Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 39

by Trio for Blunt Instruments

  I had to ask him how to spell it so I could look it up when I went to the office. Sitting, I picked up the Times, and my brow went up when I saw that it had made the front page. Probably on account of Martin Kirk; the Times loves architects as much as it hates disk jockeys and private detectives. It had nothing useful to add to what I had got from Lon, but it mentioned that Mrs. Kirk had been born in Manhattan, Kansas. Any other paper which had dug up that detail would have had a feature piece about born in Manhattan and died in Manhattan.

  After three griddle cakes with homemade sausage and one with thyme honey, and two cups of coffee, I made it to the office in time to have the desks dusted, fresh water in the vase, biaiser looked up, and the mail opened, when Wolfe came down from the plant rooms. I waited until the orchids were in the vase and he had sat and glanced through the mail to tell him that it now looked as if someone had sent me a hot piece of evidence in a homicide, and I intended to find out why, of course on my own time, and anyway he wouldn’t be needing me since apparently there was nobody that needed him.

  His lips tightened. “Evidence? Merely a conjecture.”

  “No, sir. I took it to Ludlow and it’s human blood. So I gave it to Cramer. Of course you’ve read the Times?”

  “Yes.”

  “The blood is the same type as Mrs. Kirk’s. If it was or is a floundering numskull, obviously I’d better see—”

  The doorbell rang.

  I got up and went, telling myself it was even money it was James Neville Vance, but it wasn’t. A glance at the one-way glass panel in the front door settled that. It was a panhandler who had run out of luck and started ringing doorbells—a tall, lanky one pretending he had to lean against the jamb to keep himself upright. Opening the door, I said politely, “It’s a hard life. Good morning.”

  He got me in focus with bleary eyes and said, “I would like to see Nero Wolfe. My name is Martin Kirk.”

  If you think I should have recognized him from the pictures Lon had shown me, I don’t agree. You should have seen him. I told him Mr. Wolfe saw people only by appointment, but I’d ask. “You’re the Martin Kirk who lives at Two-nineteen Horn Street?”

  He said he was, and I invited him in, ushered him into the front room and to a seat, which he evidently needed, went to the office by way of the connecting door, closed the door, and crossed to Wolfe’s desk. “I’m on my own time now,” I told him. “It’s Martin Kirk. He asked to see you, but of course you’re not interested. May I use the front room?”

  He took a deep breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth, then glared at me for five seconds and growled, “Bring him in.”

  “But you don’t—”

  “Bring him.”

  Unheard of. Absolutely contrary to nature—his nature. The Nero Wolfe I thought I knew would at least have wanted me to pump him first. With a genius you never know. As I returned to the front room and told Kirk to come, I decided that the idea must be to show me that I would be a sap to waste my time. He would make short work of Martin Kirk. So as Kirk flopped into the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk he snapped at him, “Well, sir? I have read the morning paper. Why do you come to me?”

  Kirk pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. He groaned. He lowered his hands and the bleary eyes blinked a dozen times. “You’ll have to make allowances,” he said. “I just left the district attorney’s office. I was there all night and no sleep.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “My God no.”

  Wolfe made a face. That complicated it. The mere thought of a man going without food was disagreeable, and to have one there in his house was intolerable. He had to either get him out in a hurry or feed him. “Why should I make allowances?” he demanded.

  Kirk actually tried to smile, and it made me want to feed him myself. “I know about you,” he said. “You’re hard. And you charge high fees. I can pay you, don’t worry about that. They think I killed my wife. They let me go, but they—”

  “Did you kill your wife?”

  “No. But they think I did, and they think they can prove it. I haven’t got a lawyer, and I don’t know any lawyer I want to go to. I came to you because I know about you—partly that, and partly because they asked me a lot of questions about you—about you and Archie Goodwin.” He looked at me, blinking to manage the change of focus. “You’re Archie Goodwin, aren’t you?”

