Rex Stout - Where There's a Will

“Right.” I got up. “Good night, gentlemen, and good luck. You can imagine how I felt when I realized that when I reached across the bar for that bottle of MacNeal’s the body was right there — already there on the floor, dead — must have been — okay, I’m going, sorry if I irritated you—”

Grier followed me out and told the cop at the entrance door to let me through to freedom. Outside another pair of cops looked me over as I went by. There was still a row of P.D. cars parked at the curb. I walked to the corner and flagged a taxi. On the way downtown the driver wanted to chat about the murder, but the best I had to offer was ill-natured grunts.

I inserted my key and turned it and the knob, but the door opened two inches and stopped. The chain was on. So I leaned on the bell. In a second there were steps in the hall, and Fritz’s eye was at the crack, peering at me.

“Ah, Archie?” He sounded relieved. “Are you alone?”

“No, I’ve got a machine-gun squad. Open up!”

He did so. I left the closing to him and proceeded. The office was dark. I entered the kitchen. It was illuminated and smelled good as usual, and the French newspaper Fritz had been reading was on a chair. He trotted in and I confronted him.

“What time did Wolfe get home?”

“At 6:40. There’s some duckling left, and some cheese cake, if you—”

“No, thanks. I had some lovely sandwiches.” I got the jug from the refrigerator and poured a glass of milk. “What time did he go to bed?”

“Soon after eleven. He said he was tired. He ate with me in the kitchen, not to have a light in the dining room, because he said the police were after him. Is he in danger, Archie? Is it perhaps that we—”

“Sure he’s in danger. Gulosity. Forget it. What the dickens is that thing?”

I went closer to inspect it: a branch of something a foot long, with a dozen twigs on it, a lot of little dark green leaves, and many tiny thorns that looked sharp, there on top of the low cabinet in a vase of water. Fritz said he didn’t know what it was; that Fred Durkin had brought it and Wolfe had put it in the vase, with some remark about ripening the seeds.

“Oh,” I said, “then it must be a clue. Fred’s a wonder for collecting clues. I’ll bet a nickel those little stickers are Haw thorns. So it’s a haw. Haw haw. What time did Fred report?”

“About half past ten. He had quite a few clues in a bag. And Saul came a little earlier and talked with Mr. Wolfe. Also Johnny telephoned.” Fritz glanced at the pad which he kept beside the phone. “At 10:46 — Oh, here, something for you—” He took a piece of paper from under the pad and handed it to me.

I looked at it.

Archie :

I am not at home.

I tossed it in the trash basket. “Haw haw haw haw,” I observed, and went up to bed.

In the morning I half expected a summons to the bedroom when Fritz returned from delivering the breakfast tray, but there was none. I thought, all right, if the big buffalo wants to pretend it’s just another Sunday morning I can too, and settled down in the kitchen to enjoy my anchovy omelet with a half a dozen pictures and three full pages of text regarding the Dunn-Hawthorne-Stauffer-Karn affair in the morning paper. Someone in Rockland County had talked, and the suspicion of foul play in Hawthorne’s death was also loose, so it was a regular picnic.

Any fear that Wolfe had actually dived into a relapse was removed a little after nine o’clock, when Orrie Cather and Fred Durkin arrived simultaneously and told me they had been instructed to report and await orders. I was plenty relieved, but I was still determined that if communication was going to be re-established it wouldn’t be through any advances by me. I knew he was up in the plant rooms because I had heard his elevator. Then I took a step. A phone call came from Inspector Cramer. I talked with him, and hung up, and buzzed the plant rooms on the inside wire. Wolfe answered.

I addressed him formally. “Good morning, sir. Inspector Cramer of the homicide squad just phoned that he was up all night, he wants to see you, and he will be here probably a little after twelve. He is working on a murder case. There are two kinds of detectives that work on homicides. One kind hastens to the scene of a murder. The other kind hastens away from it. Inspector Cramer is the first kind.”

“I said in that note that I’m not at home.”

“You can’t continue being not at home indefinitely. Are there any orders for Fred and Orrie?”

“No. Have them wait.”

The receiver went dead.

An hour later, at the customary time, eleven o’clock, his elevator descended and he entered the office. I waited until he was holding his chair down and then stated to him:

“I see you intend to brazen it out. I admit nothing is to be gained by a prolonged controversy. All I say is, that was the most preposterous goddam performance in the entire history of the investigation of crime. That’s all. Now for my report—”

“There was nothing preposterous about it. It was the only sensible—”

“You couldn’t sell me that in a thousand years. Do you want my report?”

He sighed, leaned back, and half closed his eyes. He looked as fresh as a daisy, and about as shamefaced as a fan dancer. “Go ahead.”

I gave it to him, complete, from memory, for I had made no notes. It took quite a while. He asked no questions and let me go to the end without any interruption. When I was through he said again, sat up, and rang for beer.

“It’s hopeless,” he declared. “You say they sent for you last? They had interviewed all the others?”

“I think so. Certainly most of them. I think all of them.”

“It’s hopeless. I mean for us. With tenacity and perseverance the police may break that circle, but I doubt it. It’s welded too tight. They were all there in the country when Hawthorne was killed. They were all in that house when Miss Karn died. Too many of them. I might get the truth if I worked hard enough for it, but what would I do with it? Could I establish it? How? They don’t want it, not even Dunn himself, though he thinks he does. And I don’t want it myself if I can’t use it. Especially at the price it would cost. Do I?”

“No, sir. But you could use a little deposit at the bank.”

“I’m aware of that. But the death of Miss Karn makes it impossible to proceed even with the matter of the will. If she left a will herself — pfui! It’s hopeless.”

“Then what are Fred and Orrie sitting around for, at eight bucks a day? Local color?”

“No. I’m hanging on until I see Mr. Cramer. And others who’ll be coming before the day’s out. Two or three of them, I fancy, will want to see me.”

“They sure will,” I agreed. “Stauffer will want to bribe you. Daisy will want to sell you another cornflower. And of course Sara will want you to recover her camera. Oh, I forgot to mention that. She told me somebody stole her camera.”

“Miss Dunn? When?”

“Last night just before they sent for me. I mean she told me then. It was yesterday afternoon she missed the camera from her room there in the house. Also two rolls of film she had in her bag or suitcase. She said she asked everybody, including the servants, but no soap.”

“Had the rolls of film been exposed?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to ask her, because we were interrupted by Cramer sending for me.”

“Get Miss Dunn. At once.”

I stared. “She didn’t offer any reward for its recovery.”

“Get her, please! This is our first chance to pick up something that was dropped. It may be only a thieving servant, but I doubt it, with the films gone too. Do the others know she told you about it?”