“Nope.”
He grunted. “I know only too well how nosy you are, Goodwin. There were three doors in the walls of that room besides the one you entered by. You didn’t open any of them?”
“Nope.”
“One of them is the door to the closet in which Heller’s body was found by a caller, a friend, at three o’clock this afternoon. The medical examiner says that the sausage and griddle cakes he ate for breakfast at nine-thirty hadn’t been in him more than an hour when he died, so it’s practically certain that the body was in the closet while you were there in the room. As nosy as you are, you’re telling me that you didn’t open the door and see the body?”
“Yep. I apologize. Next time I’ll open every damn door in sight.”
“A gun had been fired. You didn’t smell it?”
“No. Air-conditioned.”
“You didn’t look through the desk drawers?”
“No. I apologize again.”
“We did.” Cramer took something from his breast pocket. “In one drawer we found this envelope, sealed. On it was written in pencil, in Heller’s hand, ‘Mr. Nero Wolfe.’ In it were five one-hundred-dollar bills.”