Rex Stout - Method Three for Murder

“I wasn’t free at all,” she said. “I told Mr. Goodwin I wanted to help, and—”

“Don’t talk,” her husband commanded the back of her head. “Let him talk.” To Wolfe: “Unless you’re through?”

“By no means. I’ll put it directly to you, madam. This is how you really spent those hours. You did phone Phoebe Arden yesterday afternoon, but not to ask her to join you at dinner and the theater. You told her of Miss Holt’s plan to drive Miss Bram’s cab in an effort to have a talk with her husband, and you proposed a prank. Miss Arden would arrange that Mr. Kearns would fail to appear, and if he didn’t, Miss Holt would certainly leave the cab to go to his house to inquire. Whereupon you and Miss Arden, from your concealment in the neighboring stoneyard, would go and enter the cab, and when Miss Holt returned she would find you there, to her discomfiture and even consternation.”

“You can’t prove any of this,” Cramer growled.

“No one ever can, since Miss Arden is dead.” Wolfe’s eyes didn’t leave Mrs. Irving. He went on, “I didn’t know Miss Arden, so I can’t say whether she agreed to your proposal from mere caprice or from an animus for Miss Holt, but she did agree, and went to her doom. The program went as planned, without a hitch. No doubt Miss Arden herself devised the stratagem by which Mr. Kearns was removed from the scene. But at this point I must confess that my case is not flawless. Certainly you would not have been so witless as to let anyone have a hand in your deadly prank — either a cab driver or your private chauffeur. Do you drive a car?”

“Don’t answer,” Irving commanded her.

“Yes, she does,” Judy Bram said, louder than necessary.

“Thank you, Miss Bram. Apparently you can speak to the point. Then you and Miss Arden went in your car, and parked it on Carmine Street — away from the corner in the direction Miss Holt would take when, leaving, she made the turn from Ferrell Street. You walked to the stoneyard and chose your hiding spot, and when Miss Holt left the cab you went and entered it. It is noteworthy that at that point you were committed to nothing but a prank. If Miss Holt had suddenly returned, or if anyone had come close enough to observe, you would merely have abandoned your true objective — a disappointment, but no disaster. As it was, you struck. I am not a moralizer, but I permit myself the comment that in my experience your performance is without parallel for ruthlessness and savagery. It appears that Miss Arden was not merely no enemy of yours; she was your friend. She must have been, to join with you in your impish prank; but you needed her corpse for a tool to gratify your mortal hatred for Miss Holt. That was—”

“Her hatred for Miss Holt,” Cramer said. “You assume that too?”

“No indeed. That is established. Miss Bram. Speaking of Gilbert Irving, you said that when he looks at Miss Holt or hears her voice he has to lean against something to keep from trembling. You didn’t specify the emotion that so affects him. Is it repugnance?”

“No. It’s love. He wants her.”

“Was his wife aware of it?”

“Yes. Lots of people were. You only had to see him look at her.”

“That is not true,” Irving said. “I am merely Miss Holt’s friend, that’s all, and I hope she is mine.”

Judy’s eyes darted at him and returned to Wolfe. “He’s only being a husband because he thinks he has to. He’s being a gentleman. A gentleman doesn’t betray his wife. I was wrong about you. I shouldn’t have called you a fat fool. I didn’t know—”

Cramer cut in, to Wolfe. “All right, if that isn’t established it can be. But it’s about all that’s established. There’s damn little you can prove. Do you expect me to charge a woman with murder on your guess?”

You don’t often hear a sergeant disagree with an inspector in public, but Purley Stebbins — no, I used the wrong word. Not hear, see. Purley didn’t say a word. All he did was leave his post at Kearns’s elbow and circle around Irving to stand beside Mrs. Irving, between her and Judy Bram. Probably it didn’t occur to him that he was disagreeing with his superior; he merely didn’t like the possibility of Mrs. Irving’s getting a knife from her handbag and sticking it in Judy’s ribs.

“There’s nothing at all I can prove,” Wolfe said. “I have merely exposed the naked truth; it is for you, not me, to drape it and arm it with the evidence the law requires. For that you are well equipped; surely you need no suggestions from me; but, item, did Mrs. Irving get her car from the garage yesterday evening? What for? If to drive to a restaurant and then to a theater, in itself unlikely, where did she park it? Item, the knife. If she conceived her prank only after her husband phoned to cancel their engagement, which is highly probable, she hadn’t time to contrive an elaborate and prudent plan for getting a weapon. She either bought one at a convenient shop, or she took one from her own kitchen; and if the latter her cook or maid will have missed it and can identify it. Her biggest mistake, of course, was leaving the knife in the body, even with the handle wiped clean; but she was in a hurry to leave, she was afraid blood would spurt on her, and she was confident that she would never be suspected of killing her good friend Phoebe Arden. Other items—”

Mrs. Irving was up, and as she arose her husband did too, and grabbed her arm from behind. He wasn’t seizing a murderer; he was being a gentleman and stopping his wife from betraying herself. She jerked loose, but then Purley Stebbins had her other arm in his big paw.

“Take it easy,” Purley said. “Just take it easy.”

Mira’s head dropped and her hands came up to cover her face, and she started to shake. Judy Bram put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Go right ahead, Mi, don’t mind us. You’ve got it coming.” Waldo Kearns was sitting still, perfectly still. I got up and went to the kitchen, to the extension, and dialed the Gazette number. I thought I ought to be as good at keeping a promise as Mira had been.

Yesterday I drove Mira and Judy to Idlewild, where Mira was to board a plane for Reno. Judy and I had tossed a coin to decide whether the trip would be made in the Heron sedan which Wolfe owns and I drive, or in Judy’s cab, and I had won. On the way back I remarked that I supposed Kearns had agreed to accept service for a Reno divorce because now it wouldn’t leave him free to marry Phoebe Arden.

“No,” Judy said. “Because his wife was a witness in a murder trial and that wouldn’t do.”

A little later I remarked that I supposed she had stopped dreaming about a lion standing on a rock about to spring at her.

“No,” she said. “Only now I’m not sure who it is. It could even be you.”

A little later I remarked that if the state of New York carried out its program for Mrs. Irving, who was in the death house at Sing Sing, I supposed Mira would get back from Reno just in time for a wedding.

“No,” Judy said. “They’ll wait at least a year. Gil Irving will always be a gentleman.”

Three supposes and all wrong. And still men keep on marrying women.