Homicide Trinity (22 page)

“I am.” I pointed to the parlor door. “In there.”

T
wo hours later, at twenty minutes to four, as I sat at the big table in the kitchen eating crackers and cheese and raspberry preserves, and drinking coffee, Inspector Cramer of Homicide West sent for me to ask me a favor. Very few people or situations had ever got Cramer to the point of asking a favor of me, but Hattie Annis had managed it.

With me at the table were two of the roomers, Noel Ferris and Paul Hannah. Ferris was the handsome young man who had appeared as I was phoning. Hannah was even younger, but not as handsome. He had chubby pink cheeks and not enough nose, and his ears stuck out. A dick had gone for him at the Mushroom Theater, where he had been rehearsing. At the moment Cramer sent for me he and Ferris were discussing the question, when had they last been in the parlor? Ferris said one evening about a month ago, when he had gone in to see if the piano was as bad as Martha said it was, and had found it was worse. Hannah said two weeks ago yesterday, when he had come downstairs to make a phone call and Martha was at the
phone talking, and he had stepped into the parlor because he didn’t want to stand there and listen. Before they had got onto that they had argued about the knife. Hannah said he had identified it as one from a kitchen drawer which he had often used, and Ferris said he shouldn’t have identified it; he should have merely said it was similar. They had got fairly heated, paying no attention to a city employee who was on a chair by the door, taking it in.

I hadn’t been allowed in the parlor, but I had seen the experts come and go, and some of them were still there. My first interview had been with Purley Stebbins, who had arrived in person only ten minutes behind the pair from the prowl car. That had taken place in the kitchen. My second interview had been in the room above the kitchen, Raymond Dell’s room as I learned later, with Inspector Cramer and the T-man, Albert Leach. That was an honor, but I felt that I rated it because if it hadn’t been for me they wouldn’t have been there. My phone call to the Secret Service had brought Leach on the jump, and Leach’s appearance had brought the Inspector. No doubt about it. So it was Cramer, not Stebbins, that I got to see reacting to outside authority, and it wasn’t very instructive because he was mostly reacting to me as usual.

“You say Wolfe told her he would expect no fee and he wasn’t interested in a reward, but he sent you here with her and you paid the cab fare. Nuts. I know Wolfe and I know you. You expect me to swallow that?”

Or: “You try to tell me that you don’t know exactly how long it was after you found the body until you called Stebbins because you didn’t look at your watch when you found the body. That’s a lie. The way you’ve been trained looking at your watch would have been automatic. Raymond Dell and Martha Kirk say it was just a few minutes after one when you and Hattie Annis left the kitchen. You called Stebbins at one-thirty-four. Half an hour. What were you doing?”

Or: “Quit your clowning!”

Of course he was at a disadvantage, since at the
beginning he expected to be riled because he knew I knew how, and when he’s riled his mind skips. So I got no bruises, and the one ticklish point was never mentioned. I gave him all the facts about the package from the time Hattie left it with me until I put it in the safe, excepting one detail, and he didn’t even hint at the possibility that it might be queer, and neither did Leach. Leach horned in only once, when he got riled too.

“I warned you,” he said, “not to try any fancy tricks with the Secret Service. And at that moment, when I was asking you if Hattie Annis had been there, she was in with Wolfe. You have just admitted it. You withheld information required by an agent of the Federal government in the performance of his duty, and you will answer for it.”

“I’ll answer now,” I told him. “Why should I tell you anything about anybody? If you had any proper ground for asking me about Hattie Annis you didn’t mention it. Inspector Cramer doesn’t have to mention it. She and I found a dead body in her house, and it’s his job to catch murderers, and it’s possible that there is a connection between the murder and the package that Miss Annis found and brought to Mr. Wolfe. So I answer his questions. I can’t think offhand of any question whatever that I owe you an answer to. Do you want to try?”

That was deliberate. Sooner or later someone was going to ask me if I knew that money was counterfeit, and I might as well get it over with and have it on the record. But he merely looked at Cramer, and Cramer resumed.

At twenty minutes to four, when a dick named Callahan entered the kitchen and said the Inspector wanted me, I supposed it had been decided that it was time to try me on the ten-thousand-dollar question, but when I saw Cramer’s face I knew that wasn’t it. Instead of being set to blurt a tough one at me, he was chewing on a cigar, and he does that only when he doesn’t like the prospect. Lieutenant Rowcliff and another dick were with him, in Dell’s room. Leach wasn’t there. It
didn’t come easy for him. He took the cigar from his mouth, put it back, and rasped, “We need your help, Goodwin.”

