Death on Deadline (20 page)

MacLaren thumped a fist on the arm of the red leather chair. “And you no doubt would presume to set yourself up as the arbiter of these limits.”

“No, sir, despite you and others like you, I remain committed to an unfettered press, but one that will make greater efforts at self-policing. The public will be the ultimate arbiter, through their choices.”

“Ah, Mr. Wolfe, they have already chosen,” MacLaren chortled, his eyes flashing. “As I told you on my earlier visit, my papers sell more copies per day—”

“Enough,” Wolfe snarled, holding up a hand. He was good and sore. “I’ve already heard your commercial. You appear to be riding a crest, but public acceptance is elusive. I could cite numerous cases of once-mighty publications that failed, but you know their names as well as I do.”

“I’ll take my chances with public acceptance,” MacLaren said through a tight-lipped grin as he rose. “I’ve read it pretty well so far. As for you”—he waggled a finger at Wolfe—“watch your step. If you think you’re going to weave your web around me, think again. I’ll make you wish you never got into this sleazy business of yours.”

“You dare to call me sleazy!” Wolfe was boiling, but his words bounced off MacLaren’s back as he made for the hall. I followed in his wake, but let him put his own coat on—I’ve got my standards.

“You shouldn’t have said that to Mr. Wolfe,” I told him at the door. “He’s got a little doll in his desk drawer that looks just like you, and he takes this long needle that …”

Like Wolfe, I found myself talking to his back as he opened the door and stormed out before I had a chance to tell him he’d be feeling all kinds of sharp pains when he tried to get to sleep tonight. I closed and bolted the door and watched through the one-way glass to see him climb into the limo, which screeched away from the curb. Among his other failings, George had a heavy foot.

When I got back to the office, Wolfe was sitting with his eyes squeezed shut, but that didn’t mean he was relaxing. The giveaway was that his right index finger traced circles on the chair arm, a sign that he was furious. I cleared my throat as I slipped into my desk chair.

“What?” he demanded, opening his eyes and glaring.

“Oh, nothing,” I said nonchalantly. “I was just wondering what we do next, now that you’ve put the press lord in his place and his papers all set out to crucify you.”

“Insufferable.” He pronounced it like it was a contagious disease, but that’s all he said, so I didn’t know if he was referring to me or MacLaren. After a minute of silence, he grimaced, started to ring for beer, and then grimaced again, remembering that Fritz had gone out for the evening. I realized the situation was desperate and went to the kitchen, where I got two bottles of Remmers and a chilled pilsner glass from the refrigerator, put them on a tray, and carried them back to the office.

He nodded as I placed them in front of him; then he poured and watched the foam settle. “Confound it.” Another grimace. “This has got to be finished. You know it and so do I.”

I smiled as if I understood what he was talking about.

“Archie,” he said after breathing deeply. “Call Mr. Cohen in the morning. Learn from him precisely what papers were found in Mrs. Haverhill’s office and the rest of her suite. If that office hasn’t been combed, other than the cursory search the police claim to have made, do it yourself. Also, she had a secretary. Talk to her. Find out what Mrs. Haverhill said to her on the last day of her life.”

Okay, I admit those orders weren’t exactly inspired, but at least he was putting on an imitation of somebody at work, so I decided not to harass him anymore that night. Besides, he had opened his book, and it seemed to me that after a bout with Ian MacLaren, he was entitled to a little recreation before he turned in.

W
EDNESDAY MORNING, AFTER I HAD
finished breakfast and the
Times,
I sat in the office waiting for Lon to get to work so I could call him, per Wolfe’s orders. I was about to pick up the phone when the doorbell rang. Walking to the hall, I saw a familiar but unexpected face through the one-way panel.

“My goodness, we’re up and around early today, aren’t we?” I said, swinging open the door.

“You won’t be so lippy when you hear what I have to tell you,” Inspector Cramer retorted as he barreled by me, making straight for the office and the red leather chair.

“Needless to say, I’m honored by your visit,” I told him as I slipped into one of the yellow chairs, “but I’m sure you’re not here to see me. And since it’s now”—I checked my watch—“nine-twenty-three, you know where His Nibs is.”

