Death on Deadline (21 page)

“All right—what about the secretary?”

“Where is it that she’s gone?”

“An island off the South Carolina coast. It’s a high-class resort area.”

“How does one get there?”

I went to the bookshelves and pulled down the big atlas, flipping it open. I found the right map and turned to him.

“It looks like a flight to Atlanta, then a change of planes to Savannah. From there, a rental car to the island, maybe an hour’s drive.”

He shuddered. For him, a ten-minute trip in a car, even with me behind the wheel, is cause for trauma. The thought of someone voluntarily riding in two airplanes and then driving an automobile all on the same day is unthinkable.

“All right,” he said after sucking in a bushel of air. “Get Saul. See if he can make the trip down and back tomorrow. I’ll want to talk to him before he leaves.”

“And what if he can’t just pick up and take off tomorrow?”

“Then have him make it the next day.” Wolfe heaved a sigh as though he were talking to a third-grader.

I was both happy and sore. Happy because something was getting done, sore because I would have enjoyed a little jaunt to Georgia and South Carolina myself, even for a day. But I knew Wolfe was irked at the way I’d been pushing him, and this was one of his ways of letting me know it.

I started to dial Saul’s number and then stopped abruptly. That could wait until after lunch, I said to myself. That decision made, I went back to rustling the papers on my desk.

A
S IT TURNED OUT, SAUL
was free, and at three-fifteen he settled into the red leather chair with coffee while Wolfe attacked his second post-lunch beer. On the phone, I had told him only that his presence was requested. I figured Wolfe, being a genius, was capable of spelling out the situation.

“A woman named Ann Barwell was Harriet Haverhill’s secretary for nearly twenty years,” Wolfe began. “She apparently became depressed in the days following her employer’s death and requested time off to collect herself. She now is staying at the home of a relative in …” He turned to me, his face asking the question.

“Hilton Head Island,” I supplied.

“South Carolina,” Saul added. “Top-drawer place, from what I hear.”

“I hope you can see it for yourself. And as soon as your schedule permits, I’d like you to visit Miss Barwell there. I need one fact: did Harriet Haverhill reveal to her, either verbally or in writing, that she intended to name her nephew publisher of the
Gazette?
Any further details would of course be a bonus for us.”

Saul nodded. “I can leave first thing tomorrow.”

“Satisfactory. Archie will give you expense money and the woman’s address down there. And you’ll need directions.”

“Not necessary,” Saul said. “Just get me a street number. I assume you want me to be back tomorrow night?”

“That’s not imperative,” Wolfe replied, grimacing, “although you should report by telephone.” I knew the reason for his negative reaction. He didn’t want to insist that Saul do all that traveling in a single day—it was bad enough that he would have to ride in four airplanes and a rental car over a two-day stretch. To Wolfe, four plane rides is more than anyone should be required to take in a lifetime. Saul, who knows Wolfe almost as well as I do, said he would play the return trip by ear, but that he’d definitely check in tomorrow.

And in case you’re wondering why Wolfe didn’t just pick up the phone and call Ann Barwell rather than spending hundreds of dollars to send an operative to see her, you should know this: he has telephones on his desk, in his bedroom, and in the kitchen, so he clearly accepts them as a necessary tool. But he doesn’t much like them, and he uses them in his work only when face-to-face contact is impractical or impossible. He would no more ask questions relative to a case on the telephone than I would chase down a suspect without my Marley in its shoulder holster. “Facial expressions, twitches, hand movements—all those things you like to refer to as body language—are integral to the interrogation process,” he once told me. “Remove the opportunity to witness those reactions and you become a sailor without compass, stars, or sextant.”

With our meeting ended, I opened the safe and peeled off a grand in used fifties and twenties, handing them to Saul and saying I’d get Ann Barwell’s address for him. “Have a wonderful trip,” I said at the door, “and be careful how you drive when you get there. You know what they say about those Southern cops.”

He smirked, gave me a thumbs-up, and walked out, taking the steps two at a time. I closed the door and watched through the one-way panel as he strode down the sidewalk, thinking how I’d be jealous of his little jaunt south if I didn’t know that Lily and I would be spending a week in the Virgin Islands in less than a month.

