Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (82 page)

“Excuse
me. I interrupt.” The chirp was still a chirp, but it had hard steel in it. “I
know she killed him.”

“I don’t.
And even if I bow to your conviction, before I could undertake the stratagem
you propose I would have to make sure there are no facts that would scuttle it.
It won’t take me long. You’ll hear from me tomorrow. I’ll want—”

She
interrupted again. “I can’t wait longer than tomorrow morning to tell them what
Kurt told me.”

“Pfui.
You can and will. The moment you disclose that, you no longer have a whip to
dangle at me. You will hear from me tomorrow. Now I want to think. Archie?”

I left
my chair. She looked up at me and back at Wolfe. For some seconds she sat,
considering, inscrutable of course, then stood up.

“It
was very exciting to be here,” she said, the steel gone, “to see you here. You
must forgive me for not phoning. I hope it will be early tomorrow.” She turned
and headed for the door, and I followed.

After
I had helped her on with her hooded coat, and let her out, and watched her
picking her way down the seven steps, I shut the door, put the chain-bolt on,
returned to the office, and told Wolfe, “It has stopped snowing. Who do you
think will be best for it, Saul or Fred or Orrie or Bill?”

“Sit
down,” he growled. “You see through women. Well?”

“Not
that one. I pass. I wouldn’t bet a dime on her one way or the other. Would you?”

“No.
She is probably a liar and possibly a murderer. Sit down. I must have everything
that happened there today after I left. Every word and gesture.”

I sat
and gave it to him. Including the question period, it took an hour and
thirty-five minutes. It was after one o’clock when he pushed his chair back,
levered his bulk upright, told me good night, and went up to bed.

At
half past two the following afternoon, Saturday, I sat in a room in a building
on Leonard Street, the room where I had once swiped an assistant district
attorney’s lunch. There would be no need for me to repeat the performance,
since I had just come back from Ost’s restaurant, where I had put away a
plateful of pig’s knuckles and sauerkraut.

As far
as I knew, there had not only been no steps to frame Margot for murder; there
had been no steps at all. Since Wolfe is up in the plant rooms every morning
from nine to eleven, and since he breakfasts from a tray up in his room, and
since I was expected downtown at ten o’clock, I had buzzed him on the house
phone a little before nine to ask for instructions and had been told that he
had none. Downtown Assistant DA Farrell, after letting me wait in the anteroom
for an hour, had spent two hours with me, together with a stenographer and a
dick who had been on the scene Friday afternoon, going back and forth and
zigzag, not only over what I had already reported, but also over my previous
association with the Bottweill personnel. He only asked me once if I knew
anything about Santa Claus, so I only had to lie once, if you don’t count my
omitting any mention of the marriage license. When he called a recess and told
me to come back at two-thirty, on my way to Ost’s for the pig’s knuckles I
phoned Wolfe to tell him I didn’t know when I would be home, and again he had
no instructions. I said I doubted if Cherry Quon would wait until after New
Year’s to spill the beans, and he said he did too and hung up.

When I
was ushered back into Farrell’s office at two-thirty he was alone—no
stenographer and no dick. He asked me if I had had a good lunch, and even
waited for me to answer, handed me some typewritten sheets, and leaned back in
his chair.

“Read
it over,” he said, “and see if you want to sign it.”

His
tone seemed to imply that I might not, so I went over it carefully, five full
pages. Finding no editorial revisions to object to, I pulled my chair forward
to a corner of his desk, put the statement on the desk top, and got my pen from
my pocket.

“Wait
a minute,” Farrell said. “You’re not a bad guy even if you are cocky, and why
not give you a break? That says specifically that you have reported everything
you did there yesterday afternoon.”

“Yeah,
I’ve read it. So?”

“So
who put your fingerprints on some of the pieces of paper in Bottweill’s
wastebasket?”

“I’ll
be damned,” I said. “I forgot to put gloves on.”

“All
right, you’re cocky. I already know that.” His eyes were pinning me. “You must
have gone through that wastebasket, every item, when you went to Bottweill’s
office ostensibly to look for Santa Claus, and you hadn’t just forgotten it.
You don’t forget things. So you have deliberately left it out. I want to know
why, and I want to know what you took from that wastebasket and what you did
with it.”

I
grinned at him. “I am also damned because I thought I knew how thorough they
are and apparently I didn’t. I wouldn’t have supposed they went so far as to
dust the contents of a wastebasket when there was nothing to connect them, but
I see I was wrong, and I hate to be wrong.” I shrugged. “Well, we learn
something new every day.” I screwed the statement around to position it, signed
it at the bottom of the last page, slid it across to him, and folded the carbon
copy and put it in my pocket.

“I’ll
write it in if you insist,” I told him, “but I doubt if it’s worth the trouble.
Santa Claus had run, Kiernan was calling the police, and I guess I was a little
rattled. I must have looked around for something that might give me a line on
Santa Claus, and my eye lit on the wastebasket, and I went through it. I haven’t
mentioned it because it wasn’t very bright, and I like people to think I’m
bright, especially cops. There’s your why. As for what I took, the answer is
nothing. I dumped the wastebasket, put everything back in, and took nothing. Do
you want me to write that in?”

“No. I
want to discuss it. I know you
are
bright. And you weren’t rattled. You don’t rattle. I want
to know the real reason you went through the wastebasket, what you were after,
whether you got it, and what you did with it.”

