Rex Stout - Might as Well Be Dead

So when we arrived at the old brownstone I took her up the stoop and in, told her to follow me, and, with the suitcase, mounted one flight to the South Room. It was too late for sunshine, but it’s a nice room even without it. I turned on the lights, put the suitcase on the rack, and went to the bathroom to check towels and soap and glasses. She sank into a chair. I told her about the two phones, house and outside, said Fritz would be up with a tray, and left her.

Wolfe was in the dining room, staving off starvation, with Saul Panzer doing likewise, and Fritz was standing there.

“We have a house guest,” I told them. “Mrs. Molloy. With luggage. I showed her how to bolt the door. She doesn’t feel like eating with people, so I suppose she’ll have to get a tray.”

They discussed it. The dinner dish was braised pork filets with spiced wine, and they hoped she would like it. If she didn’t, what? It was eight o’clock, and I was hungry, so I left it to them and went to the kitchen and dished up a plate for myself. By the time I returned the tray problem had been solved, and I took my place, picked up my knife and fork, and cut into a filet.

I spoke. “I was just thinking, as I dished this pork, about the best diet for a ballplayer. I suppose it depends on the player. Take a guy like Campanella, who probably has to regulate his intake—”

“Confound you, Archie.”

“What?” I raised my brows. “No business talk at the table is your rule, not mine. But to change the subject, just for conversation, the study of the human face under stress is absolutely fascinating. Take, for instance, a woman’s face I was studying just half an hour ago. She was looking at a corpse and recognizing it as having belonged to a person she knew, but she didn’t want two bystanders to know that she recognized it. She wanted to keep her face deadpan, but under the circumstances it was difficult.

“That must have been interesting,” Saul said. “You say she recognized it?”

“Oh, sure, no question about it. But you gentlemen continue the conversation. I’m hungry.” I forked a bite of filet to my mouth.

It was a tough day for rules. Still another one got a dent when, the dessert having been disposed of, we went to the office for coffee, but that happened fairly often.

I reported, in detail as usual, but not in full. Certain passages of my talk with Mrs. Molloy were not material, and neither was the fact that she had started to put out a hand to me and jerked it back. We discussed the situation and the outlook. The obvious point of attack was Mr. and Mrs. Thomas L. Irwin, but the question was how to attack. If they denied any knowledge of the reason for their maid’s absence, and if, told that she had been murdered, they denied knowledge of that too, what then? Saul and I did most of the talking. Wolfe sat and listened, or maybe he didn’t listen.

But the only point in keeping the identity of the corpse to ourselves was to have first call on the Irwins and Arkoffs, and if we weren’t going to call we might as well let the cops take over. Of course they were already giving the lumber pile and surroundings the full routine, and putting them on to the Irwins and Arkoffs wouldn’t help that any, but someone who knew what the medical examiner gave as the time of death should at least ask them where they were between this hour and that hour Thursday night. That was only common politeness.

When Fritz came to bring beer and reported that Mrs. Molloy had said she liked the pork very much but had eaten only one small piece of it, Wolfe told me to go and see if she was comfortable. When I went up I found that she hadn’t bolted the door. I knocked and got a call to enter, and did so. She was on her feet, apparently doing nothing. I told her if she didn’t care for the books on the shelf there were a lot more downstairs, and asked if she wanted some magazines or anything else. While I was speaking the doorbell rang downstairs, but with Saul there I skipped it. She said she didn’t want anything; she was going to bed and try to sleep.

“I hope you know,” she added, “that I realize how wonderful you are. And how much I appreciate all you’re doing. And I hope you won’t think I’m just a silly goose when I ask if I can see Peter tomorrow. I want to.”

“I suppose you could,” I said. “Freyer might manage it. But you shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re the widow of the man he’s still convicted of murdering. Because there would be a steel lattice between you with guards present. Because he would hate it. He still thinks you killed Molloy, and that would be a hell of a place to try to talk him out of it. Go to bed and sleep on it.”

She was looking at me. She certainly could look straight at you. “All right,” she said. She extended a hand. “Good night.”

I took the hand in a professional clasp, left the room, pulling the door shut as I went, and went back down to the office to find Inspector Cramer sitting in the red leather chair and Purley Stebbins on one of the yellow ones, beside Saul Panzer.

As I circled around Saul and Purley to get to my desk Cramer was speaking.

“... and I’m fed up! At one o’clock yesterday afternoon Stebbins phoned and told Goodwin about Johnny Keems and asked him if Keems was working for you, and Goodwin said he would have to ask you and would call back. He didn’t. At four-thirty Stebbins phoned again, and Goodwin stalled him again. At nine-thirty last evening I came to see you, and you know what you told me. Among other things—”

“Please, Mr. Cramer.” Wolfe might have been gently but firmly stopping a talky brat. “You don’t need to recapitulate. I know what has happened and what was said.”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt it. All right, I’ll move to today. At five-forty-two this afternoon Saul Panzer is waiting at the morgue to view a body when it arrives, and he views it, and beats it. At seven-twenty Goodwin shows up at the morgue to view the same body, and has a woman with him, and he says they can’t identify it and goes off with the woman. He gives her name as Mrs. Alice Bolt — Mrs. Ben Bolt, I suppose — and her address as the Churchill Hotel. There is no Mrs. Bolt registered at the Churchill. So you’re up to your goddam tricks again. You not only held out on us about Keems for eight hours yesterday, you held out on me last night, and I’m fed up. Facts connected with a homicide in my jurisdiction belong to me, and I want them.”

Wolfe shook his head. “I didn’t hold out on you last night, Mr. Cramer.”

“Like hell you didn’t!”

“No, sir. I was at pains to give you all the facts I had, except one, perhaps — that despite Peter Hays’s denial we had concluded he is Paul Herold. But you took care of that, characteristically. Knowing, as you did, that James R. Herold was my client, you notified him that you thought you had found his son and asked him to come and verify it, omitting the courtesy of even telling me you had done so, let alone consulting me in advance. Considering how you handle facts I give you, it’s a wonder I ever give you any at all.”

“Nuts. I didn’t notify James R. Herold. Lieutenant Murphy did.”

“After you had told him of your talk with me.” Wolfe flipped a hand to push it aside. “However, as I say, I gave you all the facts I had relevant to your concern. I reported what had been told me by Mr. and Mrs. Arkoff and Mr. and Mrs. Irwin. And I made a point of calling to your attention a most significant fact — more than significant, provocative — the contents of Johnny Keems’s pockets. You knew, because I told you, these things: that Keems left here at seven-thirty Wednesday evening to see the Arkoffs and Irwins, with a hundred dollars in his pocket for expenses; that during his questioning of the Irwins their maid had been present, and the questioning had been cut short by the Irwins’ departure; and that only twenty-two dollars and sixteen cents had been found on his body. I gave you the facts, as of course I should, but it was not incumbent on me to give you my inference.”