at least once an hour.
Those errands. Still no answer from Iris Innes’s phone, and when I went to Arbor Street no answer to her doorbell either. At the Gazette Lon Cohen told me that Joe Herrick was at the DA’s office and might be there all day. So was Iris Innes, but he wasn’t sure about Alan Geiss and Augustus Pizzi. After thirty minutes out for lunch at an oyster bar I called on All-over Pictures, Inc., but no one there was answering questions about Augustus Pizzi. Having got the address of Alan Geiss, the free-lance, from Lon Cohen, I took the subway to Washington Heights to pass the time, and time was what I passed. His landlady, getting a kick out of it, one of her lodgers having his picture in the paper, would have loved to talk, but she was cross-eyed and I was cross, so I left her, went and found a phone booth and made my three hourly calls: to Iris Innes, no answer; to Wolfe, no news; and to the assistant DA, whose name was Doyle. When Doyle said he wanted to see me I was just as well pleased. Debating with him about the nature of evidence would be fully as helpful as what I was doing and would be more fun. I sought the subway.
But Doyle didn’t resume the discussion of evidence. As soon as I was seated at the end of his desk he took an object from a drawer and handed it to me and asked, “Do you know that man?”
It was an unusually good police picture, an excellent likeness, both the front view and the profile, but I thought it proper to study it a little. Having done so, I nodded and dropped it on the desk.
“I wouldn’t swear to it, but it looks like a specimen I met once in connection with a case-wait and I’ll tell you his name. Yeah. Tabby. A couple of years ago. I could have handed him in for a little mistake he made but didn’t. Why, has he made another mistake?”
“He has been identified as the man who grabbed the orchids off of Mrs. Bynoe as she lay on the sidewalk. By three people.”
“I’ll be darned. He has, or the picture has?”
“The picture-when did you see him last?”
I grinned at him. “Now look. I told you this morning what Mr. Wolfe told Inspector Cramer. Cramer himself said that he couldn’t have stuck the needle in her when he took the orchids because she was already dying, so what has it got to do with the murder? It’s like the film, exactly. I realize we’re not in a courtroom, so you’re not bound by the rules of evidence, but I am. I don’t intend-”
“When did you see him last?”
“Nope. Connect him up. Make it material and I’ll tell you every word I ever exchanged with him. I have a wonderful memory.”
He was unquestionably displeased. It looked for a while as if the next time I touched a sidewalk I would be under bond, and when he left the room, telling me to wait, with a dick there for company, I was sure of it, but when he came back after a long quarter of an hour he had something else on his mind and merely told me that was all. He didn’t even warn me to keep myself available.
So I got back uptown and to the office of Surequick Pix shortly after five o’clock, only to find I was in for another wait. My job wasn’t finished and wouldn’t be for an hour. He explained that the day after Easter was one of the busiest days of the year, and I went out to a booth and phoned Wolfe and tried Iris Innes again, and bought evening papers to get the latest on the Bynoe murder. There were pictures of all the church-front photographers. The one of me was a shot taken that day at the Gazette office, and I was squinting, which makes me look older.
A little after six the transparencies were ready, and, while I didn’t expect to find that I had caught anything as interesting as a needle in the air, there was a viewer right there on the counter and I thought I might as well take a look. There were eleven of them altogether. Five were close-ups I had taken previously up in the plant rooms, two were of
the exodus from the church before Mrs. Bynoe appeared, and four showed her and her escorts as they approached. The one I looked at longest was the fourth and last, and it confirmed my memory of what I had seen in the finder: all it had of Tabby was his arm and shoulder and the back of his head, and he was a good three feet away from Mrs. Bynoe.
No needle, no murder evidence, but a little caution wouldn’t hurt, so I asked the man for another envelope, which he kindly provided with no extra charge, put the Bynoe pictures in it, and put one envelope in my right-hand pocket and the other in my left. If the Mayor or the Governor or J. Edgar Hoover stopped me on the sidewalk and asked to see the pictures I took of the Easter parade it wasn’t necessary for him to know that I had concentrated on Mrs. Millard Bynoe. No one stopped me. It was half past six, still daylight, as I mounted the stoop of the brownstone, used my key, and found, to my surprise, that the chain-bolt wasn’t on.
