Rex Stout - Trouble in Triplicate

“Listen,” I said, with my voice sounding peculiar, so I tried to correct it. “You are extremely good, no question about it, but as you say, it’s too late. You are trying to go to bat when your side already has three out in the ninth, and that’s against the rules. I’ll hand it to you that you are extremely good. When you turn it on it flows. But in seven minutes now Nero Wolfe will be phoning the police, so you’d better fix your hair. You’ll be having your picture taken.”

She hauled off and smacked me in the face. I barely felt it and didn’t even move my hands.

“I hate men,” she said through her teeth. “God, how I hate men!”

She turned and walked to the bathroom, and entered and closed the door.

I didn’t know whether she had gone to fix her hair or what, and I didn’t care.

Instead of crossing to the window and standing there without breathing, as I had done before, I sat down on the edge of the bed and did nothing but breathe. I suppose I did actually know what was going to happen. Anyhow, when it happened, when the noise came, not nearly as loud as it had been in Wolfe’s office because then the capsule had been inside a metal percolator, I don’t think I jumped or even jerked. I did not run, but walked, to the bathroom door, opened it and entered.

Less than a minute later I went to the back door in the kitchen and opened that and told Saul Panzer, “All over. She stuck it in her mouth and lit the fuse. You get out. Go and report to Wolfe. I’ll phone the cops.”

“But you must be- I’ll stay-”

“No, go on. Step on it. I feel fine.”

X

At noon the next day, Saturday, I was getting fed up with all the jabber because I had a question or two I wanted to ask myself. Cramer had come to Nero Wolfe’s office prepared to attack from all sides at once, bringing not only Sergeant Purley Stebbins but also a gang of civilians consisting of Helen Vardis, Joe Groll, and Conroy Blaney. Blaney had not been let in. On that Wolfe would not budge. Blaney was not to enter his house. The others had all been admitted and were now distributed around the office, with Cramer, of course, in the red leather chair. For over half an hour he and Wolfe had been closer to getting locked in a death grip than I had ever seen them before.

Wolfe was speaking. “Then arrest me,” he said. “Shut up, get a warrant, and arrest me.”

Cramer, having said about all an inspector could say, merely glared.

“Wording the charge would be difficult,” Wolfe murmured. When he was maddest he murmured. “I have not withheld evidence, or obstructed justice, or shielded the guilty. I thought it possible that Mrs. Poor, confronted suddenly with that evidence, would collapse and confess.”

“Nuts,” Cramer said wearily. “How about confronting me with the evidence? Instead of evidence, what you confront me with is another corpse. And I know”-he tapped the chair arm with a stiff finger-“exactly why. The only evidence you had that was worth a damn was that photograph of Arthur Howell. If you had turned it over to me-”

“Nonsense. You already had a photograph of Arthur Howell. Several of them. The Beck Products Corporation people gave them to you on Thursday. So they told Saul Panzer. What good would one more do you?”

“Okay.” Cramer was in a losing fight and knew it. “But I didn’t know that Howell had come to see you on Tuesday with Mrs. Poor, passing himself off as her husband. Dressed in the same kind of suit and shirt and tie that Poor was wearing that day. Only you and Goodwin knew that.”

“I knew it. Mr. Goodwin didn’t. He thought it was a photograph of Mr. Poor.”

“Protecting the help, huh?” Cramer snorted incredulously. “Anyhow, you knew it, and you knew it sewed her up, and you knew if she was arrested and came to trial you would have to go to court and testify, and you don’t like to leave home and you don’t like what there is to sit on in a courtroom, so you arrange it otherwise, and I’ll be damned if anyone has appointed you judge, jury, district attorney, and the police force all in one.”

Wolfe’s shoulders moved an eighth of an inch up and down. “As I said, get a warrant, but watch the wording.” Cramer glared. A noise like a giggle came from the direction of Helen Vardis, and Joe Groll, being perched on the arm of her chair and therefore close enough, put his hand over hers. Apparently the days when they had taken turns following each other were only a memory.

I put in an entry. “Excuse me, but when you gentlemen finish the shadow-boxing I would like to ask a question.” I was looking at Wolfe. “You say you knew Poor wasn’t Poor. When and how?”

Of course Wolfe faked. He sighed as if he were thinking now this is going to be an awful bore. Actually he was always tickled stiff to show how bright he was.

His eyes came to me. “Wednesday evening you told me that Mr. Poor smoked ten to fifteen cigars a day. Thursday Mr. Cramer said the same thing. But the man that came here Tuesday, calling himself Poor, didn’t even know how to hold a cigar, let alone smoke one.”

“He was nervous.”

“If he was he didn’t show it, except with the cigar. You saw him. It was a ludicrous performance and he should never have tried it. When I learned that Mr. Poor was a veteran cigar smoker, the only question was who had impersonated him in this office? And the complicity of Mrs. Poor was obvious, especially with the added information, also furnished by Mr. Cramer, that no photograph of Mr. Poor was available. There are photographs of everybody nowadays. Mrs. Poor was an ass. She was supremely an ass when she selected me to bamboozle. She wanted to establish the assumption that Mr. Blaney was going to kill Mr. Poor. That was intelligent. She did not want to take her counterfeit Mr. Poor to the police, for fear someone there might be acquainted with the real Mr. Poor. That also was intelligent. But it was idiotic to choose me as the victim.”

“She hated men,” I remarked.

Wolfe nodded. “She must have had a low opinion of men. In order to get what she wanted, which presumably was something like half a million dollars-counting her husband’s fortune, the insurance money, and a half share in the business after Mr. Blaney had been executed for the murder of Mr. Poor-she was willing to kill three men, two by direct action and one indirectly. Incidentally, except for the colossal blunder of picking on me she was not a fool.”

“The hell she wasn’t,” Cramer growled. “With all that trick set-up? She was absolutely batty.”

“No, sir.” Wolfe shook his head. “She was not. Go back over it. She didn’t manufacture the trick setup out of her head, she simply used what she had. On a certain day she found herself with these ingredients at hand. One, the hostility between the partners in the business, amply corroborated by such details as Mr. Poor having Miss Vardis spy on Mr. Blaney, and Mrs. Poor herself having Mr. Groll do the same. Two, her acquaintance with a man named Arthur Howell, who had access to a supply of explosive capsules capable of concealment in a cigar, and who also sufficiently resembled her husband in build and general appearance except for the face itself, and she intended to take care of the face. Ten of your men, Mr. Cramer, kept at it for a week or so, can probably trace her association with Mr. Howell. They’re good at that. Unquestionably it was those qualifications of Mr. Howell that suggested the details of her plan. She did not of course inform him that she hated men. Quite the contrary. She persuaded him to help her kill her husband, offering, presumably, a strong incentive.”