by Rex Stout
“Yes, she—”
“She took them from me,” Elinor Vance put in, “when I got them from the cabinet. She was right there with her hand out and I let her take them.”
“The locked cabinet that the Hi-Spot is kept in?”
“Yes.”
“And the glasses are heavy and dark blue, quite opaque so that anything in them is invisible?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t look into them from the top?”
“No.”
“If one of them had something inside you wouldn’t have seen it?”
“No.” Elinor went on, “If you think my answers are short and quick, that’s because I’ve already answered these questions, and many others, hundreds of times. I could answer them in my sleep.”
Wolfe nodded. “Of course. So now we have the bottles in the refrigerator and the glasses on the table, and the program is on the air. For forty minutes it went smoothly. The two guests did well. None of Mr. Traub’s fears were realized.”
“It was one of the best broadcasts of the year,” Miss Fraser said.
“Exceptional,” Tully Strong declared. “There were thirty-two studio laughs in the first half hour.”
“How did you like the second half?” Traub asked pointedly.
“We’re coming to it.” Wolfe sighed. “Well, here we are. The moment arrives when Hi-Spot is to be poured, drunk, and eulogized. Who brought it from the refrigerator? You again, Miss Vance?”
“No, me,” Bill Meadows said. “It’s part of the show for the mikes, me pushing back my chair, walking, opening the refrigerator door and closing it, and coming back with the bottles. Then someone—”
“There were eight bottles in the refrigerator. How many did you get?”
“Four.”
“How did you decide which ones?”
“I didn’t decide. I always just take the four in front. You realize that all Hi-Spot bottles are exactly alike. There wouldn’t be any way to tell them apart, so how would I decide?”
“I couldn’t say. Anyway, you didn’t?”
“No. As I said, I simply took the four bottles that were nearest to me. That’s natural.”
“So it is. And carried them to the table and removed the caps?”
“I took them to the table, but about removing the caps, that’s something we don’t quite agree on. We agree that I didn’t do it, because I put them on the table as usual and then got back into my chair, quick, to get on the mike. Someone else always takes the caps from the bottles, not always the same one, and that day Debby—Miss Koppel was right there, and Miss Vance, and Strong, and Traub. I was on the mike and didn’t see who removed the caps. The action there is a little tight and needs help, with taking off the caps, pouring into the glasses, and getting the glasses passed around—and the bottles have to be passed around too.”
“Who does the passing?”
“Oh, someone—or, rather, more than one. You know, they just get passed—the glasses and bottles both. After pouring into the glasses the bottles are still about half full, so the bottles are passed too.”
“Who did the pouring and passing that day?”
Bill Meadows hesitated. “That’s what we don’t agree about.” He was not at ease. “As I said, they were all right there—Miss Koppel and Miss Vance, and Strong and Traub. That’s why it was confusing.”
“Confusing or not,” Wolfe said testily, “it should be possible to remember what happened, so simple a thing as that. This is the detail where, above all others, clarity is essential. We know that Mr. Orchard got the bottle and glass which contained the cyanide, because he drank enough of it to kill him. But we do not know, at least I don’t, whether he got it by a whim of circumstance or by the deliberate maneuver of one or more of those present. Obviously that’s a vital point. That glass and bottle were placed in front of Mr. Orchard by somebody—not this one, or this one, but that one. Who put it there?”
Wolfe’s gaze went along the line. They all met it. No one had anything to say, but neither was anyone impelled to look somewhere else. Finally Tully Strong, who had his spectacles back on, spoke:
“We simply don’t remember, Mr. Wolfe.”
“Pfui.” Wolfe was disgusted. “Certainly you remember. No wonder Mr. Cramer has got nowhere. You’re lying, every one of you.”
“No,” Miss Fraser objected. “They’re not lying really.”
“The wrong pronoun,” Wolfe snapped at her. “My comment included you, Miss Fraser.”
She smiled at him. “You may include me if you like, but I don’t. It’s like this. These people are not only associated with one another in connection with my program, they are friends. Of course they have arguments—there’s always bound to be some friction when two people are often together, let alone five or six—but they are friends and they like one another.”
