Murder By The Book

9

BLANCHE DUKE darned near ruined it. When Wellman and Mrs. Abrams were ushered in by Fritz, ten pairs of eyes were focused on them, though in two or three cases the focusing required a little effort. I arose, performed the introductions, and brought them to the two chairs I had placed, one on either side of me. Mrs. Abrams, in a black silk dress or maybe rayon, was tight-lipped and scared but dignified. Wellman, in the same gray suit or its twin, was trying to take in all their faces without seeming to. He sat straight, not touching the back of the chair. I had my mouth open to speak when Blanche beat me to it.

"You folks need a drink. What'll you have?"

"No, thanks," Wellman said politely. Mrs. Abrams shook her head.

"Now listen," Blanche insisted, "you're in trouble. I've been in trouble all my life, and I know. Have a drink. Two jiggers of dry gin, one jigger of dry vermouth -"

"Be quiet, Blanche," Mrs. Adams snapped.

"Go to hell," Blanche snapped back. "This is social. You can't get Corrigan to fire me, either, you old papoose."

I would have liked to toss her out a window. I cut in. "Did I mix that right, Blanche, or didn't I?"

"Sure you did."

"Call me Archie."

"Sure you did, Archie."

"Okay, and I'm doing this right too. I do everything right. Would I let Mrs. Abrams and Mr. Wellman go without drinks if they wanted them?"

"Certainly not."

"Then that settles it." I turned to my right, having promised Mrs. Abrams that Wellman would be called on first. "Mr. Wellman, I've been telling these ladies about the case that Mr. Wolfe and I are working on, and they're interested, partly because they work in the office where Leonard Dykes worked. I told them you and Mrs. Abrams were upstairs waiting to see Mr. Wolfe, and I thought you might be willing to tell them something about your daughter Joan. I hope you don't mind?"

"I don't mind."

"How old was Joan?"

"She was twenty-six. Her birthday was November nineteenth."

"Was she your only child?"

"Yes, the only one."

"Was she a good daughter?"

"She was the best daughter a man ever had."

There was an astonishing interruption - at least, astonishing to me. It was Mrs. Abrams' voice, not loud but clear. "She was no better than my Rachel."

Wellman smiled. I hadn't seen him smile before. "Mrs. Abrams and I have had quite a talk. We've been comparing notes. It's all right, we won't fight about it. Her Rachel was a good daughter too."

"NO, there's nothing to fight about. What was Joan going to do, get married or go on with her career, or what?"

He was still a moment. "Well, I don't know about that. I told you she graduated from Smith College with honors."

"Yes."

"There was a young fellow from Dartmouth we thought maybe she was going to hitch up with, but she was too young and had sense enough to know it. Here in New York - she was here working for those publishers nearly four years - she wrote us back in Peoria about different -"

"Where's Peoria?" Blanche Duke demanded.

He frowned at her. "Peoria? That's a city out in Illinois. She wrote us about different fellows she met, but it didn't sound to us like she was ready to tie up. We got to thinking it was about time, anyway her mother did, but she thought she had a big future with those publishers. She was getting eighty dollars a week, pretty good for a girl of twenty-six, and Scholl told me just last August when I was here on a trip that they expected a great deal of her. I was thinking of that yesterday afternoon. I was thinking that we expected a great deal of her too, her mother and me, but that we had already had a great deal."

He ducked his head forward to glance at Mrs. Abrams and came back to me. "Mrs. Abrams and I were talking about that upstairs. We feel the same way about it, only with her it's only been two days, and she hasn't had so long to think it over. I was telling her that if you gave me a pad of paper and a pencil and asked me to put down all the different things I can remember about Joan, I'll bet there would be ten thousand different things, more than that - things she did and things she said, times she was like this and times she was like that. You haven't got a daughter."

"No. You have much to remember."

"Yes, I have. What got me to thinking like that, I was wondering if I deserved what happened because I was too proud of her. But I wasn't. I thought about it this way, I thought there had been lots of times she did something wrong, like when she was little and told lies, and even after she grew up she did things I didn't approve of, but I asked myself, can I point to a single thing she ever did and honestly say I wish she hadn't done that? And I couldn't."

His eyes left me and went to my guests. He took his time, apparently looking for something in each face.

"I couldn't do it," he said firmly.

"So she was perfect," Claire Burkhardt remarked. It wasn't really a sneer, but it enraged Blanche Duke. She blazed at Claire.

"Will you kindly get lost, you night-school wonder? The man's in trouble! His daughter's dead! Did you graduate from college with honors?"

