A Family Affair nwo-46

by Rex Stout

  He finally opened his mouth. “Ill send you an orchid. Do you know what would happen if Rowcliff got on this?”

  “Certainly. He would send a squad out to dig up where I recently bought a Don Pedro cigar. But you have a brain, which you sometimes use.”

  “Put that in a statement some day. My brain tells me that he might have said something which gave you a hint how the tube got in his pocket, but that’s not in your statement.”

  “I guess I forgot. Nuts.”

  “Also my brain tells me that the DA will want to know why I didn’t bring you down as a material witness. The bomb went off at one-twenty-four, and you were in the room and found him two or three minutes later, and you phoned at two-eleven. Forty-five minutes, and you know what the law says, and you’ve got a license.”

  “Must we go back to that again?”

  The DA will want to know why I didn’t bring you.”

  “Sure, and you’ll tell him. So will I after I get some sleep. It was obvious that there was no’ rush. Whatever had killed him, he had brought it himself. It was the middle of the night. If you had got here in two minutes there wasn’t a damn thing you could do that wouldn’t wait. You can’t do anything now until morning, like finding out where he was and who he saw before he came here. There’s nobody at Rusterman’s but the night watchman, and he’s probably asleep. I have a suggestion. Instead of sending me an orchid, give me permission in writing to break the seal on that room and go in and cover the windows with something. It’s not sealed anyway. One of the windows, anyone could come up the fire escape and climb in. I admit there’s no hurry about the rest of it, the plaster and other stuff.”

  “The plaster is gone.”

  He looked at his watch and got to his feet, gripping the chair arms for leverage, which he seldom does. “By god, you admit something. You’re going soft. That window’s blocked. You let that seal alone. Someone will come for another look, someone who knows about bombs. Also someone will come to see Wolfe.”

  “I told you, he probably won’t-” “Yeah. Do you know what I think? I think he made a hole in his ceiling and pushed the bomb through.”

  He headed for the door.

  I got up and followed, in no hurry. There was no hurry left in me. There wasn’t much of anything left in me. When he was out and the door shut, I went and put the chain bolt on, put out the lights in the office and hall, and went up the two flights to my room, actually leaving the plates and glasses there on my desk, which is hard to believe. Fritz had gone to bed nearly an hour ago, when all the mob had cleared out except Purley, after bringing sandwiches without asking if they were wanted.

  Of course I was asleep two minutes after I got flat, and I stayed asleep. I don’t brag about my sleeping because I suspect it shows that I’m primitive or vulgar or something, but I admit it. But I also admit I set the alarm for ten o’clock. Anyway I would probably be interrupted before that, although I turned my phone switch off. I left the house phone on.

  But I wasn’t. When the radio said, “And you’ll never regret that you obeyed the impulse and decided to try the only face cream that makes you want to touch your own skin,” I reached for it without opening my eyes. I tried to argue that another hour wouldn’t hurt, but it didn’t work because it came to me that there was a problem that wouldn’t wait. Theodore. I opened my eyes, reached for the house phone, and buzzed the kitchen.

  In five seconds Fritz’s voice came. “Yes.”

  He claims that he is not copying Wolfe, that Wolfe says “Yes?”

  and he says “Yes.”

  I said, “You’re up and dressed.”

  “Yes. I took his breakfast.”

  “Did he eat?”

  “Yes.”

  “My god, you’re short and sweet.”

  “Not sweet, Archie. Neither is he. Are you?”

  “No. I’m neither sweet nor sour. I’m done. How about Theodore?”

  “He came and went up. I told him he wouldn’t come.”

  “Ill be down, but don’t bother with breakfast. I’ll eat the second section of the Times. With vinegar.”

  “It’s better with ketchup.”

  He hung up.

