The Final Deduction

past twenty-four hours.

Wolfe would not be riled. He was back in his house, in his chair, the deadline was past, and the mussels would be ready in an hour. “As I told you,” he said, “we knew we would be pestered and we decamped. Where is of no consequence. We did nothing and communicated with no one. At eleven this morning, when our obligation to Mrs Vail had been fulfilled, Mr Goodwin telephoned your office. You have no valid grievance. Even now you will not say that you’re investigating a murder; you’re trying to determine if one has been committed. A charge of obstructing justice couldn’t possibly hold. Some of the questions you asked Mr Goodwin indicated that you suspect him of trying to find the typewriter that was missing from Mrs Vail’s study. Nonsense. Since yesterday noon he has been trying to find nothing whatever, and neither have I. Our interest in the matter is ended. We have no further commitment to Mrs Vail. We have no client. If she herself killed both Miss Utley and Mr Vail, which seems unlikely but is not inconceivable, I owe her no service.”

“She has paid you sixty thousand dollars.”

“And by the terms of my employment I have earned it.”

Cramer got up, came to my desk, and dropped the cigar in my wastebasket. That wasn’t regular; usually he threw the cigar at it and missed. He went back and picked up his hat from the floor where he had dropped it and turned to Wolfe.

“I want a statement with nothing left out signed by you and Goodwin. At my office by four o’clock. The District Attorney’s office will probably want to see Goodwin. It would suit me fine if they want you too.”

“Not everything everybody said by four o’clock,” I objected. “That would be a six-hour job.”

“I want the substance. All details. You can omit White Plains, we’ve got that from them.” He turned and tramped out. By the time I had followed him to the front, shut the door after him, and returned to the office, Wolfe had his book open. I finished opening the mail and put it on his desk and then pulled the typewriter around and got out paper and carbons. That would be a job, and it was water under the bridge, since we had no case and no client. Four carbons: one for Westchester, one for the Manhattan DA, and two for us. As I rolled the paper in Wolfe’s voice came at my back.

“Dendrobium chrysotoxum for Miss Gillard and Laelia purpurata for Doctor Vollmer. Tomorrow.”

“Right. And Sitassia readia for you and Transcriptum underwoodum for me.” I hit the keys.

With time out for lunch and a shave and a clean shirt, it was five minutes past four when I left the house, walked to 34th and Eighth Avenue for a Gazette, and flagged a taxi. I had made it barely in time for Wolfe to sign it before he went up to the plant rooms, but there had been interruptions. Sergeant Purley Stebbins had phoned to tell me to take the statement to the DA’s office instead of Homicide West. Ben Dykes had phoned and kept me on the wire fifteen minutes and had finally settled for an appointment with Wolfe at eleven-thirty Saturday morning. Reporters from three newspapers had called, two on the phone and one in person, and had been stalled. What had stung them was on the front page of the Gazette, which I perused as the taxi took me downtown-the first public notice of the kidnaping of Jimmy Vail and delivery of the ransom money by his wife. Of course it didn’t have the big kick of a kidnaping story, the suspense about the fate of the victim, since Jimmy had come back safe and sound, but it had the added attraction of his death by violence in his own home some fifteen hours after he returned. There were pictures of Fowler’s Inn and The Fatted Calf and Iron Mine Road. Lon had hung onto it, but he had taken steps. The mention of Wolfe and me was vague and sort of gave the impression that we knew about it because we knew everything, which wouldn’t hurt a bit. It was the fattest scoop I had ever given Lon, and that wouldn’t hurt either. When I got to 155 Leonard Street and was taken to the room of assistant DA Mandel, he greeted me by tapping the Gazette that was there on his desk and demanding, “When did you give them this?” I told him ten minutes after eleven this morning.

It didn’t amount to much that time. I have had several conversations in that building that lasted more than six hours, one that lasted fourteen hours, and two that ended by my being locked up as a material witness. That day Mandel and two Homicide Bureau dicks let me go in less than two hours, partly because I had the signed statement with me, partly because they weren’t officially interested in the kidnaping since that had been a Westchester job, and partly because they were by no means sure Jimmy Vail’s death had been a homicide and if it wasn’t that would be okay with them. A dick has enough grief dealing with riffraff, and he would prefer to have no part of Tedders and Vails. So after going through the routine motions for an hour and a half they shooed me out, and at a quarter past six I was paying a hackie in front of the old brownstone and climbing out. As my foot touched the sidewalk, someone grabbed my arm and pronounced my name, and I wheeled.

It was Noel Tedder. “Who the hell does this Nero Wolfe think he is?” he squeaked.

“It depends on his mood.” I moved my arm, but he had a grip. “Let go of my arm, I might need it. Why, did he bounce you?”

“I haven’t been in. First I was told through a crack to come back after six, and I did. Then I was told Wolfe was busy-‘engaged,’ he said. I asked for you and was told you were out and he didn’t know when you’d be back. I said I’d come in and wait, and he said I wouldn’t. What does it take, a passport?”

“Did you give your name?”

“Certainly.”

“Did you say what you want to see him about?”

“No. I’ll tell him.”

“Not unless you tell me first. Not only is that the routine, but also he’s had a hard day. There was no homemade blackberry jam for breakfast, he had to skip his morning turn with the orchids, a police inspector came and annoyed him, and he had to read a long statement and sign it. If you tell me what you want, there may be a chance. If you don’t, it’s hopeless.”

“Out here?”

“We can sit on the stoop if you’d rather.”

He turned his head to look at a man and woman who were passing. He needed a shave. He also needed either a haircut, a comb and brush, or a hat, and his plaid jacket and striped slacks could have stood a little pressing. When the man and woman were ten paces away his eyes came back to me.