by Rex Stout
“But that … that’s ridiculous …”
“Maybe, but it remains a question to be answered. Do you want to pay me for catching the murderer, no matter who it is?”
She gazed at him, and said finally, “Yes. Whoever killed Uncle Boyd—yes, I do.”
“You won’t go back on that?”
“No.”
“Good for you. I believe you. I’ll try the job for you. Now I want to ask you some questions, but it is possible that your reply to the first one will make others unnecessary. When did you last see Mr. McNair’s red leather box?”
“His what?” She frowned. “Red leather box?”
“That’s it.”
“Never. I never did see it. I didn’t know he had one.”
“Indeed. —You, sir, are you answering questions?”
Lew Frost said, “I guess I am. Sure. But not about a red leather box. I’ve never seen it.”
Wolfe sighed. “Then I’m afraid we’ll have to go on. I may as well tell you, Miss Frost, that Mr. McNair foresaw—at least, feared—what was waiting for him. While you were here yesterday he was at his lawyer’s executing his will. He left his property to his sister Isabel, who lives in Scotland. He named me executor of his estate, and bequeathed me his red leather box and its contents. He called here to ask me to accept the trust and the legacy.”
“He named you executor?” Llewellyn was gazing at him incredulously. “Why, he didn’t know you. Day before yesterday he didn’t even want to talk to you.…”
“Just so. That shows the extent of his desperation. But it is evident that the red box holds the secret of his death. As a matter of fact, Miss Frost, I was glad to see you here today. I hoped for something from you—a description of the box, if nothing more.”
She shook her head. “I never saw it. I didn’t know … but I don’t understand … if he wanted you to have it, why didn’t he tell you yesterday …”
“He intended to. He didn’t get that far. His last words—his last futile struggle against his fate—were an effort to tell me where the red box is. I should inform you: Inspector Cramer has a copy of the will, and at this moment scores of police are searching for the box, so if you or your cousin can give me any hint there is no time to lose. It is desirable for me to get the box first. Not to protect the murderer, but I have my own way of doing things—and the police have no client but the electric chair.”
Llewellyn said, “But you say he left it to you, it’s your property …”
“Murder evidence is no one’s property, once the law touches it. No, if Mr. Cramer finds it, the best we can hope for is the role of privileged spectator. So turn your minds back, both of you. Look back at the days, weeks, months, years. Resurrect, if you can, some remark of Mr. McNair’s, some forgotten gesture, perhaps of irritation or embarrassment at being interrupted, perhaps the hurried closing of a drawer, or the unintentional disclosure of a hiding-place. A remark by someone else who may have had knowledge of it. Some action of Mr. McNair’s, unique or habitual, at the time unexplained …”
Llewellyn was slowly shaking his head. Helen said, “Nothing. I’ll try to think, but I’m sure there’s nothing I can remember like that.”
“That’s too bad. Keep trying. Of course the police are ransacking his apartment and his place of business. Had he preempted any other spot of earth or water? A garage, a boat, a place in the country?”
Llewellyn was looking at his cousin with inquiring brows. She nodded. “Yes. Glennanne. A little cottage with a few acres of land up near Brewster.”
“Glennanne?”
“Yes. His wife’s name was Anne and his daughter’s was Glenna.”
“Did he own it?”
“Yes. He bought it about six years ago.”
“What and where is Brewster?”
“It’s a little village about fifty miles north of New York.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe sat up. “Archie. Get Saul, Orrie, Johnny and Fred here immediately. If they cannot all be prompt, send the first two to search Glennanne, and let the others join them when they come. The cottage, first, swiftly and thoroughly, then the grounds. Is there a garden, Miss Frost? Tools?”
She nodded. “He … he grew some flowers.”
“Good. They can take the sedan. Get extra things for digging if they need them, and they should have lights to continue after dark. The cottage is most likely—a hole in the wall, a loose floor-board. Get them. Wait. First your notebook; take this and type it on a letterhead:
I hereby authorize the bearer, Saul Panzer, to take complete charge of the house and grounds of Glennanne, property of Boyden McNair, deceased, and to undertake certain activities there in accordance with my instructions.