  But when I finally made it down to the kitchen the stage was set. Tools and cup and saucer and the toaster and butter dish were on the little table, and the Times was on the rack, and the griddle was on the range. On the big center table was a plate of slices of homemade scrapple. I got a glass and went to the refrigerator for orange juice, poured some, and took a sip.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” I said, “you and I are still friends. You’re the only friend I’ve got in the world. Let’s go somewhere. Switzerland? That ought to be far enough. Have there been phone calls?”

  “There have been rings, four, but I didn’t answer. Neither did he.”

  He had turned the heat on under the griddle. That thing on the door of that room, NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT, how long will it Stay?”

  I drank orange juice. That’s a good idea,” I said. “Forget all the other details, such as headlines like GUEST EN NERO WOLFE’S HOUSE KILLED BY BOMB Or ARCHIE GOODWIN OPENS DOOR TO HOMICIDE, and concentrate on that door. Wonderful idea.”

  He was getting bacon fat on the griddle. I went to my chair at the little table and picked up the Times. President Ford wanted us to do something about inflation. Nixon was in shock from the operation. Judge Sirica had told Ehrlichman’s lawyer he talked too much. The Arabs had made Arafat it. Items which ordinarily would have had me turning to inside pages, but I had to use will power to finish the first paragraphs. I tried other departments-sports, weather, obituaries, metropolitan briefs-and decided that it’s possible to tell your mind what to do only when your mind agrees with you. I was going on from there to decide if that meant anything and if so what, when Fritz came with two slices of scrapple on a plate. As he put it down he made a noise which I’ll spell Tchahh!”

  I asked him why, and he said he forgot the honey and went and brought it.

  As I was buttering the third slice of toast the phone rang. I counted. It rang twelve times and stopped. In a couple of minutes Fritz said, “I never saw you do that before.”

  “There’ll probably be a lot of things you never saw me do before. Did you get the plates and glasses I left in the office?”

  “I haven’t been to the office.”

  “Did he mention me when you took his breakfast up or went for the tray?”

  “No. He asked me if I had been up during the night. I started to tell him about it, how many of them had come, and he stopped me.”

  “How did he stop you?”

  “By looking at me and then turning his back.”

  “Was he dressed?”

  “Yes. The dark brown with little stripes. Yellow shirt and brown tie.”

  When I put the empty coffee cup down and went to the office it was ten past eleven. Since he hadn’t come down at eleven, he probably wasn’t coming. I decided it would be childish not to do the chores, so I dusted the desks, removed yesterday’s calendar sheets, changed the water in the vase on Wolfe’s desk, took the plates and glasses to the kitchen, and put the chair Purley had sat on where it belonged, and was opening the mail when the house phone buzzed. I got it and said, I’m in the office.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come up here.”

  I got the carbon of my statement from the drawer and went. Since I had been summoned, of course I didn’t knock on his door. He was seated at the table between the windows, with a book. Either he had finished with his copy of the Times or his mind had refused to cooperate, like mine. As I crossed to him he put the book down-The Palace Guard by Dan Rather and Gary Gates-and growled, “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” I snarled.

  “Have you been downtown?”

  “No. I don’t answer the phone.”

  “Sit down and report.”

  Of course he had the big chair. I brought the other one over and
sat and said, “The best start would be for you to read this copy of the statement I gave Stebbins.”

  I handed it to him. It was four pages.

  Once through is usually enough for him, but that time he went back to the first two pages-what Pierre and I had said, which I had given verbatim. He eyed me. “What did you reserve?”

  “Of my talk with Pierre, nothing. Every word is there. Of the rest, also nothing, except that you were armed when you came, with that club, and that you told me you supposed I had to. It’s all there, what was said and what happened, but I didn’t include a guess I made. I saved that for Stebbins. When I left Pierre there, he felt something in his topcoat pocket and took it out. It was an aluminum tube, the kind Don Pedro cigars come in. When he unscrewed the cap, he was holding it only a few inches from his face. You saw his face. There were pieces of aluminum on the floor, and I recognized the printing on them. Of course they had been collected and Stebbins had seen them. Also of course, they would soon make the same guess, so I thought I might as well give it to Stebbins.”

