“What are you going to do?” Ballou demanded. Demanding again.
“I don’t know. Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Panzer, Mr. Durkin, and I are now going to confer.” He looked at the clock. “It’s nearly midnight. If you don’t want two more men in on your secret, go.”
Chapter 11
At one o’clock Friday afternoon I was on a chair in a hotel bedroom, at arm’s length from an attractive young woman in the bed. Various possible approaches had been discussed in the Thursday night conference that went on for more than two hours. Two of them – get a picture of him and show it to the General Delivery clerks at the Grand Central Station post office, and find out if he had been spending more money than he should have had – were discarded offhand because they could only confirm the blackmailing, and that was regarded as settled.
An obvious one was where had he been Saturday morning, but we weren’t ready for that. If he was open, he was open. If he had an alibi, cracking it could and should wait until we had some kind of leverage on him.
Get three pictures of him, somehow – one for Saul, one for Fred, and one for me – and do the neighborhood again, to dig up someone who had seen him Saturday morning. The cops had of course been at that for four days, with pictures of Orrie. Fred was for it, and Saul was willing to try, but Wolfe vetoed it. He said we had tolerated banality long enough.
Give it to Cramer. Saul suggested it, and he had a case. We could give him the crop, all except Ballou’s name. It wouldn’t hurt us any, certainly it wouldn’t stop us, and it would give Cramer something to think about, and even work on, besides Orrie Cather. If they had a few of Fleming’s fingerprints in their collection from the apartment, or even one, it would open it up good. Wolfe wouldn’t buy it. He said it would be inept to have the police move in on Fleming before we did; for one thing, they would probably pry X’s name out of either Fleming or his wife, and we weren’t giving it even to Saul and Fred. The fifty grand wasn’t there in the safe to affect his mental processes, but he knew where it was.
I made the suggestion that gave him a bright idea. There was nothing bright about the suggestion; it was simply that I would bring the Flemings to the office for some conversation with Wolfe. As we all knew, many people had said more to Wolfe than they had realized they were saying, and why not give them a chance? Saul and Fred could be at the peephole in the alcove, and then we would have another conference. I was the only one who had ever seen them. Saul and Fred were all for it, but Wolfe sat and scowled at me, which was natural, since it would mean another session with a woman. He sat and scowled, and we sat and looked at him. After half a minute of that he spoke to me. “Your notebook.”
I swiveled and got it, and a pen.
“A letter. The regular letterhead. To Mr. Milton Thales, care of Mr. Barry Fleming, and the address. Dear Mr. Thales. It is a truism that people who have a sudden substantial increase in income often spend it, comma, or part of it, comma, on luxuries which they have previously been unable to afford. Period. It is possible that you are an admirer of orchids, comma, and that you would like to buy a few orchid plants with part of the five thousand dollars of extra income you have received during the past four months. Period. If so, comma, I shall be glad to show you my collection if you will telephone for an appointment. Sincerely yours.”
I tossed the notebook on the desk. “Wonderful,” I said. “It will bring him but not her. Maybe. If it goes to his home address and she’s there when it’s delivered but he isn’t, it may bring her but not him. Statistics show that seventy-four per cent of wives open letters, with or without a teakettle. Why not send it to the school?”
“It’s two o’clock Friday morning,” Saul said. “He wouldn’t get it until Monday.”
Wolfe growled. I said, “Damn it.”
“It’s a beautiful idea,” Saul said. “It will get him sweating before he comes, and that will help, and he’ll have to come. Even if he didn’t kill her, he’d have to come. But may I offer an amendment?”
“Yes.”
“The letter might read something like this – your notebook, Archie? Dear Mr. Thales. As you know, comma, I was Isabel’s closest friend, comma, and we told each other many things. One thing she told me was how you got that five thousand dollars and how she felt about it. I haven’t told anyone else because she told me in confidence – no, change that. Change ‘because she told me in confidence’ to ‘because I promised her I wouldn’t.’ Then: You may want to show your appreciation by giving me part of the five thousand, comma, at least half of it. I will expect you to bring it not later than Sunday afternoon. I work evenings. My address is above, and my phone number is so-and-so. It will be signed by Julie Jaquette. I suppose she should write it; I doubt if she uses a typewriter.”
Fred said, “And he croaks her and then we’ve got him.”
Saul nodded. “He would if we let him, and if he killed Isabel Kerr. If he’s had practice.” To Wolfe: “I just think that might be quicker than coming from you. I couldn’t get her to do it, I’m a rat, but Archie could.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell her I’ll send orchids to her funeral.” I looked at Wolfe. “You wished her well.”
“So you demur,” he said.
“No, sir. I like it. I merely remark that selling her won’t be easy, and if she buys it we can’t let her out of our sight for one second, and what if she won’t cooperate on that? Nobody suggests anything to her. She said so.”
“But you like it?”
“Yes. If it misses we can blame it on Saul.”
“Blaming is fatuous. The wording of the letter is important. Read it.”
So that’s why, at one o’clock Friday afternoon, I was settled in a comfortable chair in a bedroom on the ninth floor of the Maidstone Hotel, on Central Park West in the Seventies. Julie Jaquette, in the bed, was not stretched out; she was propped up against three pillows, drinking her third cup of coffee, having cleaned up the toast and bacon and eggs and muffins and strawberry jam, while I explained about the blackmailing caper, including Thā-lēz of Miletus, but not including Ballou’s name. It was a nice big room, made even nicer by the clusters of Vanda rogersi which I had brought, in a vase on the over-the-bed table. She had stuck one of the flowers in the front V of what she had on, a light blue thing with sleeves and no frills. She had said she was no treat in bed in the morning, but actually she wasn’t at all hard to look at. Clear-eyed and fresh and kind of hard-boiled wholesome.
“Poor Isabel,” she said. “You can’t beat that for lousy breaks, a blackmailer for a brother-in-law and a murderer for a pet. My God.”
“And a heehaw for a friend,” I said.
“She only had one real friend. Me.”
“Right. I call you a mule only professionally. If I was being personal I would call you kitten or snuggle bunny or lamb. Profess –”
“Do you realize this is a bed? That I could reach out and grab you?”
“Yeah, I’m watching every move. I call you a mule professionally because the minute you heard that your friend Isabel had been murdered you decided Orrie Cather had done it and you won’t budge, not even when the third smartest detective in New York gives you ten to one. It would –”
“Who are the two smartest?”
“Nero Wolfe and me, but don’t quote me. It would take an hour to explain why all three of us have crossed Orrie off, and even then you might not budge. But now we think we know who did kill her. The blackmailer. Barry Fleming. Her sister’s husband.”
She put the coffee cup down. “Huh. You got reasons?”
“If you mean evidence, no. But if there’s any other good candidate we can’t find him or her, and we have tried hard. Barry Fleming is perfect. Obviously Isabel told Stella who was keeping her – X, to you – and Stella had told Barry, since he couldn’t blackmail him unless –”
“I may be a mule, but I can count up to two and I can say the alphabet backward.”