But that surprise was nothing to what followed. The big old oak rack was so covered with hats and coats that I had to put mine on a chair, and Wolfe’s voice, raised a little for an audience, was coming through the open door to the office. I walked the length of the hall, looked in, saw District Attorney Skinner seated at my desk in my chair, and the room full of people. It was a shock. I don’t like other people sitting in my chair, not even a District Attorney.
Chapter 7
AS I ENTERED, heads turned and Wolfe stopped talking. Since my chair was occupied I wanted to ask him if I was invited, but held it; and as I circled around the cluster of chairs he spoke.
“That’s Mr. Goodwin’s desk, Mr. Skinner. If you don’t mind?”
That helped a little, but not much. He had never before arranged to stage a charade without even telling me, and besides, I had spent a good part of the day, under instructions, trying to corral four of those present: Iris Innes and Joe Herrick, whom I was acquainted with, and Alan Geiss and Augustus Pizzi, whom I had seen standing on boxes the day before. There was a vacant chair back of Geiss, and Skinner got up and moved to it. Inspector Cramer was just beyond, and in front of him was Henry Frimm. In the red leather chair, exactly as he had sat the previous evening, using only half the seat, with his back straight and his fists on his thighs, was Millard Bynoe.
Bynoe and Frimm and Cramer and Skinner I could stand, but the sight of the four photographers, after the day I had spent, was too much for me. I stood at my desk and asked Wolfe, “Am I in the way?”
“Sit down, Archie.” He was brusque. “The idea of this gathering came from Mr. Bynoe, and he arranged for it with Mr. Skinner. We have been at it half an hour but have made no progress. Sit down.”
I accepted that, since a billionaire philanthropist might plausibly have considerable drag with a District Attorney, but even so, if they had been there by six o’clock the preparations must have taken more than an hour, and I had phoned in at a quarter past five and he hadn’t mentioned it. He needed a lesson in cooperation. I got the envelope from my right-hand pocket and tossed it on his desk. If Cramer got curious and demanded a look, and wondered why I had been specifically interested in Mrs. Bynoe, let Wolfe juggle it. Of course, he would merely pick it up and drop it in a drawer.
But he didn’t. The Centrex had been bought for making a permanent record of color variations in blossoms, and the viewer was there on the desk. He pulled it to him, took the transparencies from the envelope, inserted one, inspected it, removed it, and inserted another.
Cramer spoke up. “What have you got there?”
“I beg your indulgence,” Wolfe muttered, and went on inspecting, shifting from one to another. He seemed to have a favorite, and I guessed it was the last of the series. After he had inserted it a third time and given it a good long minute, he lifted his head.
“Mr. Cramer and Mr. Skinner.” His voice had an edge. “If you will please come and take a look? This is one of the pictures Mr. Goodwin took yesterday-the last one.”
He turned the viewer around and pushed it across the desk. Cramer, there first, bent over to get his eyes at the right level. After ten seconds he grunted and moved aside to give Skinner a chance. The DA took a little longer, then straightened up.
“Interesting,” he told Wolfe. “He was certainly focused on Mrs. Bynoe. That man in front, apparently reaching for her-did he reach her?”
“I think not. Mr. Goodwin says he didn’t, and I gather that the others agree. But there is, to my eye, a suggestive detail. I wish you gentlemen would look again. Closely.”
They did so, longer than before. When they had finished Cramer demanded, “What’s the detail?”
Wolfe pulled the viewer back to him and took another look, then raised his head. “I may be wrong,” he conceded, “But it deserves inquiry and I would like to test it. Not with you gentlemen, for you have seen the picture. So has Mr. Goodwin. And Mr. Bynoe and Mr. Frimm were there.” His eyes moved. “Miss Innes and Mr. Herrick, if you will oblige us? Miss Innes, you will rise and move back a little so we can all see. You are Mrs. Bynoe, crossing the sidewalk and facing the cameras. Archie, you are the man who was apparently trying to reach her. Get in front of her, at the proper distance, with your back to the cameras. Mr. Herrick, you are Mrs. Bynoe’s escort, the one at her left. Take your position. No, closer to her, quite close, according to the picture. That’s better. Now. As you are crossing the sidewalk beside her, moving slowly, a man is suddenly there, facing her, apparently intending to touch her. Instinctively and abruptly you stretch your arms in front of her to fend him off. Don’t think about it; just do it; it was actually a reflex. Go ahead!”
