Trio for Blunt Instruments

by Rex Stout

  Trio for Blunt Instruments

  Rex Stout

  Rex Stout

  Trio For Blunt Instruments

  Kill Now-Pay Later

  1

  THAT MONDAY MORNING Pete didn’t give me his usual polite grin, contrasting the white gleam of his teeth with the maple-syrup shade of the skin of his square leathery face. He did give me his usual greeting, “Hi-ho, Mr. Goodwin,” but with no grin in his voice either, and he ignored the established fact that I expected to take his cap and jacket and put them on the rack. By the time I turned from shutting the door he had dropped his jacket on the hall bench and was picking up his box, which he had put on the floor to free his hands for the jacket.

  “You’re an hour early,” I said. “They going barefoot?”

  “Naw, they’re busy,” he said, and headed down the hall to the office. I followed, snubbed; after all, we had been friends for more than three years.

  Pete came three days a week-Monday, Wednesday, and Friday-around noon, after he had finished his rounds in an office building on Eighth Avenue. Wolfe always gave him a dollar, since it was a five-minute walk for him to the old brownstone on West 35th Street, and I only gave him a quarter, but he gave my shoes as good a shine as he did Wolfe’s. None better. I never pretended to keep busy while he was working on Wolfe because I liked to listen. It was instructive. Wolfe’s line was that a man who had been born in Greece, even though he had left at the age of six, should be familiar with the ancient glories of his native land, and he had been hammering away at Pete for forty months. That morning, as Wolfe swiveled his oversized chair, in which he was seated behind his desk, and Pete knelt and got his box in place, and I crossed to my desk, Wolfe demanded, “Who was Eratosthenes and who accused him of murder in a great and famous speech in four-oh-three B.C.?”

  Pete, poising his brush, shook his head.

  “Who?” Wolfe demanded.

  “Maybe Pericles.”

  “Nonsense. Pericles had been dead twenty-six years. Confound it, I read parts of that speech to you last year. His name begins with L.”

  “Lycurgus.”

  “No! The Athenian Lycurgus hadn’t been born!”

  Pete looked up. “Today you must excuse me.” He tapped his head with the edge of the brush. “Empty today. Why I came early, something happened. I go in a man’s room, Mr. Ashby, a good customer, two bits every day. Room empty, nobody there. Window wide open, cold wind coming in. Tenth floor. I go and look out window, big crowd down below and cops. I go out to hall and take elevator down, I push through crowd, and there is my good customer, Mr. Ashby, there on the sidewalk, all smashed up terrible. I push back out of crowd, I look up, I see heads sticking out of windows, I think it’s no good going up to customers now, they will be looking out of windows, so I come here, that’s why I come early, so today you must excuse me, Mr. Wolfe.” He lowered his head and started the brush going.

  Wolfe grunted. “I advise you to return to that building without delay. Does anyone know you were in his room?”

  “Sure. Miss Cox.”

  “She saw you enter?”

  “Sure.”

  “How long were you in his room?”

  “Maybe one minute.”

  “Did Miss Cox see you leave?”

  “No, I go out another door to the hall.”

  “Did you push him out the window?”

  Pete stopped brushing to raise his head. “Now, Mr. Wolfe. In God’s name.”

  “I advise you to return. If a crowd had already gathered when you looked out the window, and if Miss Cox can fix the exact time you entered the room, you are probably not vulnerable, but you may be in a pickle. You should not have left the premises. The police will soon be looking for you. Go back at once. Mr. Goodwin’s shoes can wait till Wednesday-or come this afternoon.”

  Pete put the brush down and got out the polish. “Cops,” he said. “They’re all right, I like cops. But if I tell a cop I saw someone-” He started dabbing polish on. “No,” he said. “No, sir.”

  Wolfe grunted. “So you saw someone.”

  “I didn’t say I saw someone, I only said what if I told a cop I did? Did they have cops in Athens in four-oh-three B.C.?” He dabbed polish.

