When a Man Murders…

IV

Since this is a democracy, thank God, please prepare to vote. All those in favor of my describing in full detail my efforts to the utmost, lasting a good five hours, to fill Wolfe’s order for three males and two females, say aye. I hear none. Since my eardrums are sensitive I won’t ask for the noes.

Then I’ll sketch it. James M. Beebe, I found, was not one of the machines in one of the huge legal factories that occupy so many floors in so many of New York’s skyscrapers. He was soloing it in a modest space on the tenth floor of a midtown building. The woman in the little anteroom, the only visible or audible employee, with a typewriter on her left and a telephone on her right, said Mr. Beebe would be back soon, and, if you call thirty-five minutes soon, he was.

The inner room he led me to must have been a little cramped with a conference of six people. Its furniture was adequate but by no means ornate. Beebe, who had looked runty alongside Mrs. Savage, could not be called impressive seated at his desk, with a large percentage of the area of his thin face taken up by the black-rimmed glasses. When I showed him my credentials, a note signed by Caroline Karnow saying that Nero Wolfe was acting for her, and told him that Wolfe would like to discuss the situation with those chiefly concerned at his office that afternoon or evening, he said that he understood that the police investigation was making progress, and that he questioned the wisdom of an investigation of a murder by a private detective.

Wise or not, I said, Mrs. Karnow surely had the right to hire Wolfe if she wanted to. He conceded that. Also surely the widow of his former friend and client might reasonably expect him to cooperate in her effort to discover the truth. Wasn’t that so?

He looked uncomfortable. He saw that a pencil on his desk was not in its proper place, and moved it, and studied it a while to decide if that was the best spot after all. At length he came back to me.

“It’s like this, Mr. Goodwin,” he piped. “I sympathize deeply with Mrs. Karnow, of course. But any obligation I am under is not to her, but to my late friend and client, Sidney Karnow. I certainly will do anything I can to help discover the truth, but it is justifiable to suppose that in employing Nero Wolfe Mrs. Karnow’s primary purpose, if not her sole purpose, is to save Paul Aubry. As an officer of the law I cannot conscientiously participate in that. I am not Aubry’s attorney. I beg you to understand.”

I kept after him. He stood pat. Finally, following instructions from Wolfe, I put a question to him.

“I suppose,” I said, “you won’t mind helping to clear up a detail. At a conference in this room last Friday afternoon Aubry left one of his business cards on your desk. It was there when he left. What happened to it?”

He cocked his head and frowned. “Here on my desk?”

“Right.”

The frown deepened. “I’m trying to remember — yes, I do remember. He suggested I might phone him later, and he put it there.”

“What happened to it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you phone him?”

“No. As it turned out, there was no occasion to.”

“Would you mind seeing if the card is around? It’s fairly important.”

“Why is it important?”

“That’s a long story. But I would like very much to see that card. Will you take a look?”

He wasn’t enthusiastic about it, but he obliged. He looked among and under things on top of his desk, including the blotter, in the desk drawers, and around the room some — as, for instance, on top of a filing cabinet. I got down on my knees to see under the desk. No card.

I scrambled to my feet. “May I ask your secretary?”

“What’s this all about?” he demanded.

“Nothing you would care to participate in. But the easiest way to get rid of me is to humor me on this one little detail.”

He lifted the phone and spoke to it, and in a moment the door opened and the employee entered. He told her I wanted to ask her something, and I did so. She said she knew nothing about any card of Paul Aubry’s. She had never seen one, on Beebe’s desk or anywhere else, last Friday or any other day. That settled, she backed out, pulling the door with her.

“It’s a little discouraging,” I told Beebe. “I was counting on collecting that card. Are you sure you don’t remember seeing one of the others pick it up?”

“I’ve told you all I remember — that Aubry put a card on my desk.”

“Was there an opportunity for one of them to pick it up without your noticing?”

“There might have been. I don’t know what you’re trying to establish, Mr. Goodwin, but I will not be led by you to a commitment, even here privately. Probably during the meeting here on Friday I had occasion to leave this chair to get something from my files. I won’t say that gave someone an opportunity to remove something from my desk, but I can’t prohibit you from saying so.” He got to his feet. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

“So am I,” I said emphatically.

I arose and turned to go, but halfway to the door his voice came. “Mr. Goodwin.”

I turned. He had left his chair and was standing at the end of the desk, stiff and straight. “I’m a lawyer,” he said in a different tone, “but I am also a man. Speaking as a man, I ask you to consider my position. My friend and client has been murdered, and the police are apparently convinced that they have the murderer in custody. Nero Wolfe, acting for Mrs. Karnow, wants to prove them wrong. His only hope of success is to fasten the guilt elsewhere. Isn’t that the situation?”

