The Twelve Crimes of Christmas (6 page)

“And
before long I was there. Then no one saw you unmasked. When did you put the
gloves on?”

“The
last thing. Just before I entered the studio.”

“Then
you may have left prints. I know, you didn’t know there was going to be a
murder. You left your clothes in the dressing room? Are you sure you got
everything when you left?”

“Yes.
I am not a complete ass.”

I
let that by. “Why didn’t you leave the gloves in the elevator, with the
costume?”

“Because
they hadn’t come with it, and I thought it better to take them.”

“That
private elevator is at the rear of the hall downstairs. Did anyone see you
leaving it or passing through the hall?”

“No.
The hall was empty.”

“How
did you get home? Taxi?”

“No.
Fritz didn’t expect me until six or later. I walked to the public library,
spent some two hours there, and then took a cab.”

I
pursed my lips and shook my head to indicate sympathy. That was his longest and
hardest tramp since Montenegro. Over a mile. Fighting his way through the
blizzard, in terror of the law on his tail. But all the return I got for my
look of sympathy was a scowl, so I let loose. I laughed. I put my head back and
let it come. I had wanted to ever since I had learned he was Santa Claus, but
had been too busy thinking. It was bottled up in me, and I let it out, good. I
was about to taper off to a cackle, when he exploded.

“Confound
it,” he bellowed, “marry and be damned!”

That
was dangerous. That attitude could easily get us onto the aspect he had sent me
up to my room to think over alone, and if we got started on that anything could
happen. It called for tact.

“I
beg your pardon,” I said. “Something caught in my throat. Do you want to
describe the situation, or do you want me to?”

“I
would like to hear you try,” he said grimly.

“Yes,
sir. I suspect that the only thing to do is to phone Inspector Cramer right now
and invite him to come and have a chat, and when he comes open the bag. That
will—”

“No.
I will not do that.”

“Then,
next best, I go to him and spill it there. Of course—”

“No.”
He meant every word of it.

“Okay,
I’ll describe it. They’ll mark time on the others until they find Santa Claus.
They’ve got to find him. If he left any prints they’ll compare them with every
file they’ve got, and sooner or later they’ll get to yours. They’ll cover all
the stores for sales of white cotton gloves to men. They’ll trace Bottweill’s
movements and learn that he lunched with you at Rusterman’s, and you left
together, and they’ll trace you to Bottweill’s place. Of course your going
there won’t prove you were Santa Claus, you might talk your way out of that,
and it will account for your prints if they find some, but what about the
gloves? They’ll trace that sale if you give them time, and with
a
description of the buyer they’ll find Santa Claus. You’re
sunk.”

I
had never seen his face blacker.

“If
you sit tight till they find him,” I argued, “it will be quite a nuisance.
Cramer has been itching for years to lock you up, and any judge would commit
you as a material witness who had run out. Whereas if you call Cramer now, and I
mean now, and invite him to come and have some beer, while it will still be a
nuisance, it will be bearable. Of course he’ll want to know why you went there
and played Santa Claus, but you can tell him anything you please. Tell him you
bet me a hundred bucks, or what the hell, make it a grand, that you could be in
a room with me for ten minutes and I wouldn’t recognize you. I’ll be glad to
cooperate.”

I
leaned forward. “Another thing. If you wait till they find you, you won’t dare
tell them that Bottweill took a drink from that bottle shortly after two o’clock
and it didn’t hurt him. If you told about that after they dug you up, they
could book you for withholding evidence, and they probably would, and make it
stick. If you get Cramer here now and tell him, he’ll appreciate it, though
naturally he won’t say so. He’s probably at his office. Shall I ring him?”

“No.
I will not confess that performance to Mr. Cramer. I will not unfold the
morning paper to a disclosure of that outlandish masquerade.”

“Then
you’re going to sit and read
Here and Now
until they come with a warrant?”

