So I read that item twice. It didn’t say that it had been pronounced suicide officially and finally, since she had left no note, but a nearly empty bourbon bottle had been there on a table, and on the floor by the couch she had died on there had been a glass with enough left in it to identify the cyanide. The picture of her was as she had been formerly when I had got my impression that I was infatuated. I asked Fritz if he had ever seen Sarah Yare, and he asked what movies she had been in, and I said none, that she was much too good for a movie.
I didn’t get to suggest phoning Lon Cohen to Wolfe because when he came down to the office at eleven o’clock, I wasn’t there. As I was finishing my second cup of coffee a phone call came from the district attorney’s office inviting me to drop in for a chat, and I went, and spent a couple of hours at Leonard Street with an assistant D.A. named Brill. When we got through, I knew slightly more than I had when we started, but he didn’t. He had a copy of our statement on his desk, and what could I add to that? He had a lot of fun, though. He would pop a question at me and then spend nine minutes studying the statement to see if I had tripped.
Getting home a little before noon, I was prepared to find Wolfe having a fresh attack of grump. He likes me to be there when he comes down from the plant rooms to the office, and while he can’t very well complain when the D.A. calls me on business that concerns us, this wasn’t our affair. We had no client and no case and no fee in prospect. But I got a surprise. Instead of being grumpy, he was busy, with the phone book open before him on his desk. He had actually gone clear around to my desk, stooped to get the book, lifted it and carried it back to his chair. Unheard of.
“Good morning,” I said. “What’s the emergency?”
“No emergency. I needed to know a number.”
“Did you find it?”
“Yes.”
I sat. He wants you at his level because it’s too much trouble to tilt his head back. “Nothing new,” I said, “at the D.A.’s office. Do you want a report?”
“No. I have an errand for you. I have formed a conjecture that I think is worth testing. You will go to Alec Gallant’s place on Fifty-fourth Street and speak with Mr. Gallant, his sister, Miss Prince, Miss Thorne, and Mr. Drew. Separately if possible. You will tell each of them — You read the paper this morning as usual?”
“Certainly.”
“You will tell each of them that I have engaged to make certain inquiries about Miss Sarah Yare, and that I shall be grateful for any information they may be able and willing to furnish. Specifically, I would like to see any communications they may have received from her, say in the past month. Don’t raise one brow like that. You know it disconcerts me.”
“I’ve never seen you disconcerted yet.” I let the brow down a little. “What’s the conjecture?”
“It may be baseless. You don’t need it to perform the errand.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Without delay.”
“If they ask me who engaged you, what do I say?”
“That you don’t know. You are merely following instructions.”
“If I ask you who engaged you, what do you say?”
“I tell you the truth. No one. Or more accurately, I have engaged myself. I think I may have been hoodwinked and I intend to find out. You may be fishing where there are no fish. They may all say they have never had any association with Sarah Yare, and they may be telling the truth or they may not. You will have that in mind and form your conclusions regarding it. If any of them acknowledge association with her, pursue it enough to learn the degree of intimacy, but don’t labor it. That can wait until we bait a hook. You are only to discover if there are any fish.”
I stood up. “It may take a while if the cops and the D.A. are working on them, and they probably are. How urgent is it? Do you want progress reports by phone?”
“Not unless you think it necessary. You must get all five of them.”
“Right. Don’t wait dinner for me.” I went.
On the way uptown in the taxi I was exercising my brain. I will not explain at this point why Wolfe wanted to know if any of the subjects had known Sarah Yare and if so, how well, for two reasons: first, you have certainly spotted it yourself; and second, since I am not so smart as you are, I had not yet come up with the answer. Anyway, that was underneath. On top, what I was using my brain for was the phone book. Unquestionably it was connected with his being hoodwinked, since that was what was biting him, and therefore it probably had some bearing on the call that had been made from his office to Bianca Voss, but what could he accomplish by consulting the phone book? For that I had no decent guess, let alone an answer, by the time I paid the hackie at 54th and Fifth Avenue.
Alec Gallant, Incorporated, on the north side of the street near Madison Avenue, was no palace, outside or in. The front was maybe thirty feet, and five feet of that was taken up by the separate entrance to the side hall. The show window, all dark green, had just one exhibit: a couple of yards of plain black fabric — silk or rayon or nylon or cottonon or linenon — draped on a little rack. Inside, nothing whatever was in sight — that is, nothing to buy. The wall-to-wall carpet was the same dark green as the show window. There were mirrors and screens and tables and ash trays, and a dozen or more chairs, not fancy, more to sit in than to look at. I had taken three steps on the carpet when a woman standing with a man by a table left him to come to meet me. I told her my name and told her I would like to see Mr. Gallant.
The man, approaching, spoke, “Mr. Gallant is not available. What do you want?”
That didn’t strike me as a very tactful greeting to a man who, for all he knew, might be set to pay $800 for an afternoon frock, but of course with a murder on the premises, he had had a tough twenty-four hours, so I kept it pleasant.
“I’m not a reporter,” I assured him, “or a cop, or a lawyer drumming up trade. I’m a private detective named Archie Goodwin, sent by a private detective named Nero Wolfe to ask Mr. Gallant a couple of harmless questions. Not connected with the death of Bianca Voss.”
“Mr. Gallant is not available.”
I hadn’t heard his voice in person before, only on the phone, but I recognized it. Also he looked like a business manager, with his neat, well-arranged face, his neat well-made dark suit, and his neat shadow-stripe four-in-hand. His cheeks wanted to sag and he was a little puffy around the eyes, but the city and county employees had probably kept him from getting much sleep.
“May I ask,” I said, “if you are Mr. Carl Drew?”
“I am, yes.”
“Then I’m in luck. I was instructed to see five different people here — Mr. Gallant, Miss Gallant, Miss Prince, Miss Thorne, and Mr. Carl Drew. Perhaps we could sit down?”
He ignored that. “See us about what?”
The woman had left us, but she was in earshot if her hearing was good, and Wolfe had said to see them separately, if possible. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d rather see you one at a time because I have to report to Mr. Wolfe and I’m apt to get confused talking with two people at once. So if that lady is Miss Prince or Miss Thorne—”
“She isn’t. And I’m busy. What do you want?”
“I want information, if you have any, about a woman who died yesterday. Not Bianca Voss. Miss Sarah Yare.”
He blinked. “Sarah Yare? What about her?”
“She is dead. She killed herself. Yesterday.”
“I know she did. That was tragic. But I can’t give you any information about it. I haven’t any.”