Curtains For Three (16 page)

I nodded. “That’s good whiskey. Is it a secret who you recognized?”

“No. I’m going to tell Nero Wolfe.”

“You decided to tell me.” I flipped a hand. “Suit yourself. Whoever you tell,

what’s the good?”

“Why - then he can’t do anything to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because he wouldn’t dare. Nero Wolfe will tell him that I’ve told about him, so that if anything happened to me he would know it was him, and he’d know who he is - I mean, Nero Wolfe would know - and so would you.”

“We would if we had his name and address.” I was studying her. “He must be quite a specimen, to scare you that bad. And speaking of names, what’s yours?”

She made a little noise that could have been meant for a laugh. “Do you like Marjorie?”

“Not bad. What are you using now?”

She hesitated, frowning.

“For Pete’s sake,” I protested, “you’re not in a vacuum, and I’m a detective.

They took the names down at the door.”

“Cynthia Brown,” she said.

“That’s Mrs. Orwin you came with?”

“Yes.”

“She’s the current customer'The lead you picked up in Florida?”

“Yes. But that’s - ” She gestured. “That’s finished. I’m through.”

“I know. There’s just one thing you haven’t told me, though. Who was it you recognized?”

She turned her head for a glance at the door and then turned it still farther to look behind her.

“Can anyone hear us?” she asked.

“Nope. That other door goes to the front room - today, the cloakroom. Anyhow,

this room’s sound - proofed.”

She glanced at the hall door again, returned to me, and lowered her voice: “This has to be done the way I say.”

“Sure; why not?”

“I wasn’t being honest with you.”

“I wouldn’t expect it from a crook. Start over.”

“I mean …” She used the teeth on the lip again. “I mean I’m not just scared about myself. I’m scared, all right, but I don’t just want Nero Wolfe for what I said. I want him to get him for murder, but he has to keep me out of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with any cops - not now I don’t, especially. If he won’t do it that way - Do you think he will?”

I was feeling a faint tingle at the base of my spine. I only get that on special occasions, but this was unquestionably something special. I gave her a hard look and didn’t let the tingle get into my voice: “He might, for you, if you pay him.

What kind of evidence have you got'Any?”

“I saw him.”

“You mean today?”

“I mean I saw him then.” She had her hands clasped tight. “I told you - I had a friend. I stopped in at her apartment that afternoon. I was just leaving - Doris was inside, in the bathroom - and as I got near the entrance door I heard a key turning in the lock, from the outside. I stopped, and the door came open and a man came in. When he saw me he just stood and stared. I had never met Doris’s bank account, and I knew she didn’t want me to. And since he had a key I supposed of course it was him, making an unexpected call; so I mumbled something about Doris’ being in the bathroom and went past him, through the door and on out.”

She paused. Her clasped hands loosened and then tightened again.

“I’m burning my bridges,” she said, “but I can deny all this if I have to. I went and kept a cocktail date, and then phoned Doris’s number to ask if our dinner date was still on, considering the visit of the bank account. There was no answer, so I went back to her apartment and rang the bell, and there was no answer to that, either. It was a self - service - elevator place, no doorman or hallman, so there was no one to ask anything.

“Her maid found her body the next morning. The papers said she had been killed the day before. That man killed her. There wasn’t a word about him - no one had seen him enter or leave. And I didn’t open my mouth! I was a rotten coward!”

“And today, all of a sudden, there he is, looking at orchids?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure he knows you recognized him?”

“Yes. He looked straight at me, and his eyes -“

She was stopped by the house phone buzzing. Stepping to my desk, I picked it up and asked it, “Well?”

Nero Wolfe’s voice, peevish, came: “Archie!”

“Yes, sir.”

“What the devil are you doing'Come back up here!”

“Pretty soon. I’m talking with a prospective client -“

“This is no time for clients! Come at once!”

The connection went. He had slammed it down. I hung up and went back to the prospective client: “Mr. Wolfe wants me upstairs. Do you want to wait here?”

“Yes.”

“If Mrs. Orwin asks about you?”

“I didn’t feel well and went home.”

