Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 25

by Before Midnight

  “Everybody this way,” I said. No one moved. “I’d rather not yell,” I said, “because the inspector’s phoning. He wants you out of this room, and four of the men will please bring chairs.”

  That helped, giving them something to do. Philip Younger picked up a chair and came, and the others after him. I opened the door to the dining room, and they filed across and in. Fritz was at my elbow, and I told him there would be lots of company and he might as well leave the bolt off. The doorbell rang, and he went and admitted Doc Vollmer, and I waved Doc to the office.

  Leaving the door from the dining room to the hall wide open and standing just inside, I surveyed my herd. Mrs. Wheelock had flopped onto a chair, and so had Philip Younger. I hoped Younger wasn’t having a paroxysm. Most of the others were standing, and I told them they might as well sit down.

  The only one who put up a squawk was Rudolph Hansen. He confronted me. “Vernon Assa is my client and my friend, and I have a right to see that he gets proper—”

  “He’s already got. A doctor’s here, and a good one.” I raised my voice. “Just take it easy, everybody, and it would be better if you’d shut up.”

  “What happened to him?” Gertrude Frazee demanded.

  “I don’t know. But if you want something to occupy your minds, just before Mr. Wolfe entered he was standing by the wall with a glass in his hand and there was liquid in the glass. You heard the glass hit the floor, but I saw no sign of spilled liquid. You might turn that over and see what you think of it.”

  “It was Pernod in the glass,” Patrick O’Garro said. “I saw him pour it. He always drank Pernod. He put the glass down on the table when Hansen called to him, and went—”

  “Hold it, Pat,” Hansen snapped at him. “This may be—I hope not—but this may be a very grave matter.”

  “You see,” I told the herd. “I advised you to shut up, and Mr. Hansen, who is a lawyer, agrees with me.”

  “I want to telephone,” Heery said.

  “The phone’s busy. Anyway, I’m just a temporary watchdog. I’ll be getting a relief, and you can—”

  I broke it off to stretch my neck for a look at the newcomers Fritz was admitting—two city employees in uniform. They came down the hall and headed for me, but I pointed across to the office and they right-angled. From there on it was a parade. A minute later two more in uniform came, and then three in their own clothes, two of whom I knew, and before long one with a little black bag. My herd had more or less settled down, and I had decided I didn’t need to catch Doc Vollmer on his way out for a look at Younger. Two more arrived, and when I saw one of them was Lieutenant Rowcliff a little flutter ran over my biceps. He affects me that way. He and his pal went to the office, but pretty soon appeared again, heading for the dining room, and I sidestepped to keep from being trampled.

  They entered, and the pal closed the door, and Rowcliff faced the herd. “You will remain here under surveillance until otherwise notified. Vernon Assa is dead. I am Lieutenant George Rowcliff, and for the present you are in my custody as material witnesses.”

  That was like him. In fact, it was him. What the hell did they care whether he was George Rowcliff or Cuthbert Rowcliff? Also he had said it wrong. If they were in his custody they were under arrest, and in that case they could demand to be allowed to communicate with their lawyers before answering any questions as a matter of ordinary prudence, which would stop the wheels of justice for hours. I was surprised that neither Hansen nor Hibbard picked it up, but they could have thought it would sound like soliciting business and didn’t want to be unethical. Lawyers are very delicate.

  I was in an anomalous position again. I wanted to open the door to leave, (a) to see if Wolfe wanted me, (b) to watch the scientists at work, and (c) to get a rise out of Rowcliff in case he had the notion that I was in his custody too, but on the other hand it seemed likely that a specimen who had had the nerve to commit a murder in Wolfe’s office, right under his nose, was there in the dining room, and I didn’t like to leave him with only a baboon like Rowcliff to keep an eye on him. I was propped against the wall, considering it, when the door opened and Inspector Cramer walked in. Short of the table he stopped and sent his eyes around.

