“But you like it?”
“Yes. If it misses we can blame it on Saul.”
“Blaming is fatuous. The wording of the letter is important. Read it.”
So that’s why, at one o’clock Friday afternoon, I was settled in a comfortable chair in a bedroom on the ninth floor of the Maidstone Hotel, on Central Park West in the Seventies. Julie Jaquette, in the bed, was not stretched out; she was propped up against three pillows, drinking her third cup of coffee, having cleaned up the toast and bacon and eggs and muffins and strawberry jam, while I explained about the blackmailing caper, including Thā-lēz of Miletus, but not including Ballou’s name. It was a nice big room, made even nicer by the clusters of Vanda rogersi which I had brought, in a vase on the over-the-bed table. She had stuck one of the flowers in the front V of what she had on, a light blue thing with sleeves and no frills. She had said she was no treat in bed in the morning, but actually she wasn’t at all hard to look at. Clear-eyed and fresh and kind of hard-boiled wholesome.
“Poor Isabel,” she said. “You can’t beat that for lousy breaks, a blackmailer for a brother-in-law and a murderer for a pet. My God.”
“And a heehaw for a friend,” I said.
“She only had one real friend. Me.”
“Right. I call you a mule only professionally. If I was being personal I would call you kitten or snugglebunny or lamb. Profess—”
“Do you realize this is a bed? That I could reach out and grab you?”
“Yeah, I’m watching every move. I call you a mule professionally because the minute you heard that your friend Isabel had been murdered you decided Orrie Cather had done it and you won’t budge, not even when the third smartest detective in New York gives you ten to one. It would—”
“Who are the two smartest?”
“Nero Wolfe and me, but don’t quote me. It would take an hour to explain why all three of us have crossed Orrie off, and even then you might not budge. But now we think we know who did kill her. The blackmailer. Barry Fleming. Her sister’s husband.”
She put the coffee cup down. “Huh. You got reasons?”
“If you mean evidence, no. But if there’s any other good candidate we can’t find him or her, and we have tried hard. Barry Fleming is perfect. Obviously Isabel told Stella who was keeping her — X, to you — and Stella had told Barry, since he couldn’t blackmail him unless—”
“I may be a mule, but I can count up to two and I can say the alphabet backward.”
“A mule would say it backward. When X told Isabel he was being blackmailed, she knew it must be Barry. She tried to make him stop, but he wouldn’t. Finally she told him she was going to tell Stella; she had probably threatened to before. That was Saturday morning. She told him she had definitely decided to tell Stella when she saw her that evening, and he killed her. Count up to two.”
“Don’t wear me out.” She shoved the table away, and the vase swayed, and I jumped to save it. She slid down in the bed, tossed one of the pillows on the floor, and propped her head on the other two. “You’re quick,” she said. “Graceful, too. You could make a chorus line easy. Leave your name with the girl at the desk. Have you explained all this to the cops?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I thought it unnecessary to tell her about the fifty grand. “Because they like Orrie and they’ve got him, and we have no evidence. Not one little scrap. The reason I’m telling you, we thought you might be willing to help. You do want the man that murdered her to get it, don’t you?”
“You’re damn right I do.”
“Then you might help. You could write Fleming a letter, calling him Thales, and telling him you want the five grand he got from X — or most of it. Tell him that Isabel told you everything, maybe even hint that you think he killed her and you know why. Of course he would have to see you, and also, if he killed Isabel, he would have to kill you, and it would be a cinch for us to arrange to have evidence of that. So we’d have him. Happy ending.”
She laughed, and she was such a good laugher that I caught it and joined in. When she had it under control she said, “You’re not married, are you?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Never?”
“Nope. I’ve asked at least a thousand.”
“I’ll bet. I was once, and what a year that was. Do you know what I’m going to do when you leave?”
“Nope.”
“I’m going to stand at the window and look out, and think it’s a damn shame that it simply won’t work. Anyway, if I’m going to get killed, all you’d get out of it would be a trip to the cemetery. This letter. Exactly what do I say?”
I waved a hand. “Forget it. A gag is for a laugh, and I got it.”
“Nuts.” She aimed a finger at me. “Listen, you. ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA. You came to deal me in. Don’t spoil it with a phony shuffle. Ten to one, twenty to one, you and Nero Wolfe wrote it out and you’ve got it in your pocket. Let’s see it.”
She would have had me if I hadn’t taken the trouble to memorize it. “Thank God,” I said, “you decided not to marry me. I’d get a Charley horse just trying to keep up. All right, we did discuss what the letter might say. But if you write it and I mail it, the minute he gets it you’re a sitting duck. Tomorrow’s Saturday. If you write it now and I mail it, he’ll get it tomorrow morning. He might move fast and he might try anything. At ten o’clock tomorrow morning I’ll be here, outside in the hall, and Saul Panzer, the rat, will be down in the lobby. When you leave, we leave with you, and we stick, and you don’t try any dodges just to show that you know what men are for and what they’re not for. At the Ten Little Indians we’ll be there, and so will Fred Durkin, and one of us will be here, in the hall, all night. And so on until something happens.”
“That’s screwy,” she said. “How could anything happen with all you heroes right there?”
“Leave that to us. We can’t arrange details until we see how he reacts. You’re willing to give it a try?”
“Certainly. The way you danced me in, I have to. Anyway, I want to. Nobody has ever tried to kill me, and it will make me feel important. All my life I have wanted to feel important.”
“So has everybody else. But it must be understood that you will follow sugges — you will obey orders. You’ll do exactly what you’re told. What do you swear on, the Bible?”
“No, some of the men in it are awful, and so are the women. We’ll shake.” She offered a hand.
It was a purely professional contact, but it was a fact that she had nice hands, and I said so. “Before we go to work on the letter,” I said, “I should mention the possibility that Stella may open it and read it. That would make it a different situation, but maybe even a better one. Anyhow, tomorrow is Saturday and he’ll probably be there. Now the letter. We had the idea of addressing it to Milton Thales, care of Barry Fleming, but that would just be a stunt. Mr. Wolfe likes stunts. Would you call him Barry or Mr. Fleming?”
“I’ve never seen him. Mr. Fleming.”
“Okay. On the hotel stationery. Dear Mr. Fleming. As you know, I was Isabel’s closest friend, and we told each other everything. She told me all about Milton Thales, and how you got that five thousand dollars, and how she felt about it. She also told me she was going to tell her sister, and that she would tell you first that she was going to tell her. That didn’t surprise me, I knew her so well. But I wonder if that had anything to do with what happened to her, and I would like to know. One thing, considering how you got that five thousand dollars, I don’t think you should keep it. I think you should give it to me and I’ll give it to some charity. I expect to hear from you soon. I live at this hotel. Sincerely yours. Of course the wording can be changed, as long as the points are covered.”