Murder By The Book

8

THAT was the first time in history that a bunch of outsiders had been let into the plant rooms with Wolfe not there. The awful responsibility damn near got Theodore down. Not only did he regard it as up to him to see that none of them toppled a bench over or snitched a blossom from one of the rare hybrids, but also I had arranged a fancy assortment of liquids on a table in the potting room, which was being freely patronized by some of the guests, and he was afraid one of them would spill a glass of 80-proof into a pot that he had been nursing for ten years. I was sorry to give him that added anxiety, but I wanted them relaxed.

I had done all right. I had got only seven phone calls, but apparently there had been talk at the office during Wednesday, for ten of them showed up, arriving in two groups. Also there had been two calls on Wednesday while I was out. My journey was necessary, a trip to the Bronx to call on Mrs. Abrams. She was anything but delighted to see me, but I wanted to ask her to do something and I rode it out. I finally talked her into it. I also had to sign up John R. Wellman, but that was comparatively easy and all it took was a phone call to his hotel.

From a purely personal standpoint they were above average as a job lot, and it would have been no ordeal to get acquainted and quench their thirst and tell them about orchids if I hadn't been so busy sorting them out for future reference. I might as well save you the bother of doing likewise if you don't want to take the trouble, for it won't make much difference. I can tell you that now, but there was no one to tell me that then.

But I was working like a dog getting their names and stations filed. By dinnertime I had them pretty well arranged. Charlotte Adams, 48, was the secretary of the senior partner, James A. Corrigan. She was bony and efficient and had not come for fun. The only other one her age was a stenographer, plump and pimply, with a name that made her giggle cheerfully when she told you: Helen Troy. Next, going down by ages, was Blanche Duke, the tri-shaded blonde. I had mixed a shaker of her formula. She had made two trips to the potting room for refills and then had decided to save steps and take the shaker around with her.

One or two of the other seven may have been crowding thirty, but most of them still had some twenties to cover. One was a little more than I had counted on. Her name was Dolly Harriton, and she was a member of the bar. She wasn't yet one of the firm, but judging from the set of her good-looking chin and the smooth quick take of her smart gray eyes, she soon would be or else. She had the air, as she moved along the aisles, of collecting points for cross-questioning an orchid-grower being sued by his wife for non-support.

Nina Perlman, a stenographer, was tall and straight with big slow-moving dark eyes. Mabel Moore, a typist, was a skinny little specimen wearing red-rimmed glasses. Sue Don-dero, Emmett Phelps's secretary, with fine temples and no perceptible lipstick, came close from all angles to my idea of a girl to have around. Portia Liss, a filing clerk, should either have had something done to her teeth or quit laughing so much. Claire Burkhardt, a stenographer, was either just out of high school or was cheating. Eleanor Gruber, Louis Kustin's secretary, was probably the one I would have invited if I had invited only one. She was the kind you look at and think she should take off just one or two pounds, and then you ask where from and end by voting for the status-quo. He eyes didn't actually slant; it was the way the lids were drawn.

By the time we went down to dinner I had picked up a few little scraps, mostly from Blanche Duke, Sue Dondero, and Eleanor Gruber. Tuesday at quitting time Corrigan, the senior partner, had called them into his room to tell them that PE 3-1212 was Nero Wolfe's phone number, and Archie Goodwin was Wolfe's confidential assistant, and that Wolfe might have been engaged by an opposing interest in one of the firm's cases. He had suggested that it might be desirable to ignore the notes in the boxes of orchids, and had warned them to guard against any indiscretion. Today, Wednesday, when the idea of making a party of it had caught on (this from Blanche Duke after she had been toting the shaker around a while), Mabel Moore had spilled it to Mrs. Adams, and Mrs. Adams, presumably after consulting with Corrigan, had decided to come along. I got other scattered hints of personalities and quirks and frictions, but not enough to pay for the drinks.

At 7:25 I herded them into the potting room to tell them that wine had been chilled for dinner, but that if any of them preferred to continue as started they were welcome. Blanche Duke raised her shaker on high and said she was a one-drink woman. There was a chorus of approval, and they all loaded themselves with bottles and accessories. I led the way. Going through the intermediate room, Helen Troy caught her heel between the slats of the walk, teetered, waved a bottle, and down came two pots of Oncidium varicosum. There were gasps and shrieks.

I said grandly, "Good for her. She showed great presence of mind, she held onto the bottle. Follow me, walking on orchids."