  That took the conversation back to the ancient glories of Greece, but I didn’t listen. While Pete finished with Wolfe and then shined me, ignoring Wolfe’s advice, I practiced on him. The idea that a detective should stick strictly to facts is the bunk. One good opinion can sometimes get you further than a hundred assorted facts. So I practiced on Pete Vassos for that ten minutes. Had he killed a man half an hour ago? If the facts, now being gathered by cops, made it possible but left it open, how would I vote? I ended by not voting because I would have had to know about motive. For money, no, Pete wouldn’t. For vengeance, that would depend on what for. For fear, sure, if the fear was hot enough. So I couldn’t vote.

  An hour later, when I walked crosstown on an errand to the bank, I stopped at the corner at Eighth Avenue for a look. The smashed-up Mr. Ashby had been removed, but the sidewalk in front of the building was roped off to keep the crowd of volunteer criminologists from interfering with the research of a couple of homicide scientists, and three cops were dealing with the traffic. Looking up, I saw a few heads sticking out of windows, but none on the tenth floor, which was third from the top.

  The afternoon Gazette is delivered a little after five o’clock at the old brownstone on West 35th Street which is owned and lived in and worked in-when he works-by Nero Wolfe, and when we have no important operation going it’s a dead hour in the office. Wolfe is up in the plant rooms on the roof with Theodore for his four-to-six afternoon session with the orchids, Fritz is in the kitchen getting something ready for the oven or the pot, and I am killing time. So when the Gazette came that day it was welcomed, and I learned all it knew about the death of Mr. Dennis Ashby. He had hit the sidewalk at 10:35 A.M. and had died on arrival. No one had been found who had seen him come out of the window of his office on the tenth floor, but it was assumed that that was where he had come from, since the receptionist, Miss Frances Cox, had spoken with him on the phone at 10:28, and no other nearby window had been open.

  If the police had decided whether to call it accident or suicide or murder they weren’t saying. If anyone had been with Ashby in the room when he left by the window, he wasn’t bragging about it. No one had gone to the room after 10:35, when Ashby had hit the sidewalk, for some fifteen minutes, when a bootblack named Peter Vassos had entered, expecting to give Ashby a shine. A few minutes later, when a cop who had got Ashby’s name from papers in his pocket had arrived on the tenth floor, Vassos had departed. Found subsequently at his home on Graham Street on the Lower East Side, Manhattan, he had been taken to the district attorney’s office for questioning.

  Dennis Ashby, thirty-nine, married, no children, had been vice-president of Mercer’s Bobbins, Inc., in charge of sales and promotion. According to his business associates and his widow, he had been in good health and his affairs had been in order, and he had had no reason to kill himself. The widow, Joan, was grief-stricken and wouldn’t see reporters. Ashby had been below average in stature, 5 feet 7, 140 pounds. That bit, saved for the last, was a typical Gazette touch, suggesting that it would be no great feat to shove a man that size through a window, so it had probably been murder, and buy the Gazette tomorrow to find out.

  At six o’clock the sound came from the hall of the elevator groaning its way down and jolting to a stop, and Wolfe entered. I waited until he had crossed to his desk and got his seventh of a ton lowered into the oversized chair to say, “They’ve got Pete down at the DA’s office. Apparently he didn’t go back to the building at all, and they-”

&n
bsp; The doorbell rang. I got up and stepped to the hall, switched on the stoop light, saw a familiar brawny figure through the one-way glass, and turned. “Cramer.”

  “What does he want?” Wolfe growled. That meant let him in. When Inspector Cramer of Homicide South is not to be admitted, with or without reason, Wolfe merely snaps, “No!” When he is to be admitted but is first to be riled, again with or without reason, Wolfe says, “I’m busy.” As for Cramer, he has moods too. When I open the door he may cross the sill and march down the hall without a grunt of greeting, or he may hello me man to man. Twice he has even called me Archie, but that was a slip of the tongue. That day he let me take his hat and coat, and when I got to the office he was in the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk, but not settled back. That chair has a deep seat, and Cramer likes to plant his feet flat on the floor. I have never seen him cross his legs. He told Wolfe this wouldn’t take long, he just wanted a little information to fill in, and Wolfe grunted.

