“Some, yes.”
“And one of them killed Bottweill. The poison was put in the bottle between two-ten, when I saw him take a drink, and three-thirty when Kiernan went and got the bottle. No one came up in the private elevator during the half-hour or more I was in the dressing room. I was getting into that costume and gave no heed to footsteps or other sounds in the office, but the elevator shaft adjoins the dressing room, and I would have heard it. It is a strong probability that the opportunity was even narrower, that the poison was put in the bottle while I was in the dressing room, since three of them were in the office with Bottweill when I left. It must be assumed that one of those three, or one of the three in the studio, had grasped an earlier opportunity. What about them?”
“Not much. Mostly from Monday evening, when Margot was talking about Bottweill. So it’s all hearsay, from her. Mrs. Jerome has put half a million in the business — probably you should divide that by two at least — and thinks she owns him. Or thought. She was jealous of Margot and Cherry. As for Leo, if his mother was dishing out the dough he expected to inherit to a guy who was trying to corner the world’s supply of gold leaf, and possibly might also marry him, and if he knew about the jar of poison in the workshop, he might have been tempted. Kiernan, I don’t know, but from a remark Margot made and from the way he looked at Cherry this afternoon, I suspect he would like to mix some Irish with her Chinese and Indian and Dutch, and if he thought Bottweill had him stymied he might have been tempted too. So much for hearsay.”
“Mr. Hatch?”
“Nothing on him from Margot, but dealing with him during the tapestry job, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had wiped out the whole bunch on general principles. His heart pumps acid instead of blood. He’s a creative artist, he told me so. He practically told me that he was responsible for the success of that enterprise but got no credit. He didn’t tell me that he regarded Bottweill as a phony and a fourflusher, but he did. You may remember that I told you he had a persecution complex and you told me to stop using other people’s jargon.”
“That’s four of them. Miss Dickey?”
I raised my brows. “I got her a license to marry, not to kill. If she was lying when she said it worked, she’s almost as good a liar as she is a dancer. Maybe she is. If it didn’t work she might have been tempted too.”
“And Miss Quon?”
“She’s half Oriental. I’m not up on Orientals, but I understood they slant their eyes to keep you guessing. That’s what makes them inscrutable. If I had to be poisoned by one of that bunch I would want it to be her. Except for what Margot told me—”
The doorbell rang. That was worse than the phone. If they had hit on Santa Claus’s trail and it led to Nero Wolfe, Cramer was much more apt to come than to call. Wolfe and I exchanged glances. Looking at my wristwatch and seeing 10:08, I arose, went to the hall and flipped the switch for the stoop light, and took a look through the one-way glass panel of the front door. I have good eyes, but the figure was muffled in a heavy coat with a hood, so I stepped halfway to the door to make sure. Then I returned to the office and told Wolfe, “Cherry Quon. Alone.”
He frowned. “I wanted—” He cut it off. “Very well. Bring her in.”
Chapter 5
As I have said, Cherry was highly decorative, and she went fine with the red leather chair at the end of Wolfe’s desk. It would have held three of her. She had let me take her coat in the hall and still had on a neat little woolen number she had worn at the party. It wasn’t exactly yellow, but there was yellow in it. I would have called it off-gold, and it and the red chair and the tea tint of her smooth little carved face would have made a very nice kodachrome.
She sat on the edge, her spine straight and her hands together in her lap. “I was afraid to telephone,” she said, “because you might tell me not to come. So I just came. Will you forgive me?”
Wolfe grunted. No commitment. She smiled at him, a friendly smile, or so I thought. After all, she was half Oriental.
“I must get myself together,” she chirped. “I’m nervous because it’s so exciting to be here.” She turned her head. “There’s the globe, and the bookshelves, and the safe, and the couch, and of course Archie Goodwin. And you. You behind your desk in your enormous chair! Oh, I know this place! I have read about you so much — everything there is, I think. It’s exciting to be here, actually here in this chair, and see you. Of course I saw you this afternoon, but that wasn’t the same thing, you could have been anybody in that silly Santa Claus costume. I wanted to pull your whiskers.”
She laughed, a friendly little tinkle like a bell.
I think I looked bewildered. That was my idea, after it had got through my ears to the switchboard inside and been routed. I was too busy handling my face to look at Wolfe, but he was probably even busier, since she was looking straight at him. I moved my eyes to him when he spoke.
“If I understand you, Miss Quon, I’m at a loss. If you think you saw me this afternoon in a Santa Claus costume, you’re mistaken.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” she exclaimed. “Then you haven’t told them?”
“My dear madam.” His voice sharpened. “If you must talk in riddles, talk to Mr. Goodwin. He enjoys them.”
“But I am sorry, Mr. Wolfe. I should have explained first how I know. This morning at breakfast Kurt told me you had phoned him and arranged to appear at the party as Santa Claus, and this afternoon I asked him if you had come and he said you had and you were putting on the costume. That’s how I know. But you haven’t told the police? Then it’s a good thing I haven’t told them either, isn’t it?”
“This is interesting,” Wolfe said coldly. “What do you expect to accomplish by this fantastic folderol?”
She shook her pretty little head. “You, with so much sense. You must see that it’s no use. If I tell them, even if they don’t like to believe me they will investigate. I know they can’t investigate as well as you can, but surely they will find something.”
He shut his eyes, tightened his lips, and leaned back in his chair. I kept mine open, on her. She weighed about a hundred and two. I could carry her under one arm with my other hand clamped on her mouth. Putting her in the spare room upstairs wouldn’t do, since she could open a window and scream, but there was a cubbyhole in the basement, next to Fritz’s room, with an old couch in it. Or, as an alternative, I could get a gun from my desk drawer and shoot her. Probably no one knew she had come here.
Wolfe opened his eyes and straightened up. “Very well. It is still fantastic, but I concede that you could create an unpleasant situation by taking that yarn to the police. I don’t suppose you came here merely to tell me that you intend to. What do you intend?”
“I think we understand each other,” she chirped.
“I understand only that you want something. What?”
“You are so direct,” she complained. “So very abrupt, that I must have said something wrong. But I do want something. You see, since the police think it was the man who acted Santa Claus and ran away, they may not get on the right track until it’s too late. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
No reply.
“I wouldn’t want it,” she said, and her hands on her lap curled into little fists. “I wouldn’t want whoever killed Kurt to get away, no matter who it was, but you see, I know who killed him. I have told the police, but they won’t listen until they find Santa Claus, or if they listen they think I’m just a jealous cat, and besides, I’m an Oriental and their ideas of Orientals are very primitive. I was going to make them listen by telling them who Santa Claus was, but I know how they feel about you from what I’ve read, and I was afraid they would try to prove it was you who killed Kurt, and of course it could have been you, and you did run away, and they still wouldn’t listen to me when I told them who did kill him.”