Bloodied Ivy (22 page)

I was still mentally composing this spiel when Wolfe walked into the office at two minutes after eleven, eased his bulk into the desk chair after wishing me a curt good morning, and started in on the mail, which as usual I’d placed on his blotter. He was halfway through the stack when the doorbell rang.

I went to the hall and, seeing a familiar face through the one-way glass panel, returned to the office. “Cramer,” I said. “Should I let him in?” Wolfe nodded and turned back to the mail.

“Hello, Inspector. What a surprise,” I said, swinging the door open. “Nice morning, isn’t it?”

“It’ll do,” he rumbled, barreling past me as he always does and making straight for the office. In all the years I’ve known Inspector Cramer of the New York Police Department’s homicide detail, I can almost never remember his hanging up his overcoat or even handing it to me to hang up. I would have accused him of imitating Peter Falk except that he was around long before
Columbo
came along. Besides, whatever else I might say about Cramer, he is his own man and doesn’t feel the need to imitate anybody, least of all a television cop.

“Good morning, Inspector,” Wolfe said as Cramer let his 190 pounds drop in the red leather chair and took a cigar from his overcoat pocket. “I’m about to have beer. Will you join me?”

“Too early,” he gruffed, chewing on the unlit stogie. “I’ll only be a minute. I got a call first thing this morning from the police chief in Prescott—name’s Hobson, as I guess you know. He claims we met at a law enforcement conference years ago, although I sure as hell don’t remember it. He wanted to know all about you.”

“And?” Wolfe raised his eyebrows.

“He said you and Goodwin had been up in Prescott investigating that professor’s death,” Cramer snorted. “I said I didn’t believe him—that there was no way you’d be caught that far from the city, but he insisted it was you and described you to the letter. Then I told him I’d known you for more years than I care to count, that you’re one shrewd cookie, that you’ve figured out a lot of tough cases, and that sometimes I trust you, sometimes I don’t. I also told him that when you give your word on something, it can be taken to the bank, but you’re as mule-headed as anybody he’d ever find.”

“Mr. Cramer, I have always admired your candor,” Wolfe said, pouring beer into a glass from one of the two bottles Fritz had just set in front of him.

“Yeah. Well, I didn’t come over here just to butter you up,” Cramer muttered, gesturing with his cigar. “The way I read it, what with this client of yours that Hobson told me about, you’re getting ready to nail somebody for giving the big push to both the professor and the girl. Okay, that’s your affair and technically it belongs to those folks up in Orange County. But I’ve been around you long enough to know that whenever you hold one of your overblown charades and gather everybody in this room for the big moment, the murderer is always sitting there along with everybody else. So whether or not you ask any police from Prescott to come, this is part of my turf, and I intend to be right here.” Cramer jabbed his chest with his finger and bit into his cigar as if it were a medium-rare filet.

“If such an event occurs, you assuredly will be invited,” Wolfe said, turning a palm over. “I wouldn’t think of omitting you—or Sergeant Stebbins—from the guest list.”

Cramer eyed Wolfe suspiciously, took one last chew of the battered panatela, and slowly got to his feet. “I just can’t believe you went to Prescott,” he said, shaking his head. “Were you unconscious all the way up and back?”

I’m happy to report that Wolfe ignored that cheap shot and reached for the mail again while Cramer turned on his heel and marched out to the front hall with me close behind. “You may have hurt Mr. Wolfe’s feelings with your last comment,” I said to his back, but got no answer as he stalked out and went down our front steps to the unmarked car at the curb.

“Nice of Cramer to stop by, eh?” I said back in the office. “Like old times.” Wolfe grunted and I filled him in on the earlier calls from Lon and Cortland. He finished perusing the mail and looked up. “Is Mr. Cortland where he can be reached?”

“I can try,” I shrugged. “You want him now?”

Wolfe nodded and I dialed his office number, getting my favorite new girlfriend. “Yes, he’s here, Mr. Goodman,” she chirped, instantly recognizing my voice, which warmed my heart. “Hold on please.”

I signaled to Wolfe, who picked up his receiver while I stayed on the line. “Mr. Cortland, this is Nero Wolfe—” Before he could get any more out, Cortland loudly bemoaned his morning at the police station, railing at the manners and methods of Prescott’s finest. He was in good form, I had to admit. Wolfe made a face as he listened, mouthing an occasional sympathetic word. “Sir,” he said after our client had finally wound down, “if I may presume on your time for just a few moments, I have a question: Was Mr. Markham a reader of fiction?”

