Where There's a Will (18 page)

Footsteps from above, on the next flight of stairs, interrupted me. It was Andy Dunn coming down. He caught sight of us, and told Prescott his father would like to see him in Mrs. Hawthorne's room. Prescott looked at me half angrily and half pleadingly, and I shook my head. Andy addressed me:

“Dad would like to see Nero Wolfe too. Where is he?”

I answered that one, and they went off, and I moseyed to the end of the corridor and sat on a bench. After a while I started down to the main floor to look over fresh arrivals, but got shooed back up before I touched bottom, and went to the library and appropriated a comfortable chair. It was while I was there that a maid came around with sandwiches and milk
and ginger ale, and I took enough to last a while. The next scene I had any part in was when a squad man appeared and said that Mr. Dunn himself had suggested that everyone in the house submit to having their fingerprints taken, and the others had agreed, and he was prepared to oblige me. Having just wasted a lot of breath trying to persuade the dick on guard in the library that it would be conducive to the interest of law and order to let me use the phone, I was sore. I refused, and said my prints were on file downtown, since I was a licensed detective. He said he knew that, but it would be more convenient to take them with the others. I said it would be more convenient for me to go home and go to bed, since it was after dark, and he could go sit on a trylon. I admit I was churlish, but so were they. All I wanted to do was phone the house and ask Fritz how he was.

I got tired of the library and wandered out to the hall again. The three kids were there, Celia and Sara sitting on a bench and Andy standing in front of them, talking in whispers. They looked at me and stopped whispering, but had nothing to say to me. Not wanting to interfere with any childish secrets, I went on up to the next floor. The third door on the left was standing wide open, and a glance through as I passed by revealed May and June seated side by side on a sofa. I noted that May had exchanged the old faded gown for something fresher, a white dress with pink spots. At the street end of the hall was a window, and I went there and stood a while, looking down at the confusion outdoors. Parked cars were solid at the curb on both sides, and streams of both pedestrian and vehicle traffic were being kept moving by a scattering
of cops. The radio certainly is a blessing for people who like their meat fresh. Standing there surveying the bustling scene, I turned from time to time at the sound of footsteps behind me, but it was never anything more exciting than one of the inmates en route to or from the stairs, a dick who was obviously a messenger from the ground floor.

On two occasions, however, the footsteps kept coming until they got me. The first time it was Osric Stauffer. He gazed at me from ten paces off, evidently decided I was the customer he was calling on, and came clear up to me before he spoke.

“I understand Nero Wolfe isn't around. If you—”

“I don't know where he is,” I said firmly.

“So Dunn tells me. But if you—the fact is, I was looking for you before—when they sent for me—”

I wouldn't have said that at that moment he was living up to much of anything. He was close to pitiful. He was trying to keep from trembling but couldn't, and his voice sounded as if his throat was badly in need of oiling.

I said, “Here I am, but I'm in one hell of a temper. You don't look very happy yourself.”

“I suppose—I don't. This ghastly—right here—with all of us here.”

“Yeah, sure. It wouldn't have been so bad if she'd been all alone in the house.”

I was hoping he'd resent that enough to quit looking pathetic, but his mind was too occupied even to realize it was an ill-timed jest. All he did was move ten inches closer to me and speak in a lower and more urgent tone:

“Do you want to earn a thousand dollars?”

“Certainly. Don't you?”

“For nothing,” he said. “Really nothing. I've just had a talk with Skinner, the district attorney. I didn't tell him about my being behind those curtains—you know—when you came in and saw me. It would have been—it would have sounded too damned silly.” He pulled one of the poorest imitations of a jolly little laugh in my long experience. “It was silly—the silliest thing I ever did in my life. I'll give you—I mean, when they question you—if you forget you saw me there—you'll earn a thousand dollars—just to save me the embarrassment—I haven't got that much with me, but you can take my word—”

He ran down. I grinned at him. “No spik Eenglis.”

