Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 11

by The Silent Speaker

  “I like this,” she said. “Go on and drag things out of me.”

  I finished chewing my second shrimp and swallowed it. “My technique is a little unusual,” I told her. “For instance, not only are all ten of you people being followed around, to see what you’re up to now, but also your pasts are being drained through cheesecloth. How do you like this cheese?”

  “I like it. I love it.”

  “Good. We’ll come here often. There are probably a hundred men—no, more than that, I forgot how important this case is—investigating your people’s pasts, to find out, for example, if Mrs. Boone was having secret trysts with Frank Thomas Erskine on the boardwalk at Atlantic City, or if you and Breslow are champing at the bit until he can get his wife to give him a divorce. That takes time and money, and my technique is different. I prefer to ask you and settle it. Are you?”

  “Am I what? Champing?”

  “At the bit.”

  “No. I’m champing shrimps.”

  I swallowed another one. “You see,” I explained, “they’re all up a stump, including Nero Wolfe. They’re not trying to make it more complicated just for the hell of it. The most satisfactory way out of it, the way that would please nearly everybody most, including the investigators themselves, would be the simplest way, namely that one of those six NIA people killed Cheney Boone for the obvious motive, and then killed Phoebe Gunther for some related reason. But the trouble is that if that’s how it was, how are you ever going to find out which one of the six did it, let alone prove it? Apparently not a chance in a billion. The New York police and the FBI have been working on it over a week now, giving it all they’ve got, and where are they? Tailing you!”

  “Well.” She herded cheese and sauce with her fork. “You’re buying me a lunch.”

  “Certainly, and I’m telling you why, aside from your hair and other personal details. We’re all sunk unless we can find a new angle. I came to you because there’s a possibility that you know something about such an angle without realizing it. Naturally I’m assuming that you want the murderer found and punished. Otherwise—”

  “I do. Of course I do.”

  “Then suppose we try the direct approach and see how it sounds. Did you know any of these NIA birds personally?”

  “No.”

  “None of those six?”

  “No.”

  “How about any NIA people at all? There were around fifteen hundred of them at that dinner.”

  “This seems perfectly silly.”

  “Then let’s get it over with. Did you?”

  “Maybe a few—or rather, their sons and daughters. I graduated from Smith a year ago, and you meet a lot of people. But if we went back over every minute of it, every word of every conversation, we wouldn’t find anything remotely resembling an angle.”

  “You don’t think it would do me any good to probe?”

  “No.” She glanced at her wrist watch. “Anyway, we haven’t time.”

  “Okay. We can go back to it. How about your aunt? Those trysts with Erskine. Did she have trysts?”

  Nina made a noise which, under the circumstances, was a fair substitute for a laugh. “Ask her. Maybe that’s what she wants to see you about. If all the pasts are being investigated as you say they are, I should think it would be established by now that Aunt Luella was utterly and exclusively devoted to my uncle, and to everything he did and everything he stood for.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t get it. That’s just the point. To illustrate: what if Boone learned something in Washington that Tuesday afternoon about something Winterhoff had done, or something that made him decide to take a certain step affecting Winterhoff’s line of business, and what if he told his wife about it when he saw her in their hotel room (which you might also have heard since you were there too), and what if Mrs. Boone happened to know Winterhoff, not for trysting purposes but just knew him, and what if later, in the reception room, she was talking with Winterhoff during her third cocktail, and what if unintentionally she gave him an idea of what was up? That’s what I mean by a new angle. I could invent a thousand of them just as I invented that one, but what is needed is one that really happened. So I’m asking about your aunt’s circle of acquaintance. Is that malevolent?”

  She had been making steady progress with the shrimps, which had now cooled off enough to permit it. “No,” she admitted, “but you’d better ask her. All I can tell you is about me.”

  “Sure. You’re virtuous and noble. It shows in your chin. The herald angels sing. A in deportment.”

