Murder By The Book

14

I HADN'T been to the West Coast for several years. I slept most of the night but woke up when the stewardess brought morning coffee and then kept my eyes open for a look down at the country. There is no question that a desert landscape is neater than where things have simply got to grow, and of course they don't have the weed problem, but from up above I saw stretches where even a few good big weeds would have been a help.

My watch said 11:10 as the plane taxied to a stop on the concrete of the Los Angeles airport, and I set it back to ten past eight before I arose and filed out to the gangway and off. It was warm and muggy, with no sign of the sun. By the time I got my suitcase and found a taxi I had to use a handkerchief on my face and neck. Then the breeze through the open window came at me, and, not wanting to get pneumonia in a foreign country, I shut the window. The people didn't look as foreign as some of the architecture and most of the vegetation. Before we got to the hotel it started to rain.

I had a regulation breakfast and then went up and had a regulation bath. My room - it was the Riviera - had too many colors scattered around but was okay. It smelled swampy, but I couldn't open a window on account of the rain. When I was through bathing and shaving and dressing and unpacking it was after eleven, and I got at the phone and asked Information for the number of Clarence O. Potter, 2819 Whitecrest Avenue, Glendale.

I called the number, and after three whirs a female voice told my ear hello.

I was friendly but not sugary. "May I speak to Mrs. Clarence Potter, please?"

"This is Mrs. Potter." Her voice was high but not squeaky.

"Mrs. Potter, my name is Thompson, George Thompson. I'm from New York, and you never heard of me. I'm here on a business trip, and I would like to see you to discuss an important matter. Any time that will suit you will suit me, but the sooner the better. I'm talking from the Riviera Hotel and I can come out now if that will be convenient."

"Did you say Thompson?"

"That's right, George Thompson."

"But why do you - what's it about?"

"It's a personal matter. I'm not selling anything. It's something I need to know about your deceased brother, Leonard Dykes, and it will be to your advantage if it affects you at all. I'd appreciate it if I could see you today."

"What do you want to know about my brother?"

"It's a little too complicated for the telephone. Why not let me come and tell you about it?"

"Well, I suppose - all right. I'll be home until three o'clock."

"Fine. I'll leave right away."

I did so. All I had to do was grab my hat and raincoat and go. But down in the lobby I was delayed. As I was heading for the front a voice called Mr. Thompson, and with my mind on my errand I nearly muffed it. Then I reined and turned and saw the clerk handing a bellboy a yellow envelope.

"Telegram for you, Mr. Thompson."

I crossed and got it arid tore it open. It said, "confound it did you arrive safely or not." I went out and climbed into a taxi and told the driver we were bound for Glendale but the first stop would be a drugstore. When he pulled up in front of one I went into a phone booth and sent a wire: "Arrived intact am on my way to appointment with subject."

During the thirty-minute drive to Glendale it rained approximately three-quarters of an inch. Whitecrest Avenue was so new it hadn't been paved yet, and Number 2819 was out almost at the end, with some giant sagebrush just beyond, hanging on the edge of a gully, only I suppose it wasn't sage-brash. There were two saggy palms and another sort of a tree in the front yard. The driver stopped at the edge of the road in front, with the right wheels in four inches of rushing water in the gutter, and announced, "Here we are."

"Yeah," I agreed, "but I'm not a Seabee. If you don't mind turning in?"

He muttered something, backed up for an approach, swung into the ruts of what was intended for a driveway, and came to a stop some twenty paces from the front door of the big pink box with maroon piping. Having already told him he wasn't expected to wait, I paid him, got out, and made a dive for the door, which was protected from the elements by an overhang about the size of a card table. As I pushed the button a three-by-six panel a little below the level of my eyes slid aside, leaving an opening through which a voice came.

"Mr. George Thompson?"

"That's me. Mrs. Potter?"

"Yes. I'm sorry, Mr. Thompson, but I phoned my husband what you said, and he said I shouldn't let a stranger in, you see it's so remote here, so if you'll just tell me what you want - "

Outside the raincoat the pouring rain was slanting in at me, amused at the card-table cover. Inside the raincoat there was almost as much dampness as outside, from sweat. I wouldn't have called the situation desperate, but it did need attention. I inquired, "Can you see me through that hole?"

"Oh, yes. That's what it's for."

"How do I look?"

There was a noise that could have been a giggle. "You look wet."

"I mean do I look depraved?"

"No. No, you really don't."

Actually I was pleased. I had come three thousand miles to pull a fast one on this Mrs. Potter, and if she had received me with open arms I would have had to swallow scruples. Now, being kept standing out in that cloudburst on a husband's orders, I felt no qualms.

