The Bloodied Ivy (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 3)

by Robert Goldsborough

  “Further,” Wolfe said, “Mr. Markham had read an advance copy of your new book and claimed to locate several passages that were—”

  “That bastard!” Schmidt lunged to his feet, his face redder than the hue of a strawberry. “I knew he’d go around blabbing about that. Even after he told me…”

  “Told you he wouldn’t say anything?” Wolfe completed the sentence. “Why don’t you inform the rest of us as to what this is about?”

  Schmidt was back in his chair, looking like a deflated balloon. He shook his head several times before beginning. “God knows how many people he shot his mouth off to. Yes, Hale had read my book, and yes, he accused me of plagiarism. Every scholarly book uses other sources, of course. I have hundreds of footnotes, and while I may have done some paraphrasing without footnoting, it was—oh, dammit, why should I have to defend myself? Everybody knows he had it in for me. He was going to try to make me look bad any way he could. That was the kind of man he was.” He shook his head again, eyes down, and the room was so quiet you could hear the wall clock ticking.

  “Very well. Mr. Greenbaum,” Wolfe said, shifting slightly to face his new target, “you and Hale Markham had been close, very close, at one time, but several years ago you left the conservative camp and in so doing incurred Mr. Markham’s lasting enmity. For that matter, your feelings toward him were no less hostile.”

  “To echo Orville, we’ve been through this before.” Greenbaum was perched on the front quarter of his chair as though he expected to jump up and bolt from the room at any moment. My eyes left him and went to Elena Moreau, who was looking at her hands clenched in her lap. She had been in that pose for several minutes.

  “From good friends, you and Mr. Markham shifted to being antagonists,” Wolfe continued, “spurred by his feeling that you had sold out to the left to further your academic career.”

  “I don’t have to put up with any more of this bilge!” Greenbaum yelled, standing and taking a step toward the door.

  “Sit down!” It was Cramer, who like Wolfe knew how to get maximum impact out of words without having to shout. Greenbaum turned. “I don’t have to listen to you, either,” he said, shaken. “You are not here on official business—Wolfe said so.”

  Cramer didn’t waver. “Sit down and shut up. I’ll tell you when it’s time to go.”

  Greenbaum sat, and I wondered who would ask for permission to leave next.

  Wolfe went on. “Each of you gentlemen”—he looked in turn at Potter, Bach, Schmidt, and Greenbaum—“by words and/or actions, has shown that you had little use for Hale Markham. And all of you excepting Mr. Bach, who said he was on the West Coast, could conceivably have been at the rim of Caldwell’s Gash with Mr. Markham on the night of September twenty-third.”

  “Just a minute,” Potter said. “I told you before that I—”

  “I said you conceivably could have been there. I don’t think any of you were,” Wolfe said. “In fact, until Miss Frazier was found at the bottom of the Gash, I foolishly questioned whether anyone had given Mr. Markham the fatal push, despite Mr. Goodwin’s observation that the branches at the point where he fell were broken off cleanly. Such breaks of course are the kind a body being shoved would likely cause, rather than a body falling as deadweight.

  “It took Miss Frazier’s death to change my thinking, but even then, my brain moved with the speed of a tortoise. From the beginning, I recognized that Mr. Markham had not died as the result of a premeditated act; he either accidentally stumbled—the alternative I first favored—or he was pushed by someone in a moment of passion. It was clear to me that each of you gentlemen harbored animus toward him of such a nature that, had you decided to eliminate him, you surely would have done it in a calculated and well-planned manner rather than with a haphazard push, a push that might have resulted in his only being injured.”

  “Look out!” Purley Stebbins shouted, moving forward in a blur and reaching over Elena Moreau’s shoulder from behind to grab her hand, which had gone into her purse. As she recoiled, he yanked her arm out, spilling the contents of the purse on the carpet. She was clutching something. “It’s only this,” she cried, holding an envelope up for everyone to see, and as she did so, Purley triumphantly snatched it from her hand.

  “I was about to give it to Mr. Wolfe,” she hissed, eyes blazing. “What are you trying to do to me?”

