Murder By The Book

11

THAT was the biggest array of legal talent ever gathered in the office. Four counselors-at-law in good standing and one disbarred.

James A. Corrigan (secretary, Charlotte Adams) was about title same age as his secretary, or maybe a little younger. He had the jaw of a prizefighter and the frame of a retired jockey and the hungriest pair of eyes I ever saw - not hungry the way a dog looks at a bone you're holding up but the way a cat looks at a bird in a cage.

Emmett Phelps (secretary, Sue Dondero) was a surprise to me. Sue had told me that he was the firm's encyclopedia, the guy who knew all the precedents and references and could turn to them with his eyes shut, but he didn't look it. Something over fifty, and a couple of inches over six feet, broad-shouldered and long-armed, on him a general's or admiral's uniform would have looked fine.

Louis Kustin (secretary, Eleanor Gruber) was the youngster of the bunch, about my age. Instead of hungry eyes he had sleepy ones, very dark, but that must have been a cover because Sue had told me that he was their trial man, and hot, having taken over the tougher courtroom assignments when O'Malley had been disbarred. He looked smaller than he was on account of the way he slumped.

Frederick Briggs, Helen Troy's Uncle Fred, had white hair and a long bony face. If he had a secretary I hadn't met her. From the way he blinked like a half-wit at everyone who spoke, it seemed a wonder he had been made a partner even in his seventh decade - or it could have been his eighth - but it takes all kinds to make a law firm. I wouldn't have hired him to change blotters.

Conroy O'Malley, who had been the senior partner and the courtroom wizard until he got bounced off the bar for bribing a juror, looked as bitter as you would expect, with a sidewise twist to his mouth that seemed to be permanent. With his mouth straightened and the sag out of his cheeks and a flash in his eye, it wouldn't have been hard to imagine him dominating a courtroom, but as he was then he couldn't have dominated a phone booth with him alone in it.

I had allotted the red leather chair to Corrigan, the senior partner, with the others in an irregular arc facing Wolfe's desk. Usually, when there are visitors, I don't get out my notebook and pen until Wolfe says to, but there was no law against my trying an experiment, so I had them ready and when Corrigan opened up I began scribbling. The reaction was instantaneous and unanimous. They all yapped at once, absolutely horrified and outraged. I looked astonished.

Wolfe, who knows me fairly well, thought he was going to slip me a caustic remark, but he had to chuckle. The idea of getting the goats of four lawyers and one ex-lawyer at one crack appealed to him too.

"I don't think," he told me mildly, "we'll need a record of this."

I put the notebook on my desk in easy reach. They didn't like it there so handy. Throughout the conference they took turns darting glances at me to make sure I wasn't sneaking in some symbols.

"This is a confidential private conversation," Corrigan stated.

"Yes, sir," Wolfe conceded. "But not privileged. I am not your client."

"Quite right." Corrigan smiled, but his eyes stayed hungry. "We wouldn't mind if you were. We are not a hijacking firm, Mr. Wolfe, but I don't need to say that if you ever need our services it would be a pleasure and an honor."

Wolfe inclined his head an eighth of an inch. I raised a brow the same distance. So they had brought butter along.

"I'll come straight to the point," Corrigan declared. "Last evening you got more than half of our office staff down here and tried to seduce them."

"Seduction in its statutory sense, Mr. Corrigan?"

"No, no, of course not. Orchids, liquors, exotic foods - not to tempt their chastity but their discretion. Administered by your Mr. Goodwin."

"I take the responsibility for Mr. Goodwin's actions on my premises as my agent. Are you charging me with a malum? In se or prohibitum?"

"Not at all. Neither. Perhaps I started badly. I'll describe the situation as we see it, and you correct me if I'm wrong. A man named Wellman has engaged you to investigate the death of his daughter. You have decided that there is a connection between her death and two others, those of Leonard Dykes and Rachel Abrams. In -"

"Not decided. Assumed as a working hypothesis."