"Look," I offered, "here's a suggestion. I'm a literary agent from New York, and this will take us at least twenty minutes and maybe more. Go to the phone and call up some friend, preferably nearby. Tell her to hold the wire, come and unlock the door, and run back to the phone. Tell the friend to hang on. I'll enter and sit across the room from you. If I make a move you'll have your friend right there on the phone. How will that do?"

"Well - we just moved here a month ago and my nearest friend is miles away."

"Okay. Have you got a kitchen stool?"

"A kitchen stool? Certainly."

"Go get it to sit on and we'll talk through the hole."

The noise that could have been a giggle was repeated. Then came the sound of a turned lock, and the door swung open.

"This is silly," she said defiantly. "Come on in."

I crossed the threshold and was in a small foyer. She stood holding the door, looking brave. I took my raincoat off. She closed the door, opened a closet door and got a hanger, draped the dripping coat on it, and hooked it on the corner of the closet door. I hung my hat on the same corner.

"In that way," she said, nodding to the right, and I turned a corner into a big room that was mostly glass on one side, with glass doors, closed, to the outdoors at the far end. At the other end was a phony fireplace with phony logs glowing. The red and white and yellow rugs were matched by the cushions on the wicker furniture, and a table with books and magazines had a glass top.

She invited me to sit, and I did so. She stood far enough off so that I would have had to make three good bounds to grab her, and it is only fair to say that it might have been worth the effort. She was three inches shorter, some years older, and at least ten pounds plumper than my ideal for grabbing, but with her dark twinkling eyes in her round little face she was by no means homely.

"If you're wet," she said, "move over by the fire."

"Thanks, this is all right This ought to be a nice room when the sun's shining."

"Yes, we think we'll like it very much." She sat down on the edge of a chair with her feet drawn back maintaining her distance. "Do you know why I let you in? Your ears. I go by ears. Did you know my brother Len?"

"No, I never met him." I crossed my legs and leaned back, as evidence that I wasn't gathered for a pounce. "I'm much obliged to my ears for getting me in out of the rain. I believe I told you I'm a literary agent, didn't I?"

"Yes."

"The reason I had to see you, I understand you were your brother's only heir. He left everything to you?"

"Yes." She moved back in her chair a little. "That's how we bought this place. It's all paid for, cash, no mortgage."

"That's fine. Or it will be when it stops raining and the sun comes out. The idea is this, Mrs. Potter, since you were the sole legatee under your brother's will everything he had belongs to you. And I'm interested in something that I think he had - no, don't be alarmed, it's nothing that you've already used. Possibly you've never even heard of it. When did you last see your brother?"

"Why, six years ago. I never saw him after nineteen forty-five, when I got married and came to California." She flushed a little. "I didn't go back when he died, to the funeral, because we couldn't afford it. I would have gone if I had known he had left me all that money and bonds, but I didn't know that until afterwards."

"Did you correspond? Did you get letters from him?"

She nodded. "We always wrote once a month, sometimes oftener."

"Did he ever mention that he had written a book, a novel? Or that he was writing one?"

"Why, no." Suddenly she frowned. "Wait a minute, now maybe he did." She hesitated. "You see, Len was always thinking he was going to do something important, but I don't think he ever told anyone but me. After father and mother died I was all he had, and I was younger than him. He didn't want me to get married, and for a while he didn't write, he didn't answer my letters, but then he did, and he wrote long letters, pages and pages. Why, did he write a book?"

"Have you kept his letters?"

"Yes, I - I kept them."

"Have you still got them?"

"Yes. But I think you ought to tell me what you want."

"So do I." I folded my arms and regarded her, her round little honest face. In out of the rain, I was feeling a qualm, and this was the moment when I had to decide whether to trick her or let her in on it - a vital point, which Wolfe had left to my own judgment after meeting her. I looked at her face, with the twinkle gone from her eyes, and decided. If it came out wrong I could kick myself back to New York instead of taking a plane.

"Listen, Mrs. Potter. Will you listen carefully, please?"

"Of course I will."

"Okay. This is what I was going to tell you. It's not what I am telling you, only what I intended to. I'm George Thompson, a literary agent. I have in my possession a copy of a manuscript of a novel entitled 'Put Not Your Trust,' written by Baird Archer. But I have reason to believe that Baird Archer was a pen name used by your brother, that your brother wrote the novel - but I'm not sure about it. I also have reason to believe that I can sell the novel to one of the big movie companies for a good price, around fifty thousand dollars. You are your brother's sole heir. I want, with you, to go through the letters your brother wrote you, looking for evidence that he wrote or was writing the novel. Whether we find such evidence or not, I want to deposit the manuscript in the vault of a local bank for safekeeping, and I want you to write a letter to a certain law firm in New York, the firm your brother worked for. In the letter I want you to say that you have a copy of the manuscript of a novel written by your brother under the name of Baird Archer, giving the title of the novel, that an agent named Thompson thinks he can sell it to the movies for fifty thousand dollars, and that you want their legal advice in the matter because you don't know how such things should be done. I also want you to say that Thompson has read the manuscript but you have not. Get that?"

