Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 19 (25 page)

One thing neither of us had done, we had read no newspaper account of Corrigan’s unsigned confession. There hadn’t been any, though of course the death of a
prominent attorney by a gunshot had been adequately covered, including pointed reference to previous regrettable occurrences connected with his firm. Evidently Cramer was saving the confession for his scrapbook, though it wasn’t autographed.

Monday morning he sat in the red leather chair and announced, “The DA’s office is ready to call it suicide.”

Wolfe, at his desk, was pouring beer. He put the bottle down, waited for the foam to subside to the right level so that the tilt would get him beer and would also moisten his lips with foam, lifted the glass, and drank. He liked to let the foam dry on his lips, but not when there was company, so he used his handkerchief before he spoke.

“And you?”

“I don’t see why not.” Cramer, having accepted the invitation to help with the beer, which he rarely did, had his glass in his hand. “I could tell you how it stands.”

“Please do.”

“It’s like this. The confession was typed on the machine in his apartment. He’s had it there for years. He has always done quite a little typing—kept a supply of the firm’s paper and envelopes there. His secretary, Mrs. Adams, admits that there is nothing about the typing or the text to cause a reasonable doubt that he typed it.”

“Admits?”

“Yes. She defends him. She won’t believe he betrayed O’Malley or committed murder.” Cramer emptied his glass and put it down. “I can give you more on the confession, plenty more, but the DA isn’t prepared to impeach it, and neither am I. We can’t challenge any of its facts. As for the dates of the murders, December thirtieth, February second, and February twenty-sixth, of course Corrigan had already been checked on that along with all the others. The file had him alibied for the twenty-sixth, the afternoon Rachel Abrams was killed, but digging into it we find that it’s loose. We’d want to
dig more on it if he was alive to take to a jury and we had to face a defense, but he’s dead and there’ll be no jury. We can’t check on December fourth, the day he says he was at his office in the evening and found Dykes’s manuscript and read it. There are no other dates to check.”

Wolfe grunted. “How are the others on the dates? Did you go over that?”

“Some. They’re all about the same as Corrigan; there’s nothing too tight to rip open. As I think I told you once, none of them is completely eliminated by an alibi—except O’Malley the day Rachel Abrams was killed. He was in Atlanta, but now that we know what was in the manuscript he’s out anyway. All it spilled about him was that he had been disbarred for bribing a juror, and God knows that was no secret. Unless you think the confession lies about the manuscript?”

“No. On that point I credit it unreservedly.”

“Then it doesn’t matter where O’Malley was.” Cramer reached to empty his bottle into his glass and settled back. “Now about the typewriter at the Travelers Club. It’s still there, in an alcove off of the writing room, but it was overhauled about two months ago. That doesn’t stop us, because in the firm’s files we found two items Corrigan had typed on it, memoranda to Mrs. Adams. We got the original of the anonymous letter to the court informing on O’Malley and it was typed on that machine, absolutely no question about it. Corrigan used it occasionally. He ate dinner there two or three times a week and played bridge there Thursday evenings. None of the others is a member. Two of them, Kustin and Briggs, have been brought there once or twice by Corrigan for dinner, but that’s all. So it looks—”

“This,” Wolfe cut in, “is important. Extremely. How closely was it examined? A dinner guest might conceivably
have used a typewriter, especially if he needed one that couldn’t be traced to him.”

“Yeah, I know. Saturday you called it a focus of interest. I had Stebbins handle it himself, with instructions to make it good, and he did. Besides, look at it. Say you’re Kustin or Briggs, going there as a guest to eat with Corrigan. Say you use that typewriter for that particular purpose. You can’t do it, you can’t even get in that room, without either Corrigan or an attendant knowing about it, probably both of them, and that would be pretty damn dumb. Wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So it looks as if Corrigan did inform on his partner. That alone makes the confession a lot easier to buy, signed or unsigned, and the DA’s office feels the same way about it. Isn’t that practically what you said Saturday? Is there anything wrong with that argument?”

“No.” Wolfe made a noise that could have been a chuckle. “I will accept an apology.”

“The hell you will. For what?”

