The house Mrs. Savage had bought was in the Sixties, over east of Lexington Avenue. I am not an expert on Manhattan real estate, but after a look at the narrow gray brick three-layer item my guess was that it had set her back not more than a tenth of her three hundred thousand, not counting the mortgage. When there was no answer to my rings I felt cheated. I hadn’t expected anything as lavish as a dolled-up butler, but not even a maid to receive detectives?
It was only a ten-minute walk to the Park Avenue address of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Horne. My luck stayed stubborn. The hallman said they were both out, phoned up at my request, and got no answer.
I like to walk around Manhattan, catching glimpses of its wild life, the pigeons and cats and girls, but that day I overdid it, back and forth between my two objectives. Finally, from an ambush in a hamburger hell on Sixty-eighth Street, where I was sipping a glass of milk, I saw Aunt Margaret navigate the sidewalk across the street and enter the gray brick. I finished the milk, crossed over, and pushed the button.
She opened the door a few inches, thought she saw a journalist, said, “I have nothing to say,” and would have closed the door if it hadn’t been for my foot.
“Wait a minute,” I objected. “We’ve been introduced — by your daughter, this morning. The name is Archie Goodwin.”
She let the door come another inch for a better view of me, and the pressure of my foot kept it going. I crossed the threshold.
“Of course,” she said. “We were rude to you, weren’t we? The reason I said I have nothing to say, they tell me that’s what I must say to everybody, but it’s quite true that my daughter introduced you, and we were rude. What do you want?”
She sounded to me like a godsend. If I could kidnap her and get her down to the office, and phone the rest of them that we had her and she was being very helpful, it was a good bet that they would come on the run to yank her out of our clutches.
I gave her a friendly eye and a warm smile. “I’ll tell you, Mrs. Savage. As your daughter told you, I work for Nero Wolfe. He thinks there are some aspects of this situation that haven’t been sufficiently considered. To mention only one, there’s the legal principle that a criminal may not profit by his crime. If it should be proved that Aubry killed your nephew, and that Mrs. Karnow was an accessory, what happens to her half of the estate? Does it go to you and your son and daughter, or what? That’s the sort of thing Mr. Wolfe wants to discuss with you. If you’ll come on down to his office with me, he’s waiting there for you. He wants to know how you feel about it, and he wants your advice. It will only take us—”
A roar came from above. “What’s going on, Mumsy?”