Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 17

by Three Doors to Death

  “Yes, it was in the first letter.”

  “And when he died, and you knew she had killed him, you thought you would avenge him yourself, was that it?”

  “Yes. What else could I do?”

  “You might—but no matter. You loved him?”

  “I do love him.”

  “Did he love you?”

  “Yes—oh, yes!”

  “Better than he loved his wife?”

  “He hated her. He despised her. He laughed at her.”

  Mrs. Whitten made a choking noise and was out of her chair. But I, rather expecting a little something, was on my feet too, and in front of her. She started to stretch a hand to me and then sat down again. Thinking it remotely possible that she had a cutlery sample in her bag, I stood by.

  Wolfe spoke to her. “I should tell you, madam, that I’ve had you in mind from the first. When you discovered your family secretly gathered in the dining room you were not yourself. Instead of upbraiding and bullying them, which would have been in character, you appealed to them. What better explanation could there be of that reversal in form than that you knew your husband was upstairs dead, you having killed him with one swift stab in the back as you passed behind him, leaving him to go down after Mr. Pompa? Your shrewd and careful plan to have it laid to Pompa was badly disarranged by the awful discovery that your sons and daughters were there too; no wonder you were upset. Your plan was not only shrewd and careful, but long and deep, for when, a month ago, you learned of your husband’s infidelity, what did you do? Drive him out with a blast of fury and contempt? No. Understand him and forgive him and try to win him all for you? No. You displayed the blooming and ripening of your affection and trust for him by announcing that he was to be put in control of the family business. That made it certain, you thought, that when you chose your moment and he died, you would be above suspicion. And indeed you were, but you had bad luck. It was ruthless, but wise, to arrange for the police to have a victim at hand, but you had the misfortune to select for that role a man who was once a good cook—indeed, a great one.”

  Wolfe jerked his head up. “Mr. Cramer, you are no longer committed. I don’t know how you handle a case like this. You have a man in jail charged with murder, but the murderer is here. How do you proceed?”

  “I need things,” Cramer rasped. He was flabbergasted and trying not to show it. “I need those letters. What’s that about an open door? I need—”

  “You’ll get all of it. I mean what happens immediately? What about Mrs. Whitten?”

  “That’s no problem. There are two men in my car out front. If her wound didn’t keep her from riding down here last night it won’t keep her from riding downtown now.”

  “Good.” Wolfe turned to Julie. “I was under an obligation to you. I told you that I thought I could arrange it so that Mrs. Whitten would not prosecute, if you would help me. You have unquestionably helped me. You have done your part. Do you agree that I have done mine?”

  I don’t think she heard a word of it. She was looking at him but not seeing him. “There was a notice in yesterday’s paper,” she said, “that his funeral would be today at four o’clock, and it said omit flowers. Omit flowers!” She seemed to be trying to smile, and suddenly her head dropped into her hands and she shook with sobs.

  XI

  I stood facing the door of the South Room, in the hall on the third floor, with my hand raised. Wolfe, positively refusing to do it himself, had left it to me. I knocked. A voice told me to come in, and I entered.

  Phoebe tossed a magazine onto the table and left the chair. “You certainly took long enough. Where’s Mother?”

  “That’s what I came to tell you.”

  Her face changed and she took a step and demanded, “Where is she?”

  “Don’t push. First I apologize. When you pulled that gag about the front door being open I thought you knew that one of you in the dining room had killed Whitten, and possibly even you had been involved in it, and you thought maybe Mr. Wolfe was getting warm and you wanted to fix an out. Now I know how it was. You couldn’t believe Pompa had done it, and you knew none of you had, so it was your mother. So it was her you wanted the out for. Therefore it seems to me I should apologize, and I do.”

  “I don’t want your apology. Where is my mother?”

  “She is either at Police Headquarters or the District Attorney’s office, depending on where they took her. I don’t know. She is, or soon will be, charged with murder. Mr. Wolfe did most of it of course, but I had a hand in it. For that I don’t apologize. You know damn well she’s a malicious and dangerous woman—look at her framing Pompa—and while I appreciate the fact that she’s your mother, she is not mine. So much for her. You are another matter. What do you want me to do? Anything?”

  “No.”

  She hadn’t batted an eyelash, nor turned pale, nor let a lip quiver, but the expression of her eyes was plenty.

  “What I mean,” I told her, “I got you down here, and you’re here alone now, and I would like to do anything at all that will help. Phone somebody, drive you somewhere, get a taxi, send your things to you later—”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Fritz will let you out downstairs. I’ll be in the office typing, in case.”

  That was the last chat I had with her for a long time, until day before yesterday, a month after her mother was sentenced by Judge Wilkinson. Day before yesterday, Tuesday afternoon, she phoned to say she had changed her mind about accepting my apology, and would I care to drive her up to Connecticut and eat dinner with her at AMBROSIA 26? Even if I hadn’t had another date I would have passed. An AMBROSIA may be perfectly okay as a source of income, but with the crowd and the noise it is no place to make any progress in human relations.

  Door to Death

  I

  Nero Wolfe took a long stretching step to clear a puddle of water at the edge of the graveled driveway, barely reached the grass of the lawn with his left foot, slipped, teetered, pawed wildly at the air, and got his sixth of a ton of flesh and bone balanced again without having actually sprawled.

  “Just like Ray Böiger,” I said admiringly.

  He scowled at me savagely, which made me feel at home though we were far from home. More than an hour of that raw and wet December morning had been spent by me driving up to northern Westchester, with him in the rear seat on account of his silly theory that when the inevitable crash comes he’ll lose less blood and have fewer bones broken, and there we were at our destination in the environs of the village of Katonah, trespassers on the estate of one Joseph G. Pitcairn. I say trespassers because, instead of wheeling up to the front of the big old stone mansion and crossing the terrace to the door like gentlemen, I had, under orders, branched off onto the service drive, circled to the rear of the house, and stopped the car at the gravel’s edge in the neighborhood of the garage. The reason for that maneuver was that, far from being there to see Mr. Pitcairn, we were there to steal something from him.

  “That was a fine recovery,” I told Wolfe approvingly. “You’re not used to this rough cross-country going.”

  Before he could thank me for the compliment a man in greasy coveralls emerged from the garage and came for us. It didn’t seem likely, in view of the greasy coveralls, that he was what we had come to steal, but Wolfe’s need was desperate and he was taking no chances, so he wiped the scowl off and spoke to the man in hearty friendliness.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  The man nodded. “Looking for someone?”

  “Yes, Mr. Andrew Krasicki. Are you him?”

  “I am not. My name’s Imbrie, Neil Imbrie, butler and chauffeur and handyman. You look like some kind of a salesman. Insurance?”

  Butlers were entirely different, I decided, when you came at them by the back way. When Wolfe, showing no resentment at the accusation, whatever he felt, told him it wasn’t insurance but something personal and agreeable, he took us to the far end of the garage, which had doors for five cars, and pointed out a pat
h which wound off into shrubbery.

  “That goes to his cottage, way the other side of the tennis court. In the summer you can’t see it from here on account of the leaves, but now you can a little. He’s down there taking a nap because he was up last night fumigating. Often I’m up late driving, but it don’t mean I get a nap. The next time around I’m going to be a gardener.”

  Wolfe thanked him and made for the path, with me for rearguard. It had just about made up its mind to stop raining, but everything was soaking wet, and after we got into the shrubbery we had to duck whenever a bare twig stretched out low to avoid making our own private rain. For me, young and Umber and in good trim, that was nothing, but for Wolfe, with his three hundred pounds, which is an understatement, especially with his heavy tweed overcoat and hat and cane, it was asking a lot. The shrubbery quit at the other side of the tennis court, and we entered a grove of evergreens, then an open space, and there was the cottage.

  Wolfe knocked on the door, and it opened, and facing us was a blond athlete not much older than me, with big bright blue eyes and his whole face ready to laugh. I never completely understand why a girl looks in any other direction when I am present, but I wouldn’t have given it a moment’s thought if this specimen had been in sight. Wolfe told him good morning and asked if he was Mr. Andrew Krasicki.

