Where There's a Will

Chapter 16

There was an instant’s silence and then Sara Dunn popped out of her chair and pretended she was a cyclone.

At that, she was young and active, and might have presented difficulties if her hands had been free to continue with my face where Daisy had left off the day before, but she was using them to collect snapshots. She had the envelope containing the film and the discards in one hand, and was reaching for the remaining six with the other, when I gathered her in. I did it promptly and neatly, with my left arm clamping both her arms and her body above the waist, and my right hand smothering her mouth and nose and pushing the back of her head into my ribs. She couldn’t even kick, because my knees had her legs pinned against the desk.

Wolfe asked, “Are you hurting her?”

“Not to speak of.”

He grunted, got up and came around the desk, and retrieved the envelope from her left hand. There wasn’t much grip in her fingers on account of the pressure on her arm. Then he collected the six pictures she hadn’t got hold of, dropped them into the envelope, crossed to the safe, put the envelope in a drawer, and closed the safe door.

He ambled back to his chair and deposited himself, and told me with a frown, “I don’t like the look on your face when you’re doing things like that. Turn her loose.”

“She may scream.”

“Then hold on a minute.” He directed his eyes at hers. “You have done everything you can, and it cannot be undone. I’m going to finish this business as soon as possible. None of your family — your father and mother and brother — will suffer by it, nor will you. But I don’t want any talk about those pictures. Furthermore, you are not to leave this house. The attempt to steal that film shows that the murderer is aware of the blunder he made. He doesn’t know where the pictures are and I don’t want him to know just yet, but he knows that anything seen by your camera was seen by you too. He’s a bungler and an ass, but that merely increases your danger. Unless you promise not to leave this house, I’ll have to feed the police a lot of stuff they’re not prepared to digest, to let them take the responsibility for your death instead of me — Let her go, Archie.”

She was half Hawthorne and there was no telling about her reactions, so I unwrapped my arms and retreated two paces simultaneously. But she ignored me completely. She straightened up there against the desk, inhaled with a couple of gasps to catch up on her oxygen, and sputtered at Wolfe:

“You said he.”

Wolfe shook his head. “You’ll have to wait, Miss Dunn. It will be ticklish going. I’m paying you a compliment by not having Mr. Goodwin tape your mouth shut and lock you in upstairs. I’m going by your eyes. You’re not to leave this house, and you’re to tell no one about those pictures—”

The door burst open and John Charles Dunn stumbled in, with May and June, Celia Fleet, and Osric Stauffer at his heels. He didn’t literally stumble, but he did run into a chair, and then stopped and grabbed the back of it and stood there and said:

“I got tired waiting. We got tired waiting.”

Sara looked at him, at his sagging face and bloodshot eyes, and then made a dive for him, crying out, “Daddy! Daddy dear!”

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Apparently the professional fiend acting that way served to release tension all around. Dunn put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and made noises in his throat. Celia Fleet stared at them and chewed on her lower lip. Stauffer glared around with eyes as bloodshot as Dunn’s. June sat down and got out her handkerchief and wiped off two tears that had started down her cheeks. May marched up to the desk and said to Wolfe in a biting and contemptuous tone:

“I didn’t want to come here. My sister and brother-in-law insisted on it. Which was it, funk or treachery?”

“Now, Miss Hawthorne—” Stauffer approached remonstrating, “That won’t help the situation—”

“April’s arrested,” June blurted. “They’ve arrested her!”

I was trying to help out by pushing chairs behind knees here and there. They certainly were a woebegone outfit.

“She’s not arrested,” Dunn said as he sank into a chair without looking at it. Still a lawyer, in misfortune up to his chin. “She was asked to go to the district attorney’s office and she went. But the way it stands now—”

“I tell you, John,” May snapped at him, “before we tell this man anything, we should demand a satisfactory explanation—”

“Nonsense,” Stauffer sputtered irritably. “Damn it all, you talk as if we could choose—”

“Please, all of you!” Wolfe pushed air with his palm. “Stop jabbering. Your minds aren’t working.” He looked at May. “Apparently, Miss Hawthorne, you are resentful because when we found Miss Karn’s dead body I came home to think it over instead of sitting there all night starving and twiddling my thumbs. I thought you had more sense. To answer your question, it was neither funk nor treachery; it was wit. Anyhow, I’m not answerable to you. You, with others, engaged me to negotiate with Miss Karn, but Miss Karn is dead. Mr. Dunn engaged me to investigate the murder of Noel Hawthorne.” He looked at Dunn. “Am I still so engaged?”

