Prisoner's Base

Chapter 5

The headquarters of Softdown, Incorporated, at 192 Collins Street, in the middle of the ancient jungle between City Hall Park and Greenwich Village, was not an office or a floor, it was a building. Its four-storied front may once have been cream-colored brick, but you would have had to use a chisel or a sand-blaster to find out. However, the two enormous street-floor windows, one on either side of the entrance, were so bright and clean they sparkled. Behind one was a vast geometrical array of bathtowels, in a dozen colors and twice that many sizes, and behind the other was a crazy old contraption with a placard resting on one of its crosspieces which said:

Both sides of the double door were standing open, and I entered. The left half of the wide and deep room was partitioned off all the way back, with a string of doors, but the right half was open, with an army of tables, piled with merchandise. Only four or five people were in sight, scattered around. An opening in the first eight feet of partition had the word INFORMATION above it, but the old war mare inside, seated at a switchboard, looked too damn skeptical, and I went on by, to the right, to where a rotund and ruddy type stood scratching the top of his ear. I showed him my case, open to display my license card with its photograph, and snapped, “Goodwin. Detective. Where’s the boss?”

He barely glanced at it. “Which boss?” he squeaked. “What do you want?”

Another skeptic. “Relax,” I told him in an official tone. “I’m on an errand connected with the death of Priscilla Eads. I want to talk with everyone here who will own part of this business because she died, preferably starting at the top. Would it be better to start with you? Your name, please?”

He didn’t bat an eye. “You want to see Mr. Brucker,” he squeaked.

“I agree. Where is he?”

“His office is down at the end, but right now he’s upstairs in the conference room.”

“And the stairs?”

He jerked a thumb. “Over there.”

I went in the direction indicated and through a door. Everything about the stairs was contemporary with the building except the treads and risers, which were up-to-date rough-top plastic. The second floor was visibly a busier place than the first. There were row after row of desks with typewriters and other machines, cabinets and shelves, and of course the girls, easily a hundred of them. There is no more agreeable form of research than the study of animated contour, color, and motion in a large business office, but that day I was preoccupied. I crossed to a dark-eyed smooth-skinned creature manipulating a machine bigger than her, and asked where the conference room was, and she pointed to the far end of the room, away from the street. I went there, found a door in a partition, opened it and passed through, and closed the door behind me.

The partition was well soundproofed, for as soon as I shut the door the clatter and hum of the big room’s activity became just a murmur. This room was of medium size, square, with a fine old mahogany table in the middle, and chairs to match all the way around it. At the far side was a stairhead. One of the five people seated in a cluster at the end of the table could have been Hargreaves of the 1768 spinning jenny, or anyhow his son, with his pure white hair and his wrinkled old skin trying to find room enough for itself with the face meat gone. He still had sharp blue-gray eyes, and they drew me in his direction as I displayed my case and said, “Goodwin. Detective. About the murder of Priscilla Eads. Mr. Brucker?”

Whitey was not Brucker. Brucker was the one across from him, about half Whitey’s age and with half as much hair, light brown, and a long pale face and a long thin nose. He spoke. “I’m Brucker. What do you want?”

None of them was reaching for the case, so I returned it to my pocket, got onto a chair, and took out my notebook and pencil. I was thinking that if I didn’t overplay my self-assurance I might get away with it. I opened the notebook and flipped to a fresh page, in no hurry, and ran my eyes over them, ending at Brucker. “This is only a preliminary,” I told him. “Full name, please.”

“J. Luther Brucker.”

“What does the J. stand for?”

“It’s J-a-y, Jay.”

I was writing. “You’re an officer of the corporation?”

“President. I have been for seven years.”

“When and how did you learn of the murder of Miss Eads?”

“On the radio this morning. The seven-forty-five newscast.”

“That was the first you heard of it?”

“Yes.”

“How did you spend your time last night between ten-thirty and two o’clock? Briefly. As fast as you please. I do shorthand.”

“I was in bed. I was tired after a hard day’s work and went to bed early, shortly after ten, and stayed there.”

“Where do you live?”

“I have a suite at the Prince Henry Hotel, Brooklyn.”

I looked at him. I always look again at people who live in Brooklyn. “Is that where you were last night?”

