match the prints-here, Washington, London-nowhere. There were two cigars in the case. Gold Label Bonitas. Knowing, as I do, the kind of stunts Wolfe is capable of, it was possible he was getting set to ask me if I would care to meet a man who smoked Gold Label Bonitas and was shy a case to carry them in.” He drank coffee.
“If the case is handy,” I said, “I would enjoy looking at it. So I could describe it to Mr. Wolfe.”
“It’s at the laboratory. It’s polished black calfskin, not new but not worn much, stamped on the inside ‘Corwin Deluxe.’ No other marks. Nothing special about it to trace.”
“I suppose the woman who owned the car-“
The door was opening and a cop stepped in. Cramer asked him, “Yes?” and he said Sergeant So-and-so had arrived with What’s-his-name, and I stood up. It would have been a dumb remark anyway. They have some darned smart dicks at Homicide South, and one of them had certainly asked the owner of the car if the cigar case was hers.
Raymond Thome was more than half an hour late. It was 9:40 when the doorbell rang and I went and admitted him, took him to the office, introduced him, nodded him to the red leather chair, asked him what he would like to drink, and went to the kitchen to fill his order for brandy and a glass of water.
Mien the three ‘teers had phoned in with their usual reports, nothing, they had been told to call at nine in the morning. They were the three ‘teers because once at a conference Orrie had said they were the three musketeers and we had tried to change it to fit. We tried snoopeteers, privateers (for private eyes), dicketeers, wolf steers, hawk-eteers, and others, and ended up by deciding that none of them was good enough and settling for the three ‘teers. They had not been told that we were now looking for a murderer, not just a father; I saved that for morning so they would get a good night’s sleep.
On the way back from Twentieth Street I had found a cigar counter with a box of Gold Label Bonitas, the third counter I tried, and had bought a couple-two for sixty-five cents-and Wolfe and I had given them a good look. A Gold Label Bonita is four and three-quarters inches long, medium thick, and medium blunt at both ends. It comes in a cellophane tube, and its label says Gold Label but not Bonita. The Bonita is only on the box. I lit one and took a few puffs, but neither Wolfe nor I would claim that if we entered a room where a man had recently smoked a cigar we could testify under oath that it had been a Gold Label Bonita. It did taste and smell like tobacco smoke, which is more than I can say for the-
but he may read this. I dropped the other one in a drawer and gave Wolfe a full account of my conversation with Raymond Thorne ten days earlier, which I had never reported verbatim.
Thome’s first remark after a sip of brandy was that a close-up of Wolfe there in his chair, with sprays of orchids scattered over the desk, would make a marvelous shot for a one-minute commercial. He said that of course he didn’t make many commercials, but a friend of his did, and what a picture! Wolfe had to rub his lips with a knuckle to stop the words that wanted out. Thorne was going to help him find a murderer, or he hoped he was.
“My friend would be glad to come and discuss it with you,” Thorne said.
“That can wait,” Wolfe said. “I’m fully occupied with the job I’m on. On behalf of Miss Denovo, I thank you for coming. I know you told Mr. Goodwin that you could supply no information that would help, but it is a common occurrence for a man to have knowledge of a fact and to be quite unaware of its significance. I once questioned a young woman for three days on what she regarded as irrelevant trivialities, and finally got a fact that exposed a murderer.”
“I’m afraid I can’t spare three days.” Thorne took a sip of brandy and stirred it in his mouth with his tongue. “This cognac is marvelous. Speaking of facts, evidently you knew one I didn’t, from that ad& I suppose that ad in the Times was yours?”
“Yes.”
“Alias Elinor Denovo. Carlotta something alias Elinor Denovo. Why the ‘alias’ if Denovo was her married name'Her daughter’s name is Amy Denovo.”
“That’s one of the complications, Mr. Thorne. A client’s communications with a detective she has hired are not legally privileged, but they are often confidential.”
“Goodwin said on the phone that you’re blocked.”
“We’re stumped.”
“But you still think it was premeditated murder?”
“Miss Denovo does, as Mr. Goodwin told you ten days ago. Do I'Yes, for reasons you might think deficient. But getting you here is not merely stumbling around in the dark. It isn’t fatuous to assume that some recent event
induced the murder and that something connected with that event, however remotely, was seen or heard by you. In conversation with her, how did you address her'Mrs. Denovo, or Elinor?”
“Elinor.”
“Then I shall. How many others there called her Elinor?”
“Why& Let’s see& three. No, four.”
