Rex Stout - If Death Ever Slept

Sunday

10:00 breakfast with WJ, LJ, NK, & AG. 10:30 leaves for St. Thomas Church, 53rd & 5th Ave. After church walks home, arriving at 1:15. 1:30 lunch with OJ, WJ, & AG. Reads papers, looks at television, goes to room and takes nap, back to television at 5:30, is there with AG at 6:00 when news comes about Corey Brigham.

Thursday

9:30 breakfast with OJ, WJ, NK, & AG. 10:15 to 11:30 on terrace reading. 11:45 to 1:00 buying shoes at three shops: Zussman’s, Yorio’s, and Weeden’s. Bought seven pairs altogether, not liking to go barefoot. 1:15 lunch at party on steamship Bolivar at dock in Hudson River. 3:00 got car from garage & drove to Net Club in Riverdale, tennis until 6:00. Home at 6:35 to change. Left at 7:30 for dinner and dancing with a group at Flamingo Club; wish I had been there.

Friday

Up at 7:00 for breakfast & ride on a horse in park. Home just in time for family conference in library at 9:30. Drives to Net Club for an hour of tennis, home at 1:15. 1:45 lunch with OJ, SJ, & RF, is told to be at NW office at 6:00. 3:00 to Evangeline’s, 49th Street near Madison, to try on clothes. Home at 5:20, leaves at 5:30 with RF & NK to taxi to NW. From there on with others as under OJ.

Saturday

Up at 7:00 to ride in park, back for breakfast at 9:10 with WJ, SJ, & AG. Cancels tennis date because of party in library with asst. DA at 11:15. 1:35 lunch with others. 2:30 takes nap in her room. 4:15 goes for walk, goes to Abingdon’s & cancels Susan’s order for plants for terrace. Home at 5:45, dresses for early dinner. 8:20 goes with AG to Flamingo Club, home at 2:00 a.m.

Sunday

10:00 breakfast with WJ, SJ, NK, & AG. Goes for walk with AG, at 11:30 takes taxi to apartment of friends named Buchanan, 185 East River Drive, goes with them to Net Club for lunch, tennis, drinks. Home at 6:40, learns about Corey Brigham.

Thursday

9:30 breakfast with OJ, WJ, LJ, & AG. Library all morning, lunch alone there, remains there alone until OJ returns at 6:00. After cocktails & dinner, pinochle with TJ & RF.

Friday

8:45 breakfast. 9:30 family conference in library. 11:00 with OJ when Rowcliff comes. Lunches in library, learns caliber of bullet that killed Eber, leaves at 1:45 to go to see NW. Home at 3:10, in library until 5:30, leaves with LJ & RF to go to the meeting at NW. From there on with others as under OJ.

Saturday

8:30 breakfast with OJ, then with him to library. 10:10 WJ comes for talk with OJ & she is told to beat it. In her room until 11:15, when she joins party in library with asst. DA. 1:35 lunch with others. 2:30 back to library with OJ; he leaves at 3:40. 3:45 gets phone call from Abingdon’s about plants; she goes and cancels orders given by both SJ & LJ. Goes shopping, buys various personal items not specified. 5:45 gets home, dresses for early dinner. 7:50 leaves for meeting of Professional Women’s League at Vassar Club, 58th Street. Home at 11:10.

Sunday

10:00 breakfast with WJ, SJ, LJ, & AG. 10:50 goes to church at 5th Ave. Presbyterian, 55th St. Lunch at Borgner’s on 6th Ave., then to Picasso show at Modern Museum, 53rd St. Home at 5:00 for bridge with OJ, TJ, & WJ. At 6:10 AG announces Corey Brigham’s death.

Thursday

7:00 breakfast alone. To Jamaica race track, loses $60 I lent him, home at 6:00. After cocktails and dinner, pinochle with TJ & NK.

Friday

9:30 family conference in library, then breakfast. On terrace & in his room until 1:45, then lunch with OJ, SJ, & LJ, is told to be at NW office at 6:00. 2:50 leaves to go to 49th Street to see if he can get into Eber’s apartment to look for a record, if any, of the fact that he owed Eber $335. No luck, apartment sealed. Calls on a lawyer he knows, unnamed, to find out where he stands. Gets home at 5:00, goes to library to try to borrow $335 from OJ, is turned down. 5:30 leaves with LJ & NK for NW office.

Saturday

10:15 breakfast alone. 11:15 joins party with asst. DA in library. 1:35 lunch with others. 2:45 goes to Mitchell’s Riding Academy on West 108th Street to look at a horse. 3:45 returns home and plays solitaire in his room until time for early dinner. After dinner invites AG to play gin, AG declines. Goes to bed at 9:00.

Sunday

7:00 breakfast alone. To Belmont race track to look at horses. Home at 7:00 p.m., learns about Corey Brigham. Has given police details of his day at Belmont, but they are too confused & complicated to be worth copying.

At a quarter past ten Thursday morning, Memorial Day, I arrived at Jamaica race track to start the damnedest four days of detecting, or non-detecting, that I have ever put in.

After Wolfe had picked up the timetables, at six o’clock Wednesday, he had read them in twenty minutes, and then had gone over them for more than an hour, until dinner time. Back in the office after dinner, he had asked a few dozen assorted questions. What did I know about Mr. and Mrs. Herman Dietz? Practically nothing. Had Trella Jarrell’s hour in the park from two o’clock to three on Sunday been checked? No, and probably it never would be. If I wanted to leave a revolver in Central Park where I was reasonably certain it wouldn’t be discovered for three days, but where I could get it when I wanted it, where would I hide it? I made three suggestions, none of them any good, and said I’d have to think it over. Who was Clarinda Day? She was a woman who ran an establishment on 48th Street just off Fifth Avenue where women could get almost anything done that occurred to them — to their hair, their faces, their necks, their busts, their waists, their hips, their legs, their knees, their calves, their ankles — and where they could sweat, freeze, rest, or exercise forty-two different ways. Her customers ran all the way from stenographers to multi-millionairesses.

Did Nora Kent have keys to all the files in Jarrell’s library and the combination to the safes? Don’t know. Had a thorough search been made of the Jarrell duplex? Yes; a regiment of experts, with Jarrell’s permission, had spent all day Tuesday at it. Including the library? Yes, with Jarrell present. Who had told me so? Purley Stebbins. Where was the Metropolitan Athletic Club? Central Park South, 59th Street. How long would it take to get from where the steamship Bolivar was docked to Eber’s apartment on 49th Street? Between ten and thirty minutes, depending on traffic. Average, say eighteen minutes. How difficult would it have been for Nora Kent to get from the library to the street, and, later, back in again, without being observed? With luck, using the service entrance, fairly simple. Without luck, impossible.

Etc.

At ten-thirty Wolfe leaned back and said, “Instructions.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Before you go to bed get Saul, Fred, and Orrie, and ask them to be here at eleven in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tomorrow is a holiday. I don’t suppose Miss Bonner will be at her office. If possible, get her tonight and ask her to breakfast with me at eight.”

I looked at him. He meant business, though what business I couldn’t say. Add his opinion of women to his opinion of other detectives, and you get his opinion of female detectives. Circumstances had compelled him to use Dol Bonner a year or so back, but now he was asking for it, and even inviting her to breakfast. Fritz would be on needles.

“I have her home number,” I told him, “and I’ll try, but she may already be gone for the long week end. If so, is it urgent enough to dig her out?”

“Yes. I want her. Now for you. You will go early in the morning to Jamaica race track and—”