Rex Stout - Death of a Doxy (Crime Line)

"That's easy. The lobster, of course."

"What? Lobster?"

"Excuse me. The man who was keeping her."

"You don't even know his name."

"So what? He was shelling out around twenty grand a year. Maybe it was stripping him. Maybe he was hooking it. He found out about that Cather, and he killed her. That's ABC."

"Very well, I'll consider it. But extend the hypothesis. Eliminate him too. Who then? Didn't you and Miss Kerr have many mutual friends?"

"Yes. If you want to call them friends to be polite. Sure we did."

"Suppose it was one of them. Which one?"

She pronounced a word which she should have kept to herself, since there was a lady present.

"Meaning?" Wolfe asked.

"Meaning I know them. You don't kill someone unless you have a reason, and even if you have a reason you've got to have the guts. They don't fit."

"Not one?"

"No."

"Will you give Mr. Goodwin or Mr. Panzer some of their names while he is showing you the orchids?"

"He can't show me the orchids. I have to be going."

"Perhaps tomorrow morning."

"He'd have to bring them to me in bed. Spread them all over me. I'd like that, but he wouldn't. In bed in the morning I'm no treat."

"Then the afternoon. Have you ever met a Dr. Gamm?"

"Teddy?" She laughed. "Yes, I know Teddy. I guess he's a pretty good doctor, but as a man you can have him. He got the idea he was going to make Isabel, and that was an idea. God knows what he'll do for an idea now."

"That one didn't work?"

"Certainly not."

"Have you ever met Miss Kerr's sister? Mrs. Fleming?"

She nodded. " That beetle. Now there's an idea. It's not funny, either. I honestly believe she thought Isabel would be better off dead. All right, if it wasn't Cather and it wasn't the lobster, it was her." She looked at the wall clock. "I've got to go." She left my chair. "Come along. Why not? You can have a front table and I'll spot you. I'll announce you big. I'll tell the suckers that Nero Wolfe in person is here and will take a bow. You can bow sitting down if you want to, they'll stand on their chairs to see you. It will be a feather in my bra. Come along. The beer will be on the house."

Wolfe's head was tilted back to squint up at her. "I decline your invitation, Miss Jackson," he said, "but I wish you well. I have the impression that your opinion of our fellow beings and their qualities is somewhat similar to mine." He got to his feet. He almost never stands for comers or goers, male or female. And he actually repeated it. "I wish you well, madam."

"Big man," she said. She turned. "You come, Archie. That Panzer's a rat."

Chapter 9

Forty-seven hours later, at nine o'clock Thursday evening, Wolfe put his coffee cup down and said, "Four days and nights of nothingness." I put my cup down and said, "No argument." Actually there could have been one. There had been plenty of nothingness in results, but not in efforts. Somewhere in the nine notebooks here on my table – I write these reports on my own machine up in my room, not in the office – are the names of four males and six females, supplied by Jaquette-Jackson when she came to look at the orchids Wednesday afternoon, who had been seen by Saul and Fred. For something to bite on, hopeless. Of course anything is possible. It was possible that one of the women had thought that Isabel had pinched her lipstick and had gone to get it and got mad and bopped her, or that one of the men hated Rudyard Kipling and couldn't stand a woman who had him bound in leather, but you need something better than ten billion possibles to get your teeth into. Any little piece of straw will do, but you have to have something .

For instance, statistics. There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

I admit this is the second kind: out of every thousand murders committed by amateurs, eighty-three are a woman killing another woman because she has taken her husband, or part of him. Therefore, from the statistical point of view, on the list of names we had collected the only one with a worthy known motive was Mrs. Avery Ballou, and that automatically gave her top billing. The difficulty was the approach. If I went and asked her if she had known that her husband had for three years been reading Kipling's poems to the woman who had been murdered last week, Ballou would never speak to us again, and we might need him for something. So after breakfast Wednesday morning I rang Lily Rowan and asked her if she had ever met Mrs. Avery Ballou, and she said no, and from the little she knew about her she didn't particularly care to.

"Then I won't insist," I said. "But I need to find out if I want to meet her. This is strictly private. I don't need a detailed resume, just a sketch, especially what her main interests are. For instance, if she collects autographs of famous private detectives, that would be perfect."

"She can't be that sappy."

I said she might do worse and it was a rush order, and an hour later she called me back. She had more than I needed, and I'll omit most of it. Mrs. Ballou had been Minerva Chadwick of the steel and railroad Chadwicks. She had married Ballou in 1936. Their son and two daughters were married. Her friends called her Minna. She never gave big parties but liked to have a few friends in for dinner. She was an Episcopalian but seldom went to church. She didn't like Paris much and she hated Florida. She liked horses and had four Arabians, but her special interest was Irish wolfhounds, and she had either twelve or fourteen…

I have wasted my space and your time, since obviously it was Irish wolfhounds. About all I knew about them was that they are big, so I called a man I know who knows dogs and got a few facts, and then rang the listed number of the Ballou house on 67th Street. When a voice like a butler said, "Mrs. Ballou's residence," I told him my name was Archibald Goodwin and I would like to make an appointment with Mrs. Ballou to ask her advice about an Irish wolfhound. He said she was not then available and he would give her the message, and I gave him my phone number. Toward noon a call came, a businesslike female voice who said she was Miss Corcoran, Mrs. Ballou's secretary, and what kind of advice did I want about an Irish wolfhound. I told her I was thinking of buying one, and I didn't know which of the commercial kennels had the best ones, and a friend had told me that Mrs. Ballou knew more about it than anyone else in the country; and she said if I came at five o'clock Mrs. Ballou would see me. That was okay, since Jackson-Jaquette was due at two-thirty to look at orchids.

You probably have no strong desire to spend another couple of hours with either Julie Jaquette or Miss Jackson, and I have already reported on the ten names I got from her, so I'll skip it and give you the pleasure of meeting Minna Ballou. The setting and supporting cast were fully up to expectations: the butler who let me in, with keen, careful eyes that sized me up in two seconds; the mat that protected the first six feet of the rug in the reception hall, bigger than the 14-by-26 Keraghan in Wolfe's office; the uniformed maid who turned her nose up as she took my hat and coat; the wide marble stairs; the elevator with red lacquered panels; the middle-aged gray-haired gray-eyed Miss Corcoran, who was there when I stepped out on the fourth floor; the room she took me to, with a desk and typewriter and cabinets to the left, and a couch and soft chairs and a coffee table to the right. Pictures of dogs and horses were spotted around, but my glance caught no picture of Avery Ballou. His wife was stretched out on the couch, on her back, with what I would call a faded red bathrobe reaching down nearly to her ankles. As we entered she turned her head and said, "I hoped you wouldn't come. I'm tired." She pointed to a chair near the foot of the couch. "Sit there."