Silver Spire

Twelve

I walked back to the brownstone, climbing the front steps at six-twenty-five. I hit the buzzer, knowing Fritz would have put the chain lock on the door. He answered on the second ring.

“Your face,” he said as he pulled the door open.

“Fritz, you have a wonderful knack for stating the obvious.”

He frowned as I crossed the threshold. “But your face, Archie — it needs attention.”

“I repeat my comment,” I told him, marching to the office, where Wolfe wrestled with the London Sunday Times crossword puzzle.

He looked up and grunted. “Your face,” he said.

“It must be this house. I’ve been back for all of thirty seconds, and the only two people I’ve encountered greeted me with the words ‘Your face.’ I think I’ll go to the plant rooms to see Theodore. He almost never speaks to me except to gripe about something, but maybe he’ll say, ‘Your face — I recognize it.’”

Wolfe scowled. “Perhaps Inspector Cramer is correct when he insists that you will clown your way to the grave. What happened?”

“I ran into a fist, but only once. The other guy wasn’t as fortunate.”

“Indeed. Get cleaned up, and then report.”

I went to my room and analyzed the damage in the mirror. A spot on my left cheekbone the size of a half-dollar had turned plum-colored. I soaked a washcloth in cold water and held it on the spot for sixty seconds, then dried it gingerly and covered the area with a bandage. When I got back to the office, Wolfe had defeated his puzzle and was hypnotizing himself by watching the bubbles rise in his beer glass.

I dropped into my desk chair and turned to face him. “Okay, here it is from the beginning,” I said, giving him a verbatim report on the last eight-plus hours, from my arrival at the Silver Spire to my mini-scrap with MacKay and my hailing a taxi for Carola Reese. He kept his eyes closed and his fingers laced over his center mound the whole time, never once commenting.

After a half-minute of silence, to which he contributed nothing of genius, I went on. “It did seem kind of funny, Carola running into the guy after all those years.”

He twitched his shoulders, which constitutes a shrug. “Perhaps, but she did mention she rarely comes to Manhattan. Encountering Mr. MacKay may indeed have been happenstance. Do you think that she and Mr. Wilkenson maintain a purely professional relationship?”

For years, Wolfe has been absolutely unwavering in his belief that I can penetrate the deepest recesses of the female mind. He’s wrong, but after all this time I hate to disillusion him. “It’s about even money,” I answered, “with maybe a slight tilt toward their having a little something going. She seemed too anxious to deny it.”

He closed his eyes again. “Well,” I said after another half-minute, “what now?”

“It is dinnertime. Lobsters in white-wine sauce.” One thing about Wolfe, you always know what his priorities are. We did what we were supposed to with Fritz’s lobsters while I heard a monologue on why the railroads were the greatest single force in America’s westward expansion during the late 1800s.

When we were back in the office with coffee, I asked Wolfe if he had any instructions. He muttered something that sounded vaguely like “None” and opened his book, Labor Will Rule, by Steven Fraser. I was in the process of giving him a strongly phrased retort when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” I said loudly. “Maybe it’s a prospective client, wanting you to find her lost Chihuahua that broke loose from its leash on Beekman Place.”

Our visitor was Inspector Cramer. “Come in,” I said warmly, pulling open the door. “We were just getting ready to play mumblety-peg on Wolfe’s desktop with a Swiss Army knife, but golly, we can do that any old time.”

“You’re a real gas,” Cramer snorted as he lumbered in and made for the office. “What happened to your face?”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t notice. I accidentally wandered into the path of a little granny on Rollerblades who was heading for the spring clearance sale at Macy’s.”

I can’t report on whether that drew a smile, because Cramer’s back was to me as he chugged into the office and plopped down in the red leather chair. Wolfe looked up from his book with raised eyebrows.

“Yeah, I wonder why I’m here, too,” Cramer said. “If I wanted comedy, I could sit home with my feet up and watch the cop shows on TV instead of listening to your court jester here.” He jerked a thumb in my direction for emphasis.

“I agree that Archie’s humor is often threadbare,” Wolfe said, exhaling. “I’ve spoken to him about it repeatedly, including tonight. It is a trial.”

