Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe - Too Many Women

by Too Many Women (lit)

  “That’s not the way to put it,” I said with emphasis, “but it was you who put it that way. I would say it more like this, that the talk about that man’s death is certainly one of the personnel problems around here, and Mr. Naylor himself suggested that I might use it as one of my starting points. Do you mind my asking a few questions about him? About Moore?” “I resent any insinuation that the operation of this section has resulted in any injustice or has been the cause of any legitimate desire to retaliate.” His jaw was back under control.

  “Okay. Who said anything about legitimate? Desires to retaliate come in all flavors. But about this Moore, how did he rate with you? Was he a good worker?” “No.” “No?” I was matter-of-fact. “What was wrong with him?” The old man’s jaw trembled again, but it didn’t come open. When he had it in hand he spoke. “I have been in charge of this section ever since it started, over twenty years ago. Last April I had five men under me, and I regarded that as adequate. But a new man was hired and I was told to put him to work. He was incompetent, and I so reported, but my report was ignored. We had to put up with him. On several occasions his mistakes would have discredited the section if we had not been alert. It made it harder for all of us.” I thought to myself, my God, here we go again. I was trying to get started narrowing it down, and here were six more added to the list, Dickerson himself and five loyal checkers, who might have been irritated into killing Moore for the honor of the section. Now everybody was in except Kerr Naylor himself.

  “But,” I objected, “what about the hiring regulations? I understand there is no overall personnel control and each department head rolls his own in theory, but in practice the section heads have the say. Who hired Moore and saddled you with him?” “I don’t know.” “How could you help knowing?” Dickerson used his own handkerchief on his eyes, which relieved the tension a lot for me. I hoped he would keep the handkerchief in his hand, but he deliberately and neatly returned it to his pocket.

  “This,” he said, “is a very large concern, the largest in the world in its field, and beyond all comparison the best. Naturally the authority is tightly organized. No one on this floor is my superior except the head of the department, Mr. Kerr Naylor, the son of one of the founders. Therefore any exercise of authority can be brought to bear on me only through Mr. Naylor.” “Then it was Naylor who hired Moore?” “I don’t know.” “But it was Naylor who said you needed another man and wished Moore on you?” “Certainly. The line of authority is as I have described it.” “What else can you tell me about Moore besides his incompetence?” “Why, nothing.” Dickerson’s look and tone indicated that he regarded my question as silly. Obviously, if a man was incompetent that settled it; nothing else about him mattered one way or another. But it appeared that he was willing to concede that even a competent man must eat. He pulled a watch from his vest pocket, looked at it, and stated, “My lunch hour starts at twelve, Mr. Truett.”

  CHAPTER Eight

  Outside Dickerson’s office I turned left, toward the far end of the arena, and then was struck by an idea and came to a halt. Turning the idea over, and seeing that it had no visible defects on either side, I faced around and headed in the other direction. When I got to Rosenbaum’s door I found it closed again, but since he had said no knocking I turned the knob and entered. My intention was to ask him where his secretary’s room was, but I didn’t carry it out because she was there in a chair at the end of his desk with her notebook.

  She didn’t turn her head at my entrance. Rosenbaum gave me a glance and said unemotionally, “Hello again.” “I just had a logical train of thought,” I told them, “and I wanted to find out what Miss Livsey thinks of it.” She looked at me. Nothing had changed in her in the hour that had passed. It was still obvious that no one on earth but me could understand her or help her.

  “It goes like this,” I explained to her. “My job here requires that I have talks with units of the personnel, as many as possible. I should do that with a minimum amount of interference with the work of the department. You are a unit.

  If we eat lunch together and do our talking then,, there will be no interference with your work. I’ll pay for the lunch and put it on expense.” Rosenbaum chuckled. “That’s a good approach,” he said appreciatively. He spoke to his secretary. “Since he thought that all up just for you, Hester, the least you can do is let him buy you a sandwich.” She asked him, in a voice that could have been a pleasure to listen to if there had been any lift to it, “Do I owe it to anybody?” “Not to me,” he declared, “but maybe to yourself. Mr. Truett sounds as if he might be capable of making you smile. Even if only a wan and feeble smile, why not let him try?” She turned to me and said politely, “Thank you, I think not.” There was certainly something about her, and I frankly admit I was getting a good start at being jealous of Waldo Wilmot Moore, even dead. He had found some way of propagandizing this wren to the point of agreeing to marry him.

