Rex Stout - Three Witnesses

“What does Mr. Horne do?”

“He tells people about the time twelve years ago when he scored four touchdowns for Yale against Princeton.”

“Is that lucrative?”

“No. He says he isn’t fitted for a commercial society. I can’t stand him, and I don’t understand how Ann can. They live in an apartment on Park Avenue, and she pays the rent, and as far as I know she pays everything. She must.”

“Well.” Wolfe sighed. “So that’s the job. While Mr. Aubry’s motive was admittedly more powerful than theirs, since he stood to lose not only his fortune but also his wife, they were by no means immune to temptation. How much have you been associating with them the past two years?”

“Not much. With Aunt Margaret and Dick almost not at all. I used to see Ann fairly often, but very little since she married Norman Horne.”

“When was that marriage?”

“Two years ago. Soon after the estate was distributed.” She stopped, and then decided to go on. “That was one of Ann’s unpredictable somersaults. She was engaged to Jim Beebe-announced publicly, and the date set-and then, without even bothering to break it off, she married Norman Horne.”

“Was Mr. Horne a friend of your husband’s?”

“No, they never met. Ann found Norman-I don’t know where. They wouldn’t have been friends even if they had met, because Sidney wouldn’t have liked him. There weren’t many people Sidney did like.”

“Did he like his relatives?”

“No-if you want facts. He didn’t. He saw very little of them.”

“I see.” Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes, and his lips began to work, pushing out and then pulling in, out and in, out and in. He only does that when he has something substantial to churn around in his skull. But that time I thought he was being a little premature, since he hadn’t even seen them yet, not one. Caroline started to say something, but I shook my head at her, and she subsided.

Finally Wolfe opened his eyes and spoke. “You understand, madam, that the circumstances-particularly the finding of Mr. Aubry’s card, bearing his fingerprints, on the body-warrant an explicit assumption: that your husband was killed by one of the six persons present at the conference in Mr. Beebe’s office Friday afternoon; and, eliminating Mr. Aubry, five are left. You know them all, if not intimately at least familiarly, and I ask you: is one of them more likely than another? For any reason at all?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Do we have to -is this the only way?”

“It is. That’s our assumption until it’s discredited. I want your best answer.”

“I don’t know,” she insisted.

I decided to contribute. “I doubt,” I put in, “if this would be a good buy at a nickel, but this morning at the DA’s office I met the whole bunch. I had a little chat with Mrs. Horne, who seems to like gags, and when the others appeared she introduced me to them. She told them I was going to give her the third degree, and she added, I quote, ‘I expect I’ll go to pieces and confess-’ Unquote. At that point Horne put his hand on her mouth and told her she talked too much. Mrs. Savage said it was her sense of humor.”

“That’s like Ann,” Caroline said. “Exactly like her, at her worst.”

Wolfe grunted. “Mr. Goodwin has a knack for putting women at their worst. He’s no help, and neither are you. You seem not to realize that unless I can expose one of those five as the murderer of your husband, Mr. Aubry is almost certainly doomed.”

“I do realize it. It’s awful, but I do.” Her lips tightened. In a moment she spoke. “And I want to help! All night I was trying to think, and one thing I thought of -what Sidney said in his letter about something that would shock me. You said yesterday it’s not simple to disinherit a wife, but couldn’t he have done it some other way? Couldn’t he have signed something that would give someone a claim on the estate, perhaps the whole thing? Isn’t there some way he could have arranged for the-shock?”

“Conceivably,” Wolfe admitted. “But there would have had to be an authentic transfer of ownership and possession, and there wasn’t. Or if he established a trust it would have had to be legally recorded, and the estate would never have been distributed. You’ll have to do better than that.” He cleared his throat explosively and straightened up. “Very well. I must tackle them. Will you please have them here at six o’clock, madam? All of them?”

Her eyes widened at him. “Me? Bring them here?”

“Certainly.”

“But I can’t! How? What could I say? I can’t tell them that you think one of them killed Sidney, and you want-No! I can’t!” She came forward in the chair. “Don’t you see it’s just impossible? Anyhow, they wouldn’t come!”

Wolfe turned. “Archie. You’ll have to get them. I prefer six o’clock, but if that isn’t feasible after dinner will do.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “Phone Mr. Parker and make an appointment for Mrs. Karnow. Phone Saul and tell him I want him here as soon as possible. Then lunch. After lunch, proceed.” He turned to the client. “Will you join us, madam? Fritz’s rice-and-mushroom fritters are, if I may say so, palatable.”

IV

SINCE THIS IS A democracy, thank God, please prepare to vote. All those in favor of my describing in full detail my efforts to the utmost, lasting a good five hours, to fill Wolfe’s order for three males and two females, say aye. I hear none. Since my eardrums are sensitive I won’t ask for the noes.

Then I’ll sketch it. James M. Beebe, I found, was not one of the machines in one of the huge legal factories that occupy so many floors in so many of New York’s skyscrapers. He was soloing it in a modest space on the tenth floor of a midtown building. The woman in the little anteroom, the only visible or audible employee, with a typewriter on her left and a telephone on her right, said Mr. Beebe would be back soon, and, if you call thirty-five minutes soon, he was.

The inner room he led me to must have been a little cramped with a conference of six people. Its furniture was adequate but by no means ornate. Beebe, who had looked runty alongside Mrs. Savage, could not be called impressive seated at his desk, with a large percentage of the area of his thin face taken up by the black-rimmed glasses. When I showed him my credentials, a note signed by Caroline Karnow saying that Nero Wolfe was acting for her, and told him that Wolfe would like to discuss the situation with those chiefly concerned at his office that afternoon or evening, he said that he understood that the police investigation was making progress, and that he questioned the wisdom of an investigation of a murder by a private detective.

Wise or not, I said, Mrs. Karnow surely had the right to hire Wolfe if she wanted to. He conceded that. Also surely the widow of his former friend and client might reasonably expect him to cooperate in her effort to discover the truth. Wasn’t that so?

He looked uncomfortable. He saw that a pencil on his desk was not in its proper place, and moved it, and studied it a while to decide if that was the best spot after all. At length he came back to me.

“It’s like this, Mr. Goodwin,” he piped. “I sympathize deeply with Mrs. Karnow, of course. But any obligation I am under is not to her, but to my late friend and client, Sidney Karnow. I certainly will do anything I can to help discover the truth, but it is justifiable to suppose that in employing Nero Wolfe Mrs. Karnow’s primary purpose, if not her sole purpose, is to save Paul Aubry. As an officer of the law I cannot conscientiously participate in that. I am not Aubry’s attorney. I beg you to understand.”