“Yeah, well, believe it or not, I didn’t come to discuss Goodwin’s pacing and timing. I want to know what’s going on with the Durkin business.”

Wolfe drank beer. “I know Fred has been charged with murder. Have there been further developments?”

“Oh, balls, stop playing around! You know damn well what I’m talking about. Goodwin spent more than four hours today at that religious monstrosity over on Staten Island. Somehow I don’t believe he was praying.”

Wolfe flipped a hand. “Archie’s visit to the church should not surprise you; I stated earlier our intent to determine the identity of Mr. Meade’s murderer.”

“Uh-huh. And what have you found?”

“Candidly, not enough to make an accusation.”

Cramer huffed. “I’m not surprised, given that the right guy’s already been nailed.”

“No, sir, that is not true — I know it, and you know it. If you were convinced of Fred Durkin’s guilt, you would hardly tie up the valuable time of one or more of your men having them tail Archie.”

“Damn straight,” I put in to show that I was offended. I also was irked that I hadn’t spotted my shadow at the Silver Spire. I wanted to ask Cramer if one of his grunts had seen me TKO MacKay on Third Avenue, but I passed on that.

“All right, so we had somebody on Goodwin,” Cramer shot back, pulling a cigar out of his pocket and jamming it into his mouth. “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you, especially when it comes to saving the skin of one of your own.”

“Come, Mr. Cramer,” Wolfe said, moving forward in his chair and waggling an index finger, “if you are suggesting we would attempt to shift blame for murder to an innocent individual, you are riding the wrong highway.”

“That’s the only way you’ll get Durkin off.”

“I think not. And I am presumptuous enough to seek your aid. I was planning to telephone you tonight with three questions. First, have your men conducted a thorough search of Mr. Meade’s office?”

“Funny you should mention that. As a matter of fact, one of our guys found something interesting at the bottom of a stack of papers in one of his desk drawers: photocopies of those six poison-pen notes that were sent to Bay.”

Wolfe raised his eyebrows. “Your reaction?”

Cramer ran a hand through his hair. “Could be Meade was trying to get his boss to opt for early retirement so he could take over the operation.”

“Indeed, sir. Do you really believe he was the author of those notes?”

“Look, we found out from others at the church — and I assume Goodwin did, too — that Meade was one poisonous customer, and damned ambitious. But if you’re trying to tie the notes to the murder, forget it. You had other questions?”

“Have you spoken to Mr. Meade’s widow?”

“Rowcliff talked to her at home — a house on the island about a mile from the church. She’s with a brokerage firm on Wall Street, has a big job there. Anyway, Rowcliff said she’s a pretty strong cookie, that she was standing up well. She told him she couldn’t understand why anybody would want to kill her husband — which is what they all say, of course. But he didn’t get much more out of her, although he wasn’t trying all that hard, given that Durkin was already in the slammer. Apparently Meade enjoyed his work, so his wife said, and he put in awfully long hours. But what’s the big deal with that? So do I. Look where I am at nine-thirty on a weeknight.”

“When you could be at home watching police adventures on your television screen,” Wolfe murmured. Humankind never ceases to astonish him.

Cramer glowered at his mangled cigar as if he’d never seen it before. “Yeah, right. I assume you’re going to stick with this business. I’ve been around you long enough to realize that there’s no way on God’s earth I can pry you off something you’ve glommed onto. By the way, who’s paying you?”

“No one,” Wolfe replied.

“Incredible. That’s one for Ripley. Well, if you come across any information that I’d be interested in — and I’m just saying if, I’m not expecting anything — I want to know about it.”

“That is a fair request, sir.”

“I thought so too. What’s your third question?”

“Have you conducted tests to confirm that a gunshot could not be heard from outside Mr. Meade’s office with the door closed?”

“We have. That place really is a fortress. One of my men fired blanks from a thirty-eight in that office, and the guy out in the hall said he heard something that could have been a book — a small book — falling on a carpet, that’s all. We also had people in the offices on either side of Meade’s, and they didn’t hear anything — not a peep. Before I go, you’d better damn well hear this, both of you,” Cramer said, getting up and standing at Wolfe’s desk. “Because Durkin is cooked, really cooked.”

