Homicide Trinity Read online

  mizing the damage by dealing with your intramural

  treachery yourself, and letting the culprit escape his

  doom. If you went about it with sufficient resourceful-

  ness and ingenuity it is conceivable that the police could

  be cheated of their prey, but not that I could be."

  The Homicide Trinity 23

  "You are making a wholly unwarranted assumption,"

  Otis said.

  "I am not making an assumption. I am merely telling

  you my intention. The police hypothesis, and mine, is

  the obvious one: that a member of your firm killed Miss

  Aaron. Though the law does not insist that the testi-

  mony against him in court must include proof of his

  motive, inevitably it would. Will you assert that you

  won't try to prevent that? That you will not regard the

  reputation of your firm as your prime concern?"

  Otis opened his mouth and closed it again.

  Wolfe nodded. "I thought not. Then I advise you to

  help me. If you do, I'll have two objectives, to get the

  murderer and to see that your firm suffers as little as

  possible; if you don't, I'll have only one. As for the

  police, I doubt if they'll expect you to cooperate, since

  they are not nincompoops. They will realize that you

  have a deeper interest than the satisfaction of justice.

  Well, sir?"

  Otis's palms were cupping his knees and his head was

  tilted forward so he could study the back of his left

  hand. His eyes shifted to his right hand, and when that

  too had been properly studied he lifted his head and

  spoke. "You used the word 'hypothesis,' and that's all it

  is, that a member of my firm killed Miss Aaron. How did

  he know she was here? She said that nobody knew."

  "He could have followed her. Evidently she left your

  office soon after she talked with him. Archie?"

  "She probably walked," I said. "Between fifteen and

  twenty-five minutes, depending on her rate. At that

  time of day empty taxis are scarce, and crosstown they

  crawl. It would have been a cinch to tail her on foot."

  "How did he get in?" Otis demanded. "Did he sneak in

  unseen when you admitted her?"

  "No. You have read my statement. He saw her enter

  and knew this is Nero Wolfe's address. He went to a

  phone booth and rang this number and she answered.

  Here." I tapped my phone. "With me not here that

  would be automatic for a trained secretary. I had not

  pushed the button so it didn't ring in the plant rooms. It

  24 Rex Stout

  would ring in the kitchen, but Fritz wasn't there. She

  answered it, and he said he wanted to see her at once

  and would give her a satisfactory explanation, and

  she told him to come here. When he came she was at the

  front door and let him in. All he was expecting to do was

  stall for time, but when he learned that she was alone on

  this floor and she hadn't seen Mr. Wolfe he had another

  idea and acted on it. Two minutes would have been

  plenty for the whole operation, even less."

  "All that is mere conjecture."

  "Yeah, I wasn't present. But it fits. If you have one

  that fits better I do shorthand."

  "The police have covered everything here for finger-

  prints."

  "Sure. But it was below freezing outdoors and I

  suppose the members of your firm wear gloves."

  "You say that he learned she hadn't seen Wolfe, but

  she had talked with you."

  "She didn't tell him that she had told me. It wouldn't

  take many words for him to learn that she was alone

  and hadn't seen Mr. Wolfe. Either that, or she did tell

  him but he went ahead anyhow. The former is more

  probable and I like it better."

  He studied me a while, then he closed his eyes and his

  head tilted again. When his eyes opened he put them at

  Wolfe. "Mr. Wolfe. I reserve comment on your sugges-

  tion that I would be moved by personal considerations

  to balk justice. You ask me to help you. How?"

  "By giving me information. By answering questions.

  Your mind is trained in inquiry; you know what I will

  ask."

  "I'll know better when I hear you. Go ahead and we'll

  see."

  Wolfe looked at the wall clock. "It's nearly an hour

  past midnight, and this will be prolonged. It will be a

  tiresome wait for Miss Paige."

  "Of course," Otis agreed. He looked at me. "Will you

  ask her to step in?"

  I got up and crossed to the door to the front room. As

  I entered, words were at the tip of my tongue, but that

  The Homicide Trinity 25

  was as far as they got. She wasn't there. Through a

  wide-open window cold air was streaming in. As I went

  to it and stuck my head out I was prepared to see her

  lying there with one of my neckties around her throat,

  though I hadn't left one in the room. It was a relief to

  see that the areaway, eight feet down, was unoccupied.

  Chapter 3

  A roar came from the office. "Archie! What the

  devil are you up to?"

  I shut the window, glanced around to see if

  there were any signs of violence or if she had left a note,

  saw neither, and rejoined the conference.

