Death on Deadline (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 2)

by Robert Goldsborough

  Wolfe opened his center drawer and pulled out a single sheet of white bond that I had given him. “Before I read this, does everyone know who Ann Barwell is?”

  “Of course,” Bishop rasped impatiently. “She was Harriet’s executive secretary. Had been for years.”

  “Yesterday, an operative in my employ named Saul Panzer visited Miss Barwell in South Carolina, where she has been staying. This is a transcript of a portion of their conversation:

  “Panzer: Did Mrs. Haverhill give you any notes or instructions concerning Scott Haverhill on Friday?

  “Barwell: No, but she did mention him to me.

  “Panzer: In what context?

  “Barwell: She said to remind her Monday to ask about a memo she wanted sent to stockholders, and later, to department heads.

  “Panzer: Did she say what the memo was about?

  “Barwell: Yes, she told me it was about naming Mr. Haverhill publisher.

  “Panzer: Which Mr. Haverhill?

  “Barwell: Why, Mr. Scott Haverhill.”

  Wolfe set the paper down and surveyed his audience triumphantly. Again the din started. They were all talking, with “I don’t believe it!” and “Impossible!” mixed in as they tried to outshout one another.

  “Quiet!” Wolfe spat. It wasn’t a bellow, but close, and it did the trick. “Does anyone seriously doubt this woman’s word? I understand she had been in Mrs. Haverhill’s employ for approximately twenty years.”

  Nobody said anything, although Scott was wearing what I’d define as a smirk. It was hard to believe Harriet would have turned her paper over to him.

  “Wait a minute,” Cramer objected. “If that’s true, it would have given Harriet Haverhill, let’s see … more than fifty-two percent.”

  “Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “a controlling interest.”

  MacLaren looked ill.

  “But the suicide …” It was Donna, and if she’d been in a comic strip, she would have had a question mark above her head.

  Wolfe inhaled several cubic feet of air and let them out slowly. “Again, Mrs. Palmer, there was no suicide. Quite the opposite. Mrs. Haverhill was herself bent on ending the life of someone else.” That raised the noise level again, but Wolfe silenced it by bringing his palm down hard enough to rattle the Laeliacattleya in the vase on the desk top.

  “The bullet that ended her life”—he paused for effect—“was intended for her killer.”

  Donna cut in again. “You mean Harriet was going to … ?” Her mouth started to form a word, but nothing came out.

  “She was,” Wolfe stated. “You might find that difficult to believe, and it might well have been, under normal circumstances. I am constrained from divulging specifics,” he said, looking levelly at Cramer, “but she knew her own death was imminent. What punishment could the law mete out to her that would override the sentence under which she already lived? And by taking this action, she would rid the world of what she considered an unspeakable vermin.”

  “I assume we’re going to get some kind of explanation of all this gibberish,” David said. His hands were shaking. His wife started fussing over him again.

  “You will, sir,” Wolfe replied. “Getting back to mathematics, I realized that the swing of Scott Haverhill’s ten percent of the Gazette shares to her side made Mrs. Haverhill the majority holder again. That fact must have been immensely satisfying to her as she awaited the arrival of her nemesis last Friday.

  “Mr. MacLaren was on time for his appointment—we and the police have Miss Barwell’s word on that.”

  “And mine too!” MacLaren said. His eyes blazed at Wolfe. A muscle was twitching in his cheek.

  “Just so. We also have your word, sir, that the conversation was far from pleasant. What we don’t have is an accurate report of that conversation.”

  “See here—”

  “You’ll have time to talk.” Wolfe scowled. “Let me reconstruct the dialogue, at least in a general way. You probably spoke first, from a position of strength, claiming to have a majority of the shares, and if what you have said at other times is true, you offered to buy Mrs. Haverhill’s stock as well.

  “This would of course have been an additional affront to her, but she still had a trump card and she played it, undoubtedly relishing the moment. She crowed about Scott’s almost certain defection from your camp.

  “But you, sir, were able to overrun, and you did. You informed her of another defection, but one from her camp, which shifted the balance back, giving you barely more than fifty percent.”

  “This is ridiculous,” MacLaren shouted, starting to rise, but Purley Stebbins moved up from the back of the room and told him softly but firmly to sit down. MacLaren sat, grabbing his knees.

  “Ridiculous? We’ll see,” Wolfe answered. “After you dropped your bombshell, the conversation deteriorated to little more than a shouting duel, and you left her office. She was in a fury, understandably. She had been betrayed, and she phoned her Judas, asking—probably demanding—his presence in her office.