“Leave room for my signature above the designation, ‘Executor of the estate of Boyden McNair.’ I have not yet qualified, but we can tie the red tape later.” He nodded me off. “Now, Miss Frost, perhaps you can tell me—”
I moved to the phone and started dialing. I got Saul and Orrie right off the bat, and they said they would come pronto. Fred Durkin was out, but his wife said she knew where to get hold of him and would have him call in ten minutes. Johnny Keems, when he wasn’t on a job for us, had formed the habit of phoning every day at nine to give me his program, and had told me that morning that he was still on a watchdog assignment for Del Pritchard, so I tried that office. They had Johnny booked for the day, but before I finished typing the authorization for Saul, Fred called, so I had three anyhow.
Saul Panzer arrived first and Wolfe had Fritz show him into the office. He came in with his hat in his hand, shot me a wink, asked Wolfe how he did, got himself an everlasting blueprint of the two Frosts in one quick glance, and pointed his big nose inquiringly at Wolfe.
Wolfe gave him the dope and told him what he was supposed to find. Helen Frost told him how to get to Glennanne from the village of Brewster. I handed him the signed authorization and forty bucks for expenses, and he pulled out his old brown wallet and deposited them in it with care. Wolfe told him to get the car from the garage and wait in front to pick up Fred and Orrie as they arrived.
Saul nodded. “Yes, sir. If I find the box, do I leave Fred or Orrie at the place when I come away?”
“Yes. Until notified. Fred.”
“If any strangers offer to help me look, do I let them?”
Wolfe frowned. “I was about to mention that. Surely there can be no objection if we show a preference for law and order. With all courtesy, you can ask to see a search warrant.”
“Is there something hot in the box?” Saul blushed. “I mean, stolen property?”
“No. It is legally mine. Defend it.”
“Right.” Saul went. I reflected that if he ever got his mitts on the box I wouldn’t like to be the guy to try to take it away from him, small as he was. He didn’t think any more of Nero Wolfe than I do of my patrician nose and big brown intelligent eyes.
Wolfe had pushed the button for Fritz, the long push, not the two shorts for beer. Fritz came, and stood.
Wolfe frowned at him. “Can you stretch lunch for us? Two guests?”
“No,” Llewellyn broke in, “really—we’ll have to get back—I promised Dad and Aunt Callie—”
“You can phone them. I would advise Miss Frost to stay. At any moment we may hear that the box has been found, and that would mean a crisis. And to provide against the possibility that it will not be found, I shall need a great deal of information. Miss Frost?”
She nodded. “I’ll stay. I’m not hungry. I’ll stay. You’ll stay with me, Lew?”
He grumbled something at her, but stayed put. Wolfe told Fritz:
“The fricandeau should be ample. Add lettuce to the salad if the endive is short, and of course increase the oil. Chill a bottle of the ’28 Marcobrunner. As soon as you are ready.” He wiggled Fritz away with a finger, and settled back in his chair. “Now, Miss Frost. We are engaged in a joint enterprise. I need facts. I am going to ask you a lot of foolish questions. If one of them tur
ns out to be wise or clever you will not know it, but let us hope that I will. Please do not waste time in expostulation. If I ask you whether your mother has recently sent you to the corner druggist for potassium cyanide tablets, just say no, and listen to the next one. I once solved a difficult case by learning from a young woman, after questioning her for five hours, that she had been handed a newspaper with a piece cut out. Your inalienable rights of privacy are temporarily suspended. Is that understood?”
“Yes.” She looked straight at him. “I don’t care. Of course I know you’re clever, I want you to be. I know how easily you caught me in a lie Tuesday morning. But you ought to know … you can’t catch me in one now, because I haven’t anything to lie about. I don’t see how anything I know can help you …”
“Possibly it can’t. We can only try. Let us first straighten out the present a little, and work back. I should inform you: Mr. McNair did tell me a few things yesterday before he was interrupted. I have a little background to start with. Now—for instance—what did Mr. Gebert mean yesterday when he said you were almost his fiancée?”
