Rex Stout: Eeny Meeny Murder Mo

I sat and stared at her a while, maybe a minute, just feeling, not thinking. I was too damn sore to think. I was sore at Wolfe, not at me, the idea being that it had been ten minutes past six when I found her, and if he had come down with me at six o’clock we might have been in time. I swiveled to the house phone and buzzed his room, and when he answered I said, “Okay, come on down. She’s gone,” and hung up.

He always uses the elevator to and from the plant rooms, but his room is only one flight up. When I heard his door open and close I got up and stood six inches from her head and folded my arms, facing the door to the hall. There was the sound of his steps, and then him. He crossed the threshold, stopped, glared at Bertha Aaron, shifted it to me, and bellowed, “You said she was gone!”

“Yes, sir. She is. She’s dead.”

“Nonsense!”

“No, sir.” I sidestepped. “As you see.”

He approached, still glaring, and aimed the glare down at her, for not more than three seconds. Then he circled around her and me, went to his oversized made-to-order chair behind his desk, sat, took in air clear down as far as it would go, and let it out again. “I presume,” he said, not bellowing, “that she was alive when you left her to come up to me.”

“Yes, sir. Sitting in that chair.” I pointed. “She was alone. No one came with her. The door was locked, as always. As you know, Fritz is out shopping. When I found her she was on her side and I turned her over to test for breathing — after I cut the necktie off. I phoned Doc—”

“What necktie?”

I pointed again. “The one you left on your desk. It was around her throat. Probably she was knocked out first with that paperweight” — I pointed again — “but it was the necktie that stopped her breathing, as you can see by her face. I cut—”

“Do you dare to suggest that she was strangled with my necktie?”

“I don’t suggest, I state. It was pulled tight with a slipknot and then passed around her neck again and tied with a granny.” I stepped to where I had dropped it on the rug, picked it up, and put it on his desk. “As you see. I do dare to suggest that if it hadn’t been here handy he would have had to use something else, maybe his handkerchief. Also that if we had come down a little sooner—”

“Shut up!”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is insupportable.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I will not accept it.”

“No, sir. I could burn the tie and we could tell Cramer that whatever he used he must have waited until he was sure she was dead and then removed it and took it—”

“Shut up. She told you that nobody knew she came here.”

“Bah,” I said. “Not a chance and you know it. We’re stuck. I put off calling until you came down only to be polite. If I put it off any longer that will only make it worse because I’ll have to tell them the exact time I found her.” I looked at my wrist. “It’s already been twenty-one minutes. Would you rather make the call yourself?”

No reply. He was staring down at the necktie, with his jaw set and his mouth so tight he had no lips. I gave him five seconds, to be polite, and then went to the kitchen, to the phone on the table where I ate breakfast, and dialed a number.

Inspector Cramer of Homicide West finished the last page of the statement I had typed and signed, put it on top of the other pages on the table, tapped it with a finger, and spoke. “I still think you’re lying, Goodwin.”

It was a quarter past eleven. We were in the dining room. The gang of scientists had finished in the office and departed, and it was no longer out of bounds, but I had no special desire to move back in. For one thing, they had taken the rug, along with Wolfe’s necktie and the paperweight and a few other items. Of course they had also taken Bertha Aaron, so I wouldn’t have to see her again, but even so I was perfectly willing to stay in the dining room. They had brought the typewriter there after the fingerprint detail had finished with it, so I could type the statement.

Now, after nearly five hours, they were gone, all except Sergeant Purley Stebbins, who was in the office using the phone, and Cramer. Fritz was in the kitchen, on his third bottle of wine, absolutely miserable. Added to the humiliation of a homicide in the house he kept was the incredible fact that Wolfe had passed up a meal. He had refused to eat a bite. Around eight o’clock he had gone up to his room, and Fritz had gone up twice with a tray, and he had only snarled at him. When I had gone up at 10:30 with a statement for him to sign, and told him they were taking the rug, he made a noise but had no words. With all that for background in addition to my personal reactions, it was no wonder that when Cramer told me he still thought I was lying I was outspoken.

“I’ve been trying for years,” I said, “to think who it is you remind me of. I just remembered. It was a certain animal I saw once in a cage. It begins with B. Are you going to take me down or not?”

“No.” His big round face is always redder at night, making his gray hair look whiter. “You can save the wisecracks. You wouldn’t lie about anything that can be checked, but we can’t check your account of what she told you. She’s dead. Accepting your statement, and Wolfe’s, that you have never had any dealings with her or anyone connected with that law firm, you might still save something for your private use — or change something. One thing especially. You ask me to believe that she told—”

“Excuse me. I don’t care a single measly damn what you believe. Neither does Mr. Wolfe. You can’t name anything we wouldn’t rather have done than report what happened, but we had no choice, so we reported it and you have our statements. If you know what she said better than I do, that’s fine with me.”

“I was talking,” he said.

“Yeah. I was interrupting.”

“You say that she gave you all those details, how she saw a member of the firm in a cheap restaurant or lunchroom with an opposing client, the day she saw him, her telling him about it this afternoon, all the rest of it, including naming Mrs. Sorell, but she didn’t name the member of the firm. I don’t believe it.” He tapped the statement and his head came forward. “And I’m telling you this, Goodwin. If you use that name for your private purposes and profit, and that includes Wolfe, if you get yourselves hired to investigate this murder and you use information you have withheld from me to solve the case and collect a fee, I’ll get you for it if it costs me an eye!”

I cocked my head. “Look,” I said. “Apparently you don’t realize. It’s already been on the radio, and tomorrow it will be in the papers, that a woman who had come to consult Nero Wolfe was murdered in his office, strangled with his necktie, while he was up playing with his orchids and chatting with Archie Goodwin. I can hear the horse laugh from here. Mr. Wolfe couldn’t swallow any dinner; he wouldn’t even try. We knew and felt all this the second we saw her there on the floor. If we had known which member of the firm it was, if she had told me his name, what would we have done? You ought to know, since you claim you know us. I would have gone after him. Mr. Wolfe would have left the office, shut the door, and gone to the kitchen, and would have been there drinking beer when Fritz came home. When he went to the office and discovered the body would have depended on when and what he heard from me. With any luck I would have got here with the murderer before you and the scientists arrived. That wouldn’t have erased the fact that she had been strangled with his necktie, but it would have blurred it. I give you this just to show you that you don’t know us as well as you think you do. As for your believing me, I couldn’t care less.”