Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 18

by Curtains for Three

  “I insisted on it,” Rupert the Fat said importantly. “Mion had a right to collect not sometime in the distant future, but then and there. They wouldn’t pay unless a total was agreed on, and if we had to name a total I wanted to be damn sure it was enough. Don’t forget that that day Mion couldn’t sing a note.”

  “He wouldn’t have been able even to let out a pianissimo for at least two months,” Lloyd bore him out. “I gave that as the minimum.”

  “There seems,” Judge Arnold interposed, “to be an implication that we opposed the suggestion that a second professional opinion be secured. I must protest—”

  “You did!” Grove squeaked.

  “We did not!” Gifford James barked. “We merely—”

  The three of them went at it, snapping and snarling. It seemed to me that they might have saved their energy for the big issue, was anything coming to Mrs. Mion and if so how much, but not those babies. Their main concern was to avoid the slightest risk of agreeing on anything at all. Wolfe patiently let them get where they were headed for—nowhere—and then invited a new voice in. He turned to Adele and spoke.

  “Miss Bosley, we haven’t heard from you. Which side were you on?”

  IV

  Adele Bosley had been sitting taking it in, sipping occasionally at her rum collins—now her second one—and looking, I thought, pretty damn intelligent. Though it was the middle of August, she was the only one of the six who had a really good tan. Her public relations with the sun were excellent.

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t on either side, Mr. Wolfe. My only interest was that of my employer, the Metropolitan Opera Association. Naturally we wanted it settled privately, without any scandal. I had no opinion whatever on whether—on the point at issue.”

  “And expressed none?”

  “No. I merely urged them to get it settled if possible.”

  “Fair enough!” Clara James blurted. It was a sneer. “You might have helped my father a little, since he got your job for you. Or had you—”

  “Be quiet, Clara!” James told her with authority.

  But she ignored him and finished it. “Or had you already paid in full for that?”

  I was shocked. Judge Arnold looked pained. Rupert the Fat giggled. Doc Lloyd took a gulp of bourbon and water.

  In view of the mildly friendly attitude I was developing toward Adele I sort of hoped she would throw something at the slim and glistening Miss James, but all she did was appeal to the father. “Can’t you handle the brat, Gif?”

  Then, without waiting for an answer, she turned to Wolfe. “Miss James likes to use her imagination. What she implied is not on the record. Not anybody’s record.”

  Wolfe nodded. “It wouldn’t belong on this one anyhow.” He made a face. “To go back to relevancies, what time did that conference break up?”

  “Why—Mr. James and Judge Arnold left first, around four-thirty. Then Dr. Lloyd, soon after. I stayed a few minutes with Mion and Mr. Grove, and then went.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “To my office, on Broadway.”

  “How long did you stay at your office?”

  She looked surprised. “I don’t know—yes, I do too, of course. Until a little after seven. I had things to do, and I typed a confidential report of the conference at Mion’s.”

  “Did you see Mion again before he died? Or phone him?”

  “See him?” She was more surprised. “How could I? Don’t you know he was found dead at seven o’clock? That was before I left the office.”

  “Did you phone him? Between four-thirty and seven?”

  “No.” Adele was puzzled and slightly exasperated. It struck me that Wolfe was recklessly getting onto thin ice, mighty close to the forbidden subject of murder. Adele added, “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “Neither do I,” Judge Arnold put in with emphasis. He smiled sarcastically. “Unless it’s force of habit with you, asking people where they were at the time a death by violence occurred. Why don’t you go after all of us?”

  “That’s what I intend to do,” Wolfe said imperturbably. “I would like to know why Mion decided to kill himself, because that has a bearing on the opinion I shall give his widow. I understand that two or three of you have said that he was wrought up when that conference ended, but not despondent or splenetic. I know he committed suicide; the police can’t be flummoxed on a thing like that; but why?”

  “I doubt,” Adele Bosley offered, “if you know how a singer—especially a great artist like Mion—how he feels when he can’t let a sound out, when he can’t even talk except in an undertone or a whisper. It’s horrible.”

