Rex Stout - Bitter End

Miss Yates smiled. That was a mistake, because the muscles around her mouth weren’t under control, so they twitched. The result was that instead of looking confident and contemptuous she merely looked sick.

“The theory starts back a few weeks,” Wolfe resumed. “As you remarked this morning, that business and that place were everything to you; you had no life except there. When the Provisions & Beverages Corporation made an offer to buy the business, you became alarmed, and upon reflection you were convinced that sooner or later Tingley would sell. That old factory would of course be abandoned, and probably you with it. That was intolerable to you. You considered ways of preventing it, and what you hit on was adulterating the product, damaging its reputation sufficiently so that the Provisions & Beverages Corporation wouldn’t want it. You chose what seemed to you the lesser of two evils. Doubtless you thought that the reputation could be gradually re-established.”

Carrie was staring at her boss in amazement.

“It seemed probable,” Wolfe conceded, “that it would work. The only trouble was, you were overconfident. You were, in your own mind, so completely identified with the success and very existence of that place and what went on there, that you never dreamed that Tingley would arrange to check on you secretly. Yesterday afternoon you learned about it when you caught Miss Murphy with a sample of a mix you had made. And you had no time to consider the situation, to do anything about it, for a sample had already reached Tingley. He kept you waiting in the factory until after Philip had gone and he phoned his niece — for obviously you didn’t know he had done that — and then called you into his office and accused you.”

“It’s a lie,” Miss Yates said harshly. “It’s a lie! He didn’t accuse me! He didn’t—!”

“Pfui! He not only accused you, he told you that he had proof. A jar that Miss Murphy had previously delivered to him that afternoon, from a mix you had made. I suppose he fired you. He may have told you he intended to prosecute. And I suppose you implored him, pleaded with him, and were still pleading with him, from behind, while he was stooping over the washbasin. He didn’t know you had got the paperweight from his desk, and never did know it. It knocked him out. You went and got a knife and finished the job, there where he lay on the floor, and you were searching the room, looking for the sample jar which he had got from Miss Murphy, when you heard footsteps.”

A choking noise came from her throat.

“Naturally, that alarmed you,” Wolfe continued. “But the steps were of only one person, and that a woman. So you stood behind the screen with the weight in your hand, hoping that, whoever it was, she would come straight to that room and enter it, and she did. As she passed the edge of the screen, you struck. Then you got an idea upon which you immediately acted by pressing her fingers around the knife handle, from which, of course, your own prints had been wiped—”

A stifled gasp of horror from Carrie Murphy interrupted him. He answered it without moving his eyes from Miss Yates: “I doubt if you had a notion of incriminating Miss Duncan. You probably calculated — and for an impromptu and rapid calculation under stress is was a good one — that when it was found that the weight had been wiped and the knife handle had not, the inference would be, not that Miss Duncan had killed Tingley, but that the murderer had clumsily tried to pin it on her. That would tend to divert suspicions from you, for you had been on friendly terms with her and bore her no grudge. It was a very pretty finesse for a hasty one. Hasty, because you were now in a panic and had not found the jar. I suppose you had previously found that the safe door was open and had looked in there, but now you tried it again. No jar was visible, but a locked metal box was there on the shelf. You picked it up and shook it, and it sounded as if the jar were in it.”

Cramer growled, “I’ll be damned.”

“Or,” Wolfe went on, “it sounded enough like it to satisfy you. The box was locked. To go to the factory again and get something to pry it open with — no. Enough. Besides, the jar was in no other likely place, so that must be it. You fled. You took the box and went, leaving by a rear exit, for there might be someone in front — a car, waiting for Miss Duncan. You hurried home through the rain, for it was certainly raining then, and had just got your umbrella stood in the tub and your things off when Miss Murphy arrived.”

“No!” Carrie Murphy blurted.

Wolfe frowned at her. “Why not?”

“Because she — she was—”

“Dry and composed and herself? I suppose so. An exceptionally cool and competent head has for thirty years been content to busy itself with tidbits.” Wolfe’s gaze was still on Miss Yates. “While you were talking with Miss Murphy you had an idea. You would lead the conversation to a point where a phone call to Tingley would be appropriate, and you did so; and you called his home first and then his office, and faked conversation with him. The idea itself was fairly clever, but your follow-up was brilliant. You didn’t mention it to the police and advised Miss Murphy not to, realizing it would backfire if someone entered the office or Miss Duncan regained consciousness before eight o’clock. If it turned out that someone had, and Miss Murphy blabbed about the phone call, you could say that you had been deceived by someone imitating Tingley’s voice, or even that you had faked the phone call for its effect on Miss Murphy; if it turned out that someone hadn’t, the phone call would stick, with Miss Murphy to corroborate it.”

A grunt of impatience came from Cramer.

“Not much more,” Wolfe said. “But you couldn’t open the box with Miss Murphy there. And then the police came. That must have been a bad time for you. As soon as you got a chance you forced the lid open, and I can imagine your disappointment and dismay when you saw no jar. Only a pair of child’s shoes and an envelope! You were in a hole, and in your desperation you did something extremely stupid. Of course, you didn’t want the box in your flat, you wanted to get rid of it, but why the devil did you mail it to Mr. Cramer? Why didn’t you put something heavy in it and throw it in the river? I suppose you examined the contents of the envelope, and figured that if the police got hold of it their attention would be directed to Guthrie Judd and Philip. You must have been out of your mind. Instead of directing suspicions against Philip or Judd, the result was just the opposite, for it was obvious that neither of them would have mailed the box to the police, and therefore some other person had somehow got it.”

Gwendolyn Yates was sitting straight and stiff. She was getting a hold on herself, and doing a fairly good job of it. There were no more inarticulate noises from her throat, and she wasn’t shouting about lies and wasn’t going to. She was a tough baby and she was tightening up.

“But you’re not out of your mind now,” Wolfe said, with a note of admiration in his tone. “You’re adding it up, aren’t you? You are realizing that I can prove little or nothing of what I’ve said. I can’t prove what Tingley said to you yesterday, or what time you left there, or that you got the box from the safe and took it with you, or that it was you who mailed it to Mr. Cramer. I can’t even prove that there wasn’t someone there at eight o’clock who imitated Tingley’s voice over the telephone. I can’t prove anything.”

“Except this.” He shoved his chair back, opened a drawer of his desk, and got something, arose, walked around the end of the desk, and displayed the object in front of Carrie Murphy’s eyes.

“Please look at this carefully, Miss Murphy. As you see, it is a small jar two-thirds full of something. Pasted on it is a plain white label bearing the notation in pencil, ‘Eleven dash fourteen dash Y.’ Does that mean anything to you? Does that ‘Y’ stand for Yates? Look at it—”