“Roughly, yes.”

“And you ask me to cooperate. You mentioned a conference in this office last Friday. Besides myself, there were five people here — you know who they were. None of them was, or is, my client. They were all dismayed by the return of Sidney Karnow alive. They were all in dread of personal financial calamity. They all asked me, one way or another, to intercede for them. I have of course given this information to the police, and I see no impropriety in my giving it also to Nero Wolfe. Beyond that I have absolutely no information or evidence that could possibly help him. I tell you frankly, if Paul Aubry is guilty I hope he is convicted and punished; but if one of the others is guilty I hope he — or she — is punished, and if I knew anything operant to that end I certainly would not withhold it.”

He lifted a hand and dropped it. “All I’m trying to say — as a lawyer I’m not supposed to be vindictive, but as a man perhaps I am a little. Whoever killed Sidney Karnow should be punished.” He turned and went back to his chair.

“A damn fine sentiment,” I agreed, and left him.

On the way to the next customer I found a booth and phoned Wolfe a report. All I got in return was a series of grunts.

The house Mrs. Savage had bought was in the Sixties, over east of Lexington Avenue. I am not an expert on Manhattan real estate, but after a look at the narrow gray brick three-layer item my guess was that it had set her back not more than a tenth of her three hundred thousand, not counting the mortgage. When there was no answer to my rings I felt cheated. I hadn’t expected anything as lavish as a dolled-up butler, but not even a maid to receive detectives?

It was only a ten-minute walk to the Park Avenue address of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Horne. My luck stayed stubborn. The hallman said they were both out, phoned up at my request, and got no answer.

I like to walk around Manhattan, catching glimpses of its wild life, the pigeons and cats and girls, but that day I overdid it, back and forth between my two objectives. Finally, from an ambush in a hamburger hell on Sixty-eighth Street, where I was sipping a glass of milk, I saw Aunt Margaret navigate the sidewalk across the street and enter the gray brick. I finished the milk, crossed over, and pushed the button.

She opened the door a few inches, thought she saw a journalist, said, “I have nothing to say,” and would have closed the door if it hadn’t been for my foot.

“Wait a minute,” I objected. “We’ve been introduced — by your daughter, this morning. The name is Archie Goodwin.”

She let the door come another inch for a better view of me, and the pressure of my foot kept it going. I crossed the threshold.

“Of course,” she said. “We were rude to you, weren’t we? The reason I said I have nothing to say, they tell me that’s what I must say to everybody, but it’s quite true that my daughter introduced you, and we were rude. What do you want?”

She sounded to me like a godsend. If I could kidnap her and get her down to the office, and phone the rest of them that we had her and she was being very helpful, it was a good bet that they would come on the run to yank her out of our clutches.

I gave her a friendly eye and a warm smile. “I’ll tell you, Mrs. Savage. As your daughter told you, I work for Nero Wolfe. He thinks there are some aspects of this situation that haven’t been sufficiently considered. To mention only one, there’s the legal principle that a criminal may not profit by his crime. If it should be proved that Aubry killed your nephew, and that Mrs. Karnow was an accessory, what happens to her half of the estate? Does it go to you and your son and daughter, or what? That’s the sort of thing Mr. Wolfe wants to discuss with you. If you’ll come on down to his office with me, he’s waiting there for you. He wants to know how you feel about it, and he wants your advice. It will only take us—”

A roar came from above. “What’s going on, Mumsy?”

Heavy feet were descending stairs behind Mrs. Savage in a hurry. She turned. “Oh, Dickie? I supposed you were asleep.”

He was in a silk dressing gown that must have accounted for at least two Cs of Cousin Sidney’s dough. I could have choked him. He had been there all the time. After ignoring all my bell ringing for the past two hours, here he was horning in just when I was getting a good start on a snatch.

“You remember Mr. Goodwin,” his mother was telling him. “Down at that place this morning? He wants to take me to see Nero Wolfe. Mr. Wolfe wants to ask my advice about a very interesting point. I think I should go, I really do.”

“I don’t,” Dick said bluntly.

“But Dickie,” she appealed, “I’m sure you agree that we should do all we can to get this awful business over and done with!”

“Sure I do,” he conceded. “God knows I do. But how it could help for you to go and discuss it with a private detective — No, I don’t see it.”

They looked at each other. The mutual resemblance was so remarkable that you might say they had the same face, allowing for the difference in age; and also they were built alike. Her bulk was more bone and meat than fat, and so was his.