“Certainly. That’s where my bed is, and I was in it.”

“Alone?”

“I’m unmarried.”

“Were you alone in your suite throughout the period from ten-thirty to two o’clock last night?”

“I was.”

“Can you furnish any corroboration? Phone calls? Anything at all?”

His jaw moved spasmodically. He was controlling himself. “How can I? I was asleep.”

I looked at him without bias but with reserve. “You understand the situation, Mr. Brucker. A lot of people stand to profit from Miss Eads’s death, some of them substantially. These things have to be asked about. How much of this business will you now inherit?”

“That’s a matter of public record.”

“Yeah. But you know, don’t you?”

“Of course I know.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, how much?”

“Under the provisions of the will of the late Nathan Eads, son of the founder of the business, I suppose that nineteen thousand three hundred and sixty-two shares of the common stock of the corporation will come to me. The same amount will go to four other people — Miss Duday, Mr. Quest, Mr. Pitkin, and Mr. Helmar. Smaller amounts go to others.”

Whitey spoke, his sharp blue-gray eyes straight at me. “I am Bernard Quest.” His voice was firm and strong, with no sign of wrinkles. “I have been with this business sixty-two years, and have been sales manager for thirty-four years and vice-president for twenty-nine.”

“Right.” I wrote. “I’ll get names down.” I looked at the woman next to Bernard Quest on his left. She was middle-aged, with a scrawny neck and dominating ears, and was unquestionably a rugged individualist, since no lipstick had been allowed anywhere near her. I asked her, “Yours, please?”

“Viola Duday,” she said in a clear voice so surprisingly pleasant that I raised my brows at my notebook. “I was Mr. Eads’s secretary, and in nineteen thirty-nine he made me assistant to the president. He was, of course, president. During his last illness, the last fourteen months of his life, I ran the business.”

“We helped all we could,” Brucker said pointedly.

She ignored him. “My present title,” she told me, “is assistant secretary of the corporation.”

I moved my eyes. “You, sir?”

That one, on Viola Duday’s left, was a neat little squirt, with a suspicious twist to his lips, who had been fifty years old all his life and would be for the rest of it. Apparently he had a cold, since he kept sniffing and dabbing at his nose with a handkerchief.

“Oliver Pitkin,” he said, and was a little hoarse. “Secretary and treasurer of the corporation since nineteen thirty-seven, when my predecessor died at the age of eighty-two.”

I was beginning to suspect that the conference I had crashed had not been about the price of towels. Of the four Brucker had named besides himself, three were present — all but Helmar. That proved nothing against any or all of them, but I wished I had a recording of their conversation before I entered. Not that I wasn’t doing all right, considering. I focused on the only one still nameless, and the only one of the five who could have been regarded as worthy of attention on other grounds than her possible connection with the murder of Priscilla Eads. As for age, she could have been Bernard Quest’s granddaughter. As for structure, she could have been improved upon — who couldn’t? — but no part of her called for a motion to reconsider. A tendency of Brucker’s head to twist toward his right, where she sat, had not been unnoticed by me. I asked her for her name.

“Daphne O’Neil,” she said. “But I don’t think I belong in your little book, Mr. Detective, because I wasn’t in Mr. Eads’s will. I was just a good little girl when he died, and I only started to work for Softdown four years ago. Now I’m the Softdown stylist.”

The way she pronounced words it wasn’t exactly baby talk, but it gave you the feeling that in four seconds it would be. Also she called me Mr. Detective, which settled it that a Softdown stylist should be seen and not heard.

“Perhaps you should know,” Viola Duday volunteered in her clear, pleasant voice, “that if Miss Eads had lived until next Monday and controlled the business, Miss O’Neil would soon have been looking for another connection. Miss Eads did not appreciate Miss O’Neil’s talents. You may think it generous of Miss O’Neil not to want you to waste space on her in your little book, but—”

“Is this necessary, Vi?” Bernard Quest asked sharply.

“I think so.” She was pleasantly firm about it. “Being an intelligent woman, Bernie, I’m more realistic than any man, even you. No one is going to be able to hide anything, so why not shorten the agony? They’ll dig up everything. That for ten years before Nate Eads died you tried to get him to give you a third interest in the business, and he refused. That Ollie here” — she glanced, not with animosity, at Oliver Pitkin — “beneath his mask of modest and stubborn efficiency, is fiercely anti-feminist and hates to see a woman own or run anything.”

