The Final Deduction (15 page)

I signaled the white apron for refills. “Let’s try something,” I said and got out my notebook and pen and started writing. I dated a blank page at the top and wrote:

The refills had come, and I sampled mine as I read it over. Tearing the sheet out, I handed it to Noel and watched his face. He took his time, then looked up. “So what?”

“So you’d have a foot. I don’t really expect you to sign it, I doubt if you have the nerve, you’ve knuckled under too long, but if you did sign it, you wouldn’t have to tell your mother you were going to do so-and-so and stick to it. You could tell her you
had
done so-and-so, you had come here with me and talked it over and confirmed your agreement with Mr. Wolfe in writing. She couldn’t send you to bed without any supper because you’ve already had your supper. Of course legally that thing isn’t important, because you’re already bound legally. Mr. Wolfe has a witness to his oral agreement with you. Me.”

He started to read it over again, quit halfway, put his glass down, and extended his hand. “Give me that pen.” I gave it to him, and he signed his name, pushed the paper across to me, picked up his glass, and raised it to eye level. “Excelsior! To freedom!” He put the glass to his mouth and drained it. A piece of ice slipped out and fell to the table, and he picked it up and threw it at the bartender across the room, missing by a yard. He shook his head, tittered, and asked me, “What did your mother do when you told her to go to hell?”

Since I had what I wanted, it would have suited me all right if we had been bounced, but apparently Noel was not a stranger at Barney’s. The barkeep took no action beyond occasional glances in our direction to see if more ice was coming. Noel wanted to talk. The idea seemed to be that I had made a hero of him, and he wanted to know who or what had made a hero of me at the early age of seventeen. I was willing to spend another half-hour and another drink on him, but I suspected that he didn’t want to go home until it was late enough for him to go to bed
without stopping in his mother’s room to say good night, and that might mean a couple of hours. So I began looking at my watch and worrying about being late for a date, and at ten o’clock I paid for the drinks and left him.

It was 10:26 when I mounted the stoop of the old brownstone and pushed the button. When Fritz opened the door he aimed a thumb to his rear, toward the office, signifying that there was company. I asked him who, and he told me in what he thinks is a whisper but is actually a kind of smothered croak, “Federal Bureau of Investigation.” I told him, “Rub off all fingerprints and burn the papers,” and went to the office.

You don’t have to believe me, but I would have known after one look at him, even if Fritz hadn’t told me. It’s mostly the eyes and the jaw. An FBI man spends so much time pretending he’s looking somewhere else that his eyes get confused; they’re never quite sure it’s okay to admit they’re focused on you. His jaw is even worse off. It is given to understand that it belongs to a man who is intrepid, daring, dauntless, cool, long-headed, quick-witted, and hard as nails, but it is cautioned that he is also modest, polite, reserved, patient, bland, and never to be noticed in a crowd. No jaw on earth could handle that order. The only question is how often it will twitch, and sideways or up and down.

Wolfe said, “Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Draper.”

Mr. Draper, having got to his feet, waited until my hand was unquestionably being offered, then extended his. Modest and reserved. His left hand went to a pocket, and I told him not to bother, but of course he did. An FBI man draws his credentials automatically, the way Paladin draws his gun. I glanced at it, not to hurt his feelings.

“Mr. Draper has been here a full hour,” Wolfe said, with the accent on the ‘full.’ “He has a copy of the statement we signed, and he has asked many questions about details. He has covered the ground thoroughly, but he wanted to see you.”

It looked like another full hour. I went to my desk and sat. Draper, back in the red leather chair, had his notebook out. “A few little questions, Mr. Goodwin,” he said. “If you don’t mind?”

“I like big ones better,” I said, “but shoot.”

“For the record,” he said. “Of course you understand that; you’re an experienced investigator. Mr. Wolfe says you left the house around half past six Tuesday evening, but he doesn’t know when you returned. When did you?”

