Rex Stout: The Body in the Hall

His gaze leveled at the husband. “Mr. Meegan. Some two hours ago I learned from Mr. Goodwin that you maintain that you had never seen or heard of Mr. Kampf. That was fairly conclusive, but before sending for you I had to verify my conjecture that the model who had sat for Mr. Chaffee’s picture was your wife. I would like to hear it straight from you. Did you ever meet with Philip Kampf alive?”

Meegan was meeting the gaze. “No.”

“Don’t you want to qualify that?”

“No.”

“Then where did you get his raincoat?”

No answer. Meegan’s jaw worked. He spoke. “I didn’t have his raincoat, or if I did I didn’t know it.”

“That won’t do. I warn you, you are in deadly peril. The raincoat that you brought into this house and left here is in the hall now, there on the rack. It can easily be established that it belonged to Mr. Kampf and was worn by him. Where did you get it?”

Meegan’s jaw worked some more. “I never had it, if it belonged to Kampf. This is a dirty frame. You can’t prove that’s the coat I left here.”

Wolfe’s voice sharpened. “One more chance. Have you any explanation of how Kampf’s coat came into your possession?”

“No, and I don’t need any.”

He may not have been pure boob. If he hadn’t noticed that he wore the wrong coat home, and he probably didn’t, in his state of mind, this had hit him from a clear sky and he had no time to study it.

“Then you’re done for,” Wolfe told him. “For your own coat must be somewhere, and I think I know where. In the police laboratory. Mr. Kampf was wearing one when you killed him and pushed his body down the stairs — and that explains why, when they were making that experiment this morning, the dog showed no interest in the spot where the body had lain. It had been enveloped, not in his coat but in yours. That can be established too. If you won’t explain how you got Mr. Kampf’s coat, then explain how he got yours. Is that also a frame?”

Wolfe pointed a finger at him. “I note that flash in your eye, and I think I know what it means. But your brain is lagging. If, after killing him, you took your raincoat off of him and put on him the one that you thought was his, that won’t help you any. For in that case the coat that was on the body is Mr. Goodwin’s, and certainly that can be established, and how would you explain that? It looks hopeless, and—”

Meegan was springing up, but before he even got well started Purley’s big hands were on his shoulders, pulling him back and down. And a new voice sounded.

“I told you he would kill me! I knew he would! He killed Phil!”

Jewel Jones was looking not at her husband, who was under control, but at Wolfe. He snapped at her, “How do you know he did?”

Judging by her eyes and the way she was shaking, she would be hysterical in another two minutes, and maybe she knew it, for she poured it out. “Because Phil told me — he told me he knew Dick was here looking for me, and he knew how afraid I was of him, and he said if I wouldn’t come and be with him again he would tell Dick where I was. I didn’t think he really would — I didn’t think Phil could be as mean as that, and I wouldn’t promise, but yesterday morning he phoned me and told me he had seen Dick and told him he thought he knew who had posed for that picture, and he was going to see him again in the afternoon and tell him about me if I didn’t promise, and so I promised. I thought if I promised it would give me time to decide what to do. But Phil must have gone to see Dick again anyway—”

“Where had they met in the morning?”

“At Phil’s apartment, he said. And he said — that’s why I know Dick killed him — he said Dick had gone off with his raincoat, and he laughed about it and said he was willing for Dick to have his raincoat if he could have Dick’s wife.” She was shaking harder now. “And I’ll bet that’s what he told Dick! That was like Phil! I’ll bet he told Dick I was coming back to him and he thought that was a good trade, a raincoat for a wife! That was like Phil! You don’t—”

She giggled. It started with a giggle, and then the valves busted open and here it came. When something happens in that office to smash a woman’s nerves, as it has more than once, it usually falls to me to deal with it, but that time three other guys, led by Ross Chaffee, came to her, and I was glad to leave it to them. As for Wolfe, he skedaddled. If there is one thing on earth he absolutely will not be in a room with it’s a woman in eruption. He got up and marched out. As for Meegan, Purley and Cramer had him.

When they left with him, they didn’t take the dog. To relieve the minds of any of you who have the notion, which I understand is widespread, that it makes a dog neurotic to change its name, I might add that he responds to Jet now as if his mother had started calling him that before he had his eyes open.

As for the raincoat, Wolfe had been right about the flash in Meegan’s eye. Kampf had been wearing Meegan’s raincoat when he was killed, and of course that wouldn’t do, so after strangling him Meegan had taken it off and put on the one he thought was Kampf’s. Only it was mine. As a part of the DA’s case I went down to headquarters and identified it. At the trial it helped the jury to decide that Meegan deserved the big one. After that was over I suppose I could have claimed it, but the idea didn’t appeal to me. My new one is a different color.