“You’ll do,” he snarled. “You can decide how you want to break it to Wolfe.” He then unloaded, and I had to keep my jaw from bouncing off my knees.

“This is on the square?” I asked.

“Hell, yes. I admit it doesn’t bother me to let the air out of Wolfe’s tires, but I had nothing to do with digging this up. Like I told you, it just dropped in my lap.”

“Yeah. Well, there’s only one thing to do, and you might as well get the satisfaction.” I went to my phone and lifted the receiver, buzzing the plant rooms.

“Yes?” The bite was in his voice.

“Me. Inspector Cramer is here. He just told me something that you’d better hear—and from him. We’re coming up.”

He snorted but didn’t veto it. He knows I wouldn’t barge in on his orchid time without a good reason.

“Let’s go,” I told Cramer. “The elevator.” Normally, I use the stairs, but since we had a guest, I did the polite thing by giving him transportation and went along for the ride to be sociable.

I’ve been up there uncounted times, but I still get dazzled whenever I walk in. The sight of ten thousand plants on benches in their shades of yellows, reds, pinks, browns, whites, and some colors that probably don’t even have names is enough to get anybody’s attention—even Cramer’s. He’s been up there before, too, and usually has acted like the orchids don’t exist. Today, though, even he seemed impressed, particularly by those old show-offs the Cattleyas, as we moved through the tropical, intermediate, and cool rooms.

I pushed open the door to the potting room, where Wolfe, in the usual yellow smock, was on his oversized stool at the bench doing some repotting. Theodore looked daggers at us—he considers this territory a private preserve—but I glared right back and he retreated out the door. He and I get along just fine as long as no words have to be exchanged.

“Well?” Wolfe directed his scowl at me, then at Cramer, and back at me.

“It’s your show,” I said to Cramer.

He cleared his throat. “Yesterday afternoon, I got a telephone call from a doctor—his name isn’t important. He had struggled with his conscience over whether or not to call, he said. But he finally felt he had to, what with the story in the papers about your claim that Harriet Haverhill was murdered.” He cleared his throat again. “This man is a specialist, and he had Mrs. Haverhill as a patient. On the recommendation of her regular doctor, she had gone to see him about five weeks ago. He diagnosed her as having an abdominal malignancy. It was terminal, apparently inoperable, and he told her that she had at most two years, probably a lot less.”

Wolfe’s eyes went to slits. “Is this flummery?”

“No flummery,” Cramer declared. “I went to his office immediately after his call and he showed me her records. He said he was violating that sacred doctor-patient trust by divulging this, but he was convinced that under the circumstances it might help. I gave him my word that none of this would come out. I’m telling you, and Goodwin, in confidence. I thought you should know. And this ought to scotch the murder nonsense permanently.”

“Thank you,” Wolfe said icily. He went back to his repotting.

“I think we’ve been dismissed,” I said to Cramer.

“Okay, I’ve given it to you,” he told Wolfe with a shrug. “Just remember, this story goes no further.” He did a crisp about-face for a guy his size. “I’ll let myself out,” he said to me over his shoulder, and headed down the stairs with me about half a flight behind. He went out the door without a word, and after I slid the bolt, I went back to my desk in the office. I stared at the phone for thirty seconds, then picked up the receiver and buzzed.

“Now what?”

“Do I go ahead with Lon and the office search?”

“I’ve said nothing to countermand that” was all I got in answer, unless you include another hang-up.

I called Lon, and when I told him what I wanted, he sighed and started to protest, but stopped himself. “Oh, hell, we said we’d cooperate, and we will. I’ll have to mention it to Carl, though.”

I said I had no objection and that I’d be over by ten-thirty. In fact, it was ten-twenty-one when I walked into the
Gazette
lobby, thanks to light traffic and a cabbie who loved to see pedestrians scatter. Two minutes later, I rapped on Lon’s office door and marched in.

“Archie, do you really expect to find anything there?” he asked, pushing away from his desk.

“Probably not,” I answered as we went down the hall to Harriet’s suite. “But how can it hurt to look? I’d guess eighty-seven people have been through here since the last time you and I saw it.”

“Give or take a few. But because nobody except you and Wolfe think it was a murder, who’d want to mess with the papers in her office?”

“The murderer?”

