Rex Stout - Trio for Blunt Instruments

“That’s obvious. Kirk took it from Vance’s closet. Part of his plan to implicate Vance.”

Wolfe nodded. “As Vance intended you to. But have you examined that assumption thoroughly?”

“Yes. I don’t like it. That’s one reason I think the DA is moving too fast. Kirk would have been a sap to do that. Someone else could have taken it to implicate Kirk. For instance, Fougere.”

“Why not Vance himself?”

“Because a man doesn’t smash a woman’s skull unless he has a damn good reason and Vance had no reason at all.”

Wolfe grunted. “I challenge that, but first the fourth point. Those neckties were an integral item of James Neville Vance’s projection of his selfhood. Made exclusively for him, they were more than merely distinctive and personal; they were morsels of his ego. Conceivably he might have given one of them to someone close and dear to him, but not to Martin Kirk-not unless it was an essential step in an undertaking of vital importance. So it was.”

“Damn it,” Cramer growled, “his reason !”

A corner of Wolfe’s mouth went up. “Your new approach is an improvement, Mr. Cramer. You know I wouldn’t fix on a man as a murderer without a motive, so I must have one for Mr. Vance, and you want it. Not now. You would get up and go. That would be enough for you to take to the district attorney, and while it would postpone a murder charge against my client it would by no means clear him permanently, because I strongly doubt if you can get enough evidence against Vance to hold him, let alone convict him. My knowledge of Vance’s motive is by hearsay, so don’t bother to warn me about withholding evidence; I have none that you don’t have. If I get some I’ll be glad to share it. I need to know with certainty where Mr. Vance will be this evening from ten o’clock on, and when Mr. Goodwin told me that you were at the door it occurred to me that the surest way would be for you to have him with you. Do you want it in writing, signed by both of us, that there will be no illegal act-under penalty of losing our licenses?”

Cramer uttered a word about the same flavor as the one Fougere had used, but of course there was no lady present. He followed it up. “I suppose I’d send it to the Commissioner so he could frame it?” He flattened his palms on the chair arms. “Look, Wolfe. I know you. I know you’ve got something. I admit your four points taken together add up. I’ll take your word that you won’t send Goodwin to break and enter. I know I can’t pry any more out of you even if it wasn’t time for you to eat, and anyway I eat too. But you say I’m to keep Vance until I hear from you or Goodwin, and that might mean all night, and he’s not just some bum. Nothing doing. Make it tomorrow morning, say ten o’clock, and limit it to six hours if I don’t hear from you or Goodwin, and I’ll buy it.”

Wolfe grinned. “That’s better anyway. I was rushing it. I said send a man to get him.”

“I heard you.”

“Very well.” Wolfe turned. “Archie. Mr. Cramer and I need a few minutes to make sure of details. Tell Fritz. And use the phone in the kitchen to get Mrs. Fougere. I must see her this evening. Also get Saul and Fred and Orrie. I want them either this evening or at eight in the morning.”

I rose. “Does it matter which?”

“No.”

I beat it to the kitchen.

8

IF YOU EVER NEED an operative and only the best will do, get Saul Panzer if you can. If Saul isn’t available, get Fred Durkin or Orrie Cather. That was the trio who entered James Neville Vance’s apartment with me at a quarter past ten Thursday morning.

What made the entry legal was that when I rang the bells, both downstairs and upstairs, the doors were opened from the inside. Who opened them was Rita Fougere. Upstairs she held it open until we were in and then closed it. I preferred not to touch the door-not that it mattered, but I like things neat.

The door shut, Rita turned to me. She still had those eyes, but the lids were puffy, and her face had had no attention at all. “Where’s Martin?” she asked. Her soft little voice was more like a croak. “Have you heard from him?”

I shook my head. “As Mr. Wolfe told you last evening, he’s being held as a material witness. Getting a lawyer to arrange for bail would cost money-his money. This will be cheaper and better if it works. Mr. Wolfe told you that.”

“I know, but… what if it doesn’t?”

“That’s his department.” I turned. “This is Mr. Panzer. Mr. Durkin. Mr. Cather. They know who you are. As you know, you’re to stay put, and if you’d like to help you might make some coffee. If the phone rings answer it. If the doorbell rings don’t answer it. Right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Gentlemen, sic ‘em.”

The way you prowl a place depends on what you’re after. If you’re looking for one large item, say a stolen elephant, of course it’s simple. The toughest is when you’re just looking. We did want one specific item, a necktie, but also we wanted anything whatever that might help, no matter what, and Saul and Fred and Orrie had been thoroughly briefed. So we were just looking after Saul found the necktie, and that means things like inspecting the seams of a mattress and unfolding handkerchiefs and flipping through the pages of books. It takes a lot longer when you are leaving everything exactly as it was.

We had been at it over an hour when Saul found the tie. I had shown them the seven on the rack in the closet so they would know what it looked like. Saul and Orrie were up in the studio, and when I heard them coming down the spiral stair I knew they had something and met them at the foot, and Saul handed it to me. It was folded, and pinned to it was one of Vance’s engraved letterheads, on which Saul had written: “Found by me at 11:25 A.M. on August 9, 1962, inside a piano score of Scriabin’s Vers la Flamme which was in a cabinet in the studio of James Neville Vance at 219 Horn Street, Manhattan, New York City.” He had signed it with his little twirl on the tail of the z.

“You’re my hero,” I told him. “It would be an honor to tie your shoestrings and I want your autograph. But you know how Orrie is on gags and so do I. We’ll take a look.”

I entered the bedroom, with them following, and went to the closet. The seven were still on the rack; I counted them twice. “Okay,” I told Saul, “it’s it. I’ll vote for you for President.” I took the seven from the rack and handed them to him. “Here, we’ll take them along.”

After that it was just looking, both in the apartment and in the studio, and that gets tedious. By two o’clock it was damn tedious because we were hungry and we had decided not to take time out to eat, but Cramer had agreed to keep Vance for six hours, and while we had Exhibit A and that was all Wolfe really expected, an Exhibit X would be deeply appreciated. So we kept at it.

A little before three o’clock I was standing in the middle of the living room frowning around. Rita was lying on a couch with her eyes closed. Fred was up in the studio with Saul and Orrie. I was trying to remember some little something that had been in my mind an hour ago, and finally I did. When Fred had taken a pile of gloves from a drawer he had looked in each glove but hadn’t felt in it, and he hadn’t taken them to the light. I went to the bedroom, got the gloves from the drawer, took them to the window, and really looked; and in the fifth glove, a pigskin hand-sewed number, there was Exhibit X. When I saw it inside the glove I thought it was just a gob of some kind of junk, but when I pulled it out and saw what it was I felt something I hadn’t felt very often, a hot spot at the base of my spine. I don’t often talk to myself either, but I said aloud, “Believe it or not, that’s exactly what it is. It has to be.” I put it back in the glove, put the glove in my pocket, returned the other gloves to the drawer, went to the phone on the bedstand, and dialed a number.