"All right. And you're working on it. You have two reasons for the assumption: the appearance of the name Baird Archer in all three cases, and the fact that all three died violently. The second is merely coincidental and would have no significance without the first. Looked at objectively, it doesn't seem like a very good reason. We suspect you're concentrating on this assumption because you can't find anything else to concentrate on, but of course we may be wrong."

"No. You're quite right."

They exchanged glances. Phelps, the six-foot-plus encyclopedia, muttered something I didn't catch. O'Malley, the ex, was the only one who didn't react at all. He was too busy being bitter.

"Naturally," Corrigan said reasonably, "we can't expect you to spread your cards out. We didn't come here to question you, we came to let you question us."

"About what?"

"Any and all relevant matters. We're willing to spread our cards out, Mr. Wolfe; we have to. Frankly, our firm is in a highly vulnerable position. We've had all the scandal we can absorb. Only a little over a year ago our senior partner was disbarred and narrowly escaped a felony conviction. That was a major blow to the firm. We reorganized, months passed, we were regaining lost ground, and then our chief confidential clerk, Leonard Dykes, was murdered, and it was all reopened. There was never a shred of evidence that there was any connection between O'Malley's disbarment and Dykes's death, but it doesn't take evidence to make scandal. It affected us even more seriously than the first blow; the effect was cumulative. Weeks went by, and Dykes's murder was still unsolved, and it was beginning to die down a little, when suddenly it came back on us through the death of someone we had never heard of, a young woman named Joan Wellman. However, that was much less violent and damaging. It was confined mostly to an effort by the police to find some trace, through us or our staff, of a man who was named Baird Archer, or who had used that name, and the effort was completely unsuccessful. After a week of that it was petering out too, and then here they came again, we didn't know why at the time, but now we know it was because of the death of another young woman we had never heard of, named Rachel Abrams. At that point don't you think we had a right to feel a little persecuted."

Wolfe shrugged. "I doubt if it matters what I think. You did feel persecuted."

"We certainly did. We do. We have had enough. As you know, the Abrams girl died three days ago. Again what the police are after is a trace of a Baird Archer, though God knows if there were any trace of such a man or such a name at our office they should have dug it up long ago. Anyhow, there's nothing we can do except hope they find their damned Baird Archer, and wait for this to begin to die down too. That's how we felt yesterday. Do you know what happened in court this afternoon? Louis Kustin was trying an important case for us, and during a recess opposing counsel came up to him and said - what did he say, Louis?"

Kustin stirred in his chair. "He asked me what I was doing about a new connection when our firm dissolves." His voice had a sharp edge, not at all sleepy like his eyes. "He was trying to get me sore to spoil my style. He didn't succeed."

"You see," Corrigan told Wolfe. "Well, that's how we felt yesterday. Then those boxes of orchids came with notes from your man Goodwin. Then today we learn what happened last night. We learn what happened here, and we also learn that Goodwin told one of our staff that you have an idea that a trail to the murderer of the Wellman girl can be picked up at our office, that he never saw you more bullheaded about an idea, and that your client and you both intend to go the limit. We know enough about you and your methods to know what that means. As long as you've got that idea you'll never let go. The police and the talk may die down and even die out, but you won't, and God knows what you'll do to our staff. You've damn near got them scratching and pulling hair already."

"Nuts," I cut in. "They've been at it for months."

"They were cooling off. You got 'em tight and then brought in a bereaved father and mother to work on their nerves. God only knows what you'll do next." Corrigan returned to Wolfe. "So here we are. Ask us anything you want to. You say that idea of a working hypothesis, go ahead and work on it. You're investigating the murder of Joan Wellman, and you think one of us has something for you, maybe all of us. Here we are. Get it over with."

Corrigan looked at me and asked politely, "Could I have a drink of water?"

