Death on Deadline
Page 20
I hustled to the front hall and held the door open. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just nodded to each of them, including Donna, at whom I would have preferred to at least smile. It seemed like a funeral procession, and in a way I suppose it was. The silence was broken only by the coughs and sniffles and wheezes of Elliot Dean while Purley eased him into the back of the unmarked car idling at the curb.
TWENTY-TWO
When I got back to the office, Bishop was standing in front of Wolfe’s desk fiddling with his unlit pipe and scratching his head. “. . . and I’ve known Elliot for probably thirty years,” he was saying. “I can’t comprehend it. Say, I’ve got to call the newsroom—can I use your phone? Dammit, I wish I had somebody along.”
“You do,” Wolfe said, nodding to me. I went out to the hall where Lon was waiting and waved him in. “Where the hell did you come from?” Bishop demanded when he saw him.
“He’s been here all the time,” Wolfe said, the folds of his cheeks deepening. “I knew you would need someone to help you write and relay the story to the newspaper. As you’ve heard me say, I want to ensure that our relationship doesn’t get out of balance. I invite both of you to use Mr. Goodwin’s and my desk and our telephones. I’m going to the kitchen. Archie, please escort Mrs. MacLaren to the front room and see that she has something to eat and drink. We can talk in here later.”
As I led Audrey to the front room, she was all questions, some of which I answered and others I told her to save for Wolfe. I took her drink order—she didn’t want to eat—and went back to the office to fill it. Bishop, who didn’t know yet that Lon had been an eyewitness, was rapidly describing the events of the evening to him, and Lon sat at my typewriter banging out a story for tomorrow’s editions while probably adding some of his own firsthand observations. At least I figure he was, the way he was grinning. I got Audrey a rye and water and went back to the front room, where I plopped down next to her on the yellow sofa.
“Will Ian get out of this without any punishment?” she asked me.
“Probably, although I’d be surprised if he lands the Gazette now. I gather you’re disappointed at the way things turned out?”
“Not really.” She shrugged and adjusted an errant strand of coppery hair. “Actually, the whole episode has been good for me. In the last few days, I think I’ve come to terms with my attitude about Ian. I’ll never like him, but I really do pity him. I suppose maybe I have unconsciously pitied him for years. He’s got all the money he can ever spend, Lord knows, but I don’t think he’ll be satisfied. And I don’t think he’ll ever have the respect he aches for from his peers in the newspaper world.”
“Do you think he deserves their respect with the papers he puts out?”
“No, and that ought to please me, but it doesn’t. Maybe that means I’m finally growing up,” she said, looking at me with a funny, lopsided smile.
“You were there a long time ago,” I said. “You just didn’t know it.”
TWENTY-THREE
Three days later, Monday to be precise, Wolfe was sitting in the office after lunch drinking beer, while I had milk. To bring you up-to-date, he got paid the other half of his fee by Audrey. It had been nearly midnight when Wolfe finally saw her in his office on Friday: Lon and Bishop had taken that long writing and phoning in the stories for Saturday’s Gazette.
When she did see Wolfe, Audrey insisted on paying him on the spot, with a personal check. “I know you said the second payment wasn’t due until someone was convicted,” she told him, “but I’m satisfied you got the right person, even if it wasn’t the one I thought I wanted.”
Saturday’s Gazette carried Dean’s arrest as its banner, scooping all the competition, and Wolfe and I again had our mugs in the paper. For hours after it hit the streets, we were flooded with calls from news-hounds wanting quotes and interviews. I fielded all the calls, and the most anybody got was a statement from Wolfe that he was “glad to be of help in clearing up this matter.”
I was admiring the new entry in the bankbook when the doorbell rang. Through the glass, I saw Donna Palmer, looking pert and businesslike.
“This is a surprise,” I said brightly as I opened the door. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Is Mr. Wolfe in?” she asked, smiling up at me. “I’d like just a minute or two of his time. I apologize for not calling first.”
“He is indeed. Follow me,” I told her.
“Mrs. Palmer is here to see you,” I said as I ushered her in.
“Madam?” Wolfe said, looking up from his book. “Can we get you anything? Coffee, perhaps?”
“No, nothing, thank you. I told Mr. Goodwin I wouldn’t stay long. But I felt that I should come and . . . representing the family, tell you how much we appreciate what you did. I’m afraid we gave you a pretty tough time. We’d like to compensate you for all your time and effort,” she said, opening her purse.
Wolfe held up a palm. “I’ve been fairly compensated already, thank you. There is only one way in which you and your family could reward me.”
“I think I know what it is,” Donna said, with her pretty smile. “Let me tell you what happened over the weekend: I decided to sell my Gazette stock to the trust Harriet set up. I felt that even if Ian MacLaren is totally blameless in her death, he’s not the kind of person that I want to see running the paper my father built up and loved so much. I suppose I should have realized that long ago. But thanks to you, I saw what a monster he really is. I owe you a great deal for that alone.”
Wolfe dipped his head an eighth of an inch, which is one of the ways he says “Satisfactory.” Donna stood, thanked him again, and held out a hand. To my surprise, he took it, although he didn’t totally lose control by standing.
Postscript: Elliot Dean was found guilty of the unpremeditated murder of Harriet Haverhill; he admitted during the trial that after he wrested the gun from her, he shot her. Her death had been no accident. Because of his age and an advanced case of emphysema, Dean was given a reduced sentence, which he is now serving. Ian MacLaren was questioned by the police and the district attorney’s office, as Inspector Cramer later told us,’ but no charges were brought against him. However, he abandoned all attempts to buy the Gazette and, according to a short piece in the Times business pages last week, he’s focused his attention on a D.C.
paper. Maybe he and the federal government deserve each other.
As far as I know, Donna Palmer went back to Boston, after selling her shares to the Gazette trust now being administered by Carl Bishop, Scott Haverhill, and that banker. Bishop is still publisher, but Lon tells me he’s going to gradually phase out over the next fifteen months or so, turning the job over to Scott in stages. As for David, he also sold his holding to the trust, using some of the proceeds to buy a small daily paper out in Ohio. Maybe that’s more his speed, although my guess is he’ll still spend most of his time in New York—somehow I can’t picture Carolyn living anywhere west of the Hudson.
Even though the case was two months ago, vestiges keep popping up. Just yesterday, I got a call from that TV evangelist in Delaware who’d phoned us because of Wolfe’s ad in the Times. “I was just checking to see if that paper up your way might still be up for sale,” he said in his syrupy drawl. I wanted to ask him where he’d been hiding for the last eight weeks, but instead said that the Gazette was not now on the market.
“I’m sure sorry to hear that,” he said. “I really think I’d like to have a newspaper.”
“You’re not alone, brother,” I told him. “Why don’t you try looking in Washington?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROBERT GOLDSBOROUGH, acclaimed author of Murder in E Minor, is a longtime Nero Wolfe fan and recognized expert. He is the recipient of the 8th Annual Nero Award, given by the Wolfe Pack. Formerly an editor with the Chicago Tribune, he is currently executive editor of Advertising Age. He lives in Chicago, where he is at work on his third Nero Wolfe mystery.
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End of Death on Deadline
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Foreword
One
TWO
Three
Four
Five
SIX
seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
TWENTY-TWO
Twenty-three
About the Author
End of Death on Deadline