Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 34 - Three at Wolfe's Door Page 4

  Ruffling Cramer beyond the bounds of tolerance did Wolfe good. He leaned back in his chair. “Everyone conceals something,” he said placidly. “Or at least omits something, if only because to include everything is impossible. During those wearisome hours, nearly six of them, I answered all questions, and so did Mr. Goodwin. Indeed, I thought we were helpful. I thought we had cleared away some rubble.”

  “Yeah.” Cramer wasn’t grateful. His big pink face was always a little pinker than normal, not with pleasure, when he was tackling Wolfe. “You had witnessed the commission of a murder, and you didn’t notify—”

  “It wasn’t a murder until he died.”

  “All right, a felony. You not only failed to report it, you—”

  “That a felony had been committed was my conclusion. Others present disagreed with me. Only a few minutes before Mr. Stebbins entered the room Mr. Leacraft, a member of the bar and therefore himself an officer of the law, challenged my conclusion.”

  “You should have reported it. You’re a licensed detective. Also you started an investigation, questioning the suspects—”

  “Only to test my conclusion. I would have been a ninny to report it before learning—”

  “Damn it,” Cramer barked, “will you let me finish a sentence? Just one?”

  Wolfe’s shoulders went up an eighth of an inch and down again. “Certainly, if it has import. I am not baiting you, Mr. Cramer. But I have already replied to these imputations, to you and Mr. Stebbins and an assistant district attorney. I did not wrongly delay reporting a crime, and I did not usurp the function of the police. Very well, finish a sentence.”

  “You knew Pyle was dying. You said so.”

  “Also my own conclusion. The doctors were still trying to save him.”

  Cramer took a breath. He looked at me, saw nothing inspiring, and returned to Wolfe. “I’ll tell you why I’m here. Those three men—the cook, the man that helped him, and the man in the dining room—Fritz Brenner, Felix Courbet, and Zoltan Mahany—were all supplied by you. All close to you. I want to know about them, or at least two of them. I might as well leave Fritz out of it. In the first place, it’s hard to believe that Zoltan doesn’t know who took the first two or three plates or whether one of them came back for a second one, and it’s also hard to believe that Felix doesn’t know who served Pyle.”

  “It is indeed,” Wolfe agreed. “They are highly trained men. But they have been questioned.”

  “They sure have. It’s also hard to believe that Goodwin didn’t see who served Pyle. He sees everything.”

  “Mr. Goodwin is present. Discuss it with him.”

  “I have. Now I want to ask your opinion of a theory. I know yours, and I don’t reject it, but there are alternatives. First a fact. In a metal trash container in the kitchen—not a garbage pail—we found a roll of paper, ordinary white paper that had been rolled into a tube, held with tape, smaller at one end. The laboratory has found particles of arsenic inside. The only two fingerprints on it that are any good are Zoltan’s. He says he saw it on the kitchen floor under a table some time after the meal had started, he can’t say exactly when, and he picked it up and dropped it in the container, and his prints are on it because he pinched it to see if there was anything in it.”

  Wolfe nodded. “As I surmised. A paper spill.”

  “Yeah. I don’t say it kills your theory. She could have shaken it into the cream without leaving prints, and she certainly wouldn’t have dropped it on the floor if there was any chance it had her prints. But it has got Zoltan’s. What’s wrong with the theory that Zoltan poisoned one of the portions and saw that it was taken by a certain one? I’ll answer that myself. There are two things wrong with it. First, Zoltan claims he didn’t know which guest any of the girls were assigned to. But Felix knew, and they could have been in collusion. Second, the girls all deny that Zoltan indicated which plate they were to take, but you know how that is. He could have done it without her knowing it. What else is wrong with it?”

  “It’s not only untenable, it’s egregious,” Wolfe declared. “Why, in that case, did one of them come back for another plate?”

  “She was confused. Nervous. Dumb.”

  “Bosh. Why doesn’t she admit it?”

  “Scared.”

  “I don’t believe it. I questioned them before you did.” Wolfe waved it away. “Tommyrot, and you know it. My theory is not a theory; it is a reasoned conviction. I hope it is being acted on. I suggested to Mr. Stebbins that he examine their garments to see if some kind of pocket had been made in one of them. She had to have it readily available.”

  “He did. They all had pockets. The laboratory has found no trace of arsenic.” Cramer uncrossed his legs. “We’re following up your theory all right; we might even have hit on it ourselves in a week or two. But I wanted to ask you about those men. You know them.”

  “I do, yes. But I do not answer for them. They may have a dozen murders on their souls, but they had nothing to do with the death of Mr. Pyle. If you are following up my theory—my conviction, rather—I suppose you have learned the order in which the women took the plates.”

  Cramer shook his head. “We have not, and I doubt if we will. All we have is a bunch of contradictions. You had them good and scared before we got to them. We do have the last five, starting with Peggy Choate, who found that Pyle had been served and gave it to you, and then—but you know them. You got that yourself.”

  “No. I got those five, but not that they were the last. There might have been others in between.”

  “There weren’t. It’s pretty well settled that those five were the last. After Peggy Choate the last four plates were taken by Helen Iacono, Nora Jaret, Carol Annis, and Lucy Morgan. Then that Fern Faber, who had been in the can, but there was no plate for her. It’s the order in which they took them before that, the first seven, that we can’t pry out of them—except the first one, that Marjorie Quinn. You couldn’t either.”

  Wolfe turned a palm up. “I was interrupted.”

  “You were not. You left them there in a huddle, scared stiff, and went to the dining room to start in on the men. Your own private murder investigation, and to hell with the law. I was surprised to see Goodwin here when I rang the bell just now. I supposed you’d have him out running errands like calling at the agency they got the girls from. Or getting a line on Pyle to find a connection between him and one of them. Unless you’re no longer interested?”

  “I’m interested willy-nilly,” Wolfe declared. “As I told the assistant district attorney, it is on my score that a man was poisoned in food prepared by Fritz Brenner. But I do not send Mr. Goodwin on fruitless errands. He is one and you have dozens, and if anything is to be learned at the agency or by inquiry into Mr. Pyle’s associations your army will dig it up. They’re already at it, of course, but if they had started a trail you wouldn’t be here. If I send Mr. Goodwin—”

  The doorbell rang and I got up and went to the hall. At the rear the door to the kitchen swung open part way and Fritz poked his head through, saw me, and withdrew. Turning to the front for a look through the panel, I saw that I had exaggerated when I told Wolfe that all twelve of them would be otherwise engaged. At least one wasn’t. There on the stoop was Helen Iacono.

  IV

  It had sounded to me as if Cramer had about said his say and would soon be moving along, and if he bumped into Helen Iacono in the hall she might be too embarrassed to give me her phone number, if that was what she had come for, so as I opened the door I pressed a finger to my lips and sshhed at her, and then crooked the finger to motion her in. Her deep dark eyes looked a little startled, but she stepped across the sill, and I shut the door, turned, opened the first door on the left, to the front room, motioned to her to enter, followed, and closed the door.

  “What’s the matter?” she whispered.

  “Nothing now,” I told her. “This is soundproofed. There’s a police inspector in the office with Mr. Wolfe and I thought you might have had enough of cops for a while. Of course if you want to meet him—”

  “I don’t. I want to see Nero Wolfe.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell him as soon as the cop goes. Have a seat. It shouldn’t be long.”

  There is a connecting door between the front room and the office, but I went around through the hall, and here came Cramer. He was marching by without even the courtesy of a grunt, but I stepped to the front to let him out, and then went to the office and told Wolfe, “I’ve got one of them in the front room. Helen Iacono, the tawny-skinned Hebe who had you but gave her caviar to Kreis. Shall I keep her while I get the rest of them?”

  He made a face. “What does she want?”

  “To see you.”

  He took a breath. “Confound it. Bring her in.”