  I told him yes and he went back to Wolfe. “They asked if I knew you or Goodwin, if I had ever met you, and they seemed to think I had—no, they did think I had. It seemed to have some connection with something that was mailed to Goodwin, and something about a necktie, and something about a phone call he got yesterday. I’m sorry to be so vague, but I said you’d have to make allowances, I’m not myself. I haven’t been myself since—I found—” His jaw had started to work and he stopped to control it. “My wife,” he said. “They kept at me that she wasn’t much of a wife, and all right, she wasn’t, but if a woman—I mean if a man—”

  He stopped again to handle his jaw. In a moment he went on, “So I came to you partly because I thought you might know about a necktie and a phone call and something that was mailed to Goodwin. Do you?”

  “Possibly.” Wolfe was regarding him. “Mr. Kirk. You said you can pay me, but I don’t sell information; I sell only services.”

  “That’s what I want, your services.”

  “You want to hire me to investigate this affair?”

  “Yes. That’s why I’m here.”

  “And you can pay me without undue strain?”

  “Yes. I have—Yes. Do you want a check now?”

  “A thousand dollars will do as a retainer.”

  I had to shut my eyes a second to keep from gawking. That wasn’t only unheard of, it was unbelievable. Taking on a job, which meant that he would have to work, without the usual dodging and stalling—that could be on account of the lag in receipts; but taking a murder suspect for a client offhand, no questions asked but the routine did you kill her and can you pay me, without the faintest notion whether he was guilty or not and how much the cops had on him—that simply wasn’t done, not by anybody, let alone Nero Wolfe. I had to clamp my teeth on my lip to sit and take it. As Kirk got out a checkfold and a pen Wolfe pushed a button on his desk, and in a moment Fritz came.

  “A tray, please,” Wolfe told him. “The madrilène is ready?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And the pudding?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A bowl of each, cheese with water cress, and hot tea.”

  When Fritz turned and went I would have liked to go along, to tell him that there could be something worse than having no client.

  5

  An hour later, when the doorbell rang again, Kirk was still there and still the client, and I would still have had to toss a coin to decide where I stood on the question, did he or didn’t he?

  Wolfe had of course refused to either talk or listen until the tray had come and gone. Kirk had said he couldn’t eat, but when Wolfe insisted he tried, and if a man can swallow anything he can swallow Fritz’s madrilène with beet juice, and after one spoonful of his lemon sherry pudding with brown sugar sauce there’s no argument. The cheese and water cress were still on the tray when I took it to the kitchen, but the bowls were empty.

  When I returned Wolfe had started in. “… so I’ll reverse the process,” he was saying. “I’ll tell you and then ask you. Are you sufficiently yourself to comprehend?”

  “I’m better. I didn’t think I could eat I’m glad you made me.” He didn’t look any better.

  Wolfe nodded. “The brain can be hoodwinked but not the stomach. First, then, your statement that you didn’t kill your wife is of course of no weight. I have assumed that you didn’t for reasons of my own, which I reserve. Do you know or suspect who did kill her?”

  “No. There are—No.”

  “Then attend. An item in yesterday’s mail to this house was an envelope addressed to Mr. Goodwi
n, typewritten. A paper inside had a typewritten note saying, ‘Archie Goodwin, keep this until you hear from me, JNV.’ The envelope and paper were the engraved stationery of James Neville Vance. Also in the envelope was a four-in-hand necktie, cream-colored with brown diagonal stripes, and it had a spot on it, a large brown stain.”

  Kirk was squinting, concentrating. “So that’s how it was. They never told me exactly …”

  “They wouldn’t. Neither would I if I weren’t engaged in your interest. At a quarter past eleven yesterday morning Mr. Goodwin got a phone call, and a voice that squeaked, presumably for disguise, said it was James Neville Vance and asked him to burn what he had received in the mail. Mr. Goodwin, provoked, went to Two-nineteen Horn Street and was admitted by Vance, who identified the tie as one of his but denied that he had sent it. As Mr. Goodwin was about to go a policeman arrived who wanted access to your apartment, and he was with Mr. Vance and the policeman when your wife’s body was discovered, but he left immediately. Later he took—”

  “But what—”

  “Don’t interrupt. He took the tie to a laboratory and learned that the spot was human blood. He gave the tie, and the envelope and letterhead, to a law officer who had been told of the tie episode by Mr. Vance, and the police have established that the blood is the same type as your wife’s. You say they think they can prove that you killed your wife. Did they take your fingerprints?”

