Murder By The Book

19

SATURDAY morning I never did finish the newspaper accounts of the violent death of James A. Corrigan, the prominent attorney. Phone calls interrupted my breakfast four times. One was from Lon Cohen of the Gazette, wanting an interview with Wolfe about the call he had got from Corrigan, and two were from other journalists, wanting the same. I stalled them. The fourth was from Mrs. Abrams. She had read the morning paper and wanted to know if the Mr. Corrigan who had shot himself was the man who had killed her Rachel, though she didn't put it as direct as that. I stalled her too.

My prolonged breakfast was ruining Fritz's schedule, so when the morning mail came I took my second cup of coffee to the office. I flipped through the envelopes, tossed all but one on my desk, glanced at the clock and saw 8:55. Wolfe invariably started for the plant rooms at nine sharp. I went and ran up the flight of stairs to his room and knocked, entered without waiting for an invitation, and announced, "Here it is. The firm's envelope. Postmarked Grand Central Station yesterday, twelve midnight. It's fat."

"Open it." He was standing, dressed, ready to leave.

I did so and removed the contents. "Typewritten, single-spaced, dated yesterday, headed at the top 'To Nero Wolfe.' Nine pages. Unsigned."

"Read it."

"Aloud?"

"No. It's nine o'clock. You can ring me or come up if necessary."

"Nuts. This is just swagger."

"It is not. A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries." He strode from the room.

My eye went to the opening sentence.

I have decided to write this but not sign it. I think I want to write it mainly for its cathartic value, but my motives are confused. The events of the past year have made me unsure about everything. It may be that deep in me much is left of the deep regard for truth and justice that I acquired in my youth, through both religious and secular teaching, and that accounts for my feeling that I must write this. Whatever the motive

The phone rang downstairs. Wolfe's extension wasn't on, so I had to go down to get it. It was Sergeant Purley Stebbins. Purley would always just as soon talk to me as Wolfe, and maybe rather. He's not dumb by any means, and he has never forgotten the prize boner that Wolfe bluffed him into on the Longren case.

He was brusque but not thorny. He said they wanted to know firsthand about two things, Corrigan's phone call the night before, and my performance in California, especially my contacts with Corrigan. When I told him I would be glad to oblige and come down, he said that wouldn't be necessary because Inspector Cramer wanted to see Wolfe and would drop in at eleven or shortly after. I said that as far as I knew we would let him in, and Purley hung up without saying good-by.

I sat at my desk and read:

Whatever the motive may be, I am going to write it and then decide whether to mail it or destroy it.

Even if I mail it I will not sign it because I do not want to give it legal validity. You will of course show it to the police, but without my signature it will certainly not be released for publication as coming from me. Since the context will clearly identify me by inference, this may seem pointless, but it will serve an desired purposes, whatever my motive may be, without my signature, and those purposes are moral and not legal.

I will try not to dwell at length on my motives. To me they are of more concern than the events themselves, but to you and others it is the events that matter. All you will care about is the factual statement that I wrote the anonymous letter to the court giving information about O'Malley's bribery of a juror, but I want to add that my motive was mixed. I will not deny that moving up to the position of senior partner, with increased power and authority and income, was a factor, but so was my concern for the future of the firm. To have as our senior partner a man who was capable of jury-bribing was not only undesirable but extremely dangerous. You will ask why I didn't merely confront O'Malley with it and demand that he get out. On account of the source and nature of my information, which I won't go into, I did not have conclusive proof, and the relations among the members of the firm would have made the outcome doubtful. Anyway, I did write the informing letter to the court.

Starting a habit, I said to myself, of not signing things. I resumed.

Q'Malley was disbarred. That was of course a blow to the firm, but not a fatal one. I became senior partner, and Kustin and Briggs were admitted to membership. As the months passed we recovered lost ground. In the late summer and fall of last year our income was higher than it had ever been, partly on account of Kustin's remarkable performances as a trial lawyer, but I think my leadership was equally responsible. Then, on Monday, December 4, a date I would never forget if I were going to be alive to remember and forget, I returned to the office in the evening to do some work and had occasion to go to Dykes's desk to get a document. It wasn't where I expected to find it and I went through the drawers. In one of them was a brown fiber portfolio and I looked inside. The document wasn't there. It contained a stack of neatly assembled sheets of paper. The top sheet, typed like a title page, said "Put Not Your Trust, A Modern Novel of a Lawyer's Frailty, by Baird Archer." Through curiosity I looked at the next sheet. It began the text, and the first sentence read "It is not true that all lawyers are cutthroats." I read on a little and then sat in Dykes's chair and read more.

