Curtains for Three

by Rex Stout

  “Upstairs?”

  “Yes, it’s a duplex, and upstairs was my husband’s soundproofed studio, where he practiced. So he went—”

  “Please, Peggy,” Weppler interrupted her. His eyes went to Wolfe. “You should have it firsthand. I went up to tell Mion that I loved his wife, and she loved me and not him, and to ask him to be civilized about it. Getting a divorce has come to be regarded as fairly civilized, but he didn’t see it that way. He was anything but civilized. He wasn’t violent, but he was damned mean. After some of that I got afraid I might do to him what Gif James had done, and I left. I didn’t want to go back to Mrs. Mion while I was in that state of mind, so I left the studio by the door to the upper hall and took the elevator there.”

  He stopped.

  Curtains for Three 5

  “And?” Wolfe prodded him. “I walked it off. I walked across to the park, and after a while I had calmed down and I phoned Mrs. Mion, and she met me in the park. I told her what I Mion’s attitude was, and I asked her to leave him and come with me. She wouldn’t do that.” Weppler paused, | and then went on, “There are two complications you Jjought to have if you’re to have everything.” “If they’re relevant, yes.”

  “They’re relevant all right. First, Mrs. Mion had Hand has money of her own. That was an added attraction for Mion. It wasn’t for me. I’m just telling you.” “Thank you. And the second?” “The second was Mrs. Mion’s reason for not leaving fion immediately. I suppose you know he had been i top tenor at the Met for five or six years, and his piroice was gone—temporarily. Gifford James, the bari|ft0ne, had hit him on the neck with his fist and hurt his sc—that was early in March—and Mion couldn’t the season. It had been operated, but his voice in’t come back, and naturally he was glum, and Mrs. ilBon wouldn’t leave him under those circumstances. I ied to persuade her to, but she wouldn’t. I wasn’t ; like normal that day, on account of what had ened to me for the first time in my life, and on nt of what Mion had said to me, so I wasn’t rea Iflpnable and I left her in the park and went downtown > a bar and started drinking. A lot of time went by I had quite a few, but I wasn’t pickled. Along seven o’clock I decided I had to see her again 1 carry her off so she wouldn’t spend another night That mood took me back to East End Avenue up to the twelfth floor, and then I stood there in t hall a while, perhaps ten minutes, before my finger ent to the pushbutton. Finally I rang, and the maid

  6 Rex Stout

  let me in and went for Mrs. Mion, but I had lost my nerve or something. All I did was suggest that we should have a talk with Mion together. She agreed, and we went upstairs and—”

  “Using the elevator?”

  “No, the stairs inside the apartment. We entered the studio. Mion was on the floor. We went over to him. There was a big hole through the top of his head. He was dead. I led Mrs. Mion out, made her come, and on the stairs—they’re too narrow to go two abreast—she fell and rolled halfway down. I carried her to her room and put her on her bed, and I started for the living room, for the phone there, when I thought of something to do first. I went out and took the elevator to the ground floor, got the doorman and elevator man together, and asked them who had been taken up to the Mion apartment, either the twelfth floor or the thirteenth, that afternoon. I said they must be damn sure not to skip anybody. They gave me the names and I wrote them down. Then I went back up to the apartment and phoned the police. After I did that it struck me that a layman isn’t supposed to decide if a man is dead, so I phoned Dr. Lloyd, who has an apartment there in the building. He came at once, and I took him up to the studio. We hadn’t been there more than three or four minutes when the first policeman came, and of course—”

  “If you please,” Wolfe put in crossly. “Everything is sometimes too much. You haven’t even hinted at the trouble you’re in.”

  “I’ll get to it—”

  “But faster, I hope, if I help. My memory has been jogged. The doctor and the police pronounced him dead. The muzzle of the revolver had been thrust into his mouth, and the emerging bullet had torn out a

  Curtains for Three 7

  i of his skull. The revolver, found lying on the floor | beside him, belonged to him and was kept there in the No . There was no sign of any struggle and no mark f any other injury on him. The loss of his voice was an scellent motive for suicide. Therefore, after a routine vestigation, giving due weight to the difficulty of the barrel of a loaded revolver into a man’s pnouth without arousing him to protest, it was retried as suicide. Isn’t that correct?” R* They both said yes.

