Homicide Trinity (11 page)

She was gawking at me. “You’re m-m-m-m—” She started over. “You’re making it up.”

“No. That’s what he said. Your husband has been shot dead.”

The bag slipped from her hand to the floor and her face went white and stiff. I had seen people turn pale before, but I had never seen blood leave skin so thoroughly and so fast. She backed up an unsteady step, and I took her arm and eased her into the chair. Wolfe, who had stopped in the center of the room, snapped at me, “Get something. Brandy.”

I moved, but she said, “Not for me. He said that?”

“Yes.”

“He’s dead. He’s
dead?”

“Yes.”

She rammed her fists against her temples and pounded them. Wolfe said, “I’ll be in the kitchen,” and turned to go. To him a woman overwhelmed, no matter by what, is merely a woman having a fit, and it’s too much for him. But I said, “Hold it, she’ll be all right in a
minute,” and he came and looked down at her, let out a growl, went to his chair, and sat.

“I want to phone somebody,” she said. “I have to
know.
Who can I phone?” Her fists were in her lap.

“A shot of brandy or whisky wouldn’t hurt,” I told her.

“I don’t want anything. Who can I phone?”

“Nobody.” Wolfe was curt. “Not just now.”

Her head jerked to him. “Why not?”

“Because he must first consider whether I should phone—phone the police to report what you have told me. I promised to. Archie. Where’s the gun?”

“In my desk drawer.”

“Has it been fired recently?”

“No telling. If so it’s been cleaned. It’s fully loaded and the cartridges all look alike.”

“Did she shoot him?”

That was routine: he merely wanted my opinion as a qualified expert on women. His over-all estimate of me and my relations with females is full of contradictions, but that doesn’t bother him. “For a quick guess,” I said, “no. To make it final I would need facts.”

“So would I. Did you shoot your husband, Mrs. Hazen?”

She shook her head.

“I prefer to hear it if you can speak. Did you shoot him?”

“No.” She had to push it out.

“Since my promise was to you, you may of course release me from it. Do you wish me to phone the police?”

“Not now.” The blood was beginning to creep back into her skin. “You don’t have to now. You won’t ever have to. He’s dead, and I didn’t kill him.” She rose to her feet, not very steady, but not staggering. “That’s all over now.”

“Sit down.” It was a command. “It’s not so simple. When the police ask you where you were this morning from eleven o’clock on what will you say? Confound it,
quit propping yourself on my desk and sit down! That’s better. What will you say?”

“Why …” She was on the edge of the chair. “Will they ask me that?”

“Certainly. Unless they already have the murderer and the evidence beyond all question, and that’s too much to hope for. You will have to account for every minute since you last saw your husband. Did you come here in a cab?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll say so. You’ll have to. And when they ask why you came to see me what will you say?”

She shook her head. She looked at me and back at him. “Oh,” she said. “You’ll have to tell me what to say.”

He nodded. “I expected that.” His head turned. “Archie. What grounds have you for your guess?”

I was back in my chair. “Partly personal,” I told him, “and partly professional. Personal, my general impression of her, and specifically her smile when I let her in. Professional, two points. First, if she shot him last night after making an appointment with you and then came here with that jabber, she is either completely loony or the trickiest specimen I have ever laid eyes on, and I’ll buy neither one. Second, and this is really it, her face when she realized he was dead. She might fake a faint or the staggers or even some fancy hysterics, but no woman alive could make her blood go like that. I said I would need facts to make it final, but I should have said I would need facts, and good ones, to make me guess again.”

Wolfe grunted and turned to her with a scowl. “Granting that Mr. Goodwin’s grounds are valid, what then? When the police learn that the widow of a man murdered last night came to see me this morning they will harass me beyond tolerance. I owe you nothing. You are not my client. You have paid me a hundred dollars for half an hour of my time, now stretched to more than an hour, and released me from my promise, so that incident is closed. You asked me to tell you what to say when they ask you what you came here for, but
they will also ask me. What if you fail to follow my advice and my account differs from yours? Why should I take that risk? I can see no alternative—What are you doing now?”

She had opened her bag and was taking out the check-fold and pen. “I’m going to write a check,” she said. “Then I’ll be your client. What shall I … how much?”

