Death on Deadline (11 page)

“I’m not interested in securing a client,” Wolfe said stiffly. “Get Inspector Cramer.”

That one threw me, but who am I to argue with genius? I dialed the Homicide number, which I knew from memory, while Wolfe picked up his receiver. After going through an underling, I heard the familiar gruff voice; I stayed on the line.

“Cramer here.”

“Good afternoon, Inspector, this is Nero Wolfe. If your schedule allows, I’d like to discuss the murder of Harriet Haverhill with you at my office.”

A silence of maybe five seconds followed, although it seemed longer. “Suicide, you mean.”

“No, sir, I mean murder.”

Cramer spat a word, then took a deep breath. “Wolfe, this isn’t funny.”

“I’m not attempting to be comedic, I assure you. I take murder every bit as seriously as you do. And I think it would be mutually beneficial if you could spare time for a conversation.”

“By God, I’ll … All right, dammit, but this better be good,” he wheezed, slamming down his phone.

I looked at Wolfe. “I agree that it better be good. I can hardly wait.”

“Archie, shouldn’t you start lining those people up? I didn’t take your wager, but it still remains to be seen whether you can deliver them, despite your braggadocio.”

It’s just like him to change the subject. I spun around and dialed Lon’s number at the
Gazette,
figuring he’d still be at work, Saturday or not. “I know, Archie, you’re calling to nag me about the visits to your office,” he said. “I think Carl’s set them up, but he wants to talk to your boss first—I’ll transfer you.”

I cupped the receiver and signalled Wolfe to get on the line, whispering Bishop’s name. “Mr. Bishop? This is Nero Wolfe.”

“Yes, Mr. Wolfe. I told Lon I wanted to speak to you before coming over. I’ve talked to David, Donna, and Scott about seeing you. But everything has its price.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, and here’s ours. We want an exclusive for the
Gazette
that you’re claiming Harriet was murdered and are conducting an investigation into her death. I’ve discussed it with all three of the Haverhills, and they agree with this stipulation.”

“All right,” Wolfe said. I shot a look at him, but his big mug revealed nothing.

“I’ve also talked to our editor-in-chief, Lloyd Williams, and he concurs with me that Lon Cohen is the man to write the story, because you know each other so well.”

“Tell Mr. Cohen he’s welcome to call me—immediately, if he wishes.”

“Excellent,” Bishop said. “I can be at your office anytime today. As for the other three, here’s the situation: David and Donna insist on seeing you together—preferably tomorrow afternoon. Scott doesn’t mind coming alone, and he says sometime tomorrow is fine; he’s not particular.”

Wolfe looked at the wall clock. “Can you be here at six? I invite you to stay for dinner, as well. We’re having pork tenderloin.”

“Six is fine,” Bishop said. “I’m sorry I’ll have to decline on dinner, though. Lon’s told me what marvelous meals you serve, but I have a previous engagement.” Wolfe left it to me to handle the Sunday appointments with Bishop, and we worked it out that the brother-sister act would come at two and the nephew at four. Any other day Wolfe would be up with the orchids at the later hour, but Sundays he strays from his schedule.

Moments after I hung up with Bishop, Lon called for his interview, and I listened in at my desk. It was fairly brief, a few basic questions asked by a skillful reporter and answered tersely by Wolfe. “You know what this means, of course?” I said sourly after he’d finished. “We get flooded-with media calls all over again tomorrow after they see the
Gazette.
And I’ll have to field every damn one of them.”

“That’s only fitting,” Wolfe said, one corner of his mouth turning up slightly, “since you devised the fiendishly clever stratagem of playing on the
Gazette’s
debt to us. With that debt now more than paid, they feel comfortable in extracting favors.”

I opened my mouth to really flatten him, but before I could get it out, the doorbell rang. I went to the hall, and flicking aside the curtain, saw the thick figure of Inspector Cramer, who looked as if he was ready to eat a bear.

“Come in,” I said heartily, swinging the door open. “It’s nice to see you again.” Of course, he steamed by me like I was invisible and made straight for Wolfe’s office, where he homed in on the leather chair, slammed his size twelves on the floor and stuck his chin out. Before he could start in, Wolfe asked if he’d join him in a beer.

“You’re darned right I will. Now, what’s this crap about murder? Can’t anyone die in the five boroughs without you trying to butt in and promote a goddamned case out of it?”

