Too Many Cooks

by Rex Stout

  The knocking on the outer door of the suite had sounded twice, the first time faintly, and I had ignored it because I didn’t want to interrupt him. Now I went out and through the inner hall and opened up. Whereupon I, who am seldom surprised, was close to astonished. There stood Dina Laszio.

  Her eyes looked larger than ever, but not quite so sleepy. She asked in a low voice, “May I come in? I wish to see Mr. Wolfe.”

  I stood back, she went past, and I shut the door. I indicated Wolfe’s room, “In there, please,” and she preceded me. The only perceptible expression on Wolfe’s face as he became aware of her was recognition.

  He inclined his head. “I am honored, madam. Forgive me for not rising; I permit myself that discourtesy. That chair around, Archie?”

  She was nervous. She looked around. “May I see you alone, Mr. Wolfe?”

  “I’m afraid not. Mr. Goodwin is my confidential assistant.”

  “But I…” She stayed on her feet. “It is hard to tell even you…”

  “Well, madam, if it is too hard…” Wolfe let it hang in the air.

  She swallowed, looked at me again, and took a step toward him. “But it would be harder … I must tell someone. I have heard much of you, of course … in the old days, from Marko … and I must tell someone, and there is no one but you to tell. Somebody is trying to poison my husband.”

  “Indeed.” Wolfe’s eyes narrowed faintly. “Be seated. Please. It’s easier to talk sitting down, don’t you think, Mrs. Laszio?”

  3

  THE SWAMP-WOMAN lowered it into the chair I had placed. Needless to say, I leaned against the bedpost not as nonchalant as I looked. It sounded as if this might possibly be something that would help to pass the time, and justify my foresight in chucking my pistol and a couple of notebooks into my bag when I had packed.

  She said, “Of course … I know you are an old friend of Marko’s. You probably think I wronged him when I … left him. But I count on your sense of justice … your humanity…”

  “Weak supports, madam.” Wolfe was brusque. “Few of us have enough wisdom for justice, or enough leisure for humanity. Why do you mention Marko? Do you suggest that he is poisoning Mr. Laszio?”

  “Oh, no!” Her hand fluttered from her lap and came to rest on the arm of her chair. “Only I am sorry if you are prejudiced against my husband and me, for I have decided that I must tell someone, and there is no one but you to tell…”

  “Have you informed your husband that he is being poisoned?”

  She shook her head, with a little twist on her lips. “He informed me. To-day. You know, of course, that for luncheon several of them prepared dishes, and Phillip did the salad, and he had announced that he was going to make Meadowbrook dressing, which he originated. They all know that he mixes the sugar and lemon juice and sour cream an hour ahead of time, and that he always tastes in spoonfuls. He had the things ready, all together on a corner table in the kitchen, lemons, bowl of cream, sugar shaker. At noon he started to mix. From habit he shook sugar on to the palm of his hand and put his tongue to it, and it seemed gritty and weak. He shook some on to a pan of water, and little particles stayed on top, and when he stirred it some still stayed. He put sherry in a glass and stirred some of it into that, and only a small portion of it would dissolve. If he had mixed the dressing and tasted a spoonful or two, as he always does, it would have killed him. The sugar was mostly arsenic.”

  Wolfe grunted. “Or flour.”

  “My husband said arsenic. There was no taste of flour.”

  Wolfe shrugged. “Easily determined, with a little hydrochloric acid and a piece of copper wire. You do not appear to have the sugar shaker with you. Where is it?”

  “I suppose, in the kitchen.”

  Wolfe’s eyes opened wide. “Being used for our dinner, madam? You spoke of humanity—”

  “No. Phillip emptied it down the sink and had it refilled by one of the Negroes. It was sugar, that time.”

  “Indeed.” Wolfe settled, and his eyes were again half shut. “Remarkable. Though he was sure it was arsenic? He didn’t turn it over to Servan? Or report it to anyone but you? Or preserve it as evidence? Remarkable.”

  “My husband is a remarkable man.” A ray of the setting sun came through the window to her face, and she moved a little. “He told me that he didn’t want to make things difficult for his friend, Louis Servan. He forbade me to mention it. He is a strong man and he is very contemptuous. That is his nature. He thinks he is too strong and competent and shrewd to be injured by anyone.” She leaned forward and put out a hand, palm up. “I come to you, Mr. Wolfe! I am afraid!”