  “Mr. Buff,” he said. “Buff and O’Garro and Hansen—and I guess Heery. You four men come here please.” They moved. “Stand there in front of me. I’m going to show you something and ask if you can identify it. Look at it as close as you want to, but don’t touch it. You understand? Don’t touch it.”

  They said they understood, and he lifted a hand. The thumb and forefinger were pinching the corner of a brown leather wallet. The quartet gazed at it. O’Garro’s hand started toward it and he jerked it back. No one spoke.

  “The initials ‘LD’ are stamped on the inside,” Cramer said, “and it contained items with Louis Dahlmann’s name on them, but I’m asking if you can identify it as the wallet Dahlmann was carrying at that meeting last Tuesday evening.”

  “Of course not,” Hansen said curtly. “Positively identify it? Certainly not.”

  A voice came from behind him: “It looks like it.” Gertrude Frazee had stepped up to help. Rowcliff got her elbow to ease her back, but she made it stronger. “It looks exactly like it!”

  “Okay,” Cramer said, “I’m not asking you to swear to it, but you can tell me this, is it enough like the wallet he had at that meeting that you can’t see any difference? I ask you that, Mr. Hansen.”

  “I can’t answer. I wasn’t at the meeting. Neither was Mr. Buff.”

  “Oh.” Cramer wasn’t fazed. Even an inspector can’t remember everything. “You, Mr. O’Garro? You heard the question.”

  “Yes,” O’Garro said.

  “Mr. Heery?”

  “It looks like it. Assa had it?”

  Cramer nodded. “In his breast pocket.”

  “I knew it!” Miss Frazee cried. “A trick! A cheat! I knew all the time—”

  Rowcliff gripped her arm, and she whirled and used the other one to smack him in the face, and I made a note to send a contribution to the Women’s Nature League. Others started to ask Cramer things, or tell him, but he showed them a palm. “You’ll all get a chance to talk before you leave here. Plenty. Stay here until you’re sent for.”

  “Are we under arrest?” Harold Rollins asked, as superior as ever.

  “No. You’re being detained by police authority at the scene of a violent death in your presence. Anyone who prefers to be arrested will be accommodated.” He turned, looked around for me, found me, said, “Come with me, Goodwin,” and made for the door.

  Chapter 19

  I supposed he was taking me to the office, but no, he told me to wait in the hall, and anyway there wasn’t room for me in the office. A mob of experts was expertizing in every direction, and Fritz was seated in Wolfe’s chair behind his desk, watching them. Wolfe was nowhere in sight. From the door I saw Cramer go to one sitting at my desk and deliver the wallet by depositing it gently in a little box. Then he passed a few orders around, came to me and said, “Wolfe’s up in his room,” and headed up the stairs. I followed.

  Wolfe’s door was closed, but Cramer opened it without bothering to knock, and walked in. That was bad manners. He was unquestionably in command of the office, since a man had just died there violently with him present, but not the rest of the house. However, it wasn’t the best possible moment to read him the Bill of Rights, so I followed him in and shut the door.

  At least Wolfe hadn’t gone to bed. He was in the big chair under the reading lamp with a book. Lifting his eyes to us, he put the book on the table, and as I moved a chair up for Cramer I caught its title: Montaigne’s Essays. It was one of a few dozen he kept on the shelves there in his room, so he hadn’t removed anything from the office, which might have been interfering with justice.

  “Was he dead when you left?” Cramer asked.

  Wolfe nodded. “Yes, sir. I stayed for that.”

  “He’s still dead.” Cramer is not a wag; he was ju
st stating a fact. He pushed his chair back an inch, wrinkling the carpet. “It was cyanide. To be verified, but it was. We found a crumpled paper on the floor under the end of the couch. Toilet paper. Not the kind in your bathroom.”

  “Thank you,” Wolfe said drily.

  “Yeah, I know. You didn’t do it. You were with me. Goodwin wasn’t, not all the time, but I’m willing to be realistic. There was white powder left on the paper, and when we put a drop of water on a spot it had the cyanide smell. The glass seemed to have it too, but there was the smell of the drink.” He looked up at me. “Sit down, Goodwin. Do you know what the drink was?”

