Рекс Стаут - Death of a Doxy

Wolfe’s lips were tight. He loosened them to say, “He’s either a murderer or a jackass.”

“Then he’s a jackass. It seems to me—”

The phone rang and I went and got it. It was Saul, reporting on a couple of names. I told him we could match him and wished him better luck tomorrow.

He didn’t have it, and neither did we. Thursday was even emptier than Wednesday, though I tried hard because Wolfe had paid me a compliment. Partly he was merely desperate, but the fact remains that Wednesday evening he told me to go and give the neighborhood a play. It was the first time he had ever sent me on something that Saul had already covered, and I admit it would have been highly satisfactory to get a break — for example, a janitor across the street who had seen a stranger enter that building Saturday morning, a stranger who could have been Dr. Gamm or Stella Fleming or Barry Fleming or Julie Jaquette, or even Avery or Minna Ballou. Or even just a stranger, to try to find. What the hell, there are only twelve million people in the metropolitan area. Actually it was a farce without a laugh. Not only had Saul and Fred seen everyone, but also the cops had worked it hard, trying to find somebody who could put Orrie Cather there. During the long day I spoke with more than forty people, all ages and sizes and colors, and they had already been spoken to so often that they had their answers down pat. At six-thirty I called it a week and went home to dinner. The only thing that had happened there was that Parker had called to say that he had seen Orrie again, and had talked with an assistant district attorney, and he still thought it was inadvisable to start action to get him out on bail.

So back in the office after dinner Wolfe put his coffee cup down and said, “Four days and nights of nothingness,” and I put mine down and said, “No argument.”

“Confound it,” Wolfe said, “ask questions.”

“If there were any good ones,” I said, “you would ask them yourself. All right, Jill Hardy. Why did she want my arms around her? Because she had killed Isabel Kerr and was going to confess and wanted to soften me up but Cramer interrupted?”

“I don’t want chaff. I want a question.”

“So do I. Stella Fleming. She is subject to fits, for instance going for me with claws. But if she had one Saturday morning and killed her sister, would she have gone back that evening and got the superintendent to let her in so she could discover the body? I don’t believe it. A thousand to one.”

“Negative,” he muttered. “Something positive.”

“Try this. Barry Fleming. Why did he invite me in, knowing how his Wife was? Because I had told him we were going to clear Orrie, and he wanted to find out if we knew or suspected that he had killed Isabel. That’s positive.”

“But vain without a motive.”

“Oh, if you want motive. Mrs. Ballou. Her chat with me was a production. She’s really a hellcat and nuts about her husband. Boiling with jealousy. Only in that case I’m a sap and you’ll have to fire me.”

“I’ll consider it. Mr. Ballou.”

I shook my head. “Your turn. You had him.”

“I reject him, provisionally. Cracking that woman’s skull with an ashtray was an act of passion, not within his compass. There is a question: why would he like to know when Orrie first heard his name? Why is it not important now but still he would like to know?”

I shook my head again. “We’d better skip that. Probably curiosity as to whether it coincided with a change he noticed in the way she reacted to Kipling and Service and London. That wouldn’t interest you. I agree on his compass. All right, Miss Jackson. She’s yours too, you wished her well.”

“No. Yours.”

“Thank you. There is nothing she couldn’t and wouldn’t do if it appealed to her. But if she had any reason for wanting Isabel dead I would have to see it in color, with sound. Talking with ten of their mutual friends, Saul or Fred would surely have got a hint, especially Saul. And they didn’t. Anyway, she’s crossed off since you wished her well. So we’re down to Dr. Gamm.”

“Pfui.”

“I agree. We’re down to nothing. You told us Sunday evening that we have never had less, and you can say it again. Not a sign of a crack anywhere. I was thinking during dinner, while you were commenting on what they intend to do to Ellis Island, that maybe you should make a deal with Cramer. I mean it. His scientists didn’t miss an inch of that apartment, and there’s a chance that whoever killed her left his prints somewhere, at least one. They latched on to Orrie so fast that they have probably filed other possibilities. Offer to trade Cramer all we have for all the prints they got. With your word of honor, which he knows is good. It wouldn’t sink Orrie any deeper, and it just might give us a lead. As it stands, there isn’t one single damn item on the program for tomorrow.”

His jaw was set. “No,” he said.

“No what? If you prefer—”

The doorbell rang. I went, took a look, stuck my head back in, and said, “Mr. Ballou. He doesn’t look jaunty.”

If Avery Ballou had somehow dropped all his stack, and had been kicked out of his job as president of the Federal Holding Corporation, he wouldn’t have starved. I have never seen a neater job of wrapping and taping than he had done on the little package he put on Wolfe’s desk before he sat down. Any shipping room in town would have grabbed him. I am assuming that he had done it himself on account of what was in it, but I admit it might have been packaged at the bank. The seams in his face were deeper than ever, and he looked as tired as his wife had felt. Seated, he lowered his head and rubbed his brow with a palm, slowly back and forth. On Tuesday that had been followed by a request for a drink, but now apparently he was beyond that. He raised his head, pulled his shoulders up, looked at Wolfe, and said, “You said I couldn’t hire you or pay you.”

“And told you why,” Wolfe said.

“I know. But the situation is — I want you to reconsider it.” He turned to me. “You said you could find out when that man Cather learned my name. Have you?”

I shook my head. “You said it isn’t important now.”

“You also said it could have been as long as four months ago.”

“Right. I said ‘certainly.’ Or eight months, or ten.”

“Four is enough.” He returned to Wolfe. “I know you have had a wide experience, but you may not realize the absolute necessity of good repute for a man of my standing. Byron wrote ‘The glory and the nothing of a name,’ but he was a poet. A poet can take liberties that are fatal to a man like me. As I think I told you, I took great precautions when I visited Miss Kerr. No one who ever saw me enter or leave that building could possibly have recognized me. I had full reliance on her discretion; I was more than liberal with her, financially. I was completely certain that nobody whatever knew of my... diversion.”

He stopped, apparently inviting comment. Wolfe obliged. “You should know that your only safe secrets are those you have yourself forgotten.”

He nodded. “I now suspect that there are many things I should know that I don’t know. My reliance on Miss Kerr was misplaced. I was a fool. I should have known that she might... form an attachment. I assume she did, with Cather? She became attached to him?”

Wolfe turned to me. “Archie?”

“She burned,” I told Ballou. “She wanted to marry him.”

“I see. I was a fool. But that explains why she told him my name, and that’s important. She was discreet, but of course with him there was no discretion. Doesn’t that follow?”

He wanted an answer, and Wolfe supplied it. “Yes.”