Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 34 - Three at Wolfe's Door Page 5

  Wolfe rubbed the side of his nose. “I do want to get her, Miss Iacono. I intend to. But like Mr. Pyle, though from a different motive, I am very careful. I can’t afford to botch it. I fully appreciate your offer to help. You didn’t like Mr. Goodwin’s suggestion that you get them here in a body for a discussion with me, and you may be right. But I don’t like your plan, for you to approach them singly and try to pump them. Our quarry is a malign and crafty harpy, and I will not be a party to your peril. I propose an alternative. Arrange for Mr. Goodwin to see them, together with you. Being a trained investigator, he knows how to beguile, and the peril, if any, will be his. If they are not available at the moment, arrange it for this evening—but not here. Perhaps one of them has a suitable apartment, or if not, a private room at some restaurant would do. At my expense, of course. Will you?”

  It was her turn to make objections, and she had several. But when Wolfe met them, and made it plain that he would accept her as a colleague only if she accepted his alternative, she finally gave in. She would phone to let me know how she was making out with the arrangements. From her manner, when she got up to go, you might have thought she had been shopping for some little item, say a handbag, and had graciously deferred to the opinion of the clerk. After I graciously escorted her out and saw her descend the seven steps from the stoop to the sidewalk, I returned to the office and found Wolfe sitting with his eyes closed and his fists planted on the chair arms.

  “Even money,” I said.

  “On what?” he growled.

  “On her against the field. She knows damn well who had a good reason and exactly what it was. It was getting too hot for comfort and she decided that the best way to duck was to wish it on some dear friend.”

  His eyes opened. “She would, certainly. A woman whose conscience has no sting will stop at nothing. But why come to me? Why didn’t she cook her own stew and serve it to the police?”

  “I don’t know, but for a guess she was afraid the cops would get too curious and find out how she had saved her honor and her virtue and tell her mother and father, and father would spank her. Shall I also guess why you proposed your alternative instead of having her bring them here for you?”

  “She wouldn’t. She said so.”

  “Of course she would, if you had insisted. That’s your guess. Mine is that you’re not desperate enough yet to take on five females in a bunch. When you told me to bring the whole dozen you knew darn well it couldn’t be done, not even by me. Okay, I want instructions.”

  “Later,” he muttered, and closed his eyes.

  V

  It was on the fourth floor of an old walk-up in the West Nineties near Amsterdam Avenue. I don’t know what it had in the way of a kitchen or bedroom—or bedrooms—because the only room I saw was the one we were sitting in. It was medium-sized, and the couch and chairs and rugs had a homey look, the kind of homeyness that furniture gets by being used by a lot of different people for fifty or sixty years. The chair I was on had a wobbly leg, but that’s no problem if you keep it in mind and make no sudden shifts. I was more concerned about the spidery little stand at my elbow on which my glass of milk was perched. I can always drink milk and had preferred it to Bubble-Pagne, registered trademark, a dime a bottle, which they were having. It was ten o’clock Wednesday evening.

  The hostesses were the redhead with milky skin, Peggy Choate, and the one with big brown eyes and dimples, Nora Jaret, who shared the apartment. Carol Annis, with the fine profile and the corn-silk hair, had been there when Helen lacono and I arrived, bringing Lucy Morgan and her throaty voice after detouring our taxi to pick her up at a street corner. They were a very attractive collection, though of course not as decorative as they had been in their ankle-length purple stolas. Girls always look better in uniforms or costumes. Take nurses or elevator girls or Miss Honeydew at a melon festival.

  I was now calling her Helen, not that I felt like it, but in the detective business you have to be sociable, of course preserving your honor and virtue. In the taxi, before picking up Lucy Morgan, she told me she had been thinking it over and she doubted if it would be possible to find out which one of them had a good reason to kill Pyle, or thought she had, because Pyle had been so very careful when he had a girl come to his penthouse. The only way would be to get one of them to open up, and Helen doubted if she could get her to, since she would be practically confessing murder, and she was sure I couldn’t. So the best way would be for Helen and me, after spending an evening with them, to talk it over and decide which one was the most likely, and then she would tell Wolfe she had seen her going back to the kitchen and bringing another plate, and Wolfe would tell the police, and that would do it.

