Death of a Doxy (Crime Line)

by Rex Stout

  “I don’t know. I don’t know her.”

  “What would she do, Archie?”

  “I don’t know either,” I said, “what she would do. But I know she would do anything, no holds barred, to keep him or anyone else from telling the world about Isabel and X. She certainly wouldn’t want it to get to a trial. I don’t know how much she cares about him. If she cares enough, in spite of the fact that he killed Isabel, she might blow with him, or if she thinks he can stand the gaff and keep his trap shut, she might stick and fight. If she doesn’t care enough about him, she might ship him off to China, or she might even bump him off. The one certain thing is that she would do whatever she thought she had to, to make sure, for instance, that Orrie wouldn’t go on the stand as a witness for the prosecution and answer questions about Isabel. Or that X wouldn’t testify about the blackmail. Of course she has to be told about the blackmail too. To make sure of that she would blow up the courthouse if she could get her hands on a bomb.” I was looking at Julie. “So there you are. You tell her what you told him in that letter. It made him snipe at you with a gun. She won’t do that, but she’ll certainly do something.”

  She was frowning. “Why can’t you tell her?”

  “She wouldn’t believe me. You can tell her things Isabel told you, but I can’t. As you told him in the letter.”

  “That was a lie, that letter.”

  “The only lie was that Isabel told you. What you said she told you was true, and he proved it. Do you know that Barry blackmailed X?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Do you think there’s any doubt that he shot at you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he would have tried to kill you just because you knew about the blackmailing and wanted the money, if he hadn’t also killed Isabel? Remember, I was there, and he knew what I was working on. The murder. I think it would be fine for you to pick up fifty grand, but also I understood that you wanted the man who killed Isabel to be tagged. You said so. Do you think there is any doubt that he killed her?”

  “No.”

  “Then count up to two.”

  She picked up the cup and took a sip, found that it had cooled enough, emptied the cup and put it down, and said, “He wouldn’t be tagged if they blow.”

  “No,” I conceded. “But his number would be up, and he wouldn’t be here to name X. They’d find him someday, and then we’d see. As Mr. Wolfe said, probably we can’t, but possibly we can.”

  “She lives in the Bronx.”

  “Right.”

  “Would I have to go there?”

  “I hope not. This is the day he was to bring you the five grand, and God knows where he is or what he might try. I’m off of bodyguarding for a while.”

  “Here,” Wolfe said. “Get her.”

  “I’ll sit in,” I told Julie, “if you think I won’t hash it.”

  “What a man,” she said, and poured coffee.

  I swiveled, got the Bronx phone book, found the number, lifted the receiver, and dialed, hoping she was there and was answering the phone. She was. It was her voice that said hello.

  “This is Archie Goodwin, Mrs. Fleming. You may remember, I was there a week ago today.”

  “I remember.”

  “Then you may remember that I said the police had the wrong man and I was looking for the right man. I have found him, and we want to tell you about him and ask your advice about how to proceed. We know you hope there won’t be a trial, and we want to discuss it with you. Will you come here, Nero Wolfe’s office? Now?”

  Silence. It went on so long I thought she had gone, but she hadn’t hung up. I finally said, “Mrs. Fleming?” but there was more silence.

  At last her voice came. “Mr. Goodwin?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the address?”

  I gave it to her.

  Chapter 15

  It was a tough decision, and it took Wolfe a good five minutes to make it. What about lunch? It was ten minutes past twelve when I hung up after giving Stella Fleming the address. Would she leave immediately, and how long would it take her? Lunch-time has been, is, and will be a quarter past one. An impossible situation. He sat and scowled at it for five or six minutes, made his decision, and got up and went to the kitchen. I followed him, since I eat too. Julie had no problem, since her hedgehog omelet and broiled sausage were about ready. The crisis was licked good. Julie ate at my breakfast table, and Wolfe and I made out on stools at the big table, with sturgeon, smoked pheasant, celery, three kinds of cheese, and spiced brandied cherries. Since it was a snack, not a meal, the taboo on business didn’t apply, and we discussed the program. I thought Wolfe should be present, and he thought he shouldn’t, and we let Julie decide it, and she voted with him. In the alcove at the kitchen end of the hall there is a hole in the wall with a sliding panel, and on the office side the hole is covered with a trick picture of a waterfall which you can see through from the alcove side. Wolfe would be there on a stool. We were unanimous on the other main point, that I should lead the attack.

