WHEN NERO WOLFE DECIDES TO hold one of his show-and-tell sessions—Inspector Cramer sneeringly refers to them as “charades”—he never bothers himself with the petty details. Such as, how do I, Archie, round up all these people and persuade them to come to the brownstone and sit patiently in the office while he, Wolfe, painstakingly, and some might say arrogantly, explains why one among them should be a permanent house guest of the State of New York?
And that’s the way it was Saturday at six when he came down from the plant rooms on foot and settled in behind his desk, ringing for beer.
I was filled with questions, as Wolfe knew I would be. He poured beer and patiently answered them, peeling back the layers of the onion. I saw where he was headed before he got to the end, but just barely.
“I suppose it’s unnecessary for me to state I would never have doped it out,” I told him. “One last question: Why were you doing your noodling in your room, rather than down here?”
He scowled. “I could not face the entire climb to the plant rooms at once.”
“So you broke the trek into two parts, eh? Very smart. Okay, when do you want to gather them?”
“I suppose tonight is out of the question?”
“You suppose right. I know it may shock you, but many New Yorkers actually leave the sanctuary of their homes, particularly on Saturday nights, to sample some diversion or another in this great metropolis.”
“Sarcasm does not become you, Archie. You wield a broadsword when a rapier is called for.” He sighed. “But I suppose that is but one of the many prices I must pay for having a man of action on the premises. Tomorrow night, then.”
“Any idea how I can lure Clarice Wingfield across the Hudson?”
Wolfe sniffed. “You will find a way.”
Easy for him to say. We agreed on nine o’clock Sunday, which gave me twenty-seven hours to assemble the entire cast. I tackled the easiest one first, calling Vinson at home.
“Wolfe knows the murderer?” the publisher said tensely. “Who is it?”
“Sorry, but this is like a raffle—you’ve got to be present to be a winner,” I told him. “It’s a long-standing house rule here.” Vinson muttered something about this being a fine way to treat a client, but not for long, and not with any real conviction. He asked who would be present, and I reeled off the guest list, not bothering to mention that none of them had yet been invited. “Well, it should make for a damned interesting evening,” he conceded. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
I also got Franklin Ott and Debra Mitchell at home on the first try, telling each of them only that Wolfe had some important information pertaining to the death of Childress. Both squawked a bit before agreeing to show up, and, like Vinson, both wanted to know who else was on the guest list, which I told them. “I don’t know why you would possibly want me there,” Ott sputtered. “But I admit to a morbid curiosity. Deal me in.”
Debra Mitchell kept asking if Wolfe was going to expose the murderer. “That’s how he usually does these things,” she insisted. “I do read the papers, you know.”
I refused to tell her in so many words that names were going to be named, but I did toss out some broad hints that Wolfe might get specific, which satisfied her to the point where she grudgingly said she’d join the party.
I got no answer from Keith Billings, Patricia Royce, or Wilbur Hobbs on Saturday night, but I nailed all of them on Sunday morning. For the sake of brevity, put it down that on a hostility scale with ten as the tops, Billings was a nine, Hobbs a seven-plus, and Ms. Royce a four. But they all said they would show after learning who else would be in attendance.
Now to backtrack briefly to Saturday night: Clarice Wingfield was a special case, and I handled it accordingly by phoning Saul Panzer. “You were so successful in locating our missing Hoosier lassie that we’ve got another project,” I told him.
“Fire away,” came the reply. Saul has never been big on lengthy phone conversations.
“Mr. Wolfe is hosting a love-in with all of the Childress murder suspects, and I’m going to have my hands full orchestrating it. Would it be asking too much to have you deliver Clarice Wingfield to the brownstone tomorrow at, say, eight-forty-five in the evening? Without using undue force, of course? And at your usual rates, of course?”
“Consider it done.”
When Saul says that, I don’t need to hear anything else.
Sundays in the brownstone are pretty much free-form. The rigid weekday schedule sails out the window, and Wolfe may or may not play with his orchids. He normally spends much of the day at his desk plowing through the Sunday papers before vanquishing the Times Magazine crossword puzzle.
