“Durkin’s in jail on a murder charge,” I told Wolfe. “You recall I told you he took the Silver Spire job that you nixed. Well, some guy named Meade on the church staff got himself shot dead last night, and Lon called to tell me they’ve charged Fred.”
“Preposterous.”
“Agreed. What do we do?”
He drew in air and looked down at the panicle in his hand before gently placing it on the bench. “Confound it, get Mr. Parker — now.”
Wolfe yields to no one in his distaste for the legal profession. However, he makes an exception for Nathaniel Parker, who has been his attorney for years and is one of the few men of any occupation he will shake hands with and invite to dinner. I went to the extension on the potting-room wall and punched out Parker’s number from memory. “Nero Wolfe calling,” I told his secretary, who put me through, and I handed the receiver to Wolfe.
“Mr. Parker, Nero Wolfe. Yes, I am well, thank you. One of my associates, Fred Durkin, whom you have met, has been charged with murder.... No, the circumstances are unclear. I’m putting Archie on to give you those few particulars he knows.... Yes, I am prepared to post bond.” He handed the instrument to me, and I unloaded what Lon had given me. Parker took it in, said we’d be hearing from him shortly, and hung up. I cradled the phone, turning to Wolfe.
“Okay, you’re rid of me for now — except that I promised Lon I’d give him something for the next edition. We owe him that much for his call. I’d like to at least tell him about the love notes.”
His chin dipped almost imperceptibly, which for him constitutes a nod. He was so peeved at the interruption in his precious routine that he would have agreed to almost anything to get rid of me. As I walked out, I looked over my shoulder; Wolfe already had turned his attention back to the ailing Oncidiums, but Horstmann was at the sink eyeing me, probably afraid I’d walk off with something, like maybe an empty pot. I gave him a smile and a wink.
Four
By the time Wolfe came down from the plant rooms, I had called Lon and read him the text of the six notes to Bay, which earned me a hurried thanks. And Parker had phoned as well. “He says he can spring Fred,” I told Wolfe as he settled behind his desk and rang for beer. “It’ll cost us fifty big ones.”
“Get the money. What else did Mr. Parker learn?”
“Not much. It seems that—” I was interrupted by the front doorbell, and since Fritz was out, I went down the hall and took a look through the one-way glass, making a fast return trip to the office. “It’s old you-know-who,” I told Wolfe. “Instructions?”
A sigh. “Let him in,” he said without enthusiasm as the bell sounded again, this time one long, impatient squeal.
“Good morning, Inspector, nice to see you,” I said, throwing open the door and allowing admittance to Lionel T. Cramer, head of Homicide for the New York Police Department. He growled and barreled by me like a freight train that had lost its brakes. I was two strides behind him as he thundered into the office and plopped into the red leather chair, pulling a cigar from the breast pocket of his navy blue suitcoat and jamming it unlit into his mouth.
“Sir?” Wolfe murmured, raising his eyebrows and looking up from an orchid catalog that had just arrived in the mail.
“I’ll ‘sir’ you,” Cramer spat. “This house has meant nothing but trouble for me through the years. Way back when, there was that poor devil Johnny Keems. And then Cather. And God knows, I’ve aged because of you and this one,” he rasped, pointing a finger more or less in my direction. “And now Durkin. I never thought he was the smartest guy in town, but I sure didn’t have him pegged. Cather was no bargain — that never surprised me.[1] But Durkin does.”
“Please, Mr. Cramer,” Wolfe said, his voice still soft. “Archie and I only recently learned of the charge against Fred. We would appreciate any details.”
“Hah! I’m sure you would. Durkin says he wasn’t working for you, but I don’t believe it any more than I believe that college basketball is an amateur sport.”
“He is telling the truth,” Wolfe said evenly.
“Uh-huh.” Cramer gnawed on his stogie. “Then why did one of the people at that Silver Spire church say they’d started out by coming to see Goodwin?”
“That is also true. Archie, tell Mr. Cramer of the visit from Mr. Morgan — all of it.”
I recited the whole thing, including Wolfe’s steadfast refusal to accept the case, my referral of Fred to Morgan, and Fred’s one call to me to learn more about the Silver Spire operation. “And that’s all I knew about it until Lon Cohen phoned me this morning with the news that Fred had been charged,” I said to the inspector.
He scowled at me, then at Wolfe and back at me. “Okay, maybe you’re leveling, maybe not; with you two, I can’t always tell. Here’s what we know, and it’s probably fairly accurate, because both Durkin and the Silver Spire people — and that includes their big kahuna, Barnabas Bay — tell it the same way, at least up to a point.
“First off, and you both obviously know this, Bay had been getting those nasty Bible verse notes slipped into the Sunday collection bags. The church could have come to us about it, but did they? No — because they were afraid of bad press. And now look what they’ve got themselves. Can you imagine the headlines this afternoon and tomorrow? And the TV news? Hah! Anyway, they hired Durkin to find out who was writing the damn things, and from what we’ve been told, he prowled around the church off and on for more than a week, including on two Sundays. He apparently alienated at least some of the staff, including Royal Meade, the guy who bought the farm last night, who had no use at all for him. From what I get, this Lloyd Morgan was the one pushing to hire a gumshoe. Nobody else was warm for the idea — they mostly felt the notes were the doing of a crank. But Morgan has Bay’s ear, and he got the top man to go along with it.”
“In what way did Fred alienate the church staff?” Wolfe asked.
Cramer leaned back and ran a hand over a ruddy cheek, frowning. “He told them he thought the notes were an inside job, that somebody on the payroll was writing them. Needless to say, that ticked everybody off, including even Morgan.”
Wolfe drew in a bushel of air and exhaled slowly. “When did Fred drop this bomb?”
“Last night, at some sort of staff meeting. Apparently sent the place up for grabs. Anyway, sometime after the meeting broke up, Meade was found dead in his office, shot twice in the head with bullets from Durkin’s thirty-eight. And Durkin’s prints were the only ones on the weapon. He claims he’d hung his suitcoat on a hook in a hallway with the gun in its holster under it and—”
The doorbell rang, and with Fritz still out, I played butler. Cramer went on with his narrative as I walked to the front hall and peered through the one-way glass. Standing on the stoop was Nathaniel Parker, all six-feet-four of him, looking elegant and urbane in a three-piece brown suit and without a single salt-and-pepper hair out of place. And next to him, disheveled and drained, was Fred Durkin, who is about an inch shorter than my five-eleven but who hauls around at least fifteen pounds more than I do, maybe twenty. Droplets of perspiration covered the Irish forehead that continued unbroken to the top of his head, where a few tufts of red hair kept him from being classified as bald.
I opened the door, holding an index finger to my lips, and motioned them into the front room. “I’ll be damned,” I said once we all were in and I shut the door to the hall. “I’ve got questions, and so does Wolfe, but right now, Cramer’s in with him, and you can guess what that conversation’s about.” Fred nodded numbly. “I’m going back. Sit tight until he’s gone. And enjoy the magazines,” I said, closing the door behind me.