Her timing and inflections were as good as if she had been on the air. “This is a terrible thing, a horrible thing, and we all knew it was the minute the doctor came and looked at him, and then looked up and said nothing should be touched and no one should leave. So could you really expect one of them to say—or, since you include me, could you expect one of us to say—yes, I gave him the glass with poison in it?”
“What was left in the bottle was also poisoned.”
“All right, the bottle too. Or could you expect one of us to say, yes, I saw my friend give him the glass and bottle? And name the friend?”
“Then you’re agreeing with me. That you’re all lying.”
“Not at all.” Miss Fraser was too earnest to smile now. “The pouring and passing the glasses and bottles was commonplace routine, and there was no reason for us to notice details enough to keep them in our minds at all. Then came that overwhelming shock, and the confusion, and later came the police, and the strain and tension of it, and we just didn’t remember. That isn’t the least bit surprising. What would surprise me would be if someone did remember, for instance if Mr. Traub said positively that Mr. Strong put that glass and bottle in front of Mr. Orchard, it would merely prove that Mr. Traub hates Mr. Strong, and that would surprise me because I don’t believe that any one of us hates another one.”
“Nor,” Wolfe murmured dryly, “that any of you hated Mr. Orchard—or wanted to kill him.”
“Who on earth could have wanted to kill that man?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been hired to find out—provided the poison reached its intended destination. You say you’re not surprised, but I am. I’m surprised the police haven’t locked you all up.”
“They damn near did,” Traub said grimly.
“I certainly thought they would arrest me,” Madeline Fraser declared. “That was what was in my mind—it was all that was in my mind—as soon as I heard the doctor say cyanide. Not who had given him that glass and bottle, not even what the effect would be on my program, but the death of my husband. He died of cyanide poisoning six years ago.”
Wolfe nodded. “The papers haven’t neglected that. It was what leaped first to your mind?”
“Yes, when I heard the doctor say cyanide. I suppose you wouldn’t understand—or perhaps you would—anyway it did.”
“It did to mine too,” Deborah Koppel interposed, in a tone that implied that someone had been accused of something. “Miss Fraser’s husband was my brother. I saw him just after he died. Then that day I saw Cyril Orchard, and—” She stopped. Having her in profile, I couldn’t see her eyes, but I saw her clasped hands. In a moment she went on, “Yes, it came to my mind.”
Wolfe stirred impatiently. “Well. I won’t pretend that I’m exasperated that you’re such good friends that you haven’t been able to remember what happened. If you had, and had told the police, I might not have this job.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s after eleven. I had thought it barely possible that I might get a wedge into a crack by getting you here together, but it seems hopeless. You’re much too fond of one another. Our time has been completely wasted. I
haven’t got a thing, not a microscopic morsel, that I hadn’t already got from the papers. I may never get anything, but I intend to try. Which of you will spend the night here with me? Not all the night; probably four or five hours. I shall need that long, more or less, with each of you, and I would like to start now. Which of you will stay?”
There were no eager volunteers.
“My Lord!” Elinor Vance protested. “Over and over and over again.”
“My clients,” Wolfe said, “are your employer, your network, and your sponsors. Mr. Meadows?”
“I’ve got to take Miss Fraser home,” Bill objected. “I could come back.”
“I’ll take her,” Tully Strong offered.
“That’s foolish.” Deborah Koppel was annoyed. “I live only a block away and we’ll take a taxi together.”
“I’ll go with you,” Elinor Vance suggested. “I’ll drop you and keep the taxi on uptown.”
“I’ll ride with you,” Tully Strong insisted.
“But you live in the Village!”
“Count me in,” Bill Meadows said stubbornly. “I can be back here in twenty minutes. Thank God tomorrow’s Wednesday.”
“This is all unnecessary,” the president of Hi-Spot broke in with authority. He had left the couch and was among the candidates, who were also on their feet. “My car is outside and I can take all of you who are going uptown. You can stay here with Wolfe, Meadows.” He turned and stepped to the desk. “Mr. Wolfe, I haven’t been greatly impressed this evening. Hardly at all impressed.”
