The Twelve Crimes of Christmas (9 page)

Wolfe
had told me enough, before the company came, to give me a general idea of the
program, so the sight of Cramer, just Cramer, was a letdown. But as I went down
the hall other figures appeared, none of them strangers, and that looked
better. In fact it looked fine. I swung the door wide and in they came—Cramer,
then Saul Panzer, then Margot Dickey, then Alfred Kiernan, and, bringing up the
rear, Sergeant Purley Stebbins. By the time I had the door closed and bolted
they had their coats off, including Cramer, and it was also fine to see that he
expected to stay a while. Ordinarily, once in, he marches down the hall and
into the office without ceremony, but that time he waved the others ahead,
including me, and he and Stebbins came last, herding us in. Crossing the sill,
I stepped aside for the pleasure of seeing his face when his eyes lit on those
already there and the empty chairs waiting. Undoubtedly he had expected to find
Wolfe alone, reading a book. He came in two paces, glared around, fastened the
glare on Wolfe, and barked, “What’s all this?”

“I
was expecting you,” Wolfe said politely. “Miss Quon, if you don’t mind moving,
Mr. Cramer likes that chair. Good evening, Miss Dickey. Mr. Kiernan, Mr.
Stebbins. If you will all be seated—”

“Panzer!”
Cramer barked. Saul, who had started for a chair in the rear, stopped and
turned.

“I’m
running this,” Cramer declared. “Panzer, you’re under arrest and you’ll stay
with Stebbins and keep your mouth shut. I don’t want—”

“No,”
Wolfe said sharply. “If he’s under arrest take him out of here. You are not
running this, not in my house. If you have warrants for anyone present, or have
taken them by lawful police power, take them and leave these premises. Would
you bulldoze me, Mr. Cramer? You should know better.”

That
was the point, Cramer did know him. There was the stage, all set. There were
Mrs. Jerome and Leo and Cherry and Emil Hatch, and the empty chairs, and above
all, there was the fact that he had been expected. He wouldn’t have taken Wolfe’s
word for that; he wouldn’t have taken Wolfe’s word for anything; but whenever
he appeared on our stoop
not
expected I always left
the chain-bolt on until he had stated his business and I had reported to Wolfe.
And if he had been expected there was no telling what Wolfe had ready to
spring. So Cramer gave up the bark and merely growled, “I want to talk with
you.”

“Certainly.”
Wolfe indicated the red leather chair, which Cherry had vacated. “Be seated.”

“Not
here. Alone.”

Wolfe
shook his head. “It would be a waste of time. This way is better and quicker.
You know quite well, sir, it was a mistake to barge in here and roar at me that
you are running my house. Either go, with whomever you can lawfully take, or
sit down while I tell you who killed Kurt Bottweill.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “Your
chair.”

Cramer’s
round red face had been redder than normal from the outside cold, and now was
redder still. He glanced around, compressed his lips until he didn’t have any,
and went to the red leather chair and sat.

VIII

Wolfe
sent his eyes around as I circled to my desk. Saul had got to a chair in the
rear after all, but Stebbins had too and was at his elbow. Margot had passed in
front of the Jeromes and Emil Hatch to get to the chair at the end nearest me,
and Cherry and Al Kiernan were at the other end, a little back of the others.
Hatch had finished his Korbeloff and put the glass on the floor, but Cherry and
the Jeromes were hanging on to their tall ones.

Wolfe’s
eyes came to rest on Cramer and he spoke. “I must confess that I stretched it a
little. I can’t tell you, at the moment, who killed Bottweill; I have only a
supposition; but soon I can, and will. First some facts for you. I assume you
know that for the past two months Mr. Goodwin has been seeing something of Miss
Dickey. He says she dances well.”

“Yeah.”
Cramer’s voice came over sandpaper of the roughest grit. “You can save that for
later. I want to know if you sent Panzer to meet—”

Wolfe
cut him off. “You will. I’m headed for that. But you may prefer this firsthand.
Archie, if you please. What Miss Dickey asked you to do last Monday evening,
and what happened.”

I
cleared my throat. “We were dancing at the Flamingo Club. She said Bottweill
had been telling her for a year that he would marry her next week, but next
week never came, and she was going to have a showdown with him. She asked me to
get a blank marriage license and fill it out for her and me and give it to her,
and she would show it to Bottweill and tell him now or never. I got the blank
on Tuesday, and filled it in, and Wednesday I gave it to her.”

