The interviews with those five were not all that happened that day and night and morning. Wolfe and I had discussions, of the numerous ways in which a determined and intelligent person can get his hands on a supply of cyanide, of the easy access to the bottles in the refrigerator in the broadcasting studio, of the advisability of trying to get Inspector Cramer or Sergeant Purley Stebbins to cough up some data on things like fingerprints. That got us exactly as far as the interviews did. Then there were two more phone calls from Cramer, and some from Lon Cohen and various others; and there was the little detail of arranging for Professor F. O. Savarese to pay us a visit.
Also the matter of arranging for Nancylee Shepherd to come and be processed, but on that we were temporarily stymied. We knew all about her: she was sixteen, she lived with her parents at 829 Wixley Avenue in the Bronx, she had light yellow hair and grey eyes, and her father worked in a storage warehouse. They had no phone, so at four Wednesday, when Miss Fraser had left and Wolfe had gone up to the plants, I got the car from the garage and drove to the Bronx. 829 Wixley Avenue was the kind of apartment house where people live not because they want to, but because they have to. It should have been ashamed of itself and probably was. There was no click when I pushed the button marked Shepherd, so I went to the basement and dug up the janitor. He harmonized well with the building. He said I was way behind time if I expected to get any effective results-that's what he said-pushing the Shepherd button. They had been gone three days now. No, not the whole family, Mrs Shepherd and the girl. He didn't know where they had gone, and neither did anyone else around there. Some thought they had skipped, and some thought the cops had 'em. He personally thought they might be dead. No, not Mr Shepherd too. He came home from work every afternoon a little after five, and left every morning at half-past six.
A glance at my wrist showing me ten to five, I offered the animal a buck to stick around the front and give me a sign when Shepherd showed up, and the look in his eye told me that I had wasted at least four bits of the clients' money.
It wasn't a long wait. When Shepherd appeared I saw that it wouldn't have been necessary to keep the janitor away from his work, for from the line of the eyebrows it was about as far up to the beginning of his hair as it was down to the point of his chin, and a sketchy description would have been enough. Whoever designs the faces had lost all sense of proportion. As he was about to enter the vestibule I got in front of him and asked without the faintest touch of condescension: “Mr Shepherd?”
“Get out,” he snarled.
“My name's Goodwin and I'm working for Miss Madeline Fraser. I understand your wife and daughter-”
“Get out!”
“But I only want-”
“Get out!”
He didn't put a hand on me or shoulder me, and I can't understand yet how he got past me to the vestibule without friction, but he did, and got his key in the door. There were of course a dozen possible courses for me, anything from grabbing his coat and holding on to plugging him in the jaw, but while that would have given me emotional release it wouldn't have got what I wanted. It was plain that as long as he was conscious he wasn't going to tell me where Nancylee was, and unconscious he couldn't. I passed.
I drove back down to Thirty-fifth Street, left the car at the kerb, went in to the office, and dialled Madeline Fraser's number. Deborah Koppel answered, and I asked her: “Did you folks know that Nancylee has left home? With her mother?”
Yes, she said, they knew that “You didn't mention it when you were here this morning. Neither did Miss Fraser this afternoon.”
“There was no reason to mention it, was there? We weren't asked.”
“You were asked about Nancylee, both of you.”
“But not if she had left home or where she is.”
“Then may I ask you now? Where is she?”
“I don't know.”
“Does Miss Fraser?”
“No. None of us knows.”
“How did you know she was gone?”
“She phoned Miss Fraser and told her she was going.”
“When was that?”
“That was…that was Sunday.”
“She didn't say where she was going?”
“No.”
That was the best I could get. When I was through trying and had hung up, I sat and considered. There was a chance that Purley Stebbins of Homicide would be in the mood for tossing me a bone, since Cramer had been spending nickels on us, but if I asked him for it he would want to make it a trade, and I had nothing to offer. So when I reached for the phone again it wasn't that number, but the Gazette's, that I dialled.
Lon Cohen immediately got personal. Where, he wanted to know, had I got the idea that an open Press release made an entry in my credit column?
I poohed him. “Some day, chum, you'll get a lulu. Say in six months, the way we're going. A newspaper is supposed to render public service, and I want some.
Did you know that Nancylee Shepherd and her mother have blown?”
“Certainly. The father got sore because she was mixed up in a murder case. He damn' near killed two photographers. Father has character.”
“Yeah, I've met Father. What did he do with his wife and daughter, bury them?”
“Shipped 'em out of town. With Cramer's permission, as we got it here, and of course Cramer knew where but wasn't giving out. Naturally we thought it an outrage. Is the great public, are American people, to be deceived and kept in ignorance? No. You must have had a hunch, because we just got it here-it came in less than an hour ago. Nancylee and her mother are at the Ambassador in Atlantic City, sitting-room, bedroom, and bath.”
“You don't say. Paid for by?”
He didn't know. He agreed that it was intolerable that the American people, of whom I was one, should be uninformed of so vital a point, and before he hung up he said he would certainly do something about it.
When Wolfe came down to the office I reported developments. At the same time we still had three more to overhaul, but it was already apparent that we were going to need all we could get, so Wolfe told me to get Saul Panzer on the phone. Saul wasn't in, but an hour later he called back.
Saul Panzer free-lances. He has no office and doesn't need one. He is so good that he demands, and gets, double the market, and any day of the week he gets so many offers that he can pick as he pleases. I have never known him to turn Wolfe down except when he was so tied up he couldn't shake loose.
He took this on. He would take a train to Atlantic City that evening, sleep there, and in the morning persuade Mrs Shepherd to let Nancylee come to New York for a talk with Wolfe. He would bring her, with Mother if necessary.
As Wolfe was finishing with Saul, Fritz entered with a tray. I looked at him with surprise, since Wolfe seldom takes on beer during the hour preceding dinner, but then, as he put the tray on the desk, I saw it wasn't beer. It was a bottle of Starlite, with three glasses. Instead of turning to leave, Fritz stood by.
“It may be too cold,” Fritz suggested.
With a glance of supercilious distaste at the bottle, Wolfe got the opener from his top drawer, removed the cap, and started pouring.
“It seems to me,” I remarked, “like a useless sacrifice. Why suffer? If Orchard had never drunk Starlite before he wouldn't know whether it tasted right or not, and even if he didn't like it they were on the air and just for politeness he would have gulped some down.” I took the glass that Fritz handed me, a third full. “Anyway he drank enough to kill him, so what does it matter what we think?”