It is still almost incredible to me that Dykes could have been such a fool. Through his connection with our office he knew something of the libel law, and yet he wrote that and offered it for publication. Of course it is true that lawyers themselves will do incredible things when their vanity is involved, as O'Malley did when he bribed a juror, and Dykes probably thought that the use of an assumed name would somehow protect him.

The novel was substantially an account of the activities and relationships of our firm. The names were different and most of the scenes and circumstances were invented, but it was unmistakably our firm. It was so badly written that I suppose it would have bored a casual reader, but it did not bore me. It told of O'Malley's bribery of a juror (I use our names instead of those Dykes used) and of my learning of it and sending an anonymous letter to the court, and of O'Malley's disbarment. He had invented an ending. In the novel O'Malley took to drink and died in the alcoholic ward at Bellevue, and I went to see him on his deathbed, and he pointed at me and screamed, "Put not your trust!" In one way the novel was ludicrous. Its ending assumed that O'Malley knew I had informed on him, but there was no adequate explanation of how he had found out.

I took the manuscript home with me. If I had found it by accident and read it, someone else might, and I couldn't risk it. After I got home I realized that I would be unable to sleep, and I went out again and took a taxi to Sullivan Street, where Dykes lived. I got him out of bed and told him I had found the manuscript and read it. In my agitation I did something incredible too. I took it for granted that he knew I had informed on O'Malley and asked how he had found out. I should have assumed that he had invented that.

But it didn't matter. He really had found out. I had not written the informing letter to the court on my typewriter here at my apartment, on which I am writing this. I had taken the precaution of writing it on a machine at the Travelers Club. There wasn't more than one chance in a billion of any risk in that, but that one had been enough. In connection with our defense of O'Malley on the bribery charge, we had photostats of all the exhibits, including the anonymous letter to the court., Dykes had made himself a fairly good expert on documents, and as a matter, of routine he inspected the photostat of the anonymous letter. He noticed that the "t" was out of line, crowding the letter to its right, and slanted a little, and he remembered that he had observed the same defect in some other document. And he found it. He found it in a typed memorandum to him which I had typed two months previously on that same machine at the Travelers Club. I had forgotten about it, and even if I had remembered it I would probably have considered the risk negligible. But with that hint to start him, Dykes had compared the photostat with the memorandum under a glass and established that the two had been typed on the same machine. Of course that was not conclusive proof that I had typed and sent the letter to the court, but it convinced Dykes.

It bowled him over that I had found and read the manuscript. He swore that he had had no intention or desire to expose me, and when I insisted that he must have told someone, possibly O'Malley himself, he swore that he hadn't, and I believed him. He had the carbon of the manuscript there in his room. The original had been returned to him by a firm of publishers, Scholl - Hanna, to whom he had submitted it, and he had put it temporarily in his desk at the office, with the intention of putting it in the hands of a literary agent. The longhand manuscript, written by him in longhand, from which the typist had worked, was also there in his room. He turned both the carbon copy and the longhand script over to me, and I took them home when I went and destroyed them. I also destroyed the original of the typed script two days later, after I had reread it.

I felt that I was fairly safe from exposure. I had of course done nothing actionable, but if it became known that I had informed on my partner in an anonymous letter the effect on my career and reputation would have been disastrous. It was not so much anything O'Malley himself could or might do as the attitude of others, particularly two of my present partners and certain other associates. Actually I would have been a ruined man. But I felt fairly safe. If Dykes was telling the truth, and I believed he was, all copies of the manuscript had been destroyed. He gave me the most solemn assurances that he would never speak of the matter to anyone, but my chief reliance was in the fact that it was to his own self-interest to keep silent. His own future depended on the future welfare of the firm, and if he spoke the firm would certainly be disrupted.

I saw Dykes several times at his room in the evening, and on one of those occasions I did a foolish and thoughtless thing, though at the time it seemed of no consequence. No, that's wrong-this occasion was not at his room but at the office after hours. I had taken from the file the letter of resignation which he had written months previously, and it was on my desk. I asked him, for no special reason that I remember, if the title "Put Not Your Trust" was from Shakespeare, and he said no, that it was in the 3rd verse of the, 146th Psalm, and I scribbled it in a corner of his letter of resignation, "Ps 146-3."

