Too Many Women nwo-12

by Rex Stout

  “I don’t want to,” she said, her voice so thin that it was nearly a squeak.

  “Of course you don’t. I can understand that, but will you?” “Yes.” “Now?” “Yes.” “Which one? Who?” “Any-I don’t care.” “But you just refused to go to see Pine.” “I mean-any other.” “Okay. Now it’s like this. Their idea is that you should be willing to discuss this with a representative of the Board of Directors, and they would prefer to have you do it with the man they have hired to work for them and represent them regarding these murders. That man is Nero Wolfe. Will you come with me to see him?” She didn’t reply.

  “I’m not urging you,” I declared. “Yesterday I asked you to come and tell him the truth. Now you can tell him anything you want to. They would prefer to have you see Mr. Wolfe, but if you don’t like the idea, take a vice-president. Suit yourself. Why don’t you go ask Hoff about it?” She flushed, and I was glad to see that her blood was still on the job. “I don’t have to ask him,” she said in a voice not so thin. “I don’t have to ask anybody.” Abruptly she pushed her chair back and was on her feet. “All right, I’ll go. Wait till I tell Mr. Rosenbaum.” She left the room, in a minute returned and put on her hat and coat, and we departed. If I had known then that that was the last I would ever see of the Naylor-Kerr stock department I would have given it some kind of parting gesture, but even so I was leaving in a blaze of glory, with Hester Livsey just in front of my elbow and not an eye in the place anywhere except on us.

  In the lobby downstairs, as we passed Bill Gore, I gave him a sign to stay put.

  It was quite possible that Hester would be back before long, and it was far from certain, anything but, that Wolfe was set for a clean-up.

  In the taxi we were strangers. Not a word.

  Our welcome from Nero Wolfe was not, I must admit, calculated to make us glow with pleasure. When I escorted her into the office and we approached his desk he growled at me: “What the devil did you bring her here for?” She goggled at him and then at me.

  “That,” I told him, “was my own idea. Everything went according to plan. She was willing to talk with anybody except Pine, which was what you wanted to know, and it occurred to me why not you? So I brought her where I’d know where she was. I told the lie that put the bee on her, and I didn’t intend to spend the rest of the day and night wondering whether she was alive or dead. It’s the humanitarian in me.” Wolfe looked at her. “I have work to do, Miss Livsey,” he said in a fairly decent tone, “and I don’t need you. But Mr. Goodwin is correct. Your life is in danger or it may be. You may know more about that than I do, but in any case you ought to stay here. In the south room, Archie?” Hester looked as if she thought we had a screw loose, and I didn’t blame her.

  She took it up with me.

  “You said they wanted me to talk to him!” I took hold of her arm without either of us realizing that I was doing so. “Just another lie,” I said. “You and I are doing swell on lies. Mr. Wolfe is ready to close in, or thinks he is, and you heard him say he doesn’t need you. Unless you’re ready to start from scratch and tell us all about it?” “No!” “I thought not. You’re very tough, dearie. I also think you’ll be a damn fool if you go back downtown or anywhere else.” “I have decided,” Wolfe said curtly, “that she is not to leave here under any circumstances, now that she knows I am ready to act.” I still had her arm. “See? I don’t want to stuff you in a closet. Upstairs is a nice sunny guest room-” I stopped because she pulled her arm free. She walked across to the corner where the big globe was, with one of the yellow chairs beside it, and sat down in the chair.

  “I’ll stay here,” she said.

  I told Wolfe, “She’s as stubborn as you are. The only way would be to carry her, and she’d scream and try to kick.” “Let her alone,” he said. “Get Mrs. Pine on the phone.” I went to my desk and dialed the number.

  CHAPTER Thirty-Three

  I didn’t like it. I thought he was dead wrong and I still think so, in spite of the fact that he got away with it. He had got the giveaway gesture he was after, no doubt of that, but the thing to do now, since at last he had found the trail, was to deploy forces on all sides and make the main advance slow and careful but sure. No, not for him. He was going to bull it through with only one shot in his gun, and that one possibly a blank. If Hester hadn’t been sitting there I would have put up an argument, and a hot one, but she had already heard more than was good for her. So I dialed the number.

