Рекс Стаут - The Final Deduction

He hadn’t mentioned it to me; it would have been admitting that Jimmy Vail’s death might possibly be of interest to us. We had several books on toxicology on the shelves, but he hadn’t been here yesterday, so he must have found one when he was going over Doc Vollmer’s shelves. I had had personal experience of chloral hydrate, having once been served a Mickey Finn by a woman named Dora Chapin. Two hours after I had swallowed it you could have rowed me out to Bedloe’s Island and pushed the Statue of Liberty onto me and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

Wolfe was going on. “So that Mr. Vail was murdered with deliberation may properly be called a deduction, not an assumption. Not a final deduction, but a basic one, for it is the ground for my assumptions. Whether you like it or not, do you concur?”

“I don’t know.” Tedder’s tongue showed between his lips. “Go on with your assumptions.”

“They’re purely tentative, to establish a starting point. But first another deduction, made three days ago, on Tuesday, by Mr. Goodwin and me. Dinah Utley, your mother’s secretary, was implicated in the kidnaping, and not indirectly or passively. She had an active hand in it. Her death—”

“How do you know that?”

“By observed evidence and interpretation of it. I’ll reserve it. I’m exposing my position, Mr. Tedder, because I have to if you’re going to occupy it with me, but I need not reveal all the steps that have led to it. I’m taking your good faith as a working hypothesis, but there is still that conjecture — that you had a part in the kidnaping and you know where the money is. If so, it was an egregious blunder to come to me. I’ll get my share of the money, and you’ll get your share of doom. Do you want to withdraw before I commit myself to this mad gamble? Do you want to leave?”

“Hell no. You talk a lot and you talk big.”

“I hope to the point — our starting point. I am almost there. Miss Utley was involved in the kidnaping and was murdered. Mr. Vail was the victim of the kidnaping and was murdered. My assumptions are, first, that both murders were consequential to the kidnaping operation; and second, that the person who killed Mr. Vail, with premeditation since he drugged him, being involved in the kidnaping, knows where the money is. He was present at the gathering at that house Wednesday evening. Therefore, if we are to find the money, our starting point is that house and its occupants. If you will proceed from that point with me, I’ll accept your proposal.”

Tedder was chewing his lips. “Jesus,” he said. He chewed some more. “The way you put it... I guess I’m in over my head. You’re saying one of them killed Jimmy — Uncle Ralph or Frost or my sister.”

“Or your mother or you.”

“Sure, we were there.” He shook his head. “Holy Christ. My mother, that’s crazy. Me, I liked Jimmy. He couldn’t see me, but I liked him. Uncle Ralph—”

“That’s irrelevant, Mr. Tedder. The murder resulted from the kidnaping — my assumption. The kidnaper wished him no harm and rendered him none; he only wanted the money. Logically that excludes your mother, but not you. There are several possibilities. For one, Miss Utley was killed because she demanded too large a share of the loot. For another, Mr. Vail was killed because he had learned that one of those present Wednesday evening was responsible for the kidnaping, and of course that wouldn’t do. We ignore the mysterious Mr. Knapp perforce, because we don’t know who or where he is. Presumably he was a confederate whose chief function was to make the phone calls, but he may also have got the money from your mother, since he spoke to her, and if he has bolted with it, we’re done before we start. We could expose the murderer, to no profit, but that’s all. I say ‘we.’ Is it ‘we’? Do we proceed?”

“How?”

“First I would need to speak at length, separately, with those who were present Wednesday evening, beginning with you. You would have to bring them here, or send them, by some pretext — or some inducement, perhaps a share of the money. Then I’ll see.”

“Great. Just great. I ask them — my sister, for instance — to come and let you grill her to find out if she kidnaped Jimmy and then killed him. Great.”

“You might manage to put it more tactfully.”

“Yeah, I might.” He leaned forward. “Look, Mr. Wolfe. Maybe you’ve got it right, your deductions and assumptions, and maybe not. If you have and you find the money, okay, I’ll get mine and you’ll get yours. I don’t owe my uncle a damn thing, and God knows I don’t owe that lawyer, Andrew Frost, anything. He talked my mother out of letting me have — oh, to hell with it. As for my sister, I’m not her keeper, repeat not — she can look out for herself. You try putting it to her tactfully and see what—”

The phone rang. I swiveled and got it. “Nero Wolfe’s residence, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“This is Margot Tedder. I’d like to speak to Mr. Wolfe.”

I told her to hold it and turned. “Margot Tedder wants to speak to you.”

Noel made a noise. Wolfe frowned at his phone to remind it that he resents being summoned by it, no matter who, then reached for it. “Yes, Miss Tedder?”

“Nero Wolfe?”

“Yes.”

“You never go anywhere, do you?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll have to come there. I’ll come now.”

“You won’t be admitted. I’ll be at dinner. Why do you wish to come?”

“I want you to help me do something.”

“What?”

“I’d rather— Oh, it doesn’t matter. About the money my mother gave the kidnapers. You know about that.”

“Yes, What about it?”

“She has told me that if I can find it I can have it, and I want you to help me. We’ll have to hurry. I’ll come now. Your dinner can wait.”

“I can’t. More precisely, I won’t. You may come at nine o’clock, not before. I’m busy. You will excuse me. I’m hanging up.” He cradled the phone and turned. “Your sister says that her mother told her that if she finds the money paid to the kidnaper she can have it, and she is coming at nine o’clock to enlist my help. I’ll tell her you have already engaged me. We have twenty minutes until my dinnertime. Where were you from eight o’clock Sunday evening until eight o’clock Wednesday morning?”

A man’s time-and-place record as given by him may or may not prove anything, even if it doesn’t check. There are a lot of people who wouldn’t tell you exactly where they had been and what they had done between eight p.m. Sunday and eight a.m. Wednesday even if they hadn’t kidnaped or murdered anybody. Wolfe, knowing how easy it is to frame an alibi, has seldom tried to crack one. In all the years I have been with him I haven’t checked more than four or five. He has sometimes had Saul Panzer or Fred Durkin or Orrie Gather look into one, but not often. I put what Noel Tedder told him in my notebook, but I knew it wouldn’t be checked unless developments nominated Noel for the tag. Besides, only one time and place was essential, either for Noel or for one of the others. It didn’t have to be that he himself had snatched Jimmy Vail Sunday evening, or had helped to keep him wherever he had been kept, or had put notes in telephone books Tuesday evening, or had been at Iron Mine Road Tuesday night. The one essential time and place was the Harold F. Tedder library Wednesday evening, and we knew he had been there. They all had. The question had to be asked; if Noel had gone up in a balloon with six United States Senators Sunday morning and hadn’t come down until Wednesday noon, he couldn’t be expected to know where the money was, and that was the point. But I won’t waste my space and your time reporting his whereabouts for those sixty hours.