When I mounted the stoop and let myself in with my key it was five minutes past four, so Wolfe had gone up for his afternoon conference with the orchids. Hanging my hat and topcoat in the hall, I ascended the three flights to the plant rooms on the roof. For all the thousands of times I have seen that display of show-offs, they still take my eye and slow me down whenever I go through, but that day I didn't even know they were there, not even in the warm room, though the Phalaenopsis were in top bloom and the Cattleyas were splashing color all around.
Wolfe was in the potting room with Theodore, transferring young Dendrobium chrysotoxums from fours to fives. As I approached he snapped at me, "Can't it wait?"
"I suppose so," I conceded. "She's dead. I just want permission to phone Cramer. I might as well, since I was seen by the elevator man who let me off at her floor, and a cop, and my fingerprints are on her desk."
"Who is dead?"
"The woman who typed that manuscript for Baird Archer."
"When and how?"
"Just now. She died while I was in the elevator going up to her office on the seventh floor. She was going down faster, out of her window. What killed her was hitting the sidewalk."
"How do you know she typed the manuscript?"
"I found this in her desk." I took the notebook from my pocket and showed him the entries. His hands were too dirty to touch it, and I held it before his eyes, I asked him, "Do you want details now?"
"Confound it. Yes."
As I reported in full he stood with the tips of his fingers resting on the potting bench, his head turned to me, his lips tight, his brow creased with a frown. His yellow smock, some half an acre in area, was exactly the color of the daffodils on Rachel Abrams' desk.
When I had finished the story I inquired grimly, "Shall I expound?"
He grunted.
"I should have stuck around, but it wouldn't have done any good because I was too goddam mad to function. If I had been three minutes earlier I would have had her alive. Also, if she was pushed out of the window I would have had the pusher alive, and you told me to get you something, and it would have been a pleasure to get you that. The lucky bastard. He must have entered a down elevator, or passed down the hall on his way to the stairs, not more than thirty seconds before I stepped out on that floor. When I looked out of the window he was probably there on the sidewalk, walking away because he wasn't morbid."
Wolfe's eyes opened and half shut again.
"If you're thinking," I said aggressively, "that she wasn't pushed, one will get you ten. I do not believe that the woman who typed that manuscript picked today to jump out of the window or to fall out by accident."
"Nevertheless, it's possible."
"I deny it. It would be too goddam silly. Okay, you said to get you something, and at least I got you this." I tapped the notebook with a finger.
"It doesn't help much." Wolfe was glum. "It establishes that Miss Wellman was killed because she had read that manuscript, but we were already going on that assumption. I doubt if it would gratify Miss Abrams to know that her death validated an assumption for us. Most people expect more than that of death. Mr. Cramer will want that notebook."
"Yeah. I shouldn't have copped it, but you said to get you something and I wanted to produce it. Shall I take it to him or phone him to send for it?"
"Neither. Put it here on the bench. I'll wash my hands and phone him. You have work to do. It's possible that Miss Abrams told someone something about the contents of that novel she typed. Try it. See her family and friends. Get a list of them. Saul and Fred and Orrie will phone in at five-thirty. You will phone at five-twenty-five, to tell me where I can tell them to join you. Divide the list among you."
"My God," I protested, "we're stretching it thinner and thinner. Next you'll be trying to get it by photo-offset from her typewriter platen."
He ignored it and headed for the sink to wash his hands. I went to my room, one flight down, for my raincoat. Downstairs I stopped in the kitchen to tell Fritz I wouldn't be home for dinner.
5
IT WAS more than I had bargained for. Having got the home address of a Rachel Abrams from the Bronx phone book, having learned by dialing the number and speaking briefly with a female voice that that was it, and having bit the subway before the rush hour, I had congratulated myself on a neat fast start. I entered the old apartment building on 178th Street a block off the Grand Concourse less than an hour after Wolfe had told me to see her family and friends.
But now I realized that I had been too damn fast. The woman who opened the door of 4E to me was meeting my eyes straight and inquiring placidly, "You're the one that phoned? What is with my Rachel?"
"Are you Rachel's mother?" I asked.
She nodded and smiled. "Since some years I am. I have never been told the opposite. What is?"
I hadn't bargained for this. I had taken it for granted that either a cop or a journalist would have relayed the news before I got there, and had been ready to cope with tears and wailing, but obviously I had beat them to it. Of course the thing to do was spill it to her, but her quiet self-satisfaction when she said "my Rachel" was too much for me. Nor could I say excuse it please, wrong number, and fade, because I had a job to do, and if I muffed it merely because I didn't like it I was in the wrong line of business. So I tried my damnedest to grin at her, but I admit that for a couple of seconds I was no help to the conversation.
Her big dark friendly eyes stayed straight at mine.
"I will maybe ask you to come in and sit," she said, "when you tell me what you want."
"I don't think," I told her, "I need to take much of your time. I told you my name on the phone, Archie Goodwin. I'm getting some stuff together for an article on public stenographers. Does your daughter discuss her work with you?"
She frowned a little. "You could ask her. Couldn't you?"
"Sure I could, if there's some reason why I shouldn't ask you."
"Why should there be a reason?"
"I don't know any. For instance, say she types a story or an article for a man. Does she tell you about him - what he looked like and how he talked? Or does she tell you what the story or article was about?"
The frown had not gone. "Would that be not proper?"
"Not at all. It's not a question of being proper, it's just that I want to make it personal, talking with her family and friends."
"Is it there will be an article about her?"
"Yes." That was not a lie. Far from it.
"Is it her name will be printed?"
"Yes."
"My daughter never talks about her work to me or her father or her sisters, only one thing, the money she makes. She tells about that because she gives me a certain part, but not for me, for the family, and one sister is in college. She does not tell me what men look like or about her work. If her name is going to be printed everybody ought to know the truth."
"You're absolutely right, Mrs. Abrams. Do you know -"
"You said you will talk with her family and friends. Her father will be home at twenty minutes to seven. Her sister Deborah is here now, doing her homework, but she is only sixteen - too young? Her sister Nancy will not be here today, she is with a friend, but she will be here tomorrow at half-past four. Then you want friends. There is a young man named William Butterfield who wants to marry her, but he is -"