After Wolfe ascended to the plant rooms, I called Lon, who wasn’t wild about letting me have Ann Barwell’s address in South Carolina. I assured him that she wouldn’t be harassed or abused, and promised that if she reported any ill-treatment I would hand him all my winnings from the next five poker games. That drew a horselaugh, given my overall record at our Thursday-night sessions. He relented, though, and after putting me on hold for a few seconds came back with the information, which I relayed to Saul. “I’m on the first flight to Atlanta tomorrow,” he told me. “You should be hearing from me sometime in the afternoon.” I wished him well and repeated my warning about Southern police.

The rest of the day wasn’t worth mentioning, other than an argument Wolfe and I had at dinner over whether college athletes should be paid. I said they should, that it would end the sham, while Wolfe held out for tougher policing of regulations. I scored myself the winner, because I don’t believe it’s possible to ever return big-time college sports to a truly amateur level.

On Thursday morning, I was on edge, mainly because nothing was happening. After he came down from the plant rooms at eleven, Wolfe seemed totally unconcerned about anything as mundane as murder and clients, choosing to divide his time among the London
Times
crossword puzzle,
Webster’s Unabridged,
and a fresh book,
Revolution in Science,
by J. Bernard Cohen. I’m sure I was getting on his nerves, and I know he was getting on mine, so at eleven-forty I got up noisily from my desk, stretched, and announced that I was going for a walk, which got no reaction from Wolfe.

The morning was tough to improve on. Yesterday’s rain had cleansed the air, proving that in the spring, even Manhattan can smell terrific. I walked east all the way to Lexington, then turned north. By the time I’d hoofed it to Forty-second, my tension had pretty well dissolved, although I kept turning the case over. Had Wolfe overplayed it this time? Outwardly, I was more or less agreeing with his murder theory, but in conversations with myself, the idea was hard to swallow.

As far as my gut feelings about the so-called suspects went, I wasn’t too wild about any of them as people, with the possible exception of Bishop. Lon liked and respected him, and I had to score that fairly high on the plus side, even though I had a little trouble warming to him. But maybe that was because of my feeling that he didn’t completely trust me. Dean was a pompous, self-important windbag, but beyond that, he seemed relatively harmless. As for the Haverhills, Donna was easy to look at, but a little driven for my taste. David and Scott both needed a trip back to the factory for more parts. Neither one was fully equipped, in brainpower or in manners, but that hardly qualified either of them as a trigger-puller. And there was Carolyn: tough, cooler than iceberg lettuce, and as unaffected as a TV game-show host. But a killer? My built-in hunch-meter gave her long odds.

That left MacLaren. If I were to pick someone I’d like to hang a murder on, he would lap the field. He seemed like a longshot himself, though; he had nothing to gain. The
Gazette
was as good as his—at least if he scooped up nephew Scott’s shares. And what about Scott? Had he really been offered the publisher’s throne? If so, would we ever know it? Maybe Saul was learning the answer to that from Ann Barwell right now.

After I’d played the whole mess through a couple more times, I woke up and found myself all the way up at Bloomingdale’s with nothing to show for the last hour-plus except perspiration and a bag filled with improbable suspects. I thought about grabbing a glass of milk and a sandwich at a little place I like on East Fifty-eighth before I remembered that oyster pie was on Fritz’s lunch menu. My watch read twelve-forty-four, which meant that if I wanted those oysters, I’d have to flag a cab. I stepped to the curb and started waving my hands like a trader on the commodities exchange.

The oyster pie was easily worth the fare, even if you throw in the aggravation of having to listen to the cabbie gripe the whole trip about how messengers on bicycles are the greatest menace on the New York streets. He turned around to talk to me so often that I was ready with my own nomination as the number-one menace on the streets.

Back in the office after lunch, Wolfe settled in with his book while I picked at some paperwork but mainly kept looking at my watch. When the call came, I almost knocked my milk glass over reaching for the phone. “Saul,” I said, and Wolfe picked up his instrument while I stayed on.

“How was your trip?” he asked.

“Uneventful. The flights were actually on time, the drive was a snap. I just got finished talking to Ann Barwell. She wasn’t exactly tickled to see me, but she let me have a few minutes.”