“You accused me, or Mr. Goodwin, of making that cryptic notation on Dykes’s letter of resignation. Well?”

Cramer picked up his glass and drank, in no hurry. He set the glass down. “Uh-huh,” he conceded. “I still say it looked like a typical Wolfe stunt, and I’m not apologizing. That’s the one detail in that confession that it’s hard to dope. The confession says he made the notation in December, so of course it wasn’t there when they all saw the letter last summer, that’s all right, but it must have been there a week ago Saturday when the letter was sent to you. Yet three of them say it wasn’t. Phelps asked his secretary, a girl named Dondero, to see if it was in the files, and she dug it out and took it to him. O’Malley had come to the office that morning, for a conference at Corrigan’s request, and was with Phelps in his room when the girl brought the letter in, and they
both looked at it. They won’t swear the notation wasn’t on it, but they both think they would have noticed it if it had been, and they didn’t notice it. Not only that, the girl says she would testify under oath that there was no such notation on the letter. She says she would positively have noticed it if it had been. Phelps dictated his letter to you, and she typed it, and Phelps signed it, and she put it and Dykes’s letter of resignation, and the other material written by Dykes, into an envelope addressed to you, and sent for a messenger and took the envelope to the anteroom and left it with the switchboard girl to be given to the messenger when he came. So how do I dope it?”

Wolfe upturned a palm. “Phelps and O’Malley leave it open. The girl is lying.”

“What the hell for?”

“Force of habit. The etiquette of the sex.”

“Nuts. We couldn’t brush it off with a gag if we had to take it to a jury. As it is, I suppose we can let it slide. We have to if we’re going to buy the confession.”

Wolfe turned his head. “Archie. We gave Mr. Cramer the letter from Dykes bearing the notation?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The envelope too? The envelope it came to us in?”

“No, sir.”

“We have the envelope?”

“Yes, sir. As you know, we keep everything until a case is closed—except what we hand to the cops.”

Wolfe nodded. “It may possibly be needed to save us from a charge of accessories.” He returned to Cramer. “What about the District Attorney’s office? Are they willing to let it slide?”

“They think it’s minor. If the rest of the confession stands up, yes.”

“Has the confession been shown to Corrigan’s associates?”

“Certainly.”

“Do they credit it?”

“Yes and no. It’s hard to tell because they’re half batty. A year ago their senior partner disbarred, and now their new senior partner confessing to three murders and killing himself—they’re in a hell of a fix. Briggs thinks they ought to denounce the confession as a fake and hold you liable, but he’s just babbling. He doesn’t say you or Goodwin shot Corrigan, but he might as well. Phelps and Kustin say that even if the confession is true it’s invalid because it isn’t signed, and any publication of it would be libelous. They think we ought to bury it. But they also think we should accept it as true. Why not? Corrigan’s dead, and that would make the three murders finished business and they could start gathering up the pieces. Their feeling about you is approximately the same as Briggs’s, but they’re realistic about it. None of them will look O’Malley in the eye, though he gives them plenty of chances to. He sticks it in them and twists it. He sent some flowers to the wife of the juror he bribed, with a letter of apology for thinking she informed on him, and before he sent the letter he read it aloud to them with Lieutenant Rowcliff present and asked their opinion of it.”

There was only an inch of beer left in Cramer’s glass. He got it and drained it and then settled back, not through yet. He rubbed the side of his nose with a fingertip. “I guess that covers it. It looks like a wrap-up. The DA will be ready to give the press a statement as soon as they decide whether to release the confession. Thank God they decide that and not me. But on the main question, do we cross off the murders or don’t we, I’ll have to go along and maybe I’m ready to, only there’s you to think of. That’s why I’m here. Once or twice I have kicked a hat that you had hid a brick in, and I don’t want a
sore toe. You connected Joan Wellman with Dykes by spotting that name, Baird Archer. You tied in Rachel Abrams by having Goodwin there two minutes late. You pulled the stunt that got Corrigan a bullet in his head. So I repeat a question I asked you day before yesterday: are you ready to send your client a bill?”

“No,” Wolfe said flatly.