He was working his way through the Times at eleven-forty-five in the morning when I hung up from verbally sparring with Keith Billings. “That’s it, they’re all coming,” I told him, swinging around in my chair. “What about Cramer?”
He filled in another word, set down the puzzle, and drew in air, expelling it slowly. “Get him.”
Heaven forbid that Wolfe should have to punch out a telephone number himself. I called Homicide and was told that the inspector would not be in at all that day, so I looked up his home number in my address book. Mrs. Cramer answered and sounded reluctant to put her husband on. She muffled the speaker, but I could hear her saying “It’s Nero Wolfe’s office. Do you want to take it?”
I nodded for Wolfe to pick up his instrument while I stayed on the line, and the next thing I heard was the familiar, gruff “Yeah?”
“This is Nero Wolfe, Mr. Cramer. I regret disturbing you at home, but I felt you should be aware that I will be divulging the identity of Charles Childress’s murderer tonight.”
That brought one of Cramer’s most frequently used epithets, one you will never read in these pages. He repeated it, presumably to make sure Wolfe knew precisely how he felt. “Is this on the level?” he then snorted.
“It is, sir. You would do well to be here at nine o’clock. Will you be bringing Sergeant Stebbins?”
Cramer spat a yes and the line went dead. “He never even bothered to say good-bye, that barbarian,” I commented.
Wolfe scowled. “You know how to reach those people who were here?”
“The members of PROBE? Yes, I have telephone numbers and addresses for all of them, as you instructed.”
“Call the woman, Wilma Race,” he said, proceeding to give me brief instructions that were so surprising I made him repeat them. “Why her?” I then asked.
“She is clearly the most intelligent and perceptive of the three,” was his reply, which was good enough for me.
Fritz and I got the office set up with extra chairs from the dining room, and we converted the small table in the corner into a bar, stocking it with scotch, rye, gin, vodka, mixers, and a carafe of a good French white wine. The doorbell rang at precisely eight-forty-five, and I bet myself it was Saul and Clarice Wingfield. I won the bet.
As I opened the front door, Clarice glared at me from the stoop, her expression an interesting blend of anger and terror. “This is a disgrace, an absolute disgrace,” she hissed as Saul ushered her into the hall.
“She’s not a happy camper, Arch,” he said. “A neighbor’s taking care of the baby, that wasn’t a problem. But she—”
Clarice wheeled on Saul, eyes afire. “I am quite capable of speaking for myself, thank you,” she snapped. Turning to me: “Mr. Goodwin, this stops just short of kidnapping. The only reason I finally consented to come is that Mr. Panzer here guaranteed that your great Nero Wolfe is going to tell us all who killed Charles. Why he insists on a group meeting is beyond me, however.”
“Well, your presence is most appreciated,” I responded, flashing a smile that failed to alter her dour expression. As per our plan, Saul steered her to the front room, where they both would stay until everyone else was seated. Clarice complained mildly and curtly declined my offer of liquid refreshments, but she went along with the program. I closed the front room door behind me and reentered the hall just as the bell rang again. It was Cramer and Sergeant Purley Stebbins.
“All right, you got us here,” Cramer wheezed, stating the obvious and barreling by me with the sergeant in his wake. A word about Purley Stebbins: He has worked for Cramer at least as long as I’ve worked for Wolfe. He’s got a long, bony face with a square jaw at the south end, and if he has a sense of humor, he manages to keep it out of sight. He’s tough, he’s honest, and he doesn’t waste words. Purley and I have what I would term grudging respect for each other; Purley doesn’t completely trust me—or Wolfe—and never will, figuring that anybody who earns his keep as a private detective is questionable by definition and will during any case eventually be at cross-purposes with the machinery of law enforcement. And while I appreciate many of Purley’s qualities, I would not put it past the good sergeant to withhold even nonessential information from us, for no other reason than to be contrary.
