The Final Deduction

4

At one-fifteen p.m. Clark Hobart, District Attorney of Westchester County, narrowed his eyes at me and said, “You’re dry behind the ears, Goodwin. You know what you’re letting yourself in for.”

We were in his office at the Court House, a big corner room with four windows. He was seated at his desk, every inch an elected servant of the people. With a strong jaw, a keen eye, and big ears that stuck out. My chair was at an end of the desk. In two chairs in front of it were Captain Saunders of the State Police and a man I had had contacts with before, Ben Dykes, head of the county detectives. Dykes had fattened some in the two years since I had last seen him; what had been a crease was now a gully, giving him two chins, and when he sat his belly lapped over his belt. But the word was that he was still a fairly smart cop.

I met Hobart’s eyes, straight but not belligerent. “I’d like to be sure,” I said, “that you’ve got it right. They reported to you before I was brought in. I don’t suppose they twisted it deliberately, I know Ben Dykes wouldn’t, but let’s avoid any misunderstanding. I looked at the corpse and identified it as Dinah Utley. Captain Saunders asked me how well I had known her, and I said I had met her only once, yesterday afternoon, but my identification was positive. Dykes asked where I had met her yesterday afternoon, and I said at Nero Wolfe’s office. He asked what she was there for, and I said Mrs. Jimmy Vail had told her to come, at Mr. Wolfe’s request, so he could ask her some questions in connection with a confidential matter which Mrs. Vail had hired him to investigate. He asked me what the confidential matter was, and I—”

“And you refused to tell him.”

I nodded. “That’s the point. My refusal was qualified. I said I was under instructions from Mr. Wolfe. If he would tell me where the body had been found, and how and when and where she had died, with details, I would report to Mr. Wolfe, and if a crime had been committed he would decide whether it was reasonable to suppose that the crime was in any way connected with the matter Mrs. Vail had consulted him about. I hadn’t quite finished when Captain Saunders broke in and said Dinah Utley had been murdered and I damned well would tell him then and there exactly what she had said to Mr. Wolfe and what he had said to her. I said I damned well wouldn’t, and he said he had heard how tough I thought I was and he would take me where we wouldn’t be disturbed and find out. Evidently he’s the salt-of-the-earth type. Ben Dykes, who is just a cop, no hero, insisted on bringing me to you. If what I’m letting myself in for is being turned over to Captain Saunders, that would suit me fine. I have been thinking of going to a psychiatrist to find out how tough I am, and that would save me the trouble.”

“I’ll be glad to do you that favor,” Saunders said. He moved his lips the minimum required to get the words out. Someone had probably told him that that showed you had power in reserve, and he had practiced it before a mirror.

“You’re not being turned over,” Hobart said. “I’m the chief law officer of this county. A crime has been committed. Dinah Utley was murdered. She was with you not many hours before she died, and as far as we know now, you were the last person to see her alive. Captain Saunders was fully justified in asking for the details of that interview. So am I.”

I shook my head. “He didn’t ask, he demanded. As for the crime, where and when? If a car ran over her this—”

“How do you know a car ran over her?” Saunders snapped.

I ignored him. “If a car ran over her this morning here on Main Street, and people who saw the driver say he was a dwarf with whiskers and one eye, I doubt if Mr. Wolfe will think his talk with her yesterday was relevant. Having seen the body, I assume that either a car ran over her or she was hit several times with a sledgehammer though there are other possibilities.” I turned a hand over. “What the hell, Mr. Hobart. You know Mr. Wolfe knows the rules.”

He nodded. “And I know how he abuses them — and you too. Dinah Utley wasn’t killed here on Main Street. Her body was found at ten o’clock this morning by two boys who should have been in school. It was in a ditch by a roadside, where it—”

“What road?”

“Iron Mine Road. Presumably it once led to an iron mine, but now it leads nowhere. It’s narrow and rough, and it come to a dead end about two miles from Route One Twenty-three. The body—”

“Where does it leave Route One Twenty-three?”

Saunders growled, in his throat, not parting his lips. He got ignored again.