  When she came, at twenty minutes past one, I started the attack in the hall. A chair and a bench are there, across from the rack, very handy, but she didn’t put her handbag down when I was taking her coat, and I didn’t like the way she was clutching it. Also I was still touchy about the bullets that had missed Julie through no fault of mine. So when, turning, she shifted the bag from her right hand to her left, I grabbed it. She tried to grab it back, but I stiff-armed her, perhaps a little rough, sidestepped, and opened the bag. She squeaked and came at me, and I pushed her again and got a hand in the bag, and it came out with something in it. She backed off and stood and panted, so I was able to look. It was a twenty-two Bristol automatic with a fancy carved butt, and it was loaded. I stuck it in my side pocket and held the bag out. “Sorry if I was rude,” I said. “We had an event here once, and I frisk everybody.”

  She was trying hard to hold in, and I hoped she would make it. She had shrunk. Not only did she look even smaller than she had a week ago, but her face had positively shrunk. Her cheeks had been filled out, and now they weren’t. She took the bag and said, “Give me that gun.”

  “It’s not a gun, it’s a toy. You’ll get it back. As I say, I frisk everybody, and right now I’m glad I do. There’s a woman here who is going to say things you won’t like, and you’re very impulsive. Her name is Julie Jaquette, and she was your sister’s best friend. I believe you have met her -”

  “I was my sister’s best friend.”

  “You ought to know. Let’s go in and sit down.” I gestured. “That open door on the left.”

  I thought she was going to balk and she did too, but I had the gun and I could have carried her under one arm. She turned and clicked down the hall, and I followed. Two steps inside the office she stopped. I passed on by and went to Julie, who was standing by my desk. I took the pistol from my pocket and showed it to her. “This was in her bag,” I said and turned and asked Stella, “Where does your husband keep his rifle?”

  I don’t think she heard me. I had moved up a couple of the yellow chairs, and she went to one and sat. Julie went and took the other one, and I returned the pistol to my pocket, sat at my desk, and told Julie, “You have met Mrs. Fleming.”

  She nodded. “That was in her bag? How did you get it?”

  “Took it. It didn’t fire those shots Saturday night.” I eyed Stella. “Your husband shot at Miss Jaquette Saturday night, but missed. That’s why I asked where he keeps his rifle.”

  She gawked at me. “What? My husband what?”

  “He tried to kill Miss Jaquette. That’s breaking it to you gently, Mrs. Fleming, there’s much worse to come. I told you on the phone that I have found the right man. The reason Miss Jaquette is here is that she helped me find him. I guess the best way is to show you a copy of a letter she sent to your husband last Friday.” I opened a drawer and got it. “She wrote it by hand; this is a typewritten copy. Shall I read it?”

  She
looked at Julie. “A letter you sent my husband?”

  “Yes.”

  She put a hand out. “Let me see it.”

  I passed it over. She went through it fast and then read it again, slow. She looked at Julie. “What’s it about? Who is Milton Thales?”

  Julie looked at me, and she shouldn’t have. She was supposed to be collaborating. I widened my eyes a little, and she went back to Stella. “Your husband,” she said. “He is Milton Thales. I said in that letter that Isabel told me everything, but the one thing she didn’t tell me was the name of the man who was paying her bills, so I have to call him X. You’re the only one she told his name to, and -”

  “She didn’t tell me his name.”

  “She told me she did tell you. Isabel wasn’t a liar.”