  “I figured she was going for a gun or a knife,” Purley said sheepishly to Cramer, who now was also on his feet. Everybody else was jabbering.

  “Sergeant, I’ll take that,” Wolfe said. After another glance at Cramer, who nodded, Purley reached over and set the crumpled envelope on Wolfe’s blotter, then retreated to his place in the back row.

  Wolfe considered the envelope, then pushed it aside unopened. “To continue,” he said, “Miss Frazier’s death convinced me that Mr. Markham had indeed been murdered. The truth should have been apparent the instant I learned the circumstances of her demise, but”—he spread his hands, palms up—“I refused to read the signs. It took Mr. Goodwin’s tenacity to awaken me. As some of you probably know, Mr. Markham was a most meticulous record keeper; using his personal computer, he cataloged virtually every facet of his life. Mr. Goodwin found that one of his myriad lists consisted of books he had checked out, from both the public and university libraries in Prescott. Most of them, not surprisingly, dealt with some aspect of political theory or theorists, but there were three novels—”

  “That explains your question to me yesterday,” Cortland interjected, stroking his chin.

  Wolfe nodded. “Mr. Cortland informed me that Mr. Markham never read fiction, which was one reason these entries seemed curious. The other was the novels themselves: Cass Timberlane, by Sinclair Lewis; The Optimist’s Daughter, by Eudora Welty; and Ten North Frederick, by John O’Hara. Do they suggest a pattern?”

  Wolfe’s eyes again swept the room. Elena shrugged, Greenbaum shook his head in puzzlement, and the others returned Wolfe’s look with blank expressions. “Each of these books in varying degree and detail deals with romance and in some cases marriage involving a middle-aged or elderly man and a woman considerably his junior,” he said. He was clearly enjoying himself.

  “At the time of his death, Mr. Markham had particularly close friendships with two women—Gretchen Frazier and Mrs. Moreau, both far younger than he. I do not pretend to know the intimate details of these relationships, nor do I care to. But one of these liaisons clearly was on his mind, as evidenced by his interest in the novels. He had been close to Mrs. Moreau for some years, while Miss Frazier had been a recent arrival in his life. Patently, it was the latter who had been occupying his thoughts of late.

  “I now shift to Miss Frazier’s death,” Wolfe said, draining the beer from his glass and dabbing his lips with the corner of a handkerchief. “The location is significant: the precise spot where the professor had plunged to his death more than three weeks earlier. Miss Carswell, when you and Mr. Bach were here last night and we received the news about Miss Frazier, you said it sounded like ritual killings.”

  Having the spotlight hit her startled Ms. Cool. “Why, yes—I guess I did,” she said, straightening her back and looking around the room self-consciously. “When two people die the same way in the same place, that’s what you naturally think of.”

  “Indeed. And the next thing likely to enter one’s mind is why the second victim happened to be at the spot where the first death occurred.”

  “You know, that’s been bugging me since last night,” Leander Bach said, waggling a finger. “How could anyone have gotten her to show up there after what had happened before?”

  “No one lured her, sir,” Wolfe replied. “She went of her own free will.”

  “You can’t possibly know that.” It was Cramer.

  “But I can—as surely as if I were present. Had someone schemed to draw Miss Frazier to that spot in the Old Oaks, she would not have taken the bait; only a fool is led willingly to destruction, and she was no fool
.”

  “You’re talking in circles,” Schmidt growled. “And all the while, here we sit with a murderer.”

  “There is no murderer present,” Wolfe contradicted, eyeing his empty glass. “I should think the truth would be obvious to all of you by now. Miss Frazier’s death was indeed a ritual one, but it was of her own making: She hurled herself into the canyon.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  OVER THE YEARS I’VE HEARD some noise in Wolfe’s office, but these college types really broke the Guinness decibel record. Everybody started yammering at once, to one another and at Wolfe. They all had something to say, most of them loudly and with as many syllables as possible, and for a good two minutes, the room sounded like the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Wolfe leaned back and watched, trying to look grumpy, but he didn’t fool me; he loves dropping bombs.

