And Be a Villain (12 page)

“Why?” Wolfe asked him.

“Because I knew this had to come sooner or later, and I’m glad it was you that got it instead of the cops. It’s been a cockeyed farce, all this digging to find out who had it in for this guy Orchard. Nobody wanted to poison Orchard. The poison was in the coffee and Orchard got it by mistake.”

That finished Traub. A groan came from him, his chin went down, and he sat shaking his head in despair.

Wolfe was frowning. “Are you trying to tell me that the police don’t know that the poisoned bottle held coffee?”

“Oh, sure, they know that.” Bill wanted to help now. “But they’ve kept it under their hats. You notice it hasn’t been in the papers. And none of us has spilled it, you can see why we wouldn’t. They know it was coffee all right, but they think it was meant for Orchard, and it wasn’t, it was meant for Miss Fraser.”

Bill leaned forward and was very earnest. “Damn it, don’t you see what we’re up against? If we tell it and it gets known, God help the program! We’d get hooted off the air. But as long as we don’t tell it, everybody thinks the poison was meant for Orchard, and that’s why I said it was a farce. Well, we didn’t tell, and as far as I’m concerned we never would.”

“How have you explained the coffee to the police?”

“We haven’t explained it. We didn’t know how the poison got in the bottle, did we? Well, we didn’t know how the coffee got there either. What else could we say?”

“Nothing, I suppose since you blackballed the truth. How have you explained the tape?”

“We haven’t explained it.”

“Why not?”

“We haven’t been asked to.”

“Nonsense. Certainly you have.”

“I haven’t.”

“Thanks, Bill.” It was Madeline Fraser, smiling at him. “But there’s no use trying to save any pieces.” She turned to Wolfe. “He’s trying to protect me from—don’t they call it tampering with evidence? You remember that after the doctor came Mr. Strong took the four bottles from the table and started off with them, just a foolish impulse he had, and Mr. Traub and I took them from him and put them back on the table.”

Wolfe nodded.

“Well, that was when I removed the tape from the bottle.”

“I see. Good heavens! It’s a wonder all of you didn’t collectively gather them up, and the glasses, and march to the nearest sink to wash up.” Wolfe went back to Bill. “You said Mr. Orchard got the poisoned coffee by mistake. How did that happen?”

“Traub gave it to him. Traub didn’t—”

Protests came at him from both directions, all of them joining in. Traub even left his chair to make it emphatic.

Bill got a little flushed, but he was stubborn and heedless. “Since we’re telling it,” he insisted, “we’d better tell it all.”

“You’re not sure it was Nat,” Miss Koppel said firmly.

“Certainly I’m sure! You know damn well it was! You know damn well we all saw—all except Lina—that Orchard had her bottle, and of course it was Traub that gave it to him, because Traub was the only one that didn’t know about the tape. Anyhow I saw him!—That’s the way it was, Mr. Wolfe. But when the cops started on us apparently we all had the same idea—I forget who started it—that it would be best not to remember who put the bottle in front of Orchard. So we didn’t. Now that you know about the tape, I do remember, and if the others don’t they ought to.”

“Quit trying to protect me, Bill,” Miss Fraser scolded him. “It was my idea, about not remembering. I started it.”

Again several of them spoke at once. Wolfe showed them a palm:

“Please!—Mr. Traub. Manifestly it doesn’t matter whether you give me a yes or a no, since you alone were not aware that one of the bottles had a distinction; but I ask you pro forma, did you place that bottle before Mr. Orchard?”

“I don’t know,” Traub said belligerently, “and I don’t care. Meadows doesn’t know either.”

“But you did help pass the glasses and bottles around?”

“I’ve told you I did. I thought it was fun.” He threw up both hands. “Fun!”

“There’s one thing,” Madeline Fraser put in, for Wolfe. “Mr. Meadows said that they all saw that Mr. Orchard had my bottle, except me. That’s only partly true. I didn’t notice it at first, but when I lifted the glass to drink and smelled the Hi-Spot I knew someone else had my glass. I went ahead and faked the drinking, and as I went on with the script I saw that the bottle with the tape on it was a little nearer to him than to me—as you know, he sat across from me. I had to decide quick what to do—not me with the Hi-Spot, but him with the coffee. I was afraid he would blurt out that it tasted like coffee, especially since he had taken two big gulps. I was feeling relieved that apparently he wasn’t going to, when he sprang up with that terrible cry … so what Mr. Meadows said was only partly true. I suppose he was protecting me some more, but I’m tired of being protected by everybody.”