“But I tell you—”

“No, brother. If you didn't kill her, you'd be overpaying me. If you did, you're a piker. But if it will relieve your mind any to know it, my rule is never to give a cop anything to hold if it's something I might want back. There are a few pieces of information I intend to keep at least temporarily for my private use—since Nero Wolfe has retired—and the fact that you sneak into bars in private houses is one of them.”

“But—you say temporarily—I've got to know—”

“That's the best I can do for you, and don't offer me any more pennies. My mother told me not to accept money from strangers.”

He was by no means satisfied. It appeared that what he wanted was an anti-aggression bloc with unilateral action rigidly excluded, and he was pretty stubborn about it. I don't know how I would have got rid of him if John Charles Dunn hadn't come down the hall, caught sight of him, and taken him off into a
room. For, I calculated, a report of his session with Skinner.

The second approach to my anchorage by the window was just after I had returned from a trip to the library to get an ash tray. This time I wasn't being sought for; at least it didn't look like it. Sara and Celia and Andy came up together from the floor below, and saw me, and Sara said something to the other two which seemed to start an argument. They hissed back and forth for a couple of minutes, and then Andy and Celia entered at the open door through which I had seen May and June seated talking, and Sara trotted up to me. As she approached I observed:

“I see they haven't arrested you yet.”

“Of course not. Why should they?”

“They're apt to. If you confess to enough crimes and misdemeanors, you'll hit on one they can't prove you didn't do.”

“Don't be so darned smart.” She sat down on the bench that was there. “This—all this—has gone to my legs. I can't stand up. It stimulates me like cocktails on an empty stomach. I suppose when I go to bed, if I go to bed at all, I'll be crushed and I'll lie and stare at the dark and be miserable, and I may even throw up, but now it just makes my legs weak and excites my brain. I have got a brain.”

“So has a cricket.” I sat beside her. “You remind me of a cricket.”

“That might interest me some day, but it doesn't now. Andy was disagreeing with me, and of course Celia was on his side. Heavens, are they hooked! Andy says that the family is in danger, in horrible
danger, and that we ought to stick together and trust no one.”

“Whereas you're in favor of trusting? Who, me?”

“Not trust exactly. Trust doesn't enter into it that I can see. I was merely going to tell you something that happened this afternoon.”

“I must warn you, Miss Dunn, that after that confession of yours I'll suspect anything you say. I doubt if I'll even take the trouble to check up on it.”

She made an unladylike noise. “Nobody's asking you to check up on it. Only it happened, and I'm going to tell you. I told dad, and I don't think he even heard me. I told Mr. Prescott, and he said, ‘Yes, yes,' and patted me on the shoulder. I told Andy and Celia, and I swear to heaven they think I made it up. Why the dickens would I make it up that somebody stole my camera?”

“Oh. Is that what happened?”

“Yes, and whoever it was took two rolls of film too. You see, we came down to New York from the country Wednesday morning. Dad had to go back to Washington, but the famous Hawthorne girls decided the rest of us should camp in this house until after the funeral, and Aunt Daisy said all right.” She shivered. “Doesn't that veil give you the creeps?”

I said it did.

She went on. “It certainly does me. When we got here Wednesday morning, I went to my room on 19th Street and brought a bag of clothes. I had nothing with me in the country because Mr. Prescott took me right up there from the shop. Then after the funeral he read the will to us and all this mess started. So we all stayed here Thursday night and again last night. I've
been sleeping in that room with Celia.” She pointed to the second door on the left. “And this afternoon I noticed my camera was gone. Somebody stole it.”

“Or maybe borrowed it.”

“No, I've asked everyone, including the servants. Besides, they went through my bag too, messed it all up, and took two rolls of film.”

“Maybe a servant did it. She wouldn't admit it when you asked, you know. Very few people have a confession complex like you. Or maybe Aunt Daisy is a kleptomaniac as well as an eavesdropper.”

“How do you know she's an eavesdropper?”

“I've seen her at work.”

“Have you? I never have. Andy says if my camera was stolen it must have been by a member of the family and the best thing I can do is keep my mouth shut about it.”