“About two miles from where Route One Twenty-three leaves Route Thirty-five,” Hobart said. “South of Ridgefield, not far from the state line. The body had been rolled into the ditch after death. The car that had run over her was there, about a hundred feet away up the road, headed into an opening to the woods. The registration for the car was in it, with the name Dinah Utley and the address Nine Ninety-four Fifth Avenue, New York twenty-eight. Also in it was her handbag, containing the usual items, some of them bearing her name. It has been established that it was that car that ran over her. Anything else?”

“When did she die?”

“Oh, of course. The limits are nine o’clock last evening and three o’clock this morning.”

“Were there traces of another car?”

“Yes. One and possibly two, but on grass. The road’s gravelly, and the grass is thick up to the gravel.”

“Anyone who saw Dinah Utley or her car last night, or another car?”

“Not so far. The nearest house is nearly half a mile away, east, toward Route One Twenty-three, and that stretch of road is seldom traveled.”

“Have you got any kind of a lead?”

“Yes. You. When a woman is murdered a few hours after she goes to see a private detective it’s a fair assumption that the two events were connected and what she said to the detective is material. Were you present when she talked with Wolfe?”

“Yes. It’s also a fair assumption that the detective is the best judge as to whether the two events were connected or not. As I said Dinah Utley didn’t come to see Mr. Wolfe on her own hook; she came because Mrs. Vail told her to, to give him some information about something Mrs. Vail wanted done.” I got up. “Okay, you’ve told me what I can read in the paper in a couple of hours. I’ll report to Mr. Wolfe and give you a ring.”

“That’s what you think.” Saunders was on his feet. “Mr. Hobart, you know how important time is on a thing like this. You realize that if you let him go in twenty minutes he’ll be out of your jurisdiction. You realize that he has information that if we get it now it might make all the difference.”

I grinned at him. “Can you do twenty pushups? I can.”

Ben Dykes told Hobart, “I’d like to ask him something,” and Hobart told him to go ahead. Dykes turned to me, “There was an ad in the Gazette yesterday headed ‘to Mr. Knapp’ with Nero Wolfe’s name at the bottom. Did that have anything to do with why Mrs. Vail told Dinah Utley to go to see Wolfe?”

The word that Dykes was still a fairly smart cop seemed to be based on facts. The grin I gave him was not the one I had given Saunders. “Sorry,” I said, “but I’m under orders from the man I work for.” I went to the District Attorney. “You know the score, Mr. Hobart. It would be stretching a point even to hold me for questioning as it stands now, and since I wouldn’t answer the questions, and since Mr. Wolfe wouldn’t talk on the phone or let anyone in the house until he gets my report, I suppose we’ll have to let Captain Saunders go without. But of course it’s your murder.”

He had his head tilted back to frown at me. “You know the penalty,” he said, “for obstructing justice.” When I said, “Yes, sir,” politely, he abruptly doubled his fists, bounced up out of his chair, and yelled, “Get the hell out of here!” As I turned to obey, Ben Dykes shook his head at me. I passed close enough to Saunders for him to stick out a foot and trip me, but he didn’t.

Down on the sidewalk, I looked at my watch: 1:35. I walked three blocks to a place I knew about, called Mary Jane’s, where someone makes chicken pie the way my Aunt Anna used to make it in Chillicothe, Ohio, with fluffy little dumplings; and as I went through a dish of it I considered the situation. There was no point in wasting money ringing Wolfe, since he wasn’t concerned, and as for our client, there was no rush. I could call her after I reported to Wolfe. So, since I was already halfway there — well, a third of the way — why not take a look at Iron Mine Road? And maybe at the old iron mine if I could find it? If I kidnaped a man and wanted a place to keep him while I collected half a million bucks, I wouldn’t ask anything better than an abandoned iron mine. I paid for the chicken and a piece of rhubarb pie, walked to the lot where I had parked the Heron, ransomed it, and headed for Hawthorne Circle. There I took the Saw Mill River Parkway, and at its end, at Katonah, I took Route 35 east. It was a bright sunny day, and I fully appreciate things like forsythia and trees starting to bud and cows in pastures as long as I have a car that I can depend on to get me back to town. Just short of Connecticut I turned right onto Route 123, glancing at my speedometer. When I had gone a mile and a half I started looking for Iron Mine Road, and in another two-tenths there it was.