The phone was ringing, but I finished the paragraph before I answered it. It was Louis Kustin. He didn't sound as if his eyes were looking sleepy. He wanted to speak to Wolfe, and I told him he wouldn't be available until eleven o'clock.

"I suppose he's available to you?" he asked curtly.

"Sure, I live here."

"My associates and I are conferring, and I am speaking on their behalf as well as my own. I'm at my office. Tell Wolfe I want to speak to him as soon as possible. Tell him that the suicide of our senior partner is an irreparable blow to us, and if it can be established that Wolfe willfully and maliciously drove him to it he will be held accountable. Tell him that?"

"It'll ruin the day for him."

"I hope to ruin all his days."

The connection went. I wanted to resume my reading but thought I'd better pass it on and buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone. Wolfe answered. I reported the conversation.

"Pfui," he said shortly and hung up. I went back to Corrigan.

I felt that I was fairly safe, though I was not completely easy. Toward the end of December I was shocked into a realization of my true position. Dykes came into my office, during office hours, and asked for a raise in pay of 50 per cent. He said that he had expected to make a considerable sum from the sale of his novel, and now that he had surrendered that source of income he would have to have a substantial raise. I saw at once what I should have seen clearly before, that I would be at his mercy for years if not for life, and that his demands would be limited only by his desires. I was literally in a panic but concealed it successfully. I told him that I had to consider the problem of justifying so large a raise to my associates, and asked him to come to my apartment the following evening, Saturday, December 30, to discuss the matter.

By the time he arrived for the appointment I had decided that I would have to kill him. It proved to be an absurdly easy thing to do, as he did not suspect my intention and was not on guard. As he sat I went to his rear on some trivial excuse, picked up a heavy paperweight, and hit him on the head. He crumpled without a sound, and I hit him again. During the four hours that I waited for the deserted streets of late night, or early morning, I had to hit him three more times. During those hours I also went for my car and parked it directly in front. When the time came I got him downstairs and into the car

without being observed. I drove uptown to an unused East River pier in the Nineties and rolled the body into the water. I must have been less calm and cool than I thought I was, for I thought he was dead. Two days later, in the newspaper account of the recovery of the body, I learned that he had died of drowning, so when I rolled him in he was only stunned.

It was then two in the morning, and I was not through. I drove downtown to Sullivan Street and let myself into Dykes's apartment with the key I had taken from his pocket. With my bare hands an hour there would have been enough, but with gloves on it took three hours to make a thorough search. I found only three items, but they were well worth it. Two of them were receipts signed by Rachel Abrams for payments for typing made by Baird Archer, and the third was a letter addressed to Baird Archer at General Delivery, Clinton Station, on the letterhead of Scholl - Hanna, signed by Joan Wellman. I said I made a thorough search, but there were many books on the shelves, and there wasn't time to turn through every page of them even if I had thought it necessary. If I had done so I would have found the sheet of paper on which Dykes made that list of names with Baird Archer among them, and you would never have seen it, and I wouldn't be writing you this now.

For a while, a week or so, I had no intention of doing anything about Joan Wellman or Rachel Abrams, but then I began to worry. One of them had typed the script and the other had read it. The trial of O'Malley and the juror and the disbarment proceedings had of course been fully reported in the papers, only a year ago. What if one of those women or both of them had noticed the similarity, or rather the sameness, between the actual happening and Dykes's novel? What if they had mentioned it or an occasion arose for them to mention it in the future? They were less dangerous than Dykes, but they were dangerous, or might be.

That was more and more on my mind, and finally I did something about it. The last day of January, a Wednesday, I phoned Joan Wellman at her office. I told her I was Baird Archer, and offered to pay her for advice about my novel, and made an appointment with her for the next day but one, Friday, at five-thirty. We met in the Ruby Room at the Churchill and had drinks and talked. She was attractive and intelligent, and I was thinking that it would be impossible to do her any serious harm, when she asked me point blank about the remarkable resemblance between the plot of my novel and an occurrence in real life here in New York a year ago. She said she wasn't sure she remembered the name of the disbarred lawyer, she thought it was O'Mara, but probably I remembered it.

