Something else was coming through too: voices from down in the street that were shouts. Three steps took me to the window, and I looked out and down. People had stopped in the drizzle and were gawking. Three men, from different directions, were running across the street toward the building, and on this side a group was forming on the sidewalk. In the center of the group two men were bending over a figure of a woman prostrate on the sidewalk, with her skirt up, showing her bare legs, and her head twisted sideways. I have good eyes, but from seven floors up, in the dim light of the drizzle blown by the wind, things were blurred. Most of the group were looking at the huddled figure, but some were gazing straight up at me. Off to the left a hundred feet, a cop was trotting toward the group.
I assert that it took me not more than three seconds to realize what had happened. I assert it not to get a credit mark, since I can’t prove it, but to account for what I did. Of course it was only a hunch, but I had never had one that felt like a better bet. Wolfe had told me to get him something, and I had missed getting it by three minutes or maybe only two. I was so sure of it that what I did was automatic. Pulling back from the window and straightening, I darted a glance at the desk and one at the filing cabinet. I started with the desk only because it was nearer.
That was probably the briefest search on record, or close to it. The shallow middle drawer was eliminated with one look. The top left drawer held paper and carbon and envelopes. The one below it had three compartments, with miscellaneous contents, and in the middle one was a notebook bound in brown imitation leather. At the top of the first page was written the word “Receipts,” and the first entry was dated Aug. 7, 1944. I flipped the pages to 1950, began with July, ran my eye over the items, and there it was: “Sept. 12, Baird Archer, $60.00 dep.” Six lines down another entry said: “Sept. 23, Baird Archer, $38.40 in full.”
“Of all the goddam lousy luck,” I said with feeling and, slipping the notebook in my pocket, made for the door. There was a bare chance that Rachel Abrams had enough life left in her to talk a little. As I rounded the second turn in the hall an elevator door opened and a flatfoot emerged. I was so engrossed that I didn’t even glance at him, which was a mistake because cops can’t bear not to be glanced at, especially when they’re on something hot. He stopped in my path and demanded, “Who are you?”
“Governor Dewey,” I told him. “How do you like me without the mustache?”
“Oh, a wag. Show me some identification.”
I raised the brows. “How did I get behind the Iron Curtain without knowing it?”
“I’m in a hurry. What’s your name?”
I shook my head. “Honest, officer, I don’t like this. Take me to the nearest Kremlin and I’ll tell the sergeant.” I stepped and pushed the down button.
“Aw, nuts.” He tramped down the hall.
An elevator stopped and I entered. The elevator man was telling his passengers about the excitement. The street lobby was deserted. Out on the sidewalk the crowd was thick now, ignoring the drizzle, and I had to get authoritative to elbow my way through to the front. A cop was there, commanding them to stand back. I had a line ready to hand him to get me an approach, but when I got close enough for an unobstructed view I saw I wouldn’t need it. She was smashed good, and there would be no more talking from a head that had taken that angle to the shoulders. Nor did I have to ask her name, since I had heard everybody telling everybody else, Rachel Abrams, as I pushed my way through the mob. I pushed my way out again, went to the corner and grabbed a taxi, and gave the driver the number on West Thirty-fifth Street.
When I mounted the stoop and let myself in with my key it was five minutes past four, so Wolfe had gone up for his afternoon conference with the orchids. Hanging my hat and topcoat in the hall, I ascended the three flights to the plant rooms on the roof. For all the thousands of times I have seen that display of show-offs, they still take my eye and slow me down whenever I go through, but that day I didn’t even know they were there, not even in the warm room, though the Phalaenopsis were in top bloom and the Cattleyas were splashing color all around.
Wolfe was in the potting room with Theodore, transferring young Dendrobium chrysotoxums from fours to fives. As I approached he snapped at me, “Can’t it wait?”
