Over My Dead Body Read online

  Wolfe glared. “I am not in a mood for buffoonery.”

  “Neither am I. I ruined my coat falling off of a fence on purpose. At two minutes after six Miss Lovchen and Miss Tormic were upstairs giving fencing lessons and various other people were doing other things. Miss Tormic was supposed to be giving a lesson to Percy Ludlow. I was downstairs in the office with Mr and Mrs Miltan. We heard yells and ran up two flights into a commotion of assorted people. In the fencing room at the end we found Percy Ludlow on the floor with an épée running through him from front to back and eight inches beyond. Miltan stayed there on guard and his wife went to the office to phone for the police and I took charge of the front door. The first two cops on the scene were radio patrol, the next three were precinct bums, and the homicide squad arrived around six twenty-four.”

  “Well?”

  “That’s all.”

  “All?” Wolfe was as nearly speechless as I had ever seen him. “You—” He sputtered. “You were right there, inside there, and you deliberately ran away—”

  “Wait a minute. Not deliberately. A cop relieved me at the door and another one took me with him to the office where the inmates had gathered. I happened to be standing near the rack where I had hung my coat and I noticed that the pocket was bulging open on account of something in it. When I had hung the coat up the pocket had been empty. Maybe someone had merely mistaken it for the waste-basket. On the other hand, there was a murderer in the room, and Miss Tormic had presumably been fencing with the victim, and I was there as the representative of Miss Tormic. The attitude that might be adopted by the homicide squad in face of those facts would certainly be distasteful, in case there was a general search and the object in my pocket wasn’t waste paper. So I descended to the basement and left by the back door and fell over a fence and took a taxi.”

  “And what was the object?”

  “I don’t know.” I removed my coat and spread it on his desk. “I thought it would be more fun to look at it with you. To the tips of my fingers it felt like a piece of canvas.” I was widening the mouth of the pocket and peeping in. “Yep, it’s canvas.” I inserted fingers and thumb and eased it out. It was rolled tight. As I unrolled it, it became a heavy canvas gauntlet, with reinforced palm, and a little metal dingus slid off on to the desk.

  “Let’s don’t touch that,” I suggested, and bent over to inspect it. At its middle it was about a quarter of an inch thick. At one end it had three claws, or fingers, and at the other it tapered to a single point, sharp as an ice-pick. I straightened up with a nod.

  “Uh-huh, I thought so.”

  “What the devil is it?”

  “My God, look at it! It’s the col de mart!”

  “Confound you, Archie—”

  “Okay, but let it alone.” I told him about the disappearance of the curio from Miltan’s cabinet and the history of it. He listened with his lip compressed.

  When I was through he demanded, “And you think this was used—”

  “I know damn well it was. The end of the épée that killed Ludlow was blunt, and Miltan said it couldn’t possibly have been thrust through him that way. So this thing was removed afterwards. It looks as if it would slide right off. I doubt if I need to point out those stains on the glove where this was wrapped up in it.”

  “Thank you. I can see.”

  “And you can also see that it is a woman’s glove. It looks big on account of the way it’s made, but it’s not big enough—”

  “I can see that, too.”

  “And can you see that if I had stayed there and that contraption had been found in my pocket, or if I had tried to hide it—?”

  I stopped because his lips were working and he had shut his eyes. It didn’t take long, maybe thirty seconds, then he reached for the button and pushed it. When Fritz appeared he was in a cap and apron similar to those worn by the man in the court who hadn’t seen my wife’s cat.

  “Turn out the light in the hall and do not answer the door,” Wolfe told him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If the phone rings, answer it in the kitchen. Archie is not here, and you don’t know where he is or when he will return. I am engaged and cannot be disturbed. Draw the heavy curtains in the front and the dining-room, but first—is there a full loaf of the Italian round?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bring it, please, with a small knife and a roll of waxed paper.”