  “Her animosity was so intense that reason deserted her, and the long-forgotten pistol in her desk drawer came to mind. When the turncoat arrived, she confronted him with her knowledge of his defection and took the gun from the drawer or some other place of concealment. However, he moved quickly—after all, his life was on the line. He managed to wrest the gun from her, and one of two things happened: either he shot her intentionally or the weapon discharged during the struggle, firing the fatal shell. Then he—”

  “Stop!” The shriek was so piercing that everyone in the room recoiled. “Stop, stop, stop!” Elliot Dean held his hands over his ears and shook his head as if he were having a spasm. “It was an accident!” he screamed. “It went off while we were … She was dying anyway …”

  His words degenerated to sobs as Purley Stebbins moved over next to him, easing Bishop aside. “You have the right to remain silent,” Purley began, and Wolfe waited until he had finished his litany. Dean seemed to be in shock, but then, so did everybody else, including Cramer.

  “My God,” he said hoarsely, “what made him do it?”

  Wolfe shrugged. “Why do people ever trespass? Money? Jealousy? Revenge? Passion? In this case, I can only surmise. But from the start, I centered my attention primarily on Mr. Dean and Mr. Bishop. My suspicions of these two were heightened when I learned that Scott Haverhill’s shares were likely slipping from Mr. MacLaren’s grasp.

  “I must be totally candid, however,” he continued, turning both palms up. “Scott Haverhill also remained on my list of contenders, and I did not absolutely eliminate him until Mr. Panzer reported his conversation with Miss Barwell.

  “As I said earlier, I should have fixed on Mr. Dean long ago. As you all know, he and Harriet Haverhill visited here last week. Several hours later, Mr. MacLaren came to see me, and during our discussion, he mentioned that he was aware Mrs. Haverhill had preceded him. I wondered at the time how he knew, but dismissed the question from my mind, assuming he had people watching this house.

  “Then on Monday, his former wife came here in an attempt to enlist my services. The next day, Mr. Dean was a visitor, albeit a reluctant one. At the end of our meeting, I said that we had a client, although I gave no name. He appeared to show little if any interest in my revelation, which was in itself suspicious. Later on Tuesday, Mr. MacLaren called, demanding an appointment. He said he was angered that his former wife had hired me. When I asked what made him think this was the case, he claimed he had been called by a television reporter who had this house under surveillance, and that this reporter had seen her entering and leaving.

  “On the surface, a feasible explanation,” Wolfe said. “Audrey MacLaren’s face might be well enough known that she’d be recognized by a journalist. But there’s a rub: the same individual who telephoned Mr. MacLaren would also have called me asking why Mrs. MacLaren had been here—even television journalists are known to practice some semblance of thoroughness. No such call came, however, and no repo
rter ever called Audrey MacLaren for a comment, either.

  “Clearly the ‘reporter’ was Elliot Dean, who wasted no time in informing Mr. MacLaren that I had a client.” Wolfe turned to MacLaren, who was slouching with his hands jammed into his pants pockets. “It didn’t take you long to guess who that client might be, particularly given your acrimonious relationship with your former wife. You called her, confronting her with your supposition, and you hit a bull’s-eye. She admitted our contract, and then you called me in a state of agitation.”

  MacLaren tried to say something, but Wolfe cut him off, shifting his attention to Cramer. “Why were MacLaren and Dean in league? Mr. MacLaren would stop at almost nothing to get the Gazette and establish a New York beachhead. Some time ago he realized he couldn’t to a moral certainty count on Scott Haverhill’s stock. He correctly sensed the man’s indecision. Without Scott, the MacLaren holdings would fall below forty-eight percent. He desperately needed insurance, and who could provide it? Either Mr. Bishop, with five percent of the shares, or Mr. Dean, with three percent, would serve to catapult him back into a majority position.

  “In seeking an ally, he may have tried Mr. Bishop first—you’ll have to ask both of them that. In any event, he found sufficient weakness of character, and perhaps need of money, in Mr. Dean. I think you’ll find that sometime in the last several weeks, Mr. MacLaren secretly co-opted him with the promise of a substantial monetary reward if he would commit his shares and also become a quisling by reporting on Mrs. Haverhill’s activities. The latter part of their compact is why he was so eager to accompany her to this office.”

  Dean responded with a groan, holding his head in his hands. “She … always took me for granted,” he choked. “Never admitted … she needed me.” His voice degenerated into sniffles.

  “You miserable little bastard,” David croaked, springing up and making a move toward Dean before Carolyn yanked his sleeve. He awkwardly sat back down.

  “You can’t prove any of this.” MacLaren’s burr was strangled. “And even if you could, I did nothing illegal at any time.” His hawkish face was gray.

