Too Many Cooks

by Rex Stout

  It was then time for another little speech, this time by Louis Servan. He said everything was in readiness for the test and explained how it would be. On the dining table would be nine dishes of Sauce Printemps on warmers, each lacking one of the nine seasonings, also a server of squabs, and plates and other utensils. Each taster would slice his own bits of squab; it was not permitted to taste any sauce without squab. Water would be there to wash the palate. Only one taste from each dish was allowed. In front of each dish would be a number on a card, from 1 to 9. Each taster would be provided with a slip of paper on which the nine seasonings were listed, and after each seasoning he would write the number of the dish in which that was lacking. Laszio, who had prepared the sauce, would be in the dining room to preside. Those who had tasted were not to converse with those who had not tasted until, all were finished. To avoid confusion the tasting would be done in this order—Servan read it from a slip:

  Mondor

  Coyne

  Keith

  Blanc

  Servan

  Berin

  Vukcic

  Vallenko

  Rossi

  Wolfe

  Right away there was a little hitch. When the slips were passed out and it came to Leon Blanc, he shook his head. He told Servan apologetically but firmly, “No, Louis, I’m sorry. I have tried not to let my opinion of Phillip Laszio make discomfort for any of you, but under no circumstances will I eat anything prepared by him. He is … all of you know … but I’d better not say…”

  He turned on his heel and beat it from the room, to the hall. The only thing that ruptured the silence was a long low growl from Jerome Berin, who had already accepted his slip.

  Ramsey Keith said, “Too bad for him. Dear old Leon. We all know—but what the devil! Are you first, Pierre? I hope to God you miss all of ’em! Is everything ready in there, Louis?”

  Mamma Mondor came trotting up to face her husband, holding her knitting against her tummy, and squeaked something at him in French. I asked Constanza what it was, and she said she told him if he made one mistake on such a simple thing there would be no forgiveness either by God or by her. Mondor patted her on the shoulder impatiently and reassuringly and trotted for the door to the dining room, closing it behind him. In ten minutes, maybe fifteen, the door opened again and he reappeared.

  Keith, who had made the bet with Servan which had started it, approached Mondor and demanded, “Well?”

  Mondor was frowning gravely. “We have been instructed not to discuss. I can say, I warned Laszio against an excess of salt and he ignored it. Even so, it will be utterly astounding if I have made a mistake.”

  Keith turned and roared across the room, “Lisette, my dearest niece! Give all of them cordials! Insist upon it! Seduce them!”

  Servan, smiling, called to Coyne, “You next, Lawrence.”

  The old snowbank went. I could see it would be a long drawn out affair. Constanza had been called across to her father. I wondered what it would be like to dance with a swamp-woman, and went to where Dina Laszio still sat on the radio stool and Vukcic beside her, but got turned down. She gave me an indifferent glance from the long sleepy eyes and said she had a headache. That made me stubborn and I looked around for another partner, but it didn’t look promising. Coyne’s Chinese wife, Lio, wasn’t there, though I hadn’t noticed her leave the room. Lisette had taken Keith’s command literally and was on a selling tour with a tray of cordials. I didn’t care to tackle Mamma Mondor for fear Pierre would get jealous. As for Constanza—well, I thought of all the children at home, and then I considered her, with her eyes close to me and my arm around her and that faint fragrance which made it seem absolutely necessary to get closer so you could smell it better, and I decided it wouldn’t be fair to my friend Tolman. I cast another disapproving glance at Vukcic as he sat glued to the chair alongside Dina Laszio, and went over and copped the big chair where Lio Coyne had been.