“I do not have a client,” Wolfe replied coldly.

“Balls!” Cramer roared, jamming an unlit cigar into his mouth. I’ve never seen him fire one up.

“Whether or not I am being paid should be immaterial to you. Rather, you should want to know why I think Harriet Haverhill was murdered.”

“Okay,” Cramer shot back, “let’s say I’m curious. Oh, thanks, Fritz,” he said as a cold bottle of beer and a glass were set on the small table on his right.

“You may be aware that I placed an advertisement in the
Times
earlier this week,” Wolfe said, shifting his bulk.

“Yeah, I saw it. I should’ve known that was the start of trouble.”

Wolfe ignored the comment. “As a result of that open letter, Harriet Haverhill came to see me on Wednesday, along with her lawyer, Mr. Dean. Our talk centered on the
Gazette,
specifically on the other shareholders and whether they would be disposed to sell out to Ian MacLaren.”

“And?” Cramer said, gulping down half a glass of beer.

“And she seemed to feel there was a strong likelihood that her late husband’s children and his nephew might indeed sell their shares.”

“There’s your reason for suicide,” Cramer said triumphantly, waving the stogie. “She was going to lose her paper.”

“No, sir, I don’t believe it. I saw enough of the woman to know she was not suicidal. She was too self-possessed and had too much pride and character to succumb to that ultimate admission of failure.”

“So now we’re playing the amateur psychiatrist,” Cramer snorted. “Well, let me just fill you in on what the facts show: First, Harriet Haverhill was found dead in her office with her own pistol in her hand. Second, cause of death, a bullet to the brain, from that same gun. It had been the only shot fired. Third, her fingerprints were the only ones on the weapon. Fourth, the lady had had a very rough day. We talked to both of her stepchildren, and they told my men that they’d informed her of their intention to sell out to the MacLaren Organisation. The nephew—what’s his name, Scott?—was apparently waffling, but he too was leaning toward grabbing the money and running. We also interviewed MacLaren, who told us his meeting with Mrs. Haverhill late yesterday afternoon was hardly cordial. He told her that he had commitments for a majority of the
Gazette
stock and even offered to buy hers. She apparently threw him out of her office on his ear at that point.”

“What time was that?”

“He says a few minutes after six. They had started talking at five-thirty.”

“Who saw Mrs. Haverhill after MacLaren left her?”

Cramer leaned forward in his chair. “Nobody, but what does that prove? Her secretary, who has a small office next door to Mrs. Haverhill’s suite, went home at five-thirty, just after she ushered MacLaren in. She always leaves at that time.”

“Does it strike you as strange that Mrs. Haverhill left neither a letter nor some kind of message?”

Cramer worked the stogie around in his mouth. “It’s a common misconception that everybody who kills himself scribbles a farewell note. In this city last year, probably half the suicides didn’t see fit to explain why they did it. My guess is she was so depressed after MacLaren left that she acted on impulse—reached into her desk drawer where she kept the pistol and …” He spread his hands, palms up.

“Nonsense,” Wolfe snapped. “Under no circumstances would this woman have destroyed herself.”

“Listen to the expert,” Cramer said, his face turning red. “You talked to her for how long—twenty minutes? A half-hour? And now you claim to know just how she’d react in the worst crisis of her life. I never thought you’d stoop to this to get a case,” he snarled, getting to his feet, throwing the chewed-over cigar at the wastebasket, and missing by a foot. “A woman is dead, tragically, and you want to twist this to your own advantage. Well, just remember you can only operate if you have a license.”

He turned on his heel, and I got up to follow him, but he stomped out the front door and down the steps before I got to the hall. All I saw from the one-way panel was his broad behind as he climbed into the unmarked black sedan waiting at the curb.

“He seemed a touch angry,” I said when I was back in the office.

Wolfe looked up from his book. “With reason. He now sees a murder case looming, one he wishes would go away. But it won’t, and neither will we.”

A
T SIX O’CLOCK I WAS
in the office looking over the Saturday
Gazette’s
coverage of Harriet Haverhill. They gave it their banner headline, along with a two-column picture of her, a portrait by that famous Canadian photographer that probably had been taken at least five years ago. The article was a straight reporting job and referred to her death as “an apparent suicide.” No mention was made of Ian MacLaren or his visit to the
Gazette
Building. As I read the story a second time, I wondered how they’d play Lon’s piece about Wolfe in the Sunday editions.