  “That’s my name.” He made a little bow. “And may I—by God, it’s Nero Wolfe! Aren’t you Nero Wolfe?”

  “Yes,” Wolfe confessed modestly. “May I come in for a little talk, Mr. Krasicki? I wrote you a letter but got no reply, and yesterday on the telephone you—”

  The blond prince interrupted. “It’s all right,” he declared. “All settled!”

  “Indeed. What is?”

  “I’ve decided to accept. I’ve just written you a letter.”

  “When can you come?”

  “Any time you say. Tomorrow. I’ve got a good assistant and he can take over here.”

  Wolfe did not whoop with glee. Instead, he compressed his lips and breathed deep through his nose. In a moment he spoke. “Confound it, may I come in? I want to sit down.”

  II

  Wolfe’s reaction was perfectly natural. True, he had just got wonderful news, but also he had just learned that if he had stayed home he would have got it just the same in tomorrow morning’s mail, and that was hard to take standing up. He hates going outdoors and rarely does, and he would rather trust himself in a room alone with three or four mortal enemies than in a piece of machinery on wheels.

  But he had been driven to the wall. Four people live in the old brownstone house on West 35th Street. First, him. Second, me, assistant everything from detective to doorbell answerer. Third, Fritz Brenner, cook and house manager. And fourth, Theodore Horstmann, tender and defender of the ten thousand orchids in the plant rooms on the roof. But that was the trouble: there was no longer a fourth. A telegram had come from Illinois that Theodore’s mother was critically ill and he must come at once, and he had taken the first train. Wolfe, instead of spending a pleasant four hours a day in the plant rooms pretending he was hard at it, had had to dig in and work like a dog. Fritz and I could help some, but we weren’t experts. Appeals were broadcast in every direction, especially after word came from Theodore that he couldn’t tell whether he would be back in six days or six months, and there were candidates for the job, but no one that Wolfe would trust with his rare and precious hybrids. He had already heard of this Andrew Krasicki, who had successfully crossed an Odontoglossum cirrhosum with an O. nobile veitchianum, and when he learned from Lewis Hewitt that Krasicki had worked for him for three years and was as good as they come, that settled it. He had to have Krasicki. He had written him; no answer. He had phoned, and had been brushed off. He had phoned again, and got no further. So, that wet December morning, tired and peevish and desperate, he had sent me to the garage for the car, and when I rolled up in front of the house there he was on the sidewalk, in his hat and overcoat and cane, grim and resolute, ready to do or die. Stanley making for Livingstone in the African jungle was nothing compared to Wolfe making for Krasicki in Westchester.

  And here was Krasicki saying he had already written he would come! It was an awful anticlimax.

  “I want to sit down,” Wolfe repeated firmly.

  But he didn’t get to, not yet. Krasicki said sure, go on in and make himself at home, but he had just been starting for the greenhouse when we arrived and he would have to go. I put in to remark that maybe we’d better get back to town, to our own greenhouse, and start the day’s work. That reminded Wolfe that I was there, and he gave Krasicki and me each other’s names, and we shook hands. Then Krasicki said he had a Phalaenopsis Aphrodite in flower we might like to see.

  Wolfe grunted. “Species? I have eight.”

  “Oh, no.” It was easy to tell from Krasicki’s tone of horticultural snobbery, by no means new to me, that he really belonged. “Not species and not dayana. Sanderiana. Nineteen sprays.”

  “Good heavens,” Wolfe said enviously. “I must see it.”

  So we neither went in and sat down nor went back to our car, which was just as well, since in either case we would have been minus a replacement for Theodore. Krasicki led the way along the path by which we had come, but as we approached the house and outbuildings he took a fork to the left which skirted shrubs and perennial borders, now mostly bare but all neat. As we passed a young man in a rainbow shirt who was scattering peat moss on a border, he said, “You owe me a dime, Andy. No snow,” and Krasicki grinned and told him, “See my lawyer, Gus.”

