Curtains for Three

by Rex Stout

I could have warned her, when she gave me that glance in the hall, to look out for him. Not only was she a sophisticated young woman, and not only did she glisten, but her slimness was the kind that comes from not eating enough, and Wolfe absolutely cannot stand people who don’t eat enough. I knew he would be down on her from the go.

  But she came back at him. “I don’t mean that,” she said scornfully. “Don’t be so touchy! I mean I had lied to my father. What he thought about Alberto and me wasn’t true. I was just bragging to him because—it doesn’t matter why. Anyway, what I told him wasn’t true, and I told him so that night!” “Which night?”

  “When we got home—from the stage party after Rigoletto. That was where my father knocked Alberto down, you know, right there on the stage. When we got home I told him that what I had said about Alberto and me wasn’t true.”

  “When were you lying, the first time or the second?”

  Curtains for Three 25

  “Don’t answer that, my dear,” Judge Arnold broke , lawyering. He looked sternly at Wolfe. “This is all elevant. You’re welcome to the facts, but relevant s. What Miss James told her father is immaterial.” Wolfe shook his head. “Oh no.” His eyes went from lit to left and back again. “Apparently I haven’t ie it plain. Mrs. Mion wants me to decide for her tier she has a just claim, not so much legally as orally. If it appears that Mr. James’ assault on Mr. i was morally justified that will be a factor in my sion.” He focused on Clara. “Whether my question i relevant or not, Miss James, I admit it was embar- and therefore invited mendacity. I withdraw it. this instead. Had you, prior to that stage party, given your father to understand that Mr. Mion had iuced you?”

  “Well—” Clara laughed. It was a tinkly soprano rather attractive. “What a nice old-fashioned ay to say it! Yes, I had. But it wasn’t true!‘1 “But you believed it, Mr. James?” Gifford James was having trouble holding himself , and I concede that such leading questions about his ghter*s honor from a stranger must have been hard take. But after all it wasn’t new to the rest of the audience, and anyway it sure was relevant. He forced IWmself to speak with quiet dignity. “I believed what tmy daughter told me, yes.”

  Wolfe nodded. “So much for that,” he said in a re jBeved tone. “I’m glad that part is over with.” His eyes Irtaoved. “Now. Mr. Grove, tell me about the conference |!ia Mr. Mion’s studio, a few hours before he died.”

  Rupert the Fat had his head tilted to one side, with hbs shrewd black eyes meeting Wolfe’s. “It was for the ^purpose,” he said in his high tenor, “of discussing the demand Mion had made for payment of damages.”

  26 Bex Stout

  “You were there?”

  “I was, naturally. I was Mion’s adviser and manager. Also Miss Bosley, Dr. Lloyd, Mr. James, and Judge Arnold.”

  “Who arranged the conference, you?”

  “In a way, yes. Arnold suggested it, and I told Mion and phoned Dr. Lloyd and Miss Bosley.”

  “What was decided?”

  “Nothing. That is, nothing definite. There was the question of the extent of the damage—how soon Mion would be able to sing again.”

  “What was your position?”

  Grove’s eyes tightened. “Didn’t I say I was Mion’s manager?”

  “Certainly. I mean, what position did you take regarding the payment of damages?”

  “I thought a preliminary payment of fifty thousand dollars should be made at once. Even if Mion’s voice was soon all right he had already lost that and more. His South American tour had been canceled, and he had been unable to make a lot of records on contract, and then radio offers—”

  “Nothing like fifty thousand dollars,” Judge Arnold asserted aggressively. There was nothing wrong with his larynx, small as he was. “I showed figures—”

  “To hell with your figures! Anybody can—”

  “Please!” Wblfe rapped on his desk with a knuckle. “What was Mr. Mion’s position?”

  “The same as mine, of course.” Grove was scowling -at Arnold as he spoke to Wolfe. “We had discussed it.”

  “Naturally.” Wolfe’s eyes went left. “How did you feel about it, Mr. James?”

  “I think,” Arnold broke in, “that I should speak for my client. You agree, Gif?”

  “Go ahead,” the baritone muttered.

