Trio for Blunt Instruments

8

IF YOU EVER NEED an operative and only the best will do, get Saul Panzer if you can. If Saul isn’t available, get Fred Durkin or Orrie Cather. That was the trio who entered James Neville Vance’s apartment with me at a quarter past ten Thursday morning.

What made the entry legal was that when I rang the bells, both downstairs and upstairs, the doors were opened from the inside. Who opened them was Rita Fougere. Upstairs she held it open until we were in and then closed it. I preferred not to touch the door-not that it mattered, but I like things neat.

The door shut, Rita turned to me. She still had those eyes, but the lids were puffy, and her face had had no attention at all. “Where’s Martin?” she asked. Her soft little voice was more like a croak. “Have you heard from him?”

I shook my head. “As Mr. Wolfe told you last evening, he’s being held as a material witness. Getting a lawyer to arrange for bail would cost money-his money. This will be cheaper and better if it works. Mr. Wolfe told you that.”

“I know, but… what if it doesn’t?”

“That’s his department.” I turned. “This is Mr. Panzer. Mr. Durkin. Mr. Cather. They know who you are. As you know, you’re to stay put, and if you’d like to help you might make some coffee. If the phone rings answer it. If the doorbell rings don’t answer it. Right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Gentlemen, sic ‘em.”

The way you prowl a place depends on what you’re after. If you’re looking for one large item, say a stolen elephant, of course it’s simple. The toughest is when you’re just looking. We did want one specific item, a necktie, but also we wanted anything whatever that might help, no matter what, and Saul and Fred and Orrie had been thoroughly briefed. So we were just looking after Saul found the necktie, and that means things like inspecting the seams of a mattress and unfolding handkerchiefs and flipping through the pages of books. It takes a lot longer when you are leaving everything exactly as it was.

We had been at it over an hour when Saul found the tie. I had shown them the seven on the rack in the closet so they would know what it looked like. Saul and Orrie were up in the studio, and when I heard them coming down the spiral stair I knew they had something and met them at the foot, and Saul handed it to me. It was folded, and pinned to it was one of Vance’s engraved letterheads, on which Saul had written: “Found by me at 11:25 A.M. on August 9, 1962, inside a piano score of Scriabin’s Vers la Flamme which was in a cabinet in the studio of James Neville Vance at 219 Horn Street, Manhattan, New York City.” He had signed it with his little twirl on the tail of the z.

“You’re my hero,” I told him. “It would be an honor to tie your shoestrings and I want your autograph. But you know how Orrie is on gags and so do I. We’ll take a look.”

I entered the bedroom, with them following, and went to the closet. The seven were still on the rack; I counted them twice. “Okay,” I told Saul, “it’s it. I’ll vote for you for President.” I took the seven from the rack and handed them to him. “Here, we’ll take them along.”

After that it was just looking, both in the apartment and in the studio, and that gets tedious. By two o’clock it was damn tedious because we were hungry and we had decided not to take time out to eat, but Cramer had agreed to keep Vance for six hours, and while we had Exhibit A and that was all Wolfe really expected, an Exhibit X would be deeply appreciated. So we kept at it.

A little before three o’clock I was standing in the middle of the living room frowning around. Rita was lying on a couch with her eyes closed. Fred was up in the studio with Saul and Orrie. I was trying to remember some little something that had been in my mind an hour ago, and finally I did. When Fred had taken a pile of gloves from a drawer he had looked in each glove but hadn’t felt in it, and he hadn’t taken them to the light. I went to the bedroom, got the gloves from the drawer, took them to the window, and really looked; and in the fifth glove, a pigskin hand-sewed number, there was Exhibit X. When I saw it inside the glove I thought it was just a gob of some kind of junk, but when I pulled it out and saw what it was I felt something I hadn’t felt very often, a hot spot at the base of my spine. I don’t often talk to myself either, but I said aloud, “Believe it or not, that’s exactly what it is. It has to be.” I put it back in the glove, put the glove in my pocket, returned the other gloves to the drawer, went to the phone on the bedstand, and dialed a number.

Wolfe’s voice came: “Yes?” I’ve been trying for years to get him to answer the phone properly.

“Me,” I said. “We’ll be there in less than half an hour. Saul found the tie. It was in a piano score in a cabinet in the studio. I just found Exhibit X. I can tell you what he did. After he killed her he cut off a lock of her hair with blood on it, plenty of blood, and took it for a keepsake. After the blood was dry he put it inside one of his gloves in a drawer, which is where I found it. That has to be it. You may not believe it till you see it, but you will then.”

“Indeed.” A pause. “Satisfactory. Very satisfactory. Bring the glove.”

“Certainly. A suggestion-or call it a request. Tell Cramer to have him there at a quarter after four, or half past. We’re starving, including Mrs. Fougere, and we need time-”

“You know my schedule. I’ll tell Mr. Cramer six o’clock. Fritz will-”

“No.” I was emphatic. “For once you’ll have to skip it. The six hours is up at four o’clock, and if you put it off until six Cramer may let him go home, with or without an escort, and he might find that both the tie and the keepsake are gone. Would that be satisfactory?”

Silence. “No.” More silence. “Confound it.” Still more. “Very well. Fritz will have something ready.”

“Better make it half past and-”

He had hung up.