“He isn’t listening, Lina,” Miss Koppel remarked.

It was a permissible conclusion, but not necessarily sound. Wolfe had leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, and even to me it might have seemed that he was settling for a snooze but for two details: first, dinner time was getting close, and second, the tip of his right forefinger was doing a little circle on the arm of his chair, around and around. The silence held for seconds, made a minute, and started on another one.

Someone said something.

Wolfe’s eyes came half open and he straightened up.

“I could,” he said, either to himself or them, “ask you to stay to dinner. Or to return after dinner. But if Miss Fraser is tired of being protected, I am tired of being humbugged. There are things I need to know, but I don’t intend to try to pry them out of you without a lever. If you are ready to let me have them, I’m ready to take them. You know what they are as well as I do. It now seems obvious that this was an attempt to kill Miss Fraser. What further evidence is there to support that assumption, and what evidence is there, if any, to contradict it? Who wants Miss Fraser to die, and why? Particularly, who of those who had access to the bottle of coffee, at any time from the moment it was bottled at her apartment to the moment when it was served at the broadcast? And so on. I won’t put all the questions; you know what I want. Will any of you give it to me—any of it?”

His gaze passed along the line. No one said a word.

“One or more of you,” he said, “might prefer not to speak in the presence of others. If so, do you want to come back later? This evening?”

“If I had anything to tell you,” Bill Meadows asserted, “I’d tell you now.”

“You sure would,” Traub agreed.

“I thought not,” Wolfe said grimly. “To get anything out of you another Miss Shepherd would be necessary. One other chance: if you prefer not even to make an appointment in the presence of the others, we are always here to answer the phone. But I would advise you not to delay.” He pushed his chair back and got erect. “That’s all I have for you now, and you have nothing for me.”

They didn’t like that much. They wanted to know what he was going to do. Especially and unanimously, they wanted to know what about their secret. Was the world going to hear of what a sip of Hi-Spot did to Madeline Fraser? On that Wolfe refused to commit himself. The stubbornest of the bunch was Traub. When the others finally left he stayed behind, refusing to give up the fight, even trying to follow Wolfe into the kitchen. I had to get rude to get rid of him.

When Wolfe emerged from the kitchen, instead of bearing left toward the dining room he returned to the office, although dinner was ready.

I followed. “What’s the idea? Not hungry?”

“Get Mr. Cramer.”

I went to the desk and obeyed.

Wolfe got on.

“How do you do, sir.” He was polite but far from servile. “Yes. No. No, indeed. If you will come to my office after dinner, say at nine o’clock, I’ll tell you why you haven’t got anywhere on that Orchard case. No, not only that, I think you’ll find it helpful. No, nine o’clock would be better.”

He hung up, scowled at me, and headed for the dining room. By the time he had seated himself, tucked his napkin in the V of his vest, and removed the lid from the onion soup, letting the beautiful strong steam sail out, his face had completely cleared and he was ready to purr.

I
NSPECTOR CRAMER, ADJUSTED to ease in the red leather chair, with beer on the little table at his elbow, manipulated his jaw so that the unlighted cigar made a cocky upward angle from the left side of his mouth.

“Yes,” he admitted. “You can have it all for a nickel. That’s where I am. Either I’m getting older or murderers are getting smarter.”

He was in fact getting fairly gray and his middle, though it would never get into Wolfe’s class, was beginning to make pretensions, but his eyes were as sharp as ever and his heavy broad shoulders showed no inclination to sink under the load.

“But,” he went on, sounding more truculent than he actually was because keeping the cigar where he wanted it made him talk through his teeth, “I’m not expecting any nickel from you. You don’t look as if you needed anything. You look as pleased as if someone had just given you a geranium.”

“I don’t like geraniums.”

“Then what’s all the happiness about? Have you got to the point where you’re ready to tell Archie to mail out the bills?”

He not only wasn’t truculent; he was positively mushy. Usually he called me Goodwin. He called me Archie only when he wanted to peddle the impression that he regarded himself as one of the family, which he wasn’t.

