Rex Stout: Black Orchids

“He was a gardener and he did some chauffeuring. Then he got fired. He always said he quit, but he got fired.”

“When was that?”

“Over a year ago. Winter before last, it was. He was a good greenhouse man, and it wasn’t long before he got another job at Dill’s. That’s about two miles the other side of Richdale. He went to live there in one of the houses.”

“Did you live there with him?”

“Me?” She looked shocked and indignant. “I certainly didn’t! I was living at home!”

“I beg your pardon. How long have you been living at the place on Morrow Street?”

She shut her mouth.

“Come, Miss Lasher. Even the janitor could tell me that.”

“Look here,” she said. “Harry Gould was no good. He never was any good. I knew that all the time. But the trouble is you get started, that’s what makes the trouble, you get started and then you keep it up — even if I knew he was no good there was something about him. He always said he wasn’t the marrying kind, but when he took me to that place on Morrow Street one day — that was last June, June last year — and said he had rented it, that looked like he wanted a home and maybe to get married after a while, so I quit my job and went there to live. That’s how long I’ve been living there, nine months. At first I was scared, and then I wasn’t. There wasn’t much money, but there was enough, and then I got scared again on account of the money. I didn’t know where he got it.”

The seam had ripped and the beans were tumbling out, and Wolfe sat back and let them come.

“He came there one night — he came four or five nights a week — that was one night in December not long before Christmas — and he had over a thousand dollars. He wouldn’t let me count it, but it must have been, it might have been two or three thousand. He bought me a watch, and that was all right, but all the money did to me, it scared me. And he began to act different and he didn’t come so often. And then about a month ago he told me he was going to get married.”

Her lips went tight and after a moment she swallowed.

“Not to you,” Wolfe said.

“Oh, no.” She made a noise. “Me? Not so you could notice it. But he wouldn’t tell me her name. And he kept having money. He didn’t show it to me any more, but several times at night I looked in his pockets and he had a bankbook with over three thousand dollars in it and he always had a big roll of bills. Then yesterday I saw a picture of him in the paper, at the Flower Show with that girl. He hadn’t said a word to me about it, not a word. And he hadn’t been to Morrow Street for nearly a week, and he didn’t come last night, so I went there today to see, and there he was in there with her. When I saw him in there with her I wanted to kill him, I tell you that straight, I wanted to kill him!”

“But you didn’t,” Wolfe murmured.

Her face worked. “I wanted to!”

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” she said, “I didn’t.”

“But someone did.” Wolfe’s voice was silky. “He was murdered. And naturally you are in sympathy with the effort to find the murderer. Naturally you intend to help—”

“I do not!”

“But my dear Miss Lasher—”

“I’m not your dear Miss Lasher.” She leaned to him from the edge of the chair. “I know what I am, I’m a bum, that’s what I am and I know it. But I’m not a complete dumbbell, see? Harry’s dead, ain’t he? Who killed him I don’t know, maybe you did, or maybe it was that ten-cent Clark Gable there that thinks he’s so slick he can slide uphill. Whoever it was, I don’t know and I don’t care, all I care about now is one thing, my folks aren’t going to know anything about all this, none of it, and if it gets so I can’t help it and they find out about it, all they’ll have left to do with me is bury me.”

She straightened up. “It’s my honor,” she said. “It’s my family’s honor.”

Whether that came from the movies or wherever it came from, that’s exactly what she said. I suspected the movies, considering her cheap crack about me being a ten-cent Clark Gable, which was ridiculous. He simpers, to begin with, and to end with no one can say I resemble a movie actor, and if they did it would be more apt to be Gary Cooper than Clark Gable.

Anyhow, that’s what she said. And apparently she meant it, for although Wolfe went on patiently working at her he didn’t get much. She didn’t know why Harry had been fired from Hewitt’s, or where his sudden wealth had come from, or why he had carefully saved that garage job-card, or why he had been interested in the Kurume yellows, which she had never heard of, and above all she couldn’t remember anyone or anything she had seen while she was hiding in the corridor. Wolfe kept at her, and it looked as if she was in for a long hard night.

Around eleven o’clock an interruption arrived in the shape of Saul Panzer. I let him in and he went to the office. With one glance of his sharp gray eyes he added Rose to his internal picture gallery, which meant that she was there for good, and then stood there in his old brown suit — he never wore an overcoat — with his old brown cap in his hand. He looked like a relief veteran, whereas he owned two houses in Brooklyn and was the best head and foot detective west of the Atlantic.

“Miss Rose Lasher, Mr. Saul Panzer,” Wolfe said. “Archie, get me the atlas.”

I shrugged. One of his favorite ways of spending an evening was with the atlas, but with company there? Muttering, “Mine not to reason why,” I took it to him, and sat down again while he went on his trip. Pretty soon he closed it and shoved it aside, and addressed Rose:

“Was Mr. Gould ever in Salamanca, New York?”

She said she didn’t know.

“Those letters, Archie,” Wolfe said.

I got the pile and gave him half and kept half for myself and ran through the envelopes. I was nearly at the bottom when Wolfe emitted a grunt of satisfaction.

“Here’s a postcard he sent you from Salamanca on December 14th, 1940. A picture of the public library. It says, Will be back tomorrow or next day. Love and kisses. Harry.’”

“Then I guess he was there,” Rose admitted sullenly.

“Archie, give Saul a hundred dollars.” Wolfe handed Saul the postcard and the garage job-card. “Go to Salamanca. Take a plane to Buffalo and hire a car. Do you know what Harry Gould looked like?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Note the dates — but I don’t need to tell you. Go up there and get all you can. Phone me on arrival.”

“Yes, sir. If necessary do I pay for it?”

Wolfe grimaced. “Within reason. I want all I can get. Make it two hundred, Archie.”

I counted ten twenties into Saul’s hand from the stack I got from the safe, and he stuffed it into his pocket and went, as usual, without any foolish questions.

Wolfe resumed with Rose, after ringing for beer. First he spent five minutes trying to get her to remember what Harry had gone to Salamanca for, or anything he had said to her about it, but that was a blank. No savvy Salamanca. Then he returned to former topics, but with a series of flanking movements. He discussed cooking with her. He asked about Harry’s abilities and experience as a gardener, his pay, his opinion of Hewitt and Dill, his employers, his drinking habits and other habits.

I was busy getting it down in my notebook, but I certainly wasn’t trembling with excitement. I knew that by that method, by the time dawn came Wolfe could accumulate a lot of facts that she wouldn’t know he was getting, and one or two of them might even mean something, but among them would not be the thing we wanted most to know, what and who she had seen in the corridor. As it stood now we didn’t dare to let the cops get hold of her even if we felt like it, for fear Cramer would open her up by methods of his own, and if he learned about the stick episode his brain might leap a barricade and spoil everything. And personally I didn’t want to toss her to the lions anyhow, even after that Clark Gable crack.