I
stopped. Wolfe prompted me. “And yesterday afternoon?”

“She
told me that the license trick had worked perfectly. That was about a minute
before Bottweill entered the studio. I said in my statement to the District
Attorney that she told me Bottweill was going to marry her, but I didn’t
mention the license. It was immaterial.”

“Did
she tell you what happened to the license?”

So
we were emptying the bag. I nodded. “She said Bottweill had torn it up and put
the pieces in the wastebasket by the desk in his office. The night before.
Thursday evening.”

“And
what did you do when you went to the office after Bottweill had died?”

“I
dumped the wastebasket and put the stuff back in it, piece by piece. No part of
the license was there.”

“You
made sure of that?”

“Yes.”

Wolfe
left me and asked Cramer, “Any questions?”

“No.
He lied in his statement. I’ll attend to that later. What I want—”

Margot
Dickey blurted, “Then Cherry took it!” She craned her neck to see across the
others. “You took it, you slut!”

“I
did not.” The steel was in Cherry’s chirp again. Her eyes didn’t leave Wolfe,
and she told him, “I’m not going to wait any longer—”

“Miss
Quon!” he snapped. “I’m doing this.” He returned to Cramer. “Now another fact.
Yesterday I had a luncheon appointment with Mr. Bottweill at Rusterman’s
restaurant. He had once dined at my table and wished to reciprocate. Shortly
before I left to keep the appointment he phoned to ask me to do him a favor. He
said he was extremely busy and might be a few minutes late, and he needed a
pair of white cotton gloves, medium size, for a man, and would I stop at some
shop on the way and get them. It struck me as a peculiar request, but he was a
peculiar man. Since Mr. Goodwin had chores to do, and I will not ride in
taxicabs if there is any alternative, I had engaged a car at Baxter’s, and the chauffeur
recommended a shop on Eighth Avenue between Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Streets.
We stopped there and I bought the gloves.”

Cramer’s
eyes were such narrow slits that none of the blue-gray showed. He wasn’t buying
any part of it, which was unjustified, since some of it was true.

Wolfe
went on. “At the lunch table I gave the gloves to Mr. Bottweill, and he
explained, somewhat vaguely, what he wanted them for. I gathered that he had
taken pity on some vagabond he had seen on a park bench, and had hired him to
serve refreshments at his office party, costumed as Santa Claus, and had
decided that the only way to make his hands presentable was to have him wear
gloves. You shake your head, Mr. Cramer?”

“You’re
damn right I do. You would have reported that. No reason on earth not to. Go
ahead and finish.”

“I’ll
finish this first. I didn’t report it because I thought you would find the
murderer without it. It was practically certain that the vagabond had merely
skedaddled out of fright, since he couldn’t possibly have known of the jar of
poison in the workshop, not to mention other considerations. And as you know, I
have a strong aversion to involvement in matters where I have no concern or
interest. You can of course check this—with the staff at Rusterman’s, my
presence there with Mr. Bottweill, and with the chauffeur, my conferring with
him about the gloves and our stopping at the shop to buy them.”

“You’re
reporting it now.”

“I
am indeed.” Wolfe was unruffled. “Because I understood from Mr. Goodwin that
you were extending and intensifying your search for the man who was there as
Santa Claus, and with your army and your resources it probably wouldn’t take
you long when the holiday had ended to learn where the gloves were bought and
get a description of the man who bought them. My physique is not unique, but it
is—uncommon, and the only question was how long it would take you to get to me,
and then I would be under inquisition. Obviously I had to report the episode to
you and suffer your rebuke for not reporting it earlier, but I wanted to make
it as tolerable as possible. I had one big advantage: I knew that the man who
acted Santa Claus was almost certainly not the murderer, and I decided to use
it. I needed first to have a talk with one of those people, and I did so, with
Miss Quon, who came here last evening.”

“Why
Miss Quon?”

Wolfe
turned a hand over. “When I have finished you can decide whether such details
are important. With her I discussed her associates at that place and their
relationships, and I became satisfied that Bottweill had in fact decided to
marry her. That was all. You can also decide later whether it is worthwhile to
ask her to corroborate that, and I have no doubt she will.”

He
was looking at Cherry, of course, for any sign of danger. She started to blurt
it out once, and might again. But, meeting his gaze, she didn’t move a muscle.