The elevator rumbled and the doorbell rang at the same moment. I went to the hall, saw through the glass that it was the publisher himself, and let him in, hanging his trench coat on a hook and directing him to the office, where Wolfe had just gotten seated.

“Good evening,” Bishop said. “I wish we were meeting under more cheerful circumstances.” He apparently knew about Wolfe’s handshake phobia and went directly to the red leather chair.

“Sir,” Wolfe responded, dipping his head a gracious eighth of an inch. “Would you like a drink? I’m having beer.”

“Scotch, thanks, with a splash of water,” he replied, unbuttoning the coat of his gray suit. He still looked like he’d had a sleepless night. I went to the serving cart in the corner and mixed a Scotch for him and another for me, while Fritz came in with Wolfe’s standard order.

“As you know,” Wolfe said, pouring beer and watching the foam settle, “Mrs. Haverhill visited here three days ago.”

Bishop nodded. “Yes, she told me about it. Your letter in the
Times
was quite a surprise to her. Let me ask you,” he said, taking a sip of his drink, “why is it you’re so sure Harriet was murdered?”

“You knew the woman well, sir, I met her but once. Are
you
convinced she took her own life?”

Bishop studied the glass in his right hand, then looked up, meeting Wolfe’s steady gaze. “I’m just now, a day later, getting used to the fact that she’s gone. We’ve worked together for more than twenty years. Yes, I believe she did kill herself. I know she didn’t seem a candidate for that kind of ending, but this MacLaren business had really been eating her up. It had depressed her terribly. Far more than she let on.” He shook his head and took another swallow of Scotch, bigger than the last. He pulled a pipe from his pocket and jammed it into his mouth, but noticing Wolfe’s grimace, he didn’t light up.

“How do you feel about the possibility of Mr. MacLaren running the
Gazette
?” Wolfe asked.

“Ruining
the
Gazette
would be more like it, and it’s the worst thing that could happen. I’ve known for weeks that it’s a strong possibility, but I’m still not prepared to accept it—any more than Harriet was.”

“I gather you would not have sold your shares to him?”

“You gather right, although I’m just small potatoes. I don’t think he gives a damn about my holding. Same with Elliot Dean’s,” he said, chewing on his pipe. Shades of Cramer. “Elliot has an even smaller piece of the company than I do—together we’ve got a little more than seven percent.”

“Still, a tidy amount,” Wolfe nodded. “Is Mr. Dean as strongly opposed to a MacLaren takeover as you are?”

“Hell, yes. Elliot was a tiger where Harriet’s interests were concerned. He would have walked on hot coals for her.”

“The family’s younger members obviously lack the same degree of fealty,” Wolfe remarked dryly.

“Hah, that’s for sure,” Bishop agreed. “I know I can be candid with you; together, I wouldn’t give a subway token for those three—wait, let me modify that. I really can’t say that I know Donna all that well. She actually seems to be bright and at least reasonably honest. But as for those two clowns … I’d almost rather see MacLaren get the paper than have either of them running things.”

“My impression is that Mrs. Haverhill held the same opinion of them, particularly the stepson.”

“Absolutely. If MacLaren had been just about anybody else, instead of the unprincipled slime that he is, I think she might have sold out without a fight.”

“You had great admiration for her.”

Bishop smiled ruefully. “A fine newspaperwoman. She ran the paper the way Wilkins would have wanted. Her first concern was always editorial excellence. I don’t mean to say she wasn’t interested in making a buck—the
Gazette
turned a nice profit every year. But she plowed a lot of money back into the product. I’ll give you an example of her priorities: I spent thirty years on the news side—as a reporter, a copy editor, city editor, managing editor, and then eleven years as editor-in-chief. She was publisher at that time, and one day she comes to me and says, ‘Carl, I want you to take over as publisher.’ I told her I didn’t know a damn thing about how to do it, and she answered by saying the publisher ought to come from the editorial side of a paper, to ensure that it never loses sight of its primary mission.”

Bishop waved away my offer of a refill. “Do you know that I’m just about the only publisher of a major U.S. daily that didn’t come up through the business or advertising ranks? I’m not going to speculate on how good I’ve been at the job—others will have to make that judgment—but I’ve always tried to keep in mind that we’re a news organ first and an advertising vehicle second. I must say, however, that I’ve learned to be diplomatic in dealing with our big advertisers, as hard as that sometimes is.”