by Rex Stout
The corners of Wolfe’s mouth were up. “Indeed,” he said. Laidlaw took a breath, but it came out merely as used air, not as words.
“Mr Goodwin has told me,” Wolfe said, “of the proposal you made to him. I am at a loss whether to respect your doggedness and applaud your dexterity or to deplore your naivete. In any case I must decline the engagement. I already have the information you’re after, but I got it from Mr Goodwin in confidence and may not disclose it. I’m sorry, sir.”
Laidlaw took another breath. “I’m not as dogged as you are,” he declared. “Both of you. In the name of God, what’s so top secret about it? What are you afraid of?”
Wolfe shook his head. “Not afraid, Mr Laidlaw, merely discreet. When a matter in which we have an interest and a commitment requires us to nettle the police we are not at all reluctant. In this affair Mr Goodwin is involved solely because he happened to be there; just as you are, and I am not involved at all. It is not a question of fear or of animus. I am merely detached. I will not, for instance, tell the police of the offers you have made Mr Goodwin and me because it would stimulate their curiosity about you, and since I assume you have made the offers in good faith I am not disposed to do you an ill turn.”
“But you’re turning me down.”
“Yes. Flatly. In the circumstances I have no choice. Mr Goodwin can speak for himself.”
Laidlaw’s head turned to me and I had the eyes again. I wouldn’t have put it past him to renew his offer, with an amendment that he would now leave the figure up to me, but if he had that in mind he abandoned it when he saw my steadfast countenance. When, after regarding me for eight seconds, he left his chair, I thought he was leaving the field and Wolfe wouldn’t have to go to work after all, but no. He only wanted to mull, and preferred to have his face to himself. He asked, “May I have a minute?” and, when Wolfe said yes, he turned his back and moseyed across the rug towards the far wall, where the big globe stood in front of bookshelves; and, for double the time he had asked for, at least that, he stood revolving the globe. Finally he about-faced and returned to the red leather chair, not moseying.
“I must speak with you privately,” he told Wolfe.
“You are,” Wolfe said snortly. “If you mean alone, no. If a confidence weren’t as safe with Mr Goodwin as with me he wouldn’t be here. His ears are mine, and mine are his.”
“This isn’t only a confidence. I’m going to tell you something that no one on earth knows about but me. I’m going to risk telling you because I have to, but I’m not going to double the risk.”
“You will not be doubling it.” Wolfe was patient. “If Mr Goodwin left us I would give him a signal to listen to us on a contraption in another room, so he might as well stay.”
“You don’t make it any easier, Wolfe.”
“I don’t pretend to make things easier. I only make them manageable-when I can.”
Laidlaw looked as if he needed to mull some more, but he got it decided without going to consult the globe again. “You’ll have all you can do to manage this,” he declared. “I couldn’t go to my lawyer with it, or anyhow I wouldn’t, and even if I had it would have been too much for him. I thought I couldn’t go to anybody, and then I thought of you. You have the reputation of a wizard, and God knows I need one. First I wanted to know why Goodwin thinks it was murder, but evidently you’re not going-by the way-”
He took a pen from a pocket and a chequebook from another, put the book on the little table at his elbow, and wrote. He yanked the cheque off, glanced it over, got up to put it on Wolfe’s desk, and returned to the chair.
“If twenty thousand isn’t enough,” he said, “for a retainer and advances for expenses, say so. You haven’t accepted the job, I know, but I’m camping here until you do. You spoke of managing things. I want you to manage that if they go on with their investigation it doesn’t go deep enough to uncover and make public a certain event in my life. I also want you to manage that I don’t get arrested and put on trial for murder.”
Wolfe grunted. “I could give no guarantee against either contingency.”
“I don’t expect you to. I don’t expect you to pass miracles, either. And two things I want to make plain: first, if Faith Usher was murdered I didn’t kill her and don’t know who did; and second, my own conviction is that she committed suicide. I don’t know what Goodwin’s reason is for thinking she was murdered, but whatever it is, I’m convinced that he’s wrong.”