When she spoke I got a suspicion that I had misjudged her. Her tone was new, dry and cool and meaningful. “I think I ought to go,” she said.

He appealed now. “Please, Mumsy. At least we can talk it over. You can go later, after dinner.” He turned to me. “Could she see Wolfe this evening?”

“She could,” I admitted. “Now would be better.”

“I really am tired,” she told me. Her tone was back to what might have been normal. “All this awful business. After dinner would be better. What is the address?”

I got my wallet, took out a card, and handed it to her. “By the way,” I observed, “that reminds me. At that meeting last Friday at Mr. Beebe’s office, Aubry put one of his cards on Beebe’s desk and left it there. Do you happen to remember what became of it?”

Mrs. Savage said promptly, “I remember he took out a card, but I don’t—”

“Hold it,” Dick barked at her, gripping her arm so hard that she winced. “Go upstairs.”

She tried to twist loose, found it wouldn’t work, and leveled her eyes at him to stare him off. That didn’t work either. His eyes were as level as hers, and harder and meaner. Four seconds of it was enough for her. When he turned her around she didn’t resist, and without a word she walked to the stairs and started up. He faced me and demanded, “What’s this about a card?”

“What I said. Aubry put one on Beebe’s desk—”

“Who says he did?”

“Aubry.”

“Yeah? A guy in for murder? Come again.”

“Glad to. Beebe says so too.”

Dick snorted. “That little louse? That punk?” He lifted a hand to tap my chest with a finger, but a short backward step took me out of range. “Listen, brother. If you and your boss think you can frame an out for Aubry don’t let me stop you, but don’t come trying to work my mother in, or me either. Is that plain?”

“I merely want to know—”

“The way out,” he said rudely, and strode to the door and opened it. Since I stay where I’m not wanted only when there is a chance of gaining something, I took advantage of his courtesy and passed on through to the sidewalk.

I was getting low on prospects. Back at the Park Avenue address, where the hallman and I were by now on intimate terms, he informed me that Mrs. Horne had come in, and he had told her that Mr. Goodwin had called several times and would return, and she had said to send me up.

At Apartment D on the twelfth floor I was admitted by a maid, properly outfitted, who showed me to a living room where a slice of Karnow’s money had been used with no great taste but a keen eye to comfort. I sat down, and almost at once got up again when Ann Horne entered. She met me and let me have a hand.

“We’ll have to hurry,” she said. “My husband may be home any minute. What do you do first, rubber hose?”

She was wearing a nice simple blue dress that either was silk or wanted to be, and had renovated her make-up since coming in from the street.

“Not here,” I told her. “Get the stole. I’m taking you to a dungeon.”

She flowed onto a couch. “Sit down and describe it to me. Rats, I hope?”

“No, we can’t get rats to stay. Bad air.” I sat. “As a matter of fact, I’ve decided the physical approach wouldn’t work with you, and we’re going after you mentally. That’s Mr. Wolfe’s department, and he never leaves the house, so I’ve come to take you down there. You can leave word for your husband, and he can join us.”

“That doesn’t appeal to me at all. Mentally I’m a wreck already. What’s the matter, are you afraid I can’t take it?”

“On the contrary, I’m afraid I can’t give it. Nature went to a lot of trouble with you, and I’d hate to spoil it. You’d enjoy a session with Nero Wolfe. He’s afraid of women anyhow, and you’d scare him stiff.”

She pulled a routine that I approved of. Knowing that if she took a cigarette I’d have to get up to light it, she first picked up a lighter and flicked it on, and then reached to a box for the cigarette. A darned good idea.

“What’s the score?” she asked, after inhaling and letting it out.

I told her. “Paul Aubry is charged with murder. Mr. Wolfe can earn a big fee only by clearing him. Mr. Wolfe has never let a big fee get away. So Aubry will be cleared. We’ll be glad to let you share the glory, though not the fee. Get the stole, and let’s go.”

“You’re irresistible,” she said admiringly. “It’s too bad about Paul.”

“Not at all. When he gets out he can marry his wife.”

“If he gets out. Do you remember nursery rhymes?”

“I wrote them.”

“Then of course you remember this one:

“Sure, that’s one of my favorites. Only Aubry didn’t murder.”

She nodded. “That’s your line, of course, and you’re stuck with it.” She reached to crush her cigarette in a tray, then suddenly turned to me with her eyes flashing. “All this poppycock! All this twaddle about life being sacred! For everybody there’s just one life that’s sacred, and everybody knows it! Mine!” She spread her hand on her breast. “Mine! And Sidney’s was sacred to him, but he’s dead. So it’s too bad about Paul.”

