Рекс Стаут: Murder Is Corny

“Confound it,” he growled. “How much of what you told Mr. Cramer was flummery?”

“None. All straight. But he’s on me and so is the DA, and I’ve got to find out why.” I sipped milk.

He was eying me. “You will see Miss McLeod in the office.”

“The front room will do. It may be an hour. Two hours.”

“You may need the telephone. The office.”

If I had been myself I would have given that offer a little attention, but I was somewhat pooped. So I went, taking my half a glass of milk. The door to the office was closed and, entering, I closed it again. She wasn’t in the red leather chair. Since she was there for me, not for Wolfe, Fritz had moved up one of the yellow chairs for her, but hearing the door open and seeing me she had sprung up, and by the time I had shut the door and turned she was to me, gripping my arms, her head tilted back to get my eyes. If it hadn’t been for the milk I would have used my arms for one of their basic functions, since that’s a sensible way to start a good frank talk with a girl. That being impractical, I tilted my head forward and kissed her. Not just a peck. She not only took it, she helped, and her grip on my arms tightened, and I had to keep the glass plumb by feel since I couldn’t see it. It wouldn’t have been polite for me to quit, so I left it to her.

She let go, backed up a step, and said, “You haven’t shaved.”

I crossed to my desk, sipped milk, put the glass down, and said, “I spent the night at the district attorney’s office, and I’m tired, dirty, and sour. I could shower and shave and change in half an hour.”

“You’re all right” She plumped onto the chair. “Look at me.”

“I am looking at you.” I sat. “You’d do fine for a before-and-after vitamin ad. The before. Did you get to bed?”

“I guess so, I don’t know.” Her mouth opened to pull air in. Not a yawn, just helping her nose. “It couldn’t have been a jail because the windows didn’t have bars. They kept me until after midnight asking questions, and one of them took me home. Oh yes, I went to bed, but I didn’t sleep, but I must have, because I woke up. Archie, I don’t know what you’re going to do to me.”

“Neither do I.” I drank milk, emptying the glass. “Why, have you done something to me?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Of course not.”

“It came out. You remember you explained it for me one night.”

I nodded. “I said you have a bypass in your wiring. With ordinary people like me, when words start on their way out they have to go through a checking station for an okay, except when we’re too mad or scared or something. You may have a perfectly good checking station, but for some reason, maybe a loose connection, it often gets bypassed.”

She was frowning. “But the trouble is, if I haven’t got a checking station I’m just plain dumb. If I do have one, it certainly got bypassed when the words came out about my going to meet you there yesterday.”

“Meet me where?”

“On Forty-eighth Street. There at the entrance to the alley where I used to turn in to deliver the corn to Rusterman’s. I said I was to meet you there at five o’clock and we were going to wait there until Ken came because we wanted to have a talk with him. But I was late, I didn’t get there until a quarter past five, and you weren’t there, so I left.”

I kept my shirt on. “You said that to whom?”

“To several people. I said it to a man who came to the apartment, and in that building he took me to downtown I said it to another man, and then to two more, and it was in a statement they had me sign.”

“When did we make the date to meet there? Of course they asked that.”

“They asked everything. I said I phoned you yesterday morning and we made it then.”

“It’s just possible that you are dumb. Didn’t you realize they would come to me?”

“Why, of course. And you would deny it But I thought they would think you just didn’t want to be involved, and I said you weren’t there, and you could probably prove you were somewhere else, so that wouldn’t matter, and I had to give them some reason why I went there and then came away without even going in the restaurant to ask if Ken had been there.” She leaned forward. “Don’t you see, Archie? I couldn’t say I had gone there to see Ken, could I?”

“No. Okay, you’re not dumb.” I crossed my legs and leaned back. “You had gone there to see Ken?”

“Yes. There was something — about something.”

“You got there at a quarter past five?”

“Yes.”

“And came away without even going in the restaurant to ask if Ken had been there?”

“I didn’t — Yes, I came away.”

I shook my head. “Look, Sue. Maybe you didn’t want to get me involved, but you have, and I want to know. If you went there to see Ken and got there at a quarter past five, you did see him. Didn’t you?”

“I didn’t see him alive.” Her hands on her lap, very nice hands, were curled into fists. “I saw him dead. I went up the alley and he was there on the ground. I thought he was dead, but, if he wasn’t, someone would soon come out and find him, and I was scared. I was scared because I had told him just two days ago that I would like to kill him. I didn’t think it out, I didn’t stop to think, I was just scared. I didn’t realize until I was several blocks away how dumb that was.”

“Why was it dumb?”

“Because Felix and the doorman had seen me. When I came I passed the front of the restaurant, and they were there on the sidewalk, and we spoke. So I couldn’t say I hadn’t been there and it was dumb to go away, but I was scared. When I got to the apartment I thought it over and decided what to say, about going there to meet you, and when a man came and started asking questions I told him about it before he asked.” She opened a fist to gesture. “I did think about it, Ardue. I did think it couldn’t matter to you, not much.”

That didn’t gibe with the bypassing-the-checking-station theory, but there was no point in making an issue of it. “You thought wrong,” I said, not complaining, just stating a fact “Of course they asked you why we were going to meet there to have a talk with Ken, since he would be coming here. Why not here instead of there?”

“Because you didn’t want to. You didn’t want to talk with him here.”

“I see. You really thought it over. Also they asked what we wanted to talk with him about. Had you thought about that?”

“Oh, I didn’t have to. About what he had told you, that I thought I was pregnant and he was responsible.”

That was a little too much. I goggled at her, and my eyes were in no shape for goggling. “He had told me that?” I demanded. “When?”

“You know when. Last week. Last Tuesday when he brought the corn. He told me about it Saturday — no, Sunday. At the farm.”

I uncrossed my legs and straightened up. “I may have heard it wrong. I may be lower than I realized. Ken Faber told you on Sunday that he had told me on Tuesday that you thought you were pregnant and he was responsible? Was that it?”

“Yes. He told Carl too — you know, Carl Heydt He didn’t tell me he had told Carl, but Carl did. I think he told two other men too — Peter Jay and Max Maslow. I don’t think you know them. That was when I told him I would like to kill him, when he told me he had told you.”

“And that’s what you told the cops we wanted to talk with him about?”

“Yes. I don’t see why you say I thought wrong, thinking it wouldn’t matter much to you, because you weren’t there. Can’t you prove you were somewhere else?”

I shut my eyes to look it over. The more I sorted it out, the messier it got. Mandel hadn’t been fooling when he asked the judge to put a fifty-grand tag on me; the wonder was that he hadn’t hit me with the big one.