  I have since wondered what he would have done if Mrs. Pine had been out shopping or looking over the pet situation on Fifth Avenue, but that was a contingency he did not have to meet. An impersonal male voice answered the phone. I told it that Mr. Wolfe wished to speak with Mrs. Pine, and in a moment she was on and I signaled to Wolfe.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Pine.” Wolfe was making it bland. “I find myself in a disagreeable position. Certain information has come to me, and the proper thing for me to do would be to communicate with Mr. Cramer -you know, the Police Inspector-and suggest that he should send immediately for your personal staff of servants, and also for all members of the staff of the apartment building where you live who were on duty Friday evening, March twenty-first-the evening your brother was killed.-Please let me finish. I realize that would be a frightful annoyance for you. So there is this alternative. Why don’t you bring them, yourself, to me? At my office. Your own servants, all of them, and also those of the apartment-” Her voice, incisive, pushed in. “What for? What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you know?” “No!” “Nonsense. Certainly you know. Unless I’ve underrated you, and I don’t think I have. Doesn’t my request make it plain that I have everything I need but a few details? I intend to get them without delay, and I’m giving you this chance to furnish them.” Wolfe’s voice suddenly went sharp and started to cut. “Either that or Mr. Cramer gets them, and that will be a different matter. You know what that would mean. Your husband lost his head. He sent for Miss Livsey, twice, and she refused to go. She came here instead. She is sitting here now under my eyes.

  Mr. Cramer’s first step, of course, would be to get your husband, after I turned Miss Livsey over to him. I prefer to be more direct about it. I come straight to you.” “Where is my husband?” “At his office. He hasn’t been disturbed yet.” “And Miss Livsey is there with you?” “Yes.” “I don’t believe it.” “Very well, madam. Good-by. I thought it fair to give you this opportunity, since you own a large share of the corporation I’m working for-” “Wait. Will you wait?” “Not long. If you want a minute to decide, take it.” She took more than a minute, at least three. Wolfe and I sat with the receivers to our ears. I had my chair turned so as to have an eye on Hester, in case she took a notion to bounce over and do some yelling loud enough for the transmitter to pick it up. I still thought Wolfe was wrong, and I was pressing the receiver against my ear so hard it was a wonder I didn’t crush a cartilage. Finally Cecily’s voice came: “I’ll be there in half an hour.” Wolfe, having her, pressed, “With the others? The servants?” “No. You won’t need them.” “It shouldn’t take you half an hour.” “I have to dress. I’ll get there as soon as I can. You won’t do anything?” “Not until you get here, no.” Wolfe hung up and turned to Hester. “Mrs. Pine is going to come and tell me all about it. Do you want to go upstairs?” Hester didn’t speak. Nor did she move, not even her eyes. She was inspecting a rug. She was sitting straight, her coat still on, her hands grasping the ends of her leather bag. and the rug was evidently the most enthralling object she had ever gazed at in her life.

  What I wanted to say to Wolfe would not have been fitting with a guest present, so I didn’t say it.

  I still hadn’t said it thirty minutes later, when Mrs. Pine arrived.