“Okay. It shouldn’t be long - the invitations said two thirty to five. If you want a drink, help yourself… What name does this murderer use when he goes to look at orchids?”

She looked blank.

I got impatient: “What’s his name'This bird you recognized.”

“I don’t know.”

“Describe him.”

She thought it over a little, gazing at me, and then shook her head. “Not now. I want to see what Nero Wolfe says first.”

She must have seen something in my eyes, or thought she did, for suddenly she came up out of her chair and moved to me and put a hand on my arm. “That’s all I mean,” she said earnestly. “It’s not you - I know you’re all right. I might as well tell you - you’d never want any part of me anyhow - this is the first time in years, I don’t know how long, that I’ve talked to a man straight - you know,

just human. I - “She stopped for a word, and a little color showed in her cheeks. “I’ve enjoyed it very much.”

“Good. Me, too. Call me Archie. I’ve got to go, but describe him.”

But she hadn’t enjoyed it that much. “Not until Nero Wolfe says he’ll do it,”

she said firmly.

I had to leave it at that, knowing as I did that in three more minutes Wolfe might have a fit. Out in the hall I had the notion of passing the word to Saul and Fritz to give departing guests a good look, but rejected it because (a) they weren’t there, both of them presumably being busy in the cloakroom, (b) he might have departed already, and (c) I had by no means swallowed a single word of Cynthia’s story, let alone the whole works.

Up in the plant-rooms there were plenty left. When I came into Wolfe’s range he darted me a glance of cold fury, and I turned on the grin. Anyway, it was a quarter to five, and if they took the hint on the invitation it wouldn’t last much longer.

They didn’t take the hint on the dot, but it didn’t bother me because my mind was occupied. I was now really interested in them - or at least one of them, if he had actually been there and hadn’t gone home.

First, there was a chore to get done. I found the three Cynthia had been with, a female and two males.

“Mrs. Orwin?” I asked politely.

She nodded at me and said, “Yes?” Not quite tall enough, but plenty plump enough, with a round, full face and narrow little eyes that might have been better if they had been wide open. She struck me as a lead worth following.

“I’m Archie Goodwin,” I said. “I work here.”

I would have gone on if I had known how, but I needed a lead myself.

Luckily one of the males horned in. “My sister?” he inquired anxiously.

So it was a brother-and-sister act. As far as looks went he wasn’t a bad brother at all. Older than me maybe, but not much. He was tall and straight, with a strong mouth and jaw and keen gray eyes. “My sister?” he repeated.

“I guess so. You are -?”

“Colonel Brown. Percy Brown.”

“Yeah.” I switched back to Mrs. Orwin: “Miss Brown asked me to tell you that she went home. I gave her a little drink and it seemed to help, but she decided to leave. She asked me to apologize for her.”

“She’s perfectly healthy,” the colonel asserted. He sounded a little hurt.

“Is she all right?” Mrs. Orwin asked.

“For her,” the other male put in, “you should have made it three drinks. Or just hand her the bottle.”

His tone was mean and his face was mean, and anyhow that was no way to talk in front of the help in a strange house, meaning me. He was a bit younger than Brown, but he already looked enough like Mrs. Orwin, especially the eyes, to make it more than a guess that they were mother and son.

That point was settled when she commanded him, “Be quiet, Gene!” She turned to the colonel: “Perhaps you should go and see about her?”

He shook his head, with a fond but manly smile at her. “It’s not necessary,

Mimi. Really.”

“She’s all right,” I assured them, and pushed off, thinking there were a lot of names in this world that could stand a reshuffle. Calling that overweight,

narrow - eyed, pearl-and-mink proprietor Mimi was a paradox.

I moved around among the guests, being gracious. Fully aware that I was not equipped with a Geiger counter that would flash a signal if and when I established contact with a strangler, the fact remained that I had been known to have hunches. It would be something for my scrapbook if I picked the killer of Doris Hatten.

Cynthia Brown hadn’t given me the Hatten, only the Doris, but with the context that was enough. At the time it had happened, some five months ago, early in October, the papers had given it a big play, of course. She had been strangled with her own scarf, of white silk with the Declaration of Independence printed on it, in her cozy firth-floor apartment in the West Seventies, and the scarf had been left around her neck, knotted at the back.

