Rex Stout - Three Witnesses

He lifted his head. “I’m a commercial photographer -in Pittsburgh. Two years ago I married a girl named Margaret Ryan. Seven months later she left me. I didn’t know whether she went alone or with somebody. She just left. She left Pittsburgh too, or anyway I couldn’t find her there, and her family never saw her or heard from her. About five months later, about a year ago, a man I know, a businessman I do work for, came back from a trip to New York and said he’d seen her in a theater here with a man. He went and spoke to her, but she claimed he was mistaken. He was sure it was her. I came to New York and spent a week looking around but didn’t find her. I didn’t go to the police because I didn’t want to. You want a better reason, but that’s mine.”

“I’ll skip that.” I was writing in the notebook. “Go ahead.”

“Two weeks ago I went to look at a show of pictures at the Institute in Pittsburgh. There was a painting there, an oil, a big one. It was called ‘Three Young Mares at Pasture,’ and it was an interior, a room, with three women in it. One of them was on a couch, and two of them were on a rug on the floor. They were eating apples. The one on the couch was my wife. I was sure of it the minute I saw her, and after I stood and studied it I was even surer. There was absolutely no doubt of it.”

“We’re not challenging that,” I assured him. “What did you do?”

“The artist’s signature looked like Chappie, but of course the catalogue settled that. It was Ross Chaffee. I went to the Institute office and asked about him. They thought he lived in New York but weren’t sure. I had some work on hand I had to finish, and it took a couple of days, and then I came to New York. I had no trouble finding Ross Chaffee; he was in the phone book. I went to see him at his studio-here in this house. First I told him I was interested in that figure in his painting, that I thought she would be just right to model for some photographs I wanted to do, but he said that his opinion of photography as a medium was such that he wouldn’t care to supply models for it, and he was bowing me out, so I told him how it was. I told him the whole thing. Then he was different. He sympathized with me and said he would be glad to help me if he could, but he had painted that picture more than a year ago, and he used so many different models for his pictures that it was impossible to remember which was which.”

Meegan stopped, and I looked up from the notebook. He said aggressively, “I’m repeating that that sounded phony to me.”

“Go right ahead. You’re telling it.”

“I say it was phony. A photographer might use hundreds of models in a year, and he might forget, but not a painter. Not a picture like that. I got a little tactless with him, and then I apologized. He said he might be able to refresh his memory and asked me to phone him the next day. Instead of phoning I went back the next day to see him, but he said he simply couldn’t remember and doubted if he ever could. I didn’t get tactless again. Coming in the house, I had noticed a sign that there was a furnished apartment to let, and when I left Chaffee I found the janitor and rented it, and went to my hotel for my bags and moved in. I knew damn well my wife had modeled for that picture, and I knew I could find her. I wanted to be as close as I could to Chaffee and the people who came to see him.”

I wanted something too. I wanted to say that he must have had a photograph of his wife along and that I would like to see it, but of course I didn’t dare, since it was a cinch that he had already either given it to the cops, or refused to, or claimed he didn’t have one. So I merely asked, “What progress did you make?”

“Not much. I tried to get friendly with Chaffee but didn’t get very far. I met the other two tenants, Talento and Aland, but that didn’t get me anywhere. Finally I decided I would have to get some expert help, and that was why I went to see Nero Wolfe. You were there, you know how that came out-that big blob.”

I nodded. “He has dropsy of the ego. What did you want him to do?”

“I’ve told you.”

“Tell it again.”

“I was going to have him tap Chaffee’s phone.”

“That’s illegal,” I said severely.

“All right, I didn’t do it.”

I flipped a page of the notebook. “Go back a little. During that week, besides the tenants here, how many of Chaffee’s friends and acquaintances did you meet?”

“Just two, as I’ve told you. A young woman, a model, in his studio one day, and I don’t remember her name, and a man that was there another day, a man that Chaffee said buys his pictures. His name was Braunstein.”

“You’re leaving out Philip Kampf.”

Meegan leaned forward and put a fist on the table. “Yes, and I’m going to leave him out. I never saw him or heard of him.”

“What would you say if I said you were seen with him?”

“I’d say you were a dirty liar!” The red eyes looked redder. “As if I wasn’t already having enough trouble, now you set on me about a murder of a man I never heard of! You bring a dog here and tell me to pat it, for God’s sake!”

I nodded. “That’s your hard luck, Mr. Meegan. You’re not the first man that’s had a murder for company without inviting it.” I closed the notebook and put it in my pocket. “You’d better find some way of handling your troubles without having people’s phones tapped.” I arose. “Stick around, please. You may be wanted downtown anyhow.”

He went to open the door for me. I would have liked to get more details of his progress with Ross Chaffee, or lack of it, and his contacts with the other two tenants, but it seemed more important to have some words with Chaffee before I got interrupted. As I mounted the two flights to the top floor my wristwatch said twenty-eight minutes past ten.

V

“I KNOW THERE’S no use complaining,” Ross Chaffee said, “about these interruptions to my work. Under the circumstances.” He was being very gracious about it.

The top floor was quite different from the others. I don’t know what his living quarters in front were like, but the studio, in the rear, was big and high and anything but crummy. There were sculptures around, big and little, and canvases of all sizes were stacked and propped against racks. The walls were covered with drapes, solid gray, with nothing on them. Each of two easels-one much larger than the other-held a canvas that had been worked on. There were several plain chairs and two upholstered ones, and an oversized divan, nearly square. I had been steered to one of the upholstered numbers, and Chaffee, still in his smock, had moved a plain one to sit facing me.

“Only don’t prolong it unnecessarily,” he requested.

I said I wouldn’t. “There are a couple of points,” I told him, “that we wonder about a little. Of course it could be merely a coincidence that Richard Meegan came to town looking for his wife, and came to see you, and rented an apartment here just nine days before Kampf was murdered, but a coincidence like that will have to stand some going over. Frankly, Mr. Chaffee, there are those, and I happen to be one of them, who find it hard to believe that you couldn’t remember who modeled for an important figure in a picture you painted. I know what you say, but it’s still hard to believe.”