Wolfe shook his head. “No, I’m far short of that. But I am indeed pleased. I like the position I’m in. It seems likely that you and your trained men—up to a thousand of them, I assume, on a case as blazoned as this one—are about to work like the devil to help me earn a fee. Isn’t that enough to give me a smirk?”

“The hell you say.” Cramer wasn’t so sugary. “According to the papers your fee is contingent.”

“So it is.”

“On what you do. Not on what we do.”

“Of course,” Wolfe agreed. He leaned back and sighed comfortably. “You’re much too clearsighted not to appraise the situation, which is a little peculiar, as I do. Would you like me to describe it?”

“I’d love it. You’re a good describer.”

“Yes, I think I am. You have made no progress, and after ten days you are sunk in a morass, because there is a cardinal fact which you have not discovered. I have. I have discovered it by talking with the very persons who had been questioned by you and your men many times, and it was not given to me willingly. Only by intense and sustained effort did I dig it out. Then why should I pass it on to you? Why don’t I use it myself, and go on to triumph?”

Cramer put his beer glass down. “You’re telling me.”

“That was rhetoric. The trouble is that, while without this fact you can’t even get started, with it there is still a job to be done; that job will require further extended dealing with these same people, their histories and relationships; and I have gone as far as I can with them unless I hire an army. You already have an army. The job will probably need an enormous amount of the sort of work for which your men are passably equipped, some of them even adequately, so why shouldn’t they do it? Isn’t it the responsibility of the police to catch a murderer?”

Cramer was now wary and watchful. “From you,” he said, “that’s one hell of a question. More rhetoric?”

“Oh, no. That one deserves an answer. Yours, I feel sure, is yes, and the newspapers agree. So I submit a proposal: I’ll give you the fact, and you’ll proceed to catch the murderer. When that has been done, you and I will discuss whether the fact was essential to your success; whether you could possibly have got the truth and the evidence without it. If we agree that you couldn’t, you will so inform my clients, and I shall collect my fee. No document will be required; an oral statement will do; and of course only to my clients. I don’t care what you say to journalists or to your superior officers.”

Cramer grunted. He removed the cigar from his mouth, gazed at the mangled end suspiciously as if he expected to see a bug crawling, and put it back where it belonged. Then he squinted at Wolfe:

“Would you repeat that?”

Wolfe did so, as if he were reading it off, without changing a word.

Cramer grunted again. “You say if we agree. You mean if you agree with me, or if I agree with you?”

“Bah. It couldn’t be plainer.”

“Yeah. When you’re plainest you need looking at closest. What if I’ve already got this wonderful fact?”

“You didn’t have it two hours ago. If you have it now, I have nothing to give and shall get nothing. If when I divulge it you claim to have had it, you’ll tell me when and from whom you got it.” Wolfe stirred impatiently. “It is, of course, connected with facts in your possession—for instance, that the bottle contained sugared coffee instead of Hi-Spot.”

“Sure, they’ve told you that.”

“Or that your laboratory has found traces of a certain substance, in a band half an inch wide, encircling the neck of the bottle.”

“They haven’t told you
that
.” Cramer’s eyes got narrower. “There are only six or seven people who could have told you that, and they all get paid by the City of New York, and by God you can name him before we go any farther.”

“Pfui.” Wolfe was disgusted. “I have better use for my clients’ money than buying information from policemen. Why don’t you like my proposal? What’s wrong with it? Frankly, I hope to heaven you accept it, and immediately. If you don’t I’ll have to hire two dozen men and begin all over again on those people, and I’d rather eat baker’s bread—almost.”

“All right.” Cramer did not relax. “Hell, I’d do anything to save you from that. I’m on. Your proposal, as you have twice stated it, provided I get the fact, and all of it, here and now.”

“You do. Here it is, and Mr. Goodwin will have a typed copy for you. But first—a little detail—I owe it to one of my clients to request that one item of it be kept confidential, if it can possibly be managed.”

“I can’t keep murder evidence confidential.”

“I know you can’t. I said if it can possibly be managed.”

“I’ll see, but I’m not promising, and if I did promise I probably wouldn’t keep it. What’s the item? Give it to me first.”