by Rex Stout
I heard her calling to someone, then apparently she covered the transmitter. I sat and waited. Wolfe sat and scowled at me. Flora Gallant stood for a good five minutes at my elbow, staring down at me, then turned and went to the red leather chair and lowered herself onto its edge. I looked at my wristwatch: 11:40. It had said 11:31 when the connection with Bianca Voss had been cut. More waiting, and then a male voice came.
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
“This is Carl Drew. What is your name, please?”
“My name is Watson, John H. Watson. Is Miss Voss all right?”
“May I have your address, Mr. Watson, please?”
“What for? Miss Voss knows my address. Is she all right?”
“I must have your address, Mr. Watson. I must insist. You will understand the necessity when I tell you that Miss Voss is dead. She was assaulted in her office and is dead. Apparently, from what you said, the assault came while she was on the phone with you, and I want your address. I must insist.”
I hung up, gently not to be rude, swiveled, and asked Flora Gallant, “Who is Carl Drew?”
“He’s the business manager. What happened?”
I went to Wolfe. “My guess was close. Miss Voss is dead. In her office. He said she was assaulted, but he didn’t say with what or by whom.”
He glowered at me, then turned to let her have it. She was coming up from the chair, slow and stiff. When she was erect she said, “No. No. It isn’t possible.”
“I’m only quoting Carl Drew,” I told her.
“It isn’t possible. He said that?”
“Distinctly.”
“But how-” She let it hang. She said, “But how-” stopped again, turned, and was going. When Wolfe called to her, “Here, Miss Gallant, your money,” she paid no attention but kept on, and he poked it at me, and I took it and headed for the hall. I caught up with her halfway to the front door, but when I offered it she just kept going, so I blocked her off, took her bag and opened it and dropped the bills in and closed it, handed it back, and went and pulled the door open. She hadn’t said a word. I stood on the sill and watched, thinking she might stumble going down the seven steps of the stoop, but she made it to the sidewalk and turned east, toward Ninth Avenue. When I got back to the office Wolfe was sitting with his eyes closed, breathing down to his big round middle. I went to my desk and put the phone book away.
“She is so stunned with joy,” I remarked, “that she’ll probably get run over. I should have gone and put her in a taxi.”
He grunted.
“One thing,” I remarked. “Miss Voss’s last words weren’t exactly gйnйreux. I would call them catty.”
He grunted.
“Another thing,” I remarked, “in spite of the fact that I was John H. Watson on the phone, we’ll certainly be called on by either Sergeant Stebbins or Inspector Cramer or both. When they go into whereabouts Flora will have to cough it up for her own protection. And we actually heard it. Also we’ll have the honor of being summoned to the stand. Star witnesses.”
He opened his eyes. “I’m quite aware of it,” he growled. “Confound it. Bring me the records on Laelia gouldiana.”
No orchid ever called a genius a slimy little ego in a big gob of fat. I remarked on that too, but to myself.
Chapter 2
SURE I APPRECIATE IT,” Cramer declared. “Why shouldn’t I? Very thoughtful of you. Saves me time and trouble. So it was eleven-thirty-one when you heard the blow?”
Inspector Cramer, big and brawny with a round red face and all his hair, half of it gray, had nothing to be sarcastic about as he sat in the red leather chair at six-thirty that Tuesday afternoon, and he knew it, but he couldn’t help it. It was his reaction, not to the present circumstances, but to his memory of other occasions, other experiences he had undergone in that room. He had to admit that we had saved him time and trouble when I had anticipated his visit by typing out a complete report of the session with Flora Gallant that morning, including the dialogue verbatim, and having it ready for him in duplicate, signed by both Wolfe and me. He had skimmed through it first, and then read it slowly and carefully.
“We heard no blow, identifiably,” Wolfe objected. His bulk was comfortably arranged in his oversize chair back of his desk. “Mr. Goodwin wrote that statement, but I read it, and it does not say that we heard a blow.”
Cramer found the place on page four and consulted it. “Okay. You heard a groan and a crash and rustles. But there was a blow. She was hit in the back of the head with a chunk of marble, a paperweight, and then a scarf was tied around her throat to stop her breathing. You say here at eleven-thirty-one.”