  “Have the police reopened it? Or is gossip at kf

  They both said no.

  “Then let’s get on. Where’s the trouble?” “It’s us,” Peggy said. “Why? What’s wrong with you?” “Everything.” She gestured. “No. I don’t mean that not everything, just one thing. After my husband’s ath and the—the routine investigation, I went away a while. When I came back—for the past two onths Fred and I have been together some, but it sn’t right—I mean we didn’t feel right. Day before ay, Friday, I went to friends in Connecticut for s weekend, and he was there. Neither of us knew the was coming. We talked it out yesterday and last and this morning, and we decided to come and ; you to help us—anyway, I did, and he wouldn’t let i come alone.”

  Peggy leaned forward and was in deadly earnest. STou must help us, Mr. Wolfe. I love him so much—so i!—and he says he loves me, and I know he does! ay afternoon we decided we would get married October, and then last night we got started talking at it isn’t what we say, it’s what is in our eyes when

  8 Sex Stout

  we look at each other. We just can’t get married with that back of our eyes and trying to hide it—”

  A little shiver went over her. “For years—forever? We can’t! We know we can’t—it would be horrible! What it is, it’s a question: who killed Alberto? Did he? Did I? I don’t really think he did, and he doesn’t really think I did—I hope he doesn’t—but it’s there back of our eyes, and we know it is!”

  She extended both hands. “We want you to find out!”

  Wolfe snorted. “Nonsense. You need a spanking or a psychiatrist. The police may have shortcomings, but they’re not nincompoops. If they’re satisfied—”

  “But that’s it! They wouldn’t be satisfied if we had told the truth!”

  “Oh.” Wolfe’s browsVent up. “You lied to them?”

  “Yes. Or if we didn’t lie, anyhow we didn’t tell them the truth. We didn’t tell them that when we first went in together and saw him, there was no gun lying there. There was no gun in sight.”

  “Indeed. How sure are you?”

  “Absolutely positive. I never saw anything clearer than I saw that—that sight—all of it. There was no gun.”

  Wolfe snapped at Weppler, “You agree, sir?”

  “Yes. She’s right.”

  Wolfe sighed. “Well,” he conceded, “I can see that you’re really in trouble. Spanking wouldn’t help.”

  I shifted in my chair on account of a tingle at the lower part of my spine. Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street was an interesting place to live and work—for Fritz Brenner, the chef and housekeeper, for Theodore Horstmann, who fed and nursed the ten thousand orchids in the plant rooms up on the roof, and for me, Archie Goodwin, whose main

  Curtains for Three 9

  operations was the big office on the ground faturally I thought my job the most interesting, confidential assistant to a famous private de is constantly getting an earful of all kinds of and problems—everything from a missing to a new blackmail gimmick. Very few clients bored me. But only one kind of case gave me le in the spine: murder. And if this pair of were talking straight, this was it.

  II

  filled two notebooks when they left, more than hours later.

  they had thought it through before they phoned appointment with Wolfe, they wouldn’t, have All they wanted, as Wolfe pointed out, was the They wanted him, first, to investigate a fo
ur i-old murder without letting on there had been second, to prove that neither of them had killed Mion, which could be done only by finding out had; and third, in case he concluded that one of had done it, to file it away and forget it. Not that put it that way, since their story was that they both absolutely innocent, but that was what it itedto.

  fe Wolfe made it good and plain. “If I take the job,” he them, “and find evidence to convict someone of no matter who, the use I make of it will be ly in my discretion. I am neither an Astraea nor a but I like my door open. But if you want to drop now, here’s your check, and Mr. Goodwin’s note will be destroyed. We can forget you have been and shall.”