  “Anyway, you never knew with him,” Rupert Grove contributed. “In rehearsal I’ve heard him do an aria like an angel and then rush out weeping because he thought he had slurred a release. One minute he was up in the sky and the next he was under a rug.”

  Wolfe grunted. “Nevertheless, anything said to him by anyone during the two hours preceding his suicide is pertinent to this inquiry, to establish Mrs. Mion’s moral position. I want to know where you people were that day, after the conference up to seven o’clock, and what you did.”

  “My God!” Judge Arnold threw up his hands. The hands came down again. “All right, it’s getting late. As Miss Bosley told you, my client and I left Mion’s studio together. We went to the Churchill bar and drank and talked. A little later Miss James joined us, stayed long enough for a drink, I suppose half an hour, and left. Mr. James and I remained together until after seven. During that time neither of us communicated with Mion, nor arranged for anyone else to. I believe that covers it?”

  “Thank you,” Wolfe said politely. “You corroborate, of course, Mr. James?”

  “I do,” the baritone said gruffly. “This is a lot of goddam nonsense.”

  “It does begin to sound like it,” Wolfe conceded. “Dr. Lloyd? If you don’t mind?”

  He hadn’t better, since he had been mellowed by four ample helpings of our best bourbon, and he didn’t. “Not at all,” he said cooperatively. “I made calls on five patients, two on upper Fifth Avenue, one in the East Sixties, and two at the hospital. I got home a little after six and had just finished dressing after taking a bath when Fred Weppler phoned me about Mion. Of course I went at once.”

  “You hadn’t seen Mion or phoned him?”

  “Not since I left after the conference. Perhaps I should have, but I had no idea—I’m not a psychiatrist, but I was his doctor.”

  “He was mercurial, was he?”

  “Yes, he was.” Lloyd pursed his lips. “Of course, that’s not a medical term.”

  “Far from it,” Wolfe agreed. He shifted his gaze. “Mr. Grove, I don’t have to ask you if you phoned Mion, since it is on record that you did. Around five o’clock?”

  Rupert the Fat had his head tilted again. Apparently that was his favorite pose for conversing. He corrected Wolfe. “It was after five. More like a quarter past.”

  “Where did you phone from?”

  “The Harvard Club.”

  I thought, I’ll be damned, it takes all kinds to make a Harvard Club.

  “What was said?”

  “Not much.” Grove’s lips twisted. “It’s none of your damn business, you know, but the others have obliged, and I’ll string along. I had forgotten to ask him if he would endorse a certain product for a thousand dollars, and the agency wanted an answer. We talked less than five minutes. First he said he wouldn’t and then he said he would. That was all.”

  “Did he sound like a man getting ready to kill himself?”

  “Not the slightest. He was glum, but naturally, since he couldn’t sing and couldn’t expect to for at least two months.”

  “After you phoned Mion what did you do?”

  “I stayed at the club. I ate dinner there and hadn’t quite finished when the news came that Mion had killed himself. So I’m still behind that ice cream and coffee.”

  “That’s too bad. When you phoned Mion, di
d you again try to persuade him not to press his claim against Mr. James?”

  Grove’s head straightened up. “Did I what?” he demanded.

  “You heard me,” Wolfe said rudely. “What’s surprising about it? Naturally Mrs. Mion has informed me, since I’m working for her. You were opposed to Mion’s asking for payment in the first place and tried to talk him out of it. You said the publicity would be so harmful that it wasn’t worth it. He demanded that you support the claim and threatened to cancel your contract if you refused. Isn’t that correct?”

  “It is not.” Grove’s black eyes were blazing. “It wasn’t like that at all! I merely gave him my opinion. When it was decided to make the claim I went along.” His voice went up a notch higher, though I wouldn’t have thought it possible. “I certainly did!”

  “I see.” Wolfe wasn’t arguing. “What is your opinion now, about Mrs. Mion’s claim?”

  “I don’t think she has one. I don’t believe she can collect. If I were in James’ place I certainly wouldn’t pay her a cent.”

  Wolfe nodded. “You don’t like her, do you?”

  “Frankly, I don’t. No. I never have. Do I have to like her?”

