Rex Stout - Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

I was considering ways of selling that idea to Cramer, when Cramer saved me the trouble. He pushed the phone aside and said abruptly to Wolfe, “You asked if I need anything. Well, I do. I suppose you’ve noticed the way things seem to be heading.”

“I perceive,” Wolfe said dryly, “a general tendency in the direction of Miss Rowan.”

Cramer nodded without enthusiasm. “That don’t require much perceiving. We’ve got to go back over everybody, but that’s the way it looks now. And Lily Rowan’s father was one of my best friends. He got me on the force, and he got me out of a couple of tight holes in the old days when he was on the inside at the Hall. I knew Lily before she could walk. I’m not the man to do any cleaning job on her, and I don’t want to turn her over to any of these wolves. I want you to handle her up at your place. And I want to be there in the front room where she can’t see me.”

Wolfe frowned. “I know her myself. I have given her orchids. She has been pestering me lately. It will not be pleasant.” He shot me a glance that was supposed to wither me. Then he regarded Cramer with an expression of repugnance, and heaved a sigh. “Very well. Provided Archie goes with us, and stays. This idiotic farce-”

A dick I didn’t know entered the room, advanced at a nod from Cramer and reported: “Mrs. Chack is here and wants to talk. Miss Leeds is with her. Give her to Lieutenant Rowcliff?”

“No,” Cramer said, after a glance at the clock, “bring them in here.”

Chapter 10

Those two females had been something out of the ordinary when I saw them separately on my first trip to Barnum Street, but marching in that office together they were really something. As far as size and weight went, Miss Leeds could easily have tucked Mrs. Chack under her arm and carried her off, but the expression in Mrs. Chack’s black eyes made it seem likely that such things as size and weight would be minor considerations, and age too, if anybody tried to start anything. She had to take two steps to Miss Leeds’ one, but she was in front. They were both dressed to sit in a buggy and watch a parade of soldiers returning from the Spanish-American war. When Purley had got them into chairs, Cramer asked, “You ladies have something to say?”

“I have,” Mrs. Chack snapped. “I want to know when you are going to get Roy Douglas. I want to see him face to face. He killed my granddaughter.”

“You are crazy,” Miss Leeds declared huskily but firmly. “You have been crazy for fifty years. I have permitted you to live in my house-”

“I will not tolerate-”

They were both talking at once.

“Ladies!” Cramer boomed. They both stopped talking as if he had turned a valve. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “you had better wait outside, Miss Leeds, until I hear what Mrs. Chack has to say-”

“No,” Miss Leeds said immovably. “I intend to hear it.”

“Then please don’t interrupt. You’ll get a chance-”

“She has been afraid of me,” Mrs. Chack asserted, “since I discovered that her mother poisoned squirrels in Washington Square on December ninth, 1905. That’s a prison offense. But now my own granddaughter is dead because I committed a sin myself and have no right to expect the mercy of God and I am willing to be punished. I am old enough to die and I ought to die. When Cora Leeds died on the ninth of December last year I said to myself, in my wretched vanity, it was the Hand of God, because it pleased me. Then when I learned that Roy Douglas had killed Cora Leeds, murdered her, I said I didn’t believe it. In my vanity I would not relinquish the Hand of God-”

“Who was Cora Leeds?” Cramer demanded.

“Her mother.” Mrs. Chack pointed a bony little finger, straight as an arrow, at Miss Leeds. “I refused-”

“How did you learn that Roy Douglas killed her?”

“Ann told me. My granddaughter. She told me how she knew, but I can’t remember. I have been trying to remember since last night. It will come back to me. My mind isn’t too old for a thing like that to come back. Cora Leeds was in bed, she had been in bed since she hurt her leg in September, and he put a pillow over her face and held her down, and when she struggled it was too much for her old heart and she died. I think Ann saw him putting the pillow-no, I’m just guessing. You see, I didn’t want to remember it because then it wouldn’t have been the Hand of God on December ninth, so I forgot it. That’s the way an old mind works. Since last night I’ve been trying to remember so I could come and tell you as soon as I did, but I decided I’d better not wait.”

“She’s crazy,” Miss Leeds stated in her voice like a man. “She has been crazy for-”

Cramer gestured her into silence without taking his gaze away from Mrs. Chack. “But,” he rumbled, “you said that Roy Douglas killed your granddaughter. Do you remember how you know that?”

“Certainly I do,” she snapped. “He killed her because she knew he had killed Cora Leeds, and he was afraid of her. He was afraid she would tell someone. Isn’t that a good reason?”

“Yeah, it’s all right for a reason. Have you got any proof? Any evidence? Did you see him around there?”

“See him? How could I? I wasn’t there. When I got home she was dead.” Her voice got shrill. “I am eighty-nine years old! I went home and found my granddaughter dead! Could I sit right down and think it out? After I was in bed I knew he had killed her! I want you to get him! I want to see him face to face!”

“You will,” Cramer assured her. “Take it easy, Mrs. Chack. Do you remember why he killed Cora Leeds?”

“Certainly I do. Because he didn’t want to give up his pigeon loft. She was going to have it torn down.”

“I thought she had built it for him,” I put in.

“She had. She spent thousands of dollars on it. But after she hurt her leg and couldn’t go to the Square any more, she hated him and she hated everybody. She sent word to me that I had to move out, had to leave that house where I had lived for over forty years. And she told Leon he had to get out and she wouldn’t pay him any more for killing hawks. She had paid him twenty dollars for every hawk he killed. And she told Roy Douglas she owned the pigeons, he didn’t, and she was going to tear the loft down and he had to go. And she told her own daughter she had to stop going to the Square, and when she found out her daughter was secretly giving money to Leon for killing hawks she wouldn’t let her have any money for anything. That’s the way she acted after she hurt her leg and couldn’t go to the Square. It was no wonder I thought it was the Hand of God, especially when it happened on December ninth. But God forgive me, it wasn’t. And I knew it wasn’t, I knew it was Roy Douglas, because Ann told me-God forgive me.”

Cramer cleared his throat and asked, “From what you said, Miss Leeds, I understand you don’t agree with Mrs. Chack?”

“I do not,” Miss Leeds declared emphatically. “She’s crazy. She did it herself.”

“Did what herself? Made that up?”

“No, she did it. She killed my mother and she killed her granddaughter. I doubt if she even knows she did it. Nobody in their right mind would have hurt Ann. She was a nice child and everybody liked her.”