A Family Affair nwo-46

by Rex Stout

  NW: I’m taking Mrs. B. home. Probably not back for lunch.

  AG I put it under a paperweight on his desk, went to the hall with Mrs. Bassett’s mink or sable or sea otter and held it for her, put my coat on, and let us out. Her Rolls-Royce was there at the curb, but I didn’t go and open the door for her because as we descended to the sidewalk the chauffeur climbed out and had it open by the time she was down. When he got back in and it rolled, I walked to Ninth Avenue and turned uptown.

  It was ten minutes past noon when I pushed the button in the vestibule at West Fifty-fourth Street. Three minutes passed with no response, and I shook my head. They might have cleared out. It had been four days since the daughter had been killed; the old man might be in a hospital. They might even have gone back to France. But then her voice came, exactly as before: “Who ees eet?”

  “Archie Goodwin, from Nero Wolfe. I don’t want to bother Mr. Ducos, and anyway” I don’t speak French, as you know. I’d like to come up, if you can spare a few minutes.”

  “What for? I don’t know anything.”

  “Maybe not, but Nero Wolfe and I would appreciate it Sill voo play.”

  “You don’t speak French.”

  “I know I don’t, but everybody knows those three words, even dummies like me. Please?”

  “Well… for Nero Wolfe…”

  The click sounded, and I pushed the door and was in, and the elevator was there with the door open. Upstairs, the door of the apartment was open too and she was there on the sill, white apron and cap exactly as before. She looked even shorter and dumpier, and the crease in the double chin looked deeper. From the way she stood and the expression on her face, it was obvious I wasn’t going to be invited in, so I had to try throwing a punch, hoping it would land.

  “I suppose I call you Marie,” I said.

  She nodded. “That’s my name.”

  You’ll have to supply her accent; I’m not going to try to spell it.

  “Well, Marie, you probably prefer straight talk, so I’ll just say that I know you heard Miss Ducos and me talk that evening. You must have. You told the police about the slip of paper, and other things. Or you may have heard Mr. Ducos and Nero Wolfe talking. I’m not saying you listened when you shouldn’t, I’m just saying that you heard. I don’t know if you heard Miss Ducos tell me that you didn’t like her. Did you?”

  “I don’t listen when I shouldn’t listen.”

  “I didn’t say you do. But you must know she didn’t like you. A woman knows when another woman doesn’t like her.”

  “She’s dead, but it won’t hurt her to say I didn’t like her. I didn’t hate her, I had no reason to hate her. And she’s dead. You didn’t come just to tell me I didn’t like her.”

  “No. It’s warm in here.”

  I took my coat off. “I came because we think there’s something here that will help us find the man who killed Pierre. Probably the slip of paper, but it could be something else. That’s what I was looking for in Pierre’s room. But I didn’t find it, and maybe it wasn’t there, maybe it was in her room, and of course she knew it was. Maybe it’s still there, and that’s what I came for, to see if I can find it.”

  No visible reaction. She just said. The police looked in her room.”

  “Of course, naturally they would, but they probably weren’t very thorough. Anyway, they didn’t find it, so I would like to try. Nero Wolfe could have come to ask Mr. Ducos to let me look, but he didn’t want to bother him. You can stay with me to see that I don’t do anything I shouldn’t do.”

  She was shaking her head. “No.”

  She repeated it “No.”

  There are a thousand ways of saying no and I had heard a lot of them. Sometimes it’s more the eyes than the tone of voice that tells you what kind of a no it is. Her little dark eyes, nearly black, were a little too close together, and they blinked a little too often. It was ten to one that I couldn’t sell her, but even money, maybe better, that I could buy her. “Look, Marie,” I said, “you know a man gave Pierre a hundred dollars for that slip of paper.”

  “No. A hundred dollars? I don’t know that.”

  “Well, he did. But Pierre might have made a copy of it. And Lucile might have found it and made a copy too.”

  My hand went to my pocket and came out with the little roll I had taken from the cash box. I draped my coat over my arm to have both hands and peeled off five of the ten twenties and returned them to my pocket. “All right,” I said, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars to give me a chance to find Lucile’s copy or to find something else that may be in her room. It may take five minutes or it may take five hours. Here, take it.”

  Her eyes said she would, but her hands didn’t move. The white apron had two little pockets, and I folded the bills into a little wad and stuck it in her left pocket, and said, “If you don’t want to stay with me, you can search me before I leave.”

  “Only her room,” she said.

  “Right,” I said, and she backed up, and I entered. She turned, and I followed her down the hall to Lucile’s room. She entered but went in only a couple of steps, and I crossed to a chair by a window and put my coat on it.

  “I’m not going to stay,” she said “I have things to do, and you’re Archie Goodwin, and I told you, I know about you and Nero Wolfe from him. Do you want a cup of coffee.?”

  I said no thanks, and she left.

  If it was a slip of paper, the most likely place was the books, but after seeing me doing her father’s room she might have put it somewhere else. There was a desk with drawers by the right wall, and I went and opened the top drawer. It was locked, but the key was sticking in the lock, probably left there by a city employee. It held an assortment-several kinds of notepaper and envelopes, stubs of bills, presumably paid bills, pencils and pens, a bunch of snapshots with a rubber band around them. Five minutes was enough for that. The second drawer was full of letters in envelopes addressed to Miss Lucile Ducos, various sizes and shapes and colors. A collection of letters is always a problem. If you don’t read them, the feeling that you may have missed a bus nags you, and if you do read them it’s a hundred to one that there won’t be a damn thing you can use. I was taking one out of the envelope just for a look when a bell rang somewhere, not in that room. Not the telephone, probably the doