The Bloodied Ivy (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 3)

by Robert Goldsborough

  “The charge?”

  “Illegal entry,” he spat. “Follow me.”

  And damned if they didn’t book me. They took my keys, wallet, and other possessions and gave me a receipt for them. A polite sergeant named Pierce filled out the paperwork, set my bond at five hundred dollars, and asked me if I wanted to call an attorney.

  “Thanks anyway,” I told him with a smile, “but I’m compiling a guide to jails in the eastern United States, and this will give me another entry—under the heading ‘Hamlets and Backwaters I Have Known.’” He looked up from the desk with a puzzled expression, then shrugged and somewhat apologetically escorted me down a hall to one of four small cells, none of which was occupied. “Our main customers are from the university,” Pierce said cheerfully, “usually the fraternity boys who get carried away at their parties and…you know.”

  “I can guess,” I said as he held the door of one of the cells, gesturing me in. It was small but reasonably clean, with the standard fixtures—bunk, toilet, washstand, matching wooden table and chair—and actually had a window that looked out on the parking lot, where I could at least keep watch over the Mercedes.

  “Pardon me, Sergeant,” I said as he started to swing the barred door shut, “but would there by any chance be a newspaper handy that I could look at?”

  “I’ll check, sir,” he said, and less than a minute later he was back with that day’s Albany Times-Union. After thanking him profusely, I read the whole thing through twice, including the piece on how Prescott was an eighteen-point underdog against Syracuse in Saturday’s game. They’ll be lucky to come that close, I thought as I tossed the paper aside, then settled back on the bunk. Time: twelve-forty-nine.

  A few minutes later, I awoke from the clank of the cell door opening and figured my watch must be lying. The face claimed it was three-ten, but of course that had to be a mistake. Sergeant Pierce had stepped into the cell, telling me to follow him.

  “First, what time is it?” I asked, shaking myself.

  “Uh, three-eleven,” he said with a lopsided smile. “Guess you flaked out. Maybe you can put in that book of yours that our bunks are comfortable, huh? You’re wanted in the old man’s office.” Whistling, he led the way down a hall toward the front of the building, where I hadn’t yet been. He rapped his knuckles lightly on a mahogany door with a polished metal nameplate that said CHIEF CARL W. HOBSON, then turned the knob and eased it open.

  The chief, still wearing his uniform shirt and tie and a scowl, sat behind a large wooden desk in a nicely carpeted office. He glared at me as Pierce ushered me in. Seated off to his right, in a chair far too small for him, also glaring, was Nero Wolfe.

  TEN

  WOLFE TOLD ME LATER WITH more than a little satisfaction that my mouth dropped open when I walked in. I didn’t believe him when he said it and I don’t believe him now, but in truth, he was about the last person I expected to find in Prescott’s police station. In those first few seconds after I saw him, all I could think about was how in the hell he’d gotten there. It must have been Saul, I said to myself—he’s the only person besides myself that Wolfe’s ever trusted as his driver.

  The gregarious Lieutenant Powers swaggered in seconds after I did, and he and I sat in the two other chairs that formed the rest of the arc in front of the elaborately carved mahogany desk of Carl W. Hobson, a man who obviously enjoyed the trappings of office. I took the seat farthest from Wolfe, who looked like he wanted to take a bite out of someone.

  Hobson didn’t exactly appear to be at peace with the world himself. He stared at Powers for several seconds, then turned his headlights on me. “Goodwin,” he snarled. I was going to congratulate him on remembering my name more than three hours after meeting me, but before I could get the words out, he brought his palm down hard on the desk, presumably for effect. He needed to take lessons from Wolfe on desk pounding, though; his technique was all wrong.

  “Okay, wise guy,” Hobson said to me with another snarl. “Your boss is here now, wanting to get you out. Suppose you fill us in on just what you were doing in Markham’s house.”

  “Do I unload?” I asked, looking across at Wolfe, whom I knew was suffering for about six reasons, not the least of which was the chair he’d somehow shoehorned himself into. He nodded grimly.

  “All right,” I said, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other. “I’ve told you some of this already: A Prescott professor named Walter Cortland called us in New, York on Monday…” I proceeded to give them a narrative, from Cortland’s contention that Markham had been bumped off that cliff to my trip to the campus the day before, including my visits to the classes and the bottom of the Gash, and lunch with the various faculty members. I did some editing, though, leaving out the coffee with Gretchen Frazier and the session in Elena Moreau’s office. As I talked, I watched Hobson’s expression go from dour to incredulous to unbelieving. Powers shook his head a lot, and Wolfe just went on looking grumpy. I finished by saying that Cortland was supposed to have left me the key to Markham’s place so I could have a look around, but when it wasn’t there, I let myself in. “And that’s when your boys came along,” I said to the chief, lacing my hands behind my head.

  “This is ridiculous!” Hobson growled, running a hand through his hair. “My men were at the location within minutes after the professor’s body was found. There was no indication he’d been pushed or that there was a struggle. The medical report showed he died of a broken neck from the fall,” he snapped, yanking a sheet from a manila folder on his desk. “I’ll tell you what I think,” he said leaning on his elbows and his vowels. “I think you New York hotshots figure you can throw your weight around up here in what you like to call ‘the sticks,’ trying to generate some easy business for yourselves. Well, I’ll tell you both,” he went on, waving a bony and none-too-clean finger at us, “you’re not welcome here, not for a minute. And you—what have you got to say for yourself?” he asked, turning to Wolfe. “You’ve barely spoken a word since you walked in here.”

  Wolfe tried to adjust himself in the chair, a physical impossibility. I was trying to recall when someone last addressed Wolfe as “you” and lived to tell about it.

  “You’ve charged Mr. Goodwin with breaking and entering,” he intoned without emotion.

  “That’s right, good guess.” The chief nodded and stuck out his lower lip. He was obviously pleased with himself.

  “It is not a guess,” Wolfe growled. “I know what the charge is because Mr. Cortland told me on the telephone at a few minutes after one. He also informed me that one of your minions, this gentleman here”—he gestured toward Powers with an almost imperceptible tilt of the head—“had called him shortly after he returned home from Kingston to tell him of Mr. Goodwin’s booking. When Mr. Cortland attempted to explain that he had given Mr. Goodwin express permission to go through the house, but that he had forgotten to leave the key in a prearranged place, your officer had no interest in what he was saying and rudely cut him off.”

  “Hey, wait a minute, I—”

  “Lloyd, I’ll handle this.” The chief stifled Powers with a karate-chop motion of his hand. “Mr. Wolfe, you should know that from the day Professor Markham’s body was found, Cortland has been driving us nuts about this, claiming it was murder. He’s probably called here a half-dozen times, maybe more, insisting we look further into the death. But, and I stress this, he has never, not once, come up with a shred of evidence to substantiate his allegations.” He leaned back and stuck out the lower lip again.

  “So in a fit of pique, both to spite Mr. Cortland and to show the New Yorkers who’s boss in your realm, you ignored him and jailed Mr. Goodwin. This despite insistence of Mr. Portland—the executor of the Markham estate—that he had approved in advance Mr. Goodwin’s entry into the house.”

  “Cortland may have approved it in advance, but nobody bothered to tell us,” Hobson protested. The red in his cheeks was turning to purple. “And furthermore, how were my men supposed to know Goodwin
was legitimate? After all, he got in with one of that dandy set of keys he carries. In my book—and in this town—that’s pretty damn suspicious behavior, to say the least.”

  “I’ll concede that Mr. Goodwin on occasion uses questionable judgment and tactics,” Wolfe said. “But you know now that his entry into the house, however unorthodox, was made with prior approval of an authorized party, and that no damage was done to its interior. I suggest that to save yourselves possible embarrassment later, you drop the matter at this point.”

  He squeezed himself out of the chair with sublime effort, rose, and motioned me to do the same, which I did. “Good day, sir,” he said.

  “Wait a minute,” Hobson rasped. “You—”

  “No, you wait a minute, sir,” Wolfe fired back in a voice that would have frozen a hot toddy. “Since you seem to harbor animus toward anyone from Manhattan, you should be more than happy to see Mr. Goodwin and me leave. And we are pleased to accommodate you.”

  Hobson was standing now, too, his puss as colorful as a slice of Rusterman’s rare prime rib. The guy was trying to figure out how to keep from losing face, especially with his second-in-command in the room.

  “You know, Goodwin is still in custody,” he barked. “We can keep him from leaving.”

  Wolfe, who had made it almost to the door, turned slowly and fixed his gaze on the chief. “I don’t doubt that for a moment,” he said, “but such an action would be so ill-advised as to be classed as Brobdingnagian folly. I strongly suggest you consider alternatives.”

  Hobson took a couple of deep breaths. You can’t blame him—Brobdingnagian throws me, too. “All right,” he said finally, in a thin voice, as if making a major concession, “I’ll do this—I’ll release Goodwin with the understanding that if he is needed for questioning, you will make him available to this department or to the district attorney’s office.”

  “I assume,” Wolfe said, holding fast at the door, “that such questioning would likely relate to a felony, perhaps a capital crime, to merit Mr. Goodwin’s return here. I am unaware that you feel a crime of such magnitude has taken place.”

  I could have strangled Wolfe. Hobson’s expression clearly reflected his puzzlement, and for a moment, I thought he might renege on his offer. But he was between the proverbial rock and hard place. After another deep breath, the chief abandoned his attempt to save face and told us both to get the hell out.

  “And the charge is dropped?” Wolfe persisted, still not budging.

  “Yes, dammit,” Hobson said, his face now the color of a wedge of watermelon. “Goodwin can pick up his belongings at the front desk!”

  With that, Wolfe marched out, with me two paces behind. He turned right and went into the entrance hall, where Saul Panzer was sitting in a straight-backed metal chair reading a dog-eared copy of the bathing-suit issue of Sports Illustrated, which looked like it was missing more than a few pages. “Saul, we’re going,” Wolfe announced, and the two of them stood waiting as I retrieved my pocketload of possessions, including the skeleton keys. I made a big deal out of checking to make sure everything was there, then signed the sheet Pierce slipped across the desk at me and thanked him. Still whistling, Pierce winked.

  Saul, who as usual looked like he could use a shave, nodded and gave me a thumbs-up as he popped his flat cap on and set it at a rakish angle. “Did you find out about rooms?” Wolfe asked him when we were on the sidewalk in front of the police station.

  “Yep. Best place around, no contest, is the Prescott Inn, which is just off the campus. I’ve reserved rooms for both you and Archie there tonight. I’m told the food’s first-rate, too, although with what you’re used to, there’s a better-than-even chance that it may not measure up.”

  “Satisfactory,” Wolfe said. As far as he’s concerned, Saul Panzer can do no wrong, and I’d have to second that. Saul isn’t impressive to look at, given a face that’s all nose, stooped shoulders that make him seem even shorter than he is, and a wardrobe the Salvation Army would reject for its resale stores. But he’s far and away the finest street operative in Manhattan, and probably the United States, which is why Wolfe always calls on him when we need a tailing job or a casing job or hard-to-get information about anyone from a two-bit thief to a corporation president.

  “Pretty fancy wheels,” I said to Saul, tapping the fender of the forest-green Lincoln Town Car parked at the curb. “You two drive up in this?”

  Saul shrugged. “It seemed like the best the rental place had, and it handles okay. Where’s the Mercedes, in back?”

  I said it was and told Wolfe to wait while I brought it around. As I walked away, Wolfe was thanking Saul for the chauffeuring job and wishing him a good drive back to New York. And he meant it; to Wolfe, any drive, regardless of length, is a risky venture at best, which I knew was why he had decided on staying the night in Prescott. Anything was preferable to two seventy-five-mile drives in the same day.

  I pulled up in front of the station. Wolfe was indeed a vision, wearing his gray overcoat and black homburg and holding tightly to his redthorn walking stick. I was sorry more of the citizenry of Prescott wasn’t around to appreciate this historic sight: the world’s greatest private detective standing on a sidewalk in a small town in upstate New York. And glowering.

  As I eased to the curb, Saul opened the back door for Wolfe, then closed it behind him and put his suitcase and my smaller overnight bag on the front seat next to me. “Archie, Fritz packed a change of clothes for you and put your shaving kit in there, too,” Saul said.

  “Bless him. And bless you, too, my son,” I told him and saluted. Pulling away, I could see Saul in my rearview mirror thumbing his nose at me and grinning from sideburn to sideburn.

  “I suppose you’d like to go straight to the Prescott Inn?” I asked Wolfe.

  “Confound it, yes!” he grumbled as he adjusted himself and gripped the passenger strap as if it were a lifeline thrown to a drowning man. I followed the directions that Saul had scratched on a sheet of paper, and three minutes later, we were in front of a two-story, American Colonial—what else?—mansion on a tree-lined street just outside the town’s business district and within sight of the very building where Cortland had his office.

  “Looks nice,” I observed, and was rewarded with a grunt from the back seat, where Wolfe was still clutching the strap even though I had stopped the car. As far as he’s concerned, you simply can’t be too careful when you’re traveling, and for once, I had to agree.

  ELEVEN

  THE PRESCOTT INN WAS FIRST-RATE, all right. With a minimum of fuss, I got Wolfe settled in his room, which turned out to be a suite—bedroom and sitting room—both decorated of course in Early American. And the sitting room had a chair that came reasonably close to accommodating Wolfe’s dimensions, which is saying something. Saul had done his job, as usual. My room was next door, and while it would never be mistaken for a suite, it was far from shabby itself.

  “Okay,” I told Wolfe after I’d unpacked his stuff and put it away. “I know you’re sore as hell about being here, and you’re sore at me for getting you here. In fact, you’re sore about this whole damn situation. But to show my good faith, I’m going to order you beer from room service—it’s on me.”

  He sat and pouted in the big chair while I called down and asked the voice at the other end to have two bottles of Remmers sent up for him and milk for me. Then I took a chair facing him. “Are you going to talk, or just sit there and let me prattle on?”

  “Pah. That man was hysterical.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Cortland, of course. When he telephoned me, he was in a dither, to the point where he neglected to use any of his polysyllabic vocabulary. He reported that the police had told him you were being held but refused to give him any further information. To hear his histrionics, one would have thought you were only minutes from an appointment with the guillotine. I contemplated calling the Prescott police myself, but chose instead, with Saul’s assistance, to beard them in their d
en.” He leaned back and closed his eyes, looking insufferably smug, as if to say that I, the man of action, needed him, the original stay-at-home, to enter the arena and put things right.

  “I’m genuinely touched that you’d make this trek, and just to get me out of a hole at that,” I said.

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Need I remind you, Archie, that this contretemps began with high-sounding pronouncements about how you were investigating Mr. Markham’s murder at your own expense, and on your own time. I might have known that—”

  I was saved from this further onslaught of smugness by the bell, or rather, the bellhop. He was at the door, all five-feet-four of him, with a pencil-thin mustache, black shoe-polished hair parted in the middle, and a smile that made Vanna White look like a mope by comparison. So much for insignificant details; the important fact was that he had two chilled bottles of Wolfe’s favorite beer, Remmers, along with a pilsner glass, and my milk. I paid him, added a tip that made the smile even wider, and took the tray, setting it on the end table at Wolfe’s left.

  “Interesting historical fact: This is the oldest college in New York State,” I said as he poured beer and studied the settling foam.

  “University,” he corrected, looking unimpressed. “We should call Mr. Cortland. What time is it?”

  “Four-oh-five. You want me to try him now?”

  “Later. Have you eaten since breakfast?”

  “Negative. Funny, I was just thinking about my stomach. It’s a little early for dinner, though. I can stand to wait a couple of hours. Did you have something before you left?”

  “Barely.” Wolfe winced at the memory. “Mr. Cortland’s frenzied call came just as I was finishing lunch.”

  “Gulping down your food is rough on the digestive system,” I sympathized. “Do you want dinner in the dining room, or should I have it brought up here?”