"I never went to night school," Claire said indignantly. "I went to Oliphant Business Academy!"

"I didn't say she was perfect," Wellman protested. "She did- quite a few things I didn't think were right when she did them. All I was trying to tell you ladies, she's dead now and it's different. I wouldn't change a thing about her if I could, not one single thing. Look at you here now, all this drinking - if your fathers were here or if they knew about it, would they like it? But if you got killed tonight and they had to take you home and have you buried, after they had had time to think it over, do you suppose they'd hold it against you that you'd been drinking? Certainly not! They'd remember how wonderful you'd been, that's all, they'd remember all the things you had done to be proud of!"

He ducked his head. "Wouldn't they, Mrs. Abrams? Isn't that how you feel about your Rachel?"

Mrs. Abrams lifted her chin. She spoke not to Wellman but to the gathering. "How I feel about my Rachel." She shook her head. "It's been only two days, I will be honest with you ladies. While Mr. Wellman was talking I was sitting here thinking. My Rachel never took a drink. If I had ever seen her take a drink I would have called her a bad daughter in strong words. I would have been so angry it would have been terrible. But if it could be that she was here now, sitting at that table with you, and she was drinking more than any of you, so that she was so drunk she would look at me and not know me, I would say to her, 'Drink, Rachel! Drink, drink, drink!' "

She made a little gesture. "I want to be honest, but maybe I'm not saying it right. Maybe you don't know what I mean."

"We know what you mean," Eleanor Gruber muttered.

"I mean only I want my Rachel. I'm not like Mr. Wellman. I have two more daughters. My Deborah is sixteen and she is smart in high school. My Nancy is twenty and she goes to college, like Mr. Wellman's Joan. They are both smarter than Rachel and they are more fashionable. Rachel did not make eighty dollars every week like Joan, with office rent to pay and other things, but she did good all the time and once she made one hundred and twelve dollars in one week, only she worked nights too. But you ladies must not think I put her nose down on it. Some of our friends thought that, but they were wrong. She was glad in her heart that Nancy and Deborah are smart, and she made Nancy go to college. If she got some dollars ahead I would say, 'Buy yourself a pretty dress or take a little trip,' and she would laugh and say, 'I'm a working girl, Mamma.' She called me Mamma, but Nancy and Deborah called me Mom, and that's the whole difference right there."

She gestured again. "You know she is only dead two days?" It sounded rhetorical, but she insisted, "You know that?"

There were murmurings. "Yes, we know."

"So I don't know how it will be when it is longer, like Mr. Wellman. He has thought about it a long time and he is spending money for Mr. Wolfe to find the man that killed his Joan. If I had money like him maybe I would spend it that way too, but I don't know. All I think about now is my Rachel. I try to see why it happened. She was a working girl. She did her work good and got paid for it the regular rates. She never hurt anybody. She never made any trouble. Now Mr. Goodwin tells me a man asked her to do work for him, and she did it good, and he paid her the regular rates, and then after some time goes by he comes back and kills her. I try to see why that happened, and I can't. I don't care how much explaining I get, I don't think I can ever see why any man had to kill my Rachel, because I know so well about her. I know there's not a man or woman anywhere that could stand up and say, 'Rachel Abrams did a bad thing to me.' You ladies know how hard that is, to be the kind of woman so that nobody can say that. I'm not that kind of woman."

She paused. She tightened her lips, and then released them to say, "I did a bad thing to my Rachel once." Her chin started to quiver. "Excuse me, please." She faltered, arose, and made for the door;

John R. Wellman forgot his manners. Without a word, he popped up, circled behind my chair, and followed Mrs. Abrams. His voice came from the hall, and then silence.

The guests were silent too. "There's more coffee," I told them. "Anybody want some?"

No takers. I spoke. "One thing Mrs. Abrams said wasn't strictly accurate. She said I told her that the man who paid Rachel for typing the script came back and killed her. What I told her was that Rachel was killed because she had typed the script, but not that it was the man who had paid her for typing it."

Three of them were dabbing at their eyes with their handkerchiefs. Two others should have been.

"You don't know that," Dolly Harriton challenged.

"To prove it, no. But we like it."

"You're crazyV' Helen Troy asserted.

"Yeah? Why?"

"You said the death of Leonard Dykes was connected with these two. Did you mean the same man killed all of them?"

"I didn't say so, but I would for a nickel. That's what I think."

"Then you're crazy. Why should Con O'Malley kill those girls? He didn't -"

"Be quiet, Helen," Mrs. Adams said sharply.

