“This is Monday,” she said. She was getting her voice back.
“Right.”
“I want that letter.”
It had dropped to the floor when she started the clawing, and I had picked it up and put it on my desk. “It’s just a typewritten copy,” I said.
“I want it.”
I got it, folded it, and handed it to her. She said, “The gun.”
“When you leave. Whose is it, yours or your husband’s?”
“It’s his. He has medals for shooting.” She put the letter in her bag, looked at Julie, and said, “You. It was people like you.”
“Nuts,” Julie said. “Anybody can say that to anybody. You mean I was bad for Isabel. I was a lot better for her than you were. I really loved her, but what about you? From what she told me, what –”
That did it. I had relaxed some, and she was so damned sudden. Her lunge at Julie was so fast that she was on her before I moved, and again it wasn’t my fault that Julie didn’t get hurt, at least some good scratches. Julie jerked her knees up, and with her feet off the floor the impact toppled her and the chair backward. Stella would have been on top, but by that time I was there and had her shoulders from behind. I pulled her off and up and pinned her arms, but she said, “I’m all right,” and she was. The fit had gone as fast as it came. Julie scrambled up, took a swipe at her hair, and said, “You can club her, for all I care.”
Wolfe’s voice came, his coldest voice. “Mrs. Fleming.”
We all turned. He was in the doorway. “Mr. Goodwin was too generous,” he said, “giving you until Wednesday morning. Tomorrow morning at the latest. Get her out, Archie.” He headed for his desk.
Stella’s eyes followed him to his chair, then she looked around, evidently for her bag. I picked it up from where she had dropped it, put the gun in it, said, “I’ll give it to you at the door,” and moved, and she came.
Chapter 16
At four o’clock Julie was in a chair by a window in the South Room, deeply interested, if you go by appearances, in a magazine, and I was standing in the doorway. We weren’t speaking. I had asked her if I should ring the Ten Little Indians to tell them she wouldn’t come this evening, or would she rather do it herself, and she had said neither one, she was going, and I had said she wasn’t. The conversation had got very outspoken. At one point she had asked me to tell her Saul Panzer’s number so she could call him and ask him to come and take her, since I didn’t want to expose myself. At another point I said that I doubted if more than half of the customers would leave when they learned that she wouldn’t appear. At still another she asked if I actually meant that she was being held there by force, against her will, and I said yes. By four o’clock it became apparent that we weren’t going to be speaking.
Then the sound came of the elevator groaning its way up, and she raised her head to listen. When the groaning stopped and the sound came of the door opening above, she tossed the magazine on the table, got up, and walked. As she approached the doorway I politely moved aside, and she passed through, went to the stairs, and started up. She was either going to appeal to the owner of the house or help him with the orchids, and as far as I was concerned it didn’t matter which. I went down the two flights to the office, called the Ten Little Indians, and said that Miss Jaquette had a cold and wouldn’t be able to make it. I didn’t say where she was because they might send someone with flowers and she didn’t need any up there.
Being a warder, I couldn’t go for a walk, and anyway I had to catch the news broadcasts every half-hour to learn if there had been any development worth reporting in a murder case, for instance that a man named Barry Fleming had been taken to the District Attorney’s office for questioning in connection with the murder of his sister-in-law. There hadn’t. I spent the two hours at the files and my desk, with the germination records. It helps, at a time like that, to have something to do that needs only one small corner of your mind, like entering on cards such items as the results to date of a cross between Odonto-glossum crispo-harryanum x aireworthi or Miltonia vexillaria x roezli.
When they came down together in the elevator at six o’clock, I was too busy even to turn my head, but I became aware of a presence near my right shoulder, and a voice asked, “Can I help?”
So we were speaking. I said, “No, thanks.”
“Did you phone?”
“Yeah, you have a cold.”
“Has anything happened?”
“Yes. We have made up. Apparently.”
“Oh, I never nurse a huff. Anyway, I knew you were right. I just wanted to see how mean you could get. One thing I could have said, I could have threatened to call a cop. Evidently the one thing you and Nero can’t stand is for anybody to tell a cop anything. It’s been more than four hours since she left. Damn it, what’s she doing?”
That was the second time I had ever heard a woman call him Nero, but the other time it had been a gag. For Julie it was just natural. If she stayed two days and two nights in a man’s house, and ate with him, and collaborated with him, and helped him with his orchids, it would have been silly to call him Mister. If she got the fifty grand and picked a college that wasn’t too far away, I might drop in after she had been there a while to see what effect she was having. It was a cinch that she would have more effect on it than it would have on her.
I accepted her offer to help with the germination records.
At the dinner table Wolfe didn’t repeat his performance of the day before. It was no longer necessary to quiz her, and he put her in her place by discussing the difference between imagination and invention in literature. She did get a word in now and then. Once when his mouth was full of sweetbreads she said, “You’re talking over my head on purpose. Show me one thing in one book and ask me if it’s imagination or invention and I’ll tell you every time, and let’s see you prove I’m wrong.” That’s no way to talk to a man who is doing his best to prepare you for college.
While Fritz was pouring after-dinner coffee in the office, Julie said, “I’d give a brand-new dollar bill to know what she’s doing. What’s her number? I’ll call her.”
“Yeah,” I said.
She looked at Wolfe. “You get on my nerves because you haven’t got any. You wouldn’t give a rusty nickel to know what she’s doing.”
“Why should I?” he growled, and sipped coffee.
It was obvious that they had had enough of each other for a while, and when we had finished with the coffee I took her down to the basement. The basement has Fritz’s room and bath, a storeroom, and a large room with a pool table. I had mentioned it to her, and she had said she would like to learn how to use a cue, and it might take her mind off of Stella Fleming, not to mention mine. But she didn’t get her pool lesson. I had taken the cover off, and picked a cue for her, and racked the balls, when the doorbell rang. If I hadn’t caught her arm she would have beaten me to the stairs, and she was right at my heels when I reached the hall and took a look at the front.
“My God,” she said, “she hashed it.” I stepped to the office door and told Wolfe, “Cramer.” He looked up from his book and tightened his lips. I told Julie, “Go to the kitchen and stay there.” The doorbell rang. Julie went, but not to the kitchen, to the alcove, where the hole was. I said, “If you sneeze, I’ll boil you in oil,” and went to the front and opened the door.
From the look Cramer gave me, he was set to boil me in oil whether I sneezed or not. That was all he had for me, the look. By the time I had his coat hung up he was at the office door, and when I got there he was already in the red leather chair and talking. He was saying, “… and you knew Barry Fleming fired those shots, and I want to know how you knew. You also knew Barry Fleming had killed Isabel Kerr, and I want to know how you knew that.”