  “No, indeed. Especially since she doesn’t like you either.” Wolfe shifted in his chair and leaned back. I could tell from the line of his lips, straightened out, that the next item on the agenda was one he didn’t care for, and I understood why when I saw his eyes level at Clara James. I’ll bet that if he had known that he would have to be dealing with that type he wouldn’t have taken the job. He spoke to her testily. “Miss James, you’ve heard what has been said?”

  “I was wondering,” she complained, as if she had been holding in a grievance, “if you were going to go on ignoring me. I was around too, you know.”

  “I know. I haven’t forgotten you.” His tone implied that he only wished he could. “When you had a drink in the Churchill bar with your father and Judge Arnold, why did they send you up to Mion’s studio to see him? What for?”

  Arnold and James protested at once, loudly and simultaneously. Wolfe, paying no attention to them, waited to hear Clara, her voice having been drowned by theirs.

  “… nothing to do with it,” she was finishing. “I sent myself.”

  “It was your own idea?”

  “Entirely. I have one once in a while, all alone.”

  “What did you go for?”

  “You don’t need to answer, my dear,” Arnold told her.

  She ignored him. “They told me what had happened at the conference, and I was mad. I thought it was a holdup—but I wasn’t going to tell Alberto that. I thought I could talk him out of it.”

  “You went to appeal to him for old times’ sake?”

  She looked pleased. “You have the nicest way of putting things! Imagine a girl my age having old times!”

  “I’m glad you like my diction, Miss James.” Wolfe was furious. “Anyhow, you went. Arriving at a quarter past six?”

  “Just about, yes.”

  “Did you see Mion?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “He wasn’t there. At least—” She stopped. Her eyes weren’t glistening quite so much. She went on, “That’s what I thought then. I went to the thirteenth floor and rang the bell at the door to the studio. It’s a loud bell—he had it loud to be heard above his voice and the piano when he was practicing—but I couldn’t hear it from the hall because the door is soundproofed too, and after I had pushed the button a few times I wasn’t sure the bell was ringing so I knocked on the door. I like to finish anything I start, and I thought he must be there, so I rang the bell some more and took off my shoe and pounded on the door with the heel. Then I went down to the twelfth floor by the public stairs and rang the bell at the apartment door. That was really stupid, because I know how Mrs. Mion hates me, but anyway I did. She came to the door and said she thought Alberto was up in the studio, and I said he wasn’t, and she shut the door in my face. I went home and mixed myself a drink—which reminds me, I must admit this is good scotch, though I never heard of it before.”

  She lifted her glass and jiggled it to swirl the ice. “Any questions?”

  “No,” Wolfe growled. He glanced at the clock on the wall and then along the line of faces. “I shall certainly report to Mrs. Mion,” he told them, “that you were not grudging with the facts.”

  “And what else?” Arnold inquired.

  “I don’t know. We’ll see.”

  That they didn’t like. I wouldn’t have supposed anyone could name a subject on which those six characters would have been in unanimous accord, but Wolfe turned the trick in five words. They wanted a verdict; failing that, an opinion; failing that, at least a hint. Adele Bosley was stubborn, Rupert the Fat was so indignant he squeaked, and Judge Arnold was next door to nasty. Wolfe was patient up to a point, but finally stood up and told them good night as if he meant it. The note it ended on was such that before going not one of them shelled out a word of appreciation for all the refreshment, not even Adele, the expert on public relations, or Doc Lloyd, who had practically emptied the bourbon bottle.

  With the front door locked and bolted for the night, I returned to the office. To my astonishment Wolfe was still on his feet, standing over by the bookshelves, glaring at the backbones.

  “Restless?” I asked courteously.

  He turned and said aggressively, “I want another bottle of beer.”

  “Nuts. You’ve had five since dinner.” I didn’t bother to put much feeling into it, as the routine was familiar. He had himself set the quota of five bottles between dinner and bedtime, and usually stuck to it, but when anything sent his humor far enough down he liked to shift the responsibility so he could be sore at me too.

  It was just part of my job. “Nothing doing,” I said firmly. “I counted ’em. Five. What’s the trouble, a whole evening gone and still no murderer?”