“And?”

“And I got what you wanted. She says Harriet did talk about giving Scott the brass ring.”

“Indeed? Details, please.”

I like to think I’m at the head of the class when it comes to repeating conversations verbatim, but Saul is no slouch himself, and he gave a word-for-word account while I got it down in shorthand. Wolfe interrupted once or twice, but otherwise just listened.

“Well, that’s it,” Saul said after he unloaded. “I wish there was more.”

“Satisfactory,” Wolfe told him for the second time in a week. “Stay the night if you wish.”

Saul answered that he might, but that he’d be back in New York no later than noon tomorrow.

“Okay,” I said, swiveling to face him after we’d hung up. “What’s next, world famous and reclusive detective?”

“Chapter four,” he replied, gesturing to his book, which he picked up and hid behind. And there he stayed, pausing only to ring for beer and consume two bottles’ worth. At four, he got up without a word and walked out, taking the elevator to the plant rooms.

Part of me has always been convinced that Wolfe keeps thinking about cases when he’s up playing with the orchids, but when I asked him about it once, he insisted his four hours on the roof each day represents a total divorce from work. After what happened that afternoon, though, I’m more convinced than ever that part of me has it right.

I was in the office reading the
Gazette
when he came back down at six, got behind his desk, and rang for beer. I mentioned something about a page-one article on a possible new round of nuclear-disarmament talks, and he said he’d read it later. I went back to the paper and in a few minutes commented on another story I thought would interest him, but got no answer. I figured he just wanted to be left alone to read his book, but when I looked up, I realized I was wrong. He was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and his hands laced over the locality of his belly button. His lips were pushing out and in, out and in, and when he’s doing that, he might as well be on Saturn. It could last five minutes or fifty-five, but when he came out of it, things would start to happen. I settled back and waited, timing him just because I always have.

For the record, this one took a fraction over sixteen minutes, which makes it one of his shorter séances. The lips stopped moving abruptly and he opened his eyes wide. “All of them!” he snapped.

“I beg your pardon?”

“All of them. I want all of them here—tonight.”

“Negative,” I said. “Start again.”

He glared. “Confound it, you were the one who craved action.”

“True, but this won’t get it. You know very well that these people, most of them anyway, resent you and all the publicity you’ve brought to Harriet’s death.”

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. I’m all for getting them here, you know that, but I vote for tomorrow night. If we try to bulldoze them into coming on such a short notice, they’ll automatically refuse. Matter of pride. We need a little more time. Let me tell you the approach I’d use.”

Wolfe started to put on a pout, but to his credit, he listened as I outlined a strategy. After I finished, he closed his eyes again. “All right,” he said after several minutes, “but start calling them tonight.”

“And you’ll want Cramer, of course?”

“I’ll call him tomorrow,” he said, picking up his book in one hand and his glass of beer in the other. As I turned to begin making plans, I realized that I didn’t have the slightest idea who Wolfe was going to finger. And I was damned if I was going to ask him.

A
S IT TURNED OUT, MY
approach worked. Wolfe and I agreed that the best way to pull everybody in was through Carl Bishop. He was still at work at six-thirty Thursday night and picked up his own phone.

“Mr. Bishop, this is Archie Goodwin. Nero Wolfe has asked for a meeting here tomorrow night, at which he plans to divulge information about Mrs. Haverhill’s death. He hopes that you will come and bring Mr. Dean, David, Carolyn, and Scott Haverhill, and Donna Palmer as well.”

Bishop’s answer was a snort. “Look, Goodwin, we’ve gone along with Wolfe so far, but this is stretching things. If what he has to say is so important, why can’t he come out with it right now?”

“Hold the line,” I said. I cupped the receiver and swiveled. “He wants to know why you can’t unload now.”

Wolfe compressed his lips. “I’ll talk to him,” he grunted.

“Mr. Bishop, good evening. What I have to say is of utmost importance, and I want to relate it to all of you together.”

“Enough is enough,” Bishop rasped. “I see no reason to come or to ask any of the others to. At the risk of sounding pompous, we’re all busy people.”