Prisoner's Base (22 page)

“Almost.”

“Good. I am held in high esteem by the whole shebang, from Commissioner all the way down to Lieutenant Rowcliff, which is quite a distance. Wanting to show me what they think of me, they are bestowing a great honor on me. Having a request to make of you, they are letting me make it. They’re all sitting here gazing at me
so tenderly I’ve got a lump in my throat. You ought to see them.”

“How long are you going to drag this out?”

“I’m through dragging. Here’s the point. We’re flumped. We have got to try something different-like this, for instance. We want to do a playback of the session at the office Thursday evening, with the original cast, and take a tape recording of it. We’ll bring the personnel, with the exception of Sarah Jaffee, and the recorder, and all you will have to do is let us in and play your part. I have told my associates, who have done me the favor of letting me make this phone call, that I am practically certain you will tell us to go to hell; and since nothing gives you more pleasure than to prove me wrong, here’s a chance for some good clean fun. All you have to do—”

“Archie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When do you want to do this?”

“Today. As soon as possible. Of course you won’t be down from the plant rooms until eleven—”

“Very well.” He was gruff but not wroth. “As you know, I have stated before witnesses that you are my client in this instance, and I never refuse a reasonable request from a client. This request seems reasonable. Therefore I grant it.”

It was unexpected, no doubt about that, but my chief reaction was not surprise. It was surmise. His noble sentiment about humoring his client, especially when I was it, was pure guff. Something else was moving him, and what?

He was going on. “However, eleven will be too early, as I’ll be engaged. Shall we say twelve o’clock? Will that be convenient?”

“Yes, sir, that will suit fine. I’ll come on up pretty soon and get things arranged, chairs and so on.”

“No.” He was emphatic. “You will not. Fritz and I can manage. Your associates in the Police Department need you more than I do. Be here at twelve.” He hung up.

I cradled the phone and told my audience, “Mr. Wolfe says okay. We’re to be there at noon.”

I didn’t add that I had a strong suspicion there were going to be some script revisions, not by any of us and not by any of the cast.

T
he idea, I don’t know whose, was to go in a body, after gathering at the Tenth Precinct station, and it was quite a cavalcade, with two limousines—Skinner’s and Bowen’s—and four PD sedans.

I was in Skinner’s limousine, and at my suggestion it headed the procession. I thought I should be the first to enter, and intended, on crossing the threshold, to change over and become a host, but discovered that it had been planned differently. It was not Fritz who let us in, but Saul Panzer, and he greeted me as an arriving guest, offering to take my hat. He could kid me, and often did, but not in the presence of the Police Commissioner. Wolfe had told him to, no question about it. So I said, “Thank you, sonny,” and handed him the hat, and he said, “Don’t mention it, officer.”

Wolfe and Fritz, with Saul’s help evidently, had managed well enough. The chairs were placed exactly as they had been at the start of proceedings Thursday evening, and the portable bar was at its spot, fully equipped. There was some displacement when Purley and a dick came with the tape recorder and accessories and got it installed, but things were properly rearranged.
Since I was being regarded as a guest I thought it was only polite to act like one, so I went to my desk and sat, which was where I belonged as a member of the cast. The other members likewise disposed themselves, and none of them needed any coaching. Nearest me was Viola Duday, then Oliver Pitkin, Jay Brucker, and Bernard Quest, and Perry Helmar in the red leather chair. The couch, to my right and rear as I faced Wolfe’s desk, was not occupied. Sarah Jaffee had sat there Thursday. On a chair near it was Eric Hagh, and beyond him were the two lawyers, Irby and Parker. Andy Fomos was off by himself, over by the bookshelves.

Additional chairs, some of the smaller yellow ones, had been lined up along the wall on the other side of Wolfe’s desk, for the audience. It seemed bad etiquette for VIPs like the Police Commissioner and the District Attorney and Inspector Cramer to be perched on those skimpy little numbers while Helmar, a mere Wall Street lawyer and murder suspect, had the red leather chair all to himself, but the occasion required it. Also in the row of audience were Assistant DA Mandelbaum, Captain Olmstead, and Purley Stebbins. The recorder was on a table at Purley’s elbow.

Saul Panzer stood facing the cast, not the audience. There is nothing impressive about Saul. He is undersized, his nose and ears are too big, and his shoulders slant. With Saul a thousand wrongdoers had made the mistake of believing what they saw. He spoke. “I believe this is the way it was Thursday evening when Mr. Wolfe entered. Does anyone disagree?”

