The Final Deduction

15

She came at 8:50, ten minutes ahead of time. I was getting Wolfe’s okay on a change in the program when the doorbell rang. In order to stay near her I would have had to sit in one of the yellow chairs near the red leather chair, and I prefer to be at my desk, or I would have had to put her in one of the yellow chairs near me, and Wolfe prefers to have a caller in the red leather chair because the window is then at his back.

It was a pleasant May Day evening, and she had no wrap over her tailored suit, so the only problem was her handbag — a big black leather one with a trick clasp. I learned about the clasp when I tried to open it, after I had got it from her lap and taken it to my desk. Her reaction to my snatching it, which I did as soon as she was seated and had no hand on it, showed the condition of her nerves. She made no sound and no movement, but merely stared at me as I took it to my desk, and she said nothing while I fiddled with it, finding the trick clasp and opening it, and inspected the contents. Nothing in it seemed to be menacing, and when I went and put it back on her lap she had transferred the stare to Wolfe. I might have felt a little sorry for her if it hadn’t been for the warrant that Ben Dykes would be back with at noon tomorrow. When you grab a woman’s bag and open it and go through it, and all she does is sit and stare, she could certainly use a little sympathy.

There was no sympathy in Wolfe’s expression as he regarded her. “This isn’t an inquisition, Mrs. Vail,” he said. “I have no questions to ask you. It will be a monologue, not a tête-à-tête, and it will be prolonged. I advise you to say nothing whatever.”

“I wouldn’t answer any questions if you did ask them,” she said. Her voice was good enough. “You said there was no Mr. Knapp. That’s crazy.”

“Not as crazy as your invention of him.” Wolfe leaned back. “This will be easier to follow if I begin in the middle. Mr. Goodwin has told you how I reached the conclusion that your husband was murdered. That didn’t help much unless I could identify the murderer, and as a first step I needed to see those who were at that gathering Wednesday evening. Let’s take them in the order in which I saw them.

“First, your son. When he came to hire me to find the money for him I suggested the possibility that he had had a hand in the kidnaping and knew where the money was, that he couldn’t very well just go and get it, and that he intended to supply hints that would lead to its discovery by me — or by Mr. Goodwin. When I made that suggestion at the beginning of our conversation, I thought it was a real possibility, but by the time our talk ended I had discarded it. For such a finesse a subtle and agile mind would be needed, and also a ready tongue. Such a witling as your son couldn’t possibly have conceived it, much less execute it. So he had come to me in good faith; he hadn’t been involved in the kidnaping; he didn’t know where the money was; and he hadn’t killed Mr. Vail.”

“You said you would tell me how you knew there was no Mr. Knapp.”

“That will come in its place. Second, your daughter. But you may not know even now what led Mr. Goodwin and me to suspect that Dinah Utley was a party to the kidnaping. Do you?”

“No.”

“Your brother hasn’t told you?”

“No.”

“Nor the police?”

“No.”

“The note that came in the mail. It had been typed by her. I won’t elucidate that; this will take long enough without such details. When Mr. Goodwin saw that the other two notes which you had found in telephone books — I know now, of course, that they were not in the books, you had them with you and went to the books and pretended to find them — when Mr. Goodwin saw that they too had been typed by her, the suspicion became a conclusion. And ten minutes’ talk with your daughter made it manifest that it was quite impossible that she had been allied with Dinah Utley in any kind of enterprise, let alone one as ambitious and hazardous as kidnaping. Your daughter is a vulgarian, a dunce, and a snob. Also she had come to demand that I find the money for her, but even without that it was plain that she, like her brother, had not been involved in the kidnaping; she didn’t know where the money was; and she hadn’t killed Mr. Vail.

“Third, your brother. From Mr. Goodwin’s report of his behavior Wednesday afternoon, or rather, his lack of behavior, his silence, I had tentatively marked him as the one who most needed watching. After twenty minutes with him, him in the chair you are in now, I had to conclude that it was impossible. You know his habit of looking at A when B starts to speak.”

“Yes.”

“His explanation of that habit was enough. A man with a reaction so hopelessly out of control cannot have effective and sustained control over any of his faculties. He would never trust himself to undertake an operation that required audacity, ingenuity, and mettle. There were many other indications. His parting words were ‘I guess I am a fool,’ and he meant them. Patently he was not the man.