  That was more like it. What a girl. She was going on. “So when X got a phone call from a man who knew all about it and told X to send him money, a thousand dollars a month, to mail it to Milton Thales, General Delivery, and X told Isabel, she knew Milton Thales must be your husband. Because no other man could know what Milton Thales knew. Isabel knew you must have told your husband, and he -”

  “I didn’t tell my husband.”

  “You must have, because if -”

  I cut in. “It’s no good, Mrs. Fleming. That’s nailed down. Your husband got that letter Saturday morning. At one o’clock he phoned Miss Jaquette at her hotel. At half past two he came in person. I was there with Miss Jaquette. He told us he hadn’t brought the five thousand dollars he had screwed out of X because the bank wasn’t open. He said he would bring it Monday. Today. What time did he get home Saturday night?”

  No answer. She was staring at me.

  “I know he got home late, because at half past one he was behind the wall in Central Park with either a rifle or a revolver, shooting at Miss Jaquette across the street when we got out of a taxicab. I brought Miss Jaquette home with me, here, so we don’t know if he has tried to get in touch with her today, and we don’t care. The point is, you did tell him X’s name, and he did blackmail X, and Isabel knew it. That’s settled.”

  She was clawing, but not at me. Her hands were resting on her knees, with the fingers curled, and she was scraping at her palms with her nails. “I can’t believe it,” she said, so low that I barely heard. She said louder, “I can’t believe it.”

  “That’s hard,” I said, “but there’s harder. This isn’t nailed down, but it can be. As it stands now, it’s what Isabel told Miss Jaquette. She not only told her about the blackmailing, she also told her that she was going to tell your husband that she had decided to tell you about it. When I first heard that, from Miss Jaquette, I wondered why the police were holding Orrie Cather instead of your husband, but then Miss Jaquette told me she hadn’t told the police about the blackmailing at all. You can ask her why; I think it was because she didn’t realize what it might mean. The police would have realized it. If she had told them about the blackmailing, all that Isabel told her, your husband would now be in jail, either along with Orrie Cather or instead of him, as a murder suspect. And when we tell them about his coming to see Miss Jaquette Saturday afternoon, and his trying to kill her that night, that will settle that. They’ll get the evidence, for instance his movements the morning Isabel was killed, and he’ll be booked for murder, and tried, and probably convicted. I told you on the phone that I have found the right man, and I have. Barry Fleming.”

  She had stopped the clawing and made fists, and had nodded three times as I talked – little involuntary nods, without knowing she was doing it, like the shake of her head when I told her that Orrie Cather might have been the one who was paying the rent. Now she whispered to herself, “That’s why.”

  I didn’t ask her why what, because I wasn’t after evidence. You want evidence in order to prove something to the District Attorney or a judge or a jury, and that wasn’t the program. Her “why” was probably something, or things, he had said or done – for instance, where he had said he had been, but hadn’t, the morning Isabel was killed. Whatever it was, it made it a lot simpler than I had thought it would be. I had expected her to throw at least three fits, especially after finding the toy in her bag, and there she was whispering to herself.

  Julie said, “You don’t have to club her.”

  That was unnecessary, so I ignored it. What the hell, she had brought a gun, even if she had had no idea what for. Probably to mow me down if I called Isabel a doxy. “You may wonder,” I told Stella, “why we wanted to discuss it with you. Since it’s practically certain that he killed Isabel, why didn’t we just tell the police? Of course we’ll have to, but I haven’t forgotten what you told me that day, that your sister’s reputation was the most important thing in the world. I know nothing about your relations with your husband, but I thought it was possible you could do something. You might persuade him to go to the police and admit he killed her, and give an entirely different reason, some reason that would leave out the blackmailing and X and everything you don’t want to come out. I don’t know if that’s possible, but I thought you ought to have the chance. We can’t wait long, not more than a day or two. Say Wednesday morning.”

  “This is Monday,” she said. She was getting her voice back.

  “Right.”

  “I want that letter.”

  It had dropped to the floor when she started the clawing, and I had picked it up and put it on my desk. “It’s just a typewritten copy,” I said.