He nodded. “I expected that too. It won’t do. I am not a blackmailer. I take pay for services, not for forbearance, and you may not need my services. If you do, we’ll see. Will you answer some questions?”

“Of course. But I’ve taken more than my half an hour, and I owe you—”

“No. If you didn’t shoot your husband we have both been snared by circumstance. First, instead of a question, a statement: you can’t take the gun. The gun stays here. Now. When and where did—”

“But I’m going to put it back where I got it!”

“No. I accept Mr. Goodwin’s guess as a hypothesis, but I can’t let you take the gun. When and where did you last see your husband?”

“Last night. At home. We had people for dinner.”

“Details. How many people? Their names.”

“They were clients of Barry’s, important clients—all but one. Mrs. Victor Oliver. Anne Talbot, Mrs. Henry Lewis Talbot. Jules Khoury. Ambrose Perdis. Ted—Theodore Weed—he’s not a client, he works for Barry. Seven, counting Barry and me.”

“When did the guests leave?”

“I don’t know exactly. Barry had told me he was going to discuss something with them, and I wouldn’t be needed, and after the coffee I left. That’s when I last saw him, there with them. I went upstairs to my bedroom.”

“Did you hear him when he went up to bed?”

“No. There’s a spare bedroom between his room and mine. And I was played out. I told you, I had the first good night’s sleep I have had for a month.”

“You didn’t see him this morning?”

“No. He wasn’t there. He rises early. The maid who—oh. Oh!”

“What?”

“Nothing—nothing that matters to you. I am not liking myself, Mr. Wolfe. I said he rises early, but now I can say he rose early, and I wanted to sing it. I did! No one is good enough to have a right to be glad that someone has died. The Lord knows I’m not. What if I never loved him? What if I married him because—”

Wolfe cut her off. “If you please. You’ll have plenty of time for that. About the maid?”

She swallowed with her lips pressed tight. “I’m sorry. The maid who sleeps in and gets breakfast said he hadn’t come down, and she had gone up and the door of his room was open and his bed hadn’t been slept in. He had done that before, not very often, once or twice a month.”

“Without telling you where he was going or, afterwards, where he had been?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know or can you guess where he went last night, or with whom, or to whom?”

“No. I have no idea.”

“I am still assuming that you didn’t kill him, but how vulnerable are you? Were you continually in your house—it is a house, not an apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Were you in it continually from the time you went to your bedroom last night until you left this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Would the maid have heard you if you had gone out during the night? Sneaked out, and later in again?”

“I don’t think so. Her room is in the basement.”

Wolfe nodded. “You
are
vulnerable. What time did you leave this morning?”

“At five minutes past eleven. I wanted to be sure to get here on time.”

“When did you take the gun from the drawer in your husband’s room?”

“Just before I left. I didn’t decide to bring it until the last minute.”

“How many people know that you despised your husband?”

She gazed at him, not blinking, no reply.

“‘Despise’ is your word, Mrs. Hazen. It is not adequate. No one kills a man, or wants to, merely because she despises him. But I’m not going into that; it could take all day. How many people know that you despised him?”

“I don’t think anyone does.” It was barely audible, and I have good ears. “I have never told anyone, not even my best friend. She may have suspected, I suppose she did.”

“Pfui.” Wolfe flipped a hand. “Your maid knows, for one, if she’s not a dolt. She is of course being questioned at this moment. Was your husband wealthy?”

“I don’t know. He had a large income, he must have, he was free with money. He owned the house.”

“Any children?”

“No.”

“You will inherit?”

Her eyes flashed. “Mr. Wolfe, this is ridiculous! I don’t
want
anything from him!”

“I am merely examining your position. You will inherit?”

“Yes. He told me I would.”

“Didn’t he know you despised him?”

“He was incapable of believing that anyone could despise him. I suppose he was a psychopath. I looked up psychopathy in the dictionary.”

“No doubt that was a help.” He looked up at the wall clock. “I presume you will now go home. Since you must tell the police that you were here you might as well say that you learned of your husband’s death from my radio; it will save you the bother of feigning surprise and shock.” He eyed her. “I said you would be in a pickle, and you are. When I asked what you wanted of me, I shall say that you consulted me in confidence and I will reveal nothing of your conversation. It will be a
little ticklish, but until and unless you are arrested on a charge of murder the pressure will not be intolerable. So you may tell them as much about your visit here, or as little, as you please.”

