Twenty minutes later, I declared myself a winner. “Telephone for you, Archie,” my mother said, handing me the receiver and stretching the cord as far as it would reach.
“Hello, Archie,” Katie Padgett said in a decidedly cool tone. “I understand there is a newsworthy visitor in your mother’s house.”
“It depends on how you define newsworthy,” I responded.
“Well, I define the most-famous private detective in America as being newsworthy,” she said in a snappish tone.
“Actually, I believe Nero Wolfe would prefer to be referred to as the most-famous private detective in the world.”
“Have it your way, Archie. Why does he happen to be here?”
“I’m curious by nature. How did you learn that he’s in town?”
“That’s unimportant. Answer me.”
“I think you can guess the answer to your own question.”
“This is big news, Archie. I need to interview him, and as soon as possible.”
“Sorry, but I can speak for Mr. Wolfe when I say he is not available to the press.”
“Then I will write that he is here to investigate Logan Mulgrew’s death and refuses to comment.”
“Really? I thought your bosses had declared a moratorium on articles about the Mulgrew death. How are you going to get around that?” The silence on the other end continued for several seconds.
“I’ll . . . figure something out,” she finally replied, which told me that she felt stymied, at least for the moment. “Good-bye, Archie,” she said before I heard the click. I had been dismissed, but I knew I had not heard the last of the intrepid young female reporter.
I barely had time to finish my coffee when the phone squawked again, and my mother answered. She was getting used to the traffic over the wire.
“Yes, yes, he is right here,” she said, handing me the receiver and rolling her eyes. “It’s Chief Blankenship.”
“Goodwin speaking,” I said.
“Tom Blankenship.” I waited for him to say more, but no words were forthcoming. Finally, I broke the silence. “Yes, sir?”
“You know of course why I’m calling.”
“I am not sure that I do.”
“Don’t try to get cute with me, Mr. Goodwin. Let’s get straight to the point, shall we?”
“By all means.”
“I have heard that Nero Wolfe is in town, and that he is staying at your mother’s house. Is that true?”
“It is.”
“Just why is he here?”
“I will answer a question with a question, Chief. Is he being accused of breaking a law?”
“Of course not, but it seems most unusual that a famous—make that legendary—private investigator from New York has chosen to spend time in what to him must seem like a very small community. I would like to talk to Mr. Wolfe.”
“I certainly will tell him of your desire, but knowing him, I can’t guarantee that he will wish to speak to you, unless there is an extremely good reason.”
“It is my belief that he is here to investigate the gunshot death of Logan Mulgrew.”
“A death you have steadfastly claimed to be a suicide.”
“You are correct.”
“Such being the case, I fail to understand what you have to discuss with Nero Wolfe. It seems you are comfortable with your decision regarding the death.”
“I am concerned that Mr. Wolfe might be interfering with a police investigation.”
“I was unaware that any sort of police investigation into Mulgrew’s death is in progress.”
Blankenship’s sigh was loud enough that it came over the wire. “Mr. Goodwin, I warn you—and by extension, Nero Wolfe—that despite the fame that both of you possess, I will act decisively if I feel the authority of my police department is being superseded.”
“That is quite a speech, Chief. I will convey your feelings to Mr. Wolfe. Is there anything else?”
“Nothing else, sir. Good-bye.”
I went up to Wolfe’s room and found him reading his book, having gone through both newspapers, which lay neatly folded on a bedside table. “I just got off the telephone with both Miss Padgett of the Trumpet and Chief Blankenship of the local constabulary. They each seem interested in talking to you.”
“Pfui. What would be gained by such interactions at this point?”
“That is essentially what I told them,” I said, repeating each of my conversations.
“Satisfactory. I will doubtless meet them eventually.”
Chapter 29
After lunch, Wolfe repaired to the kitchen, with sleeves rolled up and donning the oversized apron he, or perhaps Fritz, had the foresight to pack. There, with my mother as his second-in-command, he undertook the preparations for our dinner.
Saul and I watched with amusement from the doorway, but after a couple of minutes, I suggested we take a drive. “We will only be in the way here,” I said.
“Not that it will help much, if at all,” I told him as we pulled out of the driveway in the convertible, “but I’ll show you a few of the places of interest in our investigation, if indeed Wolfe is ever going to start doing some investigating.”
“The funny thing is, he never uttered a single word about the case on our trip down here,” Saul said. “I am still surprised that he made the trek at all, especially as there’s no client, ergo, no fee.”
“Yeah, that’s a puzzler, all right. What did he say when he decided to leave the brownstone?”
“I was typing up some of his correspondence as he came down from the plant rooms in the morning, settled in behind his desk, and said, ‘Archie’s mother called, and thinks I need to go down to Ohio and help with an investigation of his.’
“‘Is that right?’ I said to him. ‘You of course turned her down. You surely are not about to travel.’ He didn’t respond until about an hour later. When he said, ‘How would you feel about driving me to Ohio?’