  Her eyes were back on her notebook. Rosenbaum, his lips bunched, was gazing at her and shaking his head philosophically. I might as well not have been there, so I removed myself. My hand was on the knob, with my back to them, when her voice came: “Why did you ask one of the girls if she had heard any gossip about Mr. Moore?” Talk about grapevine. Less than two hours had gone by! I turned.

  “There, see? Didn’t I say I didn’t want to interfere with your work? You could have asked me that over anything from roast duckling to a maple sundae.” “All right, I will. I go at one o’clock. We can meet in the lobby, William Street side, near the mailbox.” “That’s the girl. Save a smile for it.” I went.

  So I had it all glued on, a lunch date with Hester Livsey, but it peeled off—though it wasn’t her fault or mine either. I returned to my own little room, put the folders back in the cabinet and locked it, and stood at the window to look at the river and sort things out. All I got out of that was the realization that so far there was nothing to sort. Of course, I thought sarcastically, if I was Nero Wolfe I would have finished up here by noon and gone home to drink beer, but as it is, about all I’ve accomplished is to start the grapevine rustling. That really got me. In short hours, and with no meal period for opportunity! Where it branches out from, I thought, is the restroom. If I could borrow a skirt and blouse and spend thirty minutes in the restroom I would have all I needed for a final report. Out on the river two tugboats nearly hit and one of them scooted off like a ripple skipper.

  When the buzz sounded I jerked around, startled, it was so loud in the little room. I wasn’t sure what it was, but the best guess was the phone, so I went to the desk and took it up and said hello, and came within an ace of adding, “Archie Goodwin speaking.” I bit it off, and a tenor voice asked my ear: “Hello, Mr. Truett?” “Right. Speaking.” “This is Kerr Naylor. I’d like you to lunch with me if that’s convenient. Could you step down to my office?” I told him I’d be glad to, and hung up. A glance at my wrist showed me ten to one. I lifted the phone again, and when I got a voice I asked to be connected with Miss Hester Livsey, Stock Department, Structural Metals Section. In a second the voice said, “Extension six-eight-eight please ask by extension number whenever possible,” and after a short wait another voice said, “Miss Livsey speaking.” “Peter Truett,” I told her. “This is the unluckiest day I’ve had since my rich uncle changed doctors. Mr. Kerr Naylor just phoned me to have lunch with him. I can meet you as arranged and come back after lunch and quit my job.” “I don’t want you to quit your job,” she declared. “I’ve been thinking about you. Go with Mr. Naylor, of course. My room is next to Mr. Rosenbaum’s, the one on the left.” But it didn’t set me up any, on account of the motive, which I was fully aware of. I got my hat and coat and went along to the corner office, where Naylor met me at the door. I took my hat and coat because, although the assistant vice-president had told me I would rate eating lunch in the executives’ section of the Naylor-Kerr cafeteria on the thirty-sixth floor, my hunch was that the son of the founder didn’t patronize it. The
hunch was right. He had his hat on and his topcoat over his arm. We went to an elevator, and from the lobby on the ground floor he steered us out the back way, down a block and around a corner, and to a door which had painted on it in green lettering, FOUNTAIN OF HEALTH.

  That could mean only one thing, and I grimly told my stomach it was in the line of duty as we entered, made our way to a table against the wall, got seated, and accepted menus from a waitress. There it was, roots and leaves and coarse fodder, with such names as EPICURE’S BOWL and BRAN AND CARROT PUDDING. My reaction was so strong that I was barely aware that Naylor was talking. With the waitress there waiting for us to name it, he was saying something like: “...so I tried it once about five years ago, and I’ve been lunching here ever since. I find it makes an enormous difference, physically, mentally—and even spiritually. There’s a purity about it. It keeps a man light and clean. What will you select, Mr, Goodwin?” I heard that all right.

