“About a murder?”
“Apparently.”
“They must be crazy!”
“That’s quite possible. Are you at home, Miss Hardy?”
“Yes, at my apartment. Do you know –”
“Hold it, please. Since you say you just saw it in the paper, I assume the police haven’t paid you a call yet. But they will. At least, they may. I need to ask a question. I sort of gathered from things Orrie said that you and he are planning to get married. I might have misunderstood…”
“You didn’t. We’re going to be married in May.”
“Is it known? Have you told people?”
“I have told a few people – friends. I’m going to go on working for a while, and an airline stewardess is not allowed –”
“I know. But if Orrie has told his friends, and he told me, you’ll have callers before long. If you want to have –”
“I want to know why he was arrested! I want to know – was he working for Nero Wolfe?”
“No. He hasn’t been on a job for Mr. Wolfe for more than two months. If you –”
“Why should I have callers?”
“I’d rather not tell you on the phone. It’s complicated. If you want to know about it before the police come to ask questions, why don’t you come and ask me questions? Nero Wolfe’s office, Nine-thirty-eight West Thirty-fifth Street. I’ll be –”
“I can’t. I’m due for a Rio flight at ten-thirty.”
“Then I’ll come and pick you up and we can talk on the way to the airport. I’m a good driver. What’s the address?”
“I don’t think –” Silence. “What if Orrie –” More silence. “I’ll see.” She hung up.
I had room for another brioche and slice of ham, and I didn’t dawdle. It might take her only a couple of minutes. When Fritz brought coffee I told him that when you wanted to see someone and didn’t know where she was all you had to do was send out waves, and he asked if we had a client.
“Yes and no,” I said. “A job for someone, yes. A customer who can be properly billed, no. You heard me mention Orrie’s name, so you might as well know that he’s in a hole and we’re going to pull him out. How do you say in French ‘the brotherhood of man’?”
“There is no such thing in French. So that’s what your personal errand was Saturday. I’m glad it’s Orrie instead of Saul or Fred, but all the same –”
The phone rang. I got it. “Nero Wolfe’s office –”
“Jill Hardy again, Mr. Goodwin. I’ve fixed it. I’ll be there in about an hour.”
“Good for you. Do you mind giving me your address and phone number? Just to have.”
She didn’t mind. The address was 217 Nutmeg Street, in the Village. When I had finished the coffee and went to the office, I wrote it on a slip of paper, and the phone number, and considered a problem: should it go in Orrie’s folder? Deciding against it, I got out a new folder and marked it Cather, Orrie, client. In ten minutes Wolfe would be taking the elevator for his morning session, nine to eleven, with the orchids, and I buzzed his room on the house phone. He took his time to answer.
“Yes?”
“Good morning. I thought you would want to know that it’s possible that Jill Hardy will still be here when you come down. She’ll arrive in about an hour, probably less.”
“You have already found her?”
“Oh, sure. It’s easy when you know how.”
“Swagger,” he said, and hung up.
As I dusted desks and chairs, removed yesterday’s sheets from the desk calendars, changed the water in the vase on Wolfe’s desk, and opened the mail, I decided that Jill Hardy would be tall and stiff with quick, sharp eyes, the sergeant type, but the corners of her eyes would slant up a little because some Oriental had got mixed in somewhere along the line. It would have taken something unusual like that to hook Orrie so hard, but there was another reason why she had to be like that. Since we had ruled Orrie out, the sooner we found a replacement for him the better, and of course Jill Hardy was a candidate, and it would simplify it if she looked the part.
Damn it, she didn’t. When the doorbell rang a little after nine-thirty and I went to the hall and to the front door, what I saw through the one-way glass was a size twelve black leather coat with a fur collar, and a little oval face, pink from the cold, with big gray-blue eyes, under a fur-and-leather pancake. When I had opened up and she was inside and the coat was off, she looked even smaller in the well-fitted dark blue suit. She must have just barely hit the minimum height for her job. In the office, I had one of the yellow chairs in place for her. The red leather chair is too far away from my desk.
“I’ve calmed down a little,” she said as she sat. “You look a little like Orrie. The same size.”
That didn’t strike me as an ideal opening for a friendly conversation. I do not look like Orrie. He’s handsome and I’m not. My face needs more nose, but I quit worrying about it when I was twelve. I turned the other cheek. “I’m not surprised,” I said, “that Orrie decided to merge. Seeing you. I’ll congratulate him again when I see him.”
She ignored the oil. “When will you see him?”
“I’m not sure. Possibly this afternoon.”
“I want to see him, but I don’t know how. What do I do?”
“I wouldn’t try to rush it if I were you. He might get bailed out. He has a good lawyer. When did you see him last?”
“Why did they arrest him?” she demanded. “What could he know about a murder? You say he wasn’t working for Nero Wolfe?”
“Yes. He wasn’t. I don’t know, Miss Hardy, if I can tell you much of anything you don’t already know, since you’ve read the paper. I suppose that woman, Isabel Kerr, was involved in some case he was working on, but that’s just a guess. Another guess is that he was in her apartment recently, and they found his fingerprints there, and that’s why they’ve got him. You probably know that private detectives sometimes get into a place and make a search, but if it had been that, Orrie wouldn’t have left any prints because he would have had gloves on. Of course he might not have been there on business, it might have been just – social. Do you know if he knew Miss Kerr?”
“No.” She was frowning.
“He has never mentioned her name?”
“No.”
“When did you see him last?”
She was tops at ignoring questions. She was still frowning. “You said you’d rather not tell me on the phone why I would have callers, but you’re not telling me anything, it seems to me. You’re Orrie’s close friend, but you don’t seem to know much. Why would I have callers? You mean the police?”
I decided I wasn’t going to get anywhere walking on eggs. “I don’t want to jolt you,” I said, “but I think you ought to know the situation.”
“So do I. That’s exactly what I think.”
“Fine. When a man is arrested he has a right to call a lawyer. Orrie called Nathaniel Parker, and Parker went and saw him, and then he came here and talked with Mr. Wolfe and me. Orrie knew he was going to. They don’t hold a man without bail merely because they think he knows things. They’re holding him because they think he killed Isabel Kerr. They don’t just think he knows something about a murder, they think he did it.”
Her eyes were wide, staring. “I don’t believe it.”
“If you don’t believe he did it, neither do I. If you don’t believe they think he did, ask them. Or his lawyer. Because Mr. Wolfe doesn’t think he did, he intends to do something about it, like for instance finding out who did. I haven’t answered your question, why you should expect callers. Because as soon as the cops find out that Orrie is going to marry you, which won’t take them long, they will want to ask you things. Like what I asked, do you know if he knew Isabel Kerr, and like what you haven’t answered, when did you see him last? I only asked it twice, but they’ll bear down. They’ll also want to know where and how you spent Saturday morning; that’s the kind of minds they have. They will wonder if you were there with him, and maybe even held her while he got the ashtray. It’s also the kind of mind I have. Since I think he didn’t kill her I have to consider who did, and it might have been you. Where were you Saturday morning?”