When I had got them downstairs and into the dining room, which looked festive enough for anybody, with the gleaming white cloth and silver and glass and more orchids, and told them to leave the head of the table for me but otherwise sit as they chose, I excused myself, went to the kitchen, and asked Fritz, "Are they here?"

He nodded. "Up in the south room. Quite agreeable and comfortable."

"Good. They know they may have to wait a long while?"

"Yes, it's understood. How are you succeeding?"

"Not bad. Two of them don't drink, but on the whole we are on our way to gaiety. All set?"

"Certainly."

"Shoot."

Rejoining the party, I took the chair at the head, Wolfe's place, the first time I had ever sat there. Most of them lifted their glasses to welcome me back after a long absence. I was touched and thought an acknowledgment was called for. As Fritz entered with the soup tureen, I pushed my chair back and stood. Portia Liss kept on chattering, and Dolly Harriton, the member of the bar, shushed her.

"Oyez, oyez!" Helen Troy cried.

I spoke. "Ladies and no gentlemen thank God, I have a lot of speeches to make, and I might as well get one done. Thank you for coming to my party. There is only one thing I would rather look at than orchids, and you are it. [Applause.] In the absence of Mr. Wolfe I shall follow his custom and introduce to you the most important member of this household, Mr. Fritz Brenner, now dishing soup. Fritz, a bow, please. [Applause.] I am going to ask you to help me with a little problem. Yesterday I received a phone call from a lady, doubtless fair, who refused to tell me her name. I beg you to supply it. I shall repeat some, by no means all, of what she said to me, hoping it will give you a hint. I am not a good mimic but shall do my best.

"She said: 'Mr. Goodwin, I simply had to call you! Of course it isn't proper, since I've never met you, but if I don't tell you my name and never see you I don't think it will be such a terrible misstep, do you? Those are the loveliest orchids I have ever seen! I'm going to wear them to a little party this evening, and can you imagine what they'll say? And can you imagine what I'll say when they ask who gave them to me? I simply can't imagine! Of course I can say they're from an unknown admirer, but really -' "

There was no use going on because the shrieks and hoots were drowning me out. Even Mrs. Adams loosened up enough to smile. Claire Burkhardt, the high school girl, choked on a bite of roll. I sat down and started on my soup, flushed with triumph. When it was a little quieter I demanded, "Her name?"

So many shouted it together that I had to get it from Sue Dondero, on my right. It was Cora Barth. I did not file it.

With Fritz having eleven places to serve, I had told him to leave the liquids to me. An advantage of that arrangement was that I knew what each one was drinking and could keep the refills coming without asking any questions, and another was that Sue Dondero offered to help me. Not only was it nice to have her help, but also it gave me a chance to make a suggestion to her, while we were together at the side table, which I had wanted to make to someone upstairs but hadn't got around to. She said yes, and it was agreed that for a signal I would pull at my right ear.

"I am pleased to see," I told her, "that you are sticking to vermouth and soda. A girl with temples like yours has an obligation to society. Keep 'em smooth."

"Not to society," she dissented. "To spelling. Whisky or gin gives me a hangover, and if I have a hangover I can't spell. Once I spelled lien l-e-a-n."

"Good God. No, that's for Nina Perlman."

Having done all right with the soup, they did even better with the Mondor patties. As for talk and associated noises, they kept it going without much help from me, except for filling in a few gaps. But I was glad Wolfe wasn't there to see how they treated the duckling, all but Eleanor Gruber and Helen Troy. The trouble was, they were full. I watched them pecking at it, or not even pecking, with two exceptions, and decided that something drastic was called for if I didn't want a letdown. I raised my voice to get attention.

"Ladies, I need advice. This is -"

"Speech, speech!" Claire Burkhardt squeaked.

"He's making one, you idiot!" somebody told her.

"Oyez, oyeth," said Helen Troy.

"This," I said, "is a democracy. No one can shove anything down people's throats, not even Fritz's salad. As your host and by no means unknown admirer, I want you to have a good time and go away from here saying, 'Archie Goodwin can be trusted. He had us at his mercy, but he gave us a chance to say yes or no.' "

"Yes!" Blanche Duke called.

"Thank you." I inclined my head. "I was about to ask, how many feel like eating salad? If you want it, Fritz will enjoy serving it. But what if you don't? Yes or no?"

There were six or seven noes.

"Do you still say yes, Miss Duke?"

