Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families Read online

  “I’ll try. Let’s have him now.”

  “Barry Rackham,” she said, pronouncing the name as if she held a copyright on it, or at least a lease on subsidiary rights. “He played football at Yale and then had a job in Wall Street until the war came. At the end of the war he was a major, which wasn’t very far to get in nearly four years. We were married in 1946—three years and seven months ago. He is ten years younger than I am.”

  Mrs. Barry Rackham paused, her eyes fixed on Wolfe’s face as if challenging it for comment, but the challenge was declined. Wolfe merely prodded her with a murmur.

  “And?”

  “I suppose,” she said as if conceding a point, “there is no one in New York who does not take it for granted that he married me simply for my money. They all know more about it than I do, because I have never asked him, and he is the only one that knows for sure. I know one thing: it does not make him uncomfortable to look at me. I know that for sure because I’m very sensitive about it, I’m neurotic about it, and I would know it the first second he felt that way. Of course he knows what I look like, he knows how ugly I am, he can’t help that, but it doesn’t annoy him a particle, not even—”

  She stopped and was blushing. Calvin Leeds coughed and shifted in his chair. Wolfe closed his eyes and after a moment opened them again. I didn’t look away from her because when she blushed I began to feel a little uncomfortable myself, and I wanted to see if I could keep her from knowing it.

  But she wasn’t interested in me. “Anyway,” she went on as the color began to leave, “I have kept things in my own hands. We live in my house, of course, town and country, and I pay everything, and there are the cars and so on, but I made no settlement and arranged no allowance for him. That didn’t seem to me to be the way to handle it. When he needed cash for anything he asked for it and I gave it to him freely, without asking questions.” She made a little gesture, a flip of a hand. “Not always, but nearly always. The second year it was more than the first, and the third year more again, and I felt he was getting unreasonable. Three times I gave him less than he asked for, quite a lot less, and once I refused altogether—I still asked no questions, but he told me why he needed it and tried to persuade me; he was very nice about it, and I refused. I felt that I must draw the line somewhere. Do you want to know the amounts?”

  “Not urgently,” Wolfe muttered.

  “The last time, the time I refused, it was fifteen thousand dollars.” She leaned forward. “And that was the last time. It was seven months ago, October second, and he has not asked for money since, not once! But he spends a great deal, more than formerly. For all sorts of things—just last week he gave a dinner, quite expensive, for thirty-eight men at the University Club. I have to know where he gets it. I decided that some time ago—two months ago—and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to speak to my lawyer or banker about a thing like this, or in fact anybody, and I couldn’t do it myself, so I asked my cousin, Calvin Leeds.” She sent him a glance. “He said he would try to find out something, but he hasn’t.”

  We looked at Leeds. He upturned a palm.

  “Well,” he said, half apology and half protest, “I’m no trained detective. I asked him straight, and he just laughed at me. You didn’t want anyone else to get a hint of it, that you were curious about money he wasn’t getting from you, so I was pretty limited in my asking around. I did my best, Sarah, you know I did.”

  “It seems to me,” Wolfe told her, “that Mr. Leeds had one good idea—asking him. Have you tried that yourself?”

  “Certainly. Long ago. He told me that an investment he had made was doing well.”

  “Maybe it was. Why not?”

  “Not with my husband.” She was positive. “I know how he is with money. It isn’t in him to make an investment. Another thing: he is away more now. I don’t know where he is as much as I used to. I don’t mean weeks or even days, just an afternoon or evening—and several times he has had an appointment that he couldn’t break when I wanted him to—”

  Wolfe grunted, and she was at him. “I know! You think I feel that I’ve bought him and I own him! That’s not it at all! All I really want is to be like a wife, just any wife—not beautiful and not ugly, not rich and not poor—just a wife! And hasn’t a wife a right to know the source of her husband’s income—isn’t it her duty to know? If you had a wife wouldn’t you want her to know?”

  Wolfe made a face. “I can tell you, madam, what I don’t want. I don’t want this job. I think you’re gulling me. You suspect that your husband is swindling you, either emotionally or financially, and you want me to catch him at it.” He turned to me. “Archie. You’ll have to change that formula. Hereafter, when a request comes for an appointment, do not say merely that we will not undertake to get divorce or separation evidence. Make it clear that we will not engage to expose a husband for a wife, or a wife for a husband, under any camouflage. May I ask what you are doing, Mrs. Rackham?”

  She had opened her brown leather handbag and taken out a checkfold and a little gold fountain pen. Resting the checkfold on the bag, she was writing in it with the pen. Wolfe’s question got no reply until she had finished writing, torn out the check, returned the fold and pen to the bag, and snapped the bag shut. Then she looked at him.

  “I don’t want you to expose my husband, Mr. Wolfe.” She was holding the check with her thumb and fingertip. “God knows I don’t! I just want to know. You’re not ugly and afraid and neurotic like me, you’re big and handsome and successful and not afraid of anything. When I knew I had to have help and my cousin couldn’t do it, and I wouldn’t go to anyone I knew, I went about it very carefully. I found out all about you, and no one knows I did, or at least why I did. If my husband is doing something that will hurt me that will be the end; but I don’t want to expose him, I just have to know. You are the greatest detective on earth, and you’re an honest man. I just want to pay you for finding out where and how my husband is getting money, that’s all. You can’t possibly say you won’t do it. Not possibly!”

  She left her chair and went to put the check on his desk in front of him. “It’s for ten thousand dollars, but that doesn’t mean I think that’s enough. Whatever you say. But don’t you dare say I want to expose him! My God—expose him?”

  She had my sympathy up to a point, but what stuck out was her basic assumption that rich people can always get anything they want just by putting up the dough. That’s enough to give an honest workingman, like a private detective for instance, a pain in three places. The assumption is of course sound in some cases, but what rich people are apt not to understand is that there are important exceptions.

  This, however, was not one of them, and I hoped Wolfe would see that it wasn’t. He did. He didn’t want to, but the bank account had by no means fully recovered from the awful blow of March fifteenth, only three weeks back, and he knew it. He came forward in his chair for a glance at the check, caught my eye and saw how I felt about it, heaved a sigh, and spoke.

  “Your notebook, Archie. Confound it.”

  Chapter 2

  The following morning, Saturday, I was in the office typing the final report on a case which I will not identify by name because it was never allowed to get within a mile of a newspaper or a microphone. We were committed on Mrs. Rackham’s job, since I had deposited her check Friday afternoon, but no move had been made yet, not even a phone call to any of the names she had given us, because it was Wolfe’s idea that first of all we must have a look at him. With Wolfe’s settled policy of never leaving his house on business, and with no plausible excuse for getting Barry Rackham to the office, I would have to do the looking, and that had been arranged for.

  Mrs. Rackham had insisted that her husband must positively not know or even suspect that he was being investigated, and neither must anyone else, so the arrangements for the look were a little complicated. She vetoed my suggestion that I should be invited to join a small week-end gathering at her country home in Westchester, on t
he ground that someone would probably recognize the Archie Goodwin who worked for Nero Wolfe. It was Calvin Leeds who offered an amendment that was adopted. He had a little place of his own at the edge of her estate, where he raised dogs, called Hillside Kennels. A month ago one of his valuable dogs had been poisoned, and I was to go there Saturday afternoon as myself, a detective named Archie Goodwin, to investigate the poisoning. His cousin would invite him to her place, Birchvale, for dinner, and I would go along.

  It was a quiet Saturday morning in the office, with Wolfe up in the plant rooms as usual from nine to eleven, and I finished typing the report of a certain case with no interruptions except a couple of phone calls which I handled myself, and one for which I had to give Wolfe a buzz—from somebody at Mummiani’s on Fulton Street to say that they had just got eight pounds of fresh sausage from Bill Darst at Hackettstown, and Wolfe could have half of it. Since Wolfe regards Darst as the best sausage maker west of Cherbourg, he asked that it be sent immediately by messenger, and for heaven’s sake not with dry ice.

  When, at 11:01, the sound of Wolfe’s elevator came, I got the big dictionary in front of me on my desk, opened to H, and was bent over it as he entered the office, crossed to his oversized custom-built chair, and sat. He didn’t bite at once because his mind was elsewhere. Even before he rang for beer he asked, “Has the sausage come?”

  Without looking up I told him no.

  He pressed the button twice—the beer signal—leaned back, and frowned at me. I didn’t see the frown, absorbed as I was in the dictionary, but it was in his tone of voice.

  “What are you looking up?” he demanded.

  “Oh, just a word,” I said casually. “Checking up on our client. I thought she was illiterate, her calling you handsome—remember? But, by gum, it was merely an understatement. Here it is, absolutely kosher: ‘Handsome: moderately large.’ For example it gives ‘a handsome sum of money.’ So she was dead right, you’re a handsome detective, meaning a moderately large detective.” I closed the dictionary and returned it to its place, remarking cheerfully, “Live and learn!”

  It was a dud. Ordinarily that would have started him tossing phrases and adjectives, but he was occupied. Maybe he didn’t even hear me. When Fritz came from the kitchen with the beer, Wolfe, taking from a drawer the gold bottle opener that a pleased client had given him, spoke.

  “Fritz, good news. We’re getting some of Mr. Darst’s sausage—four pounds.”

  Fritz let his eyes gleam. “Ha! Today?”

  “Any moment.” Wolfe poured beer. “That raises the question of cloves again. What do you think?”

  “I’m against it,” Fritz said firmly.

  Wolfe nodded. “I think I agree. I think I do. You may remember what Marko Vukcic said last year—and by the way, he must be invited for a taste of this. For Monday luncheon?”

  “That would be possible,” Fritz conceded, “but we have arranged for shad with roe—”

  “Of course.” Wolfe lifted his glass and drank, put it down empty, and used his handkerchief on his lips. That, he thought, was the only way for a man to scent a handkerchief. “We’ll have Marko for the sausage at Monday dinner, followed by duck Mondor.” He leaned forward and wiggled a finger. “Now about the shallots and fresh thyme: there’s no use depending on Mr. Colson. We might get diddled again. Archie will have to go—”

  At that point Archie had to go answer the doorbell, which I was glad to do. I fully appreciate, mostly anyhow, the results of Wolfe’s and Fritz’s powwows on grub when it arrives at the table, but the gab often strikes me as overdone. So I didn’t mind the call to the hall and the front door. There I found a young man with a pug nose and a package, wearing a cap that said, “Fleet Messenger Service.” I signed the slip, shut the door, started back down the hall, and was met not only by Fritz but by Wolfe too, who can move well enough when there’s something he thinks is worth moving for. He took the package from me and headed for the kitchen, followed by Fritz and me.

  The small carton was sealed with tape. In the kitchen Wolfe put it on the long table, reached to the rack for a knife, cut the tape, and pulled the flaps up. My reflexes are quick, and the instant the hissing noise started I grabbed Wolfe’s arm to haul him back, yelling at Fritz, “Watch out! Drop!”

  Wolfe can move all right, considering what he has to move. He and I were through the open door into the hall before the explosion came, and Fritz came bounding after, pulling the door with him. We all kept going, along the short stretch of hall to the office door, and into the office. There we stopped dead. No explosion yet.

  “Come back here!” Wolfe commanded.

  “Be quiet,” I commanded back, and dropped to my hands and knees and made it into the hall. There I stopped to sniff, crawled to within a yard of the crack under the kitchen door, and sniffed again.

  I arose, returned to the office on my feet, and told them, “Gas. Tear gas, I think. The hissing has stopped.”

  Wolfe snorted.

  “No sausage,” Fritz said grimly.

  “If it had been a trigger job on a grenade,” I told him, “there would have been plenty of sausage. Not for us, of us. Now it’s merely a damn nuisance. You’d better sit here and chat a while.”

  I marched to the hall and shut the door behind me, went and opened the front door wide, came back and stood at the kitchen door and took a full breath, opened the door, raced through and opened the back door into the courtyard, ran back again to the front. Even there the air current was too gassy for comfort, so I moved out to the stoop. I had been there only a moment when I heard my name called.

  “Archie!”

  I turned. Wolfe’s head with its big oblong face was protruding from a window of the front room.

  “Yes, sir,” I said brightly.

  “Who brought that package?”

  I told him Fleet Messenger Service.

  When the breeze through the hall had cleared the air I returned to the kitchen and Fritz joined me. We gave the package a look and found it was quite simple: a metal cylinder with a valve, with a brass rod that had been adjusted so that when the package was opened so was the valve. There was still a strong smell, close up, and Fritz took it to the basement. I went to the office and found Wolfe behind his desk, busy at the phone.

  I dropped into my chair and dabbed at my runny eyes with my handkerchief. When he hung up I asked, “Any luck?”

  “I didn’t expect any,” he growled.

  “Right. Shall I call a cop?”

  “No.”

  I nodded. “The question was rhetorical.” I dabbed at my eyes some more, and blew my nose. “Nero Wolfe does not call cops. Nero Wolfe opens his own packages of sausage and makes his own enemies bite the dust.” I blew my nose again. “Nero Wolfe is a man who will go far if he opens one package too many. Nero Wolfe has never—”

  “The question was not rhetorical,” Wolfe said rudely. “That is not what rhetorical means.”

  “No? I asked it. I meant it to be rhetorical. Can you prove that I don’t know what rhetorical means?” I blew my nose. “When you ask me a question, which God knows is often, do I assume—”

  The phone rang. One of the million things I do to earn my salary is to answer it, so I did. And then a funny thing happened. There is absolutely no question that it was a shock to me to hear that voice, I know that, because I felt it in my stomach. But partly what makes a shock a shock is that it is unexpected, and I do not think the sound of that voice in my ear was unexpected. I think that Wolfe and I had been sitting there talking just to hear ourselves because we both expected, after what had happened, to hear that voice sooner or later—and probably sooner.

  What it said was only, “May I speak to Mr. Wolfe, please?”

  I felt it in my stomach, sharp and strong, but damned if I was going to let him know it. I said, but not cordially, “Oh, hello there, if I get you. Was your name Duncan once?”

  “Yes. Mr. Wolfe, please.”

  “Hold the wire.” I covered the tra
nsmitter and told Wolfe, “Whosis.”

  “Who?” he demanded.

  “You know who from my face. Mr. X. Mr. Z. Him.”

  With his lips pressed tight, Wolfe reached for his phone. “This is Nero Wolfe.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Wolfe.” I was staying on, and the hard, cold, precise voice sounded exactly as it had the four previous times I had heard it, over a period of three years. It pronounced all its syllables clearly and smoothly. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes.” Wolfe was curt. “What do you want?”

  “I want to call your attention to my forbearance. That little package could have been something really destructive, but I preferred only to give you notice. As I told you about a year ago, it’s a more interesting world with you in it.”

  “I find it so,” Wolfe said dryly.

  “No doubt. Besides, I haven’t forgotten your brilliant exposure of the murderer of Louis Rony. It happened then that your interest ran with mine. But it doesn’t now, with Mrs. Barry Rackham, and that won’t do. Because of my regard for you, I don’t want you to lose a fee. Return her money and withdraw, and two months from today I shall send you ten thousand dollars in cash. Twice previously you have disregarded similar requests from me, and circumstances saved you. I advise strongly against a repetition. You will have to understand—”

  Wolfe took the phone from his ear and placed it on the cradle. Since the effect of that would be lost if my line stayed open, I did likewise, practically simultaneously.

  “By God, we’re off again,” I began. “Of all the rotten—”

  “Shut up,” Wolfe growled.

  I obeyed. He rested his elbows on his chair arms, interlaced his fingers in front of where he was roundest, and gazed at a corner of his desk blotter. I did not, as a matter of fact, have anything to say except that it was a lousy break, and that didn’t need saying. Wolfe had once ordered me to forget that I had ever heard the name Arnold Zeck, but whether I called him Zeck or Whosis or X, he was still the man who, some ten months ago, had arranged for two guys with an SM and a tommy gun to open up on Wolfe’s plant rooms from a roof across the street, thereby ruining ten thousand dollars’ worth of glass and equipment and turning eight thousand valuable orchid plants into a good start on a compost heap. That had been intended just for a warning.