I didn’t bother to follow the homicide team to the office because I knew they would find their usual chairs in the back of the room without an usher. The next ring of the doorbell brought Vinson and Debra Mitchell, who had shared a cab south. Vinson gave a tight smile and a nod, while she whispered to me that “This is a stupid way to do business, you know, wasting a lot of people’s time.”
I replied that I hoped she wouldn’t find the trip a total waste and led them to the office, casting an admiring glance at Debra’s beige outfit, which looked like it cost somewhere in the neighborhood of my weekly salary, if not more. The woman knew how to dress, I gave her that. Vinson, as our client, merited the red leather chair, while I placed Debra three places to his right in the front row. They both looked quizzically at Cramer and Stebbins, who already were seated, but I didn’t offer introductions.
The next arrival was Franklin Ott. The agent looked angry enough actually to throw a punch himself this time. His face was still bandaged. He was followed in quick succession by a pale, somber Patricia Royce, a surly Keith Billings, and an arrogant, offended Wilbur Hobbs.
“I want to make it clear that I am here as a member of the press and not as some suspect in a sordid so-called murder,” Hobbs pronounced as though he were reading from a script. I smiled, nodded, and escorted him to the office, where the critic surveyed the gathering, sniffed in condescension, and settled into the chair I indicated as though he were doing me a favor.
“Where the hell is Wolfe?” Billings demanded.
“He’ll be here shortly,” I told the editor. “Would anyone care for drinks? Help yourselves. We’ve got a wide selection on that table, and if you don’t see what you want, ask for it.”
“This wasn’t billed as a cocktail party, but I have a feeling we’re all going to need a bracer before it’s over,” Ott said, getting up. “I’m going to have a scotch. Can I get something for anyone else?”
There were no takers, only hostile muttering, so I went to the front room, opening the door. “They are all in place,” I told Saul, who was reading an old copy of Smithsonian. He and Clarice rose, she reluctantly, and we proceeded down the hall to the office, where I seated her next to Vinson. Her entrance brought looks of puzzlement from around the room.
Saul took a chair in the back row next to Stebbins while I went around Wolfe’s desk and pressed his beer buzzer. It rings in the kitchen, where he was waiting with Fritz until all were in place.
A half-minute later he appeared at the door, looked at each of his guests in turn, and walked in, skirting the desk and settling into his chair. “Good evening,” he rumbled. “Thank you for adjusting your schedules. Your time here—”
“We don’t need some meandering preamble,” Billings snarled. “You asked us to come here, and we’re here. Get on with it.”
“Sir, I never meander,” Wolfe replied coldly. “And I do not indulge in the careless or unnecessary use of verbiage. As I started to say, your time here will be brief—assuming I am allowed to proceed without incessant and needless interruptions. First, I realize that many of you do not know the identity of others in the room, a condition I will rectify.”
Even though the door to the hall was now closed, I could detect the faint ring of the doorbell, although none of the others in the room appeared to notice. That would be Wilma Race, whom Fritz was instructed to admit to the house. Wolfe continued: “The gentleman in the red chair is Horace Vinson, editor-in-chief of Monarch Press, the publisher of the late Charles Childress’s books. He has hired me to identify Mr. Childress’s murderer, which I am prepared to do. On his right, and likely a stranger to you all, is Clarice Wingfield, a cousin of Mr. Childress. On her right, Franklin Ott, a literary agent who formerly represented Mr. Childress, and next to him, Debra Mitchell, who had been engaged to Mr. Childress.”
“I was still engaged to him when he was—when he died,” the television executive protested.
“I did not mean to suggest otherwise,” Wolfe said evenly. “In the second row, behind Mr. Vinson, is Keith Billings, an editor, formerly with Monarch Press and now employed by Westman & Lane. On his right is Patricia Royce, a novelist and friend of Mr. Childress’s. And next to her is Wilbur Hobbs, a book reviewer for the Gazette.”
“Who are they?” Ott stabbed a thumb toward Cramer and Stebbins.
Wolfe glared at him. “I was getting to that, sir. The gentleman in the brown suit is Inspector Cramer, head of Homicide for the New York City Police Department. Next to him is his associate, Sergeant Stebbins.”
