Rex Stout - Alphabet Hicks

“Certainly. It’s obvious—”

“It sure is. I never saw anything obviouser.” Hicks glanced around, and back at Vail. “But I don’t know if you can make it unanimous. Ross won’t blab, not caring to see his father convicted of murder. Mrs. Dundee won’t. Of course I won’t, because I’m getting paid. You won’t, for friendship’s sake. Your old pal, Dick Dundee. But I don’t know about Miss Gladd. How are we going to silence her?”

Heather and Judith spoke at once.

“If you mean you believe—”

“That’s utterly ridiculous—”

“Please, ladies! Never get mad at a theory! Have I stated the situation correctly, Vail?”

“You have.”

“And you sort of rely on us to bring Miss Gladd into line?”

“I rely on no one. I merely present the problem. I admit that I wouldn’t like to have all this gone over in a courtroom, but the Dundees stand to lose a good deal more than I do. Maybe you do too, I don’t know.”

“I do indeed,” Hicks agreed heartily. “Therefore I’m going to poke around in the ashes before I commit myself. You can’t object to that.”

“I’m not objecting to anything.”

“Good. Then take that sonotel record. The theory is that Dundee faked it by using Martha Cooper for Mrs. Dundee’s voice, and getting someone to imitate yours. You seem to have read the paper this morning, so you must know that Martha Cooper went to Europe with her husband nearly a year ago and only came back Monday. So please tell me how Dundee used her when he faked that record.”

“I don’t pretend to know exactly when and where it was done.”

“I know you don’t. But theoretically?”

“It could have been done before she left.”

“A year ago?” Hicks’s brows went up. “He kept it around a whole year before he decided to use it? That’s possible, of course, but I don’t like it. It’s not neat. I’d like to suggest an alternative.” He turned to Heather. “Your sister visited you at Katonah a couple of times before she went to Europe, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Heather said. “I told you.”

“And there was a sonotel installed in that house at the time, for experiments?”

“Yes.”

“Did your sister come by train, or did she drive?”

“She drove. She had a little convertible—”

“And might she not, on one of those visits, have said something like this to you? Quote: ‘Good lord, let me sit down and gasp a while! I know I’m late, but I had an awful time getting here. I never saw such traffic.’ Unquote. Might she not have said that to you?”

“Yes. She might.” Heather was frowning. “I think I remember — I’m not sure. Of course she might.”

“Might is good enough. For that, but not for this. This is more important. Did she, on either occasion, bring you something? Some kind of a gift?”

“A gift?” Heather looked blank. Then suddenly her face lit up. “Oh, of course! A dress! My tan—” Her eyes went down. “I have it on! She brought me this dress!”

“That’s a nice little concidence.” Hicks patted the dress where it curved over her knee. “Nice dress. Then of course it was natural that she should say that she hoped you’d be pleased with what she had brought you. Did she say that?”

“I suppose she did. Of course.”

Hicks nodded, and turned to Vail. “So there you are. That’s on that record, Martha Cooper saying that she hoped the person she was talking to would be pleased with what she had brought. That’s about all she does say of any significance. Most of the material items of the conversation — for instance, a reference to carbotene — are in your voice — I mean the imitation of your voice. So I suggest this. The sonotel records from that machine installed experimentally in the house at Katonah were sent to Dundee. Among them were some of the conversations between Miss Gladd and her sister, and the remarkable resemblance of the sister’s voice to that of his wife was of course noted by Dundee. He got — no matter when, possibly only recently — the notion of faking a record. He found someone to imitate your voice, and for his wife’s part of it he used selected items from the records he had in Martha Cooper’s voice. He knew, undoubtedly, that Martha Cooper was in Europe, or he wouldn’t have risked it. What do you think of it?”

Vail emitted a noncommittal grunt.

“You don’t like it?”

“It’s ingenious,” Vail admitted. “But it seems unnecessarily devious.”

“On the contrary. It’s far more plausible than your suggestion that Dundee faked the record nearly a year ago and kept it all that time before using it. As you know, he’s an impetuous man. What I want to know, is it technically possible? Could a sonotel record be faked by using — only for parts of it — scraps from other records?”

“Certainly. Any good technician could do it.”

“Fine.” Hicks looked pleased. “That settles that detail. That was the chief thing that bothered me, though there are one or two other little points—”

Judith cut in, “This is perfectly absurd! I don’t believe it and I never will believe it.”

“Nobody expects you to,” Hicks told her. “We are theorizing.”

“Then why go on with this crazy—”

“We go on because it’s interesting. Very interesting. Also because I’m expecting a phone call from District Attorney Corbett and this is as good a way to pass the time as any. Better than any. I don’t believe you appreciate the exceptional beauty of Vail’s theory, especially since we’ve established the possibility that the sonotel record was faked by using another record or records of Martha Cooper’s voice. It will stand more wear and tear than any other theory I’ve ever met. Say, for instance, that your husband could prove, somehow or other, no matter how, that he didn’t fake that record, and he didn’t kill Martha Cooper, and he didn’t kill George Cooper. Under such a blow as that most theories would totally collapse, but not this one. It would remain intact. All you would have to do would be to substitute someone else as the murderer, either your son or Vail himself.”

Ross, scowling, blurted truculently, “Look here—”

Hicks waved him away. “Forget it, son. I’m not going to pick on a tough baby like you, leaping over cars at armed men. I’ll use Vail instead, to show what I mean. If you don’t object?”

A corner of Vail’s thin mouth had a twist to it. “It seems to me that we’re not here to pass the time. You say you are expecting a call from the district attorney. I want to say, I must warn you, all of you, that if my name is dragged into this, if I am brought into this in any way, I shall be compelled to give the authorities the whole story. Omitting nothing.”

“Sure,” Hicks agreed. “We understand that.” He went back to Mrs. Dundee: “To show you about that theory. Let’s say Vail faked that record and did the murders, for example. You’d hardly have to change a thing, only a few details. Why did he fake the record? To lead suspicion away from the individual in the Dundee organization — a confidential secretary or assistant — from whom he had been getting the Dundee formulas. How did he fake the record? The confidential secretary noticed that among the experimental records from Katonah were some with a voice exactly like Mrs. Dundee’s, and that gave him the idea, which he passed on to Vail. They didn’t even have to find someone to imitate Vail’s voice, Vail did that part himself. In that detail, at least, it’s an improvement on Vail’s original theory. How did they plant the fake record? Simple. The confidential secretary merely inserted it in the case of records that had been delivered to Dundee by the detective agency as coming from Vail’s office.”