“Not when we heard the groan,” I corrected. “After that there were the other noises, then the connection went, and I said hello a few times, which was human but dumb. It was when I hung up that I looked at my watch and saw eleven-thirty-one. The groan had been maybe a minute earlier. Say eleven-thirty. If a minute is important.”
“It isn’t. But you didn’t hear the blow?”
“Not to recognize it, no.”
He went back to the statement, frowning at it, reading the whole first page and glancing at the others. He looked up, at Wolfe. “I know how good you are at arranging words. This implies that Flora Gallant was a complete stranger to you, that you had never had anything to do with her or her brother or any of the people at that place, but it doesn’t say so in so many words. I’d like to know.”
“The implication is valid,” Wolfe told him. “Except as related in that statement, I have never had any association with Miss Gallant or her brother, or, to my knowledge, with any of their colleagues. Nor has Mr. Goodwin. Archie?”
“Right,” I agreed.
“Okay.” Cramer folded the statement and put it in his pocket. “Then you had never heard Bianca Voss’s voice before and you couldn’t recognize it on the phone.”
“Of course not.”
“And you can’t hear it now, since she’s dead. So you can’t swear it was her talking to you.”
“Obviously.”
“And that raises a point. If it was her talking to you, she was killed at exactly half past eleven. Now there are four important people in that organization who had it in for Bianca Voss. They had admitted it. Besides Flora Gallant, there is Anita Prince, fitter and designer, been with Gallant eight years; Emmy Thorne, in charge of contacts and promotion, been with him four years; and Carl Drew, business manager, been with him five years. None of them killed Bianca Voss at half past eleven. From eleven-fifteen on, until the call came from a man who said he was John H. Watson, Carl Drew was down on the main floor, constantly in view of four people, two of them customers. From eleven o’clock on Anita Prince was on the top floor, the workshop, with Alec Gallant and two models and a dozen employees. At eleven-twenty Emmy Thorne called on a man by appointment at his office on Forty-sixth Street, and was with him and two other men until a quarter to twelve. And Flora Gallant was here with you. All airtight.”
“Very neat,” Wolfe agreed.
“Yeah. Too damn neat. Of course there may be others who wanted Bianca Voss out of the way, but as it stands now those four are out in front. And they’re all-”
“Why not five? Alec Gallant himself?”
“All right, five. They’re all in the clear, including him, if she was killed at eleven-thirty. So suppose she wasn’t. Suppose she was killed earlier, half an hour or so earlier. Suppose when Flora Gallant phoned her from here and put you on to talk with her, it wasn’t her at all, it was someone else imitating her voice, and she pulled that stunt, the groan and the other noises, to make you think you had heard the murder at that time.”
Wolfe’s brows were up. “With the corpse there on the floor.”
“Certainly.”
“Then you’re not much better off. Who did the impersonation? Their alibis still hold for eleven-thirty.”
“I realize that. But there were nineteen women around there altogether, and a woman who wouldn’t commit a murder
might be willing to help cover up after it had been committed. You know that.”
Wolfe wasn’t impressed. “It’s very tricky, Mr. Cramer. If you are supposing Flora Gallant killed her, it was elaborately planned. Miss Gallant phoned here yesterday morning to make an appointment for eleven this morning. Did she kill Miss Voss, station someone there beside the corpse to answer the phone, rush down here, and maneuver me into ringing Miss Voss’s number? It seems a little far-fetched.”
“I didn’t say it was Flora Gallant.” Cramer hung on. “It could have been any of them. He or she didn’t have to know you were going to ring that number. He might have intended to call it himself, before witnesses, to establish the time of the murder, and when your call came, whoever it was there by the phone got rattled and went ahead with the act. There are a dozen different ways it could have happened. Hell, I know it’s tricky. I’m not asking you to work your brain on it. You must know why I brought it up.”
Wolfe nodded. “Yes, I think I do. You want me to consider what I heard-and Mr. Goodwin. You want to know if we are satisfied that those sounds were authentic. You want to know if we will concede that they might have been bogus.”