Wolfe grunted again. “Then why come to me in a dither? If you’re convinced it was suicide. Since they are human the police do frequently fumble, but usually they arrive at the truth. Finally.”
“That’s the trouble. Finally. This time, before they arrive, they might run across the event I spoke of, and if they do, they might charge me with murder. Not they might, they would.”
“Indeed. It must have been an extraordinary event. If that is what you intend to confide in me, I make two remarks: that you are not yet my client, and that even if you were, disclosures to a private detective by a client are not a privileged communication. It’s an impasse, Mr Laidlaw. I can’t decide whether to accept your job until I know what the event was; but I will add that if I do accept it I will go far to protect the interest of a client.”
“I’m desperate, Wolfe,” Laidlaw said. He pushed his hair back, but it needed more than a push. “I admit it. I’m desperate. You’ll accept the job because there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. What I’m going to tell you is known to no one on earth but me, I’m pretty sure of that, but not absolutely sure, and that’s the devil of it.”
He pushed at his hair again. “I’m not proud of this, what I’m telling you. I’m thirty-one years old. In August, nineteen fifty-six, a year and a half ago, I went into Cordoni’s on Madison Avenue to buy some flowers, and the girl who waited on me was attractive, and that evening I drove her to a place in the country for dinner. Her name was Faith Usher. Her vacation was to start in ten days, and by the time it started I had persuaded her to spend it in Canada with me. I didn’t use my own name; I’m almost certain she never knew what it was. She only had a week, and when we got back she went back to work at Cordoni’s, and I went to Europe and was gone two months. When I returned I had no idea of resuming any relations with her, but I had no reason to avoid her, and I stopped in at Cordoni’s one day. She was there, but she would barely speak to me. She asked me, if I came to Cordoni’s again, to get someone else to wait on me.”
“I suggest,” Wolfe put in, “that you confine this to the essentials.”
“I am. I want you to know just how it was. I don’t like to feel that I owe anyone anything, especially a woman, and I phoned her twice to get her to meet me and have a talk, but she wouldn’t. So I dropped it. I also stopped buying flowers at Cordoni’s, but some months later, one rainy day in April, I went there because it was convenient, and she wasn’t there. I didn’t ask about her. I include these details because you ought to know what the chances are that the police are going to dig this up.”
“First the essentials,” Wolfe muttered.
“All right, but you ought to know how I found out that she was at Grantham House. Grantham House is an institution started by-”
“I know what it is.”
“Then I don’t have to explain it. A few days after I had noticed that she wasn’t at Cordoni’s a friend of mine told me-his name is Austin Byne, and he is Mrs Robilotti’s nephew-he told me that he had been at Grantham House the day before on an errand for Mrs Robilotti and had seen a girl there that he recognized. He said I might recognize her too-the girl with the little oval face and green eyes who used to work at Cordoni’s. I told him I doubted it, that I didn’t remember her. But I-”
“Was Mr Byne’s tone or manner suggestive?”
“No. I didn’t think-I’m sure it wasn’t. But I wondered. Naturally. It had been eight months since the trip to Canada, and I did not believe that she had been promiscuous. I decided that I must see her and talk with her. I pr
efer to think that my chief reason was my feeling of obligation, but I don’t deny that I also wanted to know if she had found out who I was, and if so whether she had told anyone or was going to. In arranging to see her I took every possible precaution. Shall I tell you exactly how I managed it?”
“Later, perhaps.”
“All right, I saw her. She said that she had agreed to meet me only because she wanted to tell rne that she never wanted to see me or hear from me again. She said she didn’t hate me-I don’t think she was capable of hate-but that I meant only one thing to her, a mistake that she would never forgive herself for, and that she only wanted to blot me out. Those were her words: ‘blot you out’. She said her baby would be given for adoption and would never know who its parents were. I had money with me, a lot of it, but she wouldn’t take a cent. I didn’t raise the question whether there could be any doubt that I was the father. You wouldn’t either, if it had been you, with her, the way she was.”