  When Fritz left I followed him, to hang my coat in the hall and shoot the bolt on the front door. As I returned I flipped the light switch, and in a moment Fritz returned with the required articles on a tray. Wolfe told him to stand by and then attacked the loaf of bread with the knife, which, of course, was like a razor, as Fritz’s knives always were. He described a circle four inches in diameter in the centre of the loaf, and then dug in, excavating a neat round hole clear to the bottom crust, but leaving the crust intact. Next he picked up the col de mort with the tips of his fingers, placed it on the palm of the glove, rolled the glove up tight, wrapped it in some waxed paper, and stuffed it into the hole in the loaf. He filled the extra space with wads of paper, and spread a sheet of paper smoothly over the top. With his swift and dexterous fingers, the entire operation consumed not over three minutes.

  He told Fritz, “Make a chocolate icing, at once, and cover this well. Put it in the refrigerator. Dispose of the bread scraps.”

  “Yes, sir.” Fritz picked up the tray and departed.

  I said sarcastically, “Bravo! It’s wonderful how your mind works. If that had been me I would just have gone up and chucked it in my bureau drawer. Of course, it’s more picturesque to disguise it as a cake, but it’s an awful waste of chocolate, and who do you think is going to come looking for it? Do you think I’d have brought it here if anyone had any suspicion that I had it?”

  “I don’t know. But someone knows that you had it, and that you brought it away—the person who put it there. Who had an opportunity to do that?”

  “Everybody. They were all there in the office. While I was on guard at the street door.”

  “When you removed the coat from the rack and started off with it, were you looking at people’s faces?”

  “No, I was being nonchalant. There were two cops there and I had to get out of the room with it.”

  “You say Miss Tormic was supposed to be fencing with Mr Ludlow. Why supposed? Isn’t it known whether she was or not?”

  “It may be known, but not by me. I was down in the office with Mr and Mrs Miltan when the porter found the body and started a squawk. After that I had no chance to talk with Miss Tormic or anybody else.”

  The telephone rang. I plugged in the kitchen extension and we heard faintly Fritz’s voice taking the call.

  Wolfe leaned back and sighed. “Very well,” he muttered. “Tell me about it. From the moment you got there until you left. No omissions.”

  I did so.

  Chapter Five

  At a quarter to ten we finally left the dining-table, returned to the office, switched on the lights, and sat down to wait. Various developments had occurred. The doorbell had rung three times, unheeded, and the phone somewhat oftener. At the finish of the salad I had left Wolfe alone with the green tomato pie and gone to the darkened front room for a peek around the window curtain. Two men in plain clothes were on the sidewalk, standing there with their hands in their pockets, looking chilly and frustrated. I gave them a Bronx cheer and went to the kitchen and used the phone. Johnny Keems and Orrie Cather were out, and I left a message for them to call the office. I got Fred Durkin and Saul Panzer and told them I was just making contact and they were to await possible orders, and informed Saul about the envelope he would receive in the morning mail. I took it for granted that the number which had been jotted on his memo pad by Fritz, who had been answering the phone as instructed, was the number of the Miltan studio, but I verified it anyway by looking in the book, and told Fritz to call it and convey the message that Mr Wolfe and Mr Goodwin were now both at home and
at leisure. Then I went back to the dining-room and joined Wolfe at the coffee.

  Our wait, after we returned to the office, was a short one. We hadn’t been there more than five minutes when the doorbell called me to the front. As I opened the door I was expecting a brace of sergeants at the most, and was really surprised when I saw a single familiar figure confronting me, with a felt hat cocked over one of the half-buried, irate eyes, and an unlit cigar tilted up from a corner of the wide, determined mouth.

  “Honoured,” I declared, standing aside to give him passage. “Deeply honoured.”

  “Go to hell,” Inspector Cramer growled, entering. I shut the door and took his hat and coat and disposed of them, and followed him into the office.

  Wolfe offered a hand, greeted him nicely, and said this was a pleasure he hadn’t had for some months.

  “Yeah. Quite a pleasure.” Cramer sat down, took the cigar from his mouth, scowled at me, replaced the cigar at a better angle, and spoke.