I took it for granted that he meant with something in it and asked him what, meanwhile pushing a button for Fritz, since I wasn't supposed to leave a conference unless I had to. Also I broadened the invitation. Two of them liked Scotch, two bourbon, and one rye. They exchanged remarks. Briggs, the blinking half-wit, got up to stretch and crossed the room for a look at the big globe, probably with the notion of trying to find out where he was. I noticed that Wolfe did not order beer, which seemed to be stretching things pretty thin. I had nothing against his habit of using reasonable precaution not to take refreshment with a murderer, but he had never seen any of those birds before and he had absolutely nothing to point at them with. Bullheaded was putting it mildly.

Corrigan put his half-empty glass down and said, "Go ahead."

Wolfe grunted. "As I understand it, sir, you invite me to ask questions and satisfy myself that my assumption is not valid. That could take all night. I'm sorry, but my dinner dish this evening is not elastic."

"We'll go out and come back."

"And I can't commit myself to satisfaction by an hour or even a day."

"We don't expect a commitment. We just want to get you off our necks as soon as possible without having our organization and our reputation hurt worse than they are already."

"Very well. Here's a question. Which one of you first suggested this meeting with me?"

"What difference does that make?"

"I'm asking the questions, Mr. Corrigan."

"So you are. It was -" The senior partner hesitated. "Yes, it was Phelps."

"No," Phelps contradicted him. "You came to my room and asked me what I thought of it."

"Then it was you, Fred?"

Briggs blinked. "I really couldn't say, Jim. I make so many suggestions, I may well have made this one. I know Louis phoned in at his lunch recess to ask for some figures, and we were discussing it."

"That's right," Kustin agreed. "You said it was being considered."

"You're having a hell of a time answering a simple question," a biting voice told them. It was Conroy O'Malley, the ex. "The suggestion came from me. I phoned you around eleven o'clock, Jim, and you told me about Nero Wolfe smashing in, and I said the only thing to do was have a talk with him."

Corrigan screwed up his lips. "That's right. Then I went in to get Emmett's opinion."

Wolfe went at O'Malley. "You phoned Mr. Corrigan around eleven this morning?"

"Yes."

"What about?"

'To get the news. I had been out of town for a week, and the minute I returned the police had got ct me again about Baird Archer. I wondered why."

"What were you doing out of town?"

"I was in Atlanta, Georgia, getting facts about the delivery of steel for a bridge."

"On behalf of whom?"

"This firm." O'Malley's mouth twisted until it was distorted almost to a diagonal. "You don't think my old associates would let me starve, do you? No indeed. I eat every day. Not only do I get a share of the income from unfinished business when I left, I am also given work to do outside the office. Do you know what is the outstanding characteristic of my former associates? Love for their fellow man." He tapped his chest with a forefinger. "I am their fellow man."

"Goddam it, Con," Phelps blurted, "where does that get you? What do you want? What do you expect?"

A gleam had come and gone in Kustin's sleepy eyes as O'Malley spoke. He said dryly, "We're here to answer Wolfe's questions. Let's keep the answers responsive."

"No," Wolfe said, "this isn't a courtroom. Sometimes an unresponsive answer is the most revealing, almost as good as a lie. But I hope you will resort to lies as little as possible, since they will be of use to me only when exposed and that's a lot of work. For instance, I am going to ask each of you if you have ever tried your hand at writing fiction or had a marked and sustained desire to write fiction. If you all say no, and if later, through interviews with friends and acquaintances, I find that one of you lied, that will be of some value to me, but it will save trouble if you'll tell the truth short of serious embarrassment. Have you ever tried writing fiction, Mr. O'Malley? Or wanted to, beyond a mere whim?"

"No."

"Mr. Briggs?"

"No."

He got five noes.

Wolfe leaned back and surveyed them. "Of course," he said, "it is clearly essential to my assumption that either Leonard Dykes or someone he knew wrote a piece of fiction long enough to be called a novel - Dykes himself by preference, since he was killed. Doubtless the police have touched on this in questioning you, and you have disclaimed any knowledge of such an activity by Dykes, but I like things firsthand. Mr. Corrigan, have you ever had any information or hint, from any source, that Dykes had written, was writing, or wanted or intended to write, a work of fiction?"

"No."

