Archie in the Crosshairs

by Robert Goldsborough

I like driving but don’t get to do a lot of it in and around Manhattan, which is a good walking town and has armies of taxis and buses, as well as what the city claims to be the world’s greatest subway system, never mind what London says. It was a pleasure to ease the roadster—Wolfe’s “other” car—out of Curran’s Motors.

  Steering north and then east, I left New York City in my rearview mirror and passed signs announcing exits for Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, and White Plains before entering Connecticut on the tree-lined Merritt Parkway, called “the most beautiful road in America” by some. I hadn’t seen enough of the country to evaluate that claim, but without question, the parkway is scenic and forested, pleasantly absent of billboards or anything that seems remotely urban.

  I got off at Westport and followed Kathleen Willis’s detailed directions, winding through a town that could have been designed as Hollywood’s idea of an ideal New England village. The Willis house was three blocks from the small business district. Perched on a small rise above the street, the two-story red brick Georgian mansion with white shutters and columns flanking the front door seemed to be saying “approach with caution.”

  I parked in front and walked up the five-step stone stairway cut into the grassy rise. Before I could rap on the brass knocker, the paneled front door swung open, revealing a tall, svelte woman with long, wavy, ash-blond hair that covered one eye. Shades of Veronica Lake.

  “Are you the former Boy Scout?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. I gave her the Scout salute as I remembered it.

  “Nicely done, come in,” she said, gracefully stepping aside. “You made good time—that is, unless you were calling me from Higgins Drug Store two minutes from here.”

  “No, I really did telephone from the big, bad city one state over. Your directions were so good that I made all the correct turns and hardly ever broke the speed limit. Scout’s honor.”

  “I’m proud of you,” she said, looking back over her shoulder and smiling as she led me through a chandeliered entry hall big enough to hold an eight-piece dance band. She had a good figure and knew how to show it off without flaunting it. “We can sit in the sun room and talk, if that is all right with you, Mr. Goodwin.”

  “It’s jake with me. And I answer to Archie.”

  “All right, Archie,” she replied, directing me to a white wicker chair that looked out on a terraced backyard where two grade-school-age girls were playing in a sandbox. “My kids, Laura and Meg,” their mother said. “Can I get you something to drink, coffee perhaps, or lemonade?”

  “Coffee would be fine—black.”

  Kathleen left and returned no more than two minutes later with two cups and a silver pot. She poured java into the cups, handed one to me, and took a chair at a right angle to mine, crossing one nylon-sheathed leg over the other. They were fine legs.

  “Now, tell me just what is going on with Cordelia,” she said.

  “That is what we are trying to find out,” I recited. “We know she’s being blackmailed, but she is very close-mouthed about the reason. Your father has tried without success to get her to open up. Mr. Wolfe and I are hoping one of her siblings might have some thoughts.”

  “Have you talked to the others?”

  I nodded. “Yes, all of them.”

  “Was anyone able to shed any light on the situation?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Then I am puzzled as to why you think I can help. Of all of us, I am probably the one least close to Cordelia, not that any of our generation is what you would term really close to her. She came along much later, as I am sure you know, being a keen-eyed detective.”

  “Keen-eyed?” I laughed. “I would like to think so, of course. But so far, we haven’t been able to figure out who might be applying the screws to your younger sister.”

  “Clearly someone who knows she has money,” Kathleen said, shifting and tucking one leg under her. “Of all of us, she’s the one who’s the best off financially, and by far.”

  “These digs of yours certainly don’t look bad,” I observed, looking around.

  “No, they are not bad at all, but do not let appearances fool you, Mr. Archie Goodwin. I paid dearly to hold on to this house. I made a bad marriage, as you are probably aware.”

  “I have heard something to that effect.”

  She sniffed. “I’ll just bet you have, and you don’t have to bother being diplomatic with me. I know very well the kinds of things being said by members of my family. When I met Lawrence Willis, I thought I had found the right person to spend my life with.” Another sniff. “Was I ever wrong about that!”

  I drank the coffee—which was quite good—and nodded. She clearly wanted to talk, and I was not about to get in her way.

  “Lawrence—he never wanted to be called Larry, said that was too middle class—gave a great first impression. He was damned good-looking. Still is, although he’s getting a little frayed around the edges, you might say, and a bit on the paunchy side. When we met, he had recently graduated from Brown, although I later learned he barely staggered through to get his degree. He claimed his parents came from old-line Boston money, but it turned out that money had been lost years before, in the Depression, along with the grand family home on Louisburg Square.”

  She paused to refill our cups. “Please don’t get me wrong, Archie. I am not a fortune hunter, and I did not marry Lawrence because of any money I thought he had. I felt I had been given enough myself. But as I learned, he was the one looking for a rich spouse. His so-called “big job” on Wall Street turned out to be low-level, and he ended up losing even that. Then there was the drinking, and the … well, you really don’t want to listen to me going on with this litany of my woes—I’ve bored enough others with that over the years.

  “I’ll just leave it that I was so anxious to get out of the marriage that I gave Lawrence everything he asked for except this house. My father thought I caved in too quickly and that I should have fought him much more vigorously, but I honestly didn’t have the stomach for it.”

