Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 39

by Trio for Blunt Instruments

  “Luck,” Cramer said. “Your goddam incredible luck. If it had made mincemeat of Goodwin you might have been willing to admit for once—Okay, it didn’t.” He got up. “Stick around, Goodwin. They’ll want you at the DA’s office, probably in the morning.” To Wolfe: “What if that phone call had said the carton held corn, just corn? You think you could have talked me off, don’t you?”

  “I could have tried.”

  “By God. Talk about stubborn egos.” Cramer shook his head. “That break you got on the carton. You know, any normal man, if he got a break like that, coming down just in the nick of time, what any normal man would do, he would go down on his knees and thank God. Do you know what you’ll do? You’ll thank you. I admit it would be a job for you to get down on your knees, but—”

  The phone rang. I swiveled and got it, and a voice I recognized asked for Inspector Cramer. I turned and told him, “Purley Stebbins,” and he came and took it. The conversation was even shorter than the one about the carton, and Cramer’s part was only a dozen words and a couple of growls. He hung up, went and got his hat, and headed for the hall, but a step short of the door he stopped and turned.

  “I might as well tell you,” he said. “It’ll give you a better appetite for dinner, even if it’s not corn. About an hour ago Duncan McLeod sat or stood or lay on a pile of dynamite and it went off. They’ve got his head and some other pieces. They’ll want to decide whether it was an accident or he did it. Maybe you can help them interpret the facts.”

  He turned and went.

  7

  One day last week there was a party at Lily Rowan’s penthouse. She never invites more than six to dinner—eight counting her and me—but that was a dancing party and around coffee time a dozen more came and three musicians got set in the alcove and started up. After rounds with Lily and three or four others. I approached Sue McLeod and offered a hand.

  She gave me a look. “You know you don’t want to. Let’s go outside.”

  I said it was cold, and she said she knew it and headed for the foyer. We got her wrap, a fur thing which she probably didn’t own, since top-flight models are offered loans of everything from socks to sable, went back in, on through, and out to the terrace. There were evergreens in tubs, and we crossed to them for shelter from the wind.

  “You told Lily I hate you,” she said. “I don’t.”

  “Not ‘hate.’” I said. “She misquoted me or you’re misquoting her. She said I should dance with you and I said when I tried it a month ago you froze.”

  “I know I did.” She put a hand on my arm. “Archie. It was hard, you know it was. If I hadn’t got my father to let him work on the farm … it was my fault, I know it was … but I couldn’t help thinking if you hadn’t sent him that … letting him know you knew …”

  “I didn’t send it, Mr. Wolfe did. But I would have. Okay, he was your father, so it was hard. But no matter whose father he was, I’m not wearing an arm band for the guy who packed dynamite in that carton.”

  “Of course not. I know. Of course not I tell myself I’ll have to forget it … but it’s not easy…” She shivered. “Anyway I wanted to say I don’t hate you. You don’t have to dance with me, and you know I’m not going to get married until I can stop working and have babies, and I know you never are, and even if you do it will be Lily, but you don’t have to stand there and let me really freeze, do you?”

  I didn’t. You don’t have to be rude, even with a girl who can’t dance, and it was cold out there.

  Blood Will Tell

  1

  Naturally most of the items in the mail that is delivered to the old brownstone on West 35th Street are addressed to Nero Wolfe, but since I both work and live there eight or ten out of a hundred are addressed to me. It is my custom to let my share wait until after I have opened Wolfe’s, looked it over, and put it on his desk, but sometimes curiosity butts in. As it did that Tuesday morning when I came to an elegant cream-colored envelope, outsize, addressed to me on a typewriter, with the return address in the corner engraved in dark brown:

  JAMES NEVILLE VANCE

  Two Nineteen Horn Street

  New York 12 New York

  Never heard of him. It wasn’t flat; it bulged with something soft inside. Like everybody else, I occasionally get envelopes containing samples of something that bulges them, but not expensive envelopes with engraving that isn’t phony. So I slit it open and removed the contents. A folded sheet of paper that matched the envelope, including the engraved name and address, had a message typed in the center:

  ARCHIE GOODWIN—KEEP THIS UNTIL YOU HEAR FROM ME. JNV

  “This” was a necktie, a four-in-hand, neatly folded to go in the envelope. I stretched it out—long, narrow, maybe silk, light tan, almost the same color as the stationery, with thin brown diagonal lines. A Sutcliffe label, so certainly silk, say twenty bucks. But he should have sent it to the cleaners instead of me, because it had a spot, a big one two inches long, near one end, about the same tone of brown as the thin lines; but the lines’ brown was clean and live and the spot’s brown was dirty and dead. I sniffed at it, but I am not a beagle. Having seen a few dried bloodstains here and there, I knew the dirty color was right, but that’s no phenolphthalin test. Even so, I told myself as I dropped the tie in a drawer, supposing that James Neville Vance worked in a butcher shop and forgot his bib, why pick on me? As I closed the drawer I shrugged.

  That’s the way to take it when you get a bloodstained (maybe) necktie in the mail from a stranger, just shrug, but I admit that in the next couple of hours I did something and didn’t do something else. What I did do was ring Lon Cohen at the Gazette to ask a question, and an hour later he called back to say that James Neville Vance, now in his late fifties, still owned all the real estate he had inherited from his father, still spent winters on the Riviera, and was still a bachelor; and what did he want of a private detective? I reserved that What I didn’t do was take a walk. When nothing is stirring and Wolfe has given me no program I usually go out after the routine morning chores to work my legs and have a look at the town and my fellow men, not to mention women, but that morning I skipped it because JNV might come or phone. It had been an honest shrug, but you can’t shrug all day.

  I might as well have had my walk because the phone call didn’t come until a quarter past eleven, after Wolfe had come down to the office from his two-hour morning session with the orchids up in the plant rooms on the roof. He had put a spray of Cymbidium Doris in the vase on his desk and got his personal seventh of a ton disposed in his oversize custom-made chair, and was scowling at the dust jacket of a book, one of the items that had been addressed to him, when the phone rang and I got it.

  “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

  “Is this Archie Goodwin?”

  Three people out of ten will do that I am always tempted to say no, it’s a trained dog, and see what comes next, but I might get barked at. So I said, “It is. In person.”

  “This is James Neville Vance. Did you receive something in the mail from me?”

  His voice couldn’t decide whether to be a squeak or a falsetto and had the worst features of both. “Yes, presumably,” I said. “Your envelope and letterhead.”

  “And an enclosure.”

  “Right.”

  “Please destroy it. Burn it. I intended—But what I intended doesn’t matter now…. I was mistaken. Burn it. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  He hung up.

  I cradled the phone and swiveled. Wolfe had opened the book to the title page and was eying it with the same kind of look a man I know has for a pretty girl he has just met.

  “If I may interrupt,” I said. “Since there’s nothing urgent in the mail I have an errand, personal or professional, I don’t know which.” I got the envelope, letterhead, and enclosure from the drawer, rose, and handed them to him. “If that spot on the tie is blood, my theory was that someone stabbed or shot James Neville Vance and got rid of the corpse all right but
didn’t know what to do with the tie, so he sent it to me, but that phone call was a bagpipe saying he was James Neville Vance, and he had been mistaken, and I would please burn what he had sent me by mail. So evidently—”

  “A bagpipe?”

  “I merely meant he squeaked. So evidently he couldn’t burn it himself because he didn’t have a match, and now he’s impersonating James Neville Vance, who owns—or owned—various gobs of real estate, and it is my duty as a citizen and a licensed private detective to expose and denounce—”

  “Pfui. Some floundering numskull.”

  “Okay. I’ll go out back to burn it. It’ll smelt.”

  He grunted. “It may not be blood.”

  I nodded. “Sure. But if it’s ketchup and tobacco juice I can tell him how to get it out and charge him two bucks. That will be a bigger fee than any you’ve collected for nearly a month.”

