Archie Goes Home

Chapter 31

After the chief left, Wolfe turned to my mother. “Mrs. Goodwin, if you will excuse us, I need to confer with Archie and Saul in my room.”

“Would you like me to bring some beer up for you?” she asked.

“They can do that. We have imposed far too much upon your hospitality as it is.”

“I’m not complaining in the least. It is nice to have the house full and active. As I have mentioned, my other children — and their children as well — do not come often, so this is a welcome change for me.”

“Are you suggesting we behave like children?” I asked.

“No, I am not, Archie Goodwin. I have found the goings-on fascinating. That session you just had with Chief Blankenship, for instance, was an eye-opener for me, Mr. Wolfe. I believe that poor man is terribly worried that his suicide theory is about to go up in smoke.”

“You are most perceptive,” Wolfe said. “The chief is patently shaken and wishes we interlopers would evaporate.”

“But you won’t.”

“No, madam, we won’t. Not yet.”

Saul and I pulled chairs into Wolfe’s bedroom from adjoining rooms as he popped open one of the chilled beers we had brought up.

“If we were to have a gathering of the principals here — one more test of your mother’s hospitality — do you two think you could round up everybody and deliver them?”

“It would be a tall order,” I said, “both persuasively and logistically. That does not mean it’s impossible, though.”

“I agree with Archie,” Saul put in. “Over the years, we’ve delivered a lot of people to the brownstone who didn’t want to go, but we have managed to get them there without hardly ever resorting to rough stuff.”

“Hardly ever?” Wolfe posed, eyebrows raised.

“Well, a few have needed some... extra incentive to visit you, but not many of them.”

“Very well, then, I...”

Wolfe stopped in midsentence, and the reason quickly became clear to me, if not to Saul. His eyes were closed, and he began the exercise that always made my mouth dry as a desert.

“My God, is he okay?” Saul whispered. “Is he having some kind of a stroke or—”

“Maybe a stroke of genius. You don’t have to whisper. Where he is now, he can’t hear you,” I said as we watched Wolfe pull his lips in and push them out, again and again.

“I’ve told you about this before, although until today, you have never seen it,” I said to Saul. “It can go on for as few as several minutes and as long as almost an hour. There’s nothing we can do right now but wait. The odd thing is, the lip business usually occurs first, and then Wolfe tells me to bring everybody together for the showdown. This time it’s happened in the opposite order, which makes me think he knew one of his lip moments was coming.”

“I will be damned,” Saul said. “I need a drink.”

“Go downstairs and get yourself a scotch. You now know where it is. I’ll keep watch here.”

“Hell no, I can wait.” We both sat, watching Wolfe and wondering when he would rejoin us. Seventeen minutes later, he opened his eyes, blinked twice, and made a face.

“Pah, I have been a lackwit! The answer was right there in front of me, clear as crystal, yet I ignored it. You supplied a detailed road map,” he said to me, “and I was blind to its explicit directions. I chastise myself for my opacity and beg you to accept an apology.”

What was I going to say to that, especially because, as usual, he was so far ahead of me that I had no idea where we were going? “I think Saul and I need something liquid,” I said as Wolfe reached for his beer.

“Yes, yes, get your drinks, and then we will talk,” Wolfe said.

Once we were all settled, Wolfe took a deep breath, letting the air out slowly. “Archie, do you think your mother will abide our having a gathering in her living room?”

“By that, I assume you mean a gathering in which you will identify a murderer?”

“Confound it, of course that is what I mean!”

“I believe she’ll abide it, to use your term, but I will find out,” I replied. I went downstairs and found Mom in the kitchen cleaning up the dinner dishes.

“What can I get you, dear?” she asked, drying her hands on a towel.

“I wonder if we might be able to use the living room to... well—”

“To have Mr. Wolfe gather everyone and name a murderer?”

“Well, yes.”

“Of course that’s all right. It’s a big room, which is part of the reason your father and I bought the house in the first place. I’ve been in Mr. Wolfe’s office in the brownstone, and if that has been big enough to handle a crowd, I’m sure this will work as well.”

I gave her a hug and went back up to tell Wolfe. “Very well,” he said. “We will draw up the guest list.”

“You’re assuming we can get all the principals to show up,” I said.

“Let us proceed on that assumption. As we discussed, you have been successful at this endeavor in the past.”

“There’s a first time for everything. But okay, let’s plunge ahead.”

“I’ll take notes,” Saul said, pulling a pad and pencil from his shirt pocket.

“We will want to invite Purcell, Mapes, Kiefer, Newman, and Carrie Yeager,” I said.

“Add Miss Newman and Miss Padgett to the list as well,” Wolfe put in.

“Do you really want Katie Padgett in the room?” I asked him. “As sure as we are sitting here, she will try to take over and start asking questions.”

“She will not,” Wolfe replied, leaving no room for discussion. “The police chief should be present as well, and he would be well advised to bring along a fellow officer.”

“Shades of when you have Cramer and Stebbins sit in — or stand in — on your sessions back home,” Saul said. “This could be like old times.”

“Maybe,” Wolfe replied with a shrug. “Archie, do you believe we can bring everyone together by tomorrow evening at nine o’clock?”

“I would like to say yes, but I can’t guarantee it. One of them, Carrie Yeager, lives in another state, although Saul could go down and get her, and on the way back pick up Newman, who lives some miles south of town. That would leave me to pick up his granddaughter, Donna Newman. She has a place several miles west of here.”

Wolfe glowered at his beer. “Use your intelligence as guided by your experience,” he grumped, using more or less the same words he has thrown at me on more occasions than I can count.

“Aye, aye, boss,” I replied, knowing how much Wolfe hates the b-word. Saul and I then took our drinks and left him to his beer and his book.

Downstairs in the living room, I turned to Saul. “I didn’t mean to act like I was running this show, so I am not sure how you feel about going down to Charleston to pick up Miss Yeager — assuming she will allow herself to be picked up — and then getting Lester Newman on the return trip. I’ve got addresses and phone numbers for both of them.”

“Hell, I know my role here, and I don’t mind it one bit, Archie. When I call these two, I suppose I will tell them Wolfe is going to reveal the murderer of Mulgrew, right?”

“That’s what I’m going to say to the people I’ll be calling. The whole thing is a long shot, especially since we’re asking them to show up here tomorrow night.”

“What’s your own plan of action?” Saul asked.

“In the morning, I’m going to telephone Katie Padgett, girl reporter, who’s miffed at me right now but who may be of use to us. My immediate plan is to finish this drink and call it a night.”