  “Yes. They—I let them.”

  “Could your fingerprints be on that envelope and letterhead?”

  “Of course not. How could they? I don’t understand—”

  “If you please. Mr. Vance told Mr. Goodwin that he had nine ties of that pattern and gave one to somebody. Did he give it to you? Cream with brown stripes.”

  Kirk’s mouth opened and stayed open. The question was answered.

  “When did he give it to you?”

  “About two months ago.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I suppose—I don’t know.”

  “When you moved to a hotel room two weeks ago you took personal effects. Including that tie?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t notice. I took all my clothes, but I wasn’t noticing things like ties. I’ll see if it’s there.”

  “It isn’t.” Wolfe took a deep breath, leaned back, and closed his eyes. Kirk looked at me, blinking, and was going to say something, but I shook my head. He had said enough already to make me think it might have been better all around if I had burned the damned souvenirs and crossed it off. He put his palms to his temples and massaged.

  Wolfe opened his eyes and straightened up. He regarded Kirk, not cordially. “It’s a mess,” he stated. “I have questions of course, but you’ll answer them more to the point if I first expound this necktie tangle. Are your wits up to it? Should you sleep first?”

  “No. If I don’t—I’m all right.”

  “Pfui. You can’t even focus your eyes properly. I’ll merely describe it and ignore the intricacies. Assuming that the blood on the tie is in fact your wife’s blood, there are three obvious theories. The police theory must be that when you killed your wife the blood got on the tie, either inadvertently or by your deliberate act, and to implicate Vance you used his stationery to mail it to Mr. Goodwin. It was probably premeditated, since you had the stationery at hand. I don’t ask if that was possible; the police must know it was. You had been in his apartment, hadn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Frequently?”

  “Yes. Both my wife and I—yes.”

  “Is there a typewriter in his apartment?”

  “There’s one in his studio.”

  “You could have used it Is there one in your apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “More subtly, you could have used that, thinking it would be assumed—but that’s one of the intricacies I’ll ignore for the moment So much for the police theory. Rejecting it because you didn’t kill your wife, I need an alternative, and there are two. One: Vance killed her. It would take an hour or more to talk that out, all its twists respecting the tie. He had it on and blood got on it, and he used it to call attention to himself in so preposterous a manner that it would inevitably be shifted to you; but in that case he had previously retrieved the tie he had given you, so it had been premeditated for at least two weeks. If the tie he gave you is in your hotel room, that will be another twist. Still another: he thought it possible that Mr. Goodwin would burn it as requested on the phone, and if so he would admit he had sent it, since it would no longer be available for inspection, saying he had found it somewhere on his premises and intended to get Mr. Goodwin to investigate, but changed his mind.”

  “But why? I don’t see …”

  “Neither do I. I said it’s a mess. The other alternative: X killed your wife and undertook to involve both Vance and you. Before considering him, what about Vance? If he killed her, why? Did he have a why?”

  Kirk shook his head. “If he did—No. Not Vance.”

  “She wasn’t much of a wife. Your phrase. Granting that no woman is much of a wife, did she have distinctive flaws?”

  He shut his eyes for a long moment, opened them, and said, “She’s dead.”

  “And you’re here because the police think you killed her, and they are digging up every fact about her that’s accessible. Decorum is pointless. At your trial, if it comes to that, her defects will become public property. What were they?”

  “They were already public property—our little public.” He swallowed. “I knew when I married her that she was promis—no, she wasn’t promiscuous, she was too sensitive for that. She was incredibly beautiful. You know that?”