“I suppose so,” I conceded. “She’s dead. I just want permission to phone Cramer. I might as well, since I was seen by the elevator man who let me off at her floor, and a cop, and my fingerprints are on her desk.”
“Who is dead?”
“The woman who typed that manuscript for Baird Archer.”
“When and how?”
“Just now. She died while I was in the elevator going up to her office on the seventh floor. She was going down faster, out of her window. What killed her was hitting the sidewalk.”
“How do you know she typed the manuscript?”
“I found this in her desk.” I took the notebook from my pocket and showed him the entries. His hands were too dirty to touch it, and I held it before his eyes. I asked him, “Do you want details now?”
“Confound it. Yes.”
As I reported in full he stood with the tips of his dirty fingers resting on the potting bench, his head turned to me, his lips tight, his brow creased with a frown. His yellow smock, some half an acre in area, was exactly the color of the daffodils on Rachel Abram’s desk.
When I had finished the story I inquired grimly, “Shall I expound?”
He grunted.
“I should have stuck around, but it wouldn’t have done any good because I was too goddam mad to function. If I had been three minutes earlier I would have had her alive. Also, if she was pushed out the window I would have had the pusher alive, and you told me to get you something, and it would have been a pleasure to get you that. The lucky bastard. He must have entered a down elevator, or passed down the hall on his way to the stairs, not more than thirty seconds before I stepped out on that floor. When I looked out of the window he was probably there on the sidewalk, walking away because he wasn’t morbid.”
Wolfe’s eyes opened and half shut again.
“If you’re thinking,” I said aggressively, “that she wasn’t pushed, one will get you ten. I do not believe that the woman who typed that manuscript picked today to jump out of the window or to fall out by accident.”
“Nevertheless, it’s possible.”
“I deny it. It would be too goddam silly. Okay, you said to get you something, and at least I got you this.” I tapped the notebook with a finger.
“It doesn’t help much.” Wolfe was glum. “It establishes that Miss Wellman was killed because she had read that manuscript, but we were already going on that assumption. I doubt if it would gratify Miss Abrams to know that her death validated an assumption for us. Most people expect more than that of death. Mr. Cramer will want that notebook.”
“Yeah. I shouldn’t have copped it, but you said to get you something and I wanted to produce it. Shall I take it to him or phone him to send for it?”
“Neither. Put it here on the bench. I’ll wash my hands and phone him. You have work to do. It’s possible that Miss Abrams told someone something about the contents of that novel she typed. Try it. See her family and friends. Get a list of them. Saul and Fred and Orrie will phone in at five-thirty. You will phone at five-twenty-five, to tell me where I can tell them to join you. Divide the list among you.”
“My God,” I protested, “we’re stretching it thinner and thinner. Next you’ll be trying to get it by photo-offset from her typewriter platen.”
He ignored it and headed for the sink to wash his hands. I went to my room, one flight down, for my raincoat. Downstairs I stopped in the kitchen to tell Fritz I wouldn’t be home for dinner.
Chapter 5
It was more than I had bargained for. Having got the home address of a Rachel Abrams from the Bronx phone book, having learned by dialing the number and speaking briefly with a female voice that that was it, and having hit the subway before the rush hour, I
had congratulated myself on a neat fast start. I entered the old apartment building on 178th Street a block off the Grand Concourse less than an hour after Wolfe had told me to see her family and friends.
But now I realized that I had been too damn fast. The woman who opened the door of 4E to me was meeting my eyes straight and inquiring placidly, “You’re the one that phoned? What is with my Rachel?”
“Are you Rachel’s mother?” I asked.
She nodded and smiled. “Since some years I am. I have never been told the opposite. What is?”
I hadn’t bargained for this. I had taken it for granted that either a cop or a journalist would have relayed the news before I got there, and had been ready to cope with tears and wailing, but obviously I had beat them to it. Of course the thing to do was spill it to her, but her quiet self-satisfaction when she said “my Rachel” was too much for me. Nor could I say excuse it please, wrong number, and fade, because I had a job to do, and if I muffed it merely because I didn’t like it I was in the wrong line of business. So I tried my damnedest to grin at her, but I admit that for a couple of seconds I was no help to the conversation.