  No, I didn’t feel like calling her Helen. I would just as soon have been too far away from her to call her at all.

  Helen’s declared object in arranging the party—declared to them—was to find out from me what Nero Wolfe and the cops had done and were doing, so they would know where they stood. Helen was sure I would loosen up, she had told them, because she had been to see me and found me very nice and sympathetic. So the hostesses were making it sort of festive and intimate by serving Bubble-Pagne, though I preferred milk. I had a suspicion that at least one of them, Lucy Morgan, would have preferred whisky or gin or rum or vodka, and maybe they all would, but that might have me suspect that they were not just a bunch of wholesome, hard-working artists.

  They didn’t look festive. I wouldn’t say they were haggard, but much of the bloom was off. And they hadn’t bought Helen’s plug for me that I was nice and sympathetic. They were absolutely skeptical, sizing me up with sidewise looks, especially Carol Annis, who sat cross-legged on the couch with her head cocked. It was she who asked me, after a few remarks had been made about how awful it had been and still was, how well I knew the chef and the other man in the kitchen. I told her she could forget Fritz. He was completely above suspicion, and anyway he had been at the range while the plates were taken. As for Zoltan, I said that though I had known him a long while we were not intimate, but that was irrelevant because, granting that he had known which guest each girl would serve, if he poisoned one of the portions and saw that a certain girl got it, why did she or some other girl come back for another plate?

  “There’s no proof that she did,” Carol declared. “Nobody saw her.”

  “Nobody noticed her.” I wasn’t aggressive; I was supposed to be nice and sympathetic. “She wouldn’t have been noticed leaving the dining room because the attention of the girls who were in there was on Felix and Marjorie Quinn, who had spilled a blini, and the men wouldn’t notice her. The only place she would have been noticed was in the corridor through the pantry, and if she met another girl there she could have stopped and been patting her hair or something. Anyhow, one of you must have gone back for a second plate, because when Fern Faber went for hers there wasn’t any.”

  “Why do you say one of us?” Nora demanded. “If you mean one of us here. There were twelve.”

  “I do mean one of you here, but I’m not saying it, I’m just quoting the police. They think it was one of you here because you were the last five.”

  “How do you know what they think?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say. But I do.”

  “I know what I think,” Carol asserted. She had uncrossed her legs and slid forward on the couch to get her toes on the floor. “I think it was Zoltan. I read in the Gazette that he’s a chef at Rusterman’s, and Nero Wolfe is the trustee and so he’s the boss there, and I think Zoltan hated him for some reason and tried to poison him, but he gave the poisoned plate to the wrong girl. Nero Wolfe sat right next to Pyle.”

  There was no point in telling her that she was simply ignoring the fact that one of them had gone back for a second helping, so I just said, “Nobody can stop you thinking. But I doubt very much if the police would buy that.”

  “What would they buy?” Peggy asked.

  My personal feelings about Peggy were mixed. For, she had recognized me and named me. Against, she had accused me of liking myself. “Anything that would fit,” I told her. “As I said, they think it was one of you five that went back for more, and therefore they have to think that one of you gave the poison to Pyle, because what other possible reason could you have had for serving another portion? They wouldn’t buy anything that didn’t fit into that. That’s what rules out everybody else, including Zoltan.” I looked at Carol. “I’m sorry, Miss Annis, but that’s how it is.”

  “They’re a bunch of dopes,” Lucy Morgan stated. “They get an idea and then they haven’t got room for another one.” She was on the floor with her legs stretched out, her back against the couch. “I agree with Carol, there’s no proof that any of us went back for another plate. That Zoltan said he didn’t see anyone come back. Didn’t he?”