  CHAPTER Thirty-Four

  She sat in the red leather chair. That day her coat was mink and her dress was tightly woven brown wool with an elegant black check. She had never met Miss Livsey, she had said, and had offered a
hand which Hester had not taken. That had not disconcerted her. Nothing, as far as could be told from her appearance, had disconcerted her, though her mind was sufficiently occupied to keep her from making any personal remarks to me. She sat in the red leather chair and told Wolfe: “This would not have happened if you had done what I asked you to. My brother would not have been killed. He would have stopped his foolishness. Everything would have been all right.” “No,” Wolfe said, “it wouldn’t. It seems clear that your brother would never have abandoned his determination to become president of the firm. Nor would the death of Mr. Moore have been cleared up, but that didn’t interest you. I wish you would start with that Friday evening. Why did you tell me your husband was home in bed when he wasn’t?” “Because I saw no-what are you doing there, Archie?” “Shorthand,” I told her. “I’m good at it.” “Then stop it. I won’t have any record of this.” “I will,” Wolfe said curtly. He wiggled a finger at her. “I intend, madam, to be in a position to satisfy your Board of Directors that I have done the job they hired me for. As far as I’m concerned that’s all the record will be used for, but I’m going to have it. And I don’t need to make any pretenses to you. At this moment I know barely what I need to know and that’s all. For example, I had nothing but a surmise, a mere assumption, that your husband was not in bed asleep when you said he was, until you reacted as you did to my request to speak with your servants. That of course made the surmise a certainty. Why did you lie about it?” “I didn’t.” “Pah. You didn’t?” “I didn’t intend to.” Cecily kept glancing in my direction, but at the notebook, not at me. “When you phoned I was in my sitting-room. My husband’s room is some distance away, and I thought he had gone to bed. When I went to see, he wasn’t there. I didn’t know he had gone out. I merely didn’t care to tell you that, not that it mattered, not at the time, so I said he was asleep. He came in a little while after you phoned-” “How long after?” “I don’t know-twenty minutes or half an hour. Then, later, when the news came that my brother had been killed, I knew that my husband had killed him.” “How did you know? Did he tell you?” “Not that night. But I knew, and the next day I talked with him and he told me.” Her hand fluttered. “My husband told me everything sooner or later, after he learned that that was the best way.” “When did he tell you that he killed Mr. Moore?” She shook her head. “I’m not going to talk about that. I have decided that I don’t have to.” She had stopped glancing at my notebook and was sticking to Wolfe. “I know what this is for and I’m willing to say enough to satisfy you. I realize there are some things I have to tell you or you will turn it over to the police, but I don’t have to go beyond that. It is true that my husband killed Waldo, but that had nothing to do with me. He killed him because Miss Livsey had fallen in love with him and was going to marry him.” I wasn’t as good as Wolfe was. I jerked my head up at her. Wolfe merely murmured at her, “Jealousy.” She nodded. “My husband had completely lost his head about her-but I suppose she has told you all about that?” “Not all. I need your version. Go ahead.” “He met her at the company’s annual dinner and dance for employees over a year ago now, and he was a very passionate man. He told me about it, and he wanted to get a divorce. As time went on it got worse with him. She wouldn’t let him see her much, and not at all openly. She was extremely clever about it, she wouldn’t let him give her a better position at the office, and when I insisted that the only thing to do was to make her his mistress, he said she wouldn’t.” Cecily twisted around in her chair to look at Hester. “That was very clever of you, Miss Livsey,” she said without resentment, “but it made it very difficult for me.” Hester stayed motionless and had nothing to say.

  “He wanted a divorce,” Wolfe prompted.

  “Yes, and I wouldn’t give him one. It would have upset all my life’s arrangements-among other things, I had made him president of the firm. He was even willing to forfeit his career for her. So I persuaded Waldo Moore to take a job there.” She nodded, to herself. “You didn’t know Waldo. He was the most charming person I have ever known, until he got tiresome, which of course everyone does in time.

  I doubt if there was a woman on earth who could have resisted him. So I got him to take a job in the stock department, where Miss Livsey worked, and to-well, to divert her. It worked splendidly, as I was sure it would. He had her completely in hand within-I forget, but it couldn’t have been-” “You’re lying!” Hester had spoken.

  Cecily twisted to her. “Oh, you have nothing to be ashamed of, Miss Livsey! No, indeed! You’re the only woman he ever asked to marry him.” She went back to Wolfe. “So there was no longer any reason for my husband to want a divorce, or so I thought, but I might have known, with the drive he had to get anything he wanted enough, that he wouldn’t accept defeat as easily as that. What happened was that Waldo Moore was killed. I’m not going to talk about that. It wouldn’t do you any good, and I don’t have to. Anyway, the blame was not mine, it didn’t happen because of any mistake of mine.” “Merely bad luck,” Wolfe murmured.

