Rex Stout: Might as Well Be Dead

“Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Good—”

“This is Stebbins. About a woman named Brandt, Delia Brandt. When did you see her last?”

“Hold it a second while I sneeze.” I covered the transmitter and turned. “Stebbins asking about Delia Brandt, if you’re interested.” Wolfe frowned, hesitated, took his phone, and put it to his ear. I uncovered the transmitter and sneezed at it and then spoke.

“I hope I’m not going to have a cold. The last one I had—”

“Quit stalling,” he snarled. “I asked you a question.”

“I know you did, and you ought to know better by this time. If there’s any good reason, or even a poor one, why I should answer questions about a woman named Delia Brandt, what is it?”

“Her body has been found in her apartment. Murdered. Your name and address are on the memo page in her phone book, the last entry. When did you see her last?”

“My God. She’s dead?”

“Yeah. When you’re murdered you’re dead. Quit stalling.”

“I’m not stalling. If I didn’t react you might think I killed her myself. The first and last time I saw her was last Wednesday evening around nine-thirty, at her apartment. We were collecting background on Molloy, and she was his secretary for ten months, up to the time he died. I had a brief talk with her on the phone late Thursday afternoon. That’s all.”

“You were just collecting background?”

“Right.”

“We’d like to have you come and tell us what you collected. Now.”

“Where are you?”

“At Homicide West. I just got here with a man named William Lesser. When did you see him last?”

“Give me a reason. I always need a reason.”

“Yeah, I know. He came to Delia Brandt’s apartment twenty minutes ago and found us there. He says he had a date with her. He also says he thinks you killed her. Is that a good enough reason? When did you see him last?”

I never got to answer that. Wolfe’s voice broke in.

“Mr. Stebbins, this is Nero Wolfe. I would like to speak with Mr. Cramer.”

“He’s busy.” I swear Purley got hoarser the instant he heard Wolfe. “We want Goodwin down here.”

“Not until I have spoken with Mr. Cramer.”

Silence; then: “Hold it. I’ll see.”

We waited. I looked at Wolfe, but it was one-way because his eyes were closed. He opened them only when Cramer’s voice came.

“You there, Wolfe? Cramer. What do you want?”

“I want to expose a murderer, and I’m ready to. If you wish to be present, bring Mr. and—”

“I’m coming there right now!”

“No. I have to study some documents. You wouldn’t get in. Come at nine o’clock, and bring Mr. and Mrs. Irwin and Mr. and Mrs. Arkoff — and you may as well bring Mr. Lesser. He deserves to be in the audience. The others must be. Nine o’clock.”

“Goddam it, I want to know—”

“You will, but not now. I have work to do.”

He cradled his phone, and I followed suit. He spoke. “Archie, phone Mr. Freyer, Mr. Degan, and Mr. Herold. If he wishes to bring his wife he may. For this sort of thing the bigger the audience the better. And inform Mrs. Molloy.”

“Mrs. Molloy won’t be here.”

“She is here.”

“I mean she won’t be in the audience, not if Herold is. She doesn’t know Peter Hays is Paul Herold, and let him tell her if and when he wants to. Anyway she doesn’t want to be with people, and you don’t need her.”

“Very well.” He leered at me. He may have thought it was a tender glance of sympathy, but I call it a leer. “It is understood, of course, that you were not there today. If an explanation of how I got this material is required I’ll supply it.”

“Then that’s all for me?” Saul asked.

“No. You’ll be at his elbow. He has degenerated into a maniac. If you’ll dine with us? Now I must digest this stuff.”

He went back to the pile of papers.

The host was late to the party, but it wasn’t his fault. I wasn’t present at the private argument Cramer insisted on having with Wolfe in the dining room, being busy elsewhere, but as I passed in the hall, admitting guests as they arrived, I could hear their voices through the closed door. Since the door to the office was soundproofed and I kept it shut, they weren’t audible in there.

The red leather chair was of course reserved for Inspector Cramer, and Purley Stebbins was on one nearby against the wall, facing the gathering. Jerome and Rita Arkoff and Tom and Fanny Irwin were in the front row, where Saul and I had spaced the chairs, but Irwin had moved his close to his wife’s — not, however, taking her hand to hold. Mr. and Mrs. Herold and Albert Freyer were grouped over by the globe, off apart. Back of the Arkoffs and Irwins were William Lesser and Patrick Degan, and between them and slightly to the rear was Saul Panzer. That way the path from me to Degan was unobstructed and Saul was only an arm’s length from him.

It was a quarter past nine, and the silence, broken only by a mutter here and there, was getting pretty heavy when the door opened and Wolfe and Cramer entered. Wolfe crossed to his desk and sat, but Cramer stood to make a speech.

“I want you to understand,” he told them, “that this is not an official inquiry. Five of you came here at my request, but that’s all it was, a request. Sergeant Stebbins and I are here as observers, and we take no responsibility for anything Nero Wolfe says or does. As it stands now, you can walk out whenever you feel like it.”

“This is a little irregular, isn’t it, Inspector?” Arkoff asked.

“I said you can walk out,” Cramer told him. He stood a moment, turned and sat, and scowled at Wolfe.

Wolfe was taking them in. “I’m going to begin,” he said conversationally, “by reporting a coincidence, though it is unessential. It is unessential, but not irrelevant. Reading the Times at breakfast this morning, I noticed a Washington dispatch on page one.” He picked up a newspaper from his desk. “If you’ll indulge me I’ll read some of it.

‘A total disclosure law requiring all private welfare and pension plans to open books to governmental inspection was recommended today by a Senate subcommittee. The proposal was based on a two-year study that disclosed practices ranging from sloppy bookkeeping to a $900,000 embezzlement.

‘The funds have grown to the point, the committee said, that they now provide benefits to 29,000,000 workers and to 46,000,000 dependents of these workers. Assets of the pension funds alone now total about 25 billion dollars, it was said.

‘The Senate group, headed by Senator Paul H. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, said: “While the great majority of welfare and pension programs are being responsibly and honestly administered, the rights and equities of the beneficiaries in many instances are being dangerously ignored. In other cases, the funds of the programs are being dissipated and at times become the hunting ground of the unscrupulous.” ’

Wolfe put the paper down. “It goes on, but that will do. I read it for the record and because it juxtaposed two things: the word ‘welfare’ and large sums of money. For a solid week I had been trying to find a hint to start me on the trail of the man who killed Michael Molloy — and subsequently Johnny Keems and Ella Reyes — enough of one at least to stir my pulse, to no avail. This, if not a flare, was at least a spark. Patrick Degan was the head of an organization called the Mechanics Alliance Welfare Association, and a large sum of money had been found in a safe-deposit box Molloy had rented under an assumed name.”

He pushed the newspaper aside. “That faint hint, patiently and persistently pursued, might eventually have led me to the truth, but luckily it wasn’t needed. I have here in my drawer a sheaf of papers which contain evidence of these facts: that from nineteen fifty-one to nineteen fifty-five Molloy made purchases of small pieces of land in various parts of the country; that their value, and the amounts of money he had to put up, were negligible; that in each case the purchaser of record was some ‘camp’ — examples are the Wide World Children’s Camp and the Blue Sky Children’s Camp; that these camps, twenty-eight in all, borrowed a total of nearly two million dollars from Mr. Degan’s organization on mortgages; that Molloy’s share of the loot was one-fourth and Degan’s share three-fourths, from which each had presumably to meet certain expenses; and that the date of the last such loan on mortgage was October seventeenth, nineteen fifty-five. I can supply many details, but those are the essentials. Do you wish to comment, Mr. Degan?”