After negotiating a mile of that road I wasn’t so sure that the Heron would get me back to town. I met five cars in the mile, and for one of them I had to climb a bank and for another I had to back up fifty yards. There was no problem about spotting the scene of the crime when I finally reached it. There were eight cars strung along, blocking the road completely, none of them official. A dozen women and three or four men were standing at the roadside, at the edge of the ditch, and two men at the other side of the road were having a loud argument about who had dented whose fender. I didn’t even bother to get out. To the north was thick woods, and to the south a steep rocky slope with a swamp at the bottom. I admit I was a little vague about what an abandoned iron mine should look like, but nothing in sight looked promising. I pushed the reverse button and started backing, with care, and eventually came to a spot with enough room to turn around. On the way to Route 123 I met three cars coming in.

Of the two decisions I made going back to town, I was aware of one of them at the time I made it, which was par. That one was to take my time, with half an eye on the landscape, to see how the country was making out with its spring chores, which was sensible, since I couldn’t get to 35th Street before four o’clock and Wolfe would be up in the plant rooms, where he hates to be interrupted, especially when there’s nothing stirring that he’s concerned about. I made that decision before I reached Route 35.

I don’t know when the other decision was made. I became aware of it when I found myself in the middle lane of the Thruway, hitting sixty-five. When I’m bound for New York from Westchester and my destination is on the West Side, I take the Saw Mill all the way; when my destination is on the East Side I leave it at Ardsley and get on the Thruway. And there I was on the Thruway, so obviously I was going somewhere on the East Side. Where? It took me nearly two seconds. I’ll be damned, I told myself, I’m headed for our client’s house to tell her I identified the body. Okay, that will save a dime, the cost of a phone call. And if her husband is there and they have any questions, I can answer them face to face, which is always more satisfactory. I rolled on, to the Major Deegan Expressway, the East River Drive, and the 96th Street exit.

It was ten minutes past four when, having found a space on 81st Street I could squeeze the Heron into, I entered the vestibule of the four-story stone mansion at 994 Fifth Avenue and pushed the button. The door was opened by a square-faced woman in uniform with a smudge on her cheek. I suppose the Tedder who had had the house built, Harold F.’s father, wouldn’t have dreamed of letting that door be opened by a female, so it was just as well he wasn’t around. She had a surprise for me, though she didn’t know it. When I gave my name and I said I wanted to see Mrs. Vail, she said Mrs. Vail was expecting me, and made room for me to enter. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find once again that Wolfe thought he knew me as well as I thought I knew him, but I was. What had happened, of course, was that Mrs. Vail had phoned to ask if I had identified the body, and he had told her that I would stop at her house on the way back from White Plains, though that hadn’t been mentioned by him or me. That was how well he thought he knew me. Some day he’ll overdo it. As I have said, I hadn’t known I was going to stop at her house until I found myself on the Thruway.

As the female door-opener took my coat, a tenor voice came from above, “Who is it, Elga?” and Elga answered it, “It’s Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Tedder,” and the tenor called, “Come on up, Mr. Goodwin.” I went and mounted the marble stairs, white, wide, and winding, and at the top there was Noel Tedder. I’ve mentioned that I had seen him a few times, but I had never met him. From hearsay he was a twenty-three-year-old brat who had had a try at three colleges but couldn’t make it, who had been forced by his mother to stop climbing mountains because he had fallen off of one, and who had once landed a helicopter on second base at Yankee Stadium in the fifth inning of a ball game; but from my personal knowledge he was merely a broad-shouldered six-footer who didn’t care how he dressed when he went to the theater or the Flamingo and who talked too loud after two drinks. The tenor voice was one of those mistakes that get made when the hands are being dealt.

