Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families

by Rex Stout

  If in addition to his own equipment and talents he acquired Lina Darrow as a partner, it would probably be farther and sooner. She was, I would have guessed, slightly younger than Annabel Frey—twenty-six maybe—and I never saw a finer pair of eyes. She was obviously underplaying them, or rather what was back of them. When I was questioning her she pretended I had her in a corner, while her eyes gave it away that she could have waltzed all around me if she wanted to. I didn’t know whether she thought she was kidding somebody, or was just practicing, or had some serious reason for passing herself off as a flub.

  Barry Rackham had me stumped and also annoyed. Either I was dumber than Nero Wolfe thought I was, and twice as dumb as I thought I was, or he was smarter than he looked. New York was full of him, and he was full of New York. Go into any Madison Avenue bar between five and six-thirty and there would be six or eight of him there: not quite young but miles from being old; masculine all over except the fingernails; some tired and some fresh and ready, depending on the current status; and all slightly puffy below the eyes. I knew him from A to Z, or thought I did, but I couldn’t make up my mind whether he knew what I was there for, and that was the one concrete thing I had hoped to get done. If he knew, the question whether he was on Zeck’s payroll was answered; if he didn’t, that question was still open.

  And I still hadn’t been able to decide when, at the dinner table, we had finished the dessert and got up to go elsewhere for coffee. At first I had thought he couldn’t possibly be wise, when I had him sized up for a dummy who had had the good luck to catch Mrs. Rackham’s eye somewhere and then had happened to take the only line she would fall for, but further observation had made me reconsider. His handling of his wife had character in it; it wasn’t just yes or no. At the dinner table he had an exchange with Pierce about rent control, and without seeming to try he got the statesman so tangled up he couldn’t wiggle loose. Then he had a good laugh, took the other side of the argument, and made a monkey out of Dana Hammond.

  I decided I’d better start all over.

  On the way back to the living room for coffee, Lina Darrow joined me. “Why did you take it out on me?” she demanded.

  I said I didn’t know I had.

  “Certainly you did. Trying to indict me for dog poisoning. You went after me much harder than you did the others.” Her fingers were on the inside of my arm, lightly.

  “Certainly,” I conceded. “Nothing new to you, was it? A man going after you harder than the others?”

  “Thanks. But I mean it. Of course you know I’m just a working girl.”

  “Sure. That’s why I was tougher with you. That, and because I wondered why you were playing dumb.”

  The statesman Pierce broke us up then, as we entered the living room, and I didn’t fight for her. We collected in the neighborhood of the fireplace for coffee, and there was a good deal of talk about nothing, and after a while somebody suggested television, and Barry Rackham went and turned it on. He and Annabel turned out lights. As the rest of us got settled in favorably placed seats, Mrs. Rackham left us. A little later, as I sat in the semi-darkness scowling at a cosmetic commercial, some obscure sense told me that danger was approaching and I jerked my head around. It was right there at my elbow: a Doberman pinscher, looking larger than normal in that light, staring intently past me at the screen.

  Mrs. Rackham, just behind it, apparently misinterpreting my quick movement, spoke hastily and loudly above the noise of the broadcast. “Don’t try to pat him!”

  “I won’t,” I said emphatically.

  “He’ll behave,” she assured me. “He loves television.” She went on with him, farther forward. As they passed Calvin Leeds the affectionate pet halted for a brief sniff, and got a stroke on the head in response. No one else was honored.

  Ninety minutes of video got us to half-past ten, and got us nothing else, especially me. I was still on the fence about Barry Rackham. Television is raising hell with the detective business. It used to be that a social evening at someone’s house or apartment was a fine opportunity for picking up lines and angles, moving around, watching and talking and listening; but with a television session you might as well be home in bed. You can’t see faces, and if someone does make a remark you can’t hear it unless it’s a scream, and you can’t even start a private inquiry, such as finding out where a young widow stands now on skepticism. In a movie theater at least you can hold hands.