  “Where have you been, Goodwin?” He was practically snarling. Before I could reply he went on: “Forget it. If I already knew you’d tell me, and if I didn’t you wouldn’t.” He removed the cigar again and leaned at me. “You’re the most damn contrary pest within my knowledge. Twenty times I’ve had you under my feet when I was busy and had no use for you. Now I go to look at a murder and I am told that an important witness has calmly took his hat and coat and departed, and, by God, it turns out to be you! The one time you’re supposed to be there, you’re not! I’ve told you before that I’d throw you in the jug for a nickel. This time I’d do it for nothing!”

  I inquired, “Did you find Arthur?”

  “We found—none of your damn business what we found. What did you run away for?”

  “Because I wanted to.” I requisitioned a friendly grin for him. “Look, Inspector, you know perfectly well you’re just being rhetorical. I ran away to keep from losing my job. Mr Wolfe had sent me there on an errand with instructions to report back when the errand was finished. It was finished, and, as you know, Mr Wolfe doesn’t take an excuse. By the way, I left my car there, parked on 48th—”

  “Nuts. Why did you beat it?”

  “I’m telling you. I would have been kept there till midnight, and for nobody’s benefit, because there were a dozen people there who knew more than I did about the murder, and at least one of them a lot more.” I let my voice rise a little in indignation. “I helped out all I could, didn’t I? Didn’t I guard the front door until the radio and precinct guys—”

  I stopped short.

  “Uh-huh.” Cramer nodded grimly. “Just occurred to you, huh? Brain slowed up on you? I thought of that a long while ago, all by myself. What was it, Goodwin? What was it that happened between the time the precinct men arrived and the time you took your overcoat from the rack?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Yes, it did. I want to know what it was.”

  “Nothing, except that when a cop relieved me at the door there was nothing I could do to help, and you know damn well what Mr Wolfe is like if I let anything interfere with his business.”

  He glared at me. Then he slid back to a more comfortable position in the big leather chair, looked at Wolfe, and slowly shook his head. “I’m tired out,” he said resentfully. “I was up most of last night on the Arlen case, and I was going to bed at eight o’clock, and now here’s this, and I find you’re in on it even before it happens, and you can guess how pure and simple that makes it seem like.”

  “I can assure you,” Wolfe said sympathetically, “that Mr Goodwin’s errand was neither to prevent nor to provoke murder. We really didn’t know there was to be one.”

  “Oh, I know all about his errand. Driscoll’s diamonds. To hell with that. Let’s be reasonable. There was Goodwin, alone right at the front door for six or seven minutes after he came downstairs with Mrs Miltan, before the radio men got there. Then they left him alone again until the precinct men arrived. He knew from the beginning what a murder investigation means for those on the premises when the squad gets on the job. If he wanted to get away and get to you to report, all he had to do was walk right out and get in his car and go. Instead of that, he waits until the precinct men come and one of them is stationed at the door, then he goes to the office and stands there and looks around, and all of a sudden he grabs his hat and coat, sneaks down to the basement, pulls a gun and scares the daylights out of a coloured porter who—”

  “He had no daylights left in him.”

  “Shut up. Tells the porter to stay where he is, takes a ladder to the rear court and climbs the fence and talks about his wife’s cat and pretends to fall off, beats it through a kitchen and a restaurant to 49th Street, and jumps a taxi and tells the driver he likes to go fast. And he tells me nothing happened between the time the precinct men came and the time he reached for his coat! I ask you, what does that sound like?”

  “It sounds like a delayed cerebral process. I am accustomed to it—unfortunately.”

  “It sounds bughouse. And Goodwin’s not bughouse.”

  “No, he isn’t. Not quite. Will you have some beer?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Wolfe pushed the button, leaned back and let the tips of his fingers meet at the apex of his middle mound. “Let’s cut across, Mr Cramer,” he suggested helpfully. “You’re busy and you need sleep. Regarding the point you have broached, as to what happened up there between this time and that time, Archie says he didn’t want to be detained until midnight by the prolonged routine of your staff. I say delayed cerebration. If something significant really did happen, it’s obvious that we don’t intend to tell you, at least not now, so let’s pass that. Next, if you ask why we kept ourselves incomunicado until half past nine, my reply is that I wished to get his complete report without interruption and that I abhor any disturbance during the dinner hour; further, that you had a large number of people up there to deal with, and Archie could tell you nothing that you couldn’t learn from them.”