  “What do you want me to do? Find out who put the arsenic in the sugar shaker?”

  “Yes.” Then she shook her head. “No. I suppose you couldn’t, and even if you did, the arsenic is gone. I want to protect my husband.”

  “My dear madam.” Wolfe grunted. “If anyone not a moron has determined to kill your husband, he will be killed. Nothing is simpler than to kill a man; the difficulties arise in attempting to avoid the consequences. I’m afraid I have nothing to suggest to you. It is doubly difficult to save a man’s life against his will. Do you think you know who poisoned the sugar?”

  “No. Surely there is something—”

  “Does your husband think he knows?”

  “No. Surely you can—”

  “Marko? I can ask Marko if he did it?”

  “No! Not Marko! You promised me you wouldn’t mention—”

  “I promised nothing of the sort. Nothing whatever. I am sorry, Mrs. Laszio, if I seem rude, but the fact is that I hate to be taken for an idiot. If you think your husband may be poisoned, what you need is a food taster, and that is not my profession. If you fear bodily violence for him, the best thing is a bodyguard, and I am not that either. Before he gets into an automobile, every bolt and nut and connection must be thoroughly tested. When he walks the street, windows and tops of buildings must be guarded, and passersby kept at a distance. Should he attend the theater—”

  The swamp-woman got up. “You make a joke of it. I’m sorry.”

  “It was you who started the joke—”

  But she wasn’t staying for it. I moved to open the door, but she had the knob before I got to it, and since she felt that way about it I let her go on and do the outside one too. I saw that it was closed behind her, and then returned to Wolfe’s room and put on a fake frown for him which was wasted, because he had his eyes shut. I told his big round face:

  “That’s a fine way to treat a lady client who comes to you with a nice straight open-and-shut proposition like that. All we would have to do would be go down to the river where the sewer empties and swim around until we tasted arsenic—”

  “Arsenic has no taste.”

  “Okay.” I sat down. “Is she fixing up to poison him herself and preparing a line of negative presumptions in advance? Or is she on the level and just poking around trying to protect her man? Or is Laszio making up tales to show her how cute he is? You should have seen him looking at her when she was dancing with Vallenko. I suppose you’ve observed Vukcic lamping her with the expression of a moth in a cage surrounded by klieg lights. Or was someone really gump enough to endanger all our lives by putting arsenic in the sugar shaker? Incidentally, it’ll be dinnertime in ten minutes, and if you intend to comb your hair and tuck your shirt in—did you know that you can have one of these greenjackets for a valet for an extra five bucks per diem? I swear to God I think I’ll try it for half a day. I’d be a different person if I took proper care of myself.”

  I stopped to yawn. Insufficient sleep and outdoor sunshine had got me. Wolfe was silent. But presently he spoke:

  “Archie. Have you heard of the arrangement for this evening?”

  “No. Anything special?”

  “Yes. It seems to have come about through a wager between Mr. Servan and Mr. Keith. After the digestion of dinner there is to be a test. The cook will roast squabs, and Mr. Laszio, who volunteered for the fu
nction, will make a quantity of Sauce Printemps. That sauce contains nine seasonings, besides salt: cayenne, celery, shallots, chives, chervil, tarragon, peppercorn, thyme and parsley. Nine dishes of it will be prepared, and each will lack one of the seasonings, a different one. The squabs and sauce dishes will be arrayed in the dining room, and Mr. Laszio will preside. The gathering will be in the parlor, and each will go to the dining room, singly to prevent discussion, taste the sauces on bits of squab, and record which dish lacks chives, which peppercorn, and so on. I believe Mr. Servan has wagered on an average of eighty percent correct.”

  “Well.” I yawned again. “I can pick the one that lacks squab.”

  “You will not be included. Only the members of Les Quinze Maîtres and myself. It will be an instructive and interesting experiment. The chief difficulty will be with chives and shallots, but I believe I can distinguish. I shall drink wine with dinner, and of course no sweet. But the possibility occurred to me of a connection between this affair and Mrs. Laszio’s strange report. Mr. Laszio is to make the sauce. You know I am not given to trepidation, but I came here to meet able men, not to see one or more of them murdered.”

