Rex Stout - Plot It Yourself

In the state he was in now, he would have been willing to try one or more of the routine lines, even one the cops had already covered or were covering, if it had offered any hope at all We discussed all of them, and I made a list:

1. Combing Rennert’s apartment and Jane Ogilvy’s cloister.

2. Trying to pry something out of Mrs. Jacobs and Mrs. and Mrs. Ogilvy.

3. Getting the names of everybody who had known of the plan to go after Jacobs, analyzing them, and seeing those who were at all possible.

4. Trying to trace Jacobs to his meeting with X Monday evening, May 25th.

5. Trying to find someone who had seen a car parked in the lane back of the cloister Wednesday evening, May 27th.

6. Trying to find someone who had seen X, any stranger, entering the 37th Street building Wednesday night, May 27th.

7. Seeing a few hundred of the friends and associates of Jacobs, Jane Ogilvy, and Rennert, to find out if all three of them had been acquainted with a certain person or persons.

8. Trying to learn how Jacobs and Jane Ogilvy had disposed of the loot they got from Richard Echols and the estate of Marjorie Lippin; and supposing they had transferred a big share of it to X, trying to trace the transfers. Also the loot Alice Porter had got from Ellen Sturdevant.

9. Trying on Alice Porter the approach we had meant to try on Jane Ogilvy. Or trying to throw a scare into her. Or trying to get from Ellen Sturdevant and her publishers, McMurray & Co., an agreement not to prosecute or demand repayment if Alice Porter would identify X.

10. Get a membership list of the NAAD and go over it, name by name, with Cora Bollard.

11. Have a couple of hundred copies made of “There Is Only Love,” “What’s Mine Is Yours,” and “On Earth but Not in Heaven,” and send them to editors and book reviewers, with a letter citing the internal evidence that they had all been written by the same person, and asking if they knew of any published material, or, with editors, submitted material, apparently by that person.

During the discussion of this last item Wolfe had before him the manuscripts of the first two, and the copy of the third, they having been returned by Cramer Friday afternoon as agreed.

There were other suggestions that I didn’t bother to put down. To each of the items listed I could have added the objections and difficulties, but they’re so obvious, especially to the routine ones, the first eight, that I didn’t think it was necessary.

The stymie was the motive. In ninety-nine murder investigations out of a hundred it gets narrowed down before long to just a few people who had motives, often only two or three, and you go on from there. This time the motive had been out in full view from the start; the trouble was, who had it? It could be anyone within reach who could read and write and drive a car — say five million in the metropolitan area, and except for Alice Porter there was absolutely no pointer. She was still alive at midnight Sunday. Orrie Gather, phoning from Carmel at 12:23 to report that Saul Panzer had relieved him on schedule, said that the light in the house had gone out at 10:52 and all had been quiet since. Wolfe had gone up to bed, leaving it that we would decide in the morning how to tackle Alice Porter.

In the kitchen at a quarter to nine Monday morning, as I was pouring a third cup of coffee, Fritz asked me what I was nervous about. I said I wasn’t nervous. He said of course I was, I had been jerky for the last ten minutes, and I was taking a third cup of coffee. I said everybody in that house was too damned observant He said, “See? You’re very nervous” — and I took the coffee to the office.

I was nervous. Fred Durkin had phoned at 7:39 to say that he was on his way to relieve Saul, and Dol Bonner was with him, and Saul should have phoned by 8:20 to report, certainly not later than 8:30, and he hadn’t. He still hadn’t at 8:45. If it had been Fred or Orrie I would have thought it was probably some little snag like a flat tire, but Saul has never had a flat tire and never will. At nine o’clock I was sure there was some kind of hell to pay. At 9:15 I was sure that Alice Porter was dead. At 9:20 I was sure that Saul was dead too. When the phone rang at 9:25 I grabbed it and barked at it, “Well?” — which is no way to answer a phone.

“Archie?”

“Yes.”

“Saul. We’ve got a circus up here.”

I was so relieved to hear that all he had was a circus that I grinned at him. “You don’t say. Did you get bit by a lion?”

“No. I got bit by a deputy sheriff and a state cop. Fred didn’t show, and at eight-fifteen I went to where my car was hid. He was there, refusing to answer questions being asked by a deputy sheriff of Putnam County. Standing by was an old friend of yours, Sergeant Purley Stebbins.”

“Oh. Ah.”

“Yeah. Stebbins told the DS that I was another one of Nero Wolfe’s operatives. That’s all Stebbins said the whole time. He was leaving it to the DS, who said plenty. Evidently Fred had shown his driving license and then clammed. I thought that was a little extreme, especially with Stebbins there, and I supplied some essential details, but that didn’t help any. The DS took both of us for trespassing and loitering, and then he added disturbing the peace. He used the radio in his car, and pretty soon a state cop came. On that dirt road it was a traffic jam. The state cop brought us to Carmel, and we are being held. This is my phone call to my lawyer. Apparently the DS is going to loiter near that house, and maybe Stebbins is too. On the way here we stopped for a couple of minutes on the blacktop where another state car was parked behind Dol Bonner’s car at the roadside. Where she had had it behind some trees I suppose she was trespassing. She and a state cop were standing there chatting. If they have brought her on to Carmel I haven’t seen her. I’m talking from a booth in the building where the sheriff’s office is. The number of the sheriff’s office is Carmel five-three-four-six-six.”

When Saul makes a report there is nothing left to ask about. I asked. “Have you had any breakfast?”

“Not yet. I wanted to get you first. I will now.”

“Eat plenty of meat. We’ll try to spring you by the Fourth of July. By the way, did you see Alice Porter before you left?”

“Sure. She was mowing the lawn.”

I said that was fine, hung up, sat for two minutes looking at it, went to the stairs and mounted three flights to the plant rooms, and entered. At that point there were ten thousand orchid plants between me and my goal, many of them in full bloom, and the dazzle was enough to stop anyone, even one who had seen it as often as I had, but I kept going — through the first room, the moderate, then the tropical, and then the cool — on into the potting room. Theodore was at the sink, washing pots. Wolfe was at the big bench, putting peat mixture into flasks. When he heard my step and turned, his lips tightened and his chin went up. He knew I wouldn’t mount three flights and burst in there for anything trivial.

“Relax,” I said. “She’s still alive, or was two hours ago. Mowing the lawn. But Saul and Fred are in the hoosegow, and Dol Bonner is having an affair with a state cop.”

He turned to put the flask he was holding on the bench, and turned back. “Go on.”

I did so, repeating verbatim what Saul and I had said. His chin went back to normal, but his lips stayed tight. When I finished he said, “So you regard my giving up meat as a subject for jest.”

“I do not. I was being bitter.”

“I know you. That deputy sheriff is probably an oaf. Have you phoned Mr. Parker?”

“No.”