  I’m pretty sure I didn’t go to sleep, because I was conscious of the murmur of the voices all the time, but there’s no question that my eyes were closed for a spell, and I was so comfortable otherwise that it annoyed me that I couldn’t keep from worrying about how those guys could swallow the squabs and sauces less than three hours after the flock of ducks had gone down. It was the blare of the radio starting that woke me—I mean made me open my eyes. Dina Laszio was on her feet, leaning over twisting the dial, and Vukcic was standing waiting for her. She straightened up and melted into him and off they went. In a minute Keith and Lisette Putti were also dancing, and then Louis Servan with Constanza. I looked around. Jerome Berin wasn’t there, so apparently they had got down to him on the tasting list. I covered a yawn, and stretched without putting my arms out, and arose and moseyed over to the corner where Nero Wolfe was talking with Pierre Mondor and Lawrence Coyne. There was an extra chair, and I took it.

  Pretty soon Berin entered from the dining room and crossed the room to our corner. I saw Servan, without interrupting his dancing, make a sign to Vukcic that he was next, and Vukcic nodded back but showed no inclination to break his clinch with Dina. Berin was scowling. Coyne asked him:

  “How about it, Jerome? We’ve both been in. Number 3 is shallots. No?”

  Mondor protested, “Mr. Wolfe hasn’t tried it yet. He goes last.”

  Berin growled, “I don’t remember the numbers. Louis has my slip. God above, it was an effort I tell you, with that dog of a Laszio standing there smirking at me.” He shook himself. “I ignored him. I didn’t speak to him.”

  They talked. I listened with only one ear, because of a play I was enjoying out front. Servan had highballed Vukcic twice more to remind him it was his turn to taste, without any result. I could see Dina smile into Vukcic’s face, and I noticed that Mamma Mondor was also seeing it and was losing interest in her knitting. Finally Servan parted from Constanza, bowed to her, and approached the other couple. He was too polite and dignified to grab, so he just got in their way and they had to stop. They untwined.

  Servan said, “Please. It is best to keep the order of the list. If you don’t mind.”

  Apparently Vukcic was no longer lit, and anyway he wouldn’t have been rude to Servan. With a toss of his head he shook his hair-tangle back, and laughed. “But I think I won’t do it. I think I shall join the revolt of Leon Blanc.” He had to speak loud on account of the radio.

  “My dear Vukcic!” Servan was mild. “We are civilized people, are we not? We are not children.”

  Vukcic shrugged. Then he turned to his dancing partner. “Shall I do it, Dina?” Her eyes were up to him, and her lips moved, but in too low a voice for me to catch it. He shrugged again, and turned and headed for the dining room door and opened it and went in, with her watching his back. She went back to the stool by the radio, and Servan resumed with Constanza. Pretty soon, at eleven-thirty, there was a program change and the radio began telling about chewing gum, and Dina switched it off.

  She asked, “Shall I try another station?”

  Apparently they had had enough, so she left it dead. In our corner, Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut and Coyne was telling Berin about San Francisco Bay, when his Chinese wife entered from the hall, looked around and saw us and trotted over, and stuck her right forefinger into Coyne’s face and told him to kiss it because she had got it caught in a door and it hurt.

  He kissed it. “But I thought you were outside looking at the night.”

  “I was. But the door caught me. Look! It hurts.”

  He kissed the finger again. “My poor little blossom!” More kisses. “My flower of Asia! Now we’re talking, run away and let us alone.”

  She went off pouting.

  Vukcic entered from the dining room, and came straight across to Dina Laszio. Servan told Vallenko he was next. Vukcic turned to him:

  “Here’s my slip. I tasted each dish once. That’s the rule, eh? Laszio isn’t there.”

  Servan’s brows went up. “Not there? Where is he?”

  Vuk
cic shrugged. “I didn’t look for him. Perhaps in the kitchen.”

  Servan called to Keith: “Ramsey! Phillip has left his post! Only Vallenko and Rossi and Mr. Wolfe are left. What about it?”