“Fourth, Andrew Frost. As you know, he came yesterday morning, but I learned nothing from that interview. There was nothing in his words or tone or manner to challenge the possibility that he was the culprit, and, except for you, that was the only possibility that remained. But through an assistant I had already learned enough about him to exclude him — his record, his position in his profession and in society, his financial status. That didn’t exclude him as a possible murderer, but it was inconceivable that he had been involved in the kidnaping. He would have had to conspire with at least two others, Miss Utley and Mr. Knapp, and probably more, with the only objective in view a share of the loot, and therefore he would have been at their mercy, in mortal danger indefinitely. What if one of his confederates had been caught and had talked? To suppose that such a man had incurred such a risk for such a return? No.”

Wolfe shook his head. “No. Therefore it was you. You had been a party to the kidnaping, you had killed Dinah Utley, and you had killed your husband. I reached that conclusion at ten o’clock Saturday evening, but I wanted to see Mr. Frost before I acted on it. It was barely possible that after talking with him I would reconsider my decision about him. I didn’t. Will you have some refreshment? A drink? Coffee?”

No reply. No movement.

“Tell me if you want something. I’ll have some beer.” He pushed a button and leaned back again. “Also before I acted on it I had to examine it. I had to satisfy myself that no fact and no factor known to me rendered it untenable; and first came motive. What conceivable reason could you have had for getting half a million dollars in cash from your bank and going through that elaborate rigmarole to deliver it to a masked man at an isolated spot on a country road at midnight, other than your ostensible reason? Please bear in mind, Mrs. Vail, that from here on I am not reporting; I am only telling you how I satisfied myself. If in this instance or that I chose the wrong alternative you may correct me, but I still advise you to say nothing.”

I never saw advice better followed. She had a good opportunity to speak, for Fritz came with beer, and Wolf poured, but she didn’t take advantage of it. He waited for the foam to sink to the proper level, then lifted the glass and drank.

He leaned back. “I found only one acceptable answer. The man you delivered the suitcase to was your husband. He probably was masked, for both you and he gave meticulous attention to detail throughout the operation. Very well; why? What were you accomplishing? You were establishing the fact that you had suffered a loss of half a million dollars, and that fact would net you ninety-one per cent of the half a million, since you would deduct it as a casualty on your income-tax report. I haven’t inquired as to whether such a casualty would be deductible, and I don’t suppose you did, probably you merely assumed that it would be. If your income for the year would be less than half a million, no matter; you could carry the loss back for three previous years and forward for five future years. Well worth the effort, surely.”

He came forward to drink, then back again. “Other facts and factors. Why did you and your husband bring Dinah Utley into it? You couldn’t plan it to your satisfaction without her. Take one detail, the phone call from Mr. Knapp. You wanted no doubt whatever in any quarter that the kidnaping was genuine, and you thought there must be a phone call. Mr. Vail couldn’t make it, for even if he disguised his voice it might be recognized. It would be simpler and safer to use Miss Utley, your trusted employee, than to have some man, no matter who, make the call. Of course the call was never made. Miss Utley not only typed the notes; she also typed the transcript of the supposed conversation on the phone. I presume her reward was to be a modest share of the booty.

“Was it you or your husband who conceived the notion— No. I said I would ask you no questions. All the same, it’s an interesting point, which of you thought of coming to me, since that was what led to disaster. No doubt it seemed to be an excellent stroke in your elaborate plans to achieve verisimilitude; not only coming to me but also the hocus-pocus about getting here; ten thousand dollars wasn’t much to pay for establishing that you were desperately concerned for your husband’s safety. You couldn’t foresee that I would insist on seeing your secretary, but when I made that demand your check was already on my desk, and you didn’t dare take it back merely because I wished to speak with Miss Utley. Nor could you foresee that I would propose a step that would expose me to the risk of an extended and expensive operation, and that I would demand an additional sum as insurance against possible loss. You didn’t like that at all. Your teeth bit into your lip as you wrote the check, but you had to. Fifty thousand dollars makes a substantial hole in half a million, but you had made it so clear that nothing mattered but your husband’s safety, certainly money didn’t, that you couldn’t very well refuse.”

He poured beer, drank when the foam was right, and went on. “I don’t know if you regretted that you had come to me when you left, but you certainly did later, when Miss Utley returned after seeing me. As I said, I’m not reporting, I’m telling you how I satisfied myself. I got an inkling of Miss Utley’s temperament and character when she was here, and more than an inkling from what your brother told me about her. From questions Mr. Goodwin and I asked her, and from our taking her fingerprints, she became apprehensive. She feared that you had somehow aroused my suspicion, that I suspected her, and that I might disclose the fraud; and when she returned she tried to persuade you to give it up. You wouldn’t. All the preliminaries had been performed; you had the money in the suitcase; you had given me sixty thousand dollars; all that remained was the consummation. You tried to remove Miss Utley’s fears, to convince her that there was no danger of exposure, and you thought you succeeded, but you didn’t.