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  “In an apartment over in downtown Stamford, a very nice set-up, my daughters tell me. I have never been there. He sees them on weekends, comes here to pick them up.”

  “Is he employed now?”

  “Yes, in a brokerage house near where he lives. I don’t think he’s making all that much money, but then he does not have to, given the amount that he’s gotten out of me.”

  “Quite a story.”

  “Isn’t it, though? Sorry to bore you.”

  “You haven’t, not at all. Given your knowledge of Cordelia, which I can understand is limited, do you have any thoughts at all as to why someone would be blackmailing her?”

  “No, none whatever. She is a somewhat naive girl, as I’m sure you have figured out, but I should think that along with naïveté would come caution.”

  “Good point. I understand she has a special friend.”

  “Yes, the Mercer boy. I can’t say I know him, although I’ve met him once or twice. He seems very reserved, or maybe just shy. You can’t think that he’d be a blackmailer, can you?”

  “I haven’t met him, and even if I had, I don’t do the thinking in our operation. I leave that to Mr. Wolfe.”

  “You are very modest,” Kathleen said. “I suspect you do a great deal of thinking. I’m interested in what you think about my brothers and older sister.”

  “They are all interesting people.”

  “That is a non-answer, Archie Goodwin. You must have some opinions.”

  “So now you’re the one doing the questioning,” I said with a grin. “All right, here’s a quick rundown: I found Tom to be likable and friendly; Annie to be bright, inquisitive, and somewhat aggressive; and Doug to be on the defensive side.”

  “I’m not surprised at any of your observations. Of the three, I am most concerned a
bout Doug. Tom will survive divorce and will ultimately be the better for it; Annie will move up the advertising ladder and maybe even find a man in the process; but Doug …”

  “Go on after the but,” I prompted.

  She shifted in her chair. “Doug doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. You probably know about his failed business venture. He is in much worse financial shape than me, and he and my father are barely on speaking terms. Dad advised against his getting into that deal with a college classmate, but Doug thought he knew it all, and he lost just about everything he had.”

  “And from what he told me, he doesn’t sell much of his art.”

  “I’ve heard the same thing from him,” Kathleen said. “I am not knowledgeable enough about art to be a good judge of his work, but I like it. There’s an example that he gave me,” she said, turning and pointing at a framed oil painting on the wall that looked like a bunch of children’s blocks jumbled together, but without any letters or numbers on them. The predominant colors were brown and yellow. “That is what’s called cubism,” she said.

  “At least I can tell how it got its name,” I remarked.

  She laughed. “Not everybody likes cubism, which has been around for at least half a century. Why my brother is tackling a genre that has gone out of style, I really can’t say. But then, Doug always has had a contrary streak. Maybe it has to do with the so-called ‘artistic temperament.’”

  “What is his social life like?”

  “I really don’t know,” Kathleen said. “He’s living in his own very private world down there in the Village, and he seems to like it that way. I think he went out a few times with a friend of Cordelia’s, whose name I forgot if I ever even knew it. But I gather that relationship didn’t lead anywhere, maybe because he was quite a bit older than she.”

  “Well, I’ve taken enough of your time,” I told her as I rose to leave. “I appreciate your having seen me on such short notice.”

  “I know I haven’t been much help, for which I am truly sorry. I hate to see Cordelia in some sort of trouble, whatever it is. She is really a decent kid, although at her age, she’s hardly a kid anymore, right? But to me she seems so much younger than she really is.”

  “And to me as well,” I said, shaking her hand and stepping out into Connecticut’s balmy summer afternoon.

  Chapter 21

  On the drive back to New York, I considered the plights of the Hutchinson siblings: two bloodied survivors of rancorous divorces; one successful but apparently dissatisfied advertising copywriter; an artist who was broke and going nowhere; and a guileless tourist who had met one charming and slick-talking Italian too many. Whoever it was that warned of “the trials of abounding wealth” certainly knew what he was talking about. Over lunch, Doug had wondered aloud about whether his misfortunes were the stuff of a novel. I wasn’t sure about that, but if you took the experiences of each member of the younger Hutchinson generation and put them all together, they would make quite a saga, and not a particularly happy or uplifting one.

  It was almost four thirty when I returned to the brownstone after having dropped the roadster off at the garage. Wolfe was up in the greenhouse enjoying his afternoon session with the orchids and Fritz bustled around the kitchen preparing the evening meal.

  “Will you be dining with us tonight, Archie?” he asked, a touch of scolding in his tone.

  “Yes, I have missed far too many of your fine meals lately, and it is time I put a stop to that. Notice that I am not even going to ask you about tonight’s menu, because whatever it is will be better than anything I have had outside these walls over the last few days.”

  That put a smile on Fritz’s puss. He would deny it if asked, but he loves to hear praise for his culinary skills—and they merit quite a bit of praise.

  “Tonight, I am serving one of your favorites: veal bird in casserole­ with mushrooms and white wine. I do remember that the last time I served it, you talked about it for days,” Fritz said.

  “It was well worth talking about for days. I’m not sure how I can stand to wait until seven, but somehow I will manage.”