It
cost me more than an hour, twenty minutes of which were spent in the office of
the District Attorney himself, with Farrell and another assistant present. At
one point it looked as if they were going to hold me as a material witness, but
that takes a warrant, the Christmas weekend had started, and there was nothing
to show that I had monkeyed with anything that could be evidence, so finally
they shooed me out, after I had handwritten an insert in my statement. It was
too bad keeping such important public servants sitting there while I copied the
insert on my carbon, but I like to do things right.

By the
time I got home it was ten minutes past four, and of course Wolfe wasn’t in the
office, since his afternoon session up in the plant rooms is from four to six.
There was no note on my desk from him, so apparently there were still no
instructions, but there was information on it. My desk ashtray, which is mostly
for decoration since I seldom smoke—a gift, not to Wolfe but to me, from a
former client—is a jade bowl six inches across. It was there in its place, and
in it were stubs from Pharaoh cigarettes.

Saul
Panzer smokes Pharaohs, Egyptians. I suppose a few other people do too, but the
chance that one of them had been sitting at my desk while I was gone was too
slim to bother with. And not only had Saul been there, but Wolfe wanted me to
know it, since one of the eight million things he will not tolerate in the
office is ashtrays with remains. He will actually walk clear to the bathroom
himself to empty one.

So
steps were being taken, after all. What steps? Saul, a freelance and the best
operative anywhere around, asks and gets sixty bucks a day, and is worth twice
that. Wolfe had not called him in for any routine errand, and of course the
idea that he had undertaken to sell him on doubling for Santa Claus never
entered my head. Framing someone for murder, even a woman who might be guilty,
was not in his bag of tricks. I got at the house phone and buzzed the plant
rooms, and after a wait had Wolfe’s voice in my ear.

“Yes,
Fritz?”

“Not
Fritz. Me. I’m back. Nothing urgent to report. They found my prints on stuff in
the wastebasket, but I escaped without loss of blood. Is it all right for me to
empty my ashtray?”

“
Yes. Please do so.”

“Then
what do I do?”

“I’ll
tell you at six o’clock. Possibly earlier.”

He
hung up. I went to the safe and looked in the cash drawer to see if Saul had
been supplied with generous funds, but the cash was as I had last seen it and
there was no entry in the book. I emptied the ashtray. I went to the kitchen,
where I found Fritz pouring a mixture into a bowl of pork tenderloin, and said
I hoped Saul had enjoyed his lunch, and Fritz said he hadn’t stayed for lunch.
So steps must have been begun right after I left in the morning. I went back to
the office, read over the carbon copy of my statement before filing it, and
passed the time by thinking up eight different steps that Saul might have been
assigned, but none of them struck me as promising. A little after five the
phone rang and I answered. It was Saul. He said he was glad to know I was back
home safe, and I said I was too.

“Just a
message for Mr. Wolfe,” he said. “Tell him everything is set, no snags.”

“That’s
all?”

“Right.
I’ll be seeing you.”

I
cradled the receiver, sat a moment to consider whether to go up to the plant
rooms or use the house phone, decided the latter would do, and pulled it to me
and pushed the button. When Wolfe’s voice came it was peevish; he hates to be
disturbed up there.

“Yes?”

“Saul
called and said to tell you everything is set, no snags. Congratulations. Am I
in the way?”

“Oddly
enough, no. Have chairs in place for visitors; ten should be enough. Four or
five will come shortly after six o’clock; I hope not more. Others will come
later.”

“
Refreshments?”

“Liquids,
of course. Nothing else.”

“Anything
else for me?”

“No.”

He was
gone. Before going to the front room for chairs, and to the kitchen for
supplies, I took time out to ask myself whether I had the slightest notion what
kind of charade he was cooking up this time. I hadn’t.

It was
four. They all arrived between six-fifteen and six-twenty—first Mrs. Perry
Porter Jerome and her son Leo, then Cherry Quon, and last Emil Hatch. Mrs.
Jerome copped the red leather chair, but I moved her, mink and all, to one of
the yellow ones when Cherry came. I was willing to concede that Cherry might be
headed for a very different kind of chair, wired for power, but even so I
thought she rated that background and Mrs. Jerome didn’t. By six-thirty, when I
left them to cross the hall to the dining room, not a word had passed among
them.

In the
dining room Wolfe had just finished a bottle of beer. “Okay,” I told him, “it’s
six-thirty-one. Only four. Kiernan and Margot Dickey haven’t shown.”

“Satisfactory.”
He arose. “Have they demanded information?”

“Two
of them have, Hatch and Mrs. Jerome. I told them it will come from you, as
instructed. That was easy, since I have none.”

He
headed for the office, and I followed. Though they didn’t know, except Cherry,
that he had poured champagne for them the day before, introductions weren’t
necessary because they had till met him during the tapestry hunt. After
circling around Cherry in the red leather chair, he stood behind his desk to
ask them how they did, then sat.

“I don’t
thank you for coming,” he said, “because you came in your own interest, not
mine. I sent—”

“I
came,” Hatch cut in, sourer than ever, “to find out what you’re up to.”

“You
will,” Wolfe assured him. “I sent each of you an identical message, saying that
Mr. Goodwin has certain information which he feels he must give the police not
later than tonight, but I have persuaded him to let me discuss it with you
first. Before I—”

“I
didn’t know others would be here,” Mrs. Jerome blurted, glaring at Cherry.

“Neither
did I,” Hatch said, glaring at Mrs. Jerome.

Wolfe
ignored it. “The message I sent Miss Quon was somewhat different, but that need
not concern you. Before I tell you what Mr. Goodwin’s information is, I need a
few facts from you. For instance, I understand that any of you—including Miss
Dickey and Mr. Kiernan, who will probably join us later—could have found an
opportunity to put the poison in the bottle. Do any of you challenge that?”