  “What do you want?” she demanded. “Do you want me to tell you that I saw my aunt sneaking into a corner with Winterhoff or with any of those apes and whispering to him? Well, I didn’t. And if I had—” She stopped.

  “If you had would you tell me?”

  “No. In spite of the fact that in my opinion my aunt is a pain in the neck.”

  “You don’t like her?”

  “No. I don’t like her and I disapprove of her and I regard her as a grotesque relic. That’s spread all over my past, but it’s strictly personal.”

  “You don’t go so far as to accept Breslow’s suggestion that Mrs. Boone killed her husband on account of jealousy of Phoebe Gunther, and later, at Wolfe’s house, finished up?”

  “No, does anybody?”

  “I couldn’t say.” Having disposed of the last shrimp, I started on the salad. “I don’t. But it does seem to be a sound idea that Mrs. Boone was jealous of Phoebe Gunther.”

  “Certainly she was. There are several thousand girls and women working for the BPR, and she was jealous of all of them.”

  “Yeah. Chiefly on account of her nose, of course. But Phoebe Gunther wasn’t just one of thousands. Wasn’t she special?”

  “She was indeed.” Nina flashed me a quick glance which I failed to interpret. “She was extremely special.”

  “Was she going to do anything as trite as having a baby?”

  “Oh, good lord.” Nina pulled her salad over. “You pick up all the crumbs, don’t you?”

  “Was she?”

  “No. And my aunt had just as little reason to be jealous of her as of anybody else. Her idea that my uncle had wolf in him was simply silly.”

  “How well did you know Miss Gunther?”

  “I knew her pretty well. Not intimately.”

  “Did you like her?”

  “I—yes, I guess I liked her. I certainly admired her. Of course I envied her. I would have liked to have her job, but I wasn’t foolish enough to think I could fill it. I’m too young for one thing, but that’s only part of it, she wasn’t such a lot older than me. She did field work for a year or so and made the best record in the whole organization, and then she was brought to the main office and before long she was on the inside of everything. Usually when an organization like that gets a new Director he does a great deal of shifting around, but when my uncle was appointed there wasn’t any shifting of Phoebe except that she got a raise in pay. If she had been ten years older and a man she would have been made Director when my uncle—died.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Did you know her before you went to work for the BPR?”

  “No, but I met her the first day I went there, because my uncle asked her to keep an eye on me.”

  “Did she do so?”

  “In a way she did, yes, as much as she had time for. She was very important and very busy. She had BPR fever.”

  “Yeah?” I stopped a forkload of salad on its way to my mouth. “Bad?”

  “One of the most severe cases on record.”

  “What were the main symptoms?”

  “It varies with character and temperament. In its simplest form, a firm belief that whatever the BPR does is right. There are all kinds of complications, from bitter and undying hatred of the NIA to a messianic yen to educate the young, depending on whether you are primarily a do-gooder or a fighter.”

  “Have you got it?”r />
  “Certainly I have, but not in its acute form. With me it was mostly a personal matter. I was very fond of my uncle.” Her chin threatened to get out of control for a moment, and she paused to attend to that and then explained, “I never had a father, to know him, and I loved Uncle Cheney. I don’t really know an awful lot about it, but I loved my uncle.”

  “Which complications did Phoebe have?”

  “All of them.” The chin was all right again. “But she was a born fighter. I don’t know how much the enemies of the BPR, for instance the heads of the NIA, really knew about the insides of it, but if their intelligence was any good they must have known about Phoebe. She was actually more dangerous to them than my uncle was. I’ve heard my uncle say that. A political shake-up might have got him out, but as long as she was there it wouldn’t have mattered much.”

  “That’s a big help,” I grumbled, “I don’t think. It gives precisely the same motive, to the same people, for her as for him. If you call that a new angle …”

  “I don’t call it anything. You asked me.”

  “So I did. How about dessert?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’d better. You’re going to have to help me out with your aunt maybe all afternoon, and that will take extra energy since you don’t like her. A good number here is walnut pudding with cinnamon.”