  “No.”

  “She was. I thought then that she was simply curious about men, and impetuous—and a little reckless. I didn’t know until after we had been married a few months that she had no moral sense about sexual relations—not just no moral sense, no sense. She was sensitive, very sensitive, but that’s different. But I was stuck. I don’t mean I was stuck just because I was married to her, that’s simple enough nowadays, I mean I was really stuck. Do you know what it’s like to have all your feelings and desires, all the desires that really matter, to have them all centered on a woman, one woman?”

  “No.”

  “I do.” He shook his head, jerked it from side to side several times. “What got me started?”

  He could have meant either what got him started on that woman or what got him started talking about her. Wolfe, assuming the latter, said, “I asked you about Mr. Vance. Was he one of the objects of her curiosity?”

  “Good Lord, no.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “Oh yes I can. She never bothered to pretend. I tell you, she had no sense. I did some work for Vance on a couple of buildings, and I had that apartment before I was married. For her he was a nice old guy, rather a bore, who let her use one of his pianos when she felt like it. I am sure.”

  Wolfe granted. “Then X. He must meet certain specifications. It would be fatuous not to assume, tentatively at least, that whoever killed your wife sent the necktie to Mr. Goodwin, either to involve Mr. Vance or with some design more artful. So he had access to Vance’s stationery and either to his tie rack or to yours; and he had had enough association with your wife to want her dead. That narrows it, and you should be able to suggest candidates.”

  Kirk was squinting, concentrating. “I don’t think I can,” he said. “I could name men who have been … associated with my wife, but none of them has ever met Vance as far as I know. Or I could name men I have seen at Vance’s place, but none of them has—”

  He stopped abruptly. Wolfe eyed him. “His name?”

  “No. He didn’t want her dead.”

  “You can’t know that. His name?”

  “I’m not going to accuse him.”

  “Preserve your scruples by all means. I won’t accuse him either without sufficient cause. His name?”

  “Paul Fougere.”

>   Wolfe nodded. “The tenant on the ground floor. As I said, I have read the morning paper. He was an object of your wife’s curiosity?”

  “Yes.”

  “Had the curiosity been satisfied?”

  “If you mean was she through with him, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

  “Had he had opportunities to get some of Vance’s stationery?”

  “Yes. Plenty of them.”

  “We’ll return to him later.” Wolfe glanced up at the clock and shifted his bulk in the chair. “Now you. Not to try you; to learn the extent of your peril. I want the answers you have given the police. I don’t ask where you were Monday afternoon because if you were excluded by an alibi you wouldn’t be here. Why did you move to a hotel room two weeks ago? What you have told the police.”

  “I told them the truth. I had to decide what to do. Seeing my wife and hearing her, having her touch me—it had become impossible.”

  “Did you decide what to do?”

  “Yes. I decided to try to persuade her to have a baby. I thought that might make her … might change her. I realized I couldn’t be sure the baby was mine, but there was no way out of that. That’s what I told the police, but it wasn’t true. The baby idea was only one of many that I thought of, and I knew it was no good, I knew I couldn’t take it, not knowing if I was its father. I didn’t actually decide anything.”

  “But you dialed her phone number six times between four o’clock Monday afternoon and ten o’clock Tuesday morning. What for?”

  “What I told the police? To say I wanted to see her, to persuade her to have a baby.”

  “Actually what for?”

  “To hear her voice.” Kirk made fists and pressed them on his knees. “Mr. Wolfe, you don’t know. I was stuck. You could pity me or you could sneer at me, but I wouldn’t give a damn, it wouldn’t mean a thing. Say I was obsessed, and what does that mean? I still had my faculties, I could do my work pretty well, and I could even think straight about her, as far as thinking. went One of the ideas I had, I realized that the one thing I could do that would settle it was to kill her. I knew I couldn’t do it, but I realized that that was the one sure thing, and I wished I could do it.”