“Neither have I,” Wolfe agreed. “It’s a dreary outlook. I would prefer to abandon it, but you and I are both committed by that press release.” Seeing that some of them were heading for the hall, he raised his voice. “If you please? A moment. I would like to make appointments. One of you tomorrow from eleven to one, another from two to four, another in the evening from eight-thirty to twelve, and another from midnight on. Will you decide on that before you go?”
They did so, with me helping them and making notes of the decisions. It took a little discussion, but they were such good friends that there was no argument. The only thing that soured the leave-taking at all was when Owen made an opportunity to pass me a crack about no patch or cut being visible on Wolfe’s face. He might at least have had the decency to let it lay.
“I said nothing about his face,” I told him coldly. “I said he cut himself shaving. He shaves his legs. I understood you wanted him in kilts for the pictures.”
Owen was too offended to speak. Utterly devoid of a sense of humor.
When the others had gone Bill Meadows was honored with the red leather chair. On a low table at his elbow I put a replenished glass, and Fritz put a tray holding three sandwiches made with his own bread, one of minced rabbit meat, one of corned beef, and one of Georgia country ham. I arranged myself at my desk with my notebook, a plate of sandwiches to match Bill’s, a pitcher of milk and a glass. Wolfe had only beer. He never eats between dinner and breakfast. If he did he never would be able to say he is no fatter than he was five years ago, which isn’t true anyhow.
In a way it’s a pleasure to watch Wolfe doing a complete overhaul on a man, or a woman either, and in another way it’s enough to make you grit your teeth. When you know exactly what he’s after and he’s sneaking up on it without the slightest sound to alarm the victim, it’s a joy to be there. But when he’s after nothing in particular, or if he is you don’t know what, and he pokes in this hole a while and then tries another one, and then goes back to the first one, and as far as you can see is getting absolutely nowhere, and the hours go by, and your sandwiches and milk are all gone long ago, sooner or later the time comes when you don’t even bother to get a hand in front of your yawns, let alone swallow them.
If, at four o’clock that Wednesday morning, Wolfe had once more started in on Bill Meadows about his connections with people who bet on horse races, or about the favorite topics of conversation among the people we were interested in when they weren’t talking shop, or about how he got into broadcasting and did he like it much, I would either have thrown my notebook at him or gone to the kitchen for more milk. But he didn’t. He pushed back his chair and manipulated himself to his feet. If anyone wants to know what I had in the notebook he can come to the office any time I’m not busy and I’ll read it to him for a dollar a page, but he would be throwing his money away at any price.
I ushered Bill out. When I returned to the office Fritz was there tidying up. He never goes to bed until after Wolfe does. He asked me:
“Was the corned beef juicy, Archie?”
“Good God,” I demanded, “do you expect me to remember that far back? That was days ago.” I went to spin the knob on the safe and jiggle the handle, remarking to Wolfe:
“It seems we’re still in the paddock, not even at the starting post. Who do you want in the morning? Saul and Orrie and Fred and Johnny? For what? Why not have them tail Mr. Anderson?”
“I do not intend,” Wolfe said glumly, “to start spending money until I know what I want to buy—not even our clients’ money. If this poisoner is going to be exposed by such activities as investigation of sales of potassium cyanide or of sources of it available to these people, it is up to Mr. Cramer and his twenty thousand men. Doubtless they have already done about all they can in those directions, and many others, or he wouldn’t have phoned me squealing for help. The only person I want to see in the morning is—who is it? Who’s coming at eleven?”
“Debby. Miss Koppel.”
“You might have taken the men first, on the off chance that we’d have it before we got to the women.” He was at the door to the hall. “Good night.”
Chapter 7
IF, THIRTY-THREE hours later, at lunch time on Thursday, anyone had wanted to know how things were shaping up, he could have satisfied his curiosity by looking in the dining room and observing Wolfe’s behavior at the midday meal, which consisted of corn fritters with autumn honey, sausages, and a bowl of salad. At meals he is always expansive, talkative, and good-humored, but throughout that one he was grim, sullen, and peevish. Fritz was worried stiff.