“If you feel that way about it you ought to be ready to give him a lift.”

“I might be if I had anything to lift with.”

“Maybe I can furnish something. Last Friday you were at a conference at Jim Beebe’s office. Aubry put one of his business cards on Beebe’s desk. Why did you pick up that card, and what did you do with it?”

She stared at me a moment. Then she shook her head. “You’ll have to get out the rubber hose, or pliers to pull out my nails. Even then I may hold out.”

“Didn’t you pick up the card?”

“I did not.”

“Then who did?”

“I have no idea — if there was a card.”

“You don’t remember Aubry putting it on the desk? Or seeing it there?”

“No. But this begins to sound like something. You sound as if you’re really detecting. Are you?”

I nodded. “This is called the double sly squeeze. First I get you to deny you touched the card, which I have done. Then I display one of Aubry’s cards in a cellophane envelope, tell you it has fingerprints on it which I suspect are yours, and dare you to let me take your prints so I can check. You’re afraid to refuse—”

“Come and show me how you take my prints. I’ve never had it done.”

I was, I admit it, curious. Was she inviting physical contact because she was like that, or was she expecting to voodoo me, or was she merely passing the time? To find out I got up and went to her, took her offered hand and got it snugly in mine, palm up, and bent over it for a closeup. The hand seemed to be telling me that it didn’t mind the operation at all, and with the fingertips of my other hand I spread her fingers apart, bending lower.

Of course I was concentrated on the job. Whether the door from the outside hall to the foyer was opened so quietly that no sound came, or whether my ears caught a sound but I ignored it, what interrupted my investigation was her sudden tight grip on my hand as she straightened up and cried, “Don’t! You’re hurting me! Norman — thank God!”

My whirl around was checked for a second by her hold on my hand. For her size and sex she had muscle. I suppose to Norman Horne, approaching from behind me, it could have looked as if I were holding her, instead of her me, but even so it must have been obvious that I was turning, and he might have held his fire until I could at least see it coming. As it was, I was off balance when he plugged me on the side of the jaw, and I went clear down, sprawling. Added to the four touchdowns he had scored for Yale against Princeton, that made five.

“He was trying to force me—” Ann was saying with her sense of humor.

Probably I would have scrambled to my feet and departed, since Wolfe wouldn’t have appreciated my letting my personal feelings take charge when I was on a job, if it hadn’t been for Horne’s attitude. He was glaring down at me, with his fists ready, and it was doubtful if he would wait till I got farther up than on my knees. So I did a quick double roll, sprang all the way up, and faced him. He came at me wide open, as if I had been a dummy, and swung. There wouldn’t have been the slightest excuse for my missing the exact spot for a dead kidney punch, and I didn’t. Air exploded out of him, and he crumpled, not sprawling, but in a compact heap. Then he sort of settled to get comfortable.

His attractive wife took a couple of steps toward him, stopped to look at me, and said, “I’ll be damned.”

“You will if they consult me,” I told her emphatically, turned, went to the foyer and got my hat, and let myself out. On the way down in the elevator I felt my jaw and took a look at it in the mirror, and decided I would live.

I got home just at the dinner hour, seven-thirty, and since it takes an earthquake to postpone a meal in that house, and no mention of business is permitted at the table, my full report of the afternoon had to wait. If the main dish had been something like goulash or calves’ brains probably nothing unusual in my technique would have been apparent, but it was squabs, which of course have to be gnawed off the bones, and while I was working on the second one Wolfe demanded, “What the deuce is the matter with you?”

“Nothing. What?”

“You’re not eating, you’re nibbling.”

“Yeah. Broken jaw. With the compliments of Ann Horne.”

He stared. “A woman broke your jaw?”

“Sorry, no shoptalk at meals. I’ll tell you later.”

I did so, in the office, after dinner, and after I had looked into a little matter I was wondering about. I had obeyed the instruction, given me before lunch, to phone Saul Panzer, and Saul had said he would be at the office at two-thirty. By that time I had left. When, on the way from the dining room to the office, I asked Wolfe if Saul had come, he replied in one word, “Yes,” indicating that that was all I needed to know about it. Thinking it wouldn’t hurt me any to know more, I went and opened the safe and got out the little book from the cash drawer. Sometimes, in addition to the name and date and amount, Wolfe scribbles something about the purpose, but that time he hadn’t. The latest entry was merely the date and “SP $1000.” All that did was make me wonder further what Saul was expected to buy that might cost as much as a grand.