Lon mouthed a word but didn’t say it as he unlocked the double doors. The office looked about the same as when I was first there, except that stacks of papers and manila folders were piled neatly on Harriet’s desk and the bookcase ledge.

“Her secretary was cleaning the place out,” Lon said. “As you can see, there’s still a long way to go.”

“Oh, by the way,” I cut in, “Mr. Wolfe wants me to talk to the secretary, too.”

“Can’t deliver on that one—not now. Her name’s Ann Barwell, but she’s out of town. She’s worked for Harriet for, Lord, close to twenty years. After a couple of days of going through Harriet’s things, she got so broken up that she had to get away and be alone for a while. Carl and David and Donna all agreed it would do her some good. She went down to Hilton Head to her sister’s place. Probably won’t be back for a couple of weeks, at least.”

“Okay. And Bishop didn’t object to my going through the things here?”

“Why should he?”

“No reason, I suppose. Any papers been taken out of here, records of any kind?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but then, I wouldn’t necessarily know. Most of what Harriet had in the way of records was kept in other places in the building. She didn’t really need to keep much confidential stuff around.”

“Well, let’s start in,” I said. “You going to stay?”

Lon looked a little sheepish. “Carl … thought it might be a good idea if I hung around and—”

“And made sure that the private investigator didn’t walk out with something valuable?”

“Come on, Archie, that’s a cheap shot.”

“You’re right,” I said, throwing up a hand. “I apologize. Besides, I like the company. And if you don’t mind, you can help me plow through this stuff.”

“Just what do you expect to find?”

“Maybe a note, a memo, something to indicate that Harriet was planning to name Scott publisher.”

Lon snorted. “Wolfe really
is
reaching.”

“Could be, but I like the work, the pay’s adequate, and the hours aren’t bad, so when he gets a notion, the odds are heavily in favor of my buying it. I’ll start with the stacks on the desk.”

For the next two hours, Lon and I combed the office, the lavatory, and the little blue bedroom. We went through piles of monthly profit-and-loss statements and other financial records, circulation reports, a few angry letters from readers that she apparently intended to answer, and memos from various department heads on everything from a new design for the corporate stationery to a proposal for a Gazette-sponsored annual charity game between the Giants and the Jets. I opened and shook out every book on the shelves, which is saying a lot, emptied every drawer in both rooms, and otherwise conducted a grade-A search—something I like to think I’m very good at. I could find nothing about Scott anywhere, unless you count a few reports he’d written Harriet about instituting some stricter controls in the editorial department. “These people have no interest in or respect for budgets” was how one of his notes to her ended. How the editors would love it if he ever did get named publisher.

“We’ve been through everything,” Lon said, loosening his tie. “Nothing about Scott to speak of—nothing of
any
kind that’s very interesting.”

“Except the proposal for the Jets–Giants game.”

“Yeah, but it’ll probably never happen. Makes too much sense.” I nodded, and we turned off the lights and left.

I had planned to walk home, but while I’d been playing private eye, a dandy spring squall burst over Manhattan. After fifteen minutes of arm-waving I finally flagged a cab and walked in the door at four minutes to one. I hung my raincoat in the hall and went into the office, where Wolfe was going through a meristem catalog and making notations on his desk pad.

“Waste of a morning,” I said, dropping into my chair.

“Zero about Scott in Harriet’s office, unless you count a couple of innocuous memos, and to round it out, her secretary, Ann Barwell, was so depressed that she went south to recuperate and won’t be back for at least two weeks.”

He looked up, frowned at my wet hair, and went back to the catalog. I knew he was trying to stall till lunch. He is opposed to doing anything vigorous, such as thinking, on an empty stomach. The trouble is, he doesn’t much like thinking on a full stomach, either. I began rustling papers.

“Is that necessary?” he snapped.

“Sorry, I was just trying to get a little work done.”

“You were
not,
” he retorted. “You were goading me. What would you have me do?”

“Let me go and talk to the whole batch. An hour with each one, and I’ll give nine-to-five—no, make that seven-to-two—that one of them will crack.”

Wolfe flipped a hand. “That wouldn’t work, and you know it. As Dorothy Sayers has written, heroics that don’t come off are the very essence of burlesque. And what you propose would be a burlesque.”