  “Possibly true,” Wolfe conceded, “although I’m sure Mr. Cramer and his men will want to talk further to you. And whatever you choose to tell them, it’s likely that Mr. Dean will no longer be reticent to describe your relationship.”

  “I’m late for my engagement,” MacLaren said calmly. You have to give the man credit: he is cool. He started to get up, but Cramer barked him back into his chair.

  “Sir, whether you stay or go is of no consequence to me now,” Wolfe said coldly. “As to whether you are guilty of any criminal act, that is for others to decide. But if I may be indulged, I would like to ask if anyone in this room honestly believes Mrs. Haverhill would be dead today were it not for you and your foul machinations?”

  The room fell silent except for Dean’s sobs, which had grown softer. He still had his face down and his head covered by his hands, though. Purley Stebbins stuck to his side.

  “One thing I don’t understand.” It was Carl Bishop, clearing his throat. “What happened to those notes that Scott says Harriet made? And, for the record, at no time did MacLaren approach me. If he had, I think everyone in this room knows how I would have reacted.”

  Wolfe fingered his bottle-opener. “Yes, the notes. Mrs. Haverhill surely did make some notes, perhaps extensive ones, as her nephew has indicated. When Mr. Dean was summoned to her office for their fateful meeting, she probably had those pages on her desk, angrily using them to show him that she would have defeated MacLaren had not he, Dean, treacherously shifted his holding. After the fatal struggle, Mr. Dean, despite being badly shaken, had the presence to gather up the notes and take them away. They may be locked up in one of his offices, but more likely he destroyed them.

  “In fact, it was his reaction to my suggestion that Mrs. Haverhill might have wanted her nephew to be publisher which convinced me of his guilt. When he was here on Tuesday, he became almost violent each time I mentioned Scott Haverhill’s name in conjunction with the publisher’s chair. You saw him do it again this evening. He was desperately trying to persuade me—and tonight the rest of you as well—that Harriet would never have agreed to such an arrangement. His intent in so doing was to throw suspicion on Scott as his aunt’s killer, should the police begin to doubt that her death was a suicide. He wanted it to appear that this man, consistently foiled in his efforts to reach the top of the corporate pyramid, committed this act out of anger, frustration, and desperation.

  “In theory, a passable strategy,” Wolfe went on. “In practice, he tried too hard, overplaying his hand. At that, however, he probably thought he had succeeded. He had successfully purloined Mrs. Haverhill’s notes on Scott, and several days had passed. He felt secure in the knowledge that no one else was aware of her plans for her nephew. And he likely came here tonight thinking I would either point the finger at Scott or concede that Mrs. Haverhill’s death was indeed a suicide. Only when I read Miss Barwell’s words aloud tonight did he realize the game was up.”

  “Elliot said something just now about how Harriet was dying anyway,” Donna said softly. “What was he talking about?”

  Wolfe looked sharply at Cramer, then swung back to Donna. “Apparently Mrs. Haverhill shared with Mr. Dean—and perhaps no one else—the grim news that she had only recently received: that she was afflicted with a malignancy beyond cure. I, too, knew of this—it is immaterial how I came by it. I am somewhat surprised Mr. Dean did not trumpet his knowledge of the terminal illness after Mrs. Haverhill’s death. It would have strengthened the argument that she was a suicide, although my own knowledge of her illness never for a moment moved me from my conviction that she had been murdered.”

  “I also want to know,” Donna said, turning toward MacLaren, “whether he knew Elliot killed my stepmother.”

  Wolfe raised his shoulders and let them drop. “You’ll have to ask him yourself, madam, or get the police to do it. My thought is that he did not, because—”

  “You’re damn right I didn’t,” MacLaren blurted, his burr more pronounced than ever. His suit no longer seemed to fit so well. “I’m a newspaperman and a businessman, not a criminal, and I don’t consort with criminals.”

  “I’d advise you to stop right there,” Wolfe cautioned. “You’re getting to sound far too much like Richard Nixon.”

  “From here on in, I’ll do the talking,” Cramer said. “Purley, let’s get moving. And, Mr. MacLaren, I want to see you in my office at nine tomorrow morning—here’s my card.”

  Stebbins got Dean to his feet and snapped the cuffs on him. At that moment, it finally hit the others that the small man with the white hair and the tiny mustache was a killer. Donna gasped. David staggered up and poured a neat Irish whiskey, while Carolyn, though trying to look composed, gave herself away with a quivering lower lip. Scott just looked dazed. MacLaren’s face was twisted into a snarl as he moved toward Audrey, started to say something, and changed his mind, heading for the door. In fact, they all filed woodenly out, except for Audrey and Bishop, both of whom Wolfe asked to stay behind.

  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 deman
ded 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.