Might as Well Be Dead (19 page)

Patrick A. Degan phoned Saturday morning and came for a talk at six o’clock. Apparently his main concern was to find out from Selma Molloy what her attitude was toward the $327,640.00, and he tried to persuade her that she would be a sap to pass it up, but he took the opportunity to discuss other developments with Wolfe and me. It had got in the paper, the
Gazette
, that Nero Wolfe’s assistant, Archie Goodwin, had been at the morgue to look at the body of Ella Reyes, and that therefore there was probably some connection between her and Johnny Keems, though the police refused to say so, and Degan wanted to know. The interview ended on a sour note when Wolfe commented that it was natural for Degan to show an interest in that detail, since Ella Reyes had been Mrs. Irwin’s maid and Degan was on familiar terms with Mrs. Irwin. When that warmed Degan up under the collar, Wolfe tried to explain that the word “familiar” implied undue intimacy only when it was intended to, and that he had given no reason for inferring such an intention, but Degan hadn’t cooled off much when he left.

Since we wanted to keep informed fully and promptly on the progress of Cramer and his army, and therefore had to be on speaking terms, we graciously permitted Sergeant Stebbins an audience with Mrs. Molloy Saturday afternoon, and he was with her three hours, and Fritz served refreshments. We were pleased to hear later, from her, that Purley had spent a good third of the time on various aspects of the death of her husband, such as possible motives for Arkoff or Irwin to want him removed. The Molloy case had definitely been taken off the shelf. From the questions Purley asked it was evident that no one had been eliminated and no one had been treed. When I asked him, as he departed, if they were getting warm, he was so impolite that I knew the temperature had gone down rather than up.

Saturday evening Selma ate with us in the dining room, and Sunday at one she joined us again for chicken fricassee with dumplings, Methodist style. Fritz is not a Methodist, but his dumplings are plenty good enough for angels.

Saul Panzer and Orrie Cather spent the two days visiting with former friends of Molloy’s, spreading out from the list Patrick Degan had supplied, and concentrating on digging up a hint of the source of the third of a million in the safe-deposit box. Saul thought he might have found one Sunday morning, but it petered out. Fred Durkin plugged away at William Lesser and got enough material to fill three magazines, but none of it showed a remote connection with either the Arkoffs or Irwins, and that was essential. However, Fred got results, of a kind. Sunday afternoon, while I was down in the basement with Selma, teaching her how to handle a billiard cue, the doorbell rang, and I went up to find Fritz conversing through the crack permitted by the chain bolt, with Delia’s Bill. It was my first contact with a suspect for many hours, and I felt like greeting him with a cordial handshake, but he wasn’t having any. He was twice as grim as he had been before. In the office he stood with his fists on his hips and read the riot act. He had found out who the guy was going around asking about him, and that he worked for Nero Wolfe, and so did I, and the guff about the magazine article had been a blind, and he damn well wanted to know. It was rather confused the way he put it, and not clear at all exactly what he wanted to know, but I got the general idea. He was sore.

Neither of us got any satisfaction out of it. For him, I wouldn’t apologize or promise to lock Wolfe and myself up for kidding Delia Brandt and damaging his reputation; and for me, he wasn’t answering questions. He wasn’t even hearing questions. He wouldn’t even tell me when they were going to be married. I finally eased him to the hall and along to the door and on out, and went back to the basement to resume the billiard lesson.

Late that evening, Sunday, Inspector Cramer turned up, and when, after he got his big broad behind deposited in the red leather chair, Wolfe invited him to have some beer and he accepted, I knew he didn’t have to be asked how they were making out. They weren’t. He takes Wolfe’s beer only when he wants it understood that he’s only human and should be treated accordingly. He tried to be tactful because he had no club to use, but what it amounted to was that he had got nowhere at all after two nights and two days, and he wanted the fact or facts that Wolfe was reserving for future use.

Wolfe didn’t have any, and said so. But that didn’t satisfy Cramer, and never will, on account of certain past occasions, so it ended with him bouncing up, his glass still half full of beer, and tramping out.