“I’d love to help,” I said.

“Yeah.” Not at all the right tone for asking a favor. “Did you tell that Annis woman to bolt herself in?”

“No. I have reported it as it happened.”

“Yeah.” He removed the cigar. “She won’t open the door. She won’t open her trap. We don’t want to smash the door unless we have to. She’s your client and if you tell her to slide that damn bolt she will.”

“She is not my client. Nor Mr. Wolfe’s.”

“So you say. Wouldn’t she open the door if you asked her to?”

“Probably.”

“Okay. Ask her.”

I allowed a grin to show. “Not the way you mean. Not with you at my elbow. I’m willing to try if I’m alone in the hall and the door of this room is shut, and I’ll explain the situation to her. She has a personal attitude to cops. A cop shot her father.”

“Yeah, fifteen years ago. Hasn’t she got any sense?”

“No.”

“She might know we’ll bust the door if we have to. Will you tell her that?”

“Sure. With conditions as specified. You and yours stay here with the door shut. Rowcliff is slow in the skull but his feet are fast.”

“Save the gags,” Cramer growled, and stuck the cigar in his mouth. I went, closed the door behind me, walked down the hall, rapped on Hattie’s door, and called, “It’s me. Buster Goodwin. I’m alone. Let me in. I want to ask you something.”

Footsteps and then her voice. “Where are they?”

“Still in the house but at a safe distance. I am not a flunky.”

The bolt grated and the door opened. I entered, shut the door, and slid the bolt. The blinds were down and the lights were on. She had a magazine in her hand.
“You might have brought me something to eat,” she said. “I haven’t had any lunch. You’re no good.”

I faced her. “That’s the second time you’ve told me I’m no good,” I said. “Let’s get that settled. If you really mean it why did you let me in?”

“I thought you had something to eat. When I say you’re no good that’s just for then, when I say it. I’m hungry.”

“Okay. Actually I’m extremely good. If I wasn’t, why would I bother to come and tell you to stay away from the door because they’re going to bust it in?”

“No, they won’t.”

“Why won’t they?”

“Because they know if they do I’ll shoot.”

I glanced around. A massive old walnut bed, a big old rolltop desk, dresser, chest of drawers, chairs, pictures of men and women all over the walls, actors from a mile off. “What will you shoot with?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “I haven’t got a gun, but they don’t know it.”

I eyed her. “May I have permission to call you Hattie?”

“No. Not until I see what happens.”

“Very well, Miss Annis. A cop named Cramer, an inspector, asked me to come and tell you they’re going to break in. They can do that without getting in the line of fire, and they will. That’s all he asked me to tell you, but I add this on my own, that if they have to smash the door to get to you it’s an absolute certainty that they’ll take you downtown, and they’ll probably hold you as a material witness. They’re investigating a murder that occurred in your house, and you’re a suspect. Whereas if you let them in and answer the questions they have a right to ask, they probably won’t take you downtown and you can sleep in your own bed.”

She was staring at me. “You say I’m a suspect?”

“Certainly. When you came home to sew on the button, it could have been then.”

“You
suspect me?”

“Of course not. Even if I’m no good I’m not a halfwit.”

Her tips tightened. “They’ll have to carry me.”

“They can. There’s enough of them, and they have handcuffs.”

“They’ll need them.” She cocked her head. A strand of gray hair fell across her eye, and she didn’t bother to brush it back. “All right, Buster. I’ve never hired a detective. Do you want me to sign something?”

“Whom are you hiring, Miss Annis?”

“I’m hiring you. Call me Hattie.”

“You can’t hire me. I work for Nero Wolfe on salary.”

“Then I’m hiring Nero Wolfe.”

“To do what?”

“To show the cops. To make them wish they had never set foot in my house. To make them eat dirt.”

“He wouldn’t take the job. You might hire him to investigate the murder, and he might fill your order as a by-product. But he has exaggerated ideas about fees, and I doubt if you could afford it.”

“Would you help him?”

“Of course. That’s my job.”

She shut her eyes, tight. In a moment she opened them. “I could pay him one-tenth of all I’ve got besides the house. I could pay him forty-two thousand dollars. That ought to be enough.”

