Murder by the Book Read online

  I spoke. "If you're working, knock off. Dinner in ten minutes."

  Wolfe's eyes opened.

  I asked, "Have we got a murder or not?"

  "Certainly we have." He was supercilious.

  "Oh. Good for us. Because she wouldn't go for a walk in the park in February?"

  "No." He humphed. "You should have a better reason."

  "Me? Thanks. Me have a reason?"

  "Yes. Archie. I have been training you for years to ob-serve. You are slacking. Not long ago Mr. Cramer showed us a list of names on a sheet of paper. The seventh name on that list was Baird Archer. The evening she was killed Miss Wellman had an appointment with a man named Baird Archer. Leonard Dykes who wrote that list of names was murdered. It would be silly not to hypothesize that Miss Well-man was also murdered."

  I turned on my heel, took the two paces to my swivel chair, turned it so I would face him, and sat. "Oh, that," I said carelessly. "I crossed that off as coincidence."

  "Pfui. It never struck you. You're slacking."

  "Okay. I am not electronized."

  "There is no such word."

  "There is now. I've used it." I was getting indignant. "I mean I am not lightning. It was six weeks ago that Cramer showed us that list of names, and I gave it the merest glance.

  I know you did too, but look who you are. What if it were the other way around? What if I had remembered that name from one short glimpse of that list six weeks ago, and you hadn't? I would be the owner of this house and the bank ac-count, and you would be working for me. Would you like that? Or do you prefer it as it is? Take your pick." He snorted. "Call Mr. Cramer." "Right." I swiveled to the phone and dialed.

  3

  IF YOU like Anglo-Saxon, I belched. If you fancy Latin, I eructed. No matter which, I had known that Wolfe and Inspector Cramer would have to put up with it that evening, because that is always a part of my reaction to sauerkraut. I don't glory in it or go for a record, but neither do I fight it back. I want to be liked just for myself.

  If either Cramer or Wolfe noticed it he gave no sign. I was where I belonged, during an evening session in the office and, with Wolfe behind his desk and Cramer in the red leather chair, I was to one side of the line of fire. It had started off sociably enough, with Wolfe offering refreshment and Cramer choosing bourbon and water, and Fritz bringing it, and Cramer giving it a go and saying it was good whisky, which was true.

  "You said on the phone," he told Wolfe, "you have some-thing I can use."

  Wolfe put his beer glass down and nodded. "Yes, sir. Un-less you no longer need it. I've seen nothing in the paper re-cently about the Leonard Dykes case-the body fished out of the river nearly two months ago. Have you got it in hand?"

  "No."

  "Any progress?"

  "Nothing-no."

  "Then I would like to consult you about something, be-cause it's a little ticklish." Wolfe leaned back and adjusted himself for comfort. "I have to make a choice. Seventeen days ago the body of a young woman named Joan Wellman was found on a secluded road in Van Cortlandt Park. She

  had been struck by an automobile. Her father, from Peoria, Illinois, is dissatisfied with the way the police are handling the matter and has hired me to investigate. I saw him just this evening; he left only two hours ago, and I phoned you immediately. I have reason to think that Miss Wellman's death was not an accident and that there was an important connection between the two homicides-hers and Dykes's."

  "That's interesting," Cramer conceded. "Something your client told you?"

  "Yes. So I'm faced with an alternative. I can make a pro-posal to your colleague in the Bronx. I can offer to tell him of this link connecting the two deaths, which will surely be of great help to him, on the condition that he collaborates with me, within reason, to satisfy my client-when the-case is solved-that I have earned my fee. Or I can make that proposal to you. Since the death of my client's daughter oc-curred in the Bronx and therefore is in your colleague's jurisdiction, perhaps I should go to him, but on the other hand Dykes was killed in Manhattan. What do you think?"

  "I think," Cramer growled, "I expected something like this and here it is. You want me to pay for information about a murder by promising to help you collect a fee, and you threaten to take it to the Bronx if I won't buy. If he won't buy either, then you withhold it? Huh?"

  "I have no information to withhold."

