Death of a Doxy (Crime Line)

From her tone I knew then and there that I had had a break, him coming first.

'Now, dear.' He put an arm across her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. 'He only wants some information, if we have any. He thinks -'

'We have no information for anybody! You know that!'

I spoke up. 'But you must have a preference, Mrs. Fleming. If an innocent man is convicted of murdering your sister, the trouble is that the guilty man goes free. Do you want that?'

She focused up at me. Up, because she wasn't more than an inch over five feet. 'It's none of your business what I want,' she said, and meant it.

'No,' I said, 'but it's your business. I'm not a newshound trying to get a headline, I'm a private detective trying to dig up some facts. I already have some. I know why you won't see reporters, why you have no information for anybody. Because your sister was a doxy, and you -'

'My sister was a what?'

'D,O,X,Y, doxy. I happen to like that better than concubine or paramour or mistress. I don't -'

I stopped because I had to, to protect my face. When a woman flies at you to claw, what you do depends on the woman. If she has real tiger in her you may even have to plug her, but with Stella Fleming, with her short reach, all I had to do was stiff-arm her, with my palm flat on her mouth. Then the husband got her shoulders from behind and pulled her back and told me, 'You'd better go.'

I was inclined to agree, but it was just as well that Wolfe couldn't read my mind by short-wave because he thinks I understand women. She turned and drummed on his chest with her fists and squeaked, 'I don't want him to go,' and then calmly, no hurry, started to shed her coat. When he had it she told me, 'Come on inside,' perfectly polite, and headed through an archway. When he had the closet door shut he motioned me on, and I moved.

She had turned on lights and gone to a couch and sat and was biting her lip. I hadn't really seen her, too busy, and as I crossed to a nearby chair I noted that she resembled her sister not at all, with her brown hair and brown eyes and round filled-out face. As I approached she demanded, 'Why did you say that?'

'To jar you.' I sat. 'I had to. Either that or -'

'I mean why do you lie like that about my sister?'

I shook my head. 'That line is wasted with me, Mrs. Fleming. We both know it's not a lie, so skip it. It's not important, not to me. I only said it to -'

'Did you know my sister?'

'No. I had never heard of her until yesterday.'

'Then how could you know…'

I gave her three seconds, but she let it hang. I flipped a hand. 'It's obvious. A showgirl leaves -'

'She was an actress.'

'Okay. An actress leaves the theater, takes a three-hundred-dollar apartment, has no job, eats well, dresses well, has a car, uses thirty-dollar perfume. Who wouldn't know? Who doesn't know? That's not important, not now. What's -'

'It is to me. It's the most important thing in the world.'

'Now, dear,' Fleming said. He was beside her on the couch.

'Well,' I said, 'if it's that important to you, that's what you want to talk about. Go ahead.'

'She was twenty-eight years old. I'm thirty-one. She was only twenty-five when she… stopped work. She was six and I was nine when our mother died, and she was twelve and I was fifteen when our father died. That's why it's so important.'

I nodded. 'Certainly.'

'You're not a newspaper reporter. William told me your name, but I don't remember.'

'William's the elevator man,' Fleming said.

To him: 'Thank you.' To her: 'My name is Archie Goodwin. I'm a private detective, I work for Nero Wolfe, and I came -'

'You're a detective.'

'Yes.'

'Then you know about things. You said I wouldn't want the man that killed my sister to go free, and no, I wouldn't, but if he's arrested and there's a trial, no one is going to say about my sister what you said about her. If anyone said that at the trial it would be in the newspapers. If anyone is going to say that there mustn't be any trial. Even if he goes free. So you didn't know what I want.'

That made the second woman in one day who didn't want a trial, though for a different reason. 'I do now,' I told her, 'and from your standpoint there's no argument. I even agree with you, at least part way. You don't want a trial even if they get the right man. What I don't want is a trial of the wrong man, and that's what is going to happen unless someone stops it. Of course you read the papers.'

'I read all of them.'

'Naturally. Then you know they are holding a man named Orrie Cather and that he has worked for Nero Wolfe. Had you ever heard or seen that name before? Orrie Cather?'