As I reported on my afternoon rounds, giving all conversations verbatim, which isn’t so hard when you’ve had plenty of practice and have learned that nothing less will be acceptable, Wolfe leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed. He was too damn placid. Ordinarily, when he sends me out for bacon and I return empty-handed, he makes some pointed cracks, no matter how hopeless he knows my errand was; but that time, not a one. That meant either that he didn’t like the job and to hell with it, or that I was just a sideshow, including my sore jaw, and the main attraction was elsewhere. When I was through he didn’t open his eyes or ask a single question.

I groaned with pain. “Since it’s obvious that I wasted five hours of your time, and since if I stay here I may say something that will rile you, I guess I’ll go see Doc Vollmer and have him set my jaw. He’ll probably have to wire it.”

“No.”

“No what?”

He opened his eyes. “I’m expecting a phone call. Probably not until tomorrow, but it could come this evening. If it does I’ll need you.”

“Okay, I’ll be upstairs.”

I mounted the two flights to my room, turned on the lights, went to the bathroom mirror to see if there was enough swelling for a compress, decided there wasn’t, and settled myself in my easy chair with a collection of magazines.

Nearly two hours had gone by, and I was yawning, when a sound came faintly through the open door — the sound of Wolfe’s voice. I went and lifted the phone on my bedside table and put it to my ear. It was dead. I had neglected to plug it in when I left the office. It would have been undignified to go to the hall, to the stair landing, and listen, so I did; but though Wolfe’s voice came up at intervals I couldn’t get the words. After enough of that I returned to the room and the easy chair, but had barely lowered myself into it when a bellow from below came.

“Archie! Archie!”

I did not descend the stairs three steps at a time, but I admit I didn’t mosey. Wolfe, at his desk, spoke as I entered the office. “Get Mr. Cramer.”

Getting Inspector Cramer of Homicide, day or night, may be very simple or it may be impossible. That time it was in between. He was at his office on Twentieth Street, but in conference and not available, so I had to bear down and make it plain that if he didn’t speak with Nero Wolfe immediately God only knew what tomorrow’s papers would say.

In a couple of minutes his familiar growl was growling at me. “Goodwin? Is Wolfe on?”

I nodded at Wolfe, and he took up his phone. “Mr. Cramer? I don’t know if you know that I’m investigating the Karnow murder. For a client. Mrs. Karnow engaged me at noon today.”

“Go ahead and investigate. What do you want?”

“I understand that Mr. Aubry is being held on a murder charge, without bail. That’s regrettable, because he’s innocent. If you are supporting that charge I advise you to reconsider. On the soundness of that advice I stake my professional reputation.”

I would have paid admission to see Cramer’s face. He knew Wolfe would rather go without eating a whole day than be caught wrong in a flat statement like that.

“That’s all I wanted, your advice.” The growl was still a growl, but not the same. “Is it all right if I wait till morning to turn him loose?”

“Formalities may require it. May I ask a question? How many of the others — Mrs. Savage, her son, Mr. and Mrs. Horne, Mr. Beebe — have been eliminated by alibis?”

“Crossed off, no one. But Aubry not only has no alibi, he admits he was there.”

“Yes, I know. However, it was one of the others. I must now choose between alternatives. Either I proceed independently to disclose and hand over the culprit, or I invite you to partake. Which would you prefer?”

It was nearly silence, but I thought I could hear Cramer breathe. “Are you saying you’ve got it?”

“I’m saying I am prepared to expose the murderer. It would be a little simpler if you can spare the time, for I must have them here at my office, and for you that will be no problem. If you care to take part could you get them here in half an hour?”

Cramer cussed. Since it’s a misdemeanor to use profanity over the phone, and since I don’t want to hang a misdemeanor rap on an inspector, I won’t quote it. He added, “I’m coming up there. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“You won’t get in.” Wolfe wasn’t nasty, but he was firm. “If you come without those people, or without first assuring me that they will be brought, Mr. Goodwin won’t even open the door to the crack the chain bolt will permit. He’s in a touchy mood because a man hit him on the jaw and knocked him down. Nor am I in any humor to wrangle with you. I gave you your chance. Do you remember that when you were here this morning I told you that I had the last letter Mrs. Karnow received from her husband, and offered to show it to you?”

“Yes.”

“And you said you weren’t interested in a letter Karnow wrote nearly three years ago. You were wrong. I now offer again to show it to you before I send it to the District Attorney, but only on the condition as stated. Well?”

I’ll say one thing for Cramer, he knew when he was out of choices, and he didn’t try to prolong it. He cussed again and then got it out. “They’ll be there, and so will I.”

Wolfe hung up. I asked him, “What about our client? Hadn’t she better be present?”

He made a face. “I suppose so. See if you can get her.”