  However, I did finally get what might have been a nibble. The screen had been turned off, and we had all got up to stretch, and Annabel had offered to drive Leeds and me home, and Leeds had told her that we would rather walk, when Barry Rackham moseyed over to me and said he hoped the television hadn’t bored me too much. I said no, just enough.

  “Think you’ll get anywhere on your job for Leeds?” he asked, jiggling his highball glass to make the ice tinkle.

  I lifted my shoulders and let them drop. “I don’t know. A month’s gone by.”

  He nodded. “That’s what makes it hard to believe.”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “That he would wait a month and then decide to blow himself to a fee for Nero Wolfe. Everybody knows that Wolfe comes high. I wouldn’t have thought Leeds could afford it.” Rackham smiled at me. “Driving back tonight?”

  “No, I’m staying over.”

  “That’s sensible. Night driving is dangerous, I think. The Sunday traffic won’t be bad this time of year if you leave early.” He touched my chest with a forefinger. “That’s it, leave early.” He moved off.

  Annabel was yawning, and Dana Hammond was looking at her as if that was exactly what he had come to Birchvale for, to see her yawn. Lina Darrow was looking from Barry Rackham to me and back again, and pretending she wasn’t looking anywhere with those eyes. The Doberman pinscher was standing tense, and Pierce, from a safe ten feet—one more than springing distance—was regarding it with an expression that gave me a more sympathetic feeling for him than I ever expected to have for a statesman.

  Calvin Leeds and Mrs. Rackham were also looking at the dog, with a quite different expression.

  “At least two pounds overweight,” Leeds was saying. “You feed him too much.”

  Mrs. Rackham protested that she didn’t.

  “Then you don’t run him enough.”

  “I know it,” she admitted. “I will from now on, I’ll be here more. I was busy today. I’ll take him out now. It’s a perfect night for a good walk—Barry, do you feel like walking?”

  He didn’t. He was nice about it, but he didn’t. She broadened the invitation to take in the group, but there were no takers. She offered to walk Leeds and me home, but Leeds said she would go too slow, and he should have been in bed long ago since his rising time was six o’clock. He moved, and told me to come on if I was coming.

  We said good night and left.

  The outdoor air was sharper now. There were a few stars but no moon, and alone with no flashlight I would never have been able to keep that trail through the woods and might have made the Hillside Kennels clearing by dawn. For Leeds a flashlight would have been only a nuisance. He strode along at the same gait as in the daytime, and I stumbled at his heels, catching my toes on things, teetering on roots and pebbles, and once going clear down. I am not a deerstalker and don’t want to be. As we approached the kennels Leeds called out, and the sound came of many movements, but not a bark. Who wants a dog, let alone thirty or forty, not even human enough to bark when you come home?

  Leeds said that since the poisoning he always took a look around before going to bed, and I went on in the house and up to the little room where I had put my bag. I was sitting on the bed in pajamas, scratching the side of my neck and considering Barry Rackham’s last-minute remarks, when Leeds entered downstairs and came up to ask if I was comfortable. I told him I soon would be, and he said good night and went down the short hall to his room.

  I opened a window, turned out the light, and got into bed; but in three minutes I saw it wasn’t work
ing. My practice is to empty my head simultaneously with dropping it on the pillow. If something sticks and doesn’t want to come out I’ll give it up to three minutes but no more. Then I act. This time, of course, it was Barry Rackham that stuck. I had to decide that he knew what I was there for or that he didn’t, or, as an alternative, decide definitely that I wouldn’t try to decide until tomorrow. I got out of bed and went and sat on a chair.

  It may have taken five minutes, or it could have been fifteen; I don’t know. Anyhow it didn’t accomplish anything except getting Rackham unstuck from my head for the night, for the best I could do was decide for postponement. If he had his guard up, so far I had not got past it. With that settled, I got under the covers again, took ten seconds to get into position on a strange mattress, and was off this time….

