Instead of Evidence

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The appearance of the living room in the Poor apartment on Eighty-fourth Street was not the same as it had been when I had arrived there three evenings before. Not only was there no army of city employees present and no man of the house with his face gone huddled on the floor, but the furniture had been moved around. The chair Poor had sat in when he lit his last cigar was gone, probably to the cleaners on account of spots, the table Cramer had used for headquarters had been shifted to the other side of the room, and the radio had been moved to the other end of the couch.

Martha Poor was sitting on the couch, and I was on a chair I had pulled around to face her. She was wearing something that wasn’t a bathrobe and wasn’t exactly a dress, modest, with sleeves and only a proper amount of throat showing.

“I’m here under orders,” I told her. “I said this morning that if anything happened that it would help you to know about I’d see that you knew, but this isn’t it. This is different. Nero Wolfe sent me with orders. I just want to make that clear. Item number one is to hand you this envelope and invite you to look at the contents.”

She took it from me. With steady fingers, slow-moving rather than hurried, she opened the flap and pulled out the photograph.

I informed her, “That decoration may look like something by Dali, but it was Nero Wolfe’s idea. I am not authorized to discuss it or the picture from any angle Just there it is, except to remark that it is a very good likeness of your husband. I only saw him that one time, the other afternoon at the office, but of course I had a long and thorough look at him. Wednesday we could have sold that photo to a newspaper for a nice amount, but of course we didn’t have it Wednesday.”

She had put the photo beside her on the couch and was pinching an edge of the cardboard between her index finger and thumbnail, with the nail sinking in. She was looking straight at me. The muscles of her throat had tightened, which no doubt accounted for the change in her voice when she spoke.

“Where did you get it?”

I shook my head. “Out of bounds. As I said, I’m under orders. Item number two is just a piece of information to the effect that a man named Saul Panzer is out in the back hall on this floor, standing by the door of the service elevator. Saul is not big but he just had a nap and is alert. Number three: that naked body found up in Westchester with the head smashed by running a car over it, in an orchard not more than ten minutes’ drive from either Monty’s Tavern or Blaney’s place, has been identified as formerly belonging to a man named Arthur Howell, an employee of the Beck Products Corporation.”

Her eyes hadn’t moved. I hadn’t even seen the lashes blink. She said in a faraway voice, “I don’t know why you tell me about that. Arthur Howell? Did you say Arthur Howell?”

“Yep, that’s right. Howell, Arthur. Head flattened to a pancake, but enough left for the dentist. As for telling you about it, I’m only obeying orders.” I glanced at my wrist. “Number four: it is now twenty past ten. At a quarter to eleven I am supposed either to arrive back at the office or phone. If I do neither, Nero Wolfe will phone Inspector Cramer and then here they’ll come. Not as many as Tuesday evening I suppose, because they won’t need all the scientists, but plenty.”

I stopped, still meeting her eyes, and then went on, “Let’s see. Photo and capsule, Saul out back, Howell, cops at a quarter to eleven... that’s all.”

She got up, with the photo in her hand, and started for a door to the right, the one she had retreated through Tuesday when Blaney had arrived on the scene.

It was up to me to decide. If she wanted to be alone to get her mind arranged, or anything else arranged, that was all right with me, but the one detail which I thought had not been sufficiently considered was fire escapes. So although I would have much preferred to stay where I was, I went along.

That game of follow the leader was one of my experiences that can stay unique and suit me fine. She might have been a deaf-and-dumb renting agent showing me the apartment, and me a deaf-and-dumb prospective tenant. First we did the master bedroom, her in front and me right behind. She went and opened a closet door, looked in a moment, and shut it again. Then she crossed to another door that was standing open. I had never seen a fire escape with an entrance through a bathroom window, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to look so I did. Seeing it was okay, I backed out and she shut the door, staying inside. I went to a window and frowned out at the dark for maybe three minutes, and apparently I forgot to breathe, for when the door opened and she came out I pulled in enough oxygen to fill a barrel. Observing that she no longer was carrying the photograph, I let her go on being it. Her next destination was the back door, leading from the kitchen to the service hall. With me at her elbow, she pulled the door wide open, and we were both looking at Saul, standing there reading a newspaper.

He turned his head our way, and I said, “Hello, Saul.”

He said, “Hello, Archie.”

She closed the door, not letting it bang, and went by way of the dining room back to the living room and on to the front foyer. If this seems crazy to you reading about it, that’s nothing to what it seemed to me helping do it. Not wanting any scene in the public hall, I slipped ahead of her in the foyer and stood with my back against the entrance door, and she simply turned around and re-entered the living room. I hadn’t the dimmest idea then whether she was merely a rat in a cage and acting like one, or what, and I haven’t now. But I wasn’t going to have to phone Nero Wolfe that she had climbed down a fire escape and would he please tell the police to start looking, so when she kept going until she was in the master bedroom again I was right there.

She hadn’t uttered one word since she had asked me if I had said Arthur Howell, but now she did. When she turned, in the middle of the room, near the foot of the big double bed where she had presumably slept with her husband, I thought she was going to take hold of me, but all she did was stand in front of me, about eight inches away, looking up at me. She came about up to my chin, that was all. She wasn’t tall.

“Archie Goodwin,” she said. “You think I’m terrible, don’t you? You think I’m an awful woman, bad clear through. Don’t you?”

“I’m not thinking, lady. I’m just an errand boy.” The funny thing was that if at any moment up to then I had made a list of the ten most beautiful women she would not have been on it.

“You’ve had lots of experience,” she said, her head back to look up at me. “You know what women are like. I knew you did when you put your hand on my arm yesterday. You know I’m a man’s woman, but it has to be the right man. Just one man’s, forever.” She started to smile, and her lip began to quiver, and she stopped it. “But I didn’t find the man until it was too late. I didn’t find him until you put your hand on my arm yesterday. You could have had me then, forever yours, you could have me now if anything like that was possible. I mean — we could go away together — now you wouldn’t have to promise anything — only you could find out if you want me forever too — the way I want you—”

She lifted her hand and touched me, just a touch, the tips of her fingers barely brushing my sleeve.

I jerked back.

“Listen,” I said, with my voice sounding peculiar, so I tried to correct it. “You are extremely good, no question about it, but as you say, it’s too late. You are trying to go to bat when your side already has three out in the ninth, and that’s against the rules. I’ll hand it to you that you are extremely good. When you turn it on it flows. But in seven minutes now Nero Wolfe will be phoning the police, so you’d better fix your hair. You’ll be having your picture taken.”

She hauled off and smacked me in the face. I barely felt it and didn’t even move my hands.

“I hate men,” she said through her teeth. “God, how I hate men!”

She turned and walked to the bathroom, and entered and closed the door.

I didn’t know whether she had gone to fix her hair or what, and I didn’t care. Instead of crossing to the window and standing there without breathing, as I had done before, I sat down on the edge of the bed and did nothing but breathe. I suppose I did actually know what was going to happen. Anyhow, when it happened, when the noise came, not nearly as loud as it had been in Wolfe’s office because then the capsule had been inside a metal percolator, I don’t think I jumped or even jerked. I did not run, but walked, to the bathroom door, opened it and entered.

Less than a minute later I went to the back door in the kitchen and opened that and told Saul Panzer, “All over. She stuck it in her mouth and lit the fuse. You get out. Go and report to Wolfe. I’ll phone the cops.”

“But you must be — I’ll stay—”

“No, go on. Step on it. I feel fine.”