“That sounds sensible. If it ever comes to a vote, my ballot goes to Aunt Daisy. Were the two rolls of film—Ah, company's coming.”

It was a dick I didn't know, looking stern and important. He came up to us.

“Archie Goodwin? Inspector Cramer wants you downstairs.”

T
he stage selected for my personal appearance was the music room. Some magazines and books had been cleared off of a large table, and at the far side of it sat District Attorney Skinner, in his shirt sleeves with his hair rumpled up. Inspector Cramer, with his coat and vest, which I had never seen him without, was on the piano bench. At one end of the table was Police Commissioner Hombert, looking tired and frustrated, and at the other end was a detective with a notebook. The chair ready for me was placed properly, so they could all see my face, with the light shining in my eyes.

I sat down and said, “This is quite a compliment, all three of you like this.”

Cramer blurted at me, “That'll do! This is one time we want no gags! And no hedging! We want answers and that's all!”

“Sure, I understand that,” I said in a hurt voice, “but I come in here expecting to be questioned by a sergeant or maybe a lieutenant, and when I actually find that the three most brilliant—”

“All right, Goodwin,” Skinner snapped. “You can speak a piece for us some other time. Where's Nero Wolfe?”

“I don't know. I've told at least a million—”

“I know you have. We're told at his house that he's not there. He left here immediately after you found the body. Where did he go?”

“Search me.”

“Where did he say he was going?”

“He didn't say. If you want facts, I'm out. If you want an opinion, you can have mine.”

“Let's have it.”

“I think he went home to dinner.”

“Nonsense. He was here on an important case, with important clients, and a murder was committed right under his nose. Do you expect me to believe—not even Nero Wolfe would be eccentric enough—”

“I don't know about eccentric enough, but he was hungry enough. He had a bum lunch.” I made a gesture. “You say you were told he isn't home. Naturally. He doesn't want to be disturbed. You might pry the door open with a search warrant, but what would you write on it? If you've asked questions around here, you must have discovered by now that he was upstairs in the library from 10:30 this morning until just before we discovered the body. He didn't leave it once. So what do you want him for anyway?”

Commissioner Hombert barked, “One thing we want is to ask him where and when he saw Naomi Karn today and what was said.”

“He didn't see her today.”

“We want to know the terms of the agreement he
made with her on behalf of his clients. We want to see the agreement.”

“There isn't any. He didn't make any.”

“I choke on that,” Cramer declared bluntly. “If she made no agreement, signed nothing, Hawthorne's fortune belonged to her when she died, and Wolfe's clients are out of luck.”

“And,” I suggested, “whoever inherits from her is in luck. Had you thought of that?”

Hombert growled. Cramer looked startled. Skinner demanded, “And who is that? Who inherits from her?”

“I haven't the slightest idea. Not me.”

“You're pretty fresh, aren't you, Goodwin?”

“Yes, sir. I resent being corraled up there with the herd for four hours. You could have taken me first as well as last. I know why you did it.” I nodded at the pile of notes on the table. “You wanted to toss my lies right back at me. Go ahead and try.”

But they wasted an hour peering into empty holes before they got to that part. When and where had I first seen Naomi Karn. Ditto Wolfe. Exactly what had happened, and what had been said, when I went to her apartment to get her the day before. Then the previous visitation of the Hawthornes and auxiliaries. What had April said. What had May said. What had June said. Had anyone threatened anyone. Then the talk with Naomi after the others had left. I tried to be obliging, but of course there were certain details that I regarded as inappropriate for the detective to have in his notebook, such as Naomi's calling Stauffer Ossie and Daisy Hawthorne's attack on the integrity of our clients, and I excluded those. Another thing I neglected
to mention was the Davis-Dawson episode that morning. I merely said that Wolfe got a phone call from Dunn around 9:30 and came to 67th Street, and that I joined him there about an hour later. Then I pulled a sheet of paper from my pocket and handed it across to Skinner.