Her big dark friendly eyes stared straight at mine.
“I will maybe ask you to come in and sit,” she said, “when you tell me what you want.”
“I don’t think,” I told her, “I need to take much of your time. I told you my name on the phone, Archie Goodwin. I’m getting some stuff together for an article on public stenographers. Does your daughter discuss her work with you?”
She frowned a little. “You could ask her. Couldn’t you?”
“Sure I could, if there’s some reason why I shouldn’t ask you.”
“Why should there be a reason?”
“I don’t know any. For instance, say she types a story or an article for a man. Does she tell you about him—what he looked like and how he talked? Or does she tell you what the story or article was about?”
The frown had not gone. “Would that be not proper?”
“Not at all. It’s not a question of being proper, it’s just that I want to make it personal, talking with her family and friends.”
“Is it there will be an article about her?”
“Yes.” That was not a lie. Far from it.
“Is it her name will be printed?”
“Yes.”
“My daughter never talks about her work to me or her father or her sisters, only one thing, the money she makes. She tells about that because she gives me a certain part, but not for me, for the family, and one sister is in college. She does not tell me what men look like or about her work. If her name is going to be printed everybody ought to know the truth.”
“You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Abrams. Do you know—”
“You said you will talk with her family and friends. Her father will be home at twenty minutes to seven. Her sister Deborah is here now, doing her homework, but she is only sixteen—too young? Her sister Nancy will not be here today, she is with a friend, but she will be here tomorrow at half-past four. Then you want friends. There is a young man named William Butterfield who wants to marry her, but he is—”
She stopped short, with a twinkle in her eye. “If you will pardon me, but that is maybe too personal. If you want his address?”
“Please.”
She gave me a number on Seventy-sixth Street. “There is Hulda Greenberg, she lives downstairs on the second floor, Two C. There is Cynthia Free, only that is not her real name. You know about her.”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“She acts on the stage.”
“Oh, sure. Cynthia Free.”
“Yes. She went to high school with Rachel, but she quit. I will not speak against her. If my daughter is once a friend she is always a friend. I will be getting old now, but what will I have? I will have my husband and Deborah and Nancy, and enough friends I have, many friends, but I know I will always have my Rachel. If her name is to be printed that must be part of it. I will tell you more about her, Mr. Goodwin, if you will come in and sit—oy, the phone. Excuse me, please?”
She turned and trotted inside. I stayed put. In a moment I heard her voice, faintly.
“Hello …. This is Mrs. Abrams …. Yes …. Yes, Rachel is my daughter …. Who is it you say? …”
There was no doubt about its being my move. The only question was whether to leave the door standing open or close it. It seemed better to close it. I reached for the knob, pulled it to quickly but with no bang, and headed for the stairs.
Out on the sidewalk, glancing at my wrist and seeing 5:24, I went to the corner for a look, saw a drugstore down a block, walked there, found a phone booth, and dialed the number. Fritz answered and put me through to the plant rooms.
When Wolfe was on I told him, “I’ve had a talk with Rachel’s mother. She says her daughter never discusses her work at home. We were using the present tense because she hadn’t got the news yet. She wants to see her Rachel’s name in print, and thanks to that son of a bitch I missed by three minutes, she will. I didn’t tell her because it would have wasted time. Tomorrow, when she knows that discussing her daughter’s work may help to find the guy that killed her, she might possibly remember something, though I doubt it. I have some names, but they’re scattered around town. Tell the boys to call me at this number.” I gave it to him.
He spoke. “Mr. Cramer insists on seeing you. I gave him the information, and he sent for the notebook, but he wants to see you. He is sour, of course. You might as well go down there. After all, we are collaborating.”