  Keith said he would trust them if Servan would, and Vallenko went in. In due time he was back, and it was Rossi’s turn. Rossi hadn’t been in a scrap for over three hours, and I pricked my ears in expectation of hearing through the closed door some hot remarks about sons-in-law, in case Laszio had got back on the job, but there was so much jabber in the parlor that I wouldn’t have heard it anyway. When Rossi returned he announced to the gathering that no one but a fool would put as much salt as that in Sauce Printemps, but no one paid any attention to him. Nero Wolfe, last but not least, pried himself loose from his chair and, as the guest of honor, was conducted to the door by Louis Servan. I was darned glad that at last I could see bedtime peeping over the horizon.

  In ten minutes the door opened and Wolfe reappeared. He stood on the threshold and spoke:

  “Mr. Servan! Since I am the last, would you mind if I try an experiment with Mr. Goodwin?”

  Servan said no, and Wolfe beckoned to me. I was already on my feet, because I knew something was up. There are various kinds of experiments that Wolfe might try with me as the subject, but none of them would be gastronomical. I crossed the parlor and followed him into the dining room, and he shut the door. I looked at the table. There were the nine dishes, with numbered cards in front of them, and a big electric server, covered, and a pitcher of water and glasses, and plates and forks and miscellany.

  I grinned at Wolfe. “Glad to help you out. Which one did you get stuck on?”

  He moved around the table. “Come here.” He went on, to the right, to the edge of the big Pocahontas screen standing there, and I followed him. Behind the screen he stopped, and pointed at the floor. “Look at that confounded mess.”

  I stepped back a step, absolutely surprised. I had discounted all the loose talk about killing on account of its being dagoes, and whatever I might have thought about the swamp-woman’s little story, at least it hadn’t prepared me for blood. But there was the blood, though there wasn’t much of it, because the knife was still sticking in the left middle of Phillip Laszio’s back, with only the hilt showing. He was on his face, with his legs straight out, so that you might have thought he was asleep if it hadn’t been for the knife. I moved across and bent over and twisted the head enough to get a good look at one eye. Then I got up and looked at Wolfe.

  He said bitterly, “A pleasant holiday! I tell you, Archie—but no matter. Is he dead?”

  “Dead as a sausage.”

  “I see. Archie. We have never been guilty of obstructing justice. That’s the legal term, let them have it. But this is not our affair. And at least for the present—what do you remember about our trip down here?”

  “I think I remember we came on a train. That’s about as far as I could go.”

  He nodded. “Call Mr. Servan.”

  4

  AT THREE O’CLOCK in the morning I sat in the small parlor of Pocahontas Pavilion. Across a table from me sat my friend Barry Tolman, and standing back of him was a big-jawed squint-eyed ruffian in a blue serge suit, with a stiff white collar, red tie and pink shirt. His name and occupation had not been kept a secret: Sam Pettigrew, sheriff of Marlin County. There were a couple of nondescripts, one with a stenographer’s notebook at the end of the table, and a West Virginia state cop was on a chair tilted against the wall. The door to the dining room stood open and there was still a faint smell of photographers’ flashlight bombs, and a murmur of voices came through from sleuths doing fingerprints and similar chores.

  The blue-eyed athlete was trying not to sound irritated: “I know all that, Ashley. You may be the manager of Kanawha Spa, but I’m the prosecuting attorney of this county, and what do you want me to do, pretend he fell on the damn knife by accident? I resent your insinuation that I’m making a grab for the limelight—”

  “All right, Barry. Forget it.” Clay Ashley, standing beside me, slowly shook his head. “Of all the rotten breaks! I know you can’t suppress it, of course. But for God’s sake get it over with and get ’em out of here—all right, I know you will as soon as you can. Excuse me if I said things … I’m going to try to get some sleep. Have them call me if I can do anything.”

  He beat it. Someone came from the dining room to ask Pettigrew a question, and Tolman shook himself and rubbed his bloodshot eyes with his fingers. Then he looked at me:

  “I sent for you again, Mr. Goodwin, to ask if you have thought of anything to add to what you told me before.”

  I shook my head. “I gave you the crop.”

  “You haven’t remembered anything at all that happened, in the parlor or anywhere else, any peculiar conduct, any significant conversation?”