  CHAPTER Nine

  It was like the tricky little squirt to choose that moment for it, with the waitress, who knew him, there by us, making it as awkward as possible for me. So he thought. But I merely elevated the menu so it came between his eyes and my face, to get a little privacy, and turned my brain loose on the problem.

  Manifestly there was no point in trying to make a grab for the cat. After an interval, not a long one, I handed the menu to the waitress and told her to bring me three apples and a glass of milk. Then I asked him politely: “Were you saying something? I’m afraid I wasn’t listening.” He gave the waitress his order and let her go.

  “I was speaking of diet,” he snapped, “and you heard me. It isn’t to be expected, Mr. Truett, that you’ll like this food at first. No one does. But after a while you will wonder how you ever liked anything else.” “Yeah. When I like it I’ll whinny. You ought to make up your mind who you’re Seating to lunch, though. Goodwin or Truett?” “I much prefer Goodwin.” He smiled at me. “That was my chief reason for inviting you to lunch, to tell you that the only way to deal with me is directly and forthrightly. Also to give you a message for Mr. Nero Wolfe. Tell him, please, that you have badly bungled this job. This morning, when I mentioned the murder of a former employee of my department, you should have displayed no interest in the matter.” “I see. Much obliged. So that aroused your suspicion and you investigated.” I looked at him admiringly. “You certainly stepped on it. Where did you start from?” “Now, now,” he scolded me and shook his head. “You’re extraordinarily transparent, Mr. Goodwin, and I must say it’s a surprise to me—and a disappointment. It would have been gratifying to find a good man, a good mind, starting to work on that murder. I would have watched you with the keenest interest and expectation—Those aren’t the best apples.” He frowned at the waitress. “Haven’t you any Stayman Winesaps?” It seemed they hadn’t. When she had served us and was gone I started peeling an apple. It is not my custom to peel apples, but I figured it would outrage him.

  That was wasted effort, since he ignored it and waded in with a fork on a big bowl of a raw unholy mess which he had ordered by name: TODAY’S VITANUTRITA SPECIAL. With his small mouth he had to feed it in dribs, chewing with a straight one-two beat and skipping two chews for each drib going in.

  “Here’s an idea,” I said amiably. “You can’t count on me to give that message to Mr. Wolfe. Why don’t you drop in on him this evening after dinner and give it to him yourself?” “I would be glad to.” He chewed. “But not this evening.” He chewed. “Three evenings a week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I play chess at the Midtown Chess Club.” He chewed. “Saturday I’m going to the country, to spend the week-end looking at birds.” He chewed. “I should be delighted to do that on Monday.” “Okay, I’ll fix it up.” I started on another apple, not bothering to peel it.

  “But by that time I may be all through here. In my opinion, and I hope Mr. Wolfe will agree, there’s only one thing to do: tell the police about it and let them start up the machinery. An accusation of murder is entirely too ticklish, especially for a bungler like me.” He stopped chewing to ask, “Who has made such an accusation?” “You have.” “I have not. I have merely stated that Moore was murdered. The police? Pooh.

  They started their machinery the moment the body was discovered, but they have let it stop. Your intention, of course, was to force me into making disclosures by threatening to get the police after me. My dear Mr, Goodwin, I’m afraid this affair is far beyond the range of your abilities. A week ago I called upon Deputy Commissioner O’Hara, whom I have known for years, and stated to him that Moore was murdered. Naturally he wished me to elaborate, and naturally I refused. I told him that all I could furnish was the bare fact, that the procurement of evidence and apprehension of the criminal were functions of his department.” Naylor tittered. “I really believe that for some moments the Deputy Commissioner was tempted to have the third degree tried on me. At the end he merely regarded me as a babbler.” He resumed on the Vitanutrita.

  My impulse was to finish the milk, shove the third apple in my pocket, beat it to Thirty-fifth Street, and tell Wolfe that Kerr Naylor was a malicious chattering hay-eating beetle and that was all there was to it. Various considerations restrained me, two of which were that Naylor-Kerr, Inc., was good for any amount up to twenty million, and that I now knew where Miss Livsey’s room was.

  “Okay,” I said, completely friendly, “threats are out, disclosures are out, and chess and bird-looking will keep you from calling on Mr. Wolfe before Monday.