“Their names?”
“Now listen.” Thome flipped a hand. “That wouldn’t be just irrelevant trivialities, it would be drivel. It would take three weeks, not just three days. Goodwin said someone at my place might be involved in it, and I told him there wasn’t the slightest chance. Simply impossible. Nobody there had any personal relations with her. Even I didn’t, actually. We often had meals together, lunch and dinner and even breakfast sometimes, but only to talk business.” He turned to me. “I told you I soon saw she had lines she didn’t want crossed.” Back to Wolfe: “I can give you the names, sure, but I’m telling you, that will get you nowhere.”
“I would expect it to. On an excursion such as this you get nowhere again and again. Very well, we’ll try another tack. When and where did you last see Elinor?”
“That Friday around noon at the studio. I was taking a plane to the coast on business, to see a scriptwriter I wanted.”
“What studio?”
“Mine, of course.”
“Did she speak of her plans for that evening?”
“Yes. We did. She was going to see a preview of a movie for a look at an actor we thought we might want to use.”
“A preview where'At a theater?”
“No, a studio in the Bronx. That’s why she took her car. Of course I went over all this with the police. They said she left the studio a little after ten that evening, and I told them she probably went for a drive. She often did. She said it relaxed her. I never saw her relaxed, not really.”
“Who went to the preview with her?”
“No one.” Thome emptied his glass and put it on ttc stand, started a hand for the bottle, and pulled it back. “That’s marvelous cognac.”
“Help yourself. I have nine bottles left. We’ll start with that Friday and work back. How much were you with Elinor that morning?”
“Not much. There was a staff conference, but she had to leave it when someone came. Later I-“
“Who came?”
“A woman from an agency about a replacement their client didn’t like. Just routine. Agencies’ clients never like anything. Later I dictated some notes to her. Of course I had my secretary and she had hers, but she still did shorthand, and dictating to her made it different. It came out better. She was a very remarkable woman. She had offers of twice, three, or four times as much as she could make with me, agencies and public-relations people, but she turned them all down.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. My guess was that they were mostly big outfits and she liked the complete freedom she had with me.”
“What if I asked you to tell me everything you heard her say that morning'Could you do it?”
“My God, no. Anyway it was just business. There couldn’t possibly have been anything with any hint of what was going to happen to her that night. You know, I might be better at this if I knew why you think it was premeditated murder. Goodwin told me it was Amy’s in-tution. Isn’t a hit-and-run nearly always just a hit-and-run?”
“Yes. I would Eke to oblige you, Mr. Thorne, if only as a token of Miss Denovo’s appreciation of your willingness to help, but I can’t divulge information that the police are reserving. Only five hours ago a police officer of high rank, discussing that hit-and-run with Mr. Goodwin, said, ‘He got a cigar out to light it while he was parked on Second Avenue waiting for her, and there she came.’ If I were free to tell you more I would. Help yourself to brandy. If you please, Archie, beer?”
That was a fair example of how to lie while sticking to
the truth. It was perfectly true that he couldn’t, or anyhow shouldn’t, divulge information that the police were reserving. It was also true that a high-ranking police officer had said that to me. So a truth plus a truth equaled a bare-faced lie.
It was the only one he told during the four long hours that Thome sat in the red leather chair while downing a third of a bottle of marvelous cognac. I doubted if he knew how good it was; a man had once offered Wolfe fifty bucks for a bottle of it.
The four hours took us an hour and a half past midnight, into Friday morning, and the brandy took Thome into a kind of talking trance that made him forget about time, and also seemed to oil his memory, which was just luck. He remembered Thursday a little better than Friday, and by the time they got back to Monday he was remembering so much that I began to suspect him. He had remarked at one point that he had done some script-writing, so he had had practice making things up.
But he didn’t make up the thing, the thing that hit. It wasn’t a smack. I damned near let it slide by. I had been sitting there listening to irrelevant trivialities for more than three hours; it was well past midnight, I had covered at least a dozen yawns, and I had been drinking milk, not brandy. They had been on Monday for maybe twenty minutes, and had got to where Thorne and Elinor were on their way out to have lunch with somebody, and Thorne was telling how the receptionist had stopped Elinor to tell her that Floyd Vance had been there again and she had had to threaten to call in a policeman if he didn’t leave. The receptionist said he might be out in the hall. Elinor had thanked her and they had left. Naturally Wolfe had asked who Floyd Vance was, but Thorne knew nothing about him; he said probably some nut who wanted to peddle an idea for a show that the networks would give a million for. They were a dime a dozen.