No one did. He went on, “HI sit on the couch where Mrs. Jaffee was. I wasn’t here, but it has been described to me, and if I do anything wrong it can be corrected. Archie, will you ring for Mr. Wolfe as you did Thursday?”

He passed between Viola Duday and me to get to the couch. I stepped to Wolfe’s desk and pressed the button, one long and two short, and returned to my chair. Wolfe entered. On account of the row of audience he couldn’t bear right along the wall, so he navigated through the cast to make his desk. Standing beside his chair, he took his time for a look from right to left, ending with those against the wall, the representatives of the People of the State of New York.

“You gentlemen don’t look very comfortable,” he muttered.

They said they were all right. He sat. There was a tingle in my spine. I knew his look and manner as well as I did his voice, and there was no doubt about it, he was going to pull one, or try to.

He addressed the District Attorney. “I assume, Mr. Bowen, that these people know why you have brought them here?”

Bowen nodded. “Yes, it’s been thoroughly explained to them, and they have all agreed to cooperate. Mr. Helmar, Mr. Parker, and Mr. Irby have made certain reservations about the use of the recording, and they have been covered in a memo. Do you want to see it?”

“Not if Mr. Parker has approved it. Then we may proceed?”

“Please do.”

Wolfe turned. “Miss Duday and gentlemen. You understand that the purpose of this gathering is for us to iterate our words and movements of last Thursday evening. The first thing that happened after I entered the room was Mr. Goodwin’s identification for me of Miss Duday and Messrs. Brucker, Quest, and Pitkin. Then I sat down. Then Mr. Helmar said he had a statement he would like to read, and that, I suppose, is
where we should start, but before we do so I wish to make some remarks.”

A sound came from one person, not one of the cast. It was Inspector Cramer, and the sound was a cross between a growl and a snort. Cramer knew Wolfe better than anyone there except me.

Wolfe leaned back and got comfortable. “I told you Thursday evening that my sole interest was investigation of the murder of Priscilla Eads, and that is still true, except that now the murder of Sarah Jaffee is joined to it. After you people left that evening I told Mr. Goodwin that I thought I knew who killed Miss Eads and Mrs. Fomos. That surmise, for that is all it was then, was based on two things: first, the impression I had got of you five people that evening; and second, the fact that Mrs. Fomos had been killed.

“The supposition that the attack on Mrs. Fomos was solely for the purpose of getting the keys to Miss Eads’s apartment was clearly not acceptable if any alternative could be had. If that was all that was wanted it would only have been necessary to snatch her bag. A dozen women’s bags are snatched every day in this city. Killing Mrs. Fomos greatly increased the hazard of killing Miss Eads. If her body had been discovered sooner, as it might easily have been, and if that city detective—Auerbach, was it, Mr. Cramer?”

“Yes.” Cramer’s eyes were narrowed at him.

“If he had got his notion about the keys more promptly, he would have got to Miss Eads’s apartment before her return and would have found the murderer ambushed there. Surely the murderer was capable of calculating such a risk, and he would not have killed Mrs. Fomos except under a strong impulsion. This objection of course occurred to the police, and I understand that they met it by assuming that in his attempt
to get the bag from Mrs. Fomos her assailant was recognized and so was compelled to kill her. That assumption was not impossible, but it implied that the murderer was an egregious bungler, and I doubted it. I preferred to assume exactly the opposite—that Mrs. Fomos had been killed, not because she had recognized her attacker, but because he knew she couldn’t recognize him.”

“Is this for effect?” Skinner demanded. “Or do you think you’re getting somewhere?”

“I am already somewhere,” Wolfe retorted. “I’ve just told you who the murderer is.”

Purley Stebbins stood up with his gun in his hand, his eyes on the cast, trying to keep them all in focus at once.

“Go on and spell it,” Cramer growled.

“He wanted the keys, certainly,” Wolfe conceded, “but he didn’t have to kill Mrs. Fomos to get them. He killed her because she was herself a danger to him, as great a danger as Miss Eads. It would have done him no good to kill the one unless he killed the other. That was my hypothesis as early as Tuesday evening, but there were then too many alternatives, more easily tested, to give it priority. Wednesday Mr. Goodwin called on Mrs. Jaffee and Mr. Fomos, and late that afternoon Mr. Irby came and provided me with bait to get you people here. Thursday morning Mrs. Jaffee came, as the result of a brilliant maneuver by Mr. Goodwin the day before, and gave me much better bait than Mr. Irby had supplied, and, as you all know, I used it. But for that maneuver by Mr. Goodwin, Mrs. Jaffee would not have come to see me, and almost certainly she would be alive now. That seems to me much firmer ground for his feeling of responsibility for her death than her phone call to him Thursday night and its sequel. It is regrettable, but not
surprising, that his feeling was so intense as to warp his mental processes and pervert his judgment. I did and do sympathize with him.”