  ^Bfc Curtains for Three 27

  ^Hprnold did, and took most of one of the three hours. ^Bps surprised that Wolfe didn’t stop him, and finally ^Hped that he let him ramble on just to get additional Hnxnt for his long-standing opinion of lawyers. If ^Bphe got it. Arnold covered everything. He had a lot HR’say about tort-feasors, going back a couple of ^Hiparies, with emphasis on the mental state of a tort

  ppOF. Another item he covered at length was proxi

  Ipe cause. He got really worked up about proximate

  Hose, but it was so involved that I lost track and

  MfcHere and there, though, he made sense. At one

  pant he said, “The idea of a preliminary payment, as Bpey called it, was clearly inadmissible. It is not rea

  lenable to expect a man, even if he stipulates an obligation, to make a payment thereon until either the

  petal amount of the obligation, or an exact method of poomputing it, has been agreed upon.” II At another point he said, “The demand for so large la sum can in fact be properly characterized.as blaekffiinail. They knew that if the action went to trial, and if |we showed that my client’s deed sprang from his poiowledge that his daughter had been wronged, a jury ffejspould not be likely to award damages. But they also | knew that we would be averse to making that defense.”

  , “Not his knowledge,” Wolfe objected. “Merely his belief. His daughter says she had misinformed him.”

  “We could have showed knowledge,” Arnold insisted.

  I looked at Clara with my brows up. She was being contradicted flatly on the chronology of her lie and her truth, but either she and her father didn’t get the implication of it or they didn’t want to get started on that again.

  28 Rex Stont

  At another point Arnold said, “Even if my client’s deed was tortious and damages would be collectible, the amount could not be agreed upon until the extent of the injury was known. We offered, without prejudice, twenty thousand dollars in full settlement, for a general release. They refused. They wanted a payment forthwith on account. We refused that on principle. In the end there was agreement on only one thing: that an effort should be made to arrive at the total amount of damage. Of course that was what Dr. Lloyd was there for. He was asked for a prognosis, and he stated that—but you don’t need to take hearsay. He’s here, and you can get it direct.”

  Wolfe nodded. “If you please, Doctor?”

  I thought, My God, here we go again with another expert.

  But Lloyd had mercy on us. He kept it down to our level and didn’t take anything like an hour. Before he spoke he took another swallow from his third helping of bourbon and water with mint, which had smoothed out some of the lines on his handsome face and taken some of the worry from his eyes.

  “I’ll try to remember,” he said slowly, “exactly what I told them. First I described the damage the blow had done. The thyroid and arytenoid cartilages on the left side had been severely injured, and to a lesser extent the cricoid.” He smiled—a superior smile, but not supercilious. “I waited two weeks, using indicated treatment* thinking an operation might not be required, but it was. When I got inside I confess I was relieved; it wasnt as bad as I had feared. It was a simple operation, and he healed admirably. I wouldn’t have been risking much that day if I had given assurance that his voice would be as good as ever in two months, three at the most, but the larynx is an ex Curtains for Three 29

  ely delicate instrument, and a tenor like Mion’s is rkable phenomenon, so I was cautious enough sly to say that I would be surprised and disap 1 if he wasn’t ready, fully ready, for the opening tie next opera season, seven months from then. I that my hope and expectation were actually optim
istic than that.”

  Lloyd pursed his lips. “That was it, I think. Never s, I welcomed the suggestion that my prognosis aid be reinforced by Rentner’s. Apparently it ild be a major factor in the decision about the it to be paid in damages, and I didn’t want the responsibility.”

  “Rentner? Who was he?” Wolfe asked. “Dr. Abraham Rentner of Mount Sinai,” Lloyd rei, in the tone I would use if someone asked me who Robinson was. “I phoned him and made an ap Dintment for the following morning.”

  “linsisted on it,” Rupert the Fat said importantly. l**Mion had a right to collect not sometime in the distant piiture, 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

  30 Rex Stout

  their energy for the big issue, was anything coming to Mrs. Mipn 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.

  Curtains for Three 31

  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.”

  32 Rex Stout

  “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,” Wblfe said imperturbably. “I would like to know why Mion decided to Mil 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.”

  Wotfe 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. Dur

  Curtains for Three 33

  ing 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.” 34 Rex Stout

  I thought, 111 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 dollar
s, 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, did 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.

  Curtains for Three 35

  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?”