The cops had never got within a mile of charging anyone, and Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Homicide had told me that they had never even found out who was paying the rent.

I kept on the go through the plant-rooms, leaving all switches open for a hunch.

Some of them were plainly preposterous, but with everyone else I made an opportunity to exchange some words, full face and close up. That took time, and it was no help to my current and chronic campaign for a raise in wages, since it was the women, not the men, that Wolfe wanted off his neck. I stuck at it,

anyhow. It was true that if Cynthia was on the level, we would soon have specifications, but I had had that tingle at the bottom of my spine and I was stubborn.

As I say, it took time, and meanwhile five o’clock came and went and the crowd thinned out. Going on five-thirty, the remaining groups seemed to get the idea all at once that time was up and made for the entrance to the stairs.

I was in the moderate-room when it happened, and the first thing I knew I was alone there, except for a guy at the north bench studying a row of dowianas. He didn’t interest me, as I had already canvassed him and crossed him off as the wrong type for a strangler; but as I glanced his way he suddenly bent forward to pick up a pot with a flowering plant, and as he did so I felt my back stiffening. The stiffening was a reflex, but I knew what had caused it; the way his fingers closed around the pot, especially the thumbs. No matter how careful you are of other people’s property, you don’t pick up a five-inch pot as if you were going to squeeze the life out of it.

I made my way around to him. When I got there he was holding the pot so that the flowers were only a few inches from his eyes.

“Nice flower,” I said brightly.

He nodded.

He leaned to put the pot back, still choking it. I swiveled my head. The only people in sight, beyond the glass partition between us and the cool - room, were Nero Wolfe and a small group of guests, among whom were the Orwin trio and Bill McNab, the garden editor of the Gazette. As I turned my head back to my man he straightened up, pivoted on his heel, and marched off without a word.

I followed him out to the landing and down the three nights of stairs. Along the main hall I was courteous enough not to step on his heel, but a lengthened stride would have reached it. The hall was next to empty. A woman, ready for the street in a caracul coat, was standing there, and Saul Panzer was posted near the front door with nothing to do.

I followed my man on into the front room, now the cloakroom, where Fritz Brenner was helping a guest on with his coat. Of course, the racks were practically bare, and with one glance my man saw his property and went to get it. I stepped forward to help, but he ignored me without even bothering to shake his head. I was beginning to feel hurt.

When he emerged into the hall I was beside him, and as he moved to the front door I spoke: “Excuse me, but we’re checking guests out as well as in. Your name, please?”

“Ridiculous,” he said curtly, and reached for the knob, pulled the door open,

and crossed the sill.

Saul, knowing I must have had a reason for wanting to check him out, was at my elbow, and we stood watching his back as he descended the seven steps of the stoop.

“Tail?” Saul muttered to me.

I shook my head and was parting my lips to mutter something back, when a sound came from behind us that made us both whirl around - a screech from a woman, not loud but full of feeling. As we whirled, Fritz and the guest he had been serving came out of the front room, and all four of us saw the woman in the caracul coat come running out of the office into the hall. She kept coming, gasping something, and the guest, making a noise like an alarmed male, moved to meet her. I moved faster, needing about eight jumps to the office door and two inside. There I stopped.

Of course, I knew the thing on the floor was Cynthia, but only because I had left her in there in those clothes. With the face blue and contorted, the tongue halfway out and the eyes popping, it could have been almost anybody. I knelt down and slipped my hand inside her dress front, kept it there ten seconds, and felt nothing.

Saul’s voice came from behind: “I’m here.”

I got up and went to the phone on my desk and started dialing, telling Saul “No one leaves. We’ll keep what we’ve got. Have the door open for Doc Vollmer.”

After only two whirs the nurse answered and put Vollmer on, and I snapped it at him: “Doc, Archie Goodwin. Come on the run. Strangled woman… Yeah, strangled.”

I pushed the phone back, reached for the house phone, and buzzed the plant -

rooms, and after a wait had Wolfe’s irritated bark in my ear; “Yes?”