The Golden Spiders (18 page)

Chapter 16

I have never been on intimate terms with a policewoman but have seen a few here and there, and I must say that whoever picked the three to attend Wolfe’s party that afternoon had a good eye. Not that they were knockouts, but I would have been perfectly willing to take any one of the trio to the corner drugstore and buy her a Coke. The only thing was their professional eyes, but you couldn’t hold that against them, because they were on duty in the presence of an inspector and so naturally had to look alert, competent, and tough. They were all dressed like people, and one of them wore a blue number with fine white stripes that was quite neat.

I had got there enough in advance of the mob to give Wolfe a brief report of my day, which didn’t seem to interest him much, and to help Fritz and Orrie collect chairs and arrange them. When the first arrivals rang the bell Orrie disappeared into the front room and shut the door. Having been in there for chairs, I had seen what he was safeguarding-a middle-aged round-shouldered guy wearing glasses, with his belt buckled too tight. Orrie had introduced us, so I knew his name was Bernard Levine, but that was all.

The seating arrangement had been dictated by Wolfe. The six females were in a row in front, with the policewomen alternating with Angela Wright, Claire Horan, and Jean Estey. Inspector Cramer was in the red leather chair, with Purley Stebbins at his left, next to Jean Estey. Back of Jean Estey was Lips Egan, within reach of Stebbins in case he got nervous and started using pliers on someone, and to Egan’s left, in the second row, were Horan, Lipscomb, and Kuffner. Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin were in the rear.

I said Cramer was in the red leather chair, but actually it was being saved for him. He had insisted on speaking privately with Wolfe, and they were in the dining room. I don’t know what it was he wanted, but I doubted if he got it, judging from the expression on his face as he marched into the office ahead of Wolfe. His jaw was set, his lips were tight, and his color was red. He stood, facing the gathering, until Wolfe had passed to his chair and got into it, and then he spoke.

“I want it understood,” he said, “that this is official only up to a point. You were brought here by the Police Department with the approval of the District Attorney, and that makes it official, but now Nero Wolfe will proceed on his own responsibility, and he has no authority to insist on answers to any questions he may ask. You all understand that?”

There were murmurs. Cramer said, “Go ahead, Wolfe,” and sat down.

Wolfe’s eyes moved left to right and back again. “This is a little awkward,” he said conversationally. “I’ve seen only two of you before, Mr. Horan and Mr. Kuffner. Mr. Goodwin has provided me with a chart, but I’d like to check. You’re Miss Jean Estey?”

“Yes.”

“Miss Angela Wright?”

She nodded.

“Mrs. Dennis Horan?”

“That’s my name. I don’t think-”

“Please, Mrs. Horan.” He was brusque. “Later, if you must. You’re Mr. Vincent Lipscomb?”

“Right.”

Wolfe’s eyes went back and forth again. “Thank you. I believe this is the first time I have ever undertaken to single out a murderer from a group of mostly strangers. It seems a little presumptuous, but let’s see. Mr. Cramer told you I have no authority to insist on answers to questions, but I’ll relieve your minds on that score. I have no questions to ask. Not one. As I go along an occasion for one may arise, but I doubt it.”

Cramer let out a low growl. Eyes went to him, but he didn’t know it. He was fastened on Wolfe.

“I shall indeed ask questions,” Wolfe said, “but of myself, and answer them. This affair is so complex that they could run into the hundreds, but I’ll constrain myself to the minimum. For instance, I know why Mrs. Fromm wore those golden spiders on her ears when she came to see me Friday noon, they were a part of her attempted imposture; but why did she wear them Friday evening to the dinner party at Horan’s? Obviously in the hope of surprising a reaction from someone. Again for instance, why did Mr. Horan go to the garage last night? Because he knew his greed had impelled him to a foolish action, giving Leopold Heim’s name and address to Egan at this juncture, and he was alarmed-as it turned out, with reason. I suppose-”

“I protest!” Horan’s tenor was squeaking. “That’s slander! Inspector Cramer, you say Wolfe speaks on his own responsibility, but you’re responsible for getting us here!”