“Shortly before eight o’clock you left in your car with the suitcase in the trunk, not knowing that, instead of subsiding, Miss Utley’s alarm had grown. An hour after your departure she took the typewriter from the house, put it in her car, and drove to the country. Here there are alternatives; either is acceptable; I prefer this one: after disposing of the typewriter she intended to go to where Mr. Vail was in hiding, arriving before he left for the rendezvous with you, describe the situation, and insist that the project be abandoned. But something intervened, probably the difficulty of disposing of the typewriter unseen in a spot where it would surely never be found, and to see Mr. Vail she had to go to Iron Mine Road, which had been named in one of the notes she had typed.”

Wolfe drank beer. “Some of what I have said is conjectural, but this is not. Miss Utley got to Iron Mine Road before you did. When you and your husband arrived, you in your car and he in his, she told him of her fears and insisted that the project must be abandoned. He didn’t agree. He didn’t stay long to debate it; he was supposed to be concealed somewhere by kidnapers, and even in that secluded spot there was a possibility that someone might come along. He put the suitcase in his car and drove off, leaving it to you to deal with her, and you tried to, but she wouldn’t be persuaded. She may have demanded a large share of the half million to offset the risk, but I doubt it. From what your brother said of her it’s more likely that she was filled with dismay. Either she made it plain that she would wreck the project by disclosing it, or you were convinced that she intended to. Infuriated, you assaulted her. You hit her on the head with something — a handy rock? — and as she lay unconscious you got in her car and ran it over her, nosed the car into an opening, dragged the body to the ditch and rolled it in, got in your car, and drove away. If, ignoring my advice to say nothing, you ask why I say that you, not Mr. Vail, killed her, I repeat that I had to satisfy myself. If he killed her, why was he killed the next day? There was no tenable answer.

“To satisfy myself it wasn’t necessary to supply answers to all relevant questions. For example, where was your husband from Sunday to Wednesday morning? I don’t know and need not bother to guess, but since other details were carefully and thoroughly planned I assume that one was too. It had to be some spot where both he and his car could be effectively concealed, especially in the daytime. Of course you had to know where it was, since something might happen that would make it necessary to alter the plan. No doubt you and he chose the spot with great care and deliberation. Wherever it was, probably it lacked the convenience of a telephone, so he had to get to one Tuesday evening in order to make the calls to Fowler’s Inn and The Fatted Calf, but that was after dark, and of course that detail too was prudently contrived.

“For another example of questions that can be left open, why did you tell your son he could have the money if he found it? Why not? Knowing yourself where it was, you knew he wouldn’t find it. Still another example, why did you and your husband insist on keeping silent about the kidnaping for forty-eight hours after he returned home? A good guess is that you wanted enough time to pass to make sure that no trail had been left, but it doesn’t have to be verified for my satisfaction. Regarding any known fact or factor I need only establish that it doesn’t contradict my deduction — my final deduction, that you killed your husband. As for his coming to see me Wednesday morning, posthaste after his return, it would have been surprising if he hadn’t. He wanted to learn how much ground there was, if any, for Miss Utley’s fears; what he learned, over the telephone from you, was that she was dead; and he departed, again posthaste, to go to you.

“He knew, of course, that you had killed Dinah Utley, and you were completely at his mercy. He couldn’t expose you as a murderer without divulging his own complicity in preparations for a swindle, but the swindle hadn’t been consummated; there would be no swindle until the deduction had been made on your income-tax return and you and he had signed it. Meanwhile he had a cogent threat, and he used it. He demanded the entire half a million for himself. You were in a pickle. After all the planning, all the exertion, all the painstaking, all the zeal, even after your desperate resort to murder, you were to get nothing. That was not to be borne. Jimmy Vail must die.”

A noise came from her, but it wasn’t a word; it was merely the kind of involuntary noise that is squeezed out by a blow or a sting. Wolfe went on. “You planned it with the care and foresight you had so admirably demonstrated in planning the kidnaping. You needed a drug, and since you assuredly wouldn’t take the risk of procuring one in haste, you must have had one in your possession — probably chloral hydrate, since you may plausibly have had it in some mixture in your medicine cabinet, but that’s another question I may leave open. Either luck was with you Wednesday evening, or you knew him so well that you could safely calculate that when drowsiness overtook him from the drug you had put in his drink he would die on the couch instead of going to his room. For the rest you needed no luck. After Mr. Frost left you went down to the library, found your husband in a coma as you had a right to expect, dragged him across to the desired spot, and toppled the statue on him. With your marked talent for detail, undoubtedly you took his feet. Shoes dragged along a floor will leave telltale marks, even on a rug, but a head and shoulders won’t. Certainly you didn’t leave it to luck whether the statue would land where you wanted it. You wiggled it to learn its direction of least resistance. Evidently the thump wasn’t heard, because the inmates were all in upper rooms; and the statue didn’t hit the floor, the main impact was on your husband’s chest, and it would have been more of a crunch than a thump.”