She opened her bag. “I’m going to write a check. You must take it. You
must!”

“No. You may not be in jeopardy. They may get the murderer today or tomorrow. If they do I may send you a bill for the extra hour; it will depend on my mood. If they don’t, and you wish to engage my services, and Mr. Goodwin’s guess has not been discredited, we’ll see.” He pushed his chair back and stood up.

She rose to her feet, steady this time, and I went and held her coat for her.

W
hen I returned to the office after letting her out, Wolfe had straightened up in his chair to lean forward, and, with his head cocked, was sniffing the air. For a second I thought he was pretending that our ex-client had polluted the atmosphere with perfume, but then I realized that he was merely trying to catch an odor from the kitchen, where Fritz was baking scallops in shells—or probably, since I could catch the odor without sniffing, he was deciding whether Fritz had used only shallots in the sauce or had added an onion. By the time I got to my chair he had settled it; anyway, he turned to me.

“I do not intend,” he stated, “to serve the convenience of a murderer. What about her face? I was at one side.”

“One will get you fifty,” I said. “You heard her stutter that I was m-m-making it up. Then when I said no, he had been shot dead and it hit her as a fact, she went
white, all white, in three seconds. Maybe she can wiggle her ears, but she can’t do that. No one can.”

“Very well. Call Mr. Cohen and get details.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Whatever he has, but I want to know if the weapon has been found, or a bullet.”

“He would appreciate a major scoop, such as that the widow of the deceased visited the office of Nero Wolfe this morning. Why not, since she’s going to report it?”

“Very well.”

I got at the phone and dialed the number of the
Gazette,
and soon had Lon Cohen. When I tossed him the bone about Mrs. Hazen coming to see Wolfe, naturally he wanted the whole skeleton, not to mention meat, but I told him that would be all for now and how about some reciprocity? He obliged, and gave me the crop, and I thanked him and hung up and turned to Wolfe.

“The body was found by a truck driver at ten-eighteen a.m. It was stiff, so he must have been dead at least five hours and probably more. He was fully dressed, including an overcoat, and his hat was there on the ground. The usual items in his pockets, including a couple of dollars in change, except that there were no keys, and no wallet and no watch. Of course they could have been taken by someone who found him earlier and forgot to mention it. His name was on letters in his pocket, so the wallet wasn’t taken to delay identification. Shot once, in the back, and a rib stopped the bullet and they have it. A thirty-two. Weapon not found. If the police have any leads or notions they’re saving them, but of course it was found less than three hours ago.” I glanced at my wrist. “Two hours and forty-nine minutes. Lon says he would have paid me five grand if I had kept Mrs. Hazen here until he could send a man to take her picture and ask her who shot her husband, and I told him I’ll bear that in mind next time.”

“They have the bullet?”

“Right.”

“When will a policeman come?”

“It will probably be Cramer in person. You know how he’ll react when he learns she was here. Say two hours, possibly sooner.”

“Will she report what she told me?”

“No.”

A corner of his mouth twitched. “That’s why I put up with you; you could have answered with fifty words and you did it with one.”

“I’ve often wondered. Now tell me why I put up with you.”

“That’s beyond conjecture. I want a bullet that has been fired from that gun, and we shouldn’t wait until after lunch. You have twenty minutes. If your guess about Mrs. Hazen is correct, that gun is not evidence, unless the murderer stole into that house afterwards, went to Mr. Hazen’s room and returned the gun to the drawer, and slipped out again. If it
is
evidence you’ll be tampering with it. Shall I do it?”

“No. You might shoot a toe off.” I got the gun from the drawer, removed one of the cartridges, unlocked and opened the drawer where we keep the Marleys for which we have permits, and got a .32 cartridge from the box. I put that cartridge in the Drexel where I had made room for it, turned the cylinder so it would be in firing position, went to the hall and downstairs to the storage room in the basement, switched the light on, and crossed to where a discarded mattress was doubled up on a table. I had used it for this operation before. I cocked the revolver, held it three inches from the mattress, and pulled the trigger.