She ignored it. "He didn't kill -"

"Helen, be quiet! You're drunk."

"I am not drunk! I was, but I'm not now. How could anybody be drunk after listening to those two?" To me: "Con O'Malley didn't kill Leonard Dykes on account of any manuscript. He killed him because it was Dykes that got him disbarred. Everybody -"

She was drowned out. Half of them spoke and the other half shouted. It may have been partly to relieve the feelings that had been piled up by Wellman and Mrs. Abrams, but there was more to it than that. Both Mrs. Adams and Dolly Harriton tried to shut them up, but nothing doing. Looking and listening, I caught enough scraps to gather that a longstanding feud had blazed into battle. As near as I could make out, Helen Troy, Nina Perlman, and Blanche Duke were arrayed against Portia Liss, Eleanor Gmber - and Mabel Moore, with Sue Dondero interested but not committed, and Claire Burkhardt, the night-school wonder, not qualified for combat. Mrs. Adams and Dolly Harriton were outside.

In one of those moments of comparative calm that even the hottest fracas will have, Blanche Duke tossed a grenade at Eleanor Gruber. "What were you wearing when O'Malley told you? Pajamas?"

That shocked them into silence, and Mrs. Adams took advantage of it. "This is disgraceful," she declared. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Blanche, apologize to Eleanor."

"For what?" Blanche demanded.

"She won't," Eleanor said. She turned a white face to me. "We should all apologize to you, Mr. Goodwin."

"I don't think so," Dolly Harriton said dryly. "Since Mr. Goodwin staged this, I must admit cleverly and effectively, I hardly believe he has an apology coming. Congratulations, Mr. Goodwin."

"I must decline them, Miss Harriton. I haven't congratulations coming either."

"I don't care," Eleanor insisted to me, "what you have coming. I'm going to say this. After what Blanche said to me. And what you must have heard before. Do you know who Conroy O'Malley is?"

"Sure. I've been allowed to have a look at the police file on Leonard Dykes. A former member of the firm who got disbarred about a year ago."

She nodded. "He was the senior member. The name of the firm was O'Malley, Corrigan and Phelps. I was his secretary. Now I am Louis Kustin's secretary. Must I say that what Blanche said, her insinuation about my relations with Mr. O'Malley, that that was pure malice?"

"There's no must about it, Miss Gruber. Say it if you want to, or just skip it."

"I do say it. It's too bad, because really I like Blanche, and she likes me. This was starting to die down, and then the police came back and stirred it up again, and now you say it was something you told them about these two girls being killed that made them come back. I'm not blaming you, but I wish you hadn't, because - well, you saw what happened here just now. Could you hear what we said?"

"Some."

"Anyway, you heard Helen say that Conroy O'Malley killed Dykes because Dykes got him disbarred. That isn't true. O'Malley was disbarred for bribing a foreman of a jury in a civil suit. I don't know who it was that informed the court, that never came out, but it was certainly someone connected with the other side. Of course it made a lot of talk in the office, all kinds of wild talk - that Louis Kustin had done the informing because O'Malley didn't like him and wouldn't make him a member of the firm, and that -"

"Is this wise, Eleanor?" Dolly Harriton asked coldly.

"I think so," Eleanor said, not fazed. "He ought to understand." She went on to me. "- and that others had done it, Mr. Corrigan and Mr. Briggs among them, for similar reasons, and that Leonard Dykes had done it because O'Malley was going to fire him. I wouldn't even be surprised if there was talk that I had done it, I suppose because he wouldn't buy me some new pajamas. As the months went by there wasn't so much of it, and then Leonard Dykes got killed and it started up again. I don't know who began it that O'Malley had killed Dykes because he found out that Dykes had been the informer to the court, but someone did, and it was worse than ever. Just a lot of wild talk. No one really knew anything. You heard Blanche ask me if I was wearing pajamas when O'Malley told me something."

She seemed to think she had asked a question, so I grunted an affirmative.

"Well, what he told me, just a few weeks ago, was that he had heard that it was the jury foreman's wife who had written the anonymous letter to the judge telling about the bribing. It isn't likely that I was wearing pajamas, because I don't wear them in the office, and it was in the office that he told me - of course he's no longer connected with the firm, but he comes there once in a while. The talk that O'Malley killed Dykes is simply ridiculous."

"Why don't you say what you think?" Helen Troy demanded. "You think Uncle Fred killed Dykes. Why don't you say so?"

"I've never said I think that, Helen."

"But you do."

"I do," Blanche Duke stated, still ready to tangle.

