The Missing Chapter

“I did not mean to suggest otherwise,” Wolfe said evenly. “In the second row, behind Mr. Vinson, is Keith Billings, an editor, formerly with Monarch Press and now employed by Westman & Lane. On his right is Patricia Royce, a novelist and friend of Mr. Childress’s. And next to her is Wilbur Hobbs, a book reviewer for the Gazette.”

“Who are they?” Ott stabbed a thumb toward Cramer and Stebbins.

Wolfe glared at him. “I was getting to that, sir. The gentleman in the brown suit is Inspector Cramer, head of Homicide for the New York City Police Department. Next to him is his associate, Sergeant Stebbins.”

“And just what might they be doing here?” Wilbur Hobbs demanded shrilly. “I was not informed this was to be a police investigation.”

“As indeed it is not,” Wolfe replied, ringing for beer. “They are here at my invitation, and they remain at my sufferance. They may be of use before we adjourn, however.”

“Meaning?” Patricia Royce asked tightly. It was the first word she had spoken since she had entered the brownstone.

“Meaning that as I said a moment ago, I intend to name Mr. Childress’s murderer.”

“Well, do so, man!” Billings barked. “Or are you being paid by the hour?”

“Dammit, you’re making a mistake to slow him down,” Cramer put in gruffly. “I’ve been to these sessions before, and he does them his way. He’s as stubborn as a Missouri mule.”

“As a police officer of high rank, I should think you would want to know immediately what’s going on,” Hobbs interjected loudly.

“If I can spend a few minutes here, so can you,” Cramer shot back, the color rising in his cheeks.

“Thank you,” Wolfe replied dryly, pouring beer from one of the bottles Fritz had brought in silently. “Mr. Vinson approached me shortly after Mr. Childress’s death. He requested that I conduct an investigation. He was not satisfied with the verdict of suicide, and soon I concurred.

“It quickly became apparent that, metaphorically, there was a missing chapter in the story of Mr. Childress’s life and death. To begin with, a number of people harbored varying degrees of animus toward the dead man. To my knowledge, they all are in this room.”

Patricia Royce shuddered.

“Those who harbor what you term as animus don’t necessarily go around shooting people,” Franklin Ott snapped.

Wolfe dismissed the comment with a sniff. “Early in my investigation, an acquaintance of Mr. Goodwin’s suggested, perhaps in jest, that all of you here, excepting Mr. Vinson, had conspired to dispatch Mr. Childress. I briefly—”

“That is... outrageous!” Clarice Wingfield huffed, leaning forward and clenching both fists. Her eyes blazed. The woman clearly possessed her late cousin’s temper.

“Capricious, perhaps, but not outrageous, Miss Wingfield. I confess to you all that I briefly considered the possibility of a conspiracy before I discarded it. I then turned to the motives each of you, individually, possessed for wishing Charles Childress dead.”

“What motives?” Patricia Royce snapped. She seemed to have regained control of herself.

Wolfe drank beer and set down his glass. “Madam, I am aware of three people in this room who have been accused of murdering Mr. Childress. And two of the accusers are present.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Wolfe flipped a hand. “I mention that only to underscore that there are many conceivable motives for murder.”

“And what was my motive?” Patricia persisted.

“That will come later. I weighed what I perceived to be the various motives and the degree of stimulus behind each, considered the accusations that had been made, either to me or to Mr. Goodwin, and proceeded.”

“Let’s speed this up, dammit!” It was Keith Billings again, whom I had seated well beyond the reach of his old sparring partner, Franklin Ott. Debra Mitchell watched all of this exchange with cold interest. Maybe she was casting an episode of Entre Nous.

“All right, I shall begin with you,” Wolfe told Billings. “Your dislike for Mr. Childress was manifest and widely known. From the beginning, the editor-writer relationship was extremely fractious. He was hostile to your suggestions and your attempts to strengthen his prose — particularly his plot structures. His friendship with your superior, Mr. Vinson, exacerbated the situation. Finally, the writer demanded a new editor, and that demand was met by Mr. Vinson. You resigned in anger from Monarch. Your hostility toward Mr. Childress increased when he excoriated you in an article that was read throughout the publishing community. Your career had been seriously damaged. Many would consider that series of events an adequate motive for murder.”

“Bunk,” Billings howled. “I landed on my feet after I left Monarch. My career has been doing just fine.”

“Has it?” Wolfe raised his eyebrows. “Mr. Hobbs, you are a presumably disinterested observer of the publishing universe. Is Mr. Billings’s current position of equal status to his former one?”