By that time it was too late to eat in a restaurant and make it to the theater, so we ate in that big cafeteria near the station on Forty-second Street. Then we had bad luck and couldn’t get seats for the show we wanted to see and we went to a movie instead—The Best Years of Our Lives. Then I caught the eleven-fifty-six to Westport. Then the next day, Saturday, Mr. Hoff—he knew where I was—he came to Westport and said it was my duty to cooperate with the authorities, so I came to New York and went to the District Attorney’s office and told them what I have told you and answered their questions. So when you say you have a witness—well, I’d like to know who the witness is.” I was thinking to myself savagely, you will, my beautiful little liar, you’ll know all right. But I only felt it; I didn’t look it. I kept my face deadpan.
Wolfe didn’t. He looked concerned and apologetic. “It seems,” he said, “that you had facts for me, not me for you. I do have a witness, Miss Livsey, but manifestly a mistaken one. Of course you certify all this, Mr. Hoff?” “I do,” Hoff said emphatically.
“Then that settles it. I owe you an apology, Miss Livsey, which is a rare debt for me to incur. As for my witness—I wonder if you’ll do me a favor. Will you send me a photograph of yourself—a good one, as recent as possible?” “Why—” Hester hesitated.
“Certainly,” Hoff agreed for her. “I don’t know what for, but certainly she will.” “Good. I’ll appreciate it. Today, if possible, by messenger collect. The witness may have an idea of going to the police and there’s no use getting them more confused than they are already.” Wolfe was out of his chair. “Good day, Miss Livsey. Good day, Mr. Hoff. Thank you for coming.” I went to the hall with them. At the door Hester told me, offering a hand, “I’m sorry if I was impolite this morning, Mr. Goodwin. I guess I was upset.” “Don’t mention it,” I told her eyes. “You were nervous. Everybody in the neighborhood of a murder gets nervous, sometimes even the murderer himself.” I returned to the office, resumed my chair, and sat and glared at Wolfe as he opened a fresh bottle, poured, waited until the foam was exactly a quarter of an inch below the rim of the glass, and drank. He put the glass down empty and used his tongue on his upper lip first and then his handkerchief. When company was present he omitted the tongue part.
“Superficially neat,” he muttered at me, “but they’re a pair of idiots.” “Enravished,” I said, “is no word for it. I’m absolutely nuts about her. Did you notice that she even named the movie they went to? She left out the kind of sundae she had. That was an oversight. One thing you didn’t know about, but I doubt if it would have mattered, all I told her was that you had a fact you wanted to ask her about, and she was so anxious to know which fact that she nearly lost her pants. There was a time when the mere thought of her pants would have made my heart beat. Anyhow, our fact isn’t the only one, I’ll guarantee that. What do we do now, feed her to the animals?” “No.” Wolfe was grim. “I doubt if Mr. Cramer could shake them. Even if he could, she sat there and told me that preposterous lie and I will not tolerate it. What about Saul? Did he look twice?” “No. Not a chance. He spotted her himself and said yes, and with Saul you know how good that is. Even if she has a twin, it was her. Also, as I told you, he spotted Sumner Hoff.” I snorted. “Protect your woman.” “What?” “Nothing. It’s a motto. The corny performance we have just witnessed has got me voting for the stock department again. When I left the directors’ meeting I was voting for the thirty-sixth floor, murder on the highest executive level, but not now. What I would really like is to combine the two. I hate to leave Emmet Ferguson out of it.” “Tell me about the directors’ meeting.” I did so, and hoped he was listening. That was open to question because he kept his eyes open. When he doesn’t close his eyes while I am making a report it usually means that part of his mind is on something else, and I never know how big a part. On that occasion I suspected it was more than half, knowing as I did what he was doing with it. He was peeling strips of hide off of Hester Livsey and sprinkling salt on the exposed tissue. She had diddled him good. He had counted on getting from her, at a minimum, a hint as to where the path either entered the thicket or left it, and all he had got was a barefaced lie with Sumner Hoff to back it up.
When I finished the report, instead of asking questions or making comments, he muttered that he wished to speak to Mr. Cramer, and when the connection was made he told Cramer that in checking alibis and tracing movements of people for Friday evening a special effort should be made in the case of Sumner Hoff for the two hours from six to eight. Cramer naturally wanted to know why, since the hours they were concentrating on were from ten to midnight, and Wolfe’s refusal to explain naturally got growls. Wolfe hung up, sighed deeply, and leaned back and then in a matter of seconds had to straighten up again when a call came from Saul Panzer.
Saul made a report, a brief one, with me off the wire. Wolfe took it with no remarks but grunts, told Saul to come to the office at six that afternoon, and added: “That confounded woman is a nincompoop. Has Mr. Cramer reached you? Of course not. Now you may let him. Let him find you. Tell him about Mr. Naylor but make no reference to Miss Livsey or Mr. Hoff. Leave them out. They have concocted a story that can’t be disproven except by your word. It would be two to one, and Mr. Cramer would keep you for hours and perhaps days, accomplishing nothing.
You’d better go to see him and finish with him so you can be here at six o’clock.” Wolfe hung up and glowered at me.
“Archie. At least we’ve been hired to do a job and we know what the job is.
After lunch go back down there and use your eyes, ears, and tongue as the occasion suggests and your capacities permit.” He glanced at the wall clock.
“Get Durkin, Gore, Gather, and Keems. I want them all here at six o’clock. If they’re working and need an inducement give them one. That woman is going to regret this.”
CHAPTER Twenty-Seven
A week went by. Seven days and seven nights. They brought us to another Monday, the last day of March, and they brought us nowhere else at all.
It was the longest dry spell we have ever had on a murder case. When I finished breakfast that second Monday morning and put on my coat and hat to go downtown for the start of another week at the office of Naylor-Kerr, Inc., if Wolfe had intercepted me to tell me to type for him a summary of the headway made during the week, it wouldn’t have delayed me more than ten seconds. I could merely have stepped into the office for a blank sheet of paper and handed it to him—or, if he wanted it in triplicate, three sheets. That would have covered the accomplishments not only of me, but of everybody—Wolfe himself, Saul Panzer, Bill Gore, Orrie Gather, Fred Durkin, Johnny Keems, and Inspector Cramer with his entire army.
The cops had done everything they were supposed to do and then some. Their scientists, with microscopes and chemicals, had demonstrated that Naylor’s body had been carried in the tonneau, on the floor, of the car that had run over him, proving that he had been either killed or stunned somewhere else and transported to Thirty-ninth Street for the last act. The theory was that the body had been where the murderer didn’t want it to be, so he had needed to take it somewhere else, and why not Thirty-ninth Street again if it was as suitably deserted as it had been before? He could choose a moment when no one was in sight for dumping it out of the car, and if someone appeared before he could back the car up and run over it he could merely decide not to add that touch, and step on the gas.
Naturally the curiosity of the cops was aroused by the fact that the murderer had thought it undesirable for people to know where Naylor was killed and what with, so a few platoons worked on that. In their effort to find out where the car had been the scientists used the microscope on every particle of dust and dirt from the tires, and even from underneath the chassis. Purley told me that one of them had sold himself on the notion that the car had been in Passaic, New Jersey, but had found no other buyers. Otherwise no results.