“And just what might they be doing here?” Wilbur Hobbs demanded shrilly. “I was not informed this was to be a police investigation.”
“As indeed it is not,” Wolfe replied, ringing for beer. “They are here at my invitation, and they remain at my sufferance. They may be of use before we adjourn, however.”
“Meaning?” Patricia Royce asked tightly. It was the first word she had spoken since she had entered the brownstone.
“Meaning that as I said a moment ago, I intend to name Mr. Childress’s murderer.”
“Well, do so, man!” Billings barked. “Or are you being paid by the hour?”
“Dammit, you’re making a mistake to slow him down,” Cramer put in gruffly. “I’ve been to these sessions before, and he does them his way. He’s as stubborn as a Missouri mule.”
“As a police officer of high rank, I should think you would want to know immediately what’s going on,” Hobbs interjected loudly.
“If I can spend a few minutes here, so can you,” Cramer shot back, the color rising in his cheeks.
“Thank you,” Wolfe replied dryly, pouring beer from one of the bottles Fritz had brought in silently. “Mr. Vinson approached me shortly after Mr. Childress’s death. He requested that I conduct an investigation. He was not satisfied with the verdict of suicide, and soon I concurred.
“It quickly became apparent that, metaphorically, there was a missing chapter in the story of Mr. Childress’s life and death. To begin with, a number of people harbored varying degrees of animus toward the dead man. To my knowledge, they all are in this room.”
Patricia Royce shuddered.
“Those who harbor what you term as animus don’t necessarily go around shooting people,” Franklin Ott snapped.
Wolfe dismissed the comment with a sniff. “Early in my investigation, an acquaintance of Mr. Goodwin’s suggested, perhaps in jest, that all of you here, excepting Mr. Vinson, had conspired to dispatch Mr. Childress. I briefly—”
“That is … outrageous!” Clarice Wingfield huffed, leaning forward and clenching both fists. Her eyes blazed. The woman clearly possessed her late cousin’s temper.
“Capricious, perhaps, but not outrageous, Miss Wingfield. I confess to you all that I briefly considered the possibility of a conspiracy before I discarded it. I then turned to the motives each of you, individually, possessed for wishing Charles Childress dead.”
“What motives?” Patricia Royce snapped. She seemed to have regained control of herself.
Wolfe drank beer and set down his glass. “Madam, I am aware of three people in this room who have been accused of murdering Mr. Childress. And two of the accusers are present.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Wolfe flipped a hand. “I mention that only to underscore that there are many conceivable motives for murder.”
“And what was my motive?” Patricia persisted.
“That will come later. I weighed what I perceived to be the various motives and the degree of stimulus behind each, considered the accusations that had been made, either to me or to Mr. Goodwin, and proceeded.”
“Let’s speed this up, dammit!” It was Keith Billings again, whom I had seated well beyond the reach of his old sparring partner, Franklin Ott. Debra Mitchell watched all of this exchange with cold interest. Maybe she was casting an episode of Entre Nous.
“All right, I shall begin with you,” Wolfe told Billings. “Your dislike for Mr. Childress was manifest and widely known. From the beginning, the editor-writer relationship was extremely fractious. He was hostile to your suggestions and your attempts to strengthen his prose—particularly his plot structures. His friendship with your superior, Mr. Vinson, exacerbated the situation. Finally, the writer demanded a new editor, and that demand was met by Mr. Vinson. You resigned in anger from Monarch. Your hostility toward Mr. Childress increased when he excoriated you in an article that was read throughout the publishing community. Your career had been seriously damaged. Many would consider that series of events an adequate motive for murder.”
“Bunk,” Billings howled. “I landed on my feet after I left Monarch. My career has been doing just fine.”
“Has it?” Wolfe raised his eyebrows. “Mr. Hobbs, you are a presumably disinterested observer of the publishing universe. Is Mr. Billings’s current position of equal status to his former one?”
