Rex Stout - Trio for Blunt Instruments

“But what-”

“Don’t interrupt. He took the tie to a laboratory and learned that the spot was human blood. He gave the tie, and the envelope and letterhead, to a law officer who had been told of the tie episode by Mr. Vance, and the police have established that the blood is the same type as your wife’s. You say they think they can prove that you killed your wife. Did they take your fingerprints?”

“Yes. They- I let them.”

“Could your fingerprints be on that envelope and letterhead?”

“Of course not. How could they? I don’t understand-”

“If you please. Mr. Vance told Mr. Goodwin that he had nine ties of that pattern and gave one to somebody. Did he give it to you? Cream with brown stripes.”

Kirk’s mouth opened and stayed open. The question was answered.

“When did he give it to you?”

“About two months ago.”

“Where is it now?”

“I suppose- I don’t know.”

“When you moved to a hotel room two weeks ago you took personal effects. Including that tie?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t notice. I took all my clothes, but I wasn’t noticing things like ties. I’ll see if it’s there.”

“It isn’t.” Wolfe took a deep breath, leaned back, and closed his eyes. Kirk looked at me, blinking, and was going to say something, but I shook my head. He had said enough already to make me think it might have been better all around if I had burned the damned souvenirs and crossed it off. He put his palms to his temples and massaged.

Wolfe opened his eyes and straightened up. He regarded Kirk, not cordially. “It’s a mess,” he stated. “I have questions of course, but you’ll answer them more to the point if I first expound this necktie tangle. Are your wits up to it? Should you sleep first?”

“No. If I don’t- I’m all right.”

“Pfui. You can’t even focus your eyes properly. I’ll merely describe it and ignore the intricacies. Assuming that the blood on the tie is in fact your wife’s blood, there are three obvious theories. The police theory must be that when you killed your wife the blood got on the tie, either inadvertently or by your deliberate act, and to implicate Vance you used his stationery to mail it to Mr. Goodwin. It was probably premeditated, since you had the stationery at hand. I don’t ask if that was possible; the police must know it was. You had been in his apartment, hadn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Frequently?”

“Yes. Both my wife and I-yes.”

“Is there a typewriter in his apartment?”

“There’s one in his studio.”

“You could have used it. Is there one in your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“More subtly, you could have used that, thinking it would be assumed-but that’s one of the intricacies I’ll ignore for the moment. So much for the police theory. Rejecting it because you didn’t kill your wife, I need an alternative, and there are two. One: Vance killed her. It would take an hour or more to talk that out, all its twists respecting the tie. He had it on and blood got on it, and he used it to call attention to himself in so preposterous a manner that it would inevitably be shifted to you; but in that case he had previously retrieved the tie he had given you, so it had been premeditated for at least two weeks. If the tie he gave you is in your hotel room, that will be another twist. Still another: he thought it possible that Mr. Goodwin would burn it as requested on the phone, and if so he would admit he had sent it, since it would no longer be available for inspection, saying he had found it somewhere on his premises and intended to get Mr. Goodwin to investigate, but changed his mind.”

“But why? I don’t see…”

“Neither do I. I said it’s a mess. The other alternative: X killed your wife and undertook to involve both Vance and you. Before considering him, what about Vance? If he killed her, why? Did he have a why?”

Kirk shook his head. “If he did- No. Not Vance.”

“She wasn’t much of a wife. Your phrase. Granting that no woman is much of a wife, did she have distinctive flaws?”

He shut his eyes for a long moment, opened them, and said, “She’s dead.”

“And you’re here because the police think you killed her, and they are digging up every fact about her that’s accessible. Decorum is pointless. At your trial, if it comes to that, her defects will become public property. What were they?”

“They were already public property-our little public.” He swallowed. “I knew when I married her that she was promis-no, she wasn’t promiscuous, she was too sensitive for that. She was incredibly beautiful. You know that?”

“No.”

“She was. I thought then that she was simply curious about men, and impetuous-and a little reckless. I didn’t know until after we had been married a few months that she had no moral sense about sexual relations-not just no moral sense, no sense . She was sensitive, very sensitive, but that’s different. But I was stuck. I don’t mean I was stuck just because I was married to her, that’s simple enough nowadays, I mean I was really stuck . Do you know what it’s like to have all your feelings and desires, all the desires that really matter, to have them all centered on a woman, one woman?”

“No.”

“I do.” He shook his head, jerked it from side to side several times. “What got me started?”

He could have meant either what got him started on that woman or what got him started talking about her. Wolfe, assuming the latter, said, “I asked you about Mr. Vance. Was he one of the objects of her curiosity?”

“Good Lord, no.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Oh yes I can. She never bothered to pretend. I tell you, she had no sense . I did some work for Vance on a couple of buildings, and I had that apartment before I was married. For her he was a nice old guy, rather a bore, who let her use one of his pianos when she felt like it. I am sure.”

Wolfe grunted. “Then X. He must meet certain specifications. It would be fatuous not to assume, tentatively at least, that whoever killed your wife sent the necktie to Mr. Goodwin, either to involve Mr. Vance or with some design more artful. So he had access to Vance’s stationery and either to his tie rack or to yours; and he had had enough association with your wife to want her dead. That narrows it, and you should be able to suggest candidates.”

Kirk was squinting, concentrating. “I don’t think I can,” he said. “I could name men who have been… associated with my wife, but none of them has ever met Vance as far as I know. Or I could name men I have seen at Vance’s place, but none of them has-”

He stopped abruptly. Wolfe eyed him. “His name?”

“No. He didn’t want her dead.”

“You can’t know that. His name?”

“I’m not going to accuse him.”

“Preserve your scruples by all means. I won’t accuse him either without sufficient cause. His name?”