  "Goddam it, you said you-"

  "I said I have reason to think the two deaths are con-nected. It's based on information, of course, but I have none that the police do not have. The Police Department is a huge organization. If your staff and the Bronx staff get together on this it's likely that sooner or later they'll get where I am. I thought this would save you time and work. I can't be charged with withholding information when I know nothing that the police don't know-collectively."

  Cramer snorted. "Some day," he said darkly, and snorted again.

  "I offer this," Wolfe said, "because you might as well have it, and because the case looks complex enough to need a lot of work and my resources are limited. I make the offer con-ditional because if with my hint you solve it in a hurry with-out further consultation with me, I don't want my client to refuse to pay my bill. I am willing to put it like this: if, when it's finished, you think it likely that the Wellman case would

  not have been solved if Mr. Wellman had not come to me, you tell him so, not for publication."

  Wolfe levered himself forward to reach for his glass and drink.

  "I'll take it that way," Cramer stated. "Let's have it."

  Wolfe wiped his lips with his handkerchief. "Also Mr. Goodwin is to be permitted to look over the two files-on Dykes and on Miss Wellman."

  "I don't have the Wellman file."

  "When I explain the connection you'll get it."

  "It's against Department regulations."

  "Indeed? I beg your pardon. It would be mutually helpful to share information, and it would waste my time and my client's money to collect again the facts you already have, but of course a violation of regulations is unthinkable."

  Cramer glared at him. "You know," he said, "one of the many reasons you're hard to take is that when you're being sarcastic you don't sound sarcastic. That's just one of your offensive habits. Okay, I'll see you get facts. What's this connection?"

  "With the condition as stated."

  "Hell yes. I'd hate to see you starve,"

  Wolfe turned to me. "Archie. That letter?"

  I got it from under the paperweight and handed it to him.

  "This," he told Cramer, "is a copy of a letter Miss Wellman wrote to her parents on Thursday, February first. She was killed the evening of the next day, Friday." He held it out, and Cramer got up to take it. "Read it all if you like, but the relevant part is the marked paragraph."

  Cramer ran over it. He took his time, and then sat frowning at it. Looking up at Wolfe, he kept the frown. "I've seen that name somewhere. Baird Archer. Isn't that it?"

  Wolfe nodded. "Shall we see how long it takes you to dig it up?"

  "No. Where?"

  "On the list of names written by Leonard Dykes which you came here to show me six weeks ago. It was seventh on the list, I think-possibly eighth. Not sixth."

  "When did you first see this letter?"

  "This evening. My client gave it to me."

  "I'll be damned." Cramer gawked at him and at the relevant paragraph. He folded the letter with slow deliberate fingers and put it in his pocket.

  "The original," Wolfe told him, "is in the possession of your colleague in the Bronx. That's my copy."

  "Yeah. I'll borrow it." Cramer reached for his glass, took a swallow, and focused his eyes on a corner of Wolfe's arc-wood desk. He took another swallow and went back to studying the desk. So alternating, two more swallows with intervals for desk study emptied the glass. He put it down on the little table.

  "What else have you got?'

  "Nothing."

  "What have you done?"


  "Nothing. Since I saw that letter, I have dined."

  "I bet you have." Cramer came up out of his chair, still springy in spite of his years. "I'll be going. Damn it, I was going home."

  He headed for the hall. I followed.

  When I returned to the office after letting the law out, Wolfe was placidly opening a bottle of beer.

  "What do you Say," I suggested, "I get on the phone and call in Saul and Fred and Orrie, and you lay it out, and we set a deadline, sundown tomorrow would do, for solving both cases? Just to make a monkey out of Cramer?"

  Wolfe scowled at me. "Confound it, don't bounce like that. This will be no skirmish. Mr. Cramer's men have been looking, more or less, for a Baird Archer for seven weeks. The Bronx men have been looking for one for seventeen days. Now they'll get serious about it. What if there isn't one?"

  "We know there was enough of one to date Joan Wellman for February second."