“Yes. Of course.” Dunn didn’t sound very enthusiastic. “But I don’t know what you can do — Prescott’s down there with April—”

“Let’s clear the air a little,” Wolfe suggested. “April is in no danger whatever, except of being annoyed.”

They all stared at him. May demanded, “How do you know that?”

“I know more than that,” Wolfe assured her. “But that’s what I give you now. Accept it; it’s good — Next, Mr. Dunn, I offer you a suggestion. Yesterday Mr. Goodwin found Miss Karn seated in the living room, talking with April Hawthorne who was disguised with a veil to pass as Mrs. Noel Hawthorne.”

Dunn nodded. “That was one thing—”

“One thing you came here now to see me about. Of course. But my suggestion: Mr. Goodwin, on an impulse, parted the draperies that conceal the bar, and saw Mr. Stauffer standing there. Last evening Stauffer offered Goodwin a thousand dollars not to tell the police about it. Goodwin refused the bribe, but he didn’t tell the police, and I didn’t tell Inspector Cramer when he called on me this morning. But we might strike a bargain with Stauffer. Since he was Hawthorne’s deputy in the foreign department of Daniel Cullen and Company, he must know the truth about that leakage on the Argentine loan. If it happened as you suspected yesterday, when Mrs. Hawthorne was found—”

“You’re way behind,” Stauffer interrupted gruffly.

Wolfe’s brow lifted. “Behind?”

“Yes. You’re going to suggest that Dunn forces me to tell the truth about the loan business by threatening to inform the police that I was hiding behind that curtain when Naomi Karn was there. Aren’t you?”

“I thought we might try that.”

“Well, you’re late. As long as Hawthorne was alive it was impossible for me to tell Dunn about it, I simply couldn’t, but I told him this morning, and we confronted Mrs. Hawthorne with it and made her sign a statement. That was what made her vindictive enough to go to the police with a bunch of lies—”

“We don’t know that she lied,” May objected. “Even if she stuck to the truth, it’s enough to challenge Wolfe’s statement that April’s in no danger—”

“Let’s clean up as we go along,” Wolfe put in. “Then you’re clear on the affair of the loan, Mr. Dunn?”

“I’m clear of perfidy,” Dunn said gloomily, “but I let that damned woman make a fool of me. And anyway, with all this — it’s all over—”

“Not quite,” Wolfe declared. “It won’t be all over until I’m through with it. With luck even, you should be able to sleep tonight, or tomorrow at the latest. But you can help me remove a few obstructions — excuse me—”

The phone was ringing. I got my receiver at my ear, but he must have been on edge, for he reached for his extension without waiting for me. I said, “Office of Nero Wolfe—”

“Saul Panzer, Archie. Three-eighteen. I’m reporting from—”

Wolfe’s voice cut him off: “Hold the wire.” Wolfe dropped his instrument on its cradle, arose from his chair, said curtly, “No record, Archie,” and made for the door. Fritz, who had been hovering, left the room with him. I plugged in the kitchen extension, kept the receiver to my ear until I heard Wolfe’s voice and Saul’s answering him, and hung up.

May Hawthorne said incisively, “He’s a mountebank. Talk of our sleeping tonight! I tell you, someone must do something! Prescott down there with April! He may be a good lawyer, but he’s not up to this. And Andy’s a child. And this windbag of a Wolfe — bah! We’re sunk, damn it!”

Dunn muttered at her, without conviction, “He says April is in no danger—”

“Bluff!” May snorted. “My God, if the best we can do in the face of calamity is sit here and listen—”

“Be quiet, May,” June put in with quiet authority. “Quit ragging. You know very well it’s Nero Wolfe or nothing. What has anyone else been able to offer except well-meaning condolence? If we’re sunk, we’re sunk. You stop digging at John. He was on the verge of a collapse before this happened.” Her eyes left her sister, to look at her daughter, and her voice changed. “Sara dear. I don’t like to ask you what you came here for, but I’d like to know. Mr. Wolfe sent for you. Didn’t he?”