I permitted myself a grin, modest, polite, and bland. “Mr. Draper,” I said, “I appreciate the compliment. You think I may have tailed Mrs. Vail Tuesday night, against her wishes and with or without Mr. Wolfe’s consent, and that I may even have got as far as Iron Mine Road without being spotted by one of the kidnapers. As you know, that would have been one for the books, a real honey, and I thank you for the compliment.”

“You’re welcome. When did you return?”

I gave it to him complete, from six-thirty until one o’clock, places, names, and times, going slow enough for him to get it down. When I finished he closed the notebook, then opened it again. “You drive a car, don’t you?”

“Mr. Wolfe owns it, I drive it. Sixty-one Heron sedan.”

“Where is it garaged?”

“Curran, Tenth Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth.”

“Did you use the car Tuesday night?”

“No. I believe I mentioned taxis.”

“Yes. You understand, Mr. Goodwin, for the record.” He pocketed the notebook, arose, and got his hat from the stand. “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Wolfe. Thank you very much. I doubt if we’ll bother you again.” He turned and went. I didn’t get up, because an FBI man moves fast and I would have had to jump to get ahead of him to open the door. When I heard it close I went to the hall for a look, came back, got from my pocket the paper Noel had signed, and handed it to Wolfe.

He read it and put it down. “This was called for?”

“It seemed to be desirable. Would you like a report?”

“Yes.”

I sat down and gave it to him—verbatim, all but the last half-hour with Noel, which wasn’t material. When I was through he picked up the paper, read it again, nodded, and said, “Satisfactory.” He put it down. “When your mother was in New York for a week last year, and dined here twice, and you spent some time taking her
around, I saw no trace of the animus you described to Mr. Tedder.”

“Neither did I. If we find enough of that five hundred grand to make it worth telling about, and it gets printed and she reads it, she won’t mind. She understands that in this job, working for you, the more lies the merrier, even one about her. By the way, in a letter I got last week she mentioned the chestnut croquettes again.”

“Did you tell Fritz?”

“Sure. Anything for the morning?”

“No.”

“Are Saul and Fred and Orrie still on?”

“Yes.” He eyed me. “Archie. Your reply to Mr. Draper’s question. Could he have had any other reason for asking it than the chronic suspicion of an inquisitor?”

“Certainly. They might have found the tire prints of your car at Iron Mine Road. I drove it there Wednesday.”

“Don’t dodge. You have friends who would lie for you without question, and you named some of them in your reply. One particularly. How much of your reply was fact?”

“All of it.” I stood. “I’m going to bed. My ears are burning. First the FBI and now you. I wish I
had
tailed her, and Mr. Knapp with the suitcase; then we’d know where the cabbage is.”

It’s always possible that people who invite me to the country for a weekend will get a break; there’s a chance that there will be a development that will keep me in town, and they will neither have to put me up nor put up with me. The lucky ones that last weekend in April were a couple in Easthampton who had me booked for Friday evening to Monday morning. I have reported the developments of Friday and Saturday, and Sunday I had to stick around in case a call for reinforcements came from Saul or Fred or Orrie.

Wolfe’s routine for Sunday is different. Theodore Horstmann, the orchid nurse, has the day off and goes to visit his married sister in Jersey, so there are no regular
two-hour sessions in the plant rooms. Wolfe goes up once or twice to look around and do whatever chores the situation and the weather require, but there is no strict schedule. Usually he is down in the office by ten-thirty, at least the Sundays I am there, to settle down with the review-of-the-week section of the Sunday
Times
, which he goes right through.

From nine o’clock on that Sunday morning I was half expecting a call from Noel Tedder to tell me that he had issued his Declaration of Independence, one hero to another, but it hadn’t come by the time I turned on the radio for the ten-o’clock news. Nor had there been any word from any of the tailers, but I was soon to know where Saul Panzer was. As I was turning the radio off the doorbell rang, and I went to the hall and saw Andrew Frost So Saul was near enough to see the door opening, no matter how Frost had got there. I swung the door wide and said good morning.