Wednesday we had entertained Miss Koppel from eleven to one, Miss Fraser from two to four, Miss Vance from eight-thirty in the evening until after eleven, and Nathan Traub from midnight on; and Tully Strong Thursday morning from eleven until lunch time.
We had got hundreds of notebook pages of nothing. Gaps had of course been filled in, but with what? We even had confessions, but of what? Bill Meadows and Nat Traub both confessed that they frequently bet on horse races. Elinor Vance confessed that her brother was an electroplater, and that she was aware that he constantly used materials which contained cyanide. Madeline Fraser confessed that it was hard to believe that anyone would have put poison into one of the bottles without caring a damn which one of the four broadcasters it got served to. Tully Strong confessed that the police had found his fingerprints on all four of the bottles, and accounted for them by explaining that while the doctor had been kneeling to examine Cyril Orchard, he, Strong, had been horrified by the possibility that there had been something wrong with a bottle of Hi-Spot, the product of the most important sponsor on the Council. In a panic he had seized the four bottles, with the idiotic notion of caching them somewhere, and Miss Fraser and Traub had taken them from him and replaced them on the table. That was a particularly neat confession, since it explained why the cops had got nowhere from prints on the bottles.
Deborah Koppel confessed that she knew a good deal about cyanides, their uses, effects, symptoms, doses, and accessibility, because she had read up on them after the death of her brother six years ago. In all the sessions those were the only two times Wolfe got really disagreeable, when he was asking about the death of Lawrence Koppel—first with Deborah, the sister, and then with Madeline Fraser, the widow. The details had of course been pie for the newspapers during the past week, on account of the coincidence of the cyanide, and one of the tabloids had even gone so far as
to run a piece by an expert, discussing whether it had really been suicide, though there hadn’t been the slightest question about it at the time or at any time since.
But that wasn’t the aspect that Wolfe was disagreeable about. Lawrence Koppel’s death had occurred at his home in a little town in Michigan called Fleetville, and what Wolfe wanted to know was whether there had been anyone in or near Fleetville who was named Orchard, or who had relatives named Orchard, or who had later changed his name to Orchard. I don’t know how it had entered his head that that was a hot idea, but he certainly wrung it dry and kept going back to it for another squeeze. He spent so much time on it with Madeline Fraser that four o’clock, the hour of his afternoon date with the orchids, came before he had asked her anything at all about horse races.
The interviews with those five were not all that happened that day and night and morning. Wolfe and I had discussions, of the numerous ways in which a determined and intelligent person can get his hands on a supply of cyanide, of the easy access to the bottles in the refrigerator in the broadcasting studio, of the advisability of trying to get Inspector Cramer or Sergeant Purley Stebbins to cough up some data on things like fingerprints. That got us exactly as far as the interviews did. Then there were two more phone calls from Cramer, and some from Lon Cohen and various others; and there was the little detail of arranging for Professor F. O. Savarese to pay us a visit.
Also the matter of arranging for Nancylee Shepherd to come and be processed, but on that we were temporarily stymied. We knew all about her: she was sixteen, she lived with her parents at 829 Wixley Avenue in the Bronx, she had light yellow hair and gray eyes, and her father worked in a storage warehouse. They had no phone, so at four Wednesday, when Miss Fraser had left and Wolfe had gone up to the plants, I got the car from the garage and drove to the Bronx.
829 Wixley Avenue was the kind of apartment house where people live not because they want to, but because they have to. It should have been ashamed of itself and probably was. There was no click when I pushed the button marked Shepherd, so I went to the basement and dug up the janitor. He harmonized well with the building. He said I was way behind time if I expected to get any effective results—that’s what he said—pushing the Shepherd button. They had been gone three days now. No, not the whole family, Mrs. Shepherd and the girl. He didn’t know where they had gone, and neither did anyone else around there. Some thought they had skipped, and some thought the cops had ‘em. He personally thought they might be dead. No, not Mr. Shepherd too. He came home from work every afternoon a little after five, and left every morning at half past six.