“No.
That would be fatuous.” He took in air through his mouth, as far down as it
would go, and let it out through his nose, “I’m going to find the murderer and
present him to Mr. Cramer. There’s nothing else.”

“Oh.
You are.”

“Yes.”

“You
might have said so and saved my breath, instead of letting me spout.”

“I
wanted to see if your appraisal of the situation agreed with mine. It does.”

“That’s
fine. Then you also know that we may have two weeks and we may have two
minutes. At this very second some expert may be phoning Homicide to say that he
has found fingerprints that match on the card of Wolfe, Nero—”

The
phone rang, and I jerked around as if someone had stuck a needle in me. Maybe
we wouldn’t have even two minutes. My hand wasn’t trembling as I lifted the
receiver, I hope. Wolfe seldom lifts his until I have found out who it is, but
that time he did.

“Nero
Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“This
is the District Attorney’s office, Mr. Goodwin. Regarding the murder of Kurt
Bottweill. We would like you to be here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“All
right. Sure.”

“At
ten o’clock sharp, please.”

“I’ll
be there.”

We
hung up. Wolfe sighed. I sighed.

“Well,”
I said, “I’ve already told them six times that I know absolutely nothing about
Santa Claus, so they may not ask me again. If they do, it will be interesting
to compare my voice when I’m lying with when I’m telling the truth.”

He
grunted. “Now. I want a complete report of what happened there after I left,
but first I want background. In your intimate association with Miss Dickey you
must have learned things about those people. What?”

“Not
much.” I cleared my throat. “I guess I’ll have to explain something. My
association with Miss Dickey was not intimate.” I stopped. It wasn’t easy.

“Choose
your own adjective. I meant no innuendo.”

“It’s
not a question of adjectives. Miss Dickey is a good dancer, exceptionally good,
and for the past couple of months I have been taking her here and there, some
six or eight times altogether. Monday evening at the Flamingo Club she asked me
to do her a favor. She said Bottweill was giving her a runaround, that he had
been going to marry her for a year but kept stalling, and she wanted to do
something. She said Cherry Quon was making a play for him, and she didn’t
intend to let Cherry take the rail. She asked me to get a marriage-license
blank and fill it out for her and me and give it to her. She would show it to
Bottweill and tell him now or never. It struck me as a good deed with no risk
involved, and, as I say, she is a good dancer. Tuesday afternoon I got a blank,
no matter how, and that evening, up in my room, I filled it in, including a
fancy signature.”

Wolfe
made a noise.

“That’s
all,” I said, “except that I want to make it clear that I had no intention of
showing it to you. I did that on the spur of the moment when you picked up your
book. Your memory is as good as mine. Also, to close it up, no doubt you
noticed that today just before Bottweill and Mrs. Jerome joined the party
Margot and I stepped aside for a little chat. She told me the license did the
trick. Her words were, ‘Perfect, simply perfect.’ She said that last evening,
in his office, he tore the license up and put the pieces in his wastebasket.
That’s okay, the cops didn’t find them. I looked before they came, and the
pieces weren’t there.”

His
mouth was working, but he didn’t open it. He didn’t dare. He would have liked
to tear into me, to tell me that my insufferable flummery had got him into this
awful mess, but if he did so, he would be dragging in the aspect he didn’t want
mentioned. He saw that in time, and saw that I saw it. His mouth worked, but
that was all. Finally he spoke.

“Then
you are not on intimate terms with Miss Dickey.”

“No,
sir.”

“Even
so, she must have spoken of that establishment and those people.”

“Some,
yes.”

“And
one of them killed Bottweill. The poison was put in the bottle between two-ten,
when I saw him take a drink, and three-thirty, when Kiernan went and got the
bottle. No one came up in the private elevator during the half-hour or more I
was in the dressing room. I was getting into that costume and gave no heed to
footsteps or other sounds in the office, but the elevator shaft adjoins the
dressing room, and I would have heard it. It is a strong probability that the
opportunity was even narrower, that the poison was put in the bottle while I
was in the dressing room, since three of them were in the office with Bottweill
when I left. It must be assumed that one of those three, or one of the three in
the studio, had grasped an earlier opportunity. What about them?”