  “He did. He still does.”

  “Then he’s a dope too. And he said no one took two plates. Didn’t he?”

  “Right. He still does.”

  “Then how do they know which one he’s wrong about? We were all nervous, you know that. Maybe one of us took two plates instead of one, and when she got to the dining room there she was with an extra, and she got rid of it by giving it to some guest that didn’t have any.”

  “Then why didn’t she say so?” I asked.

  “Because she was scared. The way Nero Wolfe came at us was enough to scare anybody. And now she won’t say so because she has signed a statement and she’s even more scared.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but if you analyze that you’ll see that it won’t do. It’s very tricky. You can do it the way I did this afternoon. Take twenty-four little pieces of paper, on twelve of them write the names of the guests, and arrange them as they sat at the table. On the other twelve pieces w
rite the names of the twelve girls. Then try to manipulate the twelve girl pieces so that one of them either took in two plates at once, and did not give either of them to Pyle, or went back for a second plate, and did not give either the first one or the second one to Pyle. It can’t be done. For if either of those things happened there wouldn’t have been one mix-up, there would have been two. Since there was only one mix-up, Pyle couldn’t possibly have been served by a girl who neither brought in two plates at once nor went back for a second one. So the idea that a girl innocently brought in two plates is out.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Nora said flatly.

  “It’s not a question of believing.” I was still sympathetic. “You might as well say you don’t believe two plus two is four. I’ll show you. May I have some paper? Any old kind.”

  She went to a table and brought some, and I took my pen and wrote the twenty-four names, spacing them, and tore the paper into twenty-four pieces. Then I knelt on a rug and arranged the twelve guest pieces in a rectangle as they had sat at the table—not that that mattered, since they could have been in a straight line or a circle, but it was plainer that way. The girls gathered around. Nora knelt facing me, Lucy rolled over closer and propped on her elbows, Carol came and squatted beside me, Peggy plopped down at the other side, and Helen stood back of Nora.

  “Okay,” I said, “show me.” I took “Quinn” and put it back of “Leacraft.” “There’s no argument about that, Marjorie Quinn brought the first plate and gave it to Leacraft. Remember there was just one mix-up, started by Peggy when she saw Pyle had been served and gave hers to Nero Wolfe. Try having any girl bring in a second plate—or bring in two at once if you still think that might have happened—without either serving Pyle or starting a second mix-up.”

  My memory has had a long stiff training under the strains and pressures Wolfe has put on it, but I wouldn’t undertake to report all the combinations they tried, huddled around me on the floor, even if I thought you cared. They stuck to it for half an hour or more. The most persistent was Peggy Choate, the redhead. After the others had given up she stayed with it, frowning and biting her lip, propped first on one hand and then the other. Finally she said, “Nuts,” stretched an arm to make a jumble of all the pieces of paper, guests and girls, got up, and returned to her chair. I did likewise.

  “It’s just a trick,” said Carol Annis, perched on the couch again.

  “I still don’t believe it,” Nora Jaret declared. “I do not believe that one of us deliberately poisoned a man—one of us sitting here.” Her big brown eyes were at me. “Good lord, look at us! Point at her! Point her out! I dare you to!”

  That, of course, was what I was there for—not exactly to point her out, but at least to get a hint. I had had a vague idea that one might come from watching them maneuver the pieces of paper, but it hadn’t. Nor from anything any of them had said. I had been expecting Helen Iacono to introduce the subject of Vincent Pyle’s modus operandi with girls, but apparently she had decided it was up to me. She hadn’t spoken more than twenty words since we arrived.