He stopped and set his jaw. After a moment he released it. “That was when I decided to quit playing around. I made an anonymous contribution to Grantham House. I never saw her again until last night. I didn’t kill her. I am convinced she killed herself, and I hope to God my being there, seeing me again, wasn’t what made her do it.”
He stopped again. Then he went on, “I didn’t kill her, but you can see where I’ll be if the police go on investigating and dig this up somehow-though I don’t know how. They would have me. I was standing at the bar when Cecil Grantham came and got the champagne and took it to her. Even if I wasn’t convicted of murder, even if I was never put on trial, this would all come out and that would be nearly as bad. And evidently, if it weren’t for Goodwin, for what he has told them, they would almost certainly call it suicide and close it. Can you wonder that I want to know what he told them? At any price?”
“No,” Wolfe conceded. “Accepting your account as candid, no. But you have shifted your ground. You wanted to hire me to tell you what Mr Goodwin has told the police, though you didn’t put it that way, and I declined. What do you want to hire me to do now?”
“To manage this for me. You said you manage things. To manage that this is not dug up, that my connection with Faith Usher does not become known, that I am not suspected of killing her.”
“You’re already suspected. You were there.”
“That’s nonsense. You’re quibbling. I wouldn’t be suspected if it weren’t for Goodwin. Nobody would be.”
I permitted myself an inside grin. “Quibble” was one of Wolfe’s pet words. Dozens of people, sitting in the red leather chair, had been told by him that they were quibbling, and now he was getting it back, and he didn’t like it.
He said testily, “But you are suspected, and you’d be a ninny to hire me to prevent something that has already happened. You have admitted you’re desperate, and desperate men can’t think straight, so I should make allowances, and I do. That the police will not discover your connection with Faith Usher is a forlorn hope. Surely she knew your real name. Weren’t you known at Cordoni’s? Didn’t you have a charge account?”
“No. I have charge accounts, of course, but not at any florist’s. I always paid cash for flowers-in those days. Now it doesn’t matter, but then it was more-uh-it was wiser. I don’t think she ever knew my name, and even if she did I’m almost certain she never told anyone about me-about the trip to Canada.”
Wolfe was sceptical. “Even so,” he grumbled. “You appeared with her in public places. On the street. You took her to dinner. If the police persist it’s highly probable that they’ll turn it up; at that sort of thing they’re extremely proficient. The only way to ward that off with any assurance would be to arrange that they do not persist, and that rests with Mr Goodwin.” His head turned. “Archie. Has anything that Mr Laidlaw has said persuaded you that you might have been mistaken?”
“No,” I said. “Now that we can name the figure I admit it’s a temptation, but I’m committed. No.”
“Committed to what?” Laidlaw demanded.
“To my statement that Faith Usher didn’t kill herself.”
“Why? For God’s sake, why?”
Wolfe took over. “No, sir. That is still reserved, even if I accept your retainer. If I do, I’ll proceed on the hypothesis that your account of your relations with Faith Usher is bona fide, but only as a hypothesis. Over the years I have found many hypotheses untenable. It is quite possible that you did kill Faith Usher and your coming to me is a step in some devious and crafty stratagem. Then-”
“I didn’t.”
“Very well. That’s an item of the hypothesis. Then the situation is this: since Mr Goodwin is unyielding, and since if the police persist they will surely bare your secret and then harass you, I can do your job only (a) by proving that Faith Usher committed suicide and Mr Goodwin is wrong, or (b) by identifying and exposing the murderer. That would be a laborious and expensive undertaking, and I’ll ask you to sign a memorandum stating that, no matter who the murderer is, if I expose him you’ll pay my bill.”
Laidlaw didn’t hesitate. “I’ll sign it.”
“With, as I said, no guarantee.”
“As I said, I don’t expect any.”
“Then that’s understood.” Wolfe reached to pick up the cheque. “Archie. You may deposit this as a retainer and advance for expenses.”
I got up and took it and dropped it in a drawer of my desk.
“I want to ask a question,” Laidlaw said. He was looking at me. “Evidently you didn’t tell the police what happened when I asked Faith Usher to dance with me, and she refused. If you had told them they would certainly have asked me about it. Why didn’t you?”