He took me down a wide hall to an open door and motioned me in. I crossed the sill and stopped, thinking for a second I had crashed a party, but then I saw that only five of the people in the room were alive, the rest were bronze or stone, and I remembered a picture I had seen years ago of Harold F. Tedder’s library. This was it. It was a big room, high-ceilinged, but it looked a little crowded with a dozen life-sized statues standing around here and there. If he liked company he sure had it. Mrs. Vail’s voice came, “Over here, Mr. Goodwin,” and I moved. The five live ones were in a group, more or less, at the far end, where there was a fireplace but no fire. As I approached, Mrs. Vail said, “Well?”

“It was Dinah Utley,” I said.

“What — how—”

I glanced around. “I’m not intruding?”

“It’s all right,” Jimmy Vail said. He was standing with his back to the fireplace. “They know about it. My wife’s daughter, Margot Tedder. Her brother, Ralph Purcell. Her attorney, Andrew Frost.”

“They know about Nero Wolfe,” Mrs. Vail said. “My children and my brother were asking questions, and we thought we had better tell them. Then when this — Dinah — and we’ll be asked where we were last night... I decided my lawyer ought to know about it and about Nero Wolfe. It was Dinah?”

“Yes.”

“She was run over by a car?” From Andrew Frost, the lawyer. He looked a little like the man of bronze who was standing behind his chair, Abraham Lincoln, but he had no beard and his hair was gray; and on his feet probably he wasn’t quite as tall. Presumably he had learned how Dinah had died by phoning White Plains, or from a broadcast.

“She was run over by her car,” I said.

“Her own car?”

I faced Mrs. Vail, who was sitting on a couch, slumped against cushions. “On behalf of Mr. Wolfe,” I told her, “I owe you two pieces of information. One, I looked at the corpse and identified it as Dinah Utley. Two, I told the District Attorney that I saw her yesterday afternoon when she came to Mr. Wolfe’s office in connection with a matter you had consulted him about. That’s all. I refused to tell him what the matter was or anything about it. That’s all I owe you, but if you want to know how and when and where Dinah died I’ll throw that in. Do you want it?”

“Yes. First when.”

“Between nine o’clock last evening and three o’clock this morning. That may be narrowed down later. It was murder, because her own car ran across her chest and was there, nosed into a roadside opening, when the body was found. There was a bruise on the side of her head; she was probably hit with something and knocked out before the car was run over her. Then the—”

I stopped because she had made a sound, call it a moan, and shut her eyes. “Do you have to be utterly brutal?” Margot Tedder asked. The daughter, a couple of years younger than her brother Noel, was at the other end of the couch. From hearsay, she was a pain in the neck who kept her chin up so she could look down her nose; from my personal knowledge, she was a nice slender specimen with real possibilities if she would round out a little and watch the corners of her mouth, and, seeing her walk or dance, you might have thought her hips were in a cast.

“I didn’t do it,” I told her. “I’m just telling it.”

“You haven’t said where,” Jimmy Vail said. “Where was it?”

Mrs. Vail’s eyes had opened, and I preferred to tell her, since she was the client. “Iron Mine Road. That’s a narrow rocky lane off of Route One Twenty-three. Route One Twenty-three goes into Route Thirty-five seven miles east of Katonah, not far from the state line.”

Her eyes had widened. “My God,” she said, staring at me. “They killed her.” She turned to Andrew Frost. “The kidnapers. They killed her.” Back to me. “Then you were right, what Mr. Wolfe said about suspecting her. That’s where—”

“Wait a minute, Althea,” Frost commanded her. “I must speak with you privately. This is dangerous business, extremely dangerous. You should have told me Monday when you got that note. As your counselor, I instruct you to say nothing more to anyone until you have talked with me. And I don’t— Where are you going?”

She had left the couch and was heading for the door. She said over her shoulder, “I’ll be back,” and kept going, on out. Jimmy moved. He went halfway to the door, stopped and stood, his back to us, and then came back to the fireplace. Ralph Purcell, Mrs. Vail’s brother, said something to Frost and got no response. I had never seen Purcell and knew next to nothing of him, either hearsay or personal knowledge. Around fifty, take a couple of years either way, with not much hair left and a face as round as his sister’s, he had a habit I had noticed: when someone started to say something he looked at someone else. If he was after an effect he got it; it made you want to say something to him and see if you could keep his eye.