  She nodded. “But I had made a mistake, a very bad one. I had confided in my brother. He was older than me, and I had formed the habit in childhood, and I kept it even after we had grown up and I had become aware that he was a peculiar man and not to be taken seriously. That was a mistake too, to think he was not to be taken seriously. I didn’t realize how much, clear to the bottom of his soul, he wanted to be the head of the business our father had founded. I was shocked when I learned he was using things, things I had told him in confidence from a sister to a brother, to put pressure on my husband to let him become president. I had taken possession of some letters my husband had received from Miss Livsey, and my brother stole them from me.” “Did you tell him your husband had killed Mr. Moore?” Cecily looked annoyed. “I said I wouldn’t talk about that,” she declared to settle it. “But my brother-he thought that, yes. He threatened my husband with it, and me too. That was another mistake, or part of the same one-thinking my brother was not to be taken seriously. I told him he didn’t have the ability to direct the affairs of the business and he should abandon the idea forever. Then he-you know about the report he sent in, stating that Waldo had been murdered.” Wolfe nodded.

  Cecily fluttered a hand. “It couldn’t be simply ignored, because my brother had let it become known and gossiped about by the employees. My husband didn’t dare to keep it from the executives, and when most of them were in favor of hiring an investigator he didn’t dare oppose it. I think that was extremely clever of my brother; I had never thought he was as intelligent as that. Wasn’t that really clever?” “Very,” Wolfe agreed. “It got him killed.” “But he didn’t know that,” she protested. “It was clever to think of that way to bring pressure on my husband. I was determined, of course, to stop it, and I still think I would have succeeded if you had done what I asked-if you had stopped the investigation. It only stimulated my brother to go on. If you had quit I still think I could have persuaded my brother to give it up. But then he told Archie that he knew who had killed Waldo, and he saw he had gone too far, because what he wanted wasn’t to have my husband arrested for murder but to get his job. If Archie hadn’t been there he certainly wouldn’t have told him that, and he wouldn’t have told anybody that. I saw him that day and made him understand what he was doing, and he denied he had said it. But it may have been too late. My husband thought it was. He knew then that my brother had the letters he had received from Miss Livsey, and he thought it had gone so far that my brother couldn’t draw back even if he wanted to, and anyway he didn’t trust my brother and didn’t think he wanted to. So-that night-” She turned her palms up and lifted her shoulders.

  “Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “that night. When your husband was not home in bed, and when you learned that your brother had been killed, there was only one assumption for you. How did he do it? Where was your brother killed and with what?” “I don’t know.” “Nonsense. Certainly you know. Your husband told you everything.” Wolfe wiggled a finger
at her. “Come, madam. You know what this is for.” “Does it matter?” “Not to you. To you nothing matters. But I’m going to earn my fee, and you know what the alternative is.” “My brother and my husband were much alike in one way,” Cecily said. “They were both excessively conceited. When my brother met him that evening, to talk things over, and rode in his car with him, I doubt if he was at all alarmed even when my husband stopped the car in a secluded street. He was too conceited. He thought he could take care of himself. Probably he never thought otherwise, for when my husband reached over the back of the seat to the tonneau to get his brief case, what he really got was a chunk of petrified wood he had put there, and my brother was stunned by the first blow, or possibly killed-my husband wasn’t sure, but he made sure.” Cecily’s hand fluttered. “Of course,” she conceded, “something had to be done, since it was my husband’s own car, but only a supremely confident and conceited man would have proceeded as he did. He actually kept the piece of petrified wood and later brought it home and cleaned it and put it back on the desk in his study. Just ahead of my husband’s car where he had stopped it at the curb another car was parked-it was the one he had stolen and put there. He transferred the body to it. His reason for driving to Thirty-ninth Street and repeating, exactly repeating, his performance with Waldo’s body last December, every detail of it-his reason was that it would be supposed that the same person had killed both of them, and that would be to his advantage because he wouldn’t be suspected of killing Waldo. That was the reason he gave me, but it was nothing but a reason. He really did it because he had to do something with the body, and he was confident and conceited, and it was a difficult and complicated gesture of assurance and contempt-for you and me and everyone else.” Cecily turned her head. “Except you, Miss Livsey. As far as I know you are the one person toward whom it was impossible for my husband to feel contemptuous. It made me quite curious about you.” Hester had nothing to say.