When I returned from closing the door after him I told Wolfe cheerfully, “Forget it, he’s just tired. In the morning he’ll be back on the job, full of whatever he’s full of. In a month or so he’ll pick up a trail, and by August he’ll have it wrapped up. Of course by that time Peter Hays will be electrocuted, but what the hell, they can apologize to his father and mother and two sis—”

“Shut up, Archie.”

“Yes, sir. If I wasn’t afraid to leave Mrs. Molloy alone here with you I’d resign. This job is too dull. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be a job.”

“It will be.” He took in air down to his waist, or where it would have been if he had one. When it was out he muttered, “It will have to be. When you become insufferable something has to be done. Have Saul and Fred and Orrie here at eight in the morning.”

I locked the safe, made my desk neat, and went up to my room to call the boys from there, leaving him sitting behind his desk, an ideal model for an oversized martyr.

In a way he has spoiled me. Some of the spectacular charades he has thought up have led me to expect too much, and it was something of a letdown Monday morning when I learned what the program was. Nothing but another treasure hunt, and not even a safe-deposit box. I admit that it did the trick, but at the time it struck me as a damned small mouse to come out of so big a mountain.

I had made sacrifices, having rolled out early enough to finish my breakfast by the time Saul and Fred and Orrie arrived at eight, only to find that it hadn’t been necessary when Wolfe told me on the house phone to bring them up at a quarter to nine. When the time came I led the way up the two flights and found his door standing open, and we entered. He was seated at the table near a window, his breakfast gone, but still with coffee, with the morning
Times
propped on the reading rack. He greeted the staff and asked me if there was any news, and I said no, I had phoned Stebbins and he had not bitten my ear off only because you can’t bite over the wire.

He took a sip of coffee and put the cup down. “Then we’ll have to try. You will go, all four, to Mrs. Molloy’s apartment, and search it, covering every inch. Take probes for the upholstery and whatever tools may be required. The devil of it is you won’t know what you’re looking for.”

“Then how will we know when we find it?”

“You won’t, with any certainty. But we know that a situation existed which led to Molloy’s murder; that he had cached a large sum of money in a safe-deposit box under an alias; that he was contemplating departure from the country; and that exhaustive inquiry among his friends and associates has disclosed no hint of where the money came from or when or how he got it. Further, there was no such hint found on his person, or among the papers taken from his office, or in his apartment, or in the safe-deposit box. I don’t believe it. I do not believe that no such hint exists. As I said to Archie on Friday, when a man is involved in a circumstance pressing enough to cause his murder he must leave a relic of it somewhere, and I had hoped it was in that box. When it wasn’t I should have persisted, but other matters intervened—for one thing, a woman got killed.”

He took a sip of coffee. “We want that relic. It could be a portfolio, a notebook, a single slip of paper. It could be some object other than a record on paper, though I have no idea what. There are of course numberless places he could have left it—with some friend, checked at a hotel or other public place—but first we’ll try his apartment, since it is as likely as any and is accessible. Regarding each article you see and touch you must ask yourselves, ‘Could this possibly be it?’ Archie, you will explain the matter to Mrs. Molloy, ask if she wishes to accompany you, and if not get her permission and the key. That’s all, gentlemen. I don’t ask if you have any questions, since I wouldn’t know the answers to them. Archie, leave the phone number on my desk, in case I need to get you.”

We went. I turned off one flight down. I knew she was up, since Fritz had delivered her breakfast tray. By then I was on sufficiently familiar terms with her—the word “familiar” implying no undue intimacy—to have a private knock, 2-1-2, and I used it and was told to enter. She was in a dressing gown or house gown or negligee or dishabille—anyway, it was soft and long and loose and lemon-colored—and without make-up. Without lipstick her mouth was even better than with. A habit of observation of minor details is an absolute must for a detective. We exchanged good mornings and I told her there had been no developments worth mentioning, but there was a program. When I explained it she said she didn’t believe there could be anything in the apartment she didn’t know about, but I reminded her that she hadn’t even bothered to open the cartons that had come from the office, and asked if she had got rid of Molloy’s clothing and other effects. She said no, she hadn’t felt like touching them, and nothing had been taken away. I told her the search would be extremely thorough, and she said she didn’t mind. I asked if she wanted to go along, and she said no.