"But if you can sell it -" She was wide-eyed. It didn't alter my opinion of her. A prospect of fifty thousand unexpected bucks is enough to open eyes, no matter how honest they are. She added, "If it's my property I can just tell you to sell it, can't I?"

"You see," I reproached her, "you didn't listen."

"I did-too! I lis -"

"No. You did not. I warned you that that was only what I intended to tell you. There was some truth in it, but darned little. I do think that your brother wrote a novel of that title under the name of Baird Archer, and I would like to go through his letters to see if he mentioned it, but I have no copy of the manuscript, there is no prospect of selling it to the movies, I am not a literary agent, and my name is not George Thompson. Now, having -"

"Then it was all lies!"

"No. It would have -"

She was out of her chair. "Who are you? What's your name?"

"Have my ears changed any?" I demanded.

"What do you want?"

"I want you to listen. It wasn't a lie if I didn't say it, even if I intended to. Now here's what I do say, and it's the truth. You might as well sit down, because this is even longer."

She sat, but on about a third of the chair seat.

"My name," I said, "is Archie Goodwin. I'm a private detective, and I work for Nero Wolfe, also a private detec -"

"Nero Wolfe!"

"Right. It will please him to know that you had heard of him, and I'll be sure to tell him. He has been hired by a man named Wellman to find out who murdered his daughter. And another girl has been murdered, one named Rachel Abrams. Also, before that, your brother was murdered. We have reason to believe that the same person committed all three murders. It's a long and complicated reason, and I'll skip it. If you want the details later you can have them. I'll just say that our theory is that your brother was killed because he wrote that novel, Joan Wellman was killed because she had read it, and Rachel Abrams was killed because she had typed it."

"The novel - Len wrote?"

"Yes. Don't ask me what was in it, because we don't know. If we did, I wouldn't have had to come out here to see you. I came to get you to help us catch a man that murdered three people, and one of them was your brother."

"But I can't -" She gulped. "How can I help?"

"I'm telling you. I could have tricked you into helping. I've just proved it. You would have come along for a chance at fifty thousand dollars, you know darned well you would. You'd have let me go through your brother's letters for evidence, and whether we found it or not you'd have written the letter to the law firm. That's all I'm asking you to do, only now I'm giving it to you straight and asking you to do it not for a pile of dough but to help catch the man that killed your brother. If you would have done it for money, and you would, don't you think you ought to do it to bring a murderer to justice?"

She was frowning, concentrating. "But I don't see - You only want me to write a letter?"

"That's right. It's like this. We think your brother wrote that novel, and it was a vital element in the murders. We think that someone in that law office is involved and either committed the murders or knows who did. We think that someone is desperately determined that the contents of that manuscript shall not be known to any living person. If we're right, and you send the kind of letter I described, he'll have to move and move quick, and that's all we need, to start him moving. If we're wrong, your sending the letter will do nobody any harm."

She was keeping the frown. "What did you say you wanted me to say in the letter?"

I repeated it, with fuller detail. Toward the end she began slowly shaking her head. When I stopped she spoke.

"But that would be a lie - saying you have a copy of the manuscript when you haven't. I couldn't tell them a deliberate lie!"

"Maybe not," I said regretfully. "If you're the kind of person who has never told a lie in all your life, I can't expect you to tell one just to help find the man who killed your brother -and who also killed two young women, ran a car over one of them and pushed the other one out of a window. Even if it couldn't possibly hurt any innocent person, I wouldn't want to urge you to tell your very first lie."

"You don't have to be sarcastic." Her face had turned a mild pink. "I didn't say I never told a lie. I'm no angel. You're perfectly right, I would have done it for the money, only then I wouldn't have known it was a lie." Suddenly her eyes twinkled. "Why don't we start over and do it the other way?"

I would have liked to give her a good hug. "Listen," I suggested, "let's take things in order. We've got to go through his letters first anyhow, there's no objection to that, then we can decide on the next step. You get the letters, huh?"

"I guess so." She arose. "They're in a box in the garage."

"Can I help?"

She said no, thanks, and left me. I got up and crossed to a window to look out at the California climate, I would have thought it was beautiful if I had been a seal. It would be beautiful anyway if one of Dykes's letters had what I was after. I wasn't asking for anything elaborate like an outline of the plot; just one little sentence would do.

When she came back, sooner than I expected, she had two bundles of white envelopes in her hands, tied with string. She put them down on the glass-topped table, sat, and pulled the end of a bowknot

I approached. "Start about a year ago. Say March of last year." I pulled a chair up. "Here, give me some."

She shook her head. "I'll do it."

"You might miss it. It might be just a vague reference."