  The greenhouse, on the south side of the house, had been hidden from our view as we had driven in. Approaching it even on this surly December day, it stole the show from the mansion. With stone base walls to match the house, and curving glass, it was certainly high, wide, and handsome. At its outer extremity it ended in a one-story stone building with a slate roof, and the path Krasicki took led to that, and around to its door. The whole end wall was covered with ivy, and the door was fancy, stained oak slabs decorated with black iron, and on it was hanging a big framed placard, with red lettering so big you could read it from twenty paces:

  DANGER

  DO NOT ENTER

  DOOR TO DEATH

  I muttered something about a cheerful welcome. Wolfe cocked an eye at the sign and asked, “Cyanogas G?”

  Krasicki, lifting the sign from its hook and putting a key in the hole, shook his head. “Ciphogene. That’s all right; the vents have been open for several hours. This sign’s a little poetic, but it was here when I came. I understand Mrs. Pitcairn painted it herself.”

  Inside with them, I took a good sniff of the air. Ciphogene is the fumigant Wolfe uses in his plant rooms, and I knew how deadly it was, but there was only a faint trace to my nose, so I went on breathing. The inside of the stone building was the storage and workroom, and right away Wolfe started looking things over.

  Andy Krasicki said politely but briskly, “If you’ll excuse me, I’m always behind a morning after fumigating …”

  Wolfe, on his good behavior, followed him through the door into the greenhouse, and I went along.

  “This is the cool room,” Krasicki told us. “Next is the warm room, and then, the one adjoining the house, the medium. I have to get some vents closed and put the automatic on.”

  It was quite a show, no question about that, but I was so used to Wolfe’s arrangement, practically all orchids, that it seemed pretty messy. When we proceeded to the warm room there was a sight I really enjoyed: Wolfe’s face as he gazed at the P. Aphrodite sanderiana with its nineteen sprays. The admiration and the envy together made his eyes gleam as I had seldom seen them. As for the flower, it was new to me, and it was something special—rose, brown, purple, and yellow. The rose suffused the petals, and the brown, purple, and yellow were on the labellum.

  “Is it yours?” Wolfe demanded.

  Andy shrugged. “Mr. Pitcairn owns it.”

  “I don’t care a hang who owns it. Who grew i
t?”

  “I did. From a seed.”

  Wolfe grunted. “Mr. Krasicki, I’d like to shake your hand.”

  Andy permitted him to do so and then moved along to proceed through the door into the medium room, presumably to close more vents. After Wolfe had spent a few more minutes coveting the Phalaenopsis, we followed. This was another mess, everything from violet geraniums to a thing in a tub with eight million little white flowers, labeled Serissa foetida. I smelled it, got nothing, crushed one of the flowers with my fingers and smelled that, and then had no trouble understanding the foetida. My fingers had it good, so I went out to the sink in the workroom and washed with soap.

  I got back to the medium room in time to hear Andy telling Wolfe that he had a curiosity he might like to see. “Of course,” Andy said, “you know Tïbouchina semidecandra, sometimes listed as Pleroma mecanthrum or Pleroma grandiflora.”

  “Certainly,” Wolfe assented.

  I bet he had never heard of it before. Andy went on. “Well, I’ve got a two-year plant here that I raised from a cutting, less than two feet high, and a branch has sported. The leaves are nearly round, not ovate, foveolate, and the petioles—wait till I show you—it’s resting now out of light—”

  He had stepped to where a strip of green canvas hung from the whole length of a bench section, covering the space from the waist-high bench to the ground, and, squatting, he lifted the canvas by its free bottom edge and stuck his head and shoulders under the bench. Then he didn’t move. For too many seconds he didn’t move at all. Then he came back out, bumping his head on the concrete bench, straightened up to his full height, and stood as rigid as if he had been made of concrete himself, facing us, all his color gone and his eyes shut.

  When he heard me move his eyes opened, and when he saw me reaching for the canvas he whispered to me, “Don’t look. No. Yes, you’d better look.”

  I lifted the canvas and looked. After I had kept my head and shoulders under the bench about as long as Andy had, I backed out, not bumping my head, and told Wolfe, “It’s a dead woman.”