"My God, no. I didn't know you meant salad."

"Then we'll skip it. However, I won't ask for a vote on the almond parfait. You should taste it, at least." I turned to Fritz, at my elbow. "That's how it is, Fritz."

"Yes, sir," He started removing plates still loaded with his duckling, one of his best dishes. I wasted no sympathy on him because I had warned him. I have had much more opportunity than he has to learn the eating habits of American females. At an affair of the Society of Gourmets that duckling would have drawn cheers.

Their reaction to the almond parfait made up for it some. In their relaxed condition they were more or less ignoring the code, and a couple of them took spoonfuls while Fritz was still serving. Portia Liss exclaimed, "Oh! It's absolutely heavenly! Isn't it, Mrs. Adams?"

"I can't say, Portia. I haven't any."

But a few minutes later she conceded grudgingly, "It's remarkable. Quite remarkable."

Others had extravagant comments. Helen Troy finished first. She arose and shoved her chair back and put her palms on the table to lean on. Her pimples were purple now instead of pink.

"Oyeth, oyeth," she said.

"Who's making a speech?" someone demanded.

"I am. This is my maiden effort."

Someone tittered.

"My maiden effort," she insisted, "at my age. I've been thinking what we can do for Mr. Goodwin and I'm standing up to put it in the form of a motion. I move that one of us goes and puts her arms around Mr. Goodwin's neck and kisses him and calls him Archie."

"Which one?" Mabel Moore demanded.

"We'll vote on it. I nominate me. I'm already up."

There were cries of dissent. Claire Burkhardt, at Helen Troy's left, got her elbow and pulled her back onto her chair. Nominations were made. Someone suggested they should draw lots. Half an hour earlier I would have let it slide, on the chance that Sue or Eleanor would get eleeted, which would have been a pleasant experience, but at this stage I didn't want to risk having a tone set that it might be hard to jostle them out of. So I spoke up.

"Don't you think you ought to consult me?"

"Don't butt in," Blanche Duke said rudely.

"I'm sorry, but I have to. This is dangerous. If a certain one of you came close to me right now and put her arms around me and kissed me, I might be able to remember I'm your host and I might not. Whereas -"

"Which one?" voices demanded.

I ignored them. "Whereas if any other one did it, I couldn't keep from showing my disappointment. You can't expect me to tell you her name. We'll forget it. Anyhow, nobody seconded the motion, so it would be illegal."

I pulled at my right ear. "Another thing, the motion was put wrong. Doing it that way, who would it please most? Not me. You. I would much rather kiss than be kissed. But don't misunderstand me, you're my guests, and I would be happy to do something to please you. I'd love to please you. If you have a suggestion?"

Sue Dondero came through fine. "I have two."

"Good. One at a time."

"First, let all of us call you Archie."

"Easy. If I may call you Charlotte and Blanche and Dolly and Mabel and Portia and Eleanor and Claire and Nina and Helen and Sue."

"Of course. Second, you're a detective. Tell us something about being a detective - something exciting."

"Well." I hesitated and looked around, left and right. "Maybe I should treat it like the salad. Yes or no?"

I wasn't sure all of them said yes, but plenty of them did. Fritz had the coffee cups in place and was pouring. I edged my chair back a little, crossed my legs, and worked my lips, considering.

"I'll tell you," I said finally, "what I think I'll do. I could tell you about some old case that was finished long ago, but it might be more interesting if I pick one that we're working on right now. I can skip the parts that we're keeping to ourselves, if any. Do you like that idea?"

They said they did. Except Mrs. Adams, whose lips had suddenly become a thin line, and Dolly Harriton, whose smart gray eyes might have been a little disconcerting if she had been closer.

I made it casual. "I'll have to hit only the high spots or it will take all night. It's a murder case. Three people have been murdered: a man named Leonard Dykes, who worked in the office where you are, a girl named Joan Wellman, an editor in a publishing firm, and a girl named Rachel Abrams, a public stenographer and typist."

There were murmurings, and looks were exchanged. Nina Perlman said emphatically, in a soft satin voice that five or six Manhattans had had no effect on, "I didn't do it."

"Three murders by one person?" Eleanor Gruber asked.

"I'll come to that. Our first connection with it, not much of one, a cop came and showed us a list of fifteen men's names which had been written on a piece of paper by Leonard Dykes. They had found it between the pages of a book in Dykes's room. Mr. Wolfe and I weren't much interested and barely glanced at it. Then -"

"Why did the cop show you the list?" Dolly Harriton put in.