  Another grunt. “Where is Horn Street?”

  “In the Village. Thirty-minute walk. I’ve had no walk.”

  “Very well.” He opened the book.

  2

  Most of the houses on Horn Street, which is only three blocks long, could stand a coat of paint, but Number 219, a four-story brick, was all dressed up—the brick cream-colored and the trim dark brown; and the Venetian blinds at the windows matched the bricks. Since Vance was in clover I supposed it was just for him, but in the vestibule there were three names in a panel on the wall with buttons. The bottom one was Fougere, the middle one was Kirk, and the top one was James Neville Vance. I pushed the top one, and after a wait a voice came from a grill. “Who is it?”

  I stooped a little to put my mouth on a level with the lower grill and said, “My name is Archie Goodwin. I’d like to see Mr. Vance.”

  “This is Vance. What do you want?”

  It was a baritone, no trace of a squeak. I told the grill, “I have something that belongs to you and I want to return it.”

  “You have something that belongs to me?”

  “Right.”

  “What is it and where did you get it?”

  “Correction. I think it belongs to you. It’s a four-in-hand silk tie, Sutcliffe label, the same color as this house, with diagonal lines the same color as the trim. Cream and brown.”

  “Who are you and where did you get it?”

  I got impatient “Here’s a suggestion,” I said. “Install closed-circuit television so you can see the vestibule from up there, and phone me at the office of Nero Wolfe, where I work, and I’ll come back. It will take a week or so and set you back ten grand, but it’ll be worth it to see the tie without letting me in. After you’ve identified it I’ll tell you where I got it If you don’t—”

  “Did you say Nero Wolfe? The detective?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what—This is ridiculous.”

  “I agree. Completely. Give me a ring when you’re ready.”

  “But I—All right. Use the elevator. I’m in the studio, the top floor—four.”

  There was a click at the door, and on the third click I pushed it open and entered. To my surprise the small hall was not more cream and brown but a deep rich red with black panel-borders, and the door of the do-it-yourself elevator was stainless steel. When I pushed the button and the door opened, and, inside, pushed the 4 button and was lifted, there was practically no noise or vibration—very different from the one in the old brownstone which Wolfe always used and I never did.

  Stepping out when the door opened, I got another surprise. Since he had called it the studio I was expecting to smell turpentine and see a clutter of vintage Vances, but at first glance it was a piano warehouse. There were three of them in the big room, which was the length and width of the house.

  The man standing there waited to speak until my glance got to him. Undersized, with too much chin for his neat smooth face, no wrinkles, he wasn’t as impressive as his stationery, but his clothes were—cream-colored silk shirt and brown made-to-fit slacks. He cocked his head, nodded, and said, “I recognize you. I’ve seen you at the Ramingo.” He came a step. “What’s this about a tie? Let me see it.”

  “It’s the one you sent me,” I said.

  He frowned. “The one I sent you?”

  “There seems to be a gap,” I said. “Are you James Neville Vance?”

  “I am. Certainly.”

  I got the envelope and letterhead from my breast pocket and showed them for inspection. “Then that’s your stationery?” He was going to take them, but I held on. He examined the address on the envelope and the message on the letterhead, frowning, lifted the frown to me, and demanded, “What kind of a game is this?”

  “I’ve walked two miles to find out.” I got the tie from my side pocket “This was in the envelope. Is it yours?”

  I let him take it, and he looked it over front and back. “What’s this spot?”

  “I don’t know. Is it yours?”

  “Yes. I mean it must be. That pattern, the colors—they reserve it for me, or they’re supposed to.”

  “Did you mail it to me in this envelope?”

  “I did not. Why would—”

  “Did you phone me this morning and tell me to burn it?”

  “I did not. You got it in the mail this morning?”

  I nodded. “And a phone call at a quarter past eleven from a man who squeaked and told me to burn it. Have you got a photograph of yourself handy?”