“Yes.” Sara was on a chair next to her father. “He wanted to ask me something. About my camera being stolen. You remember I spoke about it yesterday, and last evening I told Mr. Goodwin. Of course that was all I could tell Mr. Wolfe, that it was gone and I had no idea who took it.”

So they discussed the camera. There had been two murders, an estate of millions had apparently gone up the flue as far as they were concerned, Dunn was tumbling headlong off of a national eminence, their April was being questioned by the police as a suspect, and they discussed the camera. That would have been all right if they had had any idea of its relation to the cataclysm, but as far as I could tell nobody had. They were still discussing it when Wolfe came back in.

He got into his chair and looked around at the faces. “Now,” he said brusquely, “let’s tidy up a little. First, Mrs. Hawthorne’s vindictiveness after you cornered her on that loan business. I suppose one of the things she told the police was about the cornflower Andy found hanging on a briar, and April’s wearing a bunch of cornflowers Tuesday afternoon which had been presented to her by Mr. Stauffer.”

There were stares and two or three exclamations. Stauffer started, “How the devil—”

Wolfe wiggled a finger. “Let me go on. I’m not trying to stagger you with effects. I got that story firsthand, from Mrs. Hawthorne herself yesterday. Did she give it to the police?”

“Yes, she did,” June replied.

“Describing, of course, the scene she saw through a window Tuesday evening, when Andy exhibited the cornflower to you and your husband and told where he had found it. I suppose the police questioned you about that?”

“Yes.”

“Did you admit it?”

“Of course not. It wasn’t true. We denied it.”

“All three of you?”

“Yes.”

Wolfe grunted. “That’s bad. You’re going to regret that.”

“Why should we regret it, since we merely—”

“Merely told the truth, Mrs. Dunn? Oh, no. You lied. Don’t take me for a fool. You shouldn’t even take Mr. Cramer for a fool. Mrs. Hawthorne didn’t invent that story. The fact is, you should have told me about it yourself, since you were hiring me for this job. And you’ll tell me the truth now, or you’ll get out of my office and take the job with you. I’m not being high-handed just for the devil of it. It’s important, it may even be vital, that I have a statement from you, your husband and your son, that that cornflower was found there and all three of you saw it. Well?”

“It’s a trick,” May snapped.

“Pfui!” Wolfe made a face at her. “This thing is turning you into a dunce. I don’t play tricks on clients.” He looked at June. “Well?”

Dunn demanded, “Do you have any basis for your assertion that April is not in danger?”

“I do. I’m not disclosing it, but I have it. You’d better either acquire some confidence in me, sir, or fire me.”

“All right. Andy found a cornflower there and showed it to my wife and me.”

“Tuesday evening, as Mrs. Hawthorne said?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I threw it in the fireplace.”

“Do you confirm that, Mrs. Dunn?”

June hesitated a second and then said firmly, “Yes.”

“Good.” Wolfe frowned at her. “You’ll have to eat your denial to the police, but that’s your fault. You had hired me and you should have consulted me. Next: Your sister’s masquerade as Mrs. Hawthorne. Mr. Goodwin saw her there with Miss Karn, came straight to the library, and saw Mrs. Hawthorne with me. He ascertained that the one in the library was the real Mrs. Hawthorne by trying to lift her veil. You heard her scream. We concluded that the counterfeit downstairs must be April, the accomplished actress. Did Mrs. Hawthorne give that to the police too?”

“Yes,” June replied.

“How did she know about it?”

“Turner told her. The butler. I happened to be in the entrance hall when Miss Karn arrived and said she wanted to see Mrs. Hawthorne. I told Turner to put Miss Karn in the living room and I would attend to it. On my way upstairs I had an idea. Daisy was in the library with you. The idea was for April to get a dress and veil from Daisy’s room and see Miss Karn and find out what she had to say. I found her in May’s room and suggested it, and they approved. Mr. Stauffer was there too, and he—”

“I didn’t,” Stauffer put in curtly. “I mean I didn’t approve. I strongly disapproved. I went down and entered the bar from the rear and stayed there behind the curtain as a protection for April. Goodwin saw me there.”

“And Turner?” Wolfe asked June.

“I don’t think he suspected anything when he saw April come downstairs. She was perfect. She always is. But he knew Daisy was in the library at a moment when she was also in the living room, for he saw her there when he went to tell you that one of your men had arrived. He couldn’t tell his mistress about it at once, for he didn’t know which one was her, but he told her later.”