  I went and opened the connecting door, told her to come, and escorted her across to the red leather chair. She was more ornamental in it than Cramer, but not nearly as impressive as she had been at first sight. She was puffy around the eyes and her skin had lost some glow. She told Wolfe she hadn’t had any sleep. She said she had just left the District Attorney’s office, and if she went home her mother would be at her again, and her brothers and sisters would come home from school and make noise, and anyway she had decided she had to see Wolfe. Her mother was old-fashioned and didn’t want her to be an actress. It was beginning to sound as if what she was after was a place to take a nap, but then Wolfe got a word in.

  He said drily, “I don’t suppose, Miss Iacono, you came to consult me about your career.”

  “Oh, no. I came because you’re a detective and you’re very clever and I’m afraid. I’m afraid they’ll find out something I did, and if they do I won’t have any career. My parents won’t let me even if I’m still alive. I nearly gave it away
already when they were asking me questions. So I decided to tell you about it and then if you’ll help me I’ll help you. If you promise to keep my secret.”

  “I can’t promise to keep a secret if it is a guilty one—if it is a confession of a crime or knowledge of one.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Then you have my promise, and Mr. Goodwin’s. We have kept many secrets.”

  “All right. I stabbed Vincent Pyle with a knife and got blood on me.”

  I stared. For half a second I thought she meant that he hadn’t died of poison at all, that she had sneaked upstairs and stuck a knife in him, which seemed unlikely since the doctors would probably have found the hole.

  Apparently she wasn’t going on, and Wolfe spoke. “Ordinarily, Miss Iacono, stabbing a man is considered a crime. When and where did this happen?”

  “It wasn’t a crime because it was in self-defense.” Her rich contralto was as composed as if she had been telling us the multiplication table. Evidently she saved the inflections for her career. She was continuing. “It happened in January, about three months ago. Of course I knew about him, everybody in show business does. I don’t know if it’s true that he backs shows just so he can get girls, but it might as well be. There’s a lot of talk about the girls he gets, but nobody really knows because he was always very careful about it. Some of the girls have talked but he never did. I don’t mean just taking them out, I mean the last ditch. We say that on Broadway. You know what I mean?”

  “I can surmise.”

  “Sometimes we say the last stitch, but it means the same thing. Early last winter he began on me. Of course I knew about his reputation, but he was backing Jack in the Pulpit and they were about to start casting, and I didn’t know it was going to be a flop, and if a girl expects to have a career she has to be sociable. I went out with him a few times, dinner and dancing and so forth, and then he asked me to his apartment, and I went. He cooked the dinner himself—I said he was very careful. Didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, he was. It’s a penthouse on Madison Avenue, but no one else was there. I let him kiss me. I figure it like this, an actress gets kissed all the time on the stage and the screen and TV, and what’s the difference? I went to his apartment three times and there was no real trouble, but the fourth time, that was in January, he turned into a beast right before my eyes, and I had to do something, and I grabbed a knife from the table and stabbed him with it. I got blood on my dress, and when I got home I tried to get it out but it left a stain. It cost forty-six dollars.”

  “But Mr. Pyle recovered.”

  “Oh, yes. I saw him a few times after that, I mean just by accident, but he barely spoke and so did I. I don’t think he ever told anyone about it, but what if he did? What if the police find out about it?”

  Wolfe grunted. “That would be regrettable, certainly. You would be pestered even more than you are now. But if you have been candid with me you are not in mortal jeopardy. The police are not simpletons. You wouldn’t be arrested for murdering Mr. Pyle last night, let alone convicted, merely because you stabbed him in self-defense last January.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t,” she agreed. “That’s not it. It’s my mother and father. They’d find out about it because they would ask them questions, and if I’m going to have a career I would have to leave home and my family, and I don’t want to. Don’t you see?” She came forward in the chair. “But if they find out right away who did it, who poisoned him, that would end it and I’d be all right. Only I’m afraid they won’t find out right away, but I think you could if I helped you, and you said last night that you’re committed. I can’t offer to help the police because they’d wonder why.”

  “I see.” Wolfe’s eyes were narrowed at her. “How do you propose to help me?”