I said I didn't. I said I hadn't consciously used any happening in real life when I was plotting the novel, but of course it might have been in my subconscious. She said that as far as she remembered it hadn't come out that O'Mara had been betrayed by one of his partners, and it would be interesting to look into it and see if my subconscious had not only copied what had been published but had also, by insight or intuition, divined what had not been published. That was enough for me, more than enough.

I guided the talk, while we were having dinner, to a point where it was appropriate for me to suggest that we drive to my apartment in the Bronx so I could get the manuscript. She gave me a bad moment when she asked, if I lived in the Bronx, why had I given my address as General Delivery, Clinton Station, but I gave her an answer that satisfied her. She said she would go with me to get the manuscript but let me know that she wouldn't go up to my apartment. I was sorry I had met her in so public a place as the Ruby Room, but neither of us had seen anyone we knew and I resolved to go ahead.

I went alone to get my car and picked her up in front of the Churchill and drove to Washington Heights. There, in a side street, it was as simple as it had been with Dykes. I remarked that the windshield was misted on the inside and reached behind me as if for my handkerchief, got a heavy wrench I had placed there when I went for my car, and hit her with it. She didn't even groan. I tried to prop her up but couldn't, and lifted her over into the back onto the floor. On the way to Van Cortlandt Park I stopped several times to take a look at her. Once she seemed to be stirring, and I had to hit her again.

I drove to a secluded road in the park. There was no one in sight, but it was only ten o'clock and there was a chance that a car might come along at the worst moment, even in February, so I left the park, drove around for two hours, and then returned to the park and the secluded road. The risk was then at a minimum, and anyhow I had to take it. I took her out of the car, put her on the road near the edge, and ran the car over her. Then I drove away fast. When I was miles away I stopped under a light and inspected the car for signs of blood or other evidence, but I had been careful to go slowly when passing over her and I could find nothing.

I put the thing down on my desk, looked at my watch, and saw 9:35. In Peoria, Illinois, it was 8:35, and John R. Wellman, according to the schedule he had given me, would be at his place of business. I reached for the phone and put in a call and soon had him.

"Mr. Wellman? Archie Goodwin. I promised to let you know immediately if anything broke. Corrigan, senior partner in that law firm, was found dead on the floor of his apartment last night with a hole in his head and a gun lying nearby. I would -"

"Did he shoot himself?"

"I don't know. As a purely personal opinion, it looks like it. I would call that a break, but whether good or bad is for Mr. Wolfe to decide, not me. I'm just keeping my promise and telling you. As it stands this minute, that's all I can say. Mr. Wolfe is busy upstairs."

"Thank you, Mr. Goodwin. Thank you very much. I'll go to Chicago and take a plane. I'll call you when I reach New York."

I told him that would be fine, hung up, and returned to my reading.

There was only one other living person who knew the contents of that manuscript, Rachel Abrams, who had typed it. There was only one logical and sensible thing to do.

Until three months ago I had never been conscious of anything in my mind or heart to justify any concept of myself as a potential murderer. I believed that I understood myself at least as well as most people. I was aware that there was an element of casuistry in my self-justification for what I had done to O'Malley, but without that intellectual resource no man could preserve his self-esteem. At any rate, I was an altogether different being from the moment I rolled Dykes's body from the pier into the water. I didn't know it at the time, but I do now. The change was not so much in my conscious mind as in the depths. If the processes of the subconscious can be put into rational terms at all, I think mine were something like this: (a) I have murdered a man in cold blood; (b) I am a decent and humane person, as men go, certainly not vicious or depraved; therefore (c) the conventional attitude toward the act of murder is invalid and immoral.

My inner being could not permit me to feel any moral repulsion at the thought of killing Joan Wellman, certainly not enough to restrain me, for if killing her was morally unacceptable how could I justify the killing of Dykes? By killing Joan Wellman the process was completed. After that, given adequate motive, I could have killed any number of people without any sign of compunction.