I, in Tabby’s position, jerked forward an inch, and Herrick stuck his arms out in front of Iris Innes.
“Again, please,” Wolfe commanded. “You’re not attacking him; you are merely barring him off. Again!”
I jerked again and Herrick flung his arms across.
Wolfe nodded. “Thank you. Miss Innes, keep your position. Mr. Pizzi, will you demonstrate for us?”
Skinner said something to Cramer that I didn’t catch as Augustus Pizzi, who was barrel-shaped with slick black hair, replaced Joe Herrick and put himself in the mood by glaring at me. He performed with more zip than Herrick, and, after he had repeated it twice on request, made way for Alan Geiss. Geiss, from the expression on his long bony face, thought it was a lot of hooey, but he went through with it, twice.
“That will do,” Wolfe told us. “If you will resume your seats?” He turned the viewer around and pushed it across the desk. “Mr. Bynoe and Mr. Frimm, I think you should have a look at the picture.”
They had to wait because both Cramer and Skinner were at it ahead of them, for another go. Millard Bynoe was last. He peered at it for three seconds, not more, and then returned to the red leather chair and got his spine straight.
Cramer rasped, “I see where you’re headed, Wolfe, but watch your step.”
“I shall,” Wolfe assured him. His eyes went from right to left and back again. “Of course I am going to explore the possibility that Henry Frimm killed Mrs. Bynoe. After that demonstration it would be witless not to. All three of the demonstrators held their arms in approximately the same position, with their palms outward, whereas in the picture Mr. Frimm’s right arm is turned so that the palm is inward; and moreover, the tips of his thumb and forefinger are touching, which is absurd. All the demonstrators had their fingers spread on both hands. The position of Mr. Frimm’s hand and fingers is explicable under one assumption: that he was about to stick a needle into Mrs. Bynoe.”
I was aware that Skinner said something, and that Frimm started to leave his chair and decided not to, and that Iris Innes made a noise, but only vaguely because of Millard Bynoe. His jaw dropped open and his head was moving from side to side, from Wolfe to Frimm and back again, a perfect picture of a goof. He was making no effort to speak.
Frimm did make an effort. “This is before witnesses, Wolfe.”
Wolfe eyed him. “Yes, sir, I know. I have seen that picture only now, but I was too pre
ssed for prudence. Mr. Bynoe was so urgent about the job he hired me to do that I permitted him to get all these people here, though I hadn’t the slightest idea what I would do with them, and probably nothing would have been accomplished if Mr. Goodwin hadn’t turned up with that picture. You know what Mr. Bynoe hired me for; do you challenge my right to explore a possibility?”
“No, I don’t challenge you.” Frimm swallowed. “But there are witnesses.”
“There are indeed.” Wolfe’s eyes were half closed. “There is no question about opportunity; you were there, and your hand was there. The point arises: why did you select so public an arena, with cameras pointed at you? Obviously you did so deliberately, calculating that it would be assumed that the needle was shot from one of the cameras, as indeed it had been. Two questions remain: where did you get the needle and the poison? and why did you do it?”
He turned a hand over. “The first is for Mr. Cramer and his army. His talents and resources are ideally fitted for that. For the second, I can at the moment only offer suggestions. We are exploring possibilities, and one is offered by the fact that you are the operating head of the Bynoe Rehabilitation Fund and Mrs. Bynoe was active in its affairs. She may have discovered, or suspected, that you were making free with the Fund’s money, and was going to tell her husband. That can be explored by examination of the Fund’s books. Another suggestion is offered by Mr. Bynoe’s high regard for his wife’s integrity-he prefers the word ‘purity.’ It might be that-”
Bynoe put in. He had his jaw back under control and had found his voice. It had changed, though; it came out harsh and louder than necessary. “You will omit that, Mr. Wolfe.”
“No, sir,” Wolfe declared, “I will not.” He kept his eyes at Frimm. “It might be that you had a try at her integrity and were repulsed. Assuredly you would not have killed her because she indulged you, but what if she refused to? And what if you were so persistent that she resolved to inform her husband? You would have lost your job and all that it meant to you. Of course, an exploration of this possibility may be extremely difficult. If you have peculated there are records that will reveal it, but a rebuffed gallantry may have left no record. There may be no one alive, except you, who knows anything about it. In that case-”