“You can sue him,” Cramer snapped.

“Mr. Horan.” Wolfe aimed a finger at him. “If I were you I’d stop lathering about your implication in blackmail. On that you’re sunk, and you know it, and now you’re confronted with a much greater danger, identification as the murderer of Peter Drossos. You can’t possibly escape a term in jail, but with my help you may go on living. When we finish here you’re going to owe me something.”

“You’re damned right I am!”

“Good. Don’t try to pay it, either in your sense or in mine. I was about to say, I suppose most of you know nothing about the extortion enterprise that has resulted in the death of three people, so you can’t follow me throughout, but that can wait. One of you will assuredly be able to follow me.”

He leaned forward a little, with his elbows on the chair arms and his ten fingertips resting on the desk. “Now. I don’t pretend that I can do the pointing unaided, but I have had intimations. The other day one of you was at pains to tell Mr. Goodwin of your movements Friday evening and Tuesday afternoon, though there was no earthly reason why you should have bothered. The same one made a strange remark, that it had been fifty-nine hours since Mrs. Fromm had been killed-extraordinary exactitude! Those were worth filing as intimations, but no more.”

He clasped his hands in front of his middle mound. “However, there were two major indications. First, the earrings. Mrs. Fromm bought them on May eleventh. Another woman was wearing them on May nineteenth. She must have got them as a gift or loan from Mrs. Fromm, or obtained them surreptitiously. In any case, Mrs. Fromm had them back and wore them three days later, Friday the twenty-second-and why? To try to impersonate the woman who had been wearing them on Tuesday! Then she knew who that woman was, she had some kind of suspicion about her, and, most important as an indication, she was able to retrieve the earrings, either openly or by stealth, for the purpose of the impersonation.”

“Indication of what?” Cramer demanded.

“Of the woman’s identity. By no means conclusive, but suggestive. She must have been one whose person and belongings were easily accessible, whether Mrs. Fromm retrieved the earrings overtly or covertly. Certainly that was in your calculations, Mr. Cramer, and you explored it to the utmost, but without result. Your formidable accumulation of negatives in this affair has been invaluable to me. Your ability to add two and two is unquestioned. You knew that my newspaper advertisement about a woman wearing spider earrings appeared Friday morning, and that Mrs. Fromm came here Friday noon wearing them, and that it was a good working hypothesis that she had retrieved them in that brief interval-two or three hours at the most. If she had had to go afar to get them you would have discovered it and exploited the discovery, and you wouldn’t be here now. Isn’t that true?”

“You’re telling it,” Cramer growled. “I didn’t know they were bought by Mrs. Fromm until this morning.”

“Even so, you knew they were probably unique. By the way, an interesting speculation as to why Mrs. Fromm bought them when they caught her eye in a window. Mr. Egan has said that in phoning to him a woman used a password, ‘Said a spider to a fly.’ Possibly, even probably, Mrs. Fromm had overheard that peculiar password used, and indeed that may have been a factor in her suspicion; and when she saw the spider earrings the impulse struck her to play a game with them.”

Wolfe took in a chestful of air, with him at least a peck, and let it out audibly. “To get on. The man who ran the car over the boy, Pete Drossos, was a strange creature, hard to swallow and impossible to digest. The simplest theory, that he was the man who had been in the car with the woman the day before, and was afraid that the boy could and would identify him, was invalidated when I learned that the man in the car with the woman had been Matthew Birch, who was killed Tuesday night; but in any case his conduct was peculiar. I put myself in his place. For whatever reason, I decide to kill that boy by driving to that corner in broad daylight, and, if and when he appears and offers an opportunity, run the car over him. I can’t expect the rare luck of having the opportunity at my first try; certainly I can’t count on it; I must anticipate the necessity of driving through that intersection several times, perhaps many times. There will be people around. There will be no reason for any of them to note me particularly until my opportunity comes and I run over the boy, but I will be casually seen by many eyes.”