  10 Rex Stout

  That was one of the moments when they were within an ace of getting up and going, especially Fred Weppler, but they didn’t. They looked at each other, and it was all in their eyes. By that time I had about decided I liked them both pretty well and was even beginning to admire them, they were so damn determined to get loose from the trap they were in. When they looked at each other like that their eyes said, “Let’s go and be together, my darting love, and forget this—come on, come on.” Then they said, “It will be so wonderful!” Then they said, “Yes, oh yes, but— But we don’t want it wonderful for a day or a week; it must be always wonderful—and we know …”

  It took strong muscles to hold onto it like that, not to mention horse sense, and several times I caught myself feeling sentimental about it. Then of course there was the check for five grand on Wolfe’s desk.

  The notebooks were full of assorted matters. There Were a thousand details which might or might not turn out to be pertinent, such as the mutual dislike between **e&gy Mion and Rupert Grove, her husband’s manager, or the occasion of Gifford James socking Alberto Mion in front of witnesses, or the attitudes of various persons toward Mion’s demand for damages; but you couldn’t use it all, and Wolfe himself never needed more than a fraction of it, so I’ll pick and choose. Of course the gun was Exhibit A. It was a new one, having been bought by Mion the day after Gifford James had plugged him and hurt his larynx—not, he had announced, for vengeance on James but for future protection. He had carried it in a pocket whenever he went out, and at home had kept it in the studio, lying on the base of a bust of Caruso. So far as known, it had never fired but one bullet, the one that killed Mion.

  When Dr. Lloyd had arrived and Weppler had

  Curtains for Three 11

  en him to the studio the gun was lying on the floor ; far from Mion’s knee. Dr. Lloyd’s hand had started it but had been withdrawn without touching it, so it I been there when the law came. Peggy was positive ; had not been there when she and Fred had entered, he agreed. The cops had made no announcement it fingerprints, which wasn’t surprising since none hardly ever found on a gun that are any good, jhout the two hours and a half, Wolfe kept dart; back to the gun, but it simply didn’t have wings. The picture of the day and the day’s people was all in. The morning seemed irrelevant, so it started lunch time with five of them there: Mion, Peggy, I, one Adele Bosley, and Dr. Lloyd. It was more sional than social. Fred had been invited because on wanted to sell him the idea of writing a piece for Gazette saying that the rumors that Mion would ?er be able to sing again were malicious hooey, ele Bosley, who was in charge of public relations for i Metropolitan Opera, had come to help work on Dr. Lloyd had been asked so he could assure ppler that the operation he had performed on I’s larynx had been successful and it was a good ; that by the time the opera season opened in No mber the great tenor would be as good as ever, ng special had happened except that Fred had to do the piece. Adele Bosley and Lloyd had , and Mion had gone up to the soundproofed studio, id Fred and Peggy had looked at each other and slid discovered the most important fact of life since ‘Garden of Eden.

  I An hour or so later there had been another gather, this time up in the studio, around half-past three, ; neither Fred nor Peggy had been present By then 1 had walked himself calm and phoned Peggy, and

  12 Sex Stout

  she had gone to meet him in the park, so their informa! tion on the meeting in the studio was hearsay. Besides Mion and Dr. Lloyd there had been four people: Adele Bosley for operatic public relations; Mr. Rupert Grove, Mion’s manager; Mr. Gifford James, the baritone who had socked Mion in the neck six weeks previously; and Judge Henry Arnold, James’ lawyer. This affair had been even less social than the lunch, having been arranged to discuss a formal request that Mion had made of Gifford James for the payment of a quarter of a million bucks for the damage to Mion’s larynx.

  Fred’s and Peggy’s hearsay had it that the conference had been fairly hot at points, with the temperature boosted right at the beginning by Mion’s getting the gun from Caruso’s bust and placing it on a table at his elbow. On the details of its course they were pretty sketchy, since they hadn’t been there, but anyhow the gun hadn’t been fired. Also there was plenty of evidence that Mion was alive and well—except for his larynx—when the party broke up. He had made two phone calls after the conference had ended, one to his barber and one to a wealthy female opera patron; his manager, Rupert Grove, had phoned him a little later; and around five-thirty he had phoned downstairs to the maid to bring him a bottle of vermouth and some ice, which she had done. She had taken the tray into the studio, and he had been upright and intact.

