Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (84 page)

“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 as 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 worth while 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 had 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 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.”

Saul
halted because of an interruption. Purley Stebbins, seated next to him, got up
and stepped over to Margot Dickey and stood there behind her chair. To me it
seemed unnecessary, since I was sitting not much more than arm’s length from
her and might have been trusted to grab her if she tried to start anything, but
Purley is never very considerate of other people’s feelings, especially mine.

Saul
resumed, “Naturally it was Miss Dickey I was interested in, since they had
moved in on a signal from Kiernan. But they had her, so that was okay. They
took us to a room back of the parcel room and started in on me, and I followed
your instructions. I told them I would answer no questions, would say nothing
whatever, except in the presence of Nero Wolfe, because I was acting under your
orders. When they saw I meant it they took us out to two police cars and
brought us here. Anything else?”

“No,” Wolfe
told him. “Satisfactory.” He turned to Cramer. “I assume Mr. Panzer is correct
in concluding that Mr. Kiernan gave your men a signal. So Mr. Kiernan had gone
to you with the message?”

“Yes.”
Cramer had taken a cigar from his pocket and was squeezing it in his hand. He
does that sometimes when he would like to squeeze Wolfe’s throat instead. “So
had three of the others—Mrs. Jerome, her son, and Hatch.”

“But
Miss Dickey hadn’t?”

“No.
Neither had Miss Quon.”

“Miss
Quon was probably reluctant, understandably. She told me last evening that the
police’s ideas of Orientals are very primitive. As for Miss Dickey, I may say
that I am not surprised. For a reason that does not concern you, I am even a
little gratified. I have told you that she told Mr. Goodwin that Bottweill had
torn up the marriage license and put the pieces in his wastebasket, and they
weren’t there when Mr. Goodwin looked for them, and the wastebasket hadn’t been
emptied since early Thursday evening. It was difficult to conceive a reason for
anyone to fish around in the wastebasket to remove those pieces, so presumably
Miss Dickey lied; and if she lied about the license, the rest of what she told
Mr. Goodwin was under suspicion.”

Wolfe
upturned a palm. “Why would she tell him that Bottweill was going to marry her
if it wasn’t true? Surely a stupid thing to do. since he would inevitably learn
the truth. But it wasn’t so stupid if she knew that Bottweill would soon die;
indeed it was far from stupid if she had already put the poison in the bottle;
it would purge her of motive, or at least help. It was a fair surmise that at
their meeting in his office Thursday evening Bottweill had told her, not that
he would marry her, but that he had decided to marry Miss Quon, and she decided
to kill him and proceeded to do so. And it must be admitted that she would
probably never have been exposed but for the complications injected by Santa
Claus and my resulting intervention. Have you any comment, Miss Dickey?”

Cramer
left his chair, commanding her, “Don’t answer! I’m running this now,” but she
spoke.

“Cherry
took those pieces from the wastebasket! She did it! She killed him!” She
started up, but Purley had her arm and Cramer told her, moving for her, “She
didn’t go there to meet a blackmailer, and you did. Look in her bag, Purley. I’ll
watch her.”

Cherry
Quon was back in red in the red leather chair. The others had gone, and she and
Wolfe and I were alone. They hadn’t put cuffs on Margot Dickey, but Purley had
kept hold of her arm as they crossed the threshold, with Cramer right behind.
Saul Panzer, no longer in custody, had gone along by request. Mrs. Jerome and
Leo had been the first to leave. Kiernan had asked Cherry if he could take her
home, but Wolfe had said no, he wanted to speak with her privately, and Kiernan
and Hatch had left together, which showed a fine Christmas spirit, since Hatch
had made no exceptions when he said he despised all of them.

Cherry
was on the edge of the chair, spine straight, hands together in her lap. “You
didn’t do it the way I said,” she chirped, without steel.

“No,” Wolfe
agreed, “but I did it.” He was curt. “You ignored one complication, the
possibility that you had killed Bottweill yourself. I didn’t, I assure you. I
couldn’t very well send you one of the: notes from Santa Claus, under the
circumstances; but if those notes had flushed no prey, if none of them had gone
to the rendezvous without first notifying the police, I would have assumed that
you were guilty and would have proceeded to expose you. How, I don’t know; I
let that wait on the event; and now that Miss Dickey has taken the bait and
betrayed herself it doesn’t matter.”

Her eyes
had widened. “You really thought I might have killed Kurt?”

“Certainly.
A woman capable of trying to blackmail me to manufacture evidence of murder
would be capable of anything. And, speaking of evidence, while there can be no
certainty about a jury’s decision when a personable young woman is on trial for
murder, now that Miss Dickey is manifestly guilty you may be sure that Mr.
Cramer will dig up all he can get, and there should be enough. That brings me
to the point I wanted to speak about. In the quest for evidence you will all be
questioned, exhaustively and repeatedly. It will—”

“We
wouldn’t,” Cherry put in, “if you had done it the way I said. That would have
been proof.”

“I
preferred my way.” Wolfe, having a point to make, was controlling himself. “It
will be an ordeal for you. They will question you at length about your talk
with Bottweill yesterday morning at breakfast, wanting to know all that he said
about his meeting with Miss Lackey in his office Thursday evening, and under
the pressure of inquisition you might inadvertently let something slip
regarding what he told you about Santa Claus. If you do they will certainly
follow it up. I strongly advise you to avoid making such a slip. Even if they
believe you, the identity of Santa Claus is no longer important, since they
have the murderer, and if they come to me with such a tale I’ll have no great
difficulty dealing with it.”