  “Why … yes. Why?”

  “You have recognized me, but I haven’t recognized you. You ask what kind of a game this is, and so do I. What if you’re not Vance?”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Sure, but why not humor me?”

  He was going to say why not, changed his mind, and moved. Crossing the room, detouring around a piano, to a bank of cabinets and shelves at the wall, he took something from a shelf and came and handed it to me. It was a thin book with a leather binding that had stamped on it in gold: THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE by James Neville Vance. Inside, the first two pages were blank; the third had just two words at the bottom: PRIVATELY PRINTED; and the fourth had a picture of the author.

  A glance was enough. I put it on a nearby table. “Okay. Nice picture. Any ideas or suggestions?”

  “How could I have?” He was peevish. “It’s crazy!” He gave the tie another look. “It must be mine. I can settle that. Come along.”

  He headed for the rear and I followed, back beyond the second piano, and then down spiral stairs, wide for a spiral, with carpeted steps and a polished wooden rail. At the bottom, the rear end of a good-sized living room, he turned right through an open door and we were in a bedroom. He crossed to another door and opened it, and I stopped two steps off. It was a walk-in closet. A friend of mine once told me that a woman’s clothes closet will tell you more about her than any other room in the house, and if that goes for a man too there was my chance to get the lowdown on James Neville Vance, but I was interested only in his neckties. They were on a rack at the right, three rows of them, quite an assortment, some cream and brown but by no means all. He fingered through part of one row, repeated it, turned and emerged, and said, “It’s mine. I had nine and gave one to somebody, and there are only seven.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine …” He let it hang. “What on earth …” He let that hang too.

  “And your stationery,” I said.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “And the phone call telling me to burn it. With a squeak.”

  “Yes. You asked if I had any ideas or suggestions. Have you?”

  “I could have, but they would be expensive. I work for Nero Wolfe and it would be on his time, and the bill would be bad news. You must know who has access to your stationery and that closet, and you ought to be able to make some kind of a guess about who and why. And you won’t need the tie. It came to me in the mail, so actually and legally it’s in my possession, and I ought to keep it.” I put a hand out “If you don’t mind?”

  “Of course.” He handed it over. “But
I might—You’re not going to burn it?”

  “No indeed.” I stuck it in my side pocket. The envelope and letterhead were back in my breast pocket. “I have a little collection of souvenirs. If and when you have occasion to produce it for—”

  A bell tinkled somewhere, a soft music tinkle, possibly music of the future. He frowned and turned and started for the front, and I followed, back through the open door, and across the living room to another door, which he opened. Two men were there in a little foyer—one a square little guy in shirt sleeves and brown denim pants, and the other, also square but big, a harness bull.

  “Yes, Bert?” Vance said.

  “This cop,” the little guy said. “He wants in to Mrs. Kirk’s apartment.”

  “What for?”

  The bull spoke. “Just to look, Mr. Vance. I’m on patrol and I got a call. Probably nothing, it usually isn’t, but I’ve got to look. Sorry to bother you.”

  “Look at what?”

  “I don’t know. Probably nothing, as I say. Just to see that all’s in order. Law and order.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be in order? This is my house, officer.”

  “Yeah, I know it is. And this is my job. I get a call, I do as I’m told. When I pushed the Kirk button there was no answer, so I got the janitor. Routine. I said I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “Very well. You have the key, Bert?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ring before you—I’d better come.” He crossed the sill and when I was out closed the door. Four of us in the elevator didn’t leave much room. When it stopped at 2 and they stepped out I stepped out too, into another small foyer. Vance pressed a button on a doorjamb, waited half a minute, pressed it again, kept his finger on it for five seconds, and waited some more. “All right, Bert,” he said and moved aside. Bert put a key in the lock—a Rabson, I noticed—turned it, turned the knob, pushed the door open, and made room for Vance to enter. Then the cop, and then me. Two steps in, Vance stopped, faced the rear, and raised his baritone. “Bonny! It’s Jim!”