Wolfe was over at the side bench peering at a pseudo-
bulb through a magnifying glass. Theodore Horstmann,
the fourth member of the household, who was exactly
half Wolfe’s weight, 137 to 270, was opening a bag of
osmundine. I crossed over and told Wolfe’s back, “Ex-
cuse me for interrupting, but I have a problem.”
He took ten seconds to decide he had heard me, then
removed the glass from his eye and demanded, “What
time is it?”
“Nineteen minutes to six.”
“It can wait nineteen minutes.”
“I know, but there’s a snag. If you came down and
found her there in the office with no warning it would be
hopeless.”
“Find whom?”
“A woman named Bertha Aaron. She came unin-
vited. She’s in a hole, and it’s a new kind of hole. I came
up to describe it to you so you can decide whether I go
down and shoo her out or you come down and give it a
look.”
“You have interrupted me. You have violated our
understanding.”
“I know it, but I said excuse me, and since you’re
already interrupted I might as well tell you. She is the
private secretary of LamontOtis, senior partner . . .”
I told him, and at least he didn’t go back to the
pseudo-bulb with the glass. At one point there was
even a gleam in his eye. He has made the claim, to me,
that the one and only thing that impels him to work is
his desire to live in what he calls acceptable circum-
stances in the old brownstone on West 35th Street,
Manhattan, which he owns, with Fritz as chef and
Theodore as orchid tender and me as goat (not his
word), but the gleam in his eye was not at the prospect
of a big fee, because I hadn’t yet mentioned the name
Sorell. The gleam was when he saw that, as I had said, it
was a new kind of hole. We had never looked into one
just like it.
Then came the ticklish part. “By the way,” I said,
“there’s one little detail you may not like, but it’s only a
side issue. In the case in question her firm’s client is
Morton Sorell. You know.”
“Of course.”
“And the opposing client she saw a member of the
firm with is Mrs. Morton Sorell. You may remember
that you made a comment about her a few weeks ago
after you had read the morning paper. What the paper
10 Rex Stout
The Homicide Trinity
11
said was that she was suing him for thirty thousand a
month for a separation allowance, but the talk around
town is that he wants a divorce and her asking price is a
flat thirty million bucks, and that’s probably what Miss
Aaron calls the case. However, that’s only a detail.
What Miss Aaron wants is merely—”
“No.” He was scowling at me. “So that’s why you
pranced in here.”
“I didn’t prance. I walked.”
“You knew quite well I would have nothing to do with
it.”
“I knew you wouldn’t get divorce evidence, and nei-
ther would I. I knew you wouldn’t work for a wife
against a husband or vice versa, but what has that got
to do with this? You wouldn’t have to touch—”
“No! I will not. That marital squabble might be the
central point of the matter. I will not! Send her away.”
I had flubbed it. Or maybe I hadn’t; maybe it had
been hopeless no matter how I handled it; but then it
had been a flub to try, so in any case I had flubbed it. I
don’t like to flub, and it wouldn’t make it any worse to
try to talk him out of it, or rather into it, so I did, for a
good ten minutes, but it neither changed the situation
nor improved the atmosphere. He ended it by saying
that he would go to his room to put on a necktie, and I
would please ring him there on the house phone to tell
him that she had gone.
Going down the three flights I was tempted. I could
ring him not to say that she was gone but that we were
going; that I was taking a leave of absence to haul her
out of the hole. It wasn’t a new temptation; I had had it
before; and I had to admit that on other occasions it had
been more attractive. To begin with, if I made the offer
she might decline it, and I had done enough flubbing for
one day. So as I crossed the hall to the office I was
arranging my face so she would know the answer as
soon as she looked at me. Then as I entered I rear-
ranged it, or it rearranged itself, and I stopped and
stood. Two objects were there on the rug which had
been elsewhere when I left: a big hunk of jade which
Wolfe used for a paperweight, which had been on his
desk, and Bertha Aaron, who had been in a chair.
She was on her side, with one leg straight and one
bent at the knee. I went to her and squatted. Her lips
were blue, her tongue was showing, and her eyes were
open and popping; and around her neck, knotted at the
side, was Wolfe’s necktie. She was gone. But if you get
a case of strangulation soon enough there may be a
chance, and I got the scissors from my desk drawer.
The tie was so tight that I had to poke hard to get my
finger under. When I had the tie off I rolled her over on
her back. Nuts, I thought, she’s gone, but I picked
pieces of fluff from the rug, put one across her nose and
one on her mouth, and held my breath for twenty sec-
onds. She wasn’t breathing. I took her hand and
pressed on a fingernail, and it stayed white when I
removed the pressure. Her blood wasn’t moving. Still
there might be a chance if I got an expert quick enough,
say in two minutes, and I went to my desk and dialed
the number of Doc Vollmer, who lived down the street
only a minute away. He was out. “To hell with it,” I said,
louder than necessary since there was no one but me to
hear, and sat to take a breath.
I sat and stared at her a while, maybe a minute, just
feeling, not thinking. I was too damn sore to think. I
was sore at Wolfe, not at me, the idea being that it had
been ten minutes past six when I found her, and if he
had come down with me at six o’clock we might have
been in time. I swiveled to the house phone and buzzed
his room, and when he answered I said, “Okay, come on
down. She’s gone,” and hung up.
He always uses the elevator to and from the plant
rooms, but his room is only one flight up. When I heard
his door open and close I got up and stood six inches
from her head and folded my arms, facing the door to
the hall. There was the sound of his steps, and then him.
He crossed the threshold, stopped, glared at Bertha
Aaron, shifted it to me, and bellowed, “You said she was
gone!”
“Yes, sir. She is. She’s dead.”
12 Rex Stout
“Nonsense!”
“No, sir.” I sidestepped. “As you see.”
He approached, still glaring, and aimed the glare
down at her, for not more than three seconds. Then he
circled around her and me, went to his oversized made-
to-order chair behind his desk, sat, took in air clear
down as far as it would go, and let it out again. “I
presume,” he said, not bellowing, “that she was alive
when you left her to come up to me.”
“Yes, sir. Sitting in that chair.” I pointed. “She was
alone. No one came with her. The door was locked, as
always. As you know, Fritz is out shopping. When I
found her she was on her side and I turned her over to
test for breathing—after I cut the necktie off. I phoned
Doc—”
“What necktie?”
I pointed again. “The one you left on your desk. It
was around her throat. Probably she was knocked out
first with that paperweight”—I pointed again—”but it
was the necktie that stopped her breathing, as you can
see by her face. I cut—”
“Do you dare to suggest that she was strangled with
my necktie?”
“I don’t suggest, I state. It was pulled tight with a
slipknot and then passed around her neck again and
tied with a granny.” I stepped to where I had dropped it
on the rug, picked it up, and put it on his desk. “As you
see. I do dare to suggest that if it hadn’t been here
handy he would have had to use something else, maybe