Рекс Стаут - Death of a Doxy

I arose and stood, thinking it would be better manners to thank her with her eyes open, but they didn’t open, so I said thank you, and she said with her eyes shut, “I thought you had gone.” If I had been an Irish wolfhound I would have wagged my tail as I left the room and knocked something over. Miss Corcoran, who accompanied me to the elevator to see that I entered it, told me that between ten and eleven in the morning would be the best time for Miss Rowan to phone.

I hadn’t had a decent walk since Saturday, it wasn’t five-thirty yet, and I might as well save taxi fare. But first there was a phone call to make, so I went to Madison Avenue, found a booth, got Lily Rowan, explained the situation, and said that she had better ring Miss Corcoran in the morning and tell her she had decided to get a dachshund instead. What she said was irrelevant and personal. Outside again, I turned my collar up and put gloves on. Winter was going all out.

If you have the impression that the help was doing all the work, Saul and Fred after the ten names I had got from Julie Jaquette and me cornering a jealous wife, no indeed. When I entered the office at a quarter past six there was Wolfe at his desk with a book, and I saw at a glance that it wasn’t Invitation to an Inquest . It was The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, so I tiptoed across to my desk, not to disturb him. When he finished a paragraph and looked up I asked, “Wouldn’t you get the feel better if you read aloud? Pretend I’m her.”

He ignored it and demanded, “Have you done any better?”

“No, sir. Unless we want an Irish wolfhound for stalking. Mrs. Ballou is scratched. Even if someone had told her all about it, full details, she couldn’t have gone there and settled Isabel Kerr because (a) she would have been too tired, and (b) she would have forgotten the name and address. Of course Miss Jackson has broadened your understanding of women, and you may not agree.”

I reported. It was so brief that he hadn’t much more than got comfortably arranged, leaning back with his eyes closed, when I reached the end, the phone call to Lily Rowan.

“There is one difference between you and her,” I said. “You shut your eyes to concentrate on what I’m saying, and she shuts hers to hope I’m not there. She didn’t even notice that I dragged her husband in by the heels, twice. I swear I could have told her all about Isabel Kerr and the pink bedroom, and when he came home from work she wouldn’t have bothered to mention it to him.”

He grunted and opened his eyes. “How could eight dogs that size possibly spend the night in her bedroom?” he demanded.

I nodded. “That worried me too. If you figure an average of two square yards to a dog, and maybe more if—”

The doorbell rang, and I went. It was a man in a heavy brown tweed overcoat and a smooth dark blue narrow-rimmed hat, which was ridiculous, and I guessed it was one of the bozos Saul or Fred had flushed. But when I opened the door he said, “I am Dr. Gamm. Theodore Gamm, M.D. Are you the man who called on Mr. and Mrs. Fleming Monday afternoon?” I told him yes, and he said, “I insist on seeing Nero Wolfe,” and would have walked right through me if I hadn’t sidestepped.

Of course that isn’t the way to do it. You merely say something first and then you insist. He wasn’t even built for it, after he peeled his coat off. He was round all over, round-shouldered and round-hipped and round-faced, and the bald top of his head was barely up to my chin. I put him in the front room, took the long route to the office, by the hall, and told Wolfe that Dr. Theodore Gamm insisted on asking him why he had sent me to see Mr. and Mrs. Fleming. He looked at the clock and growled, “Dinner in half an hour.” I said that Mrs. Ballou had taken me only ten minutes, went and opened the connecting door, and brought him in. As I motioned him to the red leather chair Wolfe said something about twenty minutes. That chair is deep, and when he found that his feet weren’t on the floor he slid forward, pinned his eyes on Wolfe, and said, “You’re grossly overweight.”

Wolfe nodded. “Seventy pounds. Perhaps eighty. Death will see to that. Does it concern you?”

“Yes, it does.” He curled his pudgy hands over the ends of the chair arms. “Any conflict with natural health is an impertinence, and I resent it.” His voice was bigger than he was. “It is my concern for health that brought me here — the health of one of my patients, Mrs. Barry Fleming. You sent a man — that man” — his eyes darted to me and back to Wolfe — “to torment her. She was already in a state of strain, and now she threatens to collapse. Can you justify it?”

“Easily.” Wolfe’s brows were up. “Both the intention and the deed, but it’s the deed you challenge. Mrs. Fleming’s state of strain was partly from the shock of her sister’s death, but mostly from the fear that her way of life would be exposed. Mr. Goodwin rendered her a service by making it clear that the exposure is inevitable unless certain steps are taken. That should propel her not to collapse, but to action, if she is—”

“What kind of action?”

“The only kind that could be effective. Did she tell you all that Mr. Goodwin said?”

“Her husband did. That if the man they have arrested, Orrie Cather, is tried, everything about Isabel will come out. That Cather is innocent, and the only hope is to get enough evidence to make them release him. You call that a service, to tell her that?”

“If it’s valid, yes. It’s obvious. Do you question it?”

“Yes. I think it was a cheap trick. Why do you say Cather is innocent? Can you prove it?”

“No, but I intend to.”

“I don’t believe it. I think you’re merely trying to raise enough dust to make it hard to convict him. There is no reason why you should want to do Mrs. Fleming a service, but if you did want to you could. You could persuade Cather and his lawyer to make it unnecessary for certain facts to be brought out at his trial. I know you won’t, but you could.”

“You would like me to?”

“Certainly. For Mrs. Fleming that — it might save her life.”

“But you know I won’t?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you bother to come?”

“She asked me to. They both did. They think it was just a trick, your sending him with that hogwash, and so do I. Why do you say Cather is innocent?”

Wolfe squinted at him. “You should arrange your mind better, Doctor. As Mr. Goodwin explained to Mrs. Fleming, it will serve her interest if Mr. Cather is innocent, but you don’t like that. You contend. Is it possible that you are less concerned about your patient’s health than about your own? Did you kill Isabel Kerr?”

Gamm goggled. “Why, you—” He swallowed. “Damn your impertinence!”

“Naturally you damn it. But since I have assumed that Mr. Cather did not kill her, for reasons I prefer not to disclose, I need to know who did. As a man whose repeated advances to her were spurned, you are eligible. Persistent mortification can become insupportable. It’s a question of character and temperament, and I know nothing of yours; I would have to consult people who know you well — for instance, Mr. and Mrs. Fleming. But I can collect facts. Where were you last Saturday morning from eight o’clock to noon? If you can establish—”

He stopped because his audience was going. Dr. Gamm didn’t have the figure or the style for an impressive exit, it was more like a waddle, but it got him to the door and on through. I took my time rising and crossing to the hall, and got there just as he was opening the front door. When he was out and the door closed I went back in, raised my arms for a good stretch and an uncovered yawn, and said, “Another one down. He wouldn’t have walked out, he wouldn’t have dared, until he found out if you have anything and how much. Or tried to.”