  Cramer finally made his bark heard over the din. “Okay, you’ve had your fun. I hate to be the one to spoil the party, but there’s no way you can prove your little scenario, Wolfe.”

  “Correct,” Wolfe said, lacing his hands over his middle and waiting for the audience to sit down and calm down. When he had their attention, he went on. “With your forbearance, I will reconstruct the events as I believe them to have occurred. First and most basic, Miss Frazier was clearly enamored of her teacher and mentor, a man known for his interest in comely women. Despite the two-generation disparity in their ages, there was a mutual attraction. But not, I suspect, mutual affection. The young woman, likely dazzled by the attentions of a renowned figure—and one whose philosophies she shared and admired—was an easy prey. To the professor, it was just another conquest, however, and—”

  “I don’t believe it!” Cortland shrilled.

  “Hear me out,” Wolfe said sharply. “Mr. Goodwin, who met Miss Frazier on two occasions, contends that the intensity of her feelings for Mr. Markham was palpable. And I assure you that Mr. Goodwin’s perspicacity in this area cannot be overestimated. It is my conviction that during the last few months Miss Frazier sought a permanent union with the professor—perhaps through marriage, although not necessarily. The subject of their relationship clearly was on his mind, as witness the books he had been reading, but he was not inclined to make any sort of commitment. Whether or not Mr. Markham had toyed with her affections is moot. Undoubtedly quarrels ensued, and the whole business came to a head on September twenty-third. At the edge of the Gash, Miss Frazier intercepted her mentor—or possibly met him by prearrangement—during his nightly constitutional, making one final effort to forge a permanent bond. But he was adamant. Feeling betrayed and used, she lost control and gave him a shove, sending him to his death. Being a dance instructor, she was likely both strong and agile, despite her size, and could easily have caught him off-balance. As to whether she meant to kill him…that likely will never be known.”

  “It sounds too pat to me.” Chief Hobson was smirking. “Like maybe you’re weaving a story to justify collecting your fat fee from Mr. Cortland here.”

  Wolfe looked blandly at the Prescott chief and stretched his arms in front of him, palms down on the blotter. “As I conceded earlier, there is no way I can prove my reconstruction, but Miss Frazier’s subsequent death would seem to buttress it. What she had done naturally weighed heavily upon the young woman, although the horror that gripped her immediately following the act was replaced by a more abiding fear, that of being found out. After more than two weeks passed, however, she probably felt secure. After all, the county medical examiner’s ruling had gone unchallenged, and life on the campus returned to normal. Then Mr. Goodwin and I materialized, and she quickly became aware that the accidental-death entry on the death certificate did not hold water with us.

  “When I talked to the young woman just four days ago in Prescott, a delitescent panic was suggested by her demeanor, and when I asked her an elemental question—where was she on the night of Markham’s death?—she promptly burst into tears, using this contrivance in the hopes of focusing my attention of her grief rather than on the question.” What Wolfe omitted, in case you didn’t notice, is that Gretchen’s “contrivance” was sufficient to send him scurrying from the room.

  “I firmly believe that during our conversation Miss Frazier came to the realization the game would soon be up,” he continued. “How long she agonized before opting to destroy herself one can only guess, but I suspect she had settled the matter within forty-eight hours. And her decision to perish at the same place where Mr. Markham died bespeaks a sense of high tragedy.”

  “What about a suicide note?” Cramer asked, turning to Hobson.

  “Nothing was found in her apartment,” the chief said smugly. “We gave the place a good going-over this morning—I was there myself—and we didn’t find anything that would link her to Markham. The only letters we found were from her parents.”

  “Okay, let’s see what it was this lady had in her purse,” Cramer growled, gesturing toward Elena.

  Wolfe reached for the envelope that had been all but forgotten in the hubbub and drew out a single sheet, unfolding it deliberately and letting it rest in the palm of one hand. “Do I have your permission to share this?” he asked Elena. She nodded, tight-lipped.

  “Archie,” he said, sliding the paper across the desk toward me, “please read it aloud.”