So in contemplating the murder of Rachel Abrams my only concerns were whether it was necessary and whether it could be performed without undue risk. I decided it was necessary. As for the risk, I left that to circumstances. With her I could not use the same kind of subterfuge I had used with Joan Wellman, since she had known Dykes as Baird Archer. My plan was so simple that it was really no plan at all. I merely went to her office one rainy afternoon, unannounced. If she had had an associate there with her, or if any one of a dozen other possible obstacles had arisen, I would have gone away and devised a procedure. But she had only one room and was there alone. I told her I wanted a typing job done, approached her to show her what it was, grasped her throat, had her unconscious in half a minute, opened the window, and lifted her and pushed her out. Unfortunately I had no time to search for records; of course I had no time at all. I left, ran down the stairs to the next floor, and took the elevator there, having got off there on my way up. When I left the building her body was on the sidewalk and a crowd was already collecting. Three days later, when my associates and I came to see you, I learned that I had been ahead of your man Goodwin by not more than two minutes. I took that as conclusive evidence that luck was on my side, even though he found entries in her records that connected her with Baird Archer. If he had got to her alive he would have learned the contents of the manuscript.

By that time, the day we called on you, nine days ago, I knew I was in danger but was confident that I could ward it off. You knew of Baird Archer and the manuscript and had connected them with Dykes and therefore with our office, but that was all. Your noticing that scribbled "Ps 146-3" on Dykes's letter of resignation in my handwriting, and correctly interpreting it, increased the danger only slightly if at all, since my plain square hand can be easily imitated by almost anyone and my associates unanimously supported me in convincing the police that you must have made the notation yourself in an effort to trick us.

Wednesday, when the letter from Mrs. Potter arrived, I did not suspect that you had anything to do with it. I thought it was a deadly blow that fate had dealt me at the worst possible moment. It was brought to me, but since it had been addressed not to an individual but to the firm our mail clerk had read it, and therefore I had to show it to my associates. We discussed it and agreed with no dissent that it was essential for us to learn what was in the manuscript, and that one of us must go immediately to California. There was a division of opinion as to who should go, and of course I had to insist that it must be me. Since I was the senior partner my view prevailed and I left by the first available plane.

You know what happened in California. I was in great peril, but I was not desperate until I went to Finch's room in his absence and found Goodwin there. From that moment my position was manifestly hopeless, but I refused to give up. Since, through Goodwin, you had certainly learned the content of the manuscript, my betrayal of O'Malley was sure to be disclosed, but it might yet be possible to avoid a charge of murder. All night, on the plane, with Goodwin seated there only a few feet from me, I considered possible courses and plans.

I had phoned one of my partners from Los Angeles, and they were all at the office when I arrived this morning, going directly from the airport. Their unanimous opinion was that we should call on you and demand to be told the substance of the manuscript. I argued strongly for an alternative course but could not sway them. When we went to your office I was prepared to face the disclosure of my betrayal of O'Malley, supposing that you would tell us about the manuscript, but instead of that you dealt me another blow. You told us nothing, saying that you were not quite ready to act and that you still needed a fact or two. For me that could have only one meaning. You did not intend to expose my betrayal of O'Malley until you were fully prepared to use it as evidence on a charge of murder, and you would not have said that to us unless you expected soon to be prepared. I didn't know which fact or two you still needed, but it didn't matter. Obviously you had me or you would soon get me.

My associates wanted a luncheon conference, but I plead fatigue from my night on the plane and came here to my apartment. Again my subconscious had taken command, for it came to me in a rush of sudden surprise that I had irrevocably determined to kill myself. I did not dispute the decision. I calmly accepted it. The further decision, whether to leave behind me an account of my disaster and what led to it, has not yet been made. I have spent hours writing this. I shall now read it over and decide. If I send it at all it will go to you, since it is you who have destroyed me. Again here at the end, as at the beginning, what interests me most is my motive. What is it in me that wants to send this to you, or to anyone? But if I start on that I will never end. If I do send it I will not attempt to tell you what to do with it, since in any case you will do as you see fit. That is what I am doing; I am doing as I see fit.

That was all. I jiggled the sheets together, refolded them, slipped them into the envelope, and went and mounted the three flights to the plant rooms. Wolfe, wearing one of his new yellow smocks, was in the potting room inspecting the roots of some Dendrobiums he had knocked out of the pots. I handed him the envelope and told him, "You'll have to read this."

"When I come down."

"Cramer is coming at eleven. If you read it with him sitting there he'll get impatient. If you talk with him without reading it I would prefer not to be present."

"What does it say?"

"A full confession. Betrayal of his partner, O'Malley, three murders - the works."

"Very well. I'll wash my hands."

He went to the sink and turned the faucet on.