  “If I could point her out,” I said, “I wouldn’t be bothering the rest of you. Neither would the cops if they could point her out. Sooner or later, of course, they will, but it begins to look as if they’ll have to get at it from the other end. Motive. They’ll have to find out which one of you had a motive, and they will—sooner or later—and on that maybe I can help. I don’t mean help them, I mean help you—not the one who killed him, the rest of you. That thought occurred to me after I learned that Helen Iacono had admitted that she had gone out with Pyle a few times last winter. What if she had said she hadn’t? When the police found out she had lied, and they would have, she would have been in for it. It wouldn’t have proved she had killed him, but the going would have been mighty rough. I understand that the rest of you have all denied that you ever had anything to do with Pyle. Is that right? Miss Annis?”

  “Certainly.” Her chin was up. “Of course I had met him. Everybody in show business has. Once when he came backstage at the Coronet, and once at a party somewhere, and one other time but I don’t remember where.”

  “Miss Morgan?”

  She was smiling at me, a crooked smile. “Do you call this helping us?” she demanded.

  “It might lead to that after I know how you stand. After all, the cops have your statement.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve been around longer than Carol, so I had seen him to speak to more than she had. Once I danced with him at the Flamingo, two years ago. That was the closest I had ever been to him.”

  “Miss Choate?”

  “I never had the honor. I only came to New York last fall. From Montana. He had been pointed out to me from a distance, but he never chased me.”

  “Miss Jaret?”

  “He was Broadway,” she said. “I’m TV.”

  “Don’t the twain ever meet?”

  “Oh, sure. All the time at Sardi’s. That’s the only place I ever saw the great Pyle, and I wasn’t with him.”

  I started to cross my legs, but the wobbly chair leg reacted, and I thought better of it. “So there you are,” I said, “you’re all committed. If one of you poisoned him, and though I hate to say it I don’t see any way out of that, that one is lying. But if any of the others are lying, if you saw more of him than you admit, you had better get from under quick. If you don’t want to tell the cops tell me, tell me now, and I’ll pass it on and say I wormed it out of you. Believe me, you’ll regret it if you don’t.”

  “Archie Goodwin, a girl’s best friend,” Lucy said. “My bosom pal.”

  No one else said anything.

  “Actually,” I asserted, “I am your friend, all of you but one. I have a friendly feeling for all pretty girls, especially those who work, and I admire and respect you for being willing to make an honest fifty bucks by coming there yesterday to carry plates of grub to a bunch of fmickers. I am your friend, Lucy, if you’re not the murderer, and if you are no one is.”

  I leaned forward, forgetting the wobbly chair leg, but it didn’t object. It was about time to put a crimp in Helen’s personal project. “Another thing. It’s quite possible that one of you did see her returning to the kitchen for another plate, and you haven’t said so because you don’t want to squeal on her. If so, spill it now. The longer this hangs on, the hotter it will get. When it gets so the pressure is too much for you and you decide you have got to tell it, it will be too late. Tomorrow may be too late. If you go to the cops with it tomorrow they probably won’t believe you; they’ll figure that you did it yourself and you’re trying to squirm out. If you don’t want to tell me here and now, in front of her, come with me down to Nero Wolfe’s office and we’ll talk it over.”

  They were exchanging glances, and they were not friendly glances. When I had arrived probably not one of them, excluding the murderer, had believed that a poisoner was present, but now they all did, or at least they thought she might be; and when that feeling takes hold it’s good-bye to friendliness. It would have been convenient if I could have detected fear in one of the glances, but fear and suspicion and uneasiness are too much alike on faces to tell them apart.

  “You are a help,” Carol Annis said bitterly. “Now you’ve got us hating each other. Now everybody suspects everybody.”

  I had quit being nice and sympathetic. “It’s about time,” I told her. I glanced at my wrist. “It’s not midnight yet. If I’ve made you all realize that this is no Broadway production, or TV either, and the longer the pay-off is postponed the tougher it will be for everybody, I have helped.” I stood up. “Let’s go. I don’t say Mr. Wolfe can do it by just snapping his fingers, but he might surprise you. He has often surprised me.”

  “All right,” Nora said. She arose. “Come on. This is getting too damn painful. Come on.”