Method Three for Murder

VII

Since Wolfe had suggested that I should bring Kearns there so we could look at him together, I would just as soon have let him think that I had filled the order, but of course that wouldn’t do. So when, having taken the floppy black hat and put it on the shelf in the hall, I escorted him to the office and pronounced his name, I added, “I met Mr. Kearns out front. He arrived just as I did.”

Wolfe, behind his desk, had been pouring beer when we entered. He put the bottle down. “Then you haven’t talked with him?”

“No, sir.”

He turned to Kearns, in the red leather chair. “Will you have beer, sir?”

“Heavens, no.” Kearns was emphatic. “I didn’t come for amenities. My business is urgent. I am extremely displeased with the counsel you have given my wife. You must have hypnotized her. She refuses to see me. She refuses to accept the services of my lawyer, even to arrange bail for her. I demand an explanation. I intend to hold you to account for alienating the affections of my wife.”

“Affections,” Wolfe said.

“What?”

“Affections. In that context the plural is used.” He lifted the glass and drank, and licked his lips.

Kearns stared at him. “I didn’t come here,” he said, “to have my grammar corrected.”

“Not grammar. Diction.”

Kearns pounded the chair arm. “What have you to say?”

“It would be futile for me to say anything whatever until you have regained your senses, if you have any. If you think your wife had affection for you until she met me twelve hours ago, you’re an ass. If you know she hadn’t your threat is fatuous. In either case what can you expect but contempt?”

“I expect an explanation! I expect the truth! I expect you to tell me why my wife refuses to see me!”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I don’t even know that she has, since in your present state I question the accuracy of your reporting. When and where did she refuse?”

“This morning. Just now, in the District Attorney’s office. She won’t even talk to my lawyer. She told him she was waiting to hear from you and Goodwin.” His head jerked to me. “You’re Goodwin?”

I admitted it. His head jerked back. “It’s humiliating! It’s degrading! My wife under arrest! Mrs. Waldo Kearns in jail! Dishonor to my name and to me! And you’re to blame.”

Wolfe took a breath. “I doubt if it’s worth the trouble,” he said, “but I’m willing to try. I presume what you’re after is an account of our conversation with your wife last evening. I might consider supplying it, but first I would have to be satisfied of your bona fides. Will you answer some questions?”

“It depends on what they are.”

“Probably you have already answered them, to the police. Has your wife wanted a divorce and have you refused to consent?”

“Yes. I regard the marriage contract as a sacred covenant.”

“Have you refused to discuss it with her in recent months?”

“The police didn’t ask me that.”

“I ask it. I need to establish not only your bona fides, Mr. Kearns, but also your wife’s. It shouldn’t embarrass you to answer that.”

“It doesn’t embarrass me. You can’t embarrass me. It would have been useless to discuss it with her since I wouldn’t consider it.”

“So you wouldn’t see her?”

“Naturally. That was all she would talk about.”

“Have you been contributing to her support since she left you?”

“She didn’t leave me. We agreed to try living separately. She wouldn’t let me contribute to her support. I offered to. I wanted to.”

“The police certainly asked you if you killed Phoebe Arden. Did you?”

“No. Why in God’s name would I kill her?”

“I don’t know. Miss Judith Bram suggested that she may have had a bad cold and you were afraid you would catch it, but that seems farfetched. By the way—”

“Judy? Judy Bram said that? I don’t believe it!”

“But she did. In this room last evening, in the chair you now occupy. She also called you a sophisticated ape.”

“You’re lying!”

“No. I’m not above lying, or below it, but the truth will do now. Also—”

“You’re lying. You’ve never seen Judy Bram. You’re merely repeating something my wife said.”

“That’s interesting, Mr. Kearns, and even suggestive. You are willing to believe that your wife called you a sophisticated ape, but not that Miss Bram did. When I do lie I try not to be clumsy. Miss Bram was here last evening, with Mr. Goodwin and me, for half an hour or more; and that brings me to a ticklish point. I must ask you about a detail that the police don’t know about. Certainly they asked about your movements last evening, but they didn’t know that you had arranged with Judith Bram to call for you in her cab at eight o’clock. Unless you told them?”

Kearns sat still, and for him it is worth mentioning. With many people sitting still is nothing remarkable, but with him it was. His sitting, like his face, reminded me of a squirrel; he kept moving or twitching something — a hand, a shoulder, a foot, even his head. Now he was motionless all over.

“Say that again,” he commanded.

Wolfe obeyed. “Have you told the police that you had arranged with Miss Bram to call for you in her cab at eight o’clock last evening?”

“No. Why should I tell them something that isn’t true?”

“You shouldn’t, ideally, but people often do. I do occasionally. However, that’s irrelevant, since it would have been the truth. Evidently Miss Bram hasn’t told the police, but she told me. I mention it to ensure that you’ll tell me the truth when you recount your movements last evening.”

“If she told you that she lied.”

“Oh, come, Mr. Kearns.” Wolfe was disgusted. “It is established that her cab stood at the mouth of the alley leading to your house for more than half an hour, having come at your bidding. If you omitted that detail in your statement to the police I may have to supply it. Haven’t you spoken with Miss Bram since?”

“No.” He was still motionless. “Her phone doesn’t answer. She’s not at home. I went there.” He passed his tongue across his lower lip. I admit I have never seen a squirrel do that. “I couldn’t tell the police her cab was there last evening because I didn’t know it was. I wasn’t there.”