Noel Tedder, who was leaning against George Washington, asked me, “What’s this about suspecting her? Suspecting her of what?” The lawyer shook his head at him, and Margot said, “What’s the difference now? She’s dead.” Purcell was looking at me, and I was deciding what to say to him and try to hold his eye when Mrs. Vail came in. She had an envelope in her hand. She came back to the couch, sat on the edge, and took papers from the envelope. Frost demanded, “What have you got there? Althea, I absolutely insist—”

“I don’t care what you insist,” she told him. “You’re a good lawyer, Andy, Harold thought so and so do I, and I trust your advice on things you know about, you know I do, but this is different. I told you about it because you could tell me about the legal part of it, but now I don’t need just legal advice, now that I know Dinah was killed there on Iron Mine Road. I think I need something more than legal advice, I think I need Nero Wolfe.” She turned to me. “Would he come here? He wouldn’t, would he?”

I shook my head. “He never leaves the house on business. If you want to see him he’ll be available at six—”

“No. I don’t feel like — no. I can tell you. Can’t I?”

“Certainly.” I got my notebook and pen from a pocket, went to a chair near the end of the couch, and sat.

She looked around. “I want you to hear it, all of you. You all knew Dinah. I’m sure you all thought of her as highly as I did — I don’t mean you all liked her, that’s not it, but you thought she was very competent and completely reliable. But apparently she — but wait till you hear it.” She fingered in the papers, extracted one, handed it to me, and looked around again. “I’ve told you about the note I got Monday morning saying they had Jimmy and I would get a phone call from Mr. Knapp. Nero Wolfe has it. And I’ve told you, haven’t I — yes, I did — that when the phone call came Monday afternoon Dinah listened in and took it down. Later she typed it from her notes, and that’s it. Read it aloud, Mr. Goodwin.”

A glance had shown me that the typing was the same as the note, the same faint letters, but on a better grade of paper and a different size, 8½ by 11. I read it to them:

MRS. VAIL: This is Althea Vail. Are you—

KNAPP: I’m Mr. Knapp. Did you get the note?

MRS. VAIL: Yes. This morning. Yes.

KNAPP: Is anyone else on the wire?

MRS. VAIL: No. Of course not. The note said—

KNAPP: Keep it strictly to yourself. You had better if you want to see your Jimmy again. Have you got the money?

MRS. VAIL: No, how could I? I only got the note—

KNAPP: Get it. You’ve got until tomorrow. Get it and put it in a suitcase. Five hundred thousand dollars in used bills, nothing bigger than a hundred. You understand that?

MRS. VAIL: Yes, I understand. But where is my husband? Is he—

KNAPP: He’s perfectly all right. Safe and sound, not a scratch on him. That’s absolutely straight, Mrs. Vail. If you play it straight, you can count on us. Now listen. I don’t want to talk long. Get the money and put it in a suitcase. Tomorrow evening, Tuesday, put the suitcase in the trunk of your blue sedan, and don’t forget to make sure the trunk’s locked. Take the Merritt Parkway. Leave it at the Westport exit, Route 33. You know Route 33?

MRS. VAIL: Yes.

KNAPP: Do you know where Fowler’s Inn is?

MRS. VAIL: Yes.

KNAPP: Go to Fowler’s Inn. Get there at ten o’clock tomorrow evening. Don’t get there much before ten, and not any later than five after ten. Take a table on the left side and order a drink. You’ll get a message. Understand?

MRS. VAIL: Yes. What kind of a message? How will I know—

KNAPP: You’ll know. You’re sure you understand?

MRS. VAIL: Yes. Fowler’s Inn at ten o’clock tomorrow evening. But when—

KNAPP: Just do as you’re told. That’s all.

I looked up. “That’s all.”

“But my God, Mom,” Noel Tedder blurted, “if you had told me!”

“Or me,” Andrew Frost said grimly.

“Well?” Mrs. Vail demanded. “What could you have done? Jimmy’s here, isn’t he? He’s here alive and well. I went to Nero Wolfe, I’ve told you about that, and what he did may have helped, I don’t know and I don’t care now.”