As I said, I nearly let it slide by. It hit me a little later as I was telling my jaw and cheek muscles to get set to hide another yawn, and I made a mistake. I forgot the yawn and my jaws opened wide for it. That led me into a second mistake, which often happens. Preferring not to let Thorne know that he had told us a fact which might
be significant, I tried to go on as I had been for an hour, looking more awake and alert than I was, and I overdid it. If he had been awake and alert he would have noticed it, but by that time his talking trance was in command and it would have made no impression on him if I had wiggled my ears.
But Wolfe noticed it, and that was what kept him from going on and on and making a night of it unless Thome ran down. So it was only half past one and they had only got to the middle of Monday afternoon when he looked at the clock and said he was too tired to continue, and Thome must be too. Miss Denovo would deeply appreciate Thome’s cooperation, and he and Mr. Goodwin would see if they could find a hint in any of the items Thome had supplied. As Thome used both hands on the chair arm to get to his feet I was thinking that I would have to steer him out and down the stoop steps, and possibly even go and get the Heron to cart him home, but he did all right. Going down the hall he put a hand to the wall once to steady himself, and outside he stood and brought his shoulders up and took a couple of deep breaths, but he made it down to the sidewalk without any trouble. I stayed to watch him for about thirty paces. Okay.
As I entered the office Wolfe growled at me, “You got something. What?”
I went to my desk and sat. “Nothing would please me more than to catch one you should have caught and missed, but I can’t claim it on this. I think we’ve got a nibble. I don’t know whether it’s the father or the murderer, or possibly both, but I think it’s a nibble. Last Sunday afternoon at Miss Rowan’s place in the country three people came who had not been invited and weren’t expected. Two of them were friends of hers-well, acquaintances; I had met them there before-who have a place half an hour away. The third one was their weekend house guest, a man named Floyd Vance. They said they had mentioned to him that Archie Goodwin was often at Lily Rowan’s for weekends, and he had got them to drive him over because he wanted to meet me. I gathered from what he said that what he really wanted was to meet you. He said he was a public-relations counselor. He
said that if anybody needed expert handling of his public image a private detective did, and he would like to create a presentation to propose to you. He also said that if we were working on a case and I would tell him about it, he could use that as a basis for the presentation. At that, naturally, I looked and listened, but decided he was just trying to find another sucker for his racket. I now sincerely hope I was wrong. Two comments. One, there are probably very few Floyd Vances around. Two, allowing for the twenty-three years, he fits Salvatore Manzoni’s description just fine.”
“I would like some beer,” Wolfe said.
“You’re already two bottles ahead and it’s going on two o’clock.”
“Satisfactory,” he said, leaving it open whether he meant the beer or the nibble. He gripped the edge of the desk to push his chair back, rose, and headed for the hall. For a second I thought he was walking out, to go to bed with the nibble, but he turned left in the hall. He was going for beer. When he returned he had a bottle and a glass in one hand and a snifter in the other. He put the bottle and glass on his desk, got the cognac bottle from the stand and poured a couple of ounces in the snifter,
“You might easily have missed it,” he said, and went around to his chair, opened the bottle, and poured.
I whirled the brandy around in the snifter and said, “I almost did. If it’s only a coincidence I’m through with the detective business for good. We’ll soon know, one way or another. The quickest and most obvious would be to have Salvatore Manzoni take a look at the public-relations Floyd Vance, but twenty-three years is a long time and it might not prove anything. Of course the receptionist at Thome’s could settle it that it was the public-relations Floyd Vance that she shooed out that May day, but that would only prove that it’s a real nibble.”
I put the snifter to my lips and tilted my head back enough to get a good gulp. Wolfe, having waited until the bead was down to precisely the right level, raised bis glass.
“Fingerprints,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“We get his and give them to Cramer and they match or they don’t.”
“No.” He licked foam from his lips. “If they matched we’d be in a fix. Mr. Cramer would have a murderer, but we would still need a father, and he would be locked up and inaccessible. You said he wanted to meet me.”
“Yeah. If he’s it, what he really wanted was to find out if we had got anywhere and if so how far. How he knew we were on it is a question, but we don’t have to answer it. Sure, I could get him here, and then what'Do you think you could ask him anything that would help without giving him a guess that we’re on him'I don’t. There would be the same risk in seeing the receptionist at Thome’s. She might tell him.”