"Mr. Phelps?"

Five noes again.

Wolfe nodded. "That shows why, even if you put up with this for a solid week, I can't engage not to harass your staff. For that kind of operation Mr. Goodwin is highly qualified. If you admonish those young women not to see him, I doubt if it will work. If they disobey and you fire them, you will merely make them riper for him. If you warn them specifically that any knowledge they may have, however slight, of Dykes's literary performances or ambitions is not to be disclosed, sooner or later Mr. Goodwin will know it, and I shall ask why you don't want me to get facts. And if any of them does innocently have such knowledge, perhaps from some remark once heard, we'll get it."

They didn't care for that. Louis Kustin was displaying a bored smile. "We're not schoolboys, Wolfe. We graduated long ago. Speaking for myself, you're welcome to any fact you can get, no matter what, that's conceivably connected with your case. I don't know any. I'm here - all of us are - to satisfy you on that point."

"Then tell me this, Mr. Kustin." Wolfe was placid. "I gather that although the disbarment of Mr. O'Malley was a blow to the firm's reputation, you personally benefited from it by being made a partner and by replacing Mr. O'Malley as chief trial counsel. Is that correct?"

Kustin's eyes woke up. They gleamed. "I deny that that has any connection with your case."

"We're proceeding on my assumption. Of course you may decline to answer, but if you do, what are you here for?"

"Answer him, Louis," O'Malley said jeeringly. "Just say yes."

They looked at each other. I doubt if either of them had ever regarded opposing counsel with just that kind of hostility. Then Kustin's eyes, anything but sleepy now, returned to Wolfe and he said, "Yes."

"And naturally your share of the firm's profits was increased?"

"Yes."

"Substantially?"

"Yes."

Wolfe's glance went left. "You too benefited, Mr. Corrigan? You became the senior partner with an increased share?"

Corrigan's prizefighter's jaw was jutting, "I became the senior in a firm that was damn near on the rocks. My percentage of the profits went up, but the profits went down. I would have done better to cut loose."

"Was there anything to stop you?" O'Malley inquired. From his tone I would have guessed that he hated Corrigan about one-fifth as much as he did Kustin.

"Yes, Con, there was. I had my associates to think of. My name was on the door with theirs. There was loyalty to stop me."

Suddenly, totally without warning, O'Malley bounded to his feet. I suppose he had done it a thousand times in a courtroom, to object to a question or dramatize a motion to dismiss, but it startled the others as much as it did me. He flung up an arm and called out in a ringing voice, "Loyalty!" Then he dropped back into his chair, picked up his glass and raised it, said, "To loyalty," and drank.

The four firm members glanced at one another. I changed my mind about O'Malley's ability to dominate a phone booth.

Wolfe spoke. "And you, Mr. Briggs? You also moved up when Mr. O'Malley was out?"

Briggs blinked violently. "I resent this," he said stiffly. "I am opposed to this whole procedure. I know something of you, Mr. Wolfe, and I regard your methods as unethical and reprehensible. I am here under protest."

"Frederick," O'Malley said gravely, "should be on the bench. He should have been appointed to the bench as soon as he was out of law school. He would be an ideal judge. He has the kind of daring mind that glories in deciding an issue without understanding it."

Phelps, the encyclopedia, protested, "Everybody can't be brilliant like you, Con. Maybe it's just as well they can't."

O'Malley nodded at him. "You're dead right, Emmett. But you're always right. I've never resented it, you know, your always being right, I don't know why. Not because you're the only one who didn't profit by my downfall; I never resented it."

"I did profit. I moved up one and I get a bigger cut." Phelps went to Wolfe. "We all profited by our partner's misfortune, or we will, if this doesn't ruin us altogether. Even I. Strictly speaking, I am not an attorney-at-law; I am a scholar. To a lawyer the most interesting case is the one he is currently engaged in. To me the most interesting case is one that was tried in Vienna in 1568. I inject this only to explain why this case of yours is to me unutterably dull. It might not be if I had myself killed Dykes and those two young women, but I doubt it. I would be attentive, naturally, but not interested. You will forgive me, I hope."