I sat down. “That’s about the only thing I left out. For a reason. From the beginning they were on my neck about my thinking it was murder, and if I had told them about her refusing to dance with you they would have thought I was also trying to pick the murderer, and they already had certain feelings about me on account of former collisions. And if you denied it when they asked you about it, they might think I was playing hopscotch. I could always remember it and report it later, if developments called for it.”
Wolfe was frowning. “You didn’t report this to me.”
“No, sir. Why should I? You weren’t interested.”
“I am now. But now, conveniently, her refusal is already explained.” He turned to the client. “Did you know Miss Usher would be there before you went?”
“No,” Laidlaw said. “If I had I wouldn’t have gone.”
“Did she know you would be there?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it. I think that goes for her too; if she had she wouldn’t have gone.”
“Then it was a remarkable coincidence. In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted. Had you attended any of those affairs previously? Those annual dinners?”
“No. It was on account of Faith Usher that I accepted the invitation. Not to see her-as I said, I wouldn’t have gone if I had known she would be there-just some feeling about what had happened. I suppose a psychiatrist would call it a feeling of guilt.”
“Who invited you?”
“Mrs Robilotti.”
“Were you a frequent guest at her house?”
“Not frequent, no, just occasional. I have known Cecil, her son, since prep school, but we have never been close. Her nephew, Austin Byne, was in my class at Harvard. What are you doing, investigating me?”
Wolfe didn’t reply. He glanced up at the wall clock: ten minutes past one. He took in a couple of bushels of air through his nose, and let it out through his mouth. He looked at the client, not with enthusiasm.
“This will take hours, Mr Laidlaw. Just to get started with you-what you know about those people-since I must proceed, tentatively, on the hypothesis that Mr Goodwin is right and Miss Usher was murdered, and you didn’t kill her, and therefore one of the others did. Eleven of them, if we include the
butler-no, ten, since I shall arbitrarily eliminate Mr Goodwin. Confound it, an army! It’s time for lunch, and I invite you to join us, and then we’ll resume. Clams hashed with eggs, parsley, green peppers, chives, fresh mushrooms, and sherry. Mr Goodwin drinks milk. I drink beer. Would you prefer white wine?”
Laidlaw said yes, he would, and Wolfe got up and headed for the kitchen.
Chapter Six
At a quarter past five that afternoon, when Laidlaw left, I had thirty-two pages of shorthand, my private brand, in my book. Of course, Wolfe had gone up to the plant rooms at four o’clock so for the last hour and a quarter I had been the emcee. When Wolfe came down to the office at six I had typed four pages from my notes and was banging away on the fifth.
Most of it was a waste of time and paper, but there were items that might come in handy. To begin with, there was nothing whatever on the three unmarried mothers who were still alive. Laidlaw had never seen or heard of Helen Yarmis or Ethel Varr or Rose Tuttle before the party. Another blank was Hackett. All I had got on him was that he was a good butler, which I already knew, and that he had been there for years, since before Grantham had died.
Mrs Robilotti. Laidlaw didn’t care much for her. He didn’t put it that way, but it was obvious. He called her a vulgarian. Her first husband, Albert Grantham, had had genuine philanthropic impulses and knew what to do with them, but she was a phoney. She wasn’t actually continuing to support his philanthropies; they had been provided for in his will; she spent a lot of time on them, attending board meetings and so on, only to preserve her standing with her betters. “Betters,” for Laidlaw, evidently didn’t mean people with more money, which I thought was a broad-minded attitude for a man with ten million of his own.
Robert Robilotti. Laidlaw cared for him even less, and said so. Mrs Albert Grantham, widow, had acquired him in Italy and brought him back with her luggage. That alone showed she was a vulgarian, but here, it seemed to me, things got confused, because Robilotti was not a vulgarian. He was polished, civilized, and well informed. In all this I’m merely quoting Laidlaw. Of course, he was also a parasite. When I asked if he looked elsewhere for the female refreshments that were in short supply at home, Laidlaw said there were rumours, but there were always rumours.