  Nearly, but not quite. A shutter or something began to squeak. Calling it a shutter jerked me back part way, because there were no shutters on the windows, so it couldn’t be that. I was now enough awake to argue. The sound continued, at brief intervals. It not only wasn’t a shutter, it wasn’t a squeak. Then it was a baby whining; but it wasn’t, because it came from the open window, and there were no babies out there. To hell with it. I turned over, putting my back to the window, but the sound still came, and I had been wrong. It was more of a whimper than a whine. Oh, nuts.

  I rolled out of bed, switched on a light, went down the hall to Leeds’ door, knocked on it, and opened it.

  “Well?” he asked, full voice.

  “Have you got a dog that whimpers at night?”

  “Whimpers? No.”

  “Then shall I go see what it is? I hear it through my window.”

  “It’s probably—turn on the light, will you?”

  I found the wall switch and flipped it. His pajamas were green with thin white stripes. Giving me a look which implied that here was one more reason for disapproving of my being there, he padded past me into the hall and on into my room, me following. He stood a moment to listen, crossed and stuck his head out the window, pulled it in again, and this time went by me with no look at all and moving fast. I followed him downstairs and to the side door, where he pushed a light switch with one hand while he opened the door with the other, and stepped across the sill.

  “By God,” he said. “All right, Nobby, all right.”

  He squatted.

  I take back none of my remarks about Doberman pinschers, but I admit that that was no time to expand on them, nor did I feel like it. The dog lay on its side on the slab of stone with its legs twitching, trying to lift its head enough to look at Leeds; and from its side that was up, toward the belly and midway between the front and hind legs, protruded the chased silver handle of a knife. The hair around was matted with blood.

  The dog had stopped whimpering. Now suddenly it bared its teeth and snarled, but weakly.

  “All right, Nobby,” Leeds said. He had his palm against the side, forward, over the heart.

  “He’s about gone,” he said.

  I discovered that I was shivering, decided to stop, and did.

  “Pull the knife out of him?” I suggested. “Maybe—”

  “No. That would finish him. I think he’s finished anyhow.”

  He was. The dog died as Leeds squatted there and I stood not permitting myself to shiver in the cold night breeze. I could see the slender muscular legs stretch tight and then go loose, and after another minute Leeds took his hand away and stood up.

  “Will you please hold the door open?” he asked. “It’s off plumb and swings shut.”

  I obliged, holding it wide and standing aside to let him through. With the dog’s body in his arms, he crossed to a wooden bench at one side of the little square hall and put the burden down. Then he turned to me. “I’m going to put something on and go out and look around. Come or stay, suit yourself.”

  “I’ll come. Is it one of your dogs? Or—”

  He had started for the stairs, but halted. “No. Sarah’s—my cousin’s. He was there tonight, you saw him.” His face twitched. “By God, look at him! Getting here with that knife in him! I gave him to her two years ago; he’s been her dog for two years, but when it came to this it was me he came to. By God!”

  He went for the stairs and up, and I followed. Over the years there have been several occasions when I needed to get some clothes on without delay, and I thought I was fast, but I was still in my room with a shoe to lace when Leeds’ steps were in the hall again and he called in to me, “Wait downstairs. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I called that I was coming, but he didn’t halt. By the time I got down to the little square hall he was gone, and the outside door was shut. I opened it and stepped out and yelled, “Hey, Leeds!”

  His voice came from somewhere in the darkness. “I said wait!”

  Even if he had decided not to bother with me there was no use trying to dash after him, with my handicap, so I settled for making my way around the corner of the house and across the graveled rectangle to where my car was parked. Getting the door unlocked, I climbed in and got the flashlight from the dash compartment. That put me, if not even with Leeds for a night outdoors in the country, at least a lot closer to him. Relocking the car door, I sent the beam of the flash around and then switched it off and went back to the side door of the house.

  I could hear steps, faint, then louder, and soon Leeds appeared within the area of light from the hall’s window. He wasn’t alone. With him was a dog, a length ahead of him, on a leash. As they approached I courteously stepped aside, but the dog ignored me completely. Leeds opened the door and they entered the hall, and I joined them.