He turned a palm up. “So what do I do? I can’t wear a mask, of course, but there are other expedients. A false beard would be excellent. I scorn them all and make no effort to disguise myself. Wearing my brown suit and felt hat, I proceed with the hazardous and mortal adventure. Then manifestly I am either a peerless dunce, or I am a woman. I prefer it that I’m a woman, at least as a trial hypothesis.

“For if I’m a woman many of the complexities disappear, since most of the roles are mine. I am involved in the blackmailing project; it may be that I direct it. Mrs. Fromm gets wind of it-not enough to act on, but enough to make her suspicious. She asks me guarded questions. She gives me the spider earrings. Tuesday afternoon I meet Matthew Birch, one of my accomplices. He has me drive his car, which is unusual, and suddenly produces a gun and presses its muzzle against me. Whatever the cause of his hostility, I know his character and I fear for my life. He orders me to drive somewhere. At a corner where we stop for a red light a boy approaches to wipe my window, and to his face, there so close to me, I say with my lips, ‘Help, get a cop.’ The light changes, Birch prods me, and we go. I recover from my panic, for I too have a character. Wherever we go, somewhere, sometime, I catch him off guard and attack. My weapon is a hammer, a wrench, a club, his own gun-but I don’t shoot him. I have him in the car, helpless, unconscious, and late at night I drive to a secluded alley, dump him out, run the car over him, park the car somewhere, and go home.”

Cramer rasped, “I could do this well myself. Show something.”

“I intend to. The next day I decide that the boy is a threat not to be tolerated. If Mrs. Fromm should somehow verify her suspicions and my connection with Birch is exposed, the boy could identify me as Birch’s companion in the car. I bitterly regret my moment of weakness when I told him to get a cop, startling him into staring at us, and I cannot endure the threat. So that afternoon, dressed as a man, I get the car from where it was parked and proceed as already described. This time I park the car far uptown and take the subway home.

“By now of course I am a moral idiot, an egomaniacal sow with boar’s tusks. Friday morning Mrs. Fromm gets the spider earrings and leaves the house wearing them. When she came home late that afternoon she talked with me, and told me among other things that she had hired Nero Wolfe to investigate. That was very imprudent; she should at least have suspected how dangerous I was. That night she got proof of it, though she never knew it. I went and found her car parked not far from the Horan apartment and hid behind the front seat, armed with a tire wrench. Horan came down with her, but-”

“Hold it!” Cramer snapped. “You’re charging Jean Estey with murder, with no evidence. I said you’re responsible for what you say, but I got them here, and there’s a limit. Give me a fact, or you’re through.”

Wolfe made a face. “I have only one fact, Mr. Cramer, and that hasn’t been established.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Very well, Archie, get them.”

As I got up to go to the connecting door to the front room I saw Purley Stebbins pay Wolfe one of the biggest tributes he ever got. He turned his head and dropped his eyes to Jean Estey’s hands. All Wolfe had done was make a speech. As Cramer had said, he hadn’t produced a sliver of evidence. And Jean Estey’s face showed no sign of funk. But Purley, next to her, fastened his eyes on her hands.

I pulled the door open and called, “Okay, Orrie!”

Some heads turned and some didn’t as they entered. Orrie stayed in the rear, and I conducted Levine through the crowd to a chair that was waiting for him at the corner of my desk, from which he had an unobstructed view of the front row. He was trying not to show how nervous he was, but when he sat he barely got onto the edge of the chair, and I had to tell him to get more comfortable.

Wolfe addressed him. “Your name is Bernard Levine?”

“Yes, sir.” He licked his lips.

“This gentleman near the end of my desk is Inspector Cramer of the New York Police Department. He is here on duty, but as an observer. My questions are my own, and you answer at your discretion. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”