“Yeah. On what? Okay, I’ll go. Don’t overdo.”
I waited in the booth to corner it. When the calls came I gave William Butterfield to Saul, Hulda Greenberg to Fred, and Cynthia Free to Orrie, telling them all to collect additional names and keep going. Then I hiked to the subway.
Down at Homicide on West Twentieth Street I learned how sour Cramer was. Over the years my presence has been requested at that address many times. When it’s a case of our having something he would like to get, or he thinks it is, I am taken inside at once to his own room. When it’s only some routine matter, I am left to Sergeant Purley Stebbins or one of the bunch. When all that is really wanted or expected is a piece of my hide, I am assigned to Lieutenant Rowcliff. If and when I am offered a choice of going to heaven or hell it will be simple; I’ll merely ask, “Where’s Rowcliff?” We were fairly even—he set my teeth on edge about the same as I did his—until one day I got the notion of stuttering. When he gets worked up to a certain point he starts to stutter. My idea was to wait till he was about there and then stutter just once. It more than met expectations. It made him so mad he had to stutter, he couldn’t help it, and then I complained that he was mimicking me. From that day on I have had the long end and he knows it.
I was with him an hour or so, and it was burlesque all the way, because Wolfe had already given them my story and there was nothing I could add. Rowcliff’s line was that I had overstepped when I searched her desk and took the notebook, which was true, and that I had certainly taken something besides the notebook and was holding out. We went all around that, and back and forth, and he had a statement typed for me to sign, and after I signed it he sat and studied it and thought up more questions. Finally I got tired.
“Look,” I told him, “this is a lot of bull and you know it. What are you trying to do, b-b-b-break my spirit?”
He clamped his jaw. But he had to say something. “I’d rather b-b-b-break your goddam neck,” he stated. “Get the hell out of here.”
I went, but not out. I intended to have one word with Cramer. Down the hall I took a left turn, strode to the door at the end, and opened it without knocking. But Cramer wasn’t there, only Purley Stebbins, sitting at a table working with papers.
“You lost?” he demanded.
“No. I’m giving myself up. I just c-c-c-cooked Rowcliff and ate him. Aside from that, I thought someone here might want to thank me. If I hadn’t been there
today, the precinct boys would probably have called it a jump or a fall, and no one would have ever gone through that book and found those entries.”
Purley nodded. “So you found the entries.”
“So I did.”
“And took the book home to Wolfe.”
“And then, without delay, turned it over.”
“By God, so you did. Thank you. Going?”
“Yes. But I could use a detail without waiting for the morning paper. What’s in the lead on how Rachel Abrams got out of the window?”
“Homicide.”
“By flipping a coin?”
“No. Finger marks on her throat. Preliminary, the M.E. says she was choked. He thinks not enough to kill her, but we won’t know until they’re through at the laboratory.”
“And I missed him by three minutes.”
Purley cocked his head. “Did you?”
I uttered a colorful word. “One Rowcliff on the squad is enough,” I told him and beat it. Out in the anteroom I went to a phone booth, dialed, got Wolfe, and reported, “Excuse me for interrupting your dinner, but I need instructions. I’m at Homicide on Twentieth Street, without cuffs, after an hour with Rowcliff and a word with Purley. From marks on her throat the dope is that she was choked and tossed out the window. I told you so. I divided the three names Mrs. Abrams gave me among the help, and told them to get more and carry on. There should be another call on the family either tonight or tomorrow, but not by me. Mrs. Abrams might open up for Saul, but not for me, after today. So I need instructions.”
“Have you had dinner?”
“No.”
“Come home.”
I went to Tenth Avenue and flagged a taxi. It was still drizzling.
Chapter 6
Wolfe does not like conferences with clients. Many’s the time he has told me not to let a client in. So when, that evening, following instructions, I phoned Wellman at his hotel and asked him to call at the office the next morning at eleven, I knew it looked as bad to Wolfe as it did to me.
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