  "She's gone," I said. "Leaving no message. When

  I—"

  "Why did you open a window?"

  "I didn't. I closed it. When I took her in there I locked

  the door to the hall so she couldn't wander around and

  hear things she wasn't supposed to, so when she got

  tired waiting the window was the only way out."

  "She climbed out a window?" Otis demanded.

  "Yes, sir. It's a mere conjecture, but it fits. The

  window was wide open, and she's not in the room, and

  she's not outside. I looked."

  "I can't believe it. Miss Paige is a level-headed and

  reliable—" He bit it off. "No. No! I no longer know who

  is reliable." He rested his elbow on the chair arm and

  propped his head with his hand. "May I have a glass of

  water?"

  Wolfe suggested brandy, but he said he wanted wa-

  ter, and I went to the kitchen and brought some. He got

  a little metal box from a pocket, took out two pills, and

  washed them down.

  "Will they help?" Wolfe asked. "The pills?"

  26 Rex Stout

  "Yes. The pills are reliable." He handed me the glass.

  "Then we may proceed?"

  "Yes."

  "Have you any notion why Miss Paige was impelled

  to leave by a window?"

  "No. It's extraordinary. Damn it, Wolfe, I have no

  notions of anything! Can't you see I'm lost?"

  "I can. Shall we put it off?"

  "No!"

  "Very well. My assumption that Miss Aaron was

  killed by a member of your firm, call him X, rests on a

  prior assumption, that when she spoke with Mr. Good-

  win she was candid and her facts were accurate. Would

  you challenge that assumption?"

  Otis looked at me. "Tell me something. I know what

  she said from your statement, and it sounded like her,

  but how was she—her voice an
d manner? Did she seem

  in any way . . . well, out of control? Unbalanced?"

  "No, sir," I told him. "She sat with her back straight

  and her feet together, and she met my eyes all the

  time."

  He nodded. "She would. She always did." To Wolfe:

  "At this time, here privately with you, I don't challenge

  your assumption."

  "Do you challenge the other one, that X killed her?"

  "I neither challenge it nor accept it."

  "Pfui. You're not an ostrich, Mr. Otis. Next: if Miss

  Aaron's facts were accurate, it must be supposed that X

  was in a position to give Mrs. Sorell information that

  would help her substantially in her action against her

  husband, your client. That is true?"

  "Of course." Otis was going to add something, de-

  cided not to, and then changed his mind again. "Again

  here privately with you, it's not merely her action at

  law. It's blackmail. Perhaps not technically, but that's

  what it amounts to. Her demands are exorbitant and

  preposterous. It's extortion."

  "And a member of your firm could give her weapons.

  Which one or ones?"

  Otis shook his head. "I won't answer that."

  The Homicide Trinity 27

  Wolfe's brows went up. "Sir? If you pretend to help

  at all that's the very least you can do. If you're rejecting

  my proposal say so and I'll get on without you. By noon

  tomorrow—today—the police will have that elemen-

  tary question answered. It may take me longer."

  "It certainly may," Otis said. "You haven't men-

  tioned a third assumption you're making. You are as-

  suming that Goodwin was candid and accurate in

  reporting what Miss Aaron said."

  "Bah." Wolfe was disgusted. "You are gibbering. If

  you hope to impeach Mr. Goodwin you are indeed for-

  lorn. You might as well go. If you regain your faculties

  later and wish to communicate with me I'll be here." He

  pushed his chair back.

  "No." Otis extended a hand. "Good God, man, I'm

  trapped! It's not my faculties! I have my faculties."

  "Then use them. Which member of your firm was in a

  position to betray its interests to Mrs. Sorell?"

  "They all were. Our client is vulnerable in certain

  respects, and the situation is extremely difficult, and

  we have frequently conferred together on it. I mean, of

  course, my three partners. It could have only been one

  of them, partly because none of our associates was in

  our confidence on this matter, but mainly because Miss

  Aaron told Goodwin it was a member of the firm. She

  wouldn't have used that phrase, 'member of the firm,'

  loosely. For her it had a specific and restricted applica-

  tion. She could only have meant Frank Edey, Miles

  Heydecker, or Gregory Jett. And that's incredible!"

  "Incredible literally or rhetorically? Do you disbe-

  lieve Miss Aaron—or, in desperation, Mr. Goodwin?

  Here with me privately?"

  "No."

  Wolfe turned a palm up. "Then let's get at it. It is

  equally incredible for all three of those men, or are

  there preferences?"