  “You came here to learn how to make sausage. But forget it; I guess that’s out. But how could there be a connection? It’s Laszio that’s going to get killed, isn’t it? The tasters are safe. Maybe you’d better go last. If you get sick out here in the jungle I will have a nice time.”

  He shut his eyes. Soon he opened them again. “I don’t like stories about arsenic in food. What time is it?”

  Too darned lazy to reach in his pocket. I told him, and he sighed and began preparations for getting himself upright.

  The dinner at Pocahontas Pavilion that evening was elegant as to provender, but a little confused in other respects. The soup, by Louis Servan, looked like any consommé, but it wasn’t just any. He had spread himself, and it was nice to see his dignified old face get red with pleasure as they passed remarks to him. The fish, by Leon Blanc, was little six-inch brook trout, four to a customer, with a light brown sauce with capers in it, and a tang that didn’t seem to come from lemon or any vinegar I had ever heard of. I couldn’t place it, and Blanc just grinned at them when they demanded the combination, saying he hadn’t named it yet. All of them, except Lisette Putti and me, ate the trout head and bones and all, even Constanza Berin, who was on my right. She watched me picking away and smiled at me and said I would never make a gourmet, and I told her not eating fishes’ faces was a matter of sentiment with me on account of my pet goldfish. Watching her crunch those trout heads and bones with her pretty teeth, I was glad I had put the kibosh on my attack of leg-jealousy.

  The entrée, by Pierre Mondor, was of such a nature that I imitated some of the others and had two helpings. It appeared to be a famous creation of his, well-known to the others, and Constanza told me that her father made it very well and that the main ingredients were beef marrow, cracker crumbs, white wine and chicken breast. In the middle of my second portion I caught Wolfe’s eye across the table and winked at him, but he ignored me and hung on to solemn bliss. As far as he was concerned, we were in church, and Saint Peter was speaking. It was during the consumption of the entrée that Mondor and his plump wife, without any warning, burst into a screaming argument which ended with him bouncing up and racing for the kitchen, and her hot on his tail. I learned afterward that she had heard him ask Lisette Putti if she liked the entrée. She must have been abnormally moral for a Frenchwoman.

  The roast was young duck à la Mr. Richards, by Marko Vukcic. This was one of Wolfe’s favorites and I was well acquainted with the Fritz Brenner-Nero Wolfe version of it, and by the time it arrived I was so nearly filled that I was in no condition to judge, but the other men took a healthy gulp of Burgundy for a capital letter to start the new paragraph, and waded in as if they had been waiting for some such little snack to take the edge off their appetite. I noticed that the best the women could do was peck, particularly Lio, Lawrence Coyne’s Chinese wife, and Dina Laszio. I also noticed that the greenjacket waiters were aware that they were looking on at a gastronomical World’s Series, though they were trying not to show it. Before it was over those birds disposed of nine ducks. It looked to me as if Vukcic was overdoing it a little on the various brands of wine, and maybe that was why he was so quick on the trigger when Phillip Laszio began making remarks about duck stuffings which he regarded as superior to Mr. Richards’ and proceeded from that to comments on the comparative discrimination of the clientele of the Hotel Churchill and Rusterman’s Restaurant. I had come as Vukcic’s guest, and anyway I liked him, and it was embarrassing to me when he hit Laszio square in the eye with a hunk of bread. The others seemed to resent it chiefly as an interruption, and Servan, next to Laszio, soothed him, and Vukcic glared at their remonstrances and drank more Burgundy, and a greenjacket retrieved the bread from the floor, and they went back to the duck.

  The salad, by Domenico Rossi, was attended by something of an uproar. In the first place, Phillip Laszio left for the kitchen while it was being served and Rossi had feelings about that and continued to express them after Servan had explained that Laszio must attend to the preparation of the Sauce Printemps for the test that had been arranged. Rossi didn’t stop his remarks about sons-in-law twice his age. Then he noticed that Pierre Mondor wasn’t pretending to eat, and wanted to know if perchance he had discovered things crawling on the lettuce. Mondor replied, friendly but firm, that the juices necessary to impart a flavor to salads, especially vinegar, were notoriously bad companions for wine, and that he wished to finish his Burgundy.

  Rossi said darkly, “There is no vinegar. I am not a barbarian.”

  “I have not tasted it. I smell salad juice, that is why I pushed it away.”