Wolfe straightened up, took in air through his nose as far down as it could do, and let it out through his mouth. His eyes narrowed at her. “Mrs. Vail,” he said, “I confess that I am not without animus. I have been provoked by the suit you have served against me, and by your complaint against Mr. Goodwin, subjecting him to arrest on a criminal charge. But even so I would hesitate to upbraid you on moral grounds for the fraud you conceived and tried to execute. Millions of your fellow citizens will cheat on their income tax this year. Nor would I reproach you without qualification for killing Miss Utley; you did it in the instant heat of uncontrollable passion. But killing your husband is another matter. That was planned and premeditated and ruthlessly executed; and for a sordid end. Merely for money. You killed him in cold blood because he was going to deprive you of the fruit of your swindle. That, I submit, was execrable. That would be condemned even by—”

“That’s not true,” she said. It barely got out through her tight throat, and she repeated it. “That’s not true!”

“I advised you to say nothing, madam. That would be condemned even—”

“But it’s not true! It wasn’t the money!” She was gripping the chair arms. “He could have had the money. I told him he could. He wouldn’t. It was Dinah. He was going to leave me because I had — because of Dinah. That was why — it wasn’t the money.”

“I prefer it that he demanded the money.”

“No!”

“He threatened to expose you as a murderer?”

“No. He said he wouldn’t. But he was going to leave me, and I loved him.” Her mouth worked, and her fingers clawed at the chair arms, scratching at the leather. “I loved him, and he was going to leave me.”

“And of course that might mean your exposure.” Wolfe’s voice was low, down almost to a murmur. “Away from you, no longer enjoying your bounty, there was no telling what he might do. So he had to die. I offer you my apology. I concede that your end was not sordid, that you were in mortal danger. Did you try to gull him, did you deny that you had killed Dinah Utley?”

“No, he knew I had.” She made fists. “I was insane, I must have been. You’re right, I knew what would happen if he left me, but that wasn’t it. I must have been insane. Later that night I went down to the library again and stayed there with him until—”

She jerked up straight. “What am I saying? What did I say?”

“Enough.” Not a murmur. “You said what I expected you to say when I accused you of killing your husband merely for money. That was absurd, but no more absurd than your attack on Mr. Goodwin and me after we found the money. You intended, of course, to put the onus on your deceased husband — to have it inferred that he had arranged the kidnaping to get the money for himself, with Dinah Utley as an accomplice, that he had killed her, and possibly even that he had killed himself through fear or remorse, though that would be rather farfetched — a man would hardly choose that method of committing suicide. But you should have known that you would arouse—”

He stopped because his audience was walking out on him. When she shifted her feet to get up, her bag slipped to the floor, and I went and picked it up and handed it to her and followed her out. Having circled around her in the hall to get in front, I had the door open by the time she reached it, and I went out to the stoop to watch her go down the steps. If she went home and finished up the chloral hydrate, that would be her funeral, but I didn’t want her stumbling and breaking her neck on our premises. She wasn’t any too steady, but she made it to the sidewalk and turned right, and I went back in.

Going to the kitchen, I got the tape and the playback from the cupboard and took them to the office. Wolfe sat and scowled at me as I got things ready, switched it on, ran it through to what might be the spot, and turned on the sound. Wolfe’s voice came.

“... in the instant heat of uncontrollable passion. But killing your husband is another matter. That was planned and premeditated and ruthlessly executed; and for a sordid end. Merely for money. You killed him in cold blood because he was going to deprive you of the fruit of your swindle. That, I submit, was execrable. That would be condemned even by—”

“That’s not true. That’s not true!”

“I advised you to say nothing, madam. That would be condemned even—”

“But it’s not true! It wasn’t the money! He could have had the money. I told him he could. He wouldn’t. It was Dinah. He was going to leave me because I had — because of Dinah. That was why — it wasn’t the money.”

It went on to the end, good and clear, as it should have been, since that installation had cost twelve hundred smackers. As I turned it off Wolfe said, “Satisfactory. Take it to Mr. Cramer.”

“Now?”

“Yes. That wretch may be dead within the hour. If he isn’t at his office, have him summoned. I don’t want him storming in here tomorrow to bark at me for delaying delivery of a confession of a murderer.”

I reached for the tape.