  During the next hour Otis balked at least a dozen

  times, and on some details—for instance, the respects

  in which Morton Sorell was vulnerable—he clammed

  28 Rex Stout

  up absolutely, but I had enough to fill nine pages of my

  notebook.

  Frank Edey, fifty-five, married with two sons and a

  daughter, wife living, got twenty-seven per cent of the

  firm's net income. (Otis's share was forty per cent.) He

  was a brilliant idea man but seldom went to court. He

  had drafted the marriage agreement which had been

  signed by Morton Sorell and Rita Ramsey when they

  got yoked four years ago. Personal financial condition,

  sound. Relations with wife and children, so-so. Interest

  in other women, definitely yes, but fairly discreet. In-

  terest in Mrs. Sorell casual so far as Otis knew.

  Miles Heydecker, forty-seven, married and wife liv-

  ing but no children, got twenty-two per cent. His fa-

  ther, now dead, had been one of the original members

  of the firm. His specialty was trial work and he handled

  the firm's most important cases in court. He had ap-

  peared for Mrs. Sorell at her husband's request two

  years ago when she had been sued by a man who had

  formerly been her agent. He was tight with money and

  had a nice personal pile of it. Relations with his wife,

  uncertain; on the surface, okay. Too interested in his

  work and his hobbies, chess and behind-the-scene poli-

  tics, to bother with women, including Mrs. Sorell.

  Gregory Jett, thirty-six, single, had been made a firm

  member and allotted eleven per cent of the income

  because of his spectacular success in two big corpora-

  tion cases. One of the corporations was controlled by

  Morton Sorell, and for the past year or so Jett had been

  a fairly frequent guest at the Sorell home on Fifth

  Avenue but had not been noticeably attentive to his

  hostess. His personal financial condition was one of the

  details Otis balked on, but he allowed it to be inferred

  that Jett was careless about the balance between in-

  come and outgo and was in the red in his account with

  the firm. Shortly after he had been made a member of

  the firm, about two years ago, he had dropped a fat

  chunk, Otis thought about forty thousand dollars, back-

  ing a Broadway show that flopped. A friend of his,

  female, had been in the cast. Whether he had had other

  The Homicide Trinity 29

  expenses connected with a female friend or friends Otis

  either didn't know or wasn't telling. He did say that he

  had gathered, mostly from remarks Bertha Aaron had

  made, that in recent months Jett had shown more at-

  tention to Ann Paige than their professional association

  required.

  But when Wolfe suggested the possibility that Ann

  Paige had left through a window because she sus-

  pected, or even knew, what was in the wind, and had

  decided to take a hand, Otis wouldn't buy it. He was

  having all he could do to swallow the news that one of

  his partners was a snake, and the idea that another

  of his associates might have been in on it was too much.

  He would tackle Ann Paige himself; she would no doubt

  have an acceptable explanation.

  On Mrs. Morton Sorell he didn't balk at all. Part of his

  information was known to everyone who read newspa-

  pers and magazines: that as Rita Ramsey she had daz-

  zled Broadway with her performance in Reach for the

  Moon when she was barely out of her teens, that she

  had followed with even greater triumphs in two other

  plays, that she had spumed Hollywood, that she had

  also spumed Morton Sorell for two years and then

  abandoned her career to marry him. But Otis added

  other information that had merely been hinted at in

  gossip columns: that in a year the union had gone sour,

  that it became appare
nt that Rita had married Sorell

  only to get her lovely paws on a bale of dough, and that

  she was by no means going to settle for the terms of the

  marriage agreement. She wanted much more, more

  than half, and she had carefully begun to collect evi-

  dence of certain activities of Scroll's, but he had got

  wise and consulted his attorneys, Otis, Edey, Hey-

  decker and Jett, and they had stymied her—or thought

  they had. Otis had been sure they had, until he had read

  the copy of my statement. Now he was sure of nothing.

  But he was still alive. When he got up to go, at two

  hours past midnight, he had bounced back some. He

  wasn't nearly as jittery as he had been when he asked

  for a glass of water to take the pills. He hadn't accepted

  30 Rex Stout

  Wolfe's offer in so many words, but he had agreed to

  take no steps until he had heard further from Wolfe,

  provided he heard within thirty-two hours, by ten

  o'clock Wednesday morning. The only action he would

  take during that period would be to instruct Ann Paige

  to tell no one that he had read my statement and to

  leam why she had skedaddled. He didn't think the

  police would tell him the contents of my statement, but

  if they did he would say that he would credit it only if

  it had corroboration. Of course he wanted to know

  what Wolfe was going to do, but Wolfe said he didn't

  know and probably wouldn't decide until after break-

  fast.