"Who is Uncle Fred?" I asked.

Helen answered. "He's my uncle, Frederick Briggs. They don't like him. They think he informed on O'Malley because he wouldn't make him a partner, and Dykes found out about it and threatened to tell O'Malley, and Uncle Fred killed Dykes to keep him from telling. You know perfectly well you think that, Eleanor."

"I do," Blanche repeated.

"You girls work in a law office," Dolly Harriton said warningly, "and you should realize that gabbing in the women's room is one thing, and talking like this to Mr. Goodwin is quite another. Didn't you ever hear of slander?"

"I'm not slandering anyone," Eleanor declared, and she wasn't. She looked at me. "The reason I tell you all this, I think you've wasted a lot of orchids and food and drink. Your client is Mr. Wellman, and you're investigating the death of his daughter, and you went to all this trouble and expense because you think there was a connection between her and Leonard Dykes. That list of names he wrote that was found in his room - what if some friend was there one evening and said he was trying to choose a name to use on something he had written, and Dykes and the friend made up some names and Dykes wrote them down? There are a dozen ways it could have happened. And from what you say, that name Baird Archer is absolutely the only thing that connects Dykes with Joan Wellman and Rachel Abrams."

"No," I contradicted her. "There's another. They were all three murdered."

"There are three hundred homicides in New York every year." Eleanor shook her head. "I'm just trying to put you straight. You got us all worked up, or Mrs. Abrams and Mr. Wellman did, and from that row we had you might think you have started something, but you haven't. That's why I told you all that. We all hope you find the man that killed those girls, I know I do, but I don't think you'll ever do it this way."

"Look," Nina Perlman said, "I've got an idea. Let's all chip in and hire him to find out who informed on O'Malley and who killed Dykes. Then we'd know."

"Nonsense!" Mrs. Adams snapped.

Portia Liss objected. "I'd rather hire him to catch the man that killed the girls."

"That's no good," Blanche told her. "Wellman has already hired him for that."

"How much do you charge?" Nina asked.

She got no reply, not that I resented it, but because I was busy. I had left my chair and gone to the side table, where there was a large celadon bowl, and, getting a couple of sheets from my pocket notebook and tearing them into pieces, was writing on the pieces. Blanche, asking what I was doing, got no reply either until I had finished writing, put the pieces of paper in the bowl, and, carrying the bowl, returned to the table and stood behind Mrs. Adams.

"Speech," I announced. Helen Troy did not say oyez.

"I admit," I said, "that I have ruined the party, and I offer my regrets. If you think that I am rudely sending you home I regret that too, but it must be faced that I have doused all hope of continued revelry. I do offer a little consolation, with the permission of Mr. Wolfe. For a period of one year from date each of you will be sent upon request three orchids each month. You may request three at one time or separately, as you prefer. Specifications of color will be met as far as possible."

There were appropriate noises and expressions. Claire Burkhardt wanted to know, "Can we come and pick them out?"

I said that might be arranged, by appointment only. "Earlier," I went on, "it was suggested that one of you be chosen to demonstrate on my person your appreciation for this occasion. Maybe you no longer feel like it, but if you do I have a proposal. In this bowl are ten pieces of paper, and on each piece I have written one of your names. I will ask Mrs. Adams to take one of the pieces from the bowl, and the one whose name is drawn will accompany me forthwith to the Bobolink, where we will dance and dally until one of us gets tired. I don't tire easily."

"If my name is in there you will please remove it," Mrs. Adams ultimatumed.

"If it's drawn," I told her, "you can draw another. Does anyone else wish to be excused?"

Portia Liss said, "I promised to be home by midnight."

"Simple. Get tired at eleven-thirty." I held the bowl above the level of Mrs. Adams' eyes. "Will you draw one, please?"

She didn't like doing it, but it was a quick and easy way of getting the party over and done with, so after a second's hesitation she reached up over the rim of the bowl, withdrew a slip, and put it on the table.

Mabel Moore, at her left, called out, "Sue!"

I removed the other slips and stuck them in a pocket.

Sue Dondero protested, "My lord, I can't go to the Bobolink in these clothes!"

"It doesn't have to be the Bobolink," I assured her. "I guess you're stuck, unless you want us to draw again."

"What for?" Blanche snorted. "What do you bet they didn't all say Sue?"

I didn't dignify it with a denial. I merely took nine slips from my right-hand pocket and tossed them on the table. Later on in the evening there might be occasion to show Sue the nine in my left-hand pocket, those I had taken from the bowl.