"Because they hadn't found any men to fit any of the names, and he thought we might have a suggestion. We didn't. Then, six weeks later, a man named John R. Wellman called and wanted us to investigate the death of his daughter, whose body had been found in Van Cortlandt Park - run over by a car. He thought she had been murdered, not killed by accident. He told us all about it, and showed us a copy of a letter Joan, his daughter, had written home. In it she said she had had a phone call from a man who gave his name as Baird Archer, author of a novel which he had submitted to Joan's firm some months back."

"Oh, my God," Blanche Duke said morosely. "Baird Archer again."

"I don't want to bore you," I declared.

Most of them said I wasn't.

"Okay. Joan had read Archer's novel and rejected it with a letter signed by her. On the phone he offered to pay her twenty dollars an hour to discuss his novel with him and tell him how to improve it, and she made a date to meet him the next day after office hours. So she said in her letter home. It was the evening of the next day that she was killed."

I reached for my coffee cup, drank some, and leaned back. "Now hold on to your hats. It had been six weeks since the cop had shown us that list of names, and we had just glanced at it. But when Mr. Wolfe and I saw Joan's letter home we immediately recognized the name of Baird Archer as one of those on Dykes's list. That proved there was some kind of connection between Leonard Dykes and Joan Wellman, and since they had both died suddenly and violently, and Joan had a date with Archer the day she died, it made it likely that their deaths were connected too, and connected with Archer. When you asked for something exciting about being a detective, if you meant something like tailing a murderer in Central Park and getting shot at, okay, that has its attractions, but it's not half as exciting as our spotting that name. If we hadn't, there would be one cop working on Dykes's death in his spare time, and another one in the Bronx likewise on Joan Wellman, instead of the way it is, which you know something about. That's what I call exciting."

It didn't seem essential to give the precise circumstances of the recognition of Baird Archer's name. If Wolfe had been there he would have told it his way, but he wasn't, and I was. Glancing around to see that coffee refills were being attended to and that cigarettes and matches were at hand for everyone, I resumed.

"Next I'm going to spill something. If it gets printed the cops won't like it, and they sure won't like me, but they don't anyhow. A girl named Rachel Abrams was a public stenographer and typist with a little one-room office on the seventh floor of a building up on Broadway. Day before yesterday she went out the window and smashed to death on the sidewalk. More excitement for me as a detective, which is what I'm supposed to be talking about. It would probably have been called suicide or an accident if I hadn't happened to walk into her office two or three minutes after she had gone out the window. In a drawer of her desk I found a little brown book in which she had kept a record of her receipts and expenses. Under receipts there were two entries showing that last September she had been paid ninety-eight dollars and forty cents by a man named Baird Archer."

"Ah," Dolly Harriton said. There were other reactions.

"I'll be dreaming about Baird Archer," Nina Perlman muttered.

"I am already," I told her. "As you can see, here's a job for a detective if there ever was one. I won't try to tell you how the cops are going at it, of course one or more of them has talked with all of you the past two days, but here's how we see it, and how we'll go on seeing it unless something shows we're wrong. We believe that Dykes's death was somehow connected with the manuscript of that novel. We believe that Joan Wellman was killed because she had read that manuscript. We believe that Rachel Abrams was killed because she had typed that manuscript. So naturally we want Baird Archer, and we want the manuscript. We've got to find one or both, or we're licked. Any suggestions?"

"Good lord," Sue Dondero said.

"Get a copy of the novel," Portia Liss offered.

Someone snickered.

"Look," I said impulsively, "unless you object I'm going to do something. There are a couple of people connected with this case upstairs now, waiting to see Mr. Wolfe. I think it would be interesting if they came down and told you about it." I pressed the floor button with my toe. "Unless you've had enough?"

"Who are they?" Mrs. Adams wanted to know.

"The father of Joan Wellman and the mother of Rachel Abrams."

"It won't be very gay," Dolly Harriton commented.

"No, it won't. Things and people mixed up with detectives are seldom gay."

"I want to see 'em," Helen Troy said loudly. "It's human nature."

Fritz had entered, and I spoke to him. "Where are Mrs. Abrams and Mr. Wellman, Fritz? In the south room?"

"Yes, sir."

"Will you please ask them to be good enough to come down here?"

"Yes, sir."

He went. I inquired about drinks and got three orders.