“That’s it. Exactly.”
Wolfe rubbed his nose with a knuckle, closing his eyes. In a moment he opened them. “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr. Cramer. If they were bogus they were well executed. At the time, hearing them, I had no suspicion that it was flummery. Naturally, as soon as I learned that they served to fix the precise moment of a murder, I knew they were open to question, but I can’t challenge them intrinsically. Archie?”
I shook my head. “I pass.” To Cramer: “You’ve read the statement, so you know that right after I heard it my guess was that something hit her and she dragged the phone along as she went down and it struck the floor. I’m not going to go back on my guess now. As for our not hearing the blow, read the statement. It says that it started out as if it was going to be a scream but then it was a groan. She might have seen the blow coming and was going to scream, but it landed and turned it into a groan, and in that case we wouldn’t hear the blow. A chunk of marble hitting a skull wouldn’t make much noise. As for supposing she was killed half an hour or so earlier, I phoned within three minutes, or John H. Watson did, and in another six or seven minutes Carl Drew was talking to me, so he must have seen the body, or someone did, not more than five minutes after we heard the groan. Was she twitching?”
“No. You don’t twitch long with a scarf as tight as that around your throat.”
“What about the ME?”
“He got there a little after twelve. With blood he might have timed it pretty close, but there wasn’t any. That’s out.”
“What about the setup? Someone left that room quick after we heard the sounds. If it was the murderer, he or she had to cradle the phone and tie the scarf, but that wouldn’t take long. If it was a fill-in, as you want to suppose, all she had to do was cradle the phone. Whichever it was, wasn’t there anyone else around?”
“No. If there was, they’re saving it. As you know, Bianca Voss wasn’t popular around there. Anyway, that place is a mess, with three different elevators, one in the store, one at the back for services and deliveries, and one in an outside hall with a separate entrance so they can go up to the offices without going through the store.”
“That makes it nice. Then it’s wide open.”
“As wide as a barn door.” Cramer stood up. To Wolfe: “So that’s the best you can do. You thought the sounds were open to question.”
“Not intrinsically. Circumstantially, of course.”
“Yeah. Much obliged.” He was going. After two steps he turned. “I don’t like gags about homicide, murder is no joke, but I can mention that Bianca Voss had you wrong. Scum. Stinking sewer. Orchids don’t smell.” He went.
Apparently he hadn’t really swallowed it that she was already dead when we heard the sounds.
Chapter 3
THE NEXT MORNING, Wednesday, eating breakfast in the kitchen with the Times propped up in front of me, which is routine, of course I read the account of the Bianca Voss murder. There were various details that were news to me, but nothing startling or even helpful. It included the phone call from John H. Watson, but didn’t add that he had been identified as Archie Goodwin, and there was no mention of Nero Wolfe. I admit that the cops and the DA have a right to save something for themselves, but it never hurts to have your name in the paper, and I had a notion to phone Lon Cohen at the Gazette and give him an exclusive. However, I would have to mention it to Wolfe first, so it would have to wait until eleven o’clock.
As a matter of fact, another item in the Times came closer to me. Sarah Yare had committed suicide. Her body had been found Tuesday evening in her little walk-up apartment on East Thirteenth Street. I had never written a fan letter to an actress, but I had been tempted to a couple of years back when I had seen Sarah Yare in Thumb a Ride. The first time I saw it I had a companion, but the next three times I was alone. The reason for repeating was that I had the impression I was infatuated and I wanted to wear it down, but when the impression still stuck after three tries I quit. Actresses should be seen and heard, but not touched. At that, I might have given the impression another test in a year or two if there had been an opportunity, but there wasn’t. She quit Thumb a Ride abruptly some months later, and the talk was that she was an alco and done for.
So I read that item twice. It didn’t say that it had been pronounced suicide officially and finally, since she had left no note, but a nearly empty bourbon bottle had been there on a table, and on the floor by the couch she had died on there had been a glass with enough left in it to identify the cyanide. The picture of her was as she had been when I had got my impression. I asked Fritz if he had ever seen Sarah Yare, and he asked what movies she had been in, and I said none, she was much too good for a movie.
