The Final Deduction (11 page)

He hadn’t mentioned it to me; it would have been admitting that Jimmy Vail’s death might possibly be of interest to us. We had several books on toxicology on the shelves, but he hadn’t been here yesterday, so he must have found one when he was going over Doc Vollmer’s shelves. I had had personal experience of chloral hydrate, having once been served a Mickey Finn by a woman named Dora Chapin. Two hours after I had swallowed it you could have rowed me out to Bedloe’s Island and pushed the Statue of Liberty onto me and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

Wolfe was going on. “So that Mr. Vail was murdered with deliberation may properly be called a deduction, not an assumption. Not a final deduction, but a basic one, for it is the ground for my assumptions. Whether you like it or not, do you concur?”

“I don’t know.” Tedder’s tongue showed between his lips. “Go on with your assumptions.”

“They’re purely tentative, to establish a starting point. But first another deduction, made three days ago, on Tuesday, by Mr. Goodwin and me. Dinah Utley, your mother’s secretary, was implicated in the kidnaping, and
not indirectly or passively. She had an active hand in it. Her death—”

“How do you know that?”

“By observed evidence and interpretation of it. I’ll reserve it. I’m exposing my position, Mr. Tedder, because I have to if you’re going to occupy it with me, but I need not reveal all the steps that have led to it. I’m taking your good faith as a working hypothesis, but there is still that conjecture—that you had a part in the kidnaping and you know where the money is. If so, it was an egregious blunder to come to me. I’ll get my share of the money, and you’ll get your share of doom. Do you want to withdraw before I commit myself to this mad gamble? Do you want to leave?”

“Hell no. You talk a lot and you talk big.”

“I hope to the point—our starting point. I am almost there. Miss Utley was involved in the kidnaping and was murdered. Mr. Vail was the victim of the kidnaping and was murdered. My assumptions are, first, that both murders were consequential to the kidnaping operation; and second, that the person who killed Mr. Vail, with premeditation since he drugged him, being involved in the kidnaping, knows where the money is. He was present at the gathering at that house Wednesday evening. Therefore, if we are to find the money, our starting point is that house and its occupants. If you will proceed from that point with me, I’ll accept your proposal.”

Tedder was chewing his lips. “Jesus,” he said. He chewed some more. “The way you put it … I guess I’m in over my head. You’re saying one of them killed Jimmy—Uncle Ralph or Frost or my sister.”

“Or your mother or you.”

“Sure, we were there.” He shook his head. “Holy Christ. My mother, that’s crazy. Me, I liked Jimmy. He couldn’t see me, but I liked him. Uncle Ralph—”

“That’s irrelevant, Mr. Tedder. The murder resulted from the kidnaping—my assumption. The kidnaper wished him no harm and rendered him none; he only wanted the money. Logically that excludes your mother, but not you. There are several possibilities. For one, Miss Utley was killed because she demanded too large a share of the loot. For another, Mr. Vail was killed because he
had learned that one of those present Wednesday evening was responsible for the kidnaping, and of course that wouldn’t do. We ignore the mysterious Mr. Knapp perforce, because we don’t know who or where he is. Presumably he was a confederate whose chief function was to make the phone calls, but he may also have got the money from your mother, since he spoke to her, and if he has bolted with it, we’re done before we start. We could expose the murderer, to no profit, but that’s all. I say ‘we.’ Is it ‘we’? Do we proceed?”

“How?”

“First I would need to speak at length, separately, with those who were present Wednesday evening, beginning with you. You would have to bring them here, or send them, by some pretext—or some inducement, perhaps a share of the money. Then I’ll see.”

“Great. Just great. I ask them—my sister, for instance—to come and let you grill her to find out if she kidnaped Jimmy and then killed him. Great.”

“You might manage to put it more tactfully.”

“Yeah, I might.” He leaned forward. “Look, Mr. Wolfe. Maybe you’ve got it right, your deductions and assumptions, and maybe not. If you have and you find the money, okay, I’ll get mine and you’ll get yours. I don’t owe my uncle a damn thing, and God knows I don’t owe that lawyer, Andrew Frost, anything. He talked my mother out of letting me have—oh, to hell with it. As for my sister, I’m not her keeper, repeat not—she can look out for herself. You try putting it to her tactfully and see what—”

The phone rang. I swiveled and got it. “Nero Wolfe’s residence, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“This is Margot Tedder. I’d like to speak to Mr. Wolfe.”

