Black Orchids

"Shut up, Archie. What can I do for you, Inspector?"

"You can tell me what you were doing for Bess Huddleston."

"Indeed." Wolfe's brows went up a shade. "You? The Homicide Bureau? Why do you want to know?"

"Because a guy is making himself a pest down at Headquarters. Her brother. He says she was murdered."

"He does?"

"Yes."

"Offering what evidence?"

"None at all."

"Then why bother me about it? Or yourself either?"

"Because we can't shut him up. He's even been to the Commissioner. And though he has no evidence, he has an argument. I'd like to tell you his argument."

Wolfe leaned back and sighed. "Go ahead."

"Well. He started on us last Saturday, four days ago. She got tetanus the day before. I don't need to tell you about that cut on her toe, since Goodwin was there-"

"I've heard about it."

"I'll bet you have. The brother, Daniel, said she couldn't have got tetanus from that cut. He said it was a clean piece of glass that dropped into her slipper when the tray of glasses fell on the terrace. He saw it. And the slipper was a clean house slipper, nearly new and clean. And she hadn't been walking around barefooted. He claimed there couldn't possibly have been any tetanus germs in that cut, at least not enough to cause so violent an attack so soon. I sent a man up there Saturday night, but the doctor wouldn't let him see her, and of course he had no evidence-"

"Dr. Brady?"

"Yes. But the brother kept after us, especially when she died, and yesterday morning I sent a couple of men up to rub it off. I want to ask you, Goodwin, what was the piece of glass like? The piece in her slipper that cut her?"

"I knew you really came to see me," I told him genially. "It was a piece from one of the thick blue glasses that they had for old-fashioneds. Several of them broke."

Cramer nodded. "So they all say. We sent the slippers to the laboratory, and they say no tetanus germs. Of course there was another possibility, the iodine and the bandage. We sent all the stuff on that shelf to the laboratory, and the gauze was sterile, and it was good iodine, so naturally there were no germs in it. Under the circum-"

"Subsequent dressings," Wolfe muttered.

"No. The dressing Brady found on it when he was called up there Friday night was the one he had put on originally."

"Listen," I put in, "I know. By God. That orangutan. He tickled her feet. He rubbed germs on her-"