The two letters in the morning mail hadn't been answered, and when we returned to the office after dinner and had finished coffee we attended to them. One was from a Putnam County farmer asking how many starlings he wanted this year, and the other was from a woman in Nebraska saying that she would be in New York for a week late in June, with her husband and two children, and could they come and look at the orchids. The reply to the first was forty; Wolfe always invites two dinner guests for the starling pie. The reply to the second was no; she shouldn't have mentioned the children. When the answers had been typed and Wolfe had signed them, he sat and watched while I folded them and put them in the envelopes, and then spoke.
"Your exclusion of Mr. and Mrs. Perez is no longer valid. They knew they would get the house."
Of course I had known that was coming. I swiveled. "It's a funny thing about the Bible. I haven't been to church for twenty years, and modern science has proved that heaven is two hundred degrees Fahrenheit hotter than hell, but if I was asked to put my hand on a Bible and swear to a lie, I'd dodge. I'd say I was a Hindu or a Buddhist - Zen, of course. And Mr. and Mrs. Perez undoubtedly go to mass once a week and probably oftener."
"Pfui. To get a house, perhaps not; but to save their skins?"
I nodded. "Thousands of murderers have lied under oath on the witness stand, but this was different. They still sort of think I'm their detective."
"You're incorrigibly mulish."
"Yes, sir. Same to you."
"Nor is that imbecile Hough excluded. I call him an imbecile, but what if he is in fact subtle, wily, and adroit? Knowing or suspecting that his wife was going to that address Sunday evening, he got her keys, went there himself, killed Yeager, and left. Monday something alarmed him, no matter what; perhaps he told his wife what he had done, or she guessed, and her attitude brought dismay. He decided he must take some action that would make it seem highly unlikely that he had been implicated, and he did. You and I concluded yesterday that the impostor had not known Yeager was dead - not an assumption, a conclusion. We now abandon it."
"It's not incredible," I conceded. "I see only three holes in it."
"I see four, but none of them is beyond patching. I'm not suggesting that we have advanced; indeed, we have taken a step backward. We had concluded that that man was eliminated, but he isn't. And now?"
We discussed it for two solid hours. By the time we went up to bed, toward midnight, it looked very much as if we had a case and a client, two clients, and we didn't hold one single card that we were in a position to play. Our big ace, that we knew about that room and that Yeager had been killed in it, was absolutely worthless. And the longer we kept it up our sleeve, the more ticklish it would be when the police found a trail to it, as they were bound to sooner or later. When Wolfe left for his elevator he was so sour that he didn't say good night. As I undressed I was actually weighing the chance, if we called Fred off, that the cops wouldn't pry it loose that we had been there. That was so ridiculous that I turned over three times before I got to sleep.
The phone rang.
I understand that some people, when the phone rings in the middle of the night, surface immediately and are almost awake by the time they get it to their ear. I don't. I am still way under. I couldn't possibly manage anything as complicated as "Nero Wolfe's residence, Archie Goodwin speaking." The best I can do is " 'Lo.'"
A woman said, "I want to talk to Mr. Archie Goodwin." I was still fighting my way up.
"This is Goodwin. Who is this?"
"I am Mrs. Cesar Perez. You must come. Come now. Our daughter Maria is dead. She was killed with a gun. Will you come now?"
I was out from under. "Where are you?" I reached for the switch of the bed light and glanced at the clock. Twenty-five to three. "We are at home. They took us to look at her, and we are just come back. Will you come?"
"Is anybody there? Policemen?"
"No. One brought us home, but he is gone.
Will you come?"
"Yes. Right away. As fast as I can make it. If you haven't already - "
She hung up.
I like to take my time dressing, but I am willing to make an exception when necessary. When my tie was tied and my jacket on, and my things were in my pockets, I tore a sheet from my notebook and wrote on it:
Maria Perez is dead, murdered, shot - not at home, I don't know where. Mrs. P. phoned at 2:35. I'm on my way to 82nd Street.
AG
Down one flight I went to the door of Wolfe's room and slipped the note through the crack at the bottom. Then on down, and out. At that time of night Eighth Avenue would be the best bet for a taxi, so I headed east.
11
It was one minute after three when I used my key at the basement door of 156 and entered. Mrs. Perez was standing there. Saying nothing, she turned and walked down the hall, and I followed. Halfway along she turned into a room on the right, the door of which I had pushed open Tuesday evening when I felt an eye on me. It was a small room; a single bed, a chest of drawers, a little table with a mirror, and a couple of chairs didn't leave much space. Perez was on the chair by the table, and on the table was a glass and a bottle of rum. As I entered he slowly lifted his head to look at me. The eye that he half closed in emergencies was nearly shut.
He spoke. "My wife told you that day we sit down with friends. Are you a friend?"
"Don't mind him," she said. "He drinks rum, half a bottle. I tell him to." She sat on the bed. "I make him come to this room, our daughter's room, and I bring him rum. I sit on our daughter's bed. That chair is for you. We thank you for coming, but now we don't know why. You can't do anything, nobody can do anything, not even the good God Himself."
Ferez picked up the glass, took a swallow, put the glass down, and said something in Spanish.
I sat on the chair. "The trouble with a time like this," I said, "is that there is something to do, and the quicker the better. You have no room in you right now for anything except that she's dead, but I have. I want to know who killed her, and you will too when the shock eases up a little. And in order - "
"You're crazy," Perez said. "I'll kill him."
"He's a man," she told me. I thought for a second she meant that a man had killed Maria and then realized that she meant her husband.
"We'll have to find him first," I said. "Do you know who killed her?"
"You're crazy," Perez said. "Of course not."
"They took you to look at her. Where? The morgue?"
"A big building," she said. "A big room with strong light. She was on a thing with a sheet on her. There was blood on her head but not on her face."
"Did they tell you who found her and where?"
"Yes. A man found her at a dock by the river."
"What time did she leave the house and where did she go and who with?"
"She left at eight o'clock to go to a movie with friends."
"Boys or girls?"
"Girls. Two girls came for her. We saw them. We know them. We went with a policeman to see one of them, and she said Maria went with them to the movie but she left about nine o'clock. She didn't know where she went."
"Have you any idea where she went?"
"No."
"Have you any idea who killed her or why?"
"No. They asked us all these questions."
"They'll ask a lot more. All right, this is how it stands. Either there is some connection between her death and Mr. Yeager's death or there isn't. If there isn't, it's up to the police and they'll probably nail him. Or her. If there is, the police can't even get started because they don't know this was Yeager's house - unless you've told them. Have you?"
"No," she said.