  I said no.

  “Anything during the day, for instance?”

  “Nope. Day or night.”

  “When Wolfe called you secretly into the dining room and showed you Laszio’s body behind the screen, what did he say to you?”

  “He didn’t call me secretly. Everybody heard him.”

  “Well, he called you alone. Why?”

  I lifted the shoulders and let them drop. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I’ve already told you. He asked me to see if Laszio was dead, and I saw he was, and he asked me to call Servan.”

  “Was that all he said?”

  “I think he remarked something about it being a pleasant holiday. Sometimes he’s sarcastic.”

  “He seems also to be cold-blooded. Was there any special reason for his being cold-blooded about Laszio?”

  I put my foot down a little harder on the brake. Wolfe would never forgive me if by some thoughtless but relevant remark I got this buzzard really down on us. I knew why Wolfe had bothered to get me in the dining room alone and inquire about my memory before broadcasting the news: it had occurred to him that in a murder case a material witness may be required to furnish bond not to leave the state without permission, or to return to testify at the trial, and it was contrary to his idea of the good life to do either one. It wasn’t easy to maintain outward respect for a guy who had been boob enough to fall for that ginger ale act in the club car, but while I had nothing at all against West Virginia I wasn’t much more anxious to stay there or return there than Wolfe was.

  I said, “Certainly not. He had never met Laszio before.”

  “Had anything happened during the day to make him—er, indifferent to Laszio’s welfare?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “And had you or he knowledge of a previous attempt on Laszio’s life?”

  “You’ll have to ask him. Me, no.”

  My friend Tolman forsook friendship for duty. He put an elbow on the table and pointed a finger at me and said in a nasty tone, “You’re lying.” I also noticed that the squint-eyed sheriff had a scowl on him not to be sneezed at, and the atmosphere of the whole room was unhealthy.

  I put my brows up. “Me lying?”

  “Yes, you. What did Mrs. Laszio tell you and Wolfe when she called at your suite yesterday afternoon?”

  I hope I didn’t gulp visibly. I know my brain gulped, but only once. No matter how he had found out, or how much, there was but one thing to do. I said, “She told us that her husband told her that he found arsenic in the sugar shaker and dumped it in the sink, and she wanted Wolfe to protect her husband. She also said that her husband had instructed her not to mention it to anyone.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s all.”

  “And you just told me that you had no knowledge of a previous attempt on Laszio’s life. Didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “Well?” He stayed nasty.

  I grinned at him. “Look, Mr. Tolman. I don’t want to try to get smart with you, even if I knew how. But consider a few things. In the first place, without any offense—you’re
just a young fellow in your first term as a prosecutor—Nero Wolfe has solved more tough ones than you’ve even heard about. You know that, you know his reputation. Even if either of us knew anything that would give you a trail, which we don’t, it wouldn’t pay you to waste time trying to squeeze juice out of us without our consent, because we’re old hands. I’m not bragging, I’m just stating facts. For instance, about my knowing about an attempt to kill Laszio, I repeat I didn’t. All I knew was that Mrs. Laszio told us that her husband told her that he found something in the sugar shaker besides sugar. How could he have been sure it was arsenic? Laszio wasn’t poisoned, he was stabbed. In my experience—”

  “I’m not interested in your experience.” Still nasty. “I asked you if you remember anything that might have any significance regarding this murder. Do you?”

  “I’ve told you what Mrs. Laszio told us—”

  “So has she. Pass that for the moment. Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Tolman told the state cop, “Bring Odell in.”

  It came to me. So that was it. A fine bunch of friends I had made since entering the dear old Panhandle State—which nickname I had learned from my pal Gershom Odell, house dick of Kanawha Spa. My brain was gulping again, and this time I wasn’t sure whether it would get it down or not. The process was interrupted by the entry of my pal, ushered in by the cop. I turned a stare on him which he did not meet. He came and stood near me at the table, so close I could have smacked him one without getting up.