“I think you were extremely wise,” Margot Tedder said, “not to tell either of them. Mr. Frost would have tried to make you wait until he looked it up in the books. Noel would have gone to Fowler’s Inn in disguise, probably with a false beard. You went, Mother? To Fowler’s Inn?”

Mrs. Vail nodded. “I did exactly what he told me to. Of course Mr. Graham at the bank was suspicious — no, not suspicious, curious — and he wanted me to tell him what the money was for, but I didn’t. It was my money. I got to Fowler’s Inn too early, and sat in the car until ten o’clock, and then went in. I tried not to show how nervous I was, but I suppose I did; I kept looking at my watch, and at twenty after ten I was called to the phone. It was in a booth. The voice sounded like the other one, Mr. Knapp, but he didn’t say. He told me to look in the Manhattan phone book where Z begins, and hung up. I looked in the phone book, and there was a note. I have it.” She extracted another sheet of paper and handed it to me. “Read it, Mr. Goodwin.”

“Wait a minute.” It was Jimmy Vail. He had moved and was standing looking down at his wife. “I think you’d better call a halt, Al. You and I had better have a talk. Telling Goodwin all this, telling Frost — it’s not Friday yet.”

She lifted a hand to touch his arm. “I have to, Jimmy. I have to, now that Dinah — my God, they killed her! Read it, Mr. Goodwin.”

It was the same typing, and on the same cheap paper as the note that had come in the mail. I read it aloud.

“I’ll take that,” Jimmy Vail said. “And the other one.” His hand was there for them. From his tone, it seemed likely that if I tried to argue that I wanted to show them to Wolfe I would lose the debate, so I got the texts in my notebook in shorthand. That wasn’t really necessary, since after years of practice I can report long conversations verbatim, but with such documents as those it was desirable. Transferring typed text to shorthand was practically automatic, so my ears could take in what Mrs. Vail was saying:

“I did what the note said. I think a car was following me all the time, but I wasn’t sure. I think I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to be sure. The same thing happened at The Fatted Calf, the same as Fowler’s Inn. At ten minutes after eleven I was called to the phone, and the same voice told me to look in the phone book where U begins, and there was another note.” She handed it to me. “Read it.”

Same typing, same paper. I read:

“He did,” Mrs. Vail said. “He told me to drive straight back to New York, here, without stopping. He told me not to tell anyone anything until Jimmy came back or he would never come back. He said he would be back within twenty-four hours. And he was! He is! Thank God!” She put out a hand to touch her Jimmy, but had to stretch because he was sticking with me to get the notes. I was getting the last one in my notebook. The Tedder son and daughter were saying something, and so was Andrew Frost. Finishing with my shorthand, I reached around Jimmy to hand the papers to Mrs. Vail. He had a hand there, but I ignored it, and she took them. She spoke to me.

“You see why I had to tell Nero Wolfe. Or you.”

“I can guess,” I told her. “Mr. Wolfe told you we suspected that Dinah Utley was implicated in the kidnaping. Now I tell you that her body was found on Iron Mine Road, at the spot where you turned over the suitcase, or near there. That complicates your problem when Westchester County comes to ask you about Dinah Utley and why you had her go to see Mr. Wolfe, especially if you and your husband still want to save it until Friday. Haven’t they been here yet?”

“No.”

“They soon will be. As for Mr. Wolfe and me, we’ll stand pat until eleven o’clock Friday morning. He made it eleven o’clock because that’s when he comes down from the plant rooms. As for you and your husband, and now also your son and daughter and brother and lawyer, you’ll have to decide for yourselves. It’s risky to withhold information material to a murder, but if it’s for self-protection from a real danger, if you think Mr. Knapp meant business when he told your husband he’d regret it if he or you spilled it before Friday, I doubt if you’ll have any serious trouble. Is that what you want from Mr. Wolfe or me?”

“No.” She had the papers back in the envelope and was clutching it. “Only partly that. I want to know why you thought Dinah was implicated.”

“Naturally.” I put the notebook back in my pocket. “You didn’t see her there? At Iron Mine Road?”