  "We do not. We know only that she wrote her parents that a stranger on the telephone had said he was Baird Archer, and that a manuscript of a novel bearing that name had been submitted to her employers, read by her, and returned in the mail to a Baird Archer at General Delivery." Wolfe shook his head. "No, this will be more than a skirmish. Before we're through Mr. Wellman may indeed be a pauper unless his rancor wears thin. Let the police do their part."

  Knowing him as I did, I didn't care for that. I sat down. "Sitzlust again?" I demanded offensively.

  "No. I said let the police do their part. This will take work. We'll start with the assumption, not risky I think, that Miss Wellman's letter to her parents was straightforward. If so, it had something for us besides the name of Baird Archer. He

  asked her if anyone else had read his manuscript and she said no. It could have been an innocent question, but in the light of what happened to her it raises a point. Was she killed because she had read the manuscript? As a conjecture that is not inane. How many public stenographers are there in the city? Say in Manhattan?"

  "I don't know. Five hundred. Five thousand." "Not thousands surely. People who make presentable copies of documents or manuscripts from drafts."

  "That's typing services, not public stenographers." "Very well." Wolfe drank beer and leaned back. "I thought of suggesting this to Mr. Cramer, but if we're to spend some of Mr. Wellman's money this is as good a way to start as any. I would like to know what that novel was about. Baird Archer may have typed the manuscript himself, but he may not. We'll put Saul and Fred and Orrie on a round of the typing services. Have them here at eight in the morning and I'll give them instructions. There is a possibility not only of learning about the novel, but also of getting a description of Baird Archer." ^

  "Right." This was more like it. "It wouldn't hurt me to stretch my legs too."

  "You will. There's a chance, though this may be slimmer, that the novel had previously been submitted to another publisher. It's worth trying. Start with the better firms, of the class of Scholl and Hanna. But not tomorrow. Tomorrow get all you can from the police files on both Miss Wellman and Dykes, covering everything. For instance, did Dykes have a typewriter in his apartment?"

  I lifted a brow. "Do you think Dykes was Baird Archer?" "I don't know. He wrote that list of names, obviously inventions. He certainly wasn't Baird Archer on February second, since he had been dead five weeks. You will also go to Scholl and Hanna. In spite of what Miss Wellman wrote her parents, it's possible that someone else read that manuscript, or at least glanced through it. Or Miss Wellman may have said something about it to one of her associates. Or, less likely, Baird Archer may have delivered the manuscript in person and be remembered-of course that was last fall, months ago." Wolfe heaved a sigh and reached for his glass. "I suggest that you extend the deadline beyond sundown tomorrow." "What the hell," I said generously, "I'll give you till Friday." It was just as well I didn't say what Friday.

  4

  WHAT with getting Saul and Fred and Orrie sicked onto the typing services, and dealing with the morning mail, and going to the bank to deposit Wellman's check, it was well after ten o'clock Tuesday when I got to Cramer's office on Twentieth Street. He wasn't there but had left instructions with Sergeant Purley Stebbins. I am one of the few people Purley knows that he has not completely made up his mind about. Since I'm a private detective, the sooner I die, or at least get lost outside the city limits, the better-of course that's basic, but he can't quite get rid of the suspicion that I might have made a good cop if I had been caught in time.

  I not only got a look at the files, I even got to talk with two of the help who had worked on Dykes and one from the Bronx who had worked on Joan Wellman. By the time I left, a little before three, I had a lot in my notebook and more in my head.

  For here I'll trim it down. Leonard Dykes, forty-one, found banging up against a pile in the East River on New Year's Day, had for eight years been a clerk, not a member of the bar, in the office of the law firm of Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin and Briggs. Up to a year ago the firm's name had been O'Malley, Corrigan and Phelps, but O'Malley had been disbarred and there had been a reorganization. Dykes had been unmarried, sober, trustworthy, and competent. He had played cards every Tuesday evening with friends, for small stakes. He had twelve thousand dollars in government bonds and a savings account, and thirty shares of United States Steel, which had been inherited by a married sister who lived in California, his only close relative. No one discoverable had hated or feared him or wished him ill. One sentence in one report said, "No women at all." There was a photograph of him after he had been hauled out of the river, not attractive, and one of him alive that had been taken from his apartment. To be objective, I'll put it that he had been less unattractive before drowning than after. He had had popeyes, and his chin had started backing up about a quarter of an inch below his mouth.