“You know very well that I prefer conversing with those who are at eye level,” Wolfe growled.

“I’ll keep standing, thanks,” Cramer growled back. “The exercise is good for your neck. Anyway, here’s two things maybe you don’t know: First, the department up in Albany that licenses you guys got a letter about ten days ago from one Royal Meade of Richmond County — that’s Staten Island, in case you were home sick the day they covered that in geography class. The letter, with a carbon copy to Durkin, said that he, Durkin, was unfit to hold a private investigator’s license in the state of New York and went on to detail some of his tactics at the Silver Spire — including his bullying two women to let him see personnel records of various employees. As it turned out, they both refused to show him the records and told Meade about it.

“At the state’s request, I sent a man to the church to check on Durkin’s activities, and another woman on the staff, a part-time secretary, told my man she overheard Durkin saying ‘I’m going to kill that bastard’ after he and Meade had had a noisy argument in the hallway outside Meade’s office.”

Wolfe raised his shoulders and let them drop. “Angry braggadocio on Fred’s part,” he remarked.

“Yeah, well, how do you think it’ll play in court when that nice little woman — she’s about four-eleven and in her sixties — quotes Durkin?”

“Is that all?” Wolfe demanded.

“Isn’t it enough, for God’s sake?” Cramer roared, pounding a fist on Wolfe’s desktop. “Durkin’s a hothead, a damn loose cannon, but he’s fired once too often. I’ll see myself out,” he spat, turning on his heel. “I remember the way.”

I followed him down the hall and bolted the door behind him. “That wasn’t very cheerful news,” I told Wolfe when I got back to the office. “It must have upset Cramer, too, though. First, he didn’t fling his mutilated stogie at the wastebasket — he had the decency to take it with him. Second, he didn’t say boo to me on the way out, not a word, and he always throws at least one parting zinger my way.”

“Among the things upon which we agree, Archie, is that Inspector Cramer is essentially an honorable man. His methods and mental processes often fall short of adequacy, although the same cannot be said of his conscientiousness. He is understandably troubled, because despite his gainsaying it, and despite this latest damning report, he is as convinced as we are that Fred is innocent. However, being a pragmatist as well, the inspector realizes that to pursue his investigation further is to in effect suggest that one church stalwart has murdered another — hardly a prudent move for a high-ranking public servant. He would be pilloried by his superiors, not to mention the treatment he would receive at the hands of some of the less responsible segments of the media.” Wolfe sighed. “It falls to us alone to extricate Fred from this morass, which appears to be deepening.”

“Okay, let’s start extricating,” I said. “What do we do next?”

Wolfe rang for more beer, then readjusted his bulk. “Visit Mrs. Meade tomorrow. Call upon your interrogatory skills to discover whatever you can about her late husband’s attitudes toward his job and his coworkers. Also, return to the church and seek permission from Mr. Bay to conduct a search of Mr. Meade’s office. If he balks at the request, call me.”

“What am I looking for?”

He pursed his lips. “What indeed. Undoubtedly, members of the church staff — including his murderer — already have gone through Mr. Meade’s papers, so whatever clues existed may have been obliterated. However, it is possible that some crumbs were overlooked by the broom. Use your intelligence, guided by experience.”

I grinned. “Where have I heard that line before?”

“Wise counsel bears repetition,” he said airily. “Give particular attention to Mr. Meade’s Bibles. Surely there are several on his shelves. Sift through them for notations, underlinings, dog-eared pages.”

“So you think he wrote those notes threatening Bay, huh?”

“I did not say that,” Wolfe replied. “One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Attend the service at Mr. Bay’s church on Sunday.”

“Any particular reason? I can watch it on television. So, for that matter, can you.”

Wolfe made a face. “I would like to receive the benefit of your observations and reactions,” he said, drinking beer and retreating behind his book. I thought of a great comeback, but I sat on it. After all, I had gotten what I wanted — marching orders. There was nothing to be gained by alienating the field marshal.