  “About that man that came this morning to shine your shoes,” Cramer said. “Peter Vassos. What time did he get here?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “You should know better, Mr. Cramer. You do know better. I answer questions only when you have established their relevance to your duty and to my obligation, and then at my discretion.”

  “Yeah.” Cramer squeezed his lips together and counted three. “Yeah. Never make it simple, no matter how simple it is, that’s you. I’m investigating what may have been a murder, and Peter Vassos may have done it. If he did, he came straight to you afterwards. I know, he’s been coming more than three years, three times a week, to shine your shoes, but today he came early. I want to know what he said. I don’t have to remind you that you’re a licensed private detective, you’re not a lawyer, and communications to you are not privileged. What time did Vassos come this morning and what did he say?”

  Wolfe’s brows were up. “Not established. ‘May have’ isn’t enough. A man can get through a window unaided.”

  “This one didn’t. Close to certain. There was a thing on his desk, a big hunk of polished petrified wood, and it had been wiped. A thing like that on a man’s desk would have somebody’s prints or at least smudges, and it didn’t. It had been wiped. And at the back of his head, at the base of his skull, something smooth and round had hit him hard. Nothing he hit when he landed could have done that, and nothing on the way down. This hasn’t been released yet, but it will be in the morning.”

  Wolfe made a face. “Then your second ‘may have.’ Supposing that someone hit him with that thing and then pushed him out the window, it couldn’t have been Mr. Vassos, by his account. A woman, a Miss Cox, saw him enter Mr. Ashby’s room; and within seconds after entering, finding no one there, he looked out the window and saw a crowd gathered below. If Miss Cox can set the time within-”

  “She can. She does. But Vassos might have been in there before that. He could have entered by the other door, direct from the outer hall. That door was kept locked, but he could have knocked and Ashby let him in. He hit Ashby with that thing, killed him or stunned him, dragged or carried him to the window and pushed him out, left by that door, went down the hall and entered the anteroom and spoke to Miss Cox, went to Mercer’s room and gave him a shine, went to Busch’s room and gave him a shine, went to Ashby’s room by the inner hall, speaking to Miss Cox again, looked out of the window or didn’t, left by the door to the outer hall he had used before, took the elevator down and left the building, decided he had better come and see you, and came. What did he say?”

  Wolfe took a deep breath. “Very well. I won’t pretend that I’m not concerned. Aside from the many pleasant conversations I have had with Mr. Vassos, he is an excellent bootblack and he never fails to come. He would be hard to replace. Therefore I’ll indulge you. Archie. Report to Mr. Cramer in full. Verbatim.”

  I did so. That was easy, compared to some of the lengthy and complicated dialogues I have had to report to Wolfe over the years. I got my notebook and pen and shorthanded it down as I recited it, so there would be no discrepancy if he wanted it typed and signed later. Since I was looking at the notebook I couldn’t see Cramer’s face, but of course his sharp gray eyes were fastened on me, trying to spot a sign of a skip or stumble. When I came to the end, Pete’s departure, and tossed the notebook on my desk, he looked at Wolfe.

  “You advised him to go back there at once?”

  “Yes. Mr. Goodwin’s memory is incomparable.”

  “I know it is. He’s good at forgetting too. Vassos didn’t go back. He went home and we found him there. His account of his conversation with you agrees with Goodwin’s, only he left something out or Goodwin put something in. Vassos says nothing about telling you he saw someone.”

  “He didn’t. You heard it. It was an if-what if he told a cop he saw someone.”

  “Yeah. Like for instance, if he told a cop he saw someone going into Ashby’s room by the hall door, would that be a good idea, or not? Like that?”

  “Pfui. You’re welcome to your conjectures, but don’t expect me to rate them. I’m concerned; I have said so; it would be a serious inconvenience to lose Mr. Vassos. If he killed that man a jury would wonder why. So would I.”

  “We’re not ready for a jury.” Cramer stood up. “But we’ve got a pretty good guess at why. Granting that Goodwin has reported everything Vassos said today, which I don’t, what about other days? What has Vassos ever said about Ashby?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He has never mentioned his name?”

  “No. Archie?”