  He shook his head, either at Purley or at me, I didn’t know which. “What else did you give him?”

  “Nothing. There was nothing else to give. Nothing to anybody, including the medical examiner and Lieutenant Burnham, whom you have never met. I didn’t count, but Fritz says there were nineteen of them altogether. The door of the South Room is sealed. A bomb specialist is coming to get clues, probably this afternoon.”

  When he wants to give something a good look and is in the office at his desk, in the one chair that he thoroughly approves, he leans back and shuts his eyes, but the back of that chair isn’t the right angle for it, so he just squinted and pulled at his ear lobe. A full two minutes.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing whatever.”

  “Right. Because you’re the greatest detective in the world. Stebbins doesn’t believe it. He thinks he told me something, maybe not a name but something, and I left it out because we want to get him ourselves. Of course we do, at least I do. I might have unscrewed the cap of that tube myself. So I owe him something.”

  “So do I. In my own house, asleep in my own bed, and that. That-that…”

  I raised my brows at him. That was a first. The first time in my long experience that he had ever been at a loss for words.

  He hit the chair arm with a fist. “So. Call Felix. Tell him we’ll be there for lunch.”

  He looked at the wall clock. “In half an hour. If no upstairs room is available, perhaps on the top floor, if that’s convenient. Do you know of any source of information about Pierre other than the restaurant?”

  I said no, got up, went to the phone on the bed-stand, switched it on, and dialed.

  The top floor at Rusterman’s restaurant was once the living quarters of Marko Vukcic, its owner, who had been Wolfe’s boyhood friend in Montenegro and one of the only three men I knew who called him by his first name. For a year or so after Marko’s death it had been unoccupied, and then Felix, who had left a one-third share and ran the restaurant under Wolfe’s supervision as trustee, had moved in with his wife and two children. Soon the children had got married and left.

  At twenty-five minutes to one, Wolfe and I were Seated at a table near a window on that floor which looked down on Madison Avenue. Felix, slim and trim, elegant in blue-black and white for the lunch customers, standing at Wolfe’s left and my right, said, “Then the scallops. Fresh from the bay, I never saw finer ones, and the shallots were perfect. They’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

  Wolfe nodded. “And the rice fritters. I’ll tell his name is Philip?”

  “Philip Correla. Of course everyone knew Pierre, but Philip knew him best. As I said, I don’t think I ever saw Pierre except here. We’ll miss him, Mr. Wolfe. He was a good man. It’s hard to believe, there in your house.”

  He looked at his watch. “You’ll ex-cuse me-Ill send Philip.”

  He went. The early ones would be coming down below.

  “Uhuh,” I said. “A million people will be saying that, it’s hard to believe, there in Nero Wolfe’s house. Or some of them will say it’s easy to believe. I don’t know which is worse.”

  He glared at me.

  Of the seventy-some at Rusterman’s altogether, there were few that Wolfe had never seen, only seven or eight who had come since he had bowed out as trustee. When Philip Correla appeared, white apron and cap, he crossed to us and said, “You may remember me, Mr. Wolfe. And Mr. Goodwin.”

  “Certainly,” Wolfe said. “You once disagreed with me about Rouennaise sauce.”

  “Yes, sir. You said no bay leaf.”

  “I nearly always say no bay leaf. Tradition should be respected but not sanctified. I concede that you make good sauces. Will you sit, please? I prefer eyes at a level.”

  He waited until Philip had moved a chair to face him and was on it. Then: “I presume Felix told you what I want.”

  “Yes, sir. To ask me about Pierre. We were friends. Good friends. I tell you, I cried. In Italy men cry. I didn’t leave Italy until I was twenty-four. I met Pierre in Paris.”

  He looked at me. “It said on the radio you found him.”

  He looked at Wolfe. “In your house. It didn’t say why he was at your house or why he got killed.”