I told her to hold it and turned. “Margot Tedder wants to speak to you.”

Noel made a noise. Wolfe frowned at his phone to remind it that he resents being summoned by it, no matter who, then reached for it. “Yes, Miss Tedder?”

“Nero Wolfe?”

“Yes.”

“You never go anywhere, do you?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll have to come there. I’ll come now.”

“You won’t be admitted. I’ll be at dinner. Why do you wish to come?”

“I want you to help me do something.”

“What?”

“I’d rather— Oh, it doesn’t matter. About the money my mother gave the kidnapers. You know about that.”

“Yes, What about it?”

“She has told me that if I can find it I can have it, and I want you to help me. We’ll have to hurry. I’ll come now. Your dinner can wait.”

“I can’t. More precisely, I won’t. You may come at nine o’clock, not before. I’m busy. You will excuse me. I’m hanging up.” He cradled the phone and turned. “Your sister says that her mother told her that if she finds the money paid to the kidnaper she can have it, and she is coming at nine o’clock to enlist my help. I’ll tell her you have already engaged me. We have twenty minutes until my dinnertime. Where were you from eight o’clock Sunday evening until eight o’clock Wednesday morning?”

A man’s time-and-place record as given by him may or may not prove anything, even if it doesn’t check. There are a lot of people who wouldn’t tell you exactly where they had been and what they had done between eight p.m. Sunday and eight a.m. Wednesday even if they hadn’t kidnaped or murdered anybody. Wolfe, knowing how easy it is to frame an alibi, has seldom tried to crack one. In all the years I have been with him I haven’t checked more than four or five. He has sometimes had Saul Panzer or Fred Durkin or Orrie Gather look into one, but not often. I put what Noel Tedder told him in my notebook, but I knew it wouldn’t be checked unless developments nominated Noel for the tag. Besides, only one time and place was essential, either for Noel or for one of the others. It didn’t have to be that he himself had snatched Jimmy Vail Sunday evening, or had helped to keep him wherever he had been kept, or had put notes in telephone
books Tuesday evening, or had been at Iron Mine Road Tuesday night. The one essential time and place was the Harold F. Tedder library Wednesday evening, and we knew he had been there. They all had. The question had to be asked; if Noel had gone up in a balloon with six United States Senators Sunday morning and hadn’t come down until Wednesday noon, he couldn’t be expected to know where the money was, and that was the point. But I won’t waste my space and your time reporting his whereabouts for those sixty hours.

More interesting was his reaction to the news that Margot was coming to see Wolfe. It fussed him more than anything Wolfe had said to him. When he said he didn’t believe his mother had told her that, he had to squeeze it through his teeth. Evidently he had some strong feeling about his sister, and it wasn’t brotherly love. Wolfe tried to ask him questions about Dinah Utley and her relations with Purcell and Frost and Margot, but got no usable answers. Noel wanted to be damn sure that Wolfe wasn’t going to let Margot talk him into switching to her. He even offered to bring Uncle Ralph that evening and Andrew Frost in the morning. When Fritz announced dinner he followed Wolfe to the dining-room door, and I had to take his arm and start him to the front.

Returning and entering the dining room, I found that Wolfe had pulled his chair out but hadn’t sat. “A grotesque venture,” he grunted. “Preposterous. Will that woman be punctual?”

“Probably not.” I pulled my chair back. “She’s not the punctual type.”

“But she may be. You’ll have to be at the phone with your coffee to get Saul and Fred and Orrie. In my room in the morning at eight, and in the office with you at nine.” Fritz was there with the stuffed clams, and he sat and took the spoon and fork. He couldn’t have sat before giving me instructions because that would have been talking business during a meal, and by heck a rule is a rule is a rule. As I helped myself to clams I held my breath because if you smell them, mixed with shallots, chives, chervil, mushrooms, bread crumbs, sherry, and dry white wine, you take so many that you don’t leave enough room for the duckling roasted in cider with Spanish sauce
as revised by Wolfe and Fritz, leaving out the carrot and parsley and putting anchovies in. As I ate the clams I remarked to myself that we darned well had better find at least some leavings of the half a million, since Saul and Fred and Orrie came to twenty-five bucks an hour, plus expenses.