“My dear Viola,” Pitkin began in a shocked tone, but she overspoke him.

“That my ambition and appetite for power are so strong that you four men, much as you fear and distrust one another, fear and distrust me more, and you knew that when Priscilla was in control I would have top authority. They’ll learn that this Daphne O’Neil — my God, what a name for her, Daphne—”

“It means ‘laurel tree,’” Daphne said to be helpful.

“I know it does. That she was playing Perry Helmar and Jay against each other, and with June thirtieth approaching she was getting desperate and so were they. That Jay—”

What stopped her was Daphne suddenly reaching across in front of Pitkin and slapping her on the mouth. It was a remarkably swift and accurate performance, giving Viola Duday no time to duck or block. Miss Duday raised a hand as if to counter, but merely covered her mouth with it, recoiling.

“You asked for it, Vi,” Quest told her. “And if you’re counting on Ollie and me being with you, and I think you are, this is a big mistake.”

“I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time,” said Daphne, more like baby talk than before. “I’ll do it again.”

I was perfectly willing to sit and wait for Miss Duday to start up where she had left off, or for someone else to start something, but apparently that script was finished, so I spoke.

“Miss Duday is absolutely right,” I told them. “I don’t mean that what she said is right — that I don’t know about — but she was right in saying that if you try to hold out and cover up you’ll just prolong the agony. It’ll all come out, don’t think it won’t, the bad with the good, and the quicker the better.” I looked at the president. “It wouldn’t hurt a bit, Mr. Brucker, if you followed Miss Duday’s example. Where does everybody stand, the way you see it? For instance, this conference you were having. Whose idea was it? What were you talking about? What were you saying?”

Brucker, his head tilted back, was regarding me down his long, thin nose. “We were saying,” he stated, “that we would have to accept the fact that the manner of Miss Eads’s death, especially at this time, created an extremely unpleasant situation for all of us. I had spoken to Mr. Quest about it, and we had decided to discuss it with Miss Duday and Mr. Pitkin. I had already spoken with Miss O’Neil and thought she should be present. We agreed that it was unthinkable that any of us, or any other member of the Softdown staff who will now come into possession of Softdown stock, could possibly have been involved in the murder of Miss Eads. We—”

“Miss Duday agreed to that?”

She answered me. “Certainly. If you thought, young man, that I was suggesting motives for murder acceptable to me, you misunderstood. I was merely giving you facts which will seem to you to be acceptable motives for murder. You were sure to discover them, and I was saving time.”

“I see. What else were you saying, Mr. Brucker?”

“We were considering what to do. Specifically, we were considering whether we should arrange at once to get legal advice, and if so whether our corporation counsel would do, or would it be better to have special counsel for this. Also we were discussing the murder itself. We agreed that we knew of no one with a reason for killing Miss Eads and capable of such a crime. We spoke of the letter received recently from Eric Hagh, Miss Eads’s former husband, by Perry Helmar — you know about that?”

“Yes, from Helmar. Claiming that he had a document that entitled him to half of her property.”

“That’s right. The letter was sent from Venezuela, but he could have come to New York by ship or plane — or he didn’t even have to come; he could have hired someone to kill her.”

“I see. Why?”

“We don’t know why. I don’t know. We were only trying to find some plausible explanation of the murder.”

I insisted. “Yeah, but how could you figure Eric Hagh? If she had lived a week longer he would still have his document and she would have a lot more property for him to claim half of.”

“One possibility,” Viola Duday suggested, “would be that she had denied that she had signed the document, or he thought she was going to, and he was afraid he would get nothing at all.”

“But she had stated that she had signed the document.”

“Had she? To whom?”

I couldn’t very well say to Nero Wolfe and me, so I went official on her. “I’m asking the questions, Miss Duday. As I said, this is only preliminary, so I’ll cover the rest of you on the routine.” I focused on Daphne. “Miss O’Neil, how did you spend your time last night between ten-thirty and two o’clock? You understand that—”

There was the sound of a door opening behind me, the one by which I had entered, and I turned my head to see. Three men were filing in, one of whom, the one in front, I knew only too well. Seeing me, he stopped, gawked, and said from from his heart, “Well, by God!”