Hobbs chuckled smugly, a chilling sound. “By no means. In the first place, Monarch is an infinitely more prestigious house than Westman & Lane. Second, Mr. Billings has far less responsibility now than he had at Monarch. Also, you should know that the rumor on the street is that Westman is getting ready to dump him.”
“That’s a goddamn lie!” Billings screeched, lunging across Patricia Royce toward Hobbs. Purley Stebbins neatly grabbed the editor from the rear by his belt and forced him down into his chair with a thud. “Don’t get up again,” Purley said in a tone that left no doubt that he was in charge of maintaining order. Billings glowered at a spot on the floor between his feet, his face and neck a fiery red.
Wolfe finished his first bottle of beer and started on the second. “Miss Wingfield, you had known Mr. Childress longer than anyone else here. That relationship—a blood relationship—was renewed when Mr. Childress returned to his home in Indiana for a protracted period to attend to his mother during her final illness. While he was there, certain events transpired that pointed to the possibility of a permanent liaison between you.”
Debra Mitchell twitched. This news had clearly penetrated her impassive facade. “And what events would those be?” she demanded shrilly.
“They are not germane at present,” Wolfe replied crisply. “But Mr. Childress eschewed such a relationship with his cousin, which was a bitter pill for her—one that might be deemed a goad to violence.” ‘
“Bull. You don’t even know me!” Clarice protested.
Wolfe lifted his shoulders a fraction of an inch and let them drop. “Did you not visit Mr. Childress at his domicile in Greenwich Village on numerous occasions, pleading, sometimes angrily, for a reconciliation?”
She toyed with a silver bracelet on her wrist, then looked up, her face anguished. “That doesn’t mean I shot him. I loved him,” she said hoarsely.
“That’s the first I’ve ever heard any of this,” Debra Mitchell told Clarice in an accusing tone. “In fact, I’ve never even heard of you. Charles never mentioned you—not once.”
“I’m not surprised to hear that,” Clarice replied, still subdued. “He was the father of my baby girl, and he didn’t want anything to do with her—or with me.”
“I don’t believe it,” Debra said loudly as everyone else started jabbering excitedly. Wolfe scowled, waiting for the din to subside. When it did, he said, “Miss Wingfield, you chose to divulge information that I was content to omit from this discussion. But since you have divulged it, I will only say that my knowledge of it intensified my interest in you as a suspect.”
“I’m not ashamed of what happened in Indiana between me and Charles.” Both her tone and her expression were fiercely defiant.
“So noted.” Wolfe turned toward Wilbur Hobbs. “Sir, you incurred the anger of Charles Childress with your acerbic reviews of his books.”
Hobbs chuckled again. “Not the first writer who’s gotten mad at me, and likely not the last.”
“Indeed. But few if any authors have lashed back as did Mr. Childress. His denunciation of you in print was scathing.”
“And defamatory,” Hobbs added without rancor, stroking his mustache.
“Perhaps. And prisons are filled with inmates whose motives for murder were far less compelling than yours.”
The reviewer’s smug expression did not change. “Huh! Childress’s diatribe did not harm me in the slightest. It’s true that I didn’t think much of him as a writer, but I wished him no ill.”
“So you now say,” Wolfe replied impassively. “You were not so mellow when you sat in this room previously and spoke of your anger toward Mr. Childress and your contemplation of a lawsuit.”
“I have had time to reflect,” Hobbs said amiably.
Wolfe glowered, turning his attention toward the agent. “Mr. Ott, you, too, suffered in print at the hands of Mr. Childress and his acid-tipped pen. He impugned you and your professional capabilities, and as an apparent result, you lost other writers that you had represented.”
“You can’t prove that,” Ott argued, shifting in his chair and gingerly touching his bandage.
“I believe I can, sir,” Wolfe retorted. “Further, there is the curious episode of the fracas in the restaurant between you and Mr. Billings. One might be tempted to surmise that you baited the man so that he would strike you and thus appear outraged—and by extension, guilty—of the incendiary accusation you leveled: that he had murdered Mr. Childress.”