  The other thousand or so facts in the file on Dykes had as little discernible bearing on his murder as those I have given for samples.

  On Joan Wellman, the Bronx had not been as much in love with the hit-and-run theory as Wellman suspected, but it was just as well that her father did not have access to the police file. They didn't care much for Joan's version of her Friday date in her letter home, especially since they could find no one among her office associates to whom she had mentioned it. I gave them a low mark on that, knowing how full offices are Of petty jealousies and being willing to give our client's daughter credit for enough sense to keep her mouth shut about her private affairs. Aside from the search for the car that had run over her, the Bronx had mostly concentrated on her boy friends. If you want to give the average dick a job he really likes, sit him down with a man who has been seen fairly recently in the company of a pretty girl who has just died a sudden and violent death. Think of the questions he can ask. Look at the ground he can cover, no matter who the man is, with no risk of a comeback that will cost him anything.

  So the Bronx had done the boy friends up brown, especially an advertising copywriter named Atchison, apparently because his name began with "A" and had a "c" and an "h" in it, and it had dawned upon some eagle eye that Archer did too, and what more do you want?" Luckily for Atchison, he had taken a four-thirty train Friday afternoon, February second, to spend the weekend with friends at Westport. Two dicks had worked like dogs trying to pry that alibi loose, with no success.

  As far as I could tell from the file, it looked as if Joan had had not only beauty and intelligence but also good old-fashioned virtue. The three boy friends who had been flushed were unanimous on that They had admired and respected her. One of them had been after her for a year to marry him and had had hopes. If any of them had had reason to prefer her dead, the Bronx had failed to dig up a hint of it.

  I went back home and typed it all up for Wolfe, and got reports on the phone from Saul and Fred and Orrie.

  I spent most of Wednesday at the office of Scholl and Hanna on Forty-fifth Street. What I got out of it was a respectful appreciation of the book-publishing business as a means of corralling jack. Th
e office took up two whole floors, with nothing spared anywhere in the way of rugs and furniMURDER BY THE BOOK 17

  tare. Scholl was in Florida, I was told, and Hanna never got in until ten-thirty. I was escorted down a hall to the room of a junior executive who needed a haircut and was chewing gum, and when I showed him the note I had from our client he said they would be glad to cooperate with the bereaved father of their late employee, and I could ask questions of any of the staff I cared to see, starting with him if I wanted to. But would I please tell him, had something new turned up? City detectives, three of them, had been there again yesterday, for hours, and now here was Nero Wolfe's Archie Goodwin. What was stirring? I told him something harmless and began on him.

  The fact that Wolfe never leaves the office on business, unless there is an incentive more urgent than the prospect of a fee, such as saving his own skin, has a lot to do with the way I work. When I'm out on a case and get something helpful I like to recognize it before I deliver it to Wolfe, but as I left Scholl and Hanna's I couldn't see a crumb. It was hard to believe that I had spent nearly five hours in the office where Joan Wellman had worked, questioning everybody from the office boy to Hanna himself, without getting a single useful item, but that was how it looked. The one thing that tied in at all was an entry in the columns of a big book I had been shown. I give it with the column headings:

  number: 16237

  date: Oct. 2

  name and address: Baird Archer, General Delivery,

  Clinton Station, N. Y. City title: Put Not Your Trust detail: Novel 246 pp. postage enclosed: 630 read by: Joan Wellman disposition: Rejected ret'd. mail Oct. 27

  That was my haul. The manuscript had been received by mail. No one had ever heard of Baird Archer, except for that entry. No one else had looked at the manuscript or remembered anything about it. If Joan had made any comment on it to anyone they had forgotten it. She had not mentioned the phone call from Baird Archer or her appointment with him. I could go on with negatives for a page.