I don’t know how Wolfe first got the notion that when I’ve had one good look at a woman and heard her speak, especially if she’s under thirty, I can answer any question he wants to ask about her, but I know he still has it, chiefly on account of little items like my saying that Margot Tedder wouldn’t be punctual. She was twenty-five minutes late. Of course if she had been on time I would have commented that she must need some ready cash quick. When you once get a reputation, or it gets you, you’re stuck with it for good.

I have said that from hearsay she kept her chin up so she could look down her nose, and her manners when she entered the old brownstone didn’t contradict it. Crossing the threshold, she gave me a nod for a butler, though I hadn’t seen one at 994 Fifth Avenue, and when I took her to the office she stopped at the edge of the big rug, looked it over from side to side and end to end, and asked Wolfe, “Is that a Kazak?”

“No,” he said. “Shirvan.”

“You can’t possibly appreciate it. Is it yours?”

“I doubt it. It was given to me in nineteen thirty-two, in Cairo, by a man to whom I had rendered a service, and I suspected he had stolen it in Kandahar. If it wasn’t rightfully his, it isn’t rightfully mine. But of course illegality of ownership does not extend indefinitely. If my possession of that rug were challenged by an heir of the Kandahar prince who once owned it, or by one of his wives or concubines, I would enter a defense. It would be a borderline case. After sufficient time legal ownership is undisputed. Your grandfather was a bandit; some of his forays were almost certainly actionable. But if a descendant of one of his victims tried to claim that fur thing you are wearing, she would be laughed at I’m pleased that you recognize the quality of the rug, though only an ignoramus could mistake it for a Kazak. Kazaks have a long pile. You are Margot Tedder? I am Nero Wolfe.” He
pointed to the red leather chair. “Sit down and tell me what you want.”

She had opened her mouth a couple of times to cut in on him, but Wolfe in full voice is not easy to interrupt, particularly if his eyes are pinning you. “I told you on the phone what I want,” she said.

“You will please sit down, Miss Tedder. I like eyes at a level.”

She glanced at me. The poor girl was stuck. She didn’t want to sit down because he had ordered her to, but to stay on her feet would be silly. She compromised. One of the yellow chairs was at the end of my desk, and she came and sat on it. As I have said, when she walked you might have thought her hips were in a cast, but sitting she wasn’t at all hard to look at.

“I didn’t come,” she said, “to listen to a lecture about legal ownership by a detective. You know what I came for. My mother paid you sixty thousand dollars for nothing. All you did was put that thing in the paper. For sixty thousand dollars you certainly ought to help me find the money my mother gave the kidnaper. That’s more than ten per cent.”

Wolfe grunted. “Twelve. That might be thought adequate. How would I go about it? Have you a suggestion?”

“Of course not. You would go about it the way any detective would. That’s your business.”

“Could I count on your cooperation?”

She frowned at him, her chin up. “How could I cooperate?”

He didn’t frown back. Having put her in her place, he didn’t mind if she didn’t stay put. “That would depend on developments,” he said. “Take a hypothesis. Do you know what a hypothesis is?”

“You’re being impertinent.”

“Not without provocation. You didn’t know what a Shirvan is. The hypothesis: If I took the job you offer, I would want to begin by asking you some questions. For example, what were your relations with Dinah Utley?”

She stared. “What on earth has that got to do with finding the money?”

He nodded. “I thought so. You’re under a misapprehension. You expected me to pit my wits and Mr. Goodwin’s
eyes and legs against the horde of official investigators who are combing the countryside and looking under every stone. Pfui. That would be infantile. I would have to approach it differently, and the best way—indeed, the only way—would be through Dinah Utley. You know that Mr. Goodwin and I suspected that she was implicated in the kidnaping; you heard your mother and Mr. Goodwin discuss it Wednesday afternoon. Now we don’t suspect it; we know it. Therefore—”

“How do you know it? Because she was there and was killed?”

“Partly that, but there were other factors. She was here Tuesday afternoon. Therefore at least one of the kidnapers was someone with whom she had had contacts, and I would want to learn all I could about her. How well did you know her?”

“Why—she was my mother’s secretary. She lived in the house, but she didn’t regard herself as a servant. I thought my mother let her take too many liberties.”

“What kind of liberties?”