“I had too much to drink.” Ott waved away Wolfe’s statement with a hand. “I’m not proud of the way I mouthed off, but it was the liquor talking.”
“Or perhaps it was a stratagem on your part, the tactic of one who seeks to shift suspicion elsewhere.”
“Nonsense. That’s the kind of logic that crops up in bad detective novels.”
“The novels of writers you represent, perhaps?” Wolfe posed, raising his eyebrows. “Miss Mitchell, you had been affianced to Charles Childress for—what—six months?”
“Almost, yes,” she said. “We were to be married in September.”
“Yet Miss Royce insists that he was about to terminate your engagement.”
Debra Mitchell turned and looked over her left shoulder at Patricia, who was in the row of chairs behind her. “In your dreams,” she sneered at the other woman. “You always wanted him yourself—don’t deny it. And you probably used every opportunity to turn him against me, you bitch.”
“That’s a lie,” Patricia retorted. “I didn’t have to say anything. He finally saw you for what you are, a—”
“Silence!” Wolfe roared. It was hard enough on him, having three women under his roof at once, but feminine bickering stretches him to the limit of his tolerance. “Miss Mitchell, at least one other person—someone who is not acquainted with Miss Royce—also reported that Mr. Childress was about to end your relationship—and perhaps already had.” He was referring to the conversation I’d had with Clarice over coffee in Hoboken.
“So you say. Maybe … maybe Charles and I were having some, well … differences. Some differences, differences …” She seemed to crumble, burying her head in her hands. It was not pretty to behold.
For a moment, I thought Wolfe was going to get up and flee, but he courageously held his ground as Debra’s sobbing gradually subsided. He drained the beer from his glass and forged on. “From the first, I felt it most probable that one of the women in this room was the killer. For starters, would Mr. Childress likely allow any of the three men—Messrs. Ott, Billings, or Hobbs—entrance to his apartment without a struggle? I think not, particularly given his current relationship with each of them. And there was no sign of a struggle, was there, Inspector?”
Cramer shook his head.
“But Mr. Childress would have readily admitted any of the women, even Miss Wingfield. They had feuded, but he continued to tolerate her presence in his abode.”
“Tolerate! Is that what you call it, you pathetic male chauvinist?” Clarice shrieked, throwing up both arms and almost striking Vinson and Ott. “The man who fathers my child and then refuses to have anything to do with either of us deigns to tolerate me?” I thought she was going to dive at Wolfe, and I came halfway out of my chair before she slumped back, her chin against her chest, as she muttered about chauvinism and injustice.
Wolfe considered her through lidded eyes. “Madam, I confess to an unfortunate selection of words; you have my apology. Is it true that despite fractiousness between you, Mr. Childress did not bar your entry to his apartment?”
She looked up. “Yes. But that doesn’t mean I killed him. That doesn’t—”
Wolfe held up a palm, which, to my surprise, silenced her. “Mr. Childress’s ownership of a handgun was widely known. Indeed, he crowed about it. This, as it turned out, was fatal braggadocio. It would have been relatively simple for any of these women to secure the pistol when Mr. Childress was otherwise occupied, to come upon him unawares, and to fire a single lethal shot at close range. After all, he felt no physical peril from their presence. Miss Wingfield’s assaults—at least so far—had been verbal ones.”
“Meaning?” interjected Cramer.
Wolfe ignored the bark of the NYPD and shifted his attention. “Miss Mitchell, when you came to this office several days ago, you accused Patricia Royce of murdering Charles Childress.”
“And you said I was trying to shift suspicion to someone else,” Franklin Ott snapped. “Now there’s your prime example.” He pointed at Debra, who was still pale and shuddering from her earlier crying jag.
“I was misled,” Wolfe conceded. “Miss Mitchell behaved in such a fatuous manner when she was here that I discounted virtually all of her prattling. That was my mistake. I sit before you chagrined.”
“Wha-a-a-t?” Ott bleated. “What is it you’re telling us?”
Debra Mitchell dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and jerked upright. “He’s telling you that Patricia Royce did murder Charles. She loved him, but she couldn’t have him. So she shot him.”
