It was neat. She had used only four words, “I met him somewhere,” to tell me that she didn’t want them to know of her call at Wolfe’s office. I humored her. “No, thanks,” I said. “It’s not urgent. I’ll wait somewhere till you finish if you’ll tell me where.”
“You phoned,” Noel Ferris said.
He was looking at me. I met his lazy brown eyes. “I phoned?”
He nodded, a lazy nod. “Around noon.” His voice changed: “ ‘My name is Buster. I want to speak to Miss Annis. Then I’ll speak to Miss Baxter, please.’ ” His voice changed back. “Will that pass?”
It would indeed. On a tape recording my voice doesn’t sound like me at all, but he had it to a T, and he had only heard me once on the phone. “Perfect,” I said. “I wish I could do it. It’s a gift.”
“That’s nothing.” He was bored. He was younger than me, but probably he had been born bored. “But your name’s Archie Goodwin. I seem to have heard it. Are you in the theatre?” He waved it away with a lazy hand. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t bother.”
I opened my mouth to bother, but closed it when Tammy Baxter pushed her chair back and got up. As she headed for the door I moved, but stopped when she said, “I’m just going for my lipstick. I’ll be back.” Paul Hannah was telling Noel Ferris, “Of course you’ve heard it.” Hannah was still younger than Ferris. For a juvenile lead he would have to do something about his chubby cheeks. He was regarding me. “Aren’t you the Archie Goodwin that works with Nero Wolfe?”
“For him,” I said.
“A detective.”
“Right.”
“A snoop,” Raymond Dell rumbled. “Worse than a Philistine. A monster.”
“That’s not very polite,” Martha Kirk said. She was an ornamental little number, not long out of high school, with a dimple in her chin. I no longer had any illusions about dimples. The most attractive and best-placed ones I had ever seen were on the cheeks of a woman who had fed arsenic to three husbands in a row.
“If Ray knew how to be polite,” Noel Ferris drawled, “he would have had his name at the top of a marquee long ago.” His eyes moved lazily to me. “Since you’re a detective, maybe you can help us. As a service to the arts. We’re having a conference, but it’s a farce. Just a guessing match. We want to know what’s going to happen to this castle of culture now that our Lady Bountiful has been slain.”
“By a fiend,” Raymond Dell declared. “Worse than a monster!”
“People who steal cars,” Paul Hannah said, “and run them over people ought to have their hands and feet cut off.”
“How horrible,” Martha Kirk said. She had a full rich contralto, enough for one twice her size. “That’s brutal, Paul.”
“It’s not polite,” Noel Ferris drawled. “But you might agree if you had seen her, Martha darling. It was my luck to be here when they came to get someone to identify her. That was horrible. I would be for one hand and one foot, at least.”
Raymond Dell boomed at me, “Is that what you’re snooping about?”
“No,” I said, “it’s after hours. I only snoop from eight to four. I know about Miss Annis because it happened only three blocks from Nero Wolfe’s place and the cop on the beat told me, but that’s a police matter. I’m just a Philistine trying to rub up against culture.”
“So Tammy is culture,” Noel Ferris said. “I don’t deny that she — but here she is. Tammy, you’re culture.”
“Sit down,” Dell commanded me. “I’ll explain why it’s hopeless. Utterly hopeless.”
“Later, Ray.” Tammy Baxter was in the doorway. “Maybe Rodgers and Hammerstein sent him to beg me to take a lead. If I like it I’ll buy the house and have the plumbing fixed. Come on, Mr. Goodwin.”
She started down the hall and I followed. Toward the front she opened a door on the left, entered and flipped a light switch, and, when I was in, closed the door. It was the parlor, at least it had been the parlor fifty years back, and it was the same furniture. Dark red plush or velvet or whatever it was. An upright piano. The window blinds were down. I dropped my coat and hat on a sofa. She took hold of a chair to move it and found it was heavy, and I helped, and we sat. She didn’t sit like an actress. Actresses sit with their knees together and to one side a little, and their feet drawn in, but she kept hers straight front and at a right angle, with her feet flat.
She cocked her head. “I’ve been trying to guess what brought you. It would be flattering to think it’s a social call, but no such luck. When you phoned you asked for Miss Annis first.”
“That Noel Ferris is a wonderful mimic,” I said. “When I was a boy I could croak like a bullfrog, but I’ve lost it. I’m more than willing to make it social. If you can stand a drink on top of a sandwich Sardi’s is only a six-minute walk.”
She shook her head. “I think not. You did ask for Miss Annis?”
“Yes. The fact is, I’m under suspicion. I suspect myself of wanting to see you again, I have no idea why. I suspect my asking for Miss Annis was a trick. After I had spoken with her I would have an excuse to ask for you, and you wouldn’t suspect what I was really after. Not a bad idea.”
“A grand idea. And now?”
“Now I admit there’s another element. You heard me say how I happened to hear about Miss Annis, from the cop on the beat — no, you weren’t there.”
“No. From the cop on the beat?”
I nodded. “Right in the neighborhood, only three blocks away. And she had told you she was going to see Nero Wolfe. Have you told the police that?”
“I haven’t told them anything. They haven’t asked me. I was out and wasn’t here until nearly four o’clock. They had talked with Noel Ferris and Raymond Dell, and Noel had gone and identified the body. There’s nothing I can tell them. It was just a moron or a maniac, or both, with a stolen car. Wasn’t it?”
“Evidently.” I was looking relieved. “But there’s still a chance they may check with everyone here, sometimes they’re pretty thorough, and that’s the other element. If the police learn that she had said she was going to see Nero Wolfe they’ll pester him. It won’t make any sense since she didn’t see him, but they’ll grab at the excuse to pester him, and anyhow they may think she did see him. He has been known to reserve facts. Since, as you say, it was just a moron or maniac with a stolen car, it won’t help any for them to know she had said she was going to see Nero Wolfe, so there’s no point in your mentioning it. Of course it’s not vital, he’s been pestered before, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to suggest it. And I still suspect myself. There’s the possibility that I’ve merely cooked up an excuse to see you again.”
I admit it wasn’t a very good line, but it was the best I had been able to come up with, and anyhow all I had wanted was an approach. It had already got me a look at the inmates. Also it would be interesting to get her reaction. I have mentioned the possibility that she had had the Hope diamond under her mattress, and while a stack of phoney lettuce isn’t the same thing as the Hope diamond, far from it, it was still possible. How would she take it?
I soon found out. “I would love to think,” she said, “that you bothered to cook up an excuse. I wish I could, but I can’t. Why don’t you want the police to know that Miss Annis saw Nero Wolfe? What did she say that he doesn’t want to tell?”
My brows lifted. “You’re mixing us up. I’m the detective. Trick questions like that are no good if you can’t back them up. You know darned well she didn’t see him.”