  Wolfe took in a bushel of air through his nose and let it out through his mouth. Felix, and now Philip, and they knew him. “He came to ask me something,” he said, “but I was in bed. So I don’t know what he wanted to ask, and that’s why I need information from you. Since you were his friend, since you wept, it may be assumed that you want the man who killed him exposed and punished. Yes?”

  “Of course I do. Have you-do you know who killed him?”

  “No. I’m going to find out. I want to tell you something in confidence and ask you some questions. You are to tell no one-no one. Can you keep it to yourself?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Not many people are sure of themselves. Are you?”

  “I’m sure I can keep a secret. I’m sure I can keep this kind of a secret.”

  “Good. Pierre told Mr. Goodwin that a man was going to kill him, but that’s all he told him. Had he told you?”

  “That a man was going to kill him? No, sir.”

  “Had he spoken of any threat, any danger impending?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Had he mentioned any recent event, anything done or said by somebody, that might have suggested a possibility of danger?”

  “No, sir.”

  “But you have seen him and spoken with him recently? Yesterday?”

  “Of course. I’m in the kitchen, and he’s in front, but we usually eat lunch together in the kitchen. We did yesterday. I didn’t see him Sunday; of course, we’re not here Sunday.”

  “When did you hear-learn of his death?”

  “The radio this morning. The eight-o’clock news.”

  “Only five hours ago. You were shocked, and there hasn’t been much time. You may recall something be said.”

  “I don’t think I will, Mr. Wolfe. If you mean something about danger, about someone might kill him, I’m sure I won’t.”

  “You can’t be sure now. Memory plays tricks. This next question is important. He told Mr. Goodwin a man was going to kill him, so something had happened that put him in fear of his life. When? Just last evening? It would help to know when, so this is important. What was he like yesterday at lunch? Was he completely normal? Was there anything unusual about his mood, his behavior?”

  “Yes, sir, there was. I was remembering that when you asked if he said anything about danger. He didn’t seem to hear things I said and he didn’t talk as much. When I asked him if he would rather eat alone he said he was sorry, that he had got orders mixed at lunch and served people wrong. I thought that explained it. Pierre was a very proud man. He thought a waiter should never make a mistake, and he thought he never did. I don’t know, maybe he didn’t. You can ask Felix. Pierre often mentioned that when you came you always
liked to have him. He was proud of his work.”

  “Had he actually done that? Got orders mixed?”

  “I don’t know, but he wouldn’t have said that if he hadn’t. You can ask Felix.”

  “Did he mention it again later?”

  “No, sir. Of course I didn’t.”

  “Had he been like that Saturday? Distraught?”

  “I don’t -” Philip frowned. “No, sir, he hadn’t.”

  “I suggest that when opportunity offers you sit and close your eyes and try to recall everything he said yesterday. If you do that, make a real effort, you may surprise yourself. People frequently do. Will you do that?”

  “Yes, sir, but not here. I couldn’t, here. I will later.”

  “And tell me or Mr. Goodwin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. We’ll hope to hear from you.”

  Wolfe cocked his head. “Now. Another important question. If he was killed by someone who works here, who was it? Who might have had reason to want him dead? Who feared him or bated him or might have profited by his death?”

  Philip was shaking his head. “Nobody. Nobody here. Nobody anywhere.”

  “Pfui. You can’t know that. Obviously you can’t, since someone killed him.”

  He was still shaking his head. “No, sir. I mean yes, sir. Of course. But I can’t believe it. That’s what I thought when I heard it-who could have killed him? Why would anybody kill Pierre? He never hurt anybody, he wouldn’t. Nobody hated him. Nobody was afraid of him. He was a fine man, an honest man. He wasn’t perfect, he had that one fault, he bet too much on horse races, but he knew he did and he tried to stop. He didn’t want to talk about it, but sometimes he did. I was his best friend, but he never tried to borrow from me.”

  “Did he borrow from anyone?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think he would. I’m sure he didn’t from anybody here. If he had, there would have been talk. You can ask Felix.”