“Miss Royce never had amorous longings for Mr. Childress,” Wolfe stated firmly. “They were good friends until she learned he was a thief—in her eyes a thief of the worst sort.”
That set everybody off again, until Cramer silenced them with a bellowed “Shut up!”
“Okay, Wolfe,” the inspector growled, getting to his feet. “Now I have to agree with Billings that this has dragged on too long. Are you accusing this woman”—he stabbed a finger at Patricia Royce—“of Childress’s murder?”
“I am.” Wolfe looked at Patricia. She met his gaze steadily. “Miss Royce had been working on Mr. Childress’s personal computer to compose a novel because her computer had malfunctioned. Concurrently, he was writing a new Barnstable mystery. It is widely agreed, and I concur on the basis of reading one book, that his greatest weakness—although by no means his sole one—was a debilitating ineptness at constructing plots. Wilbur Hobbs had recently crucified Mr. Childress in his review of Death in the North Meadow for that very failing. That criticism rankled deeply. I surmise that one day, while at his computer, Charles Childress looked at Miss Royce’s work-in-progress, perhaps out of simple curiosity. And he found some—or perhaps all—of its plot to his liking. He quickly saw a way out of his own dilemma and he seized it. He plagiarized. Very likely, he took only a little of Miss Royce’s structure at firsts but like so many thieves, he grew increasingly bold, and soon he had co-opted much of her book’s structure, altering it of course to fit his characters and locale.”
“That sounds incredibly farfetched.” Horace Vinson was shaking his head.
“So it does,” Wolfe conceded. “But how else do you explain his latest manuscript being described by you, sir, as far superior to the previous efforts? A description with which I concur. Miss Royce undoubtedly looked at his work in the computer—also driven by curiosity—and what she saw enraged her. They had been friends and mutual supporters in their chosen vocations for years, and now she found that he was duplicitous. He had stolen something very precious to a writer—her creation.”
Cramer snorted. “Where’s your proof?”
“I have none,” Wolfe said, turning both palms up. “But is it not noteworthy that Miss Royce destroyed everything she had drafted for a novel that was reportedly nearing completion? Mr. Vinson, am I correct in stating that most authors preserve virtually everything they write?”
“Yes,” he said. “Even if a manuscript is rejected by a dozen publishers or if the writer is deeply dissatisfied with it, he or she will almost always squirrel it away, whether on paper or, more recently, on a computer disk. The material may get reworked at a later time. And sometimes portions are cannibalized and used as part of another opus—this occurs more frequently than most readers realize. There’s no question—authors are pack rats when it comes to their own prose. Nothing ever gets pitched.”
“Just so. Yet Miss Royce carelessly mentioned to Mr. Goodwin that she had destroyed a nearly completed manuscript. That was her fatal error. And why had she destroyed it? Because she realized that if Mr. Childress’s novel, much of which already was in the hands of his publisher, was to be posthumously published, hers never could be; the similarities would be so striking as to attract comparison. This in turn would raise cries of plagiarism—and probably also would cause speculation as to how Mr. Childress came to die. There was no question in Miss Royce’s mind: Her book had to go. It was a price she must pay because she had murdered him.”
“So I was right all the time!” Debra Mitchell crowed, turning again and smirking at Patricia as Purley moved in behind her.
“You were right about very little,” the writer replied mildly. “First, I had no romantic interest whatever in Charles at any time. Mr. Wolfe is quite correct; we were friends and supporters of each other’s work—until the end, that is. Second, Charles had absolutely no intention of marrying you. He couldn’t stomach your social pretensions and your shallowness. He told me he wanted to stop seeing you, but hadn’t worked up the courage to tell you.”
“That is a lie—the lie of a murderer!” Debra keened, her beautiful face grotesquely contorted into a mask of rage. “Charles wouldn’t have done that to me—he was a wonderful man!”
Patricia Royce smiled thinly. “You are wrong again. Charles was a twenty-four-karat bastard.”
She was still smiling as Purley Stebbins read her the Miranda warning.