“I damned near fell off my chair . . . er, your chair, and after I recovered from the shock, I told him that I could be ready any time he was, and a few hours later, we were off. I knew damned well that he would be one nervous passenger. Based on my occasional glances in the rearview mirror, I think that he kept his eyes closed for at least half the trip, which was too bad. There’s some picturesque country along the way, especially in the Pennsylvania mountains.”
“I don’t think Wolfe is high on picturesque country, unless it’s in a book of photographs. Back to the business at hand: that big old house coming up on the right is where Logan Mulgrew lived,” I told Saul.
“Dreary comes to mind,” he said. “It looks like an ideal place to set a movie murder.”
“Doesn’t it, though? And it’s possible that two murders took place inside—Mulgrew’s wife and the man himself.” I proceeded to tell Saul what had been said about the possibility of Sylvia Mulgrew having been poisoned by her husband—or her caregiver.
“You grew up in this burg, Archie. Do you remember anything like this ever happening during the years of your callow youth?”
“Callow, eh? I’ll have to look that one up; knowing you, I suppose it’s some sort of an insult. But the answer to your question is no, I can’t remember a single murder in the county in my growing-up years. The closest thing was when a farmer whose name I’ve long forgotten came home and found his wife in bed with another man and chased him out of the house, firing at him with a shotgun. The story I heard from classmates was that the unwelcome guest ended up picking shotgun pellets out of his rear for weeks.”
“Serves him right,” Saul said. “I wonder how the farmer treated his wife.”
“There was plenty of speculation about that, too, but apparently he didn’t beat her. She showed up in town just a few days later with no apparent marks on her.”
“Did she have to wear a red ‘
A’ on her clothes?”
“Huh?”
“You should read The Scarlet Letter sometime, Archie, a novel by a man named Hawthorne.”
“The only Hawthorne I ever heard of was some guy whom our grade school was named after.”
“Same man. Heck of a writer.”
“I will have to take your word for it,” I said as I turned the car around and we headed back toward town. “Have a look at that farm,” I said to Saul. “Harold Mapes lives there.”
“I don’t know anything about farms, but it looks like a pretty nice layout.”
“It is, but Mapes and his wife are just the tenants, not the owners. Mulgrew foreclosed on him when he couldn’t keep up the loan payments, and he lost his own spread, which was down the road from this one.”
“The banker as Scrooge,” Saul observed.
“One more poor soul who had reason to dislike Mulgrew,” I said as we continued back into town.
“See that second-story window? That’s the apartment where the reporter Katie Padgett lives, and after Mulgrew’s death, somebody fired a shot, breaking the window. Fortunately for Katie, she wasn’t in that room at the time.”
“Lucky for her, all right, especially given that she was writing about Mulgrew’s death. Didn’t that make the police chief suspicious?”
“He brushed it off as somebody getting drunk on a Saturday night and going on a toot. Even though nothing like that had happened around town in recent memory.”
“He didn’t think it was more than a coincidence that the shot just happened to be fired at a reporter’s home?”
“You’re getting a picture of a small-town police department. It makes Inspector Cramer back home look good, doesn’t it?”
“I happen to think Cramer’s a damned good cop, Archie,” Saul said. “He just lets Nero Wolfe get under his skin too often.”
“In fairness, I think this Blankenship is an okay cop, as well. But he hasn’t had any experience with murder, which is what I think we’re dealing with.
“On the left is Renson’s Garage, where Charles Purcell works,” I said, continuing in my role as tour director. “He’s the one who started a bank to compete with Mulgrew.”
“Who then torpedoed him by spreading rumors about the financial instability of the new bank.”
“Bingo! You were listening earlier when I told you about the way Mulgrew ruined Purcell, wiped him out.”
“Of course I was listening,” Saul snapped. “I always listen. Don’t think you’re the only guy who’s got good retention skills. I have a mind like a steel trap. It seems that if Mulgrew had ever been sentenced to death by a firing squad, you could probably have gotten several local volunteers to pull the collective triggers.”
“No doubt, and to my thinking, someone did nominate themselves as his executioner. One more stop in town. Coming up on the right is Charlie’s Tap, where yours truly and the very dour Eldon Kiefer got into a brief shoving-match-cum-fistfight in which I emerged as the victor.”
“I’m proud of you, lad.”
“Don’t be. Kiefer looks like he’d be tough, but he isn’t very good when it comes to barroom brawling. He gives away his moves, although he did land one decent punch that my shoulder can still feel.”
“The evils of physical violence. Have I now seen the high spots?”
“In and near town, yes. The other principals in this drama are scattered: Donna Newman out west in Selkirk, Lester Newman down in Waverly, and Carrie Yeager in Charleston, West Virginia.”
“It would be fun trying to round them all up if your boss decided to have one of his show-and-tell sessions,” Saul said.
“Don’t think that hasn’t occurred to me. Well, let’s head back to the homestead. Wolfe’s planked porterhouse will soon be awaiting us.”
“I’ve never had it in all the times I’ve dined at your place.”