  “Get in front of her,” Leeds said, “a yard off, and stand still.”

  I obeyed, circling.

  “See, Hebe.”

  For the first time the beast admitted I was there. She lifted her head at me, then stepped forward and smelled my pants legs, not in haste. When she had finished Leeds crossed to where the dead dog lay on the bench, made a sign, and Hebe went to him.

  Leeds passed his fingertips along the dead dog’s belly, touching lightly the smooth short hair. “Take it, Hebe.”

  She stretched her sinewy neck, sniffed along the course his fingertips had taken, backed up a step, and looked up at him.

  “Don’t be so damn sure,” Leeds told her. He pointed a finger. “Take it again.”

  She did so, taking more time for it, and again looked up at him.

  “I didn’t know they were hounds,” I remarked.

  “They’re everything they ought to be.” I suppose Leeds made some signal, though I didn’t see it, and the dog started toward the door, with her master at the other end of the leash. “They have excellent scent, and this one’s extraordinary. She’s Nobby’s mother.”

  Outside, on the slab of stone where we had found Nobby, Leeds said, “Take it, Hebe,” and when she made a low noise in her throat as she tightened the leash, he added, “Quiet, now. I’ll do the talking.”

  She took him, with me at their heels, around the corner of the house to the graveled space, across that, along the wall of the main outbuilding, and to a corner of the enclosed run. There she stopped and lifted her head.

  Leeds waited half a minute before he spoke. “Bah. Can’t you tell dogs apart? Take it!”

  I switched the flashlight on, got a reprimand, and switched it off. Hebe made her throat noise again, got her nose down, and started off. We crossed the meadow on the trail to the edge of the woods and kept going. The pace was steady but not fast; for me it was an easy stroll, nothing like the race Leeds had led me previously. Even with no leaves on the trees it was a lot darker there, but unless my sense of direction was completely cockeyed we were sticking to the trail I had been over twice before.

  “We’re heading straight for the house, aren’t we?” I asked.

  For reply I got only a grunt.

  For the first two hundred yards or so after entering the woods it was a steady climb, not steep, and then a leveling off for another
couple hundred of yards to the start of the easy long descent to the edge of the Birchvale manicured grounds. It was at about the middle of the level stretch that Hebe suddenly went crazy. She dashed abruptly to one side, off the trail, jerking Leeds so that he had to dance to keep his feet, then whirled and came back into him, with a high thin quavering noise not at all like what she had said before.

  Leeds spoke to her sharply, but I don’t know what he said. By then my eyes had got pretty well accommodated to the circumstances. However, I am not saying that there in the dark among the trees, at a distance of twenty feet, I recognized the blob on the ground. I do assert that at the instant I pressed the button of the flashlight, before the light came, I knew already that it was the body of Mrs. Barry Rackham.

  This time I got no reprimand. Leeds was with me as I stepped off the trail and covered the twenty feet. She was lying on her side, as Nobby had been, but her neck was twisted so that her face was nearly upturned to the sky, and I thought for a second it was a broken neck until I saw the blood on the front of her white sweater. I stooped and got my fingers on her wrist. Leeds picked up a dead leaf, laid it on her mouth and nostrils, and asked me to kneel to help him keep the breeze away.

  When we had gazed at the motionless leaf for twenty seconds he said, “She’s dead.”

  “Yeah.” I stood up. “Even if she weren’t, she would be by the time we got her to the house. I’ll go—”

  “She is dead, isn’t she?”

  “Certainly. I’ll—”

  “By God.” He got erect, coming up straight in one movement. “Nobby and now her. You stay here—” He took a quick step, but I caught his arm. He jerked loose, violently.

  I said fast, “Take it easy.” I got his arm again, and he was trembling. “You bust in there and there’s no telling what you’ll do. Stay here and I’ll go—”

  He pulled free and started off.

  “Wait!” I commanded, and he halted. “But first get a doctor and call the police. Do that first. I’m going to your place. We left that knife in the dog, and someone might want it. Can’t you put Hebe on guard here?”