  “Bah.” He compressed his lips. “That’s not it. If that were all we could close it up before going to bed. It’s that confounded gun with wings.” He gazed at me with his eyes narrowed, as if suspecting that I had wings too. “I could, of course, just ignore it—No. No, in view of the state our clients are in, it would be foolhardy. We’ll have to clear it up. There’s no alternative.”

  “That’s a nuisance. Can I help any?”

  “Yes. Phone Mr. Cramer first thing in the morning. Ask him to be here at eleven o’clock.”

  My brows went up. “But he’s interested only in homicides. Do I tell him we’ve got one to show him?”

  “No. Tell him I guarantee that it’s worth the trouble.” Wolfe took a step toward me. “Archie.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve had a bad evening and I’ll have another bottle.”

  “You will not. Not a chance.” Fritz had come in and we were starting to clear up. “It’s after midnight and you’re in the way. Go to bed.”

  “One wouldn’t hurt him,” Fritz muttered.

  “You’re a help,” I said bitterly. “I warn both of you, I’ve got a gun in my pocket. What a household!”

  V

  For nine months of the year Inspector Cramer of Homicide, big and broad and turning gray, looked the part well enough, but in the summertime the heat kept his face so red that he was a little gaudy. He knew it and didn’t like it, and as a result he was some harder to deal with in August than in January. If an occasion arises for me to commit a murder in Manhattan I hope it will be winter.

  Tuesday at noon he sat in the red leather chair and looked at Wolfe with no geniality. Detained by another appointment, he hadn’t been able to make it at eleven, the hour when Wolfe adjourns the morning session with his orchids up in the plant rooms. Wolfe wasn’t exactly beaming either, and I was looking forward to some vaudeville. Also I was curious to see how Wolfe would go about getting dope on a murder from Cramer without spilling it that there had been one, as Cramer was by no means a nitwit.

  “I’m on my way uptown,” Cr
amer grumbled, “and haven’t got much time.”

  That was probably a barefaced lie. He merely didn’t want to admit that an inspector of the NYPD would call on a private detective on request, even though it was Nero Wolfe and I had told him we had something hot.

  “What is it,” he grumbled on, “the Dickinson thing? Who brought you in?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “No one, thank heaven. It’s about the murder of Alberto Mion.”

  I goggled at him. This was away beyond me. Right off he had let the dog loose, when I had thought the whole point was that there was no dog on the place.

  “Mion?” Cramer wasn’t interested. “Not one of mine.”

  “It soon will be. Alberto Mion, the famous opera singer. Four months ago, on April nineteenth. In his studio on East End Avenue. Shot—”

  “Oh.” Cramer nodded. “Yeah, I remember. But you’re stretching it a little. It was suicide.”

  “No. It was first-degree murder.”

  Cramer regarded him for three breaths. Then, in no hurry, he got a cigar from his pocket, inspected it, and stuck it in his mouth. In a moment he took it out again.

  “I have never known it to fail,” he remarked, “that you can be counted on for a headache. Who says it was murder?”

  “I have reached that conclusion.”

  “Then that’s settled.” Cramer’s sarcasm was usually a little heavy. “Have you bothered any about evidence?”

  “I have none.”

  “Good. Evidence just clutters a murder up.” Cramer stuck the cigar back in his mouth and exploded, “When did you start keeping your sentences so goddam short? Go ahead and talk!”

  “Well—” Wolfe considered. “It’s a little difficult. You’re probably not familiar with the details, since it was so long ago and was recorded as suicide.”

  “I remember it fairly well. As you say, he was famous. Go right ahead.”

  Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes. “Interrupt me if you need to. I had six people here for a talk last evening.” He pronounced their names and identified them. “Five of them were present at a conference in Mion’s studio which ended two hours before he was found dead. The sixth, Miss James, banged on the studio door at a quarter past six and got no reply, presumably because he was dead then. My conclusion that Mion was murdered is based on things I have heard said. I’m not going to repeat them to you—because it would take too long, because it’s a question of emphasis and interpretation, and because you have already heard them.”