It may be cheesy writing to say that Frost’s expression and tone were frosty as he said he wanted to see Nero Wolfe, but it’s good reporting. They were. It was possible that a factor was the probability that he would have to miss church, since he was dressed for it in a custom-made charcoal-gray top-coat and a forty-dollar homburg to match. I allowed him to enter, took the hat and coat, ushered him to the office, and buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone. When Wolfe’s voice came, his usual testy “Yes?” and I told him Mr. Andrew Frost had come and had been admitted, he snapped, “Ten minutes,” and hung up. When I told Frost he made a frosty little noise and gave me a frosty look. He didn’t seem to look as much like Abraham Lincoln as he had Wednesday afternoon, but that may have been because I had never seen a picture of Lincoln simmering.

It was nearer fifteen minutes than ten when the sound came of the elevator, and Wolfe entered, a spray of Miltonia roezli in his left hand and the Sunday
Times
under his right arm. He takes his copy of the
Times
with him to the plant rooms so he won’t have to stop off at his room on the way down to the office. Labor-saving device. He stopped at the corner of his desk to face the caller, said, “Mr. Frost? How do you do. I was expecting you,” then
put the flowers in the vase and the
Times
on the desk, and circled around to his chair.

Frost said distinctly, “You were not expecting me.”

“But I was.” Wolfe, seated, regarded him. “I invited you. I told Mr. Purcell that Mr. Vail was murdered, knowing that that would almost certainly bring you. I wished to see everyone who had been at that gathering Wednesday evening. You came, naturally, to remonstrate. Go ahead.”

A muscle at the side of the lawyer’s neck was twitching. “Are you saying,” he demanded, “that you uttered that slander, knowing it was false, merely to coerce me to come here so you could see me?”

A corner of Wolfe’s mouth went up a sixteenth of an inch. “That’s quite a question. I uttered no slander, because what I said was true. I haven’t coerced you; you are under no constraint; if you don’t want to be here, go. Has Mr. Purcell told you what led me to the conclusion that Mr. Vail was murdered?”

“Yes. It’s pure sophistry. The police and the District Attorney haven’t formed that conclusion. It’s false, fallacious, and defamatory, and it’s actionable.”

“Has the District Attorney made his final deduction and closed the inquiry?”

“Formally, no.”

“Even if he does, that won’t prove me wrong. He needs evidence that will convince a jury; I don’t. I merely—”

“You’ll need evidence if you persist in this slander and are made to answer for it.”

“I doubt if I’ll have to meet that contingency. I merely needed a starting point for a job I have undertaken, and I got it—my conclusion that Mr. Vail was murdered. I have no—”

“You have no job. You mean that fantastic scheme with Noel Tedder. That’s off.”

Wolfe turned his head. “Archie. That paper?”

I hadn’t opened the safe, so I had to work the combination. I did so and got the paper from the shelf where I had put it before going up to bed. As I approached with it, Wolfe told me to give it to Frost. He took it, ran his
eyes over it, and then read it word by word. When he looked up, Wolfe spoke.

“I’m not a counselor-at-law, Mr. Frost, but I have some knowledge of the validity of contracts. I’m confident that that paper binds Mrs. Vail as well as Mr. Tedder.”

“When did he sign it?”

“Yesterday evening.”

“It won’t stand. He was tricked into signing it.”

Wolfe turned. “Archie?”

“No tricks,” I told Frost. “Ask him. He’s fed up and wants to stand on his own two feet. I bought him three little drinks, but he was perfectly sober. There were witnesses.”

“Witnesses where?”

“Barney’s bar and grill, Seventy-eighth and Madison.” I was still there by him, and I put out a hand. “May I have it, please?”

He took another look at it and handed it over. I went to the safe and put it back on the shelf and swung the door shut.

Wolfe was speaking. “I was about to say, Mr. Frost, that I have no intention of broadcasting my conclusion that Mr. Vail was murdered, or my reasons for it. I had to tell Mr. Tedder in order to explain my approach to our joint problem, and I told Mr. Purcell because I wanted to see you; he would of course tell his sister, and she would tell you. My purposes have been served. As for the murder, I am not—”

“There was no murder.”

“That’s
your
conclusion—or your delusion. I’m not bent on disturbing it. I am not a nemesis.”

“Why did you want to see me?”