Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

“He knows them too. Found on the body, underneath the dress, was the note I have shown you, in Goodwin’s handwriting, signed ARCHIE. The paper had been torn from a notebook which was found on his person, now in my possession. Three sets of Goodwin’s fingerprints, fresh and recent, were on objects in the apartment. A strand of hair, eleven hairs, found behind the scarf which was around the body’s throat, with which she was strangled, has been compared with Goodwin’s hair and they match precisely. Goodwin was at that address Monday evening and had an altercation with Mrs. Chack, and took Ann Amory to the Flamingo Club, and left with her hastily on account of a scene with a woman whose name is-not an element in the case. He went to 316 Barnum Street again yesterday and made inquiries of a man named Furey, Leon Furey, and apparently he spent most of the afternoon snooping around the neighborhood. We’re still checking that. So the neighborhood is acquainted with him, and two people saw him walking east on Barnum Street, not far from Number 316, between six-thirty and seven o’clock, in company with a man named Roy Douglas, who lives at-”

“That will do,” Wolfe snapped. His eyes moved. “Archie. Explain this at once.”

“Confronted with this evidence,” Cramer rumbled, “Goodwin refuses to talk. He submitted to a search without protest, with that notebook in his pocket. He permitted us to make a microscopic comparison of the strand of hair with his. But he won’t talk. And by God,” he hit the desk with one of the fists, “you have the gall to come down here, the first time you have ever honored us with a visit, and threaten to have the police department abolished!”

“I merely-” Wolfe began.

“Just a minute!” Cramer roared. “I’ve been taking your guff for fifteen years, and Goodwin has been riding for a fall for at least ten. Here it is. He is not now charged with murder. He is detained as a material witness. But it’s going to take a lot of comedy to laugh off that strand of hair. It’s exactly the kind of thing that could have happened without him knowing it, the girl grabbing at him and seizing his hair, and then when he got the scarf around her, trying to get her fingers behind it to pull it away and leaving the hair there. You’re smart, Wolfe, as smart a man as I ever knew. All right, try to figure out any other conceivable way how Goodwin’s hair got behind that scarf. That’s why we’re prepared to oppose any application for release on bail.”