  Meanwhile, I noticed that on that report to Mr. Pine, the one about Moore, where it asked how he got hired, you put, ‘Applied personally’. Who did he apply to, the head of that section, Mr. Dickerson?” That was the first dent I made in the beetle’s shell. It didn’t make him drop his fork, or even start the glint in his eyes dancing, but he went on conveying and chewing far beyond the limit of politeness. It was plain that he was finding it necessary to decide what to say.

  He swallowed and spoke. “He applied to my sister.” “Oh. Which sister?” “I have only one.” The glint became perceptible. “My sister, Mr. Truett, is a remarkable and interesting woman, but she is far more conventional than I am.

  Each of us was given one-quarter of the stock of the corporation by our father, who wished to get rid of his burdens and responsibilities. I turned mine over, without compensation, to certain old employees of the business, because they had earned it and I hadn’t. I don’t like to own things to which other people might conceivably assert a claim, especially a moral claim. Legal claims don’t interest me. But my sister, being more conventional, kept her stock. That was lucky for her husband. Jasper Pine, whom I believe you have met, as otherwise it is unlikely that he would have become president of the corporation.” “And Moore got his job through your sister?” The glint did a jig. “You have a talent, Mr. Goodwin, for making statements in the most distasteful manner possible. My sister likes to do things for people.

  She sent Moore to me, and I spoke with him and had him interviewed by Dickerson, and he was given a job in that section. Now how about some pudding? And some Pink Steamer? Hot water with tangerine juice.” He was through as an information bureau. From there on the only thing that appealed to him as a topic of conversation was the food, and questions about Moore or murder or sister were simply ignored. He irritated me most when he was ignoring. I gave up and sat and watched him sip Pink Steamer.

  When we got back to the building on William Street I parted from him in the lobby, went to a phone booth and dialed the number of the Gazette, and asked for Lon Cohen. He knew more facts than the Police Department and the Public Library combined.

  When he was on I told him, “It’s your turn on the favors. What about a Mrs.

  Jasper pine? When born she was called Naylor. Her husband is president of a big engineers’ supply firm with offices downtown. Ever hear of her?” “Sure, she’s meat.” “What kind of meat?” “Oh, that means anyone who might make a meal for a journalist some day, strictl
y as news. So far she has kept herself off the menu, except for paragraphs on the right inside pages, but not a sheet in town has lost hope.” “What keeps the hope going?” “Where are you phoning from? Wolfe’s office?” I tutted at him. “Didn’t I tell you my name? That’s all right, I’m in a booth.” “Okay. The subject of your inquiry is a befriender of young men. Not promiscuous. Discriminating, but chronic. She has plenty of dough, is well preserved, and presumably not a fool or she would have lost her balance long ago. I would advise you to try for it—now old are you, thirty? Just about right for her! You have the looks, and you could brush up on manners—” “Yeah. You’ll get ten per cent. I don’t suppose you could get hold of a list of my predecessors she has befriended?” “Well, we wouldn’t have one, we’re not that thorough. Do you think this paper would nose into people’s private af— Say! Wait a minute! You and Nero Wolfe and your homicides. I’ll try word association on you—damn it, what was that name?

  Murray. No. Moore?” “Mr. Cohen,” I said in awe, “you have nailed the head on the hit as usual.

  Compared to you John Kieran is a blank page. Moore was killed by a hit-and-run on Thirty-ninth Street the night of December fourth. Do tell me he was being or had been befriended.” “I do.” “By Mrs. Pine?” “Restate the question. Even from a booth I don’t like names on anything as fragile as this.” “By the subject of my inquiry?” “Yes.” “Would you mind spreading it out?” “Sure, it looked as if the meat might be on its way to the table, that was all.

  With him mowed down like that in the dead of night, and with that connection he had, we felt we owed it to the community to cover all angles in an effort to prevent any breath of scandal—” “My God. Go on.” “So we did, and I suppose the cops did too, but it was a washout. The details are hazy by now, but it was definitely nothing doing for the presses. I remember this, the most obvious line only got us to a starve-out. The husband had certainly not done a desperate deed to retrieve his honor, or for vengeance.