There has never been a time when the sight of Lieutenant Rowcliff of Manhattan Homicide has done me good. Circumstances under which the sight of Rowcliff would do me good are not remotely imaginable. But if I had been keeping a list of the moments for him not to appear, that one would have been at the top, and there he was.

“You’re under arrest,” he said, nearly choking on it.

I controlled the impulse I always have when he comes in view, and which I will not describe. “In writing?” I inquired.

“I don’t need any writing. I’m taking—” He checked himself, advanced to my elbow, and looked at the Softdown quintet. “Which of you is Jay L. Brucker?”

“I am.”

“I’m Lieutenant George Rowcliff of the Police Department. Downstairs this man said he was a policeman. Did he—”

“Isn’t he?” Brucker demanded.

“No. Did he—”

“We’re a pack of fools,” Miss Duday snapped. “He’s a reporter!”

Rowcliff raised his voice a notch. “He’s no reporter. His name is Archie Goodwin, and he’s the confidential assistant of Nero Wolfe, the private detective. Did he say he was a policeman?”

Three of them said yes. He shifted his fishy popeyes to me. “I’m taking you in the act of impersonating an officer of the law, which is a felony and justifies severity. Handcuff him and search him, Doyle.”

His two colleagues came toward me. I thrust my hands deep in my pants pockets, slumped, and slid forward in my chair, so that more than half of me was beneath the table. To frisk and cuff a 180-pound man relaxed in that position takes a determined attitude and plenty of muscle, and I was sure that the colleagues would halt at least to take a breath.

“You may remember,” I told Rowcliff, “that on April third, nineteen forty-nine, by order of Commissioner Skinner, you signed a written apology to Mr. Wolfe and me. This one will be only to me, if I decide to accept one instead of hanging it on you.”

“I’m taking you in the act.”

“You are not. These people are nervous. Both downstairs and up here I identified myself with just two words, my name and the word ‘detective,’ and I showed my license, which no one took the trouble to examine. I didn’t say I was a policeman. I am a detective, and I said so. I asked questions, and they answered. Apologize now and get it over with.”

“What were you asking questions about?”

“Matters connected with the death of Priscilla Eads.”

“About a homicide.”

I conceded it. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“As an interested citizen.”

“What kind of interest? You lied to Inspector Cramer. You told him that Wolfe had no client, but here you are.”

“It wasn’t a lie. He had no client.”

“Then he’s got one since?”

“No. He has none.”

“Then what are you here for? What kind of interest?”

“My own. I am interested for personal reasons, and Mr. Wolfe has nothing to do with it. I’m strictly on my own.”

“For God’s sake.” From the tone of Rowcliff’s voice, he had reached the limit of exasperated disgust. From my slumped position I couldn’t see his face, but from a corner of my eye I had a view of his hand tightened into a fist. “So Wolfe has got a c-c-client.” When he reached a certain pitch of excitement he was apt to stutter. I usually tried to beat him to it, but this time missed the chance. “And a client he doesn’t dare to acknowledge. And you actually have the gall to try to cover for him by telling another outrageous lie, that you’re here on your own. Your insolence—”

“Look, Lieutenant.” I was earnest. “It has always been a pleasure to lie to you, and will be again, but I want to make it clear and emphatic that my interest in this case is strictly personal, as I said, and Mr. Wolfe is not concerned. If you—”

“That’s enough.” The fist was tighter and was quivering a little. Some day it would be too much for him and he would let fly, and my reaction would depend on the context. It couldn’t be taken for granted that I would break him in two. He went on. “It’s more than enough. Giving false information, withholding evidence, material witness, obstructing justice, and impersonating an officer of the law. Take him, Doyle. There’ll be someone here soon to t-t-t-turn him over to.”

He meant it. I considered swiftly. In spite of the current situation, I hoped and expected to have further dealings with some or all of the Softdown quintet, and it wouldn’t help any to have them sit and watch while a pair of bozos dragged me from under a table, unavoidably mussing me up. So I arose, sidled around to the back of my chair, and told Doyle, “Please be careful. I’m ticklish.”