  I was careful to get all the names spelled right in my notebook, since it seemed likely the job would be to get one of them tagged for murder, and I was especially careful with the last one that got in: Clara James, Gifford’s daughter. There were three spotlights on her. First, the reason for James’ assault on Mion had been his knowledge or suspicion—Fred and Peggy weren’t sure which—that Mion had stepped over the line with

  Curtains for Three 13

  ties’ daughter. Second, her name had ended the list, t>t by Fred from the doorman and elevator man, of ople who had called that afternoon. They said she come about a quarter past six and had got off at be floor the studio was on, the thirteenth, and had oned the elevator to the twelfth floor a little er, maybe ten minutes, and had left. The third spot jht was directed by Peggy, who had stayed in the rk a while after Fred had marched off, and had then eturned home, arriving around five o’clock. She had gone up to the studio and had net seen her hus nd. Sometime after six, she thought around half she had answered the doorbell herself because s maid had been in the kitchen with the cook. It was . James. She was pale and tense, but she was al ays pale and tense. She had asked for Alberto, and ?eggy had said she thought he was up in the studio, ad Clara had said no, he wasn’t there, and never nd. When Clara went for the elevator button, Peggy shut the door, not wanting company anyway, and ticularly not Clara James.

  Some half an hour later Fred showed up, and they ?iascended to the studio together and found that Alberto ?;lra8 there all right, but no longer upright or intact. That picture left room for a whole night of quess, but Wolfe concentrated on what he regarded as |3ttie essentials. Even so, we went into the third hour the third notebook. He completely ignored some ots that I thought needed filling in; for instance, had I^Jberto had a habit of stepping over the line with lather men’s daughters and/or wives, and if so, names Spplease. From things they said I gathered that Alberto |%ad been broad-minded about other men’s women, but ^apparently Wolfe wasn’t interested. Along toward the tSend he was back on the gun again, and when they had

  14 Sex Stoat

  ,

  nothing new to offer he scowled and got caustic. When they stayed glued he finally snapped at them, “Which one of you is lying?.”

  They looked hurt. “That won’t get you anywhere,” Fred Weppler said bitterly, “or us either.”

  “It would be silly,” Peggy Mion protested, “to come here and give you that check and then lie to you. Wouldn’t it?”

  “Then you’re silly,” Wolfe said coldly. He pointed a finger at her. “Look here. All of this might be worked out, none of it is preposterous, except one thing. Who put the gun on the floor besi
de the body? When you two entered the studio it wasn’t there; you both swear to that, and I accept it. You left and started downstairs; you fell, and he carried you to your room. You weren’t unconscious. Were you?”

  “No.” Peggy was meeting his gaze. “I could have walked, but he—he wanted to carry me.”

  “No doubt. He did so. You stayed in your room. He went to the ground floor to compile a list of those who had made themselves available as murder suspects— showing admirable foresight, by the way—came back up and phoned the police and then the doctor, who arrived without delay since he lived in the building. Not more than fifteen minutes intervened between the moment you and Mr. Weppler left the studio and the moment he and the doctor entered. The door from the studio to the public hall on the thirteenth floor has a lock that is automatic with the closing of the door, and the door was closed and locked. No one could possibly have entered during the fifteen minutes. You say that you had left your bed and gone to the living room, and that no one could have used that route without being seen by you. The maid and cook were in the

  Curtains for Three 15

  itchen, unaware of what was going on. So no one en|tered the studio and placed the gun on the floor.” “Someone did,” Fred said doggedly. Peggy insisted, “We don’t know who had a key.” “You said that before.” Wolfe was at them now. f^Even if everyone had keys, I don’t believe it and nei er would anyone else.” His eyes came to me. “Ar |ehie. Would you?”

  “I’d have to see a movie of it,” I admitted. “You see?” he demanded of them. “Mr. Goodwin fIsn’t prejudiced against you—on the contrary. He’s llready to fight fire for you; see how he gets behind on i notes for the pleasure of watching you look at each father. But he agrees with me that you’re lying. Since i one else could have put the gun on the floor, one of y’o.n did. I have to know about it. The circumstances ay have made it imperative for you, or you thought gheydid.”