“Is all this necessary?” Bowen wanted to know.

“Perhaps not,” Wolfe allowed, “but I’m exposing a murderer and claim a measure of indulgence. You must have expected to spend hours here. Am I tedious?”

“Go ahead.”

“And Thursday afternoon Mr. Irby returned with his client, Mr. Hagh, who had flown from Venezuela. I no longer needed him or his client as bait for you, but I invited them to join us that evening, provided they came as observers and not participants. As you know, they were here. What is it, Archie?”

“I’ll tend to me,” I told him. I had left my chair and was moving. I won’t say I had caught up with him, but at least I could see his dust, and I admit that I had also seen Saul Panzer, not with any flourish, take a gun from his pocket and rest it on his thigh. I did not display a gun. I merely circled around the end of the couch and stopped, and stood less than arm’s length northwest of Eric Hagh’s right shoulder. He didn’t turn his head, but he knew I was there. His eyes were glued to Wolfe.

“Okay,” I told Wolfe. “I’m not warped enough to break his neck. How come?”

Satisfied that I wasn’t going to throw a tantrum, he returned to the Softdown quintet. “When you left here Thursday evening, I had nothing new about you with regard to the murder of Miss Eads, but it seemed more than ever doubtful, under my hypothesis, that a motive could be found for any of you to kill Mrs. Fomos. As I said, I told Mr. Goodwin that I thought I knew who had committed the murders, but I also told him that there was a contradiction that had to be solved, and for that
purpose I asked him to have Mrs. Jaffee here at eleven o’clock the next morning.”

He turned left. “What was the contradiction, Mr. Cramer?”

Cramer shook his head. “I’m not clear up with you. I suppose the point was that this Eric Hagh is not Hagh, he’s a ringer, from what you said about him killing Mrs. Fomos because he knew she couldn’t recognize him, but then where were you?”

“I was facing a contradiction.”

“What?”

“You should know. Among the items furnished by me to Lieutenant Rowcliff on Friday was a carbon copy of a report, typed by Mr. Goodwin, of his conversation with Mrs. Jaffee on Wednesday at her apartment. Surely you have read it, and this is an excerpt from it. I quote: ‘That was the last letter I ever got from Pris. The very last. Maybe I still have it—I remember she enclosed a picture of him.’

“Mrs. Jaffee said that to Mr. Goodwin. It contradicted my hypothesis that the man calling himself Eric Hagh was an impostor; for if Mrs. Jaffee had seen a picture of Hagh, why didn’t she denounce this man when she saw him here? It was to get an answer to that question that I asked Mr. Goodwin to have her here Friday morning.”

“Why didn’t you ask her then and there?”

“If that’s a challenge, Mr. Cramer, I ignore it. If it’s a request for information, the—”

“It is.”

“Good. The circumstances were not favorable. My suspicion of Hagh had no support but a hypothesis, and I was not certain of the bona fides of Mrs. Jaffee herself. I wanted first to get an opinion from Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Parker, and Mrs. Jaffee was leaving with Mr.
Parker. It was late at night, and I was tired. Of course I regret it. I regretted it only two hours after I had gone to bed, when I was awakened by the phone and Mr. Goodwin told me that Mrs. Jaffee had been murdered. Then, too late for her, I knew. I even got out of bed and sat in a chair, something I never do.”

“This is being recorded, Wolfe,” Bowen warned him. “You say you knew the identity of a murderer. Whom did you notify?”

“Pfui. That’s childish, Mr. Bowen. I had no evidence. You have had every scrap of information I have had, and the services of Mr. Goodwin to boot, which is a great advantage when his head is on straight. I had started, remember, with pure hypothesis, in an effort to account for the murder of Mrs. Fomos as a preamble to the murder of Miss Eads. In fact, I had started with several different hypotheses, but by far the most attractive was this: that someone in Caracas had got hold of the document Miss Eads, then Mrs. Hagh, had signed, giving her husband a half interest in her property, and was impersonating Hagh to make the claim; that, deciding he would have to come to New York in person to press the claim, he had determined to get rid of the only two people who, because they knew Hagh, made his appearance here impossible; and that either he came here himself and killed them, or contrived it.