It took a little effort not to gawk. “I should think so,” I conceded. “If you want me to put it to him, I have to ask a question that he’ll ask. He’s very realistic about money. What you’ve got besides the house, is it in something convenient? Would you have to sell something, for instance a race horse or a yacht?”

“Don’t try to be funny, Buster. I’m realistic about money too. It’s in tax-exempt bonds in a vault in a bank. Do you want me to sign something?”

“That’s not necessary, now that I call you Hattie.” I controlled an impulse to reach and brush the strand of hair away from her eye. “You may not be very available the rest of the day, so we’ll leave it this way: you have hired Mr. Wolfe to investigate the murder, and if he doesn’t take the job I’ll notify you as soon as I can get in touch with you. And you’ll leave—”

“Why wouldn’t he take the job?”

“Because he’s a genius and he’s eccentric. Geniuses don’t have to have reasons. But leave that to me. And if you’re going to pay us I might as well start earning it. Have you got a stamp pad?”

She said yes, in the desk, and I went and found it in a pigeonhole. She said she had no glossy paper, and I took her magazine and found a page ad in color with wide margins in white, and tore it out. “I’ll want all ten fingers,” I told her. “First your right hand, the thumb. Like this.”

She didn’t ask why. She didn’t ask anything. Either she knew why or she merely wanted to humor me, and your guess is as good as mine. When I had the set, the right hand on the right margin and the left on the left, I folded the sheet with care and put it between the pages of my notebook.

“Okay,” I said. “You’ll leave the door unbolted, and I’ll tell Cramer—”

“No, I won’t. If they break in that door they’ll pay for it.”

I explained again. I told her that anyone as realistic about money as she was ought to be able to be realistic about murder, but she wouldn’t budge. I told her she didn’t have to invite them in or let them in, just leave the door unbolted, and she said I was no good. So I left, and the second I was across the sill the door clicked shut and I heard the bolt go in. I walked to the rear and opened the door of Dell’s room.

“Well?” Cramer demanded.

“No soap.” I stood in the doorway. “If she has a brain I can’t imagine what she uses it for. She wants to hire Nero Wolfe to make you eat dirt. I told her if you had to break in you would probably take her downtown and hold her, and she said you’d have to carry her. When I left she pushed the bolt.”

“All right,” Cramer said, “if that’s the way she wants it.” He turned to speak to Rowcliff, but I didn’t stay to listen, because I had an urgent errand. Callahan, the dick who had brought me from the kitchen, wasn’t in
sight, and if I went downstairs unescorted I probably wouldn’t be stopped. I backed off, made the landing, descended, asked the dick in the lower hall if it was still snowing as I got my hat and coat, took my time putting my coat on, opened the front door, and was gone.

The snow was coming down thicker and was an inch deep on the sidewalk. Outside were two harness bulls, four police cars double-parked, and a small group of unofficial criminologists. I headed east, found a phone booth in a bar and grill around the corner on Eighth Avenue, and dialed. It was after four and Wolfe would be up in the plant rooms for his afternoon session with the orchids, which is from four to six, so it was Fritz who answered, and I told him to switch it.

“Yes?” Wolfe is always gruff on the phone, but when it interrupts him up there he is even gruffer.

“Me again. From a booth on Eighth Avenue. I left the scene informally because I have something to report. We won’t be contradicted about the money. Miss Annis, whom I now call Hattie, has buttoned her lip and will keep it buttoned. She is in her room with the door bolted and Cramer and Rowcliff are going to batter their way in. Stebbins isn’t around. I was re—”

“He was here.”

“Who? Stebbins?”

“Yes. I spoke with him at the door. He wanted the package of money. I told him it was not mine to surrender, since it had been left in your safekeeping. He said nothing about its being bogus. I didn’t admit him. He was not pleased.”

“I’ll bet. I was requested by Cramer to persuade Hattie to let them in, and I tried—not through the door, she let me in. When I told her that if they had to bust the door to get to her they would take her downtown and hold her, she said she wanted to hire you to make them eat dirt. I said the only job you might take would be to investigate the murder, and dirt-eating, if any, would be a by-product, and your fee would be high. She said she could pay you twenty-one thousand dollars, one-tenth of the tax-exempt bonds she has in a bank vault. I
said we would leave it that you are hired, and if you refuse to take it on because you’re eccentric I’ll notify her. The trouble is, how can I notify her if she’s not accessible? Shall I ask Cramer to tell her you’re too busy?”