Рекс Стаут - Death of a Doxy

“Playing you,” he said. “Nuts. Now you ask me where I’ve been since eight o’clock this morning and can I prove it.”

I shook my head. “Since I’m merely curious, that would be stretching it. If I wanted to be nasty I would have opened up by barking at you something like, ‘Why did you leave the ashtray on the floor?’ Of course we do have to consider facts, such as the fact that I may be the only one besides you who knows that her being dead pulls a thorn for you. A bad thorn in deep. So of course I’m curious about one detail. Did you kill her?”

“No. My God, Archie. Am I a sap?”

“No. You’re no mental giant, but you’re not a sap. It would be nice if you could sell me. After all, you pulled me in, you knew I was going there today. It would be extra nice if you were covered.”

“I’m not covered.” He was staring at me but possibly not seeing me. He took a mouthful of whiskey and swallowed it twice. “As I told you, I’m on a job for Bascom. I was out at eight and picked up a subject a little before nine and was on him all day. It was—”

“Single tail?”

“Yes. Just routine. From nine-nineteen until twelve-thirty-five I was in the lobby of an office building.”

“No company?”

“No.”

“Then I’m still curious. You would be if we traded spots, you know damn well you would, but that’s all I am, just curious. Do you want to ask me anything?”

“Yes, I do. You had gloves and keys, I don’t mean mine. You knew there might be something there. Why didn’t you take a quick look?”

I grinned at him. “You don’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t.”

I nodded. “Now and then you are a sap.” I stood up. “As you know, Orrie, and as I know, you think it would be fine if you had my job. That’s all right, there’s nothing wrong with ambition. But what if you had got too ambitious? What if you knew there was nothing there to point to you? What if you had arranged for one man, me, to go there at a quarter past four, and for another man, maybe a cop on an anonymous tip, to arrive a few minutes later? It wouldn’t have hooked me for murder, since the ME would set the time, but I would have the keys on me, not only yours, and the rubber gloves, and that would have been good for at least a couple of years. Of course I didn’t really believe it, but being the nervous type—”

“Balls.” He was staying put, his head tilted back. “What are you going to do?”

I looked at my wrist. “Dinner will be half over, and anyway I ate. I’m going home and eat two helpings of crème Génoise . You crush eight homemade macaroons and soak them in half a cup of brandy. Put two cups of rich milk, half a cup of sugar, and the finely cut rind of a small orange into—”

“So clown it!” he yelled. “Are you going to tell Wolfe?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Are you?”

“As it stands now, no.”

“Or Saul or Fred?”

“No. Nor Cramer nor J. Edgar Hoover.” I went to the couch for my hat and coat. “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t expect me to do. You know what doctors call professional courtesy?”

“Yeah.”

“I sincerely hope you won’t need any.”

I went.

The New York Times knows how to put things.

“It does not appear that Miss Kerr was employed anywhere or engaged in any regular activity.” You can’t beat that, leaving it wide open for all types of minds.

At the little table in the kitchen where I eat breakfast, with the Times on the rack facing me, I poured Puerto Rico molasses on a buckwheat cake and told Fritz, “It would be a good murder to work on. Walking distance.”

At the big table inspecting dried mushrooms, with an eye on me to know when to start the next cake, he shook his head and said, “No murder is good to work on. When it’s a murder the doorbell scares me and I never know if you’ll come back alive.”

I told him he was just blowing, I had yet to see him scared, forked a bite of cake and molasses, and Creole sausage, and started the Times piece again. I knew a lot more than it did, which suited me fine. The only items that were news to me were that the body had been discovered by Isabel Kerr’s sister Stella, that Stella was the wife of Barry Fleming, who taught mathematics at the Henry Hudson High School, that Stella had gone to the apartment a little before seven o’clock Saturday evening — less than three hours after I left — that tentatively Isabel had died between eight o’clock and noon, that Stella wouldn’t talk to reporters, and that the police and the District Attorney’s office had begun a thorough investigation. The picture of Isabel had probably been dug up in the files of a theatrical agent; she had a chorus-girl smile. The one of Stella had been snapped as a cop had escorted her across the sidewalk.

So far, so good. But if the errand I had tackled for Orrie had been on the level, if he hadn’t been playing me, and I didn’t really think he had, there would be fur flying soon, and when I finished breakfast and went into the office I turned the radio on. Ten-o’clock news, nothing. When Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock the radio was still on, and when he had crossed to his desk and settled his bulk in the only chair that holds it to suit him, he scowled at the radio and then at me and demanded, “Is there an urgency?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Will the Braves play in Milwaukee or in Atlanta? Also it’s Sunday, the day of rest.”

“I thought you had an engagement.”

“It’s for one o’clock, and I may skip it. The lunch will be all right, but then a man is going to read poetry.”

“Whose poetry?”

“His.”

“Pfui.”

“Sure. I think Miss Rowan knew he was hungry and merely wanted to feed him, but then he said he would do her and her friends a big favor and she was stuck. He calls it an epithon because it’s an epic and it takes hours.”

A corner of his mouth was up an eighth of an inch. “Serves you right.”

“Yeah. What she did in the car that night was in the line of duty, but you’ll never forgive her. I may not go.”

He flipped a hand. “You will.” He went at his copy of the Sunday Times . We get three, a total of twenty pounds — one for him, one for me, and one for Fritz.

When the noon news still had nothing new about murder, I decided it would be silly to sit around all afternoon rassling with the Times , holding my breath for the radio every half-hour, and mounted the two flights to my room. Having already shaved, I had only to change to a clean shirt and one of my four best suits. Downstairs again, I looked in at the kitchen and the office to say I was going. Outside, I headed for the garage on Tenth Avenue where we keep the Heron which Wolfe owns and I drive. On Sundays it is often possible to find a spot to put a car.

At twenty minutes past four I was in a big roomy chair in the living room of Lily Rowan’s penthouse on top of a building on 63rd Street, leaning back with my eyes closed, trying to decide which one I would rather have, Willie Mays or Sandy Koufax, on my team. The poet, a long-faced specimen with whiskers, who didn’t look hungry, but of course had recently had a good meal, was still going strong, but I had stopped hearing him an hour back. It was just a background noise. At a poke on my shoulder I opened my eyes, and Mimi, the maid, was there. She moved her lips to say “Telephone” without saying it. I pulled myself up and to my feet, went to a door at the corner of the room and on through, crossed to the desk where Lily makes out checks for causes which may be worthy, picked up the phone, and told it, “This is Archie Goodwin.”