That, I thought, might be useful in future conversations with Sue Dondero, Phelps's secretary. From her scanty remarks about her boss I hadn't got that slant on him, and surely she would like to know more about him if she didn't already. Girls feel that it's their duty to know all about their bosses.

Wolfe was cocking his head at the encyclopedia. "Murders bore you, Mr. Phelps?"

"I didn't say that. 'Bore' is an active verb. I am merely indifferent."

"But isn't your livelihood involved?"

"Yes. That's why I'm here. I came and I'll talk, but don't expect to arouse me."

"Then I won't try." Wolfe's eyes moved. "By the way, Mr. O'Malley, why are you here?"

"Loyalty." I had refilled O'Malley's glass, and he lifted it. "To loyalty!"

"To whom? Your former associates? I was getting the impression that you are not too well disposed toward them."

"That just shows" - O'Malley put his glass down - "how wrong appearances can be. My old friends Jim and Emmett and Louis and Fred? I'd go through hell for them - in fact I have. Isn't that acceptable as my motive for coming?"

"I'd prefer something a little less moot."

"Then try this. I was a man of extraordinary talent and not without ambition. My talent had been developed and my faculties trained to one end: to enter a courtroom with a briefcase, confront a judge and jury, and so manipulate their thoughts and emotions that I got the verdict I wanted. I hadn't lost a case for four years when one day I found myself faced by certain defeat; there was no question about it. Under that pressure I did something foolish: I bribed a juror, the first and only time. I got a hung jury, and a few weeks later got a settlement out of court, and I thought I was safely out of it, when suddenly it hit me. Someone informed the court, they got the juror in and worked on him and broke him, and there I was. Insufficient evidence saved me from a felony conviction, the jury was divided six to six, but I was disbarred."

"Who informed the court?"

"I didn't know at the time. Now I have reason to believe it was the juror's wife."

"Were any of your associates privy to your act?"

"No. They wouldn't have stood for it. They were shocked - the shock of righteous men - meaning by 'righteous men' those who have not been caught. They were also loyal, they helped me fight it, but it was hopeless. So here I am, a man with an extraordinary talent that can't be used. I can use it only in one place and I am not allowed to go there. Moreover, I am stigmatized. People who could use my talents outside of courtrooms don't want them. And I'm broke. I'm in no position to postulate that I should go on living; there seems no point in it; but through perversity I'm going to. My only source of income is this firm, payments on account of business that was unfinished when I left, and they give me errands to do. So it is to my interest for the firm to prosper. I offer that as my reason for coming here with them. If you don't like it either, I have still another alternative. Would you like to hear it?"

"If it isn't too fanciful."

"It's not fanciful at all. I am embittered against my former associates because they let me down. I think it quite possible that one of them killed Dykes and the two women, though I have no idea why, and that you're going to hang on until you get it, and I want to see it happen. Do you like that better?"

"It has attractions."

"Or here's another. I myself killed Dykes and the women, though again I have no idea why, and I think you're more dangerous than the police and want to keep an eye on you." O'Malley picked up his glass. "That's four, that should be enough."

"It'll do for the time being," Wolfe concurred. "Of course they're mutually exclusive. In one your associates helped you fight and in another they let you down. Which was it actually?"

"They fought like tigers to save me."

"Goddam it, Con," Phelps exploded, "we did! We let everything else go! We did our damnedest!"

O'Malley was unmoved. "Then you'd better take that one," he told Wolfe. "Number Two. It has corroboration, which is always a help."

"I prefer it anyway." Wolfe glanced up at the clock on the wall. "I want all you can tell me about Dykes, gentlemen, but it's my dinnertime. As I said, I'm sorry we're not prepared for guests."

They left their chairs. Corrigan asked, "What time do you want us back?"

Wolfe made a face. He hated the prospect of work during digestion. "Nine o'clock?" he suggested. "Will that suit?"

They said it would.