Abigail Browining - Murder Most Merry

“Piffle.”

“Yes, sir. They’ve been friends of our client for years, and customers for about as long. They’re mystery fans, and he got them started on first editions.”

“Including Woolrich?”

“He’s a favorite of Jayne’s. I gather Jon can take him or leave him.”

“I wonder which he did last night. Do the Corn-Wallaces collect manuscripts?”

“Just books. First editions, though they’re starting to get interested in fancy bindings and limited editions. The one with a special interest in manuscripts is Zoltan Mihalyi.”

“The violinist?”

Trust Haig to know that. I’d never heard of him myself. “A big mystery fan.” I said. “I guess reading passes the time on those long concert tours.”

“I don’t suppose a man can spend all his free hours with other men’s wives,” Haig said. “And who’s to say that all the stories are true? He collects manuscripts, does he?”

“He was begging for a chance to buy the Straub, but our friend wouldn’t sell.”

“Which would make him a likely suspect. Who else?”

“Philip Perigord.”

“The writer?”

“Right, and I didn’t even know he was still alive. He hasn’t written anything in years.”

“Almost twenty years. More Than Murder was published in nineteen eighty.”

Trust him to know that. too. “Anyway,” I said, “he didn’t die. He didn’t even stop writing. He just quit writing books. He went to Hollywood and became a screenwriter.”

“That’s the same as stopping writing,” Haig reflected. “It’s very nearly the same as being dead. Does he collect books?”

“No.”

“Manuscripts?”

“No.”

“Perhaps he wanted the manuscripts for scrap paper,” Haig said. “He could turn the pages over and write on their backs. Who else was present’“

“Edward Everett Stokes.”

“The small-press publisher. Bought out his partner, Geoffrey Poges, to became sole owner of Stokes-Poges Press.”

“They do limited editions, according to our client. Leather bindings, small runs, special tip-in sheets.”

“All well and good,” he said, “but what’s useful about Stokes-Poges is that they issue a reasonably priced trade edition of each title as well, and publish works otherwise unavailable, including collections of short fiction from otherwise uncollected writers.”

“Do they publish Woolrich?”

“All his work has been published by mainstream publishers, and all his stories collected. Is Stokes a collector himself?”

“Our client didn’t say.”

“No matter. How many is that? The Corn-Wallaces, Zoltan Mihalyi, Philip Perigord, E. E. Stokes. And the sixth is—”

“Harriet Quinlan.”

He looked puzzled, then nodded in recognition. “The literary agent.”

“She represents Perigord,” I said, “or at least she would, if he ever went back to novel-writing. She’s placed books with Stokes-Poges. And she may have left the party with Zoltan Mihalyi.”

“I don’t suppose her client list includes the Woolrich estate. Or that she’s a rabid collector of books and manuscripts.”

“He didn’t say.”

“No matter. You said six suspects, Chip. I count seven.”

I ticked them off. “Jon Corn-Wallace. Jayne Corn-Wallace. Zoltan Mihalyi. Philip Perigord. Edward Everett Stokes. Harriet Quinlan. Isn’t that six? Or do you want to include our client, the little man with the palindromic first name? That seems farfetched to me, but—”

“The caterer, Chip.”

“Oh. Well, he says she was just there to do a job. No interest in books, no interest in manuscripts, no real interest in the world of mysteries. Certainly no interest in Cornell Woolrich.”

“And she stayed when her staff went home.”

“To have a drink and be sociable. He had hopes she’d spend the night, but it didn’t happen. I suppose technically she’s a suspect, but—”

“At the very least she’s a witness,” he said. “Bring her.”

“Bring her?”

He nodded. “Bring them all.”

It’s a shame this is a short story. If it were a novel, now would be the time for me to give you a full description of the off-street carriage house on West Twentieth Street, which Leo Haig owns and where he occupies the top two floors, having rented out the lower two stories to Madam Juana and her All-Girl Enterprise. You’d hear how Haig had lived for years in two rooms in the Bronx, breeding tropical fish and reading detective stories, until a modest inheritance allowed him to set up shop as a poor man’s Nero Wolfe.

He’s quirky, God knows, and I could fill a few pleasant pages recounting his quirks, including his having hired me as much for my writing ability as for my potential value as a detective. I’m expected to write up his cases the same way Archie Goodwin writes up Wolfe’s, and this case was a slam-dunk, really, and he says it wouldn’t stretch into a novel, but that it should work nicely as a short story.

So all I’ll say is this: Haig’s best quirk is his unshakable belief that Nero Wolfe exists. Under another name, of course, to protect his inviolable privacy. And the legendary brownstone, with all its different fictitious street numbers, isn’t on West Thirty-fifth Street at all but in another part of town entirely.

And someday, if Leo Haig performs with sufficient brilliance as a private investigator, he hopes to get the ultimate reward—an invitation to dinner at Nero Wolfe’s table.

Well, that gives you an idea. If you want more in the way of background. I can only refer you to my previous writings on the subject. There have been two novels so far. Make Out With Murder and The Topless Tulip Caper , and they’re full of inside stuff about Leo Haig. (There were two earlier books from before I met Haig. No Score and Chip Harrison Scores Again , but they’re not mysteries and Haig’s not in them. All they do, really, is tell you more than you’d probably care to know about me. )

Well, end of commercial. Haig said I should put it in, and I generally do what he tells me. After all, the man pays my salary.

And, in his own quiet way. he’s a genius. As you’ll see.

“They’ll never come here,” I told him. “Not today. I know it will always live in your memory as The Day the Cichlids Spawned, but to everybody else it’s Christmas, and they’ll want to spend it in the bosoms of their families, and—”

“Not everyone has a family. “‘ he pointed out, “and not every family has a bosom.”

“The Corn-Wallaces have a family. Zoltan Mihalyi doesn’t, but he’s probably got somebody with a bosom lined up to spend the day with. I don’t know-about the others, but—”

“Bring them,” he said, “but not here. I want them all assembled at five o’clock this afternoon at the scene of the crime.”

“The bookshop? You’re willing to leave the house?”

“It’s not entirely business,” he said. “Our client is more than a client. He’s a friend, and an important source of books. The reading copies he so disdains have enriched our own library immeasurably. And you know how important that is.”

If there’s anything you need to know, you can find it in the pages of a detective novel. That’s Haig’s personal conviction, and I’m beginning to believe he’s right.

“I’ll pay him a visit,” he went on. “I’ll arrive at four-thirty or so, and perhaps I’ll come across a book or two that I’ll want for our library. You’ll arrange that they all arrive around five, and we’ll clear up this little business.” He frowned in thought. “I’ll tell Wong we’ll want Christmas dinner at eight tonight. That should give us more than enough time.”

Again, if this were a novel, I’d spend a full chapter telling you what I went through getting them all present and accounted for. It was hard enough finding them, and then I had to sell them on coming. I pitched the event as a second stage of last night’s party—their host had arranged, for their entertainment and edification, that they should be present while a real-life private detective solved an actual crime before their very eyes.