  “Right,” I said. “Not before today.”

  “What has he ever said about his daughter?”

  “Nothing,” Wolfe said.

  “Correction,” I said. “What Pete talked about wasn’t up to him. Mr. Wolfe kept him on the ancient glories of Greece. But one day more than two years ago, in June nineteen fifty-eight, when Mr. Wolfe was upstairs in bed with the flu, Pete told me his daughter had just graduated from high school and showed me a picture of her. Pete and I would know each other a lot better if it wasn’t for ancient Greece.”

  “And he has never mentioned his daughter since?”

  “No, how could he?”

  “Nuts. Greece.” Cramer looked at Wolfe. “You know what I think? I think this. If you know Vassos killed Ashby, and you know why, on account of his daughter, and you can help nail him for it, you won’t. If you can help him wriggle out of it, you will.” He tapped Wolfe’s desk with a finger. “Just because, by God, you can count on him to come and shine your shoes, and you like to spout to him about people nobody ever heard of. That’s you.” His eyes darted to me. “And you.” He turned and tramped out.

  2

  IT WAS EXACTLY TWENTY-EIGHT hours later, Tuesday evening at half past ten, that I went to answer the doorbell and saw, through the one-way glass of the front door, a scared but determined little face bounded at the sides by the turned-up collar of a brown wool coat and on top by a fuzzy brown thing that flopped to the right. When I opened the door she told me with a single rush of breath, “You’re Archie Goodwin I’m Elma Vassos.”

  It had been a normal nothing-stirring day, three meals, Wolfe reading a book and dictating letters in between his morning and afternoon turns in the plant rooms, Fritz housekeeping and cooking, me choring. It was still in the air whether I would have to find another bootblack. According to the papers the police had tagged Ashby’s death as murder, but no one had been charged. Around one o’clock Sergeant Purley Stebbins had phoned to ask if we knew where Peter Vassos was, and when I said no and started to ask a question he hung up on me. A little after four Lon Cohen of the Gazette had phoned to offer a grand for a thousand-word piece on Peter Vassos, a dollar a word, and another grand if I would tell him where Vassos was. I declined with thanks and made a counter offer, my autograph in his album if he would tell me who at Homicide or the DA’s bureau had given him the steer that we knew Vassos. When I told him I had no idea where Vassos was he pronou
nced a word you are not supposed to use on the telephone.

  I usually stick to the rule that no one is to be ushered to the office when Wolfe is there without asking him, but I ignore it now and then in an emergency. That time the emergency was a face. I had been in the kitchen chinning with Fritz. Wolfe was buried in a book, we had no case and no client, and to him no woman is ever welcome in that house. Ten to one he would have refused to see her. But I had seen her scared little face and he hadn’t, and anyway he hadn’t done a lick of work for more than two weeks, and it would be up to me, not him, to find another bootblack if it came to that. So I invited her in, took her coat and put it on a hanger, escorted her to the office, and said, “Miss Elma Vassos. Pete’s daughter.” Wolfe closed his book on a finger and glared at me. She put a hand on the back of the red leather chair to steady herself. It looked as if she might crack, and I took her arm and eased her into the chair. Wolfe transferred the glare to her, and there was her face. It was a little face, but not too little, and the point was that you didn’t see any of the details, eyes or mouth or nose, just the face. I have supplied descriptions of many faces professionally, but with her I wouldn’t know where to begin. I asked her if she wanted a drink, water or something stronger, and she said no.

  She looked at Wolfe and said, “You’re Nero Wolfe. Do you know my father is dead?” She needed more breath.

  Wolfe shook his head. His lips parted and closed again. He turned to me. “Confound it, get something! Brandy. Whisky.”

  “I couldn’t swallow it,” she said. “You didn’t know?”

  “No.” He was gruff. “When? How? Can you talk?”

  “I guess so.” She wasn’t any too sure. “I have to. Some boys found him at the bottom of a cliff. I went and looked at him-not there, at the morgue.” She set her teeth on her lip, hard, but it didn’t change the face. She made the teeth let go. “They think he killed himself, he jumped off, but he didn’t. I know he didn’t.”