Rex Stout: Murder by the Book

When Wolfe entered, Wellman stood up to shake hands. Sometimes Wolfe makes an effort to conceal his dislike of shaking hands with strangers, and sometimes he doesn't. This time he did fairly well, then rounded the corner of his desk and got bis seventh of a ton deposited in the only chair on earth that really suits him. He rested his forearms on the arms of the chair and leaned back.

"Yes, Mr. Wellman?"

"I want to hire you," Wellman said.

"For what?"

"I want you to find-" He stopped short, and his jaw muscles began to work. He shook his head violently, took off his glasses, dug at his eyes with his fingertips, put the glasses back on, and had trouble getting them adjusted. "I'm not under very good control," he apologized. "I haven't had enough sleep lately and I'm tired. I want you to find the person who killed my daughter."

Wolfe shot a glance at me, and I got my notebook and pen. Wellman, concentrating on Wolfe, wasn't interested in me. Wolfe asked him, "When and where and how did she die?"

"She was run over by a car in Van Cortlandt Park seven-teen days ago. Friday evening, February second." Wellman had himself in hand now. "I ought to tell you about her."

"Go ahead."

"My wife and I live in Peoria, Illinois. I've been in business there over twenty years. We had one child, one daughter, Joan. We were very-" He stopped. He sat completely still, not even his eyes moving, for a long moment, and then went on. "We were very proud of her. She graduated from Smith with honors four years ago and took a job in the editorial department of Scholl and Hanna, the book publishers. She did well there-I have been told that by Scholl himself. She was twenty-six last November." He made a little gesture. "Looking at me, you wouldn't think I'd have a beautiful daugh-ter, but she was. Everybody agreed she was beautiful, and she was extremely intelligent."

He got a large envelope from his side pocket. "I might as well give you these now." He left his chair to hand Wolfe the envelope. "A dozen prints of the best likeness we have of her. I got them for the police to use, but they weren't using them, so you can. You can see for yourself."

Wolfe extended a hand with one of the prints, and I arose to take it. Beautiful is a big word, but there's no point in quibbling, and if that was a good likeness Joan Wellman had been a good-looking girl. There was slightly too much chin for my taste, but the forehead and eyes were all any father had a right to expect.

"She was beautiful," Wellman said, and stopped and was still again.

Wolfe couldn't stand to see people overcome. "I suggest," he muttered, "that you avoid words like 'beautiful' and 'proud.' The colder facts will serve. You want to hire me to learn who drove the car that hit her?"

"I'm a damn fool," Wellman stated.

"Then don't hire me."

"I don't mean I'm a damn fool to hire you. I mean I intend to handle this efficiently and I ought to do it." His jaw muscles moved, but not through loss of control. "It's like this. We got a wire two weeks ago Saturday that Joan was dead. We drove to Chicago and took a plane to New York. We saw her body.

The car wheels had ran over the middle of her, and there was a big lump on her head over her right ear. I talked to the police and the medical examiner."

Wellman was being efficient now. "I do not believe Joan was walking in that secluded spot in that park, not a main road, on a cold evening in the middle of winter, and neither does my wife. How did she get the lump on her head? The car didn't hit her head. The medical examiner says it's possible she fell on her head, but he's careful how he says it, and I don't believe it. The police claim they're working on it, doing all they can, but I don't believe that either. I think they think, it was just a hit-and-run driver, and all they're doing is to try to find the car. I think my daughter was murdered, and I think I know the name of the man that killed her."

"Indeed." Wolfe's brows went up a little. "Have you told them so?"

"I certainly have, and they just nod and say they're working on it. They haven't got anywhere and they're not going to. So I decided to come to you-"

"Have you any evidence?"

"I call it evidence, but I guess they don't." He took an enve-lope from his breast pocket. "Joan wrote home every week, hardly ever missed." He removed a sheet of paper from the envelope and unfolded it. "This is a copy I had typed, I let the police have the original. It's dated February first, which was a Thursday. I'll read only part of it.

"Oh, I must tell you, I have a new kind of date to-morrow evening. As you know, since Mr. Hanna decided that our rejections of manuscripts must have the per-sonal touch, except when it's just tripe, which I must say most of it is, I return quite a lot of stuff with a typed note with my name signed, and so do the other readers. Well, last fall sometime I did that with the manuscript of a novel by a man named Baird Archer, only I had forgotten all about it, until yesterday there was a phone call for me, at the office, and a man's voice said he was Baird Archer, and did I remember the note I had sent him returning his manuscript, and I said I did. He asked if anyone else had read it, and I said no, and then he propositioned me! He said he would pay me twenty dollars an hour to discuss the novel with him and make suggestions to improve it! How do you like that? Even if it's only five hours, that will

be an extra hundred dollars for the exchequer, only it won't stay in the exchequer very long, as you know, my darling and doting parents, if you know me, and you ought to, I'm to meet him tomorrow right after office hours."

Wellman waggled the paper. "Now she wrote that on-"

"May I see it, please?" Wolfe was leaning forward with a gleam in his eye. Apparently something about Joan Well-man's letter home had given him a kick, but when Wellman handed it to him he gave it only a brief glance before passing it to me. I read it clear through with my eyes while my ears recorded their talk for the notebook.

"She wrote that," Wellman said, "on Thursday, February first. Her appointment with that man was the next day, Friday, right after office hours. Early Saturday morning her body was found on that out-of-the-way road in Van Gortlandt Park. What's wrong with thinking that that man killed her?"

Wolfe was leaning back again. "Was there any evidence of assault? Assault as a euphemism for rape?"

"No." Wellman's eyes went shut, and his hands closed into fists. After a moment the eyes opened again. "Nothing like that. No sign at all of that."

"What do the police say?"

"They say they're still trying to find that man Archer and can't. No trace of him. I think-"

"Nonsense. Of course there's a trace. Publishers must keep records. He submitted a manuscript of a novel last fall, and it was returned to him with a note from your daughter. Re-turned how and where?"

"It was returned by mail to the only address he gave, Gen-eral Delivery, Clinton Station. That's on West Tenth Street." Wellman's fists became hands again, and he turned a palm up. "I'm not saying the police have just laid down on the job. Maybe they've even done the best they can, but the fact remains that it's been seventeen days now and they haven't got anywhere, and I don't like the way they talked yesterday and this morning. It looks to me like they don't want it to be an unsolved murder, and they want to call it manslaughter, and that's all it would be if it was a hit-and-run accident. I don't know about these New York police, but you tell me, they might do a thing like that, mightn't they?"