  “No,” I replied, “but O’Garro said it was Pernod. He said he saw him pour it and put it down on the table when Hansen called to him. And when—”

  “Damn you,” Cramer exploded, “you had the nerve to start in on them? You know damn well—”

  “Nuts,” I said distinctly. “I asked no questions. He volunteered it. And when Assa was here this evening just before dinner he drank Pernod—or rather, he gulped it, and said it was his drink.”

  “He was here? Before dinner?”

  “Right. Unless Mr. Wolfe says he wasn’t.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Ask Mr. Wolfe.”

  “No,” Wolfe said emphatically. “My brain is fuddled. Tell Mr. Cramer what Mr. Assa said and what I said. All of it.”

  I got a chair and sat, and shut my eyes for a moment to get my brain arranged. I had had a long and strict training, but the past hour had shoved other details to the rear, and I had to adjust. I did so, opened my eyes, and reported. When I had got to the end, with Assa saying, “Very well,” and departing, I added, “That’s it. If we had a tape of it I’d welcome a comparison. Any questions?”

  No reply. Cramer had stuck a cigar in his mouth and was chewing on it. “Go down to the office,” he said, “and get your typewriter and some paper. Tell Stebbins I said so, and take it somewhere and type that. All of it.”

  “That can wait,” Wolfe said gruffly, “until we’re through here. I want him here.”

  Cramer didn’t press it. He took the cigar from his mouth and said, “And then you phoned me.”

  “Yes. As soon as Mr. Assa was out of the house.”

  “Too bad you didn’t tell me what had happened. Assa would still be alive.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Cramer goggled. “By God, you admit it?”

  “I’ll admit anything you please. I have had cause for chagrin before now, Mr. Cramer, but nothing to compare with this. I didn’t know that mortification could cut so deeply. One more stab and it would have got the bone. If Mr. Assa had had the wallet in his possession, actually on his person—then it would have been consummate. That would have finished me.”

  “He did.”

  “He did what?”

  “He had the wallet. In his breast pocket. It has been identified as the one Dahlmann was carrying—sufficiently identified. There was no paper in it containing the answers.”

  Wolfe swallowed. He swallowed again. “I am humiliated beyond expression, Mr. Cramer. Go and get the murderer. But lock me in here; I would only botch it for you. The rest of the house is yours.”

  Cramer and I regarded him, not with pity. We both knew him too well. Naturally he was bitter, since he had got the stage all set for one of his major performances, with him as the star, and had actually started his act, only to have a prominent member of the cast, presumably the villain, up and on him, there before his eyes. It was certainly upsetting, but neither Cramer nor I was sap enough to believe that he was humiliated beyond expression—or anything else beyond expression.

  Cramer didn’t go to pat his shoulder. He merely asked, “What if he wasn’t murdered? What if he dosed his drink himself?”

  “Pfui,” Wolfe said, and I lifted a hand to hide a grin. He went on, “If he did, he had the paper of cyanide in his pocket when he left wherever he was to come here. With a choice of places for ending his life, I refuse to believe he selected the audience he knew he would have in my office—and with that wallet in his pocket.”

  “Something might have happened after he got here.”

  “I don’t believe it. He had had ample opportunity to talk with his associates beforehand.”

  “He might have wanted to throw suspicion on someone.”

  “Then for an intelligent man he was remarkably clumsy about it. Unless you have details unknown to me?”

  “No. I think he was murdered.” Cramer dumped that by turning his hand over. “If I understand you, after he came and tried to get you to call off the meeting, you assumed he had killed Dahlmann and taken the wallet, and you intended to screw it out of him tonight. Was that it?”

  “No, sir. You forget that I was not interested in the murder. I assumed, of course, that points relevant to the murder would be broached, and that was why I invited you to come. I also assumed that Assa had taken the wallet, because—”

  “Sure you did,” Cramer blurted. “Naturally. Because he was certain you had sent the answers to the contestants, so he knew nobody else could have sent them, and the only way he could have known that was obvious.”