She compressed her lips, but then spoke right to it: “He didn’t mean anything, really. He has—several times he has asked me to marry him.”
“Have you encouraged him?”
“No.”
“Has anyone?”
“Why … who could?”
“Lots of people. Your maid, the pastor of his church, a member of your family—has anyone?”
She said, after a pause, “No.”
“You said you had nothing to lie about.”
“But I—” She stopped, and tried to smile at him. It was then that I began to think she was a pretty good kid, when I saw her try to smile to show that she wasn’t meaning to cheat on him. She went on, “This is so very personal … I don’t see how …”
Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. “We are proceeding on this theory, that in any event whatever, we wish to discover the murderer of Mr. McNair. Even—merely for instance—if it should mean dragging your mother into a courtroom to testify against someone she likes. If that is our aim, you must leave the method of pursuit to me; and I beg you, don’t balk and shy at every little pebble. Who encouraged Mr. Gebert?”
“I won’t do it again,” she promised. “No one really encouraged him. I’ve known him all my life, and mother knew him before I was born. Mother and father knew him. He has always been … attentive, and amusing, and in some ways he is interesting and I like him. In other ways I dislike him extremely. Mother has told me I should control my dislike on account of his good points, and she said that since he was such an old friend I shouldn’t wound his feelings by cutting him off, that it wouldn’t hurt to let him think he was still in the field as long as I hadn’t decided.”
“You agreed to that?”
“Well, I … I didn’t fight it. My mother is very persuasive.”
“What was the attitude of your uncle? Mr. Dudley Frost. The trustee of your property.”
“Oh, I never discussed things like that with him. But I know what it would have been. He didn’t like Perren.”
“And Mr. McNair?”
“He disliked Perren more than I did. Outwardly they were friends, but … anyway, Uncle Boyd wasn’t two-faced. Shall I tell you …”
“By all means.”
“Well, one day about a year ago Uncle Boyd sent for me to go upstairs to his office, and when I went in Perren was there. Uncle Boyd was standing up and looking white and determined. I asked him what was the matter, and he said he only wanted to tell me, in Perrens’s presence, that any influence his friendship and affection might have on me was unalterably opposed to my marriage with Perren. He said it very … formally, and that wasn’t like him. He didn’t ask me to promise or anything. He just said that and then told me to go.”
“And in spite of that, Mr. Gebert has persisted with his courtship.”
“Of course he has. Why wouldn’t he? Lots of men have. I’m so rich it’s worth quite an effort.”
“Dear me.” Wolfe’s eyes flickered open at her and half shut again. “As cynical as that about it? But a brave cynicism which is of course proper. Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. What is Mr. Gebert’s profession?”
“He hasn’t any. That’s one of the things I don’t like about him. He doesn’t do anything.”
“Has he an income?”
“I don’t know. Really, I don’t know a thing about it. I suppose he has … I’ve heard him make vague remarks. He lives at the Chesebrough, and he drives a car.”
“I know. Mr. Goodwin informed me he drove it here yesterday. At all events, a man of courage. You knew him in Europe; what did he do there?”
“No more than here, as far as I remember—of course I was young then. He was wounded in the war, and afterwards came to visit us in Spain—that is, my mother, I was only two years old—and he went to Egypt with us a little later, but when we went on to the Orient he went back—”
“One moment, please.” Wolfe was frowning. “Let us tidy up the chronology. There seems to have been quite a party in Spain; almost Mr. McNair’s last words were that he had gone to Spain with his baby daughter. We’ll start when your life started. You were born, you told me yesterday, in Paris—on May 7th, 1915. Your father was already in the war, as a member of the British Aviation Corps, and he was killed when you were a few months old. When did your mother take you to Spain?”
“Early in 1916. She was afraid to stay in Paris, on account of the war. We went first to Barcelona and then to Cartagena. A little later Uncle Boyd and Glenna came down and joined us there. He had no money and his health was bad, and mother … helped him. I think Perren came, not long after, partly because Uncle Boyd was there—they had both been friends of my father’s. Then in 1917 Glenna died, and soon after that Uncle Boyd went back to Scotland, and mother took me to Egypt because they were afraid of a revolution or something in Spain, and Perren went with us.”