I didn’t get to suggest phoning Lon Cohen to Wolfe because when he came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock I wasn’t there. As I was finishing my second cup of coffee a phone call came from the District Attorney’s office inviting me to drop in, and I went and spent a couple of hours at Leonard Street with an assistant DA named Brill. When we got through I knew slightly more than I had when we started, but he didn’t. He had a copy of our statement on his desk, and what could I add to that? He had a lot of fun, though. He would pop a question at me and then spend nine minutes studying the statement to see if I had tripped.
Getting home a little before noon, I was prepared to find Wolfe grumpy. He likes me to be there when he comes down from the plant rooms to the office, and while he can’t very well complain when the DA calls me on business that concerns us, this wasn’t our affair. We had no client and no case and no fee in prospect. But I got a surprise. He wasn’t grumpy; he was busy. He had the phone book open before him on his desk. He had actually gone to my desk, stooped to get the book, lifted it, and carried it around to his chair. Unheard of.
“Good morning,” I said. “What’s the emergency?”
“No emergency. I needed to know a number.”
“Can I help?”
“Yes. I have instructions.”
I sat. He wants you at his level because it’s too much trouble to tilt his head back. “Nothing new,” I said, “at the DA’s office. Do you want a report?”
“No. You will go to Alec Gallant’s place on Fifty-fourth Street and speak with Mr. Gallant, his sister, Miss Prince, Miss Thorne, and Mr. Drew. Separately if possible. You will tell each of them-You read the Times this morning as usual?”
“Certainly.”
“You will tell each of them that I have engaged to make certain inquiries about Miss Sarah Yare, and that I shall be grateful for any information they may be able and willing to furnish. I would like to see any communications they may have received from her, say in the past month. Don’t raise one brow like that. You know it disconcerts me.”
“I’ve never seen you disconcerted yet.” I let the
brow down a little. “If they ask me who engaged you what do I say?”
“That you don’t know. You are merely following instructions.”
“If I ask you who engaged you what do you say?”
“I tell you the truth. No one. Or more accurately, I have engaged myself. I think I may have been hoodwinked and I intend to find out. You may be fishing where there are no fish. They may all say they have never had any association with Sarah Yare, and they may be telling the truth or they may not. You will have that in mind and form your conclusions. If any of them acknowledge association with her, pursue it enough to learn the degree of intimacy, but don’t labor it. That can wait until we bait a hook. You are only to discover if there are any fish.”
“Now?”
“Yes. The sooner the better.”
I stood up. “It may take a while if the cops and the DA are working on them, and they probably are. How urgent is it? Do you want progress reports by phone?”
“Not unless you think it necessary. You must get all five of them.”
“Right. Don’t wait dinner for me.” I went.
On the way uptown in the taxi I was using my brain. I will not explain at this point why Wolfe wanted to know if any of the subjects had known Sarah Yare, and if so how well, for two reasons: first, you have certainly spotted it yourself; and second, since I am not as smart as you are, I had not yet come up with the answer. It was underneath. On top, what I was using my brain for, was the phone book. Unquestionably it was connected with his being hoodwinked, since that was what was biting him, and therefore it probably had some bearing on the call that had been made from his office to Bianca Voss, but what could he accomplish by consulting the phone book? For that I had no decent guess, let alone an answer, by the time I paid the hackie at Fifty-fourth and Fifth Avenue.
Alec Gallant Incorporated, on the north side of the street near Madison Avenue, was no palace, either outside or in. The front was maybe thirty feet, and five feet of that was taken by the separate entrance to the side hall. The show window, all dark green, had just one exhibit: a couple of yards of plain black fabric, silk or rayon or nylon or Orlon or Dacron or cottonon or linenon, draped on a little rack. Inside, nothing whatever was in sight-that is, nothing to buy. The wall-to-wall carpet was the same dark green as the show window. There were mirrors and screens and tables and ashtrays, and a dozen or more chairs, not fancy, more to sit in than to look at. I had taken three steps on the carpet when a woman standing with a man by a table left him to come to meet me. I told her my name and said I would like to see Mr. Gallant. The man, approaching, spoke.