  “Well, I figure it like this.” She was on the edge of the chair. “The way you explained it last night, one of the girls poisoned him. She was one of the first ones to take a plate in, and then she came back and got another one. I don’t quite understand why she did that, but you do, so all right. But if she came back for another plate that took a little time, and she must have been one of the last ones, and the police have got it worked out who were the last five. I know that because of the questions they asked this last time. So it was Peggy Choate or Nora Jaret or Carol Annis or Lucy Morgan.”

  “Or you.”

  “No, it wasn’t me.” Just matter-of-fact. “So it was one of them. And she didn’t poison him just for nothing, did she? You’d have to have a very good reason to poison a man, I know I would. So all we have to do is find out which one had a good reason, and that’s where I can help. I don’t know Lucy Morgan, but I know Carol a little, and I know Nora and Peggy even better. And now we’re in this together, and I can pretend I want to talk about it. I can talk about him because I had to tell the police I went out with him a few times, because I was seen with him and they’d find out, so I thought I’d better tell them. Dozens of girls went out with him, but he was so careful that nobody knows which ones went to the last ditch except the ones that talked. And I can find out which one of those four girls had a reason, and tell you, and that will end it.”

  I was congratulating myself that I hadn’t got her phone number; and if I had got it, I would have crossed it off without a pang. I don’t say that a girl must have true nobility of character before I’ll buy her a lunch, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Thinking that Wolfe might be disgusted enough to put into words the way I felt, I horned in. “I have a suggestion, Miss lacono. You could bring them here, all four of them, and let Mr. Wolfe talk it over with them. As you say, he’s very clever.”

  She looked doubtful. “I don’t believe that’s a good idea. I think they’d be more apt to say things to me, just one at a time. Don’t you think so, Mr. Wolfe?”

  “You know them better than I do,” he muttered. He was controlling himself.

  “And then,” she said, “when we find out which one had a reason, and we tell the police, I can say that I saw her going back to the kitchen for another plate. Of course just where I saw her, where she was and where I was, that will depend on who she is. I saw you, Mr. Wolfe, when I said you could if I helped you, I saw the look on your face. You didn’t think a twenty-year-old girl could help, did you?”

  He had my sympathy. Of course what he would have liked to say was that it might well be that a twenty-year-old hellcat could help, but that wouldn’t have been tactful.

  “I may have been a little skeptical,” he conceded. “And it’s possible that you’re over-simplifying the problem. We have to consider all the factors. Take one: her plan must have been not only premeditated but also thoroughly rigged, since she had the poison ready. So she must have known that Mr. Pyle would be one of the guests. Did she?”

  “Oh, yes. We all did. Mr. Buchman at the agency showed us a list of them and told us who they were, only of course he didn’t have to tell us who Vincent Pyle was. That was about a month ago, so she had plenty of time to get the poison. Is that arsenic very hard to get?”

  “Not at all. It is in common use for many purposes. That is of course one of the police lines of inquiry, but she knew it would be and she is no bungler. Another point: when Mr. Pyle saw her there, serving food, wouldn’t he have been on his guard?”

  “But he didn’t see her. They didn’t see any of us before. She came up behind him and gave him that plate. Of course he saw her afterward, but he had already eaten it.”

  Wolfe persisted. “But then? He was in agony, but he was conscious and could speak. Why didn’t he denounce her?”

  She gestured impatiently. “I guess you’re not as clever as you’re supposed to be. He didn’t know she had done it. When he saw her she was serving another man, and—”

  “What other man?”

  “I don’t know. How do I know? Only it wasn’t you, because I served you. And anyway, maybe he didn’t know she wanted to kill him. Of course she had a good reason, I know that, but maybe he didn’t know she felt like that. A man doesn’t know how a girl feels—anyhow, some girls. Look at me. He didn’t know I would never dream of going to the last ditch. He thought I would give up my honor and my virtue just to get a part in that play he was backing, and anyhow it was a flop.” She gestured again. “I thought you wanted to get her. All you do is make objections.”