“Good. I own a house in Egypt which I haven’t seen for twenty years. It has Rhages and Veramine tiles on the doorway. How long were you in Egypt?”
“About two years. In 1919, when I was four years old—of course mother has told me all this—three English people were killed in a riot in Cairo, and mother decided to leave. Perren went back to France. Mother and I went to Bombay, and later to Bali and Japan and Hawaii. My uncle, who was the trustee of my property, kept insisting that I should have an American education, and finally, in 1924—I was nine years old then—we left Hawaii and came to New York. It was from that time on, really, that I knew Uncle Boyd, because of course I didn’t remember him from Spain, since I had been only two years old.”
“He had his business in New York when you got here?”
“No. He has told me—he started designing for Wilmerding in London and was very successful and became a partner, and then he decided New York was better and came over here in 1925 and went in for himself. Of course he looked mother up first thing, and she was a little help to him on account of the people she knew, but he would have gone to the top anyway because he had great ability. He was very talented. Paris and London were beginning to copy him. You would never have thought, just being with him, talking with him … you would never have thought …”
She faltered, and stopped. Wolfe began to murmur something at her to steady her, but an interruption saved him the trouble. Fritz appeared to announce lunch. Wolfe pushed back his chair:
“Your coat will be all right here, Miss Frost. Your hat? But permit me to insist, as a favor; to eat with a hat on, except in a railroad station, is barbarous. Thank you. Restaurant? I know nothing of restaurants; short of compulsion, I would not eat in one were Vatel himself the chef.”
Then, after we were seated at the table, when Fritz came to pass the relish platter, Wolfe performed the introduction according to his custom with guests who had not tasted that cooking before:
“Miss
Frost, Mr. Frost, this is Mr. Brenner.”
Also according to custom, there was no shop talk during the meal. Llewellyn was fidgety, but he ate; and the fact appeared to be that our new client was hungry as the devil. Probably she had had no breakfast. Anyway, she gave the fricandeau a play which made Wolfe regard her with open approval. He carried the burden of the conversation, chiefly about Egypt, tiles, the uses of a camel’s double lip, and the theory that England’s colonizing genius was due to her repulsive climate, on account of which Britons with any sense and willpower invariably decided to go somewhere else to work. It was two-thirty when the salad was finished, so we went back to the office and had Fritz serve coffee there.
Helen Frost telephoned her mother. Apparently there was considerable parental protest from the other end of the wire, for Helen sounded first persuasive, then irritated, and finally fairly sassy. During that performance Llewellyn sat and scowled at her, and I couldn’t tell whether the scowl was for her or the opposition. It had no effect on our client either way, for she was sitting at my desk and didn’t see it.
Wolfe started in on her again, resuming the Perren Gebert tune, but for the first half hour or so it was spotty because the telephone kept interrupting. Johnny Keems called to say that he could leave the Pritchard job if we needed him, and I told him that we’d manage to struggle along somehow. Dudley Frost phoned to give his son hell, and Llewellyn took it calmly and announced that his cousin Helen needed him where he was, whereupon she kept a straight face but I smothered a snicker. Next came a ring from Fred Durkin, to say that they had arrived and taken possession of Glennanne, finding no one there, and had begun operations; the phone at the cottage was out of order, so Saul had sent Fred to the village to make that report. A man named Collinger phoned and insisted on speaking to Wolfe, and I listened in and took it down as usual; he was Boyden McNair’s lawyer, and wanted to know if Wolfe could call at his office right away for a conference regarding the will, and of course the bare idea set Wolfe’s digestion back at least ten minutes. It was arranged that Collinger would come to 35th Street the following morning. Then, a little after three o’clock, Inspector Cramer got us, and reported that his army was making uniform progress on all fronts: namely, none. No red box and no information about it; no hide or hair of motive anywhere; nothing among McNair’s papers that could be stretched to imply murder; no line on a buyer of potassium cyanide; no anything.