Wolfe
returned to Cramer. “This morning I acted. Mr. Goodwin was absent, at the
District Attorney’s office, so I called in Mr. Panzer. After spending an hour
with me here he went to do some errands. The first one was to learn whether
Bottweill’s wastebasket had been emptied since his conversation with Miss
Dickey in his office Thursday evening. As you know, Mr. Panzer is highly
competent. Through Miss Quon he got the name and address of the cleaning woman,
found her and talked with her, and was told that the wastebasket had been
emptied at about six o’clock Thursday afternoon and not since then. Meanwhile I—”

“Cherry
took it—the pieces,” Margot said.

Wolfe
ignored her. “Meanwhile I was phoning everyone concerned—Mrs. Jerome and her
son, Miss Dickey, Miss Quon, Mr. Hatch, and Mr. Kiernan—and inviting them to
come here for a conference at six-fifteen. I told them that Mr. Goodwin had
information which he intended to give the police, which was not true, and that I
thought it best to discuss it first with them.”

“I
told you so,” Hatch muttered.

Wolfe
ignored him too. “Mr. Panzer’s second errand, or series of errands, was the
delivery of some messages. He had written them in longhand, at my dictation
here this morning, on plain sheets of paper, and had addressed plain envelopes.
They were identical and ran as follows:

“When I was there yesterday putting on my
costume I saw you through a crack in the door and I saw what you did. Do you
want me to tell the cops? Be at Grand Central information booth upper level at
6:30 today. I’ll come up to you and say ‘Saint Nick.’ ”

“By
God,” Cramer said, “you admit it.”

Wolfe
nodded. “I proclaim it. The messages were signed ‘Santa Claus.’ Mr. Panzer
accompanied the messenger who took them to the persons I have named, and made
sure they were delivered. They were not so much shots at random as they may
appear. If one of those people had killed Bottweill it was extremely likely
that the poison had been put in the bottle while the vagabond was donning the
Santa Claus costume; Miss Quon had told me, as no doubt she has told you, that
Bottweill invariably took a drink of Pernod when he returned from lunch; and,
since the appearance of Santa Claus at the party had been a surprise to all of
them, and none of them knew who he was, it was highly probable that the
murderer would believe he had been observed and would be irresistibly impelled
to meet the writer of the message. So it was a reasonable assumption that one
of the shots would reach its target. The question was, which one?”

Wolfe
stopped to pour beer. He did pour it, but I suspected that what he really
stopped for was to offer an opening for comment or protest. No one had any, not
even Cramer. They all just sat and gazed at him. I was thinking that he had
neatly skipped one detail: that the message from Santa Claus had not gone to
Cherry Quon. She knew too much about him.

Wolfe
put the bottle down and turned to go on to Cramer. “There was the possibility,
of course, that more than one of them would go to you with the message, but
even if you decided, because it had been sent to more than one, that it was
some hoax, you would want to know who perpetrated it, and you would send one of
them to the rendezvous under surveillance. Any one or more, excepting the
murderer, might go to you, or none might; and surely only the murderer would go
to the rendezvous without first consulting you. So if one of those six people
was guilty, and if it had been possible for Santa Claus to observe him,
disclosure seemed next to certain. Saul, you may now report. What happened? You
were in the vicinity of the information booth shortly before six-thirty?”

Necks
were twisted for a view of Saul Panzer. He nodded. “Yes, sir. At six-twenty.
Within three minutes I had recognized three Homicide men scattered around in
different spots. I don’t know if they recognized me or not. At six twenty-eight
I saw Alfred Kiernan walk up near the booth and stand there, about ten feet
away from it. I was just about to go and speak to him when I saw Margot Dickey coming
up from the Forty-second Street side. She approached to within thirty feet of
the booth and stood looking around. Following your instructions in case more
than one of them appeared and Miss Dickey was one of them, I went to her and
said, ‘Saint Nick.’ She said, ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ I said, ‘Excuse
me, I’ll be right back,’ and went over to Alfred Kiernan and said to him, ‘Saint
Nick.’ As soon as I said that he raised a hand to his ear, and then here they
came, the three I had recognized and two more, and then Inspector Cramer and
Sergeant Stebbins. I was afraid Miss Dickey would run, and she did start to,
but they had seen me speak to her, and two of them stopped her and had her.”