  She conceded that it was a good idea and I passed it on to the waiter. While our table was being cleared and we were waiting for the pudding and coffee, we continued on the subject of Phoebe Gunther, with no revelations coming out of it, startling or otherwise. I introduced the detail of the missing tenth cylinder, and Nina snorted at the suggestion that Phoebe might have had concealed relations with some NIA individual and had ditched the cylinder because it implicated him or might have. I gave her that and asked how about the possibility that the cylinder implicated Solomon Dexter or Alger Kates. What was wrong with that?

  With her spoon in her hand ready to start on the pudding, she shook her head positively. She said it was loony. To suppose that Dexter would have done anything to hurt Boone, thereby hurting the BPR also, was absurd. “Besides, he was in Washington. He didn’t get to New York until late that night, when he was sent for. As for Mr. Kates, good heavens, look at him! He’s just an adding machine!”

  “He is in a pig’s eye. He’s sinister.”

  She gasped. “Alger Kates sinister?”

  “Anyhow, mysterious. Down at Wolfe’s house that evening Erskine accused him of killing your uncle because he wanted to marry you and your uncle opposed it, and Kates let it stand that he did want to marry you, along with two hundred other lovesick BPR’s, and then later that same evening I learn that he already has a wife who is at present in Florida. A married adding machine does not covet another lovely maiden.”

  “Puh. He was merely being gallant or polite.”

  “An adding machine is not gallant. Another thing, where does the dough come from to send his wife to Florida at the present rates and keep her there until the end of March?”

  “Really.” Nina stopped eating pudding. “No matter what Nero Wolfe charges the NIA, you’re certainly trying your best to earn it! You’d just love to clear them completely—and it looks as if you don’t care how you do it! Perhaps Mrs. Kates won some money at a church bingo. You ought to check on that!”

  I grinned at her. “When your face is flushed like that it makes me feel like refusing to take any part of my salary in NIA money. Some day I’ll tell you how wrong you are to suspect us of wanting to frame one of your heroes like Dexter or Kates.” I glanced at my wrist. “You just have time to finish your cigarette and coffee.—What is it, Carlos?”

  “Telephone, Mr. Goodwin. The middle booth.”

  I had a notion to tell him to say I had gone, because I had a natural suspicion that it was the creature I had bribed with three nickels merely wanting to know how much longer we were going to be in there, but I thought better of it and excused myself, since there was one other person who knew where I was.

  It proved to be the one other person.

  “Goodwin talking.”

  “Archie. Get down here at once.”

  “What for?”

  “Without delay!”

  “But listen. We’re just leaving, to see Mrs. Boone. I’ve got her to agree to see me. I’ll put her through a—”

  “I said get down here.”

  There was no use arguing. He sounded as if six tigers were crouching before him, lashing their tails, ready to spring. I went back to the table and told Nina that our afternoon was ruined.

  Chapter 28

  Having delivered Nina at the Waldorf entrance, with my pet bribee on our tail in a taxi, and having crowded the lights and the congested traffic down and across to West Thirty-fifth Street, I was relieved to see, as I reached my destination and braked to a stop at the curb, that the house wasn’t on fire. There were only two foreign items visible: a police car parked smack in front of the address, and a man on the stoop. He was seated on the top step, hunched over, looking gloomy and obstinate.

  This one I knew by name, one Quayle. He was on his feet by the time I had mounted the steps, and accosted me with what was meant to be cordiality.

  “Hello, Goodwin! This is a piece of luck. Don’t anybody ever answer the bell here when you’re away? I’ll just go in with you.”