  “I tell you there is no vinegar! That salad is mostly by the good Cod, as He made things! Mustard sprouts, cress sprouts, lettuce! Onion juice with salt! Bread crusts rubbed with garlic! In Italy we eat it from bowls, with Chianti, and we thank God for it!”

  Mondor shrugged. “In France we do not. France, as you well know, my dear Rossi, is supreme in these things. In what language—”

  “Ha!” Rossi was on his hind legs. “Supreme because we taught you! Because in the sixteenth century you came and ate our food and copied us! Can you read? Do you know the history of gastronomy? Any history at all? Do you know that of all the good things in France, of which there are a certain number, the original is found in Italy? Do you know—”

  I suppose that’s how the war will start. On that occasion it petered out. They kept Mondor from firing up and got Rossi started on his own salad, and we had peace.

  Coffee was served in the two parlors. Two, because Lawrence Coyne got stretched out on the divan in the small one again, and Keith and Leon Blanc sat by him and talked. I’m always more comfortable on my feet after a meal, and I wandered around. Back in the large parlor, Wolfe and Vukcic and Berin and Mondor were in a group in a corner, discussing the duck. Mamma Mondor came waddling in from the hall with a bag of knitting and got settled under a light. Lio Coyne was on a big chair with her feet tucked under her, listening to Vallenko tell her stories. Lisette Putti was filling Servan’s coffee cup, and Rossi stood frowning at an Indian blanket thrown over a couch as if he suspected it was made in France.

  I couldn’t see Dina Laszio anywhere, and wondered idly whether she was off somewhere mixing poison or had merely gone to her room, which was in the left wing of Pocahontas, for some bicarbonate. Or maybe out in the kitchen helping her husband? I moseyed out there. In the dining room, as I went through, they were getting ready for the sauce test, with the chairs moved back to the walls, and the big screens in front of the serving tables, and a fresh cloth on the long table. I sidestepped a couple of greenjackets and proceeded. Dina wasn’t in the kitchen. Half a dozen people in white aprons paid no attention to me, since in the past twelve hours they had got accustomed to the place being cluttered up with foreign matter. Laszio, also in an apron, was at
the big range stirring and peering into a pan, with a shine at each elbow waiting for commands. The place smelled sort of unnecessary on account of what I still had in me, and I went out again and down the pantry hall and back to the parlor. Liqueurs were being passed, and I snared myself a stem of cognac and sought a seat and surveyed the scene.

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t noticed Constanza around. In a little while she came in, from the hall, ran her eyes over the room, and came and sat down beside me and crossed her knees flagrantly. I saw signs on her face, and leaned toward her to make sure.

  “You’ve been crying.”

  She nodded. “Of course I have! There’s a dance at the hotel, and Mr. Tolman asked me to go and my father won’t let me! Even though we’re in America! I’ve been in my room crying.” She hitched her knee up a little. “Father doesn’t like me to sit like this, that’s why I’m doing it.”

  I grunted, “Leg-jealousy. Parental type.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You might as well make yourself comfortable, he isn’t looking at you. Can I get you some cognac?”

  We whiled away a pleasant hour, punctuated by various movements and activities outside our little world. Dina Laszio came in from the hall, got herself a liqueur, stopped for a few words with Mamma Mondor, and then moved on to the little stool in front of the radio. She sipped the liqueur and monkeyed with the dials, but got nothing on it. In a minute or two Vukcic came striding across the room, pulled a chair up beside the stool, and sat down. Her smile at him, as he spoke to her, was very good, and I wondered if he was in any condition to see how good it was. Coyne and Keith and Blanc came in from the small parlor. Around ten o’clock we had a visitor—nothing less than Mr. Clay Ashley, the manager of Kanawha Spa. He was fifty, black-haired with no gray, polished inside and out; and had come to make a speech. He wanted us to know that Kanawha Spa felt itself deeply honored by this visit from the most distinguished living representatives of one of the greatest of the arts. He hoped we would enjoy and so forth. Servan indicated Nero Wolfe, the guest of honor, as the appropriate source of the reply, and for once Wolfe had to get up out of his chair without intending to go anywhere. He offered a few remarks, and thanks to Mr. Ashley, saying nothing about train rides and sausages, and Mr. Ashley went, after being presented to those he hadn’t met.