  Fritz came with a tray, and Wolfe uncapped a bottle and poured. “Next? I suppose, why Archie was sent there? Because a girl named Carla Lovchen, whom we had never seen before, came this afternoon to engage me in the interest of a friend of her named Neya Tormic, who had been accused of theft. That matter was cleared up by a statement from Mr Driscoll, who appears to be a blundering ass. Next, you will doubtless ask, after the affair had been settled and Mr Goodwin had departed, why did he return? Because he phoned me and I told him to. As you know, when I accept a commission I like to get paid. I try to stop this side of rapacity, but I like to collect, even when, as in this case, I have furnished more will than wit. I sent him back to see Miss Tormic. He was waiting for her in the office when the porter’s yells were heard.”

  Cramer was slowly rubbing at his chin, looking stubborn and unconvinced. He watched Wolfe swallow the glass of beer and wipe his lips, and then turned to me:

  “You’re not bughouse, you know. Some day when I’m not busy I’d like to tell you what you are but you’re not bughouse. Now, suppose you tell me a little story.”

  “Sure, I’ll even tell you a big one. I was in the office talking with Mr and Mrs Miltan when we heard the yelling—”

  “Oh, no. Back up. From the time you got there. I want the works.”

  I gave it to him, in my best style. I knew from the tone Wolfe had taken that the programme was eagerness to oblige in inessentials, so I skipped none of the unimportant details. I covered the route. One of the little cuts I made was the brief passage between the Balkans and me while I was standing guard at the front door. When I got through Cramer asked me some questions that offered no difficulty, ending with a few more jabs regarding what had happened between the time when this and the time when that. My only addition to my former explanation was that I had started to get hungry. He sat a minute and chewed his cigar, frowning, and switched to Wolfe.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said flatly.

  “No? What is it you don’t be
lieve, Mr Cramer?”

  “I don’t believe that Goodwin’s bughouse. I don’t believe he left like that because he was homesick and hungry. I don’t believe he went back there to collect a fee from Miss Tormic. I don’t believe that as far as you’re concerned it’s washed up and you’re not interested in the murder.”

  “I haven’t said I’m not interested in the murder.”

  “Ho! Haven’t you? Well, are you?”

  “Yes.” Wolfe grimaced. “Apparently I am. While Archie was on guard at the door Miss Tormic approached and asked him—me—to act in the matter in her interest. He accepted. I am committed, and the amount of profit that may be expected . . .” He shrugged. “I am committed. That was what happened that made Archie feel he should communicate with me promptly and privately. As you are aware, Mr Cramer, I am quite capable of candour when the occasion presents—”

  The inspector clamped his teeth on his cigar and said through them savagely, “I knew it!”

  Wolfe’s brows went up a millimetre. “You knew? . . .”

  “I knew it the minute I learned Goodwin had been there and gone off to chase a cat. It had already begun to look like a first-class headache, and when I heard about Goodwin that clinched it. So you’ve got a client! And sure enough, by God, it has to be your client that was in that room fencing with him! It would be!” He rescued the cigar from his teeth with his left hand and hit the desk with his right fist, simultaneously. “Understand this, Wolfe! I came here in a mood of co-operation, in spite of Goodwin’s tricky getaway! And what am I getting? Now you try to tell me that in the space of ten seconds, just like that, your man accepted a murder case for you! Nuts!” He hit the desk again. “I know what your abilities are—no one knows that better than I do! And like a fool I come here expecting a little disinterested discussion and you tell me you’ve got a client! Why have you always got to have a goddam client? Naturally from now on I can’t believe a single solitary thing—”

  My waving paw finally stopped his bellowing; the phone had rung and I couldn’t hear. It was a request for him. With a grunt he got up and came to my desk for it, and I made way for him. For several minutes his part of it was mostly listening, and then apparently he was told something disagreeable, judging from the way he violated the law against the use of profanity on the telephone. He gave some instructions, banged the thing into its cradle, and said in a quiet but very sarcastic voice, “That’s nice, now.”