“I thought not,” Cramer growled. “What are you waiting for?”

“I’m through waiting.” Wolfe struck the arm of his chair with his palm, a gesture so violent that with him it was the next thing to hysterics. “I have to be. This can’t go on forever. I’ll have to do it with what I’ve got or not at all.”

“What have you got?”

“Nothing that you haven’t. Absolutely nothing. It may not be enough, but I see no chance of getting more. If I—”

The phone rang, and I swiveled and got it. It was Saul Panzer. He wanted Wolfe. Wolfe took it and gave me the sign to get off, and I did so. The part of the conversation that Cramer and I listened to was not exciting. Mostly it was grunts, at intervals. Apparently Saul had plenty to say. At the end Wolfe told him, “Satisfactory. Report here at six o’clock,” and hung up.

He turned to Cramer. “I’ll have to amend that statement. I now have something that you do not have, but it was easily available to you if you had gone after it. I’m better off than I was, but not much. I never will be, and I’m going to act. You’re welcome to participate if you care to.”

“In what?”

“A risky but resolute effort to expose a murderer. That’s the best I can offer.”

“You can offer some information. What did you just get, and who is it?”

Wolfe shook his head. “You would insist on further inquiry and let the moment slip, and further inquiry would be fruitless. He has been too smart for you and almost too smart for me. I’m going to close with him and I may get him. You may participate or not, as you please.”

“Participate how?”

“By getting them here, all of them. This evening at nine o’clock. Including the ten women that Mr. Goodwin entertained at dinner two weeks ago. I need them all, or I may. And of course come yourself.”

“If I get them here I take a hand.”

Wolfe sighed. “Mr. Cramer. Three weeks ago we agreed to cooperate. I have done so faithfully. I have given you everything I got, without reciprocation. Where do we stand? You, utterly routed, are ready to join with the District Attorney in unconditional surrender. You have been bamboozled. I have not. I know him, his motive, and his strategy. I intend to rush him. You say you should take a hand?”

Cramer was not overwhelmed. “I say if I get them here I am officially responsible and I’m in charge.”

“Very well, then you decline. Mr. Goodwin will get them here. If you come you will not get in. I hope to be ready to communicate with you before midnight.”

Cramer sat and scowled. His lips tightened. He opened his mouth, said nothing, and pressed his lips tight again. I was pretty well acquainted with him, and I knew by his eyes that he was going to take it. But he couldn’t just knuckle under, he had to keep his independence and show his spirit and prove that he was by no means cowed. So he said, “I’ll bring Sergeant Stebbins along.”

W
e needed seventeen chairs if they all came, and a phone call from Stebbins around four o’clock informed me that they would. With four from the front room, one from the hall, two from my room, and two from Fritz’s room, Fritz and I got them collected and arranged in the office. We had an argument. Fritz insisted there should be a table of liquid refreshments, that Wolfe regarded that as a minimum of hospitality for invited guests, and I fought it. Not so much on account of the basic situation, since more than one murderer had been served a highball or other mixture in that room. The trouble was the females, particularly Helen Troy and Blanche Duke. I did not want the former, at some ticklish spot where everything might hang on a word and a tone, to jump up and call out, “Oyez, oyeth!” And if the latter, whose inhibitions were totally unreliable, got a shaker full of her formula mixed and worked on it, she might do or say anything. So I was firm.

Fritz couldn’t appeal to Wolfe because he wasn’t accessible. He was there at his desk, but not for us. Five minutes after Cramer left he had leaned back, closed his eyes, and started pushing his lips in and out, which
meant he was working, and hard. He kept at it until lunch, took only half of his customary hour for the meal, returned to the office, and started in again. He left for the plant rooms at four o’clock as usual, but when I went up there on an errand he was standing in a corner of the intermediate room frowning at a Cochlioda hybrid that had nothing whatever wrong with it, and he wasn’t even aware that I was passing through. A little later he phoned down to tell me to send Saul up to him when he came. So I wasn’t present at their conference. Nor did I get any kind of an instruction for the evening. If he was planning a charade, apparently it was going to be a solo.