“Hale? Almost never,” Cortland said. “He thought it was a waste of time. So do I, for that matter. In fact, now that you mention it, I can’t ever remember hearing him talk about a novel. Why in the world do you ask?”

Wolfe ducked the question and thanked him, cradling the receiver and leaning back in his chair, eyes closed. I knew what was coming before it started, don’t ask me how—maybe I’ve just been around him so long that I unconsciously pick up the signals. After about a minute, it began—his lips pushing out and in, out and in. I never know where he is at these times and I doubt if he knows himself. Because I’ve gotten into the habit through the years, I timed him as he sat there doing the lip drill. After a few seconds more than twenty-two minutes by my watch, he opened his eyes, blinked twice, and sat up straight. “Confound it, let’s be done with this,” he grumbled. “Get all of them here.”

“You mean right now?”

“Tonight will be soon enough. I suggest nine o’clock.”

“Oh, what a relief—then there’ll be no problem. After all, that’s almost ten hours away. But will you be kind enough to define ‘all of them’ for me?”

“I would have thought that patently obvious,” he said dryly. “Messrs. Potter, Greenbaum, Schmidt, and Bach, and Mrs. Moreau. And our client, of course. Also, that cretinous police chief from Prescott.”

“So you
are
inviting the billionaire. You realize that means you’ll also be getting his personal assistant in the package?”

Wolfe nodded, returning to the beer he’d abandoned during his séance.

“And you promised Inspector Cramer a seat at the proceedings, too.”

“I will call Mr. Cramer,” Wolfe replied. “After lunch is soon enough.”

“Assuming everybody shows up, this place is going to be more crowded than a room filled with Johnny Carson’s guest hosts.”

“I have absolute confidence in your ability to work out the logistics.” Wolfe turned to an orchid growers’ magazine. I picked up on that signal, too—it meant the discussion was officially over, but that was all right with me, because things were about to get interesting.

A
FTER GETTING MY MARCHING ORDERS
, I turned immediately to the telephone and started in to deliver on those orders. I caught Cortland in his office just as he was leaving for lunch. “Mr. Wolfe is going to make an announcement here tonight,” I told him. “You’re invited, of course, and so are Potter, Schmidt, Greenbaum, and Mrs. Moreau.”

“What information is he going to impart?”

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “Except that I think it’s fair to say you’ll all want to hear it.”

“May I please speak with Mr. Wolfe?” he asked, the peevishness still in his voice.

“Sorry, he’s not available right now.” Okay, so that’s twice in this narrative that I’ve lied to a client. There was a long pause at the other end.

“All right,” Cortland sighed, “I’ll be present.”

“Think you can get the others?”

Another pause. “I drew them together once for you—isn’t that sufficient?”

“Look, Mr. Cortland, you wanted Mr. Wolfe to take this case—begged him, in fact, through me. And now it looks like you just might be getting some results. It seems to me you’d want to do everything you could to help things along. After all, you
are
the client.”

Yet another pause followed by another sigh. “You’re right,” he finally said. “And I am happy to learn of progress. It’s just that my colleagues here are highly irritated with me by now, as I’m sure you can appreciate. But I’ll ask them—in fact, I will probably be encountering at least some of them over in the Union at lunch.”

As a sign-off I gave him a few words of encouragement and told him to let me know the results, then swiveled to face Wolfe. “I don’t know if you heard that or not, but Cortland’s trying to round up the college crowd. Should I invite his eminence the police chief of Prescott, or would you prefer to do the honors?”

Wolfe set his book down and scowled. “You do it. If he balks, I’ll get on the line.”

A female voice answered at the Prescott police station, and when I told her I wanted to talk to Chief Hobson, she put me through without even bothering to ask my name. There were some advantages to dealing with small-town institutions after all.

“Carl Hobson,” he answered gruffly.

“Mr. Hobson, this is Archie Goodwin. You recall we met the other day. I’m calling for Mr. Wolfe, who is inviting you to a meeting at his house in New York tonight at nine o’clock. He plans to—”

“Me? Come to New York? What the hell kind of a game is this?”

I started to say that he plans to name the murderer of both Hale Markham and Gretchen Frazier, and—

“Goddamn it, let me talk to Wolfe!”