“You’ll think I’m crazy,” she said, “after my not wanting to come here, but now I never want to enter that door again. I guess that was one thing that was wrong with me—I should have got out of there.”

I told her that the only thing that had been wrong with her was that she thought Peter Hays had killed Molloy, whereas now she didn’t, got the keys from her, went downstairs, where the hired help was waiting for me in the hall, put the phone number on Wolfe’s desk, told Fritz where we were going, and left. Saul and Fred had assembled a kit of tools from the cupboard in the office where we kept an assortment of everything from keys to jimmies.

If I described every detail of our performance in the Molloy apartment that day between 9:35
A.M.
and 3:10
P.M.
you might get some useful pointers on how to look for a lost diamond or postage stamp, but if you haven’t lost a diamond or a postage stamp it wouldn’t interest you. When we got through we knew a lot of things: that Molloy had hoarded old razor blades in a cardboard box in his dresser; that someone had once upon a time burned a little hole in the under side of a chair cushion, probably with a cigarette, and at a later time someone had stuffed a piece of lemon peel in the hole, God knew why; that there were three loose tiles in the bathroom wall and a loose board in the living room floor; that Mrs. Molloy had three girdles, liked pale yellow underwear and white nighties, used four different shades of nylons, and kept no letters except those from a sister who lived in Arkansas; that apparently there were no unpaid bills other than one for $3.84 from a laundry; that none of the pieces of furniture had hollow legs; that if a jar of granulated sugar slips from your hand and spills you have a problem; and a thousand others. Saul and I together went over every scrap of the contents of the three cartons, already inspected by Orrie.

It would be misleading to say we found nothing whatever. We found two empty drawers. They were the two top drawers, one on each side, of a desk against the wall of what Molloy might have called his den. None of the six keys Selma had given me fitted their locks, which were good ones, Wetherbys, and Saul had to work on them with the assortment in the kit. The drawers were as empty as the day they were built, and had presumably been locked from force of habit.

At 3:10
P.M.
I used the phone there in the apartment and told Wolfe the bad news, including the empty drawers. Orrie said to tell him that never had so many searched so long for so little, but it didn’t appeal to me. Wolfe told me to tell Fred and Orrie that was all for the day and to bring Saul in with me. After making a tour to verify that we were leaving things as we had found them, we moved out. Down on the sidewalk we parted, Fred and Orrie heading for the corner to get a drink to drown the disappointment, and Saul and I, with the kit of tools, flagging a taxi. It wasn’t a cheerful ride. If the best the genius could do was start us combing the metropolitan area, including Jersey and Long Island, for a relic that might not exist, the future wasn’t very bright.

But he had something a little more specific. We had barely crossed the sill to the office when he blurted at me, “About that Delia Brandt. About Molloy’s proposal to her of a trip to South America. You said last Wednesday that she told you she had put him off, but you thought she lied. Why did you think she lied?”

I stood. “The way she said it, the way she looked, the way she answered questions about it. And just her. I had formed an opinion of her.”

“Have you changed your opinion? Since she is going to marry William Lesser?”

“Hell no. She couldn’t go to South America with a dead man, and evidently, from Fred’s reports, she was playing Lesser all the time on an option. If Lesser found out what the score was and decided to take—”

“That’s not my target. If Molloy was preparing to decamp and take that girl with him, and if she had agreed to go, he might have entrusted certain objects to her care—for example, some of the objects he removed from the empty drawers you found. Is it fantastic to assume that he left them in her apartment for safekeeping pending departure?”

“No, not fantastic. I wouldn’t trust her with a subway token, but apparently his opinion of her wasn’t the same flavor as mine. It’s quite possible.”

“Then you and Saul will go and search her apartment. Now.”

When Wolfe gets desperate he is absolutely fearless. He will expose me to the risk of a five-year stretch up the river without batting an eye. That’s okay, since I am old enough to vote and can always say no, but that time he was inviting another party too, so I turned to look at Saul. He merely asked, “Will she be there?”