“Where were you? Consider that I know you had ordered the cab for eight o’clock and hadn’t cancelled the order.”

“I’ve told the police where I was.”

“Then your memory has been jogged.”

“It didn’t need jogging. I was at the studio of a man named Prosch, Carl Prosch. I went there to meet Miss Arden and look at a picture she was going to buy. I got there at a quarter to eight and left at nine o’clock. She hadn’t come, and—”

“If you please. Miss Phoebe Arden?”

“Yes. She phoned me at half past seven and said she had about decided to buy a painting, a still life, from Prosch, and was going to his studio to look at it again, and asked me to meet her there to help her decide. I was a little surprised because she knows what I think of daubers like Prosch, but I said I would go. His studio is on Carmine Street, in walking distance from my house, and I walked. She hadn’t arrived, and I had only been there two or three minutes when she phoned and asked to speak to me. She said she had been delayed and would get there as soon as she could, and asked me to wait for her. My thought was that I would wait until midnight rather than have her buy a still life by Prosch, but I didn’t say so. I didn’t wait until midnight, but I waited until nine o’clock. I discussed painting with Prosch a while, until he became insufferable, and then went down to the street and waited there. She never came. I walked back home.”

Wolfe grunted. “Can there be any doubt that it was Miss Arden on the phone? Both times?”

“Not the slightest. I couldn’t possibly mistake her voice.”

“What time was it when you left Mr. Prosch and went down to the street?”

“About half past eight. I told the police I couldn’t be exact about that, but I could about when I started home. It was exactly nine o’clock.” Kearns’s hands moved. Back to normal. “Now I’ll hear what you have to say.”

“In a moment. Miss Bram was to come at eight o’clock. Why didn’t you phone her?”

“Because I thought I would be back. Probably a little late, but she would wait. I didn’t phone her after Miss Arden phoned that she was delayed because she would be gone.”

“Where was she to drive you?”

“To Long Island. A party. What does that matter?” He was himself again. “You talk now, and I want the truth!”

Wolfe picked up his glass, emptied it, and put it down. “Possibly you are entitled to it, Mr. Kearns. Unquestionably a man of your standing would feel keenly the ignominy of having a wife in jail — the woman to whom you have given your name, though she doesn’t use it. You may know that she came to this house at twenty minutes past nine last evening.”

“I know nothing. I told you she won’t see me.”

“So you did. She arrived just as Mr. Goodwin was leaving the house on an errand and they met on the stoop. No doubt you know that Mr. Goodwin is permanently in my employ as my confidential assistant — permanently, that is, in the sense that neither of us has any present intention of ending it or changing its terms.”

Kearns was fidgeting again. I was not. He spoke. “The paper said he had left your employ. It didn’t say on account of my wife, but of course it was.”

“Bosh.” Wolfe’s head turned. “Archie?”

“Bosh,” I agreed. “The idea of quitting on account of Miss Holt never entered my head.”

Kearns hit the chair arm. “Mrs. Kearns!”

“Okay,” I conceded. “Mrs. Waldo Kearns.”

“So,” Wolfe said, “your wife’s first contact was with Mr. Goodwin. They sat on the stoop and talked. You know, of course, that Miss Bram’s cab was there at the curb with Miss Arden’s body in it.”

“Yes. What did my wife say?”

“I’ll come to that. Police came along in a car and discovered the body, and reported it, and soon there was an army. A policeman named Cramer talked with Mr. Goodwin and your wife, I went to the door and invited them to enter — not Mr. Cramer — and they did so. We talked for half an hour or so, when Mr. Cramer came with Miss Bram, and they were admitted. Mr. Cramer, annoyed by the loquacity of Miss Bram, and wishing to speak with your wife privately, took her away. You demanded the truth, sir, and you have it. I add one item, also true: since your wife had engaged Mr. Goodwin’s services, and through him mine also, what she told us was confidential and can’t be divulged. Now for—”

Kearns bounced out of the chair, and as he did so the doorbell rang. Since a man who might have stuck a knife in a woman might be capable of other forms of violence, I was going to leave it to Fritz, but Wolfe shot me a glance and I went to the hall for a look. On the stoop was a tall guy with a bony face and a strong jaw. Behind me Kearns was yapping but had drawn no weapon. I went to the front and opened the door.

“To see Mr. Wolfe,” he said. “My name is Gilbert Irving.”

The temptation was too strong. Only twelve hours ago I had seen a confrontation backfire for Cramer, when he had brought Judy Bram in to face Mira, but this time the temperament was already in the office, having a fit, and it would be interesting to see the reaction, and possibly helpful. So I told him to come in, took his Homburg and put it on the shelf beside the floppy black number, and steered him to the office.

Kearns was still on his feet yapping, but when Wolfe’s eyes left him to direct a scowl at me he turned his head. I ignored the scowl. I had disregarded another rule by bringing in a visitor without consulting Wolfe, but as far as I was concerned Mira was still my client and it was my case. I merely pronounced names. “Mr. Gilbert Irving. Mr. Wolfe.”

The reaction was interesting enough, though not helpful, since it was no news that Kearns and Irving were not pals. Perhaps Kearns didn’t actually spit at him because it could have been merely that moisture came out with his snort. Two words followed immediately. “You bastard!”

Irving must have had lessons or practice, or both. His uppercut, with his right, was swift and sure, and had power. It caught Kearns right on the button and sent him straight up a good six inches before he swayed against the corner of Wolfe’s desk.