“No, of course not.”

“Not of course not, since she was there. Was the man alone in the car behind you?”

“I didn’t see anyone else. It was dark. I wasn’t — I wasn’t caring if there was anyone else.”

“What did the man look like?”

“I don’t know. He had a coat and a hat pulled down, and his face was covered with something, all but his eyes.”

“Who left first, him or you?”

“I did. He told me to. I had to go on up the road to find a place to turn around.”

“Was his car still there when you came back past the spot?”

“Yes. He had it up against the bank so I could get by.”

“Did you see any other car anywhere on that road?”

“No.” She gestured impatiently. “What has this to do with Dinah?”

“Nothing,” Noel Tedder said. “He’s a detective. It’s his nature. He’s putting you through the wringer.”

“I insist,” Andrew Frost said emphatically, “that this is ill-advised. Very ill-advised. You’re making a mistake, Althea. Don’t you agree, Jimmy?”

Jimmy was back at the fireplace. “Yes,” he said. “I agree.”

“But Jimmy, you must see,” she protested. “She was there! And they killed her! You must see I want to know why Nero Wolfe suspected her!” To me: “Why did he?”

I shook my head. “I only run errands. But you’re welcome to a hint.” I stood up. “That phone talk you had with Mr. Knapp Monday afternoon, that Dinah listened to and took down. May I see the machine she typed it on?”

The three men spoke at once. Jimmy Vail and Andrew Frost both said, “No!” and Noel Tedder said, “Didn’t I tell you?” Mrs. Vail ignored them and asked, “Why?”

“I’ll probably tell you after I see it. And I may have a suggestion to make. Is it here?”

“It’s in my study.” She arose. “Will you tell me why you suspected Dinah?”

“I’ll either tell you or you’ll have a healthy idea.”

“All right, come with me.” She moved, paying no attention to protests from the men. I followed her out and along the hall to a door frame where she pressed a button. The door of a do-it-yourself elevator slid open, and we entered. That elevator was a much newer and neater job than the one in Wolfe’s house that took him up to his room or the roof. No noise or jiggle. When it stopped and the door opened, she stepped out and led the way down the hall, some narrower than the one below. The room we entered was much smaller than the Harold F. Tedder library. Inside, I stopped for a glance around — that’s habit. Two desks, one large and one small, shelves with books and magazines, filing cabinet, a large wall mirror, a television set on a table, framed photographs. Mrs. Vail had crossed to the small desk. She turned and said, “It’s not here! The typewriter.”

I went to her. At the end of the desk was a typewriter stand on casters. There was nothing on it. She had turned again and was staring at it. There were only two questions worth asking, and I asked them.

“Is it always kept here, or is it sometimes taken to another room?”

“Never. It is kept here.”

“When did you last see it here?”

“I don’t — I’d have to think. I haven’t been in here today, until just now, when I came to get this envelope. I didn’t notice it was gone. Sometime yesterday — I’d have to think. I can’t imagine...”

“Someone may have borrowed it.” I went to the door and turned. “I’ll report to Mr. Wolfe. If he has anything to say we’ll ring you. The main thing is we’ll stay put until Friday unless you—”

“But you’re going to tell me why you suspected Dinah!”

“Not now. Find the typewriter, and we’ll see.” I left. As I went down the hall her voice followed me, but I kept going. I was in no mood for talk. I should never have mentioned the typewriter, since it had nothing to do with the job Wolfe had been paid for, but I had wanted to get a sample from it to take along. Noel Tedder had been right; I was a detective, and it was my nature. Nuts. Skipping the elevator, I took the stairs, three flights down, and when I reached the ground floor the square-faced female appeared through an arch. She got my coat and held it, and went and opened the door; and there entering the vestibule was Ben Dykes, head of the Westchester County detectives.

I said, “Hello there. Get stopped for speeding?”

He said, “I’ve been in the park feeding pigeons. I didn’t want to butt in.”

“That’s the spirit. I fully appreciate it. May your tribe increase.” I circled around him, on out, and headed for 81st Street, where I had left the car.