“You are in for a treat then,” I told Saul. “Even though my boss relies on Fritz most of the time, I have to say that he knows his way around a kitchen himself.”
Chapter 30
Nero Wolfe was in fine form that night. He graciously accepted our praises for his planked steak, then he launched into a treatise on the history of beef in America. “Spanish explorers introduced Longhorn cattle to this continent in 1534, and British colonists brought Devon cattle here in the 1630s,” he said. “Other breeds followed—Herefords, Aberdeen Angus, Shorthorns, Ayrshire, Jersey, and Guernsey, among others.”
“And presto, the steak house was one of the results!” Saul proclaimed, raising a wineglass in salute.
“That institution came into being in New York City in the mid-nineteenth century,” Wolfe replied. “Its two direct ancestors were the beefsteak banquet and the chophouse. New York was the center of the beefsteak world because it was the only place in the country where diners in great numbers had the wherewithal to afford those expensive cuts.”
“We really did not have that wherewithal very often,” my mother put in. “Archie can probably remember some of the very few occasions when we had steak for dinner.”
“And they really were few,” I agreed. “One time, my father bought steaks to celebrate a sale of hogs in which he got a much better price than he had expected.”
“The steak, whether T-bone, filet, rib eye, or any other fine cut, has indeed been a frequent symbol of celebration,” Wolfe said. “Sports victories, postelection parties, religious rites, birthdays, all have chosen steak with which to underscore the gravity of the event.”
“What are we celebrating tonight?” I posed.
“The fact that I have three New Yorkers as welcome guests in my home,” my mother said. “I feel honored.”
“You have honored us, madam,” Wolfe said, “by providing shelter and sustenance.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wolfe. And you have prepared a fine meal. Dessert will be my contribution tonight.” Mom got up, went out to the kitchen, and returned soon with a fat wedge of blueberry pie à la mode for each of us.
“This is very much as Fritz prepares it,” Wolfe said approvingly after taking a bite. “Have you been consorting with Mr. Brenner?”
“Do you mean in a culinary sense?” my mother asked.
“Of course.”
“I suppose I should own up. On my visits to the brownstone, I have spent time in the kitchen with Fritz. He is a fine teacher.”
That actually got the hint of a chuckle out of Wolfe, a rarity. “I assume such activity must go on when I am up with the orchids,” he said. “A man is not always aware of what transpires in his own domicile.”
After finishing dessert, the four of us retired to the living room, Wolfe easing into the wing chair that could best accommodate him and that had been my father’s favorite. We had been settled for less than five minutes when the doorbell rang. My mother peered through the blinds in the front window and said, “It is our police chief. Should I let him in?”
“He has wanted to meet me. It might as well be now, if you have no objection, Mrs. Goodwin,” Wolfe said.
“None whatever,” she replied, going to the door and pulling it open. “Good evening, Chief Blankenship.”
“Good evening, Mrs. Goodwin. I am sorry to be calling at a late hour, but I was hoping I might be able to meet Nero Wolfe.”
“Come right in. As you can see, here he is.”
If Blankenship was surprised at Wolfe’s size, he did not show it as Mom gestured him to a chair. “This is Mr. Wolfe, and this is his associate, Mr. Panzer. May I get you some coffee?”
Blankenship nodded and considered Wolfe. “I know you by reputation, of course, and I have been impressed by your career.”
Wolfe dipped his chin in response.
Blankenship cleared his throat and continued after accepting a cup of coffee from my mother. “With all your success in New York, I have to wonder what has comp
elled you to come to our small city.”
“I believe you know the answer, sir.”
“You are among those few who feel Logan Mulgrew was murdered. And as I am sure you are aware, I do not agree.”
“Mr. Goodwin has made me cognizant of your position. He has also filled me in on his conversations with individuals who had reason to bear animus toward Logan Mulgrew.”
“I must tell you that Mr. Goodwin has been something of a disruptive force since his arrival here,” Blankenship said.
“Granted, he can be impulsive and headstrong, qualities that are either assets or liabilities, depending upon the situation,” Wolfe said. “On balance, however, I prefer that he maintain his ready reflexes and quick reactions. I have found his positives to far outweigh his negatives.”
“Nonetheless, he seems to have upset some people,” the chief persisted.
“Has he broken any laws?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“Then let us move beyond discussing Mr. Goodwin,” Wolfe said.
“That’s fine with me. I am assuming you have a client who is behind your investigation into Logan Mulgrew’s death. Do you care to name that individual?”
“There is no individual to name.”
“Meaning there is no client?”
“You are correct, sir.”
“I find that difficult to believe. If I accurately recall what I have read, you have a reputation for demanding—and getting—large fees for your work.”
“I have been known to charge what I believe my services to be worth.”
“Then why have you made the trip here on what appears to be a pro bono project?”
“If you are determined to find a reason, Mr. Blankenship, chalk it up to my unbridled curiosity. As Samuel Johnson wrote, ‘curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.’ I am afraid that must suffice as an answer to your question. I have no other.”
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