  “Unexpected pleasure,” I told him, and used my key, turned the knob, and pushed. The door opened two inches and stopped. The chain bolt was on, as it often was during my absence. My finger went to the button and executed my private ring. In a minute Fritz’s step came down the hall and he spoke to me through the crack:

  “Archie, that’s a policeman. Mr. Wolfe doesn’t—”

  “Of course he doesn’t. Take off the bolt. Then keep your eye on us. This officer eagerly performing his duty might lose his balance and fall down the stoop, and I may need you as a witness that I didn’t push him. He must be twice my age.”

  “You witty son of a bitch,” Quayle said sadly, and sat down on the step again. I entered, marched down the hall to the office, and saw Wolfe there alone behind his desk, sitting up straight as a ramrod, his lips pressed together in a thin straight line, his eyes wide open, his hands resting on the desk before him with the fingers curved ready for a throat.

  His eyes darted at me. “What the devil took you so long?”

  “Now just a minute,” I soothed him. “Aware that you were having a fit, I made it as fast as I could in the traffic. Is it a pinch?”

  “It is insufferable. Who is Inspector Ash?”

  “Ash? You remember him. He was a captain under Cramer from 1938 to ’43. Now in charge of Homicide in Queens. Tall guy, face all bones, plastic eyes, very incorruptible and no sense of humor. Why, what has he done?”

  “Is the car in good condition?”

  “Certainly. Why?”

  “I want you to drive me to Police Headquarters.”

  “My God.” So it was something not only serious, but drastic. Leaving the house, getting in the car, incurring all the outdoor risks, visiting a policeman; and besides all that, which was unheard of, almost certainly standing up the orchids for the regular four o’clock date. I dropped onto a chair, speechless, and gawked at him.

  “Luckily,” Wolfe said, “when that man arrived the door was bolted. He told Fritz that he had come to take me to see Inspector Ash. When Fritz gave him the proper reply he displayed a warrant for me as a material witness regarding the murder of Miss Gunther. He pushed the warrant in through the crack in the door and Fritz pushed it out again and closed the door, and, through the glass panel, saw him walk toward the corner, presumably to telephone, since he left his car there in front of my house.”

  “That alone,” I remarked, “leaving his car in front of your house, shows the kind of man he is. It’s not even his car. It belongs to the city.”

  Wolfe didn’t even hear me. “I called Inspector Cramer’s office and was told he was not availabl
e. I finally succeeded in reaching some person who spoke in behalf of Inspector Ash, and was told that the man they had sent here had reported by telephone, and that unless I admitted him, accepted service of the warrant, and went with him, a search warrant would be sent without delay. I then, with great difficulty, got to the Police Commissioner. He has no guts. He tried to be evasive. He made what he called a concession, stating that I could come to his office instead of Inspector Ash’s. I told him that only by using physical force could I be transported in any vehicle not driven by you, and he said they would wait for me until half-past three but no longer. An ultimatum with a time limit. He also said that Mr. Cramer has been removed from the Boone-Gunther case and relieved of his command and has been replaced by Inspector Ash. That’s the situation. It is unacceptable.”

  I was staring incredulously. “Cramer got the boot?”

  “So Mr. What’s-his-name said.”

  “Who, Hombert? The Commissioner?”

  “Yes. Confound it, must I repeat the whole thing for you?”

  “For God’s sake, don’t. Try to relax. I’ll be damned. They got Cramer.” I looked at the clock. “It’s five past three, and that ultimatum has probably got narrow margins. You hold it a minute and try to think of something pleasant.”

  I went to the front and pulled the curtain aside for a look through the glass, and saw that Quayle had acquired a colleague. The pair were sitting on the stoop with their backs to me. I opened the door and inquired affably:

  “What’s the program now?”

  Quayle twisted around. “We’ve got another paper. Which we’ll show when the time comes. The kind of law that opens all doors from the mightiest to the humblest.”

  “To be shown when? Three-thirty?”

  “Go suck a pickle.”

  “Aw, tell him,” the colleague growled. “What do you expect to get out of it, fame?”

  “He’s witty,” Quayle said petulantly. He twisted back to me. “At three-thirty we phone in again for the word.”