“And now she has told the police.”

“Yes.”

“And you have all been questioned.”

“Yes.”

“And you have, I hope — except Mr. Stauffer — told it just as it happened.”

“Of course not. We denied it.”

“Good heavens.” Wolfe sighed and compressed his lips. “You have denied the whole thing?”

“Yes.”

“April too?”

“Yes.”

“And Turner presumably is a mealymouthed liar?”

“No. He must — we merely said — he must be mistaken.”

“God bless you.” Wolfe was disgusted. “He’d better. You merely said! It’s a wonder you’re not all locked up! Was Prescott in on this?”

“No. No one knew of it except April and May and me — and Mr. Stauffer. Not even my husband, until this morning.” June fluttered a hand at him. “And I appeal to you, Mr. Wolfe, to — to understand. Ordinarily I’m not a fool, none of us is. But we’ve been so shocked and bewildered and helpless — all the sense we had was knocked out of us. For my husband and me this came at the end of months of frightful strain — you must understand—”

She faltered to a stop. Wolfe said gruffly, “My understanding wouldn’t help you any. You can get that anywhere. Tell me what Miss Karn said to your sister disguised as Mrs. Hawthorne.”

“She wanted a million dollars.”

“You mean she offered to sign over all but a million?”

“Yes. She said the offer you had made her was ridiculous, but she would be satisfied with a million. April left soon after Mr. Goodwin saw her there, because she knew he would see Daisy in the library. She told Miss Karn she was going upstairs to consult with us about her offer, but she went straight to Daisy’s room and got rid of the dress and veil.”

“And you, Mr. Stauffer? How long did you stay behind the curtain?”

“I stayed a while because I thought April might come back. Then when Goodwin looked in and saw me, I realized that she wouldn’t. I left a few seconds after that, by the rear.”

“Miss Karn was there sitting on a chair when you left?”

“I suppose she was. I didn’t see her.”

Wolfe’s gaze swept the faces. “Here’s a question for all of you. When Mr. Goodwin left the living room after a brief conversation with Miss Karn, it was ten minutes past three. Has anyone admitted seeing her there, alive, after that?”

They all shook their heads. Dunn said, “Prescott tells me that Davis said Miss Karn was not in the living room when he entered it a little before five o’clock.”

“Did Turner take Davis to the living room?”

“No. They let me read Turner’s statement. Davis entered the living room alone and Turner went upstairs to find Prescott.”

“Does Davis admit that?”

“He hasn’t admitted anything. They can’t find him. At least they hadn’t found him at noon today.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe’s eyes half closed. “Do you know where he is?”

“Of course not. How could I?”

“I don’t know, I’m asking. I should think Prescott might know. Davis bolted out of the library yesterday at a quarter to six, and Prescott went after him a moment later. What about that?”

“Prescott says he reached the entrance hall just as Davis was opening the front door to leave. He called to him, but Davis went on out without answering. Turner was there and his statement verifies that. Stauffer and I were in the living room with that police lieutenant and Ritchie of the Cosmopolitan Trust. I myself heard Prescott’s voice calling Davis’s name, and went to the hall and asked him to join us in the living room. A few minutes later we sent Turner upstairs to ask you to come down.” Dunn’s voice was better, and a gleam of life, even intelligence, was showing itself in his eyes. He fixed them on Wolfe, calculating, and suddenly demanded, “What about Davis?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Nothing much. Curiosity. The fact that he can’t be found—”

“I don’t believe it.” Dunn’s voice was getting obstreperous. “Your man was telling you something about Davis yesterday — about finding him somewhere drunk. If you expect me to have confidence in you, at least you can give me an idea of what—”

“No, I can’t!” Wolfe cut him off. “What good will an idea do you? I’ll give you something much better than an idea, as soon as I can, and I’ll let you know when it’s ready. You ought to eat something.” He looked around. “All of you. Eat something and take off your shoes and lie down a while.”

“My Lord,” May Hawthorne said. “If you’re a humbug you’re a good one. It’s four o’clock and you’re going upstairs to your orchids.”

“I am,” Wolfe agreed. “And arrange a few things, including my mind.” He arose, and looked at Sara. “If you’ll come with me, Miss Dunn? You said you’d like to.”