I cupped the receiver. “He would very much like to speak to you,” I told Wolfe. “And he’s not being a gentleman about it.”

Wolfe gave me one of his looks of resignation and picked up his instrument. “Yes, Mr. Hobson?” he said nonchalantly.

“What is this claptrap about a meeting at your place to name a murderer?”

“Mr. Goodwin described it accurately. I thought you would relish the opportunity to be present.”

“Inspector Cramer told me about your methods, Mr. Wolfe. Things down in New York may be run casually, but we don’t operate that way in Prescott. Whatever it is you plan to say tonight, you can spit it out right now.”

“No, sir, that won’t work. What I have to say I will say here—and only here—tonight.”

“If you think I’m going to drive all the way down there—and to a meeting about possible homicides, in a private home at that—you’re badly mistaken,” Hobson snarled.

“Suit yourself, sir,” Wolfe said. “Whether you come or not, law enforcement will be represented in the person of Inspector Cramer.”

Hobson swore and then cupped his receiver while he talked to someone else. I couldn’t make out any of it. “What’s your address?” he barked when he came back on the line. Wolfe told him and the chief growled that he would see if he could arrange to come.

My next call was to Leander Bach’s office, and again I went through the switchboard. This time, however, when I gave my name and got passed to Bach’s office, the call went directly to Annette Carswell. “Yes, Mr. Goodwin?” came the ten-degree-Fahrenheit voice.

I repeated basically the same speech I’d given Hobson. “Mr. Bach is at home this morning, but I expect him in the office later,” she replied. “If he decides to come—and I stress the
if
—he’ll probably ask me to accompany him.”

“Fine with us,” I told her, and we left it that she’d call to let me know one way or the other.

“Eight-to-five he shows,” I said to Wolfe. “Cramer next?” My answer was a nod, so I dialed the number I know by heart, and Wolfe picked up his phone when Cramer came on the line. “Inspector, I didn’t realize I would be calling you this soon after your visit. You said you wanted an invitation to my next…I believe ‘charade’ is the term you used. It will be tonight at nine o’clock.”

“I’ll be damned,” Cramer murmured. “Who else is coming?”

Wolfe recited the list, including Hobson. “Sergeant Stebbins of course is also welcome,” Wolfe said, but all he got in return from Cramer was another “I’ll be damned” before he said he’d be there and hung up.

We were back in the office after lunch with our coffee when the next installment came—in the form of a call from the president of Prescott University. “Mr. Wolfe, I saw Walter Cortland a few minutes ago, and he informed me of your gathering tonight,” Potter said. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to accept because of a previous commitment.”

“I would strongly advise you to rearrange your schedule,” Wolfe murmured, closing his eyes.

“When you’re in my position, that’s not always easy to do,” was the stiff reply.

“I appreciate that, sir. But I naturally assumed, given the impact these recent events have had on the university and its image, that you might want to be present. I am expecting several of your faculty to attend.”

Potter probably thought he was too refined to swear, but I know he was itching to. He, too, paused, and then muttered something about seeing if he couldn’t postpone a meeting. He asked for the time and the address, and when he got them, he hung up.

“I’ll give nine-to-five on that one,” I said. “Now all we have to do is hear back from Cortland.”

“You will receive a call from him in the next hour,” Wolfe said, “and he will tell you that they are all coming, although both Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Greenbaum howled loudly about it, and Mr. Schmidt at first flatly refused to come. He also will tell you Mrs. Moreau reacted far more positively, agreeing almost immediately to come.”

“Pretty smug, aren’t you? Well, I don’t want to bet against you because I’m hoping all of them show, but it would serve you right if they didn’t follow your script. A little humility would be a healthy thing for you.”

“Archie, too often what we refer to as humility is only false modesty strutting on the parade ground.”

“Very nice. Who said it?”

“I did,” Wolfe replied, returning to his book.

At three-twenty-five, Cortland called, and I was glad Wolfe wasn’t listening in. “Mr. Goodwin, I spoke to all of them. Orville and Ted really bridled about making the trip to Manhattan, and Orville insisted, rather violently, if you must know, that he was remaining at home, but they both eventually calmed down and said they will be in attendance—in fact, we probably all will drive in together. Elena was more matter-of-fact about coming—she’ll be there, too. I’m not so convinced about Keith; he became testy when I told him and said he was going to call you—did he?”