"I won't miss it. I couldn't let you read my brother's letters, Mr. Thompson."

"Goodwin. Archie Goodwin."

"Excuse me. Mr. Goodwin." She was looking at postmarks.

Evidently she meant it, and I decided to table my motion, at least temporarily. Meanwhile I could do a job. I got out my notebook and pen and started writing at the top of a sheet:

Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin - Briggs 522 Madison Avenue New York, N. Y.

Gentlemen:

I am writing to ask your advice because my brother worked for you for many years up to the time of his death. His name was Leonard Dykes. I am his sister and in his will he left everything to me, but I suppose you know that.

A man named Walter Finch has just been to see me. He says he is a literary agent. He says that last year my brother wrote a novel.

I stopped to consider. Mrs. Potter was reading a letter, with her teeth clamped on her lower lip. Well, I thought, I can put it in, and it will be easy enough to take it out if we have to. I resumed with my pen:

I already knew that because my brother mentioned it once in a letter, but that was all I knew about it. Mr. Finch says he has a copy of the manuscript and its title is "Put Not Your Trust," and my brother put the name of Baird Archer on it as the author, but my brother really wrote it. He says he thinks that he can sell it to the movies for $50,000.00, and he says since my brother left everything to me I am the legal owner of it and he wants me to sign a paper that he is my agent and I will pay him 10 per cent of what he gets for it from the movies.

I am writing to you air mail because it is a big sum of money and I know you will give me good advice. I don't know any lawyer here that I know I can trust. I want to know if the 10 per cent is all right and should I sign the paper. Another thing I want to know is that I haven't seen the manuscript except just the envelope he has it in and he won't leave it with me, and it seems to me I ought to see it and read it if I am going to sell it because I ought to know what I am selling.

Please answer by air mail because Mr. Finch says it is urgent and we must act quick. Thanking you very much.

Sincerely yours,

It didn't come out that way all at once. I did a lot of crossing out and changing, and the preceding was the final result, of which I made a clear copy. I read it over and passed it. There was the one sentence that might have to come out, but I hoped to God it wouldn't.

My accomplice was reading steadily, and I had kept an eye on her progress. There were four envelopes in a little stack at her right, finished, and if she had started with March and he had written one a month, she was up to July. My fingers itched to reach for the next one. I sat and controlled them until she finished another one and began folding it for return to the envelope, and then got up to take a walk. She was reading so damn slow. I crossed to the glass doors at the far end of the room and looked out. In the rain a newly planted tree about twice my height was slanting to one side, and I decided to worry about that but couldn't get my mind on it. I got stubborn and determined that I damn well was going to worry about that tree, and was fighting it out when suddenly her voice came.

"I knew there was something! Here it is. Listen!"

I wheeled and strode. She read it out.

"Here is something just for you, Peggy dear. So many things have been just for you all my life. I wasn't going to tell even you about this, but now it's finished and I have to. I have written a novel! Its title is "Put Not Your Trust." For a certain reason it can't be published under my name and I have to use a nom de plume, but that won't matter much if you know, so I'm telling you. I have every confidence that it will be published, since I am by no means a duffer when it comes to using the English language. But this is strictly for you alone. You mustn't even tell your husband about it."

Mrs. Potter looked up at me, at her elbow. "There! I had forgotten that he mentioned the title, but I knew - no! What are you -"

She made a quick grab, but not quick enough. I had finally pounced. With my left hand I had snatched the letter from her fingers, and with my right the envelope from the table, and then backed off out of reach.

"Take it easy," I told her. "I'd go through fire for you and I've already gone through water, but this letter goes home with me. It's the only evidence on earth that your brother wrote that novel. I'd rather have this letter than one from Elizabeth Taylor begging me to let her hold my hand. If there's anything in it that you don't want read in a courtroom that part won't be read, but I need it all, including the envelope. If I had to I would knock you down and walk on you to get out of here with it. You'd better take another look at my ears."

She was indignant. "You didn't have to grab it like that."

"Okay, I was impulsive and I apologize. I'll give it back, and you can hand it to me, with the understanding that if you refuse I'll take it by force."

Her eyes twinkled, and she knew it, and flushed a little. She extended a hand. I folded the letter, put it in the envelope, and handed it to her. She looked at it, glanced at me, held it out, and I took it.

"I'm doing this," she said gravely, "because I think my brother would want me to. Poor Len. You think he was killed because he wrote that novel?"

"Yes. Now I know it. It's up to you whether we get the guy that killed him." I got out my notebook, tore out a sheet, and handed it to her. "All you have to do is write that letter on your own paper. Maybe not quite all. I'll tell you the rest."

She started to read it. I sat down. She looked beautiful. The phony logs in the phony fireplace looked beautiful. Even the pouring rain - but no, I won't overdo it.