“Not
much. Mostly from Monday evening, when Margot was talking about Bottweill. So
it’s all hearsay, from her. Mrs. Jerome has put half a million in the business—probably
you should divide that by two at least—and thinks she owns him. Or thought. She
was jealous of Margot and Cherry. As for Leo, if his mother was dishing out the
dough he expected to inherit to a guy who was trying to corner the world’s
supply of gold leaf, and possibly might also marry him, and if he knew about
the jar of poison in the workshop, he might have been tempted. Kiernan, I don’t
know, but from a remark Margot made and from the way he looked at Cherry this
afternoon, I suspect he would like to mix some Irish with her Chinese and
Indian and Dutch, and if he thought Bottweill had him stymied he might have
been tempted to. So much for hearsay.”

“Mr.
Hatch?”

“Nothing
on him from Margot, but, dealing with him during the tapestry job, I wouldn’t
have been surprised if he had wiped out the whole bunch on general principles.
His heart pumps acid instead of blood. He’s a creative artist, he told me so.
He practically told me that he was responsible for the success of that
enterprise but got no credit. He didn’t tell me that he regarded Bottweill as a
phony and a fourflusher, but he did. You may remember that I told you he had a
persecution complex and you told me to stop using other people’s jargon.”

“That’s
four of them. Miss Dickey?”

I
raised my brows. “I got her a license to marry, not to kill. If she was lying
when she said it worked, she’s almost as good a liar as she is a dancer. Maybe
she is. If it didn’t work she might have been tempted too.”

“And
Miss Quon?”

“She’s
half Oriental. I’m not up on Orientals, but I understand they slant their eyes
to keep you guessing. That’s what makes them inscrutable. If I had to be
poisoned by one of that bunch I would want it to be her. Except for what Margot
told me—”

The
doorbell rang. That was worse than the phone. If they had hit on Santa Claus’s
trail and it led to Nero Wolfe, Cramer was much more apt to come then to call.
Wolfe and I exchanged glances. Looking at my wristwatch and seeing 10:08, I
arose, went to the hall and flipped the switch for the stoop light, and took a
look through the one-way glass panel of the front door. I have good eyes, but
the figure was muffled in a heavy coat with a hood, so I stepped halfway to the
door to make sure. Then I returned to the office and told Wolfe, “Cherry Quon.
Alone.”

He
frowned. “I wanted—” He cut it off. “Very well. Bring her in.”

V

As
I have said, Cherry was highly decorative, and she went fine with the red leather
chair at the end of Wolfe’s desk. It would have held three of her. She had let
me take her coat in the hall and still had on the neat little woolen number she
had worn at the party. It wasn’t exactly yellow, but there was yellow in it. I
would have called it off-gold, and it and the red chair and the tea tint of her
smooth little carved face would have made a very nice kodachrome.

She
sat on the edge, her spine straight and her hands together in her lap. “I was
afraid to telephone,” she said, “because you might tell me not to come. So I
just came. Will you forgive me?”

Wolfe
grunted. No commitment. She smiled at him, a friendly smile, or so I thought.
After all, she was half Oriental.

“I
must get myself together.” she chirped. “I’m nervous because it’s so exciting
to be here.” She turned her head. “There’s the globe, and the bookshelves, and
the safe, and the couch, and of course Archie Goodwin. And you. You behind your
desk in your enormous chair! Oh, I know this place! I have read about you so
much—everything there is, I think. It’s exciting to be here, actually here in
this chair, and see you. Of course I saw you this afternoon, but that wasn’t
the same thing, you could have been anybody in that silly Santa Claus costume. I
wanted to pull your whiskers.”