  “It’s a letter on peach-colored stationery, handwritten,” I said, holding the sheet up by one corner with my thumb and forefinger. “Here’s the message:

  “‘Dear Mrs. Moreau:

  Saying that I’m sorry about everything is so appallingly inadequate that it seems ludicrous. But I’ll say it anyway—I am sorry. I know how you felt about him, and I also know how much he cared for you.

  Good-bye,

  Gretchen Frazier’”

  “That’s all there is?” Cramer said, breaking the silence in the room.

  “That’s it,” I answered. “What were you expecting—a signed and notarized confession with three witnesses?”

  “I want to see that letter,” Hobson gruffed. “When did you get it, Mrs. Moreau? And why weren’t we told about it?”

  Elena twisted in her chair to face the back of the room. “It was in my departmental box this afternoon and I only got around to looking at it while I was having dinner at home just before we left to come here.”

  “Were you and this Frazier girl good friends?” Cramer demanded.

  “No. I’d only met her two or three times, although I knew she and Hale were…close. I doubt if we’d spoken more than a few sentences to each other.”

  “Is this her writing?” Hobson grabbed the letter from me. When he checked later, those fingerprints on it other than Gretchen’s would be his, plus one smudged print from Elena.

  “I don’t know,” Elena said, shaking her head. “I assume so, but I just don’t know.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

  “Mr. Hobson, it will be simple enough to determine the handwriting,” Wolfe said, averting his eyes from the sobbing woman. “If you happen to be a betting man and doubt that Gretchen Frazier was the author of that missive, I suggest that you might wish to propose a wager to Mr. Goodwin, who enjoys such things.”

  Hobson looked like he wanted to either pop Wolfe or cut loose with a string of those words that can’t be used on television. But bless him, he showed admirable restraint by gritting his teeth, getting up, and storming out of the office. Lieutenant Powers, looking just as grim, was right on his heels, and I was only too happy to follow them both down the hall and hold the front door open. After all, in the brownstone we have certain standards where the social graces are concerned.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE WALL CLOCK READ ELEVEN-SIXTEEN. Wolfe and I were alone in the office, nursing beer and milk, respectively. After our guests had filed out, I helped Fritz straighten up, putting chairs back where they belonged, taking glasses to the kitchen, and otherwise giving the place a semi-presentable look that Fritz would improve upon in the morning.

  “Well, you man
aged to make just about everybody unhappy tonight,” I told Wolfe.

  “Oh?” He set his beer glass down and raised his eyebrows.

  “Sure. First there’s our client, who paid up all right, which is the good news,” I said, holding the check for twenty-five thousand dollars that Cortland had somewhat grudgingly written as his second and final installment just before he left. “But he’s sore at you because you made his hero look like a dirty old man—which of course he was. Then there’s Prescott’s top cop, who’s mad because you solved his case for him and didn’t even leave him anybody to arrest. To say nothing of Cramer and Stebbins, who probably felt like they wasted their evening. You know how Purley likes to give his handcuffs a workout. And we have Schmidt and Greenbaum, the Frick and Frack of the Prescott faculty, who were hoping Markham had either committed suicide or fallen accidentally. Now they’re afraid that despite his lecherous leanings he’ll look like a martyr and will end up being deified. And I’ve still got to call Lon, who’s sure to be grouchy because he won’t get the kind of story he was hoping for. After all, the headline PRIVATE GUMSHOE SAYS PRESCOTT COED KILLED PROF THEN SELF BUT POLICE ARE SEEKING PROOF isn’t exactly a newsstand grabber. He was expecting you to finger somebody who’s living so the Gazette could somehow wangle an exclusive interview with the suspect. As for Elena, she had to sit there and listen while you speculated on the amorous exploits of the man she felt she had some claim on.”

  “Mr. Markham’s exploits, as you refer to them, surely came as no surprise to her,” Wolfe remarked.

  “I know. Still, it’s got to be hard hearing about them, especially in front of a crowd that includes some of your coworkers. But you sent at least one person home happy—Potter. Now that there’s nothing stopping him from latching on to that dough of Bach’s, he’s free to keep on building his empire up the Hudson. No doubt Prescott will have a Bach Library, a Bach Field House, and a Bach Science Center before it’s over.