  “I want it.”

  I got it, folded it, and handed it to her. She said, “The gun.”

  “When you leave. Whose is it, yours or your husband’s?”

  “It’s his. He has medals for shooting.” She put the letter in her bag, looked at Julie, and said, “You. It was people like you.”

  “Nuts,” Julie said. “Anybody can say that to anybody. You mean I was bad for Isabel. I was a lot better for her than you were. I really loved her, but what about you? From what she told me, what -”

  That did it. I had relaxed some, and she was so damned sudden. Her lunge at Julie was so fast that she was on her before I moved, and again it wasn’t my fault that Julie didn’t get hurt, at least some good scratches. Julie jerked her knees up, and with her feet off the floor the impact toppled her and the chair backward. Stella would have been on top, but by that time I was there and had her shoulders from behind. I pulled her off and up and pinned her arms, but she said, “I’m all right,” and she was. The fit had gone as fast as it came. Julie scrambled up, took a swipe at her hair, and said, “You can club her, for all I care.”

  Wolfe’s voice came, his coldest voice. “Mrs. Fleming.”

  We all turned. He was in the doorway. “Mr. Goodwin was too generous,” he said, “giving you until Wednesday morning. Tomorrow morning at the latest. Get her out, Archie.” He headed for his desk.

  Stella’s eyes followed him to his chair, then she looked around, evidently for her bag. I picked it up from where she had dropped it, put the gun in it, said, “I’ll give it to you at the door,” and moved, and she came.

  Chapter 16

  At four o’clock Julie was in a chair by a window in the South Room, deeply interested, if you go by appearances, in a magazine, and I was standing in the doorway. We weren’t speaking. I had asked her if I should ring the Ten Little Indians to tell them she wouldn’t come this evening, or would she rather do it herself, and she had said neither one, she was going, and I had said she wasn’t. The conversation had got very outspoken. At one point she had asked me to tell her Saul Panzer’s number so she could call him and ask him to come and take her, since I didn’t want to expose myself. At another point I said that I doubted if more than half of the customers would leave when they learned that she wouldn’t appear. At still another she asked if I actually meant that she was being held there by force, against her will, and I said yes. By four o’clock it became apparent that we weren’t going to be speaking.

  Then the sound came of the elevator groaning its way up, and
she raised her head to listen. When the groaning stopped and the sound came of the door opening above, she tossed the magazine on the table, got up, and walked. As she approached the doorway I politely moved aside, and she passed through, went to the stairs, and started up. She was either going to appeal to the owner of the house or help him with the orchids, and as far as I was concerned it didn’t matter which. I went down the two flights to the office, called the Ten Little Indians, and said that Miss Jaquette had a cold and wouldn’t be able to make it. I didn’t say where she was because they might send someone with flowers and she didn’t need any up there.

  Being a warder, I couldn’t go for a walk, and anyway I had to catch the news broadcasts every half-hour to learn if there had been any development worth reporting in a murder case, for instance that a man named Barry Fleming had been taken to the District Attorney’s office for questioning in connection with the murder of his sister-in-law. There hadn’t. I spent the two hours at the files and my desk, with the germination records. It helps, at a time like that, to have something to do that needs only one small corner of your mind, like entering on cards such items as the results to date of a cross between Odonto-glossum crispo-harryanum x aireworthi or Miltonia vexillaria x roezli.

  When they came down together in the elevator at six o’clock, I was too busy even to turn my head, but I became aware of a presence near my right shoulder, and a voice asked, “Can I help?”

  So we were speaking. I said, “No, thanks.”

  “Did you phone?”

  “Yeah, you have a cold.”

  “Has anything happened?”

  “Yes. We have made up. Apparently.”

  “Oh, I never nurse a huff. Anyway, I knew you were right. I just wanted to see how mean you could get. One thing I could have said, I could have threatened to call a cop. Evidently the one thing you and Nero can’t stand is for anybody to tell a cop anything. It’s been more than four hours since she left. Damn it, what’s she doing?”