  I left Fritz a happy man and went to the office to telephone Marlene Peters, the last person on my to-be-interviewed list. Cordelia had given me two numbers for Marlene: her apartment on the Lower East Side and the bookshop in the same neighborhood where she lived. There was no answer at home, so I dialed the number at the store.

  “Mason’s Book Nook,” a young-sounding female voice chirped.

  “I would like to speak to Marlene Peters.”

  “This is she. How may I help you?” I told her who I was and why I was calling. There was silence for several seconds. “How did you get my number?” she demanded, no longer chirping.

  I told her that Cordelia had given it to me.

  “Well, I really can’t imagine why,” she snapped. “I was in Florence when she was, that much is true, but I certainly don’t know about any sort of blackmailing. It really sounds terrible.”

  “Yes, it does, and Cordelia is extremely upset, as I’m sure you can imagine. My boss, Nero Wolfe, and I are trying to determine who the blackmailer is. It would be helpful if I could talk to you about your time in Florence with Cordelia. Without even realizing it, you may have some insights.”

  “I am sorry, Mr. … Goodwin. I’m at work and really am not free to talk. Even if I could, I don’t know what I could say that would be of any help.”

  “What time do you get off today?”

  “Nine o’clock, that’s when we close up.”

  “Fine, I’ll stop by then. We can get a cup of coffee or a sandwich someplace nearby. Where is the shop?”

  “On Second Avenue, just north of Sixth Street. But I really don’t see any use in this.”

  “Consider it as doing a favor for your good friend. And if you are worried about me, I can only say that I am honest and trustworthy. You can call Cordelia and ask her about me. When we meet, I will show you my private investigator’s license, complete with a picture. It was issued to me by the great State of New York, and they have never had reason to revoke it.”

  I could hear deep breathing. “Well … all right, as long as Cordelia said you should call me. I’ll try to remember everything I can think of about the time when she and I were together in Florence.”

  When Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at six, I told him where I had been and where I would be later in the evening. He held fast in his insistence that I wait until after my meeting with Marlene Peters to give him the rundown on all of my interviews. “I do not want to receive these reports in piecemeal form,” he grumped. “Your memory is good enough to store everything up until such time as you can repeat it all to me.”

  I appreciated his faith in my ability to give verbatim reports on extended conversations, although I would have liked to unload some of my information then. But Wolfe is a genius and I am not, so that settled the matter without further discussion.

  The veal bird casserole was as good as I had remembered, maybe even better, and it was followed by a dessert of raspberries in sherry cream, another of my all-time favorites. Could this be Fritz’s way of reminding me just how much I had been missing recently?

  Wolfe stuck to his inflexible rule of never discussing business during meals, holding forth on the various reasons New York had become the largest and most important city in the country and why it would likely stay that way for decades, if not centuries, to come. As usual, I mainly nodded, listened, and chewed, having nothing significant to add.

  After dinner, we had coffee in the office, but there was little conversation, as Wolfe immersed himself in his latest book, My Three Years in Moscow by Walter Bedell Smith. At eight-twenty, I rose and announced I was off to the Lower East Side, but got no reaction from the man who signs my checks. A fascinating book, no doubt. A light drizzle had begun to fall, so I grabbed my raincoat from the hall rack a
nd headed for Ninth Avenue to hail a southbound cab. Twenty-five minutes later, I found myself at the corner of Second Avenue and Sixth Street.

  I spotted Mason’s Book Nook, a narrow storefront whose cheerful inside lighting was a welcome contrast to the closed and darkened establishments on either side. When I stepped in, a little bell over the door announced my arrival. A man at the cash register with no hair on his head but plenty on his upper lip peered over half-glasses at me and smiled. “Welcome to Mason’s,” he said. “If we haven’t got what you want, we’ll do our darndest to get it. Just tell us how might we help you, young fella?”

  “Just by calling me ‘young fella’ you have lifted my spirits,” I told him, shaking the raindrops off my coat. “I’m looking for Miss Marlene Peters. I believe she is expecting me.”

  He threw me a suspicious look but quickly erased it. “Marlene!” he called, “A gentleman here to see you. At least I hope he’s a gentleman,” he added, winking at me to show that he sensed I was all right.

  A short, slim redhead with a turned-up nose wearing a skirt, sweater, and large tortoise shell glasses emerged from the shadowy bowels of the store and fixed me with an expression somewhere between curious and cautious.

  “It’s Mr. Goodwin, isn’t it?” she said, cocking her head.

  “That’s me all right. Did you check me out with your friend Cordelia?”

  A slight smile creased her face as she shook her head. “No, I really didn’t think I had to, and you don’t need to show me your license.”

  “That is reassuring,” I said. “I know I’m a little early, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just browse around until closing time.”

  “Marlene, it’s been a slow night,” the bald man said, stroking his white mustache. “You might as well take off now; I can close up.”

  “Are you sure, Mr. Mason?”

  “Absolutely, unless Mr. Goodwin here really does want to do some browsing, which I certainly would not object to.”

  “You know, my boss is a lover of Charles Dickens’ work, and he is also a lover of handsome volumes,” I told him. “Do you happen to have anything that might make a good birthday gift?”