  “Nothing of the sort.” Wolfe didn’t sound humiliated, but I’m not saying he hadn’t been. It was just that he had a good repair department. “On the contrary. Because he was eager to give me the credit for sending the answers, though he knew I hadn’t. If he hadn’t known who had sent them he wouldn’t have risked such a move, so he had sent them himself, getting them from the paper in Dahlmann’s wallet. I rejected the remote possibility that he had got them from the originals in the safe deposit vault, since he wouldn’t have dared go there alone and ask for that box. The brilliant stroke that saved the contest, for which he heaped praise on me, was his own. Therefore he had either taken the wallet himself or he knew who had, and the former was the more probable, since he said he had come to me on his own initiative and responsibility without consulting his associates. And of course he wanted the meeting canceled.”

  “Why not?” Cramer demanded. “Why didn’t you cancel it?”

  “Because I had a double obligation, and not to him. One was my obligation to my client, the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa, to do the job I had been hired for, and the other was my obligation to myself, not to be hoodwinked.” He stopped short, tightened his lips, and half closed his eyes. “Not to be hoodwinked,” he said bitterly, “and look at me.”

  He opened his eyes. “Hoodwinked, however, not by a Mr. Assa trying to save a perfume contest, but by a man who had already murdered once and was ready to murder again. I was assuming that Assa had taken Dahlmann’s wallet, but not that he had killed him; and anyway, that was your affair. Now it’s quite different. To assume that Assa was killed merely because someone knew he had taken the wallet and sent the answers to the contestants would be infantile. To assume that Assa knew that Hansen or Buff or O’Garro or Heery had taken the wallet and sent the answers, and that one of them killed him to forestall disclosure, would be witless. The only tolerable assumption is that Assa knew, or had reason to believe, that one of them had killed Dahlmann. That would be worth killing for, but by heaven, not in my office!”

  “Yeah, that was cheeky.” Cramer took the cigar from his mouth, what was left of it. “Why just those four? What about the contestants?”

  “Nonsense. Not worth considering. Send them home. Can you possibly think them worth discussing?”

  “No,” Cramer conceded, “but I’m not sending them home. They were there when the poison was put in the drink. They’re being questioned now, separately. I thought you wouldn’t mind if we used the rooms on that floor and the basement.”

  “I am in no position to mind anything whatever.” It had cut deep. “I respect your routine, Mr. Cramer, question them by all means, but I doubt if he was inept enough to let himself be observed. Also you may get more than you want. Miss Frazee may well declare that she saw each of them in turn, including the other contestants, puttin
g something into his drink. I advise you not to let her know that the paper was found.—By the way. You told me last Wednesday that none of those five men—you were including Assa—could prove he hadn’t gone to Dahlmann’s place the night he was killed. Does that still hold?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I wanted to know.”

  “What for? You looking for a murderer now? By God, I could lock you in!”

  “I still have my job, to find out who took the wallet. Those who may suppose I’ll now be satisfied that Mr. Assa took it will be wrong.” All of a sudden, with no warning, Wolfe blew. He opened his mouth and roared, “Confound it, can a man kill with impunity in my office, with my liquor in my glass?”

  “A goddam shame,” Cramer said. “But you stick to your job and let mine alone. I’d hate to see you humiliated again. I wouldn’t mind humiliating you myself some day, but not by a stranger and a murderer. Anyway, if it’s down to those four, two of them are your clients.”

  “No. My client is a business firm.”

  “Okay, but keep off. I don’t like the look on your face, but I seldom do. Other things I don’t like. You seem positive the contestants are out of it.”

  “I am.”

  “Why? What do you know that you haven’t told me?”

  “Nothing of any substance.”

  “Do you know of any motive any of those four men had for killing Dahlmann?”

  “No. Only that apparently they all envied him. Do you know of any?”

  “None that has looked good enough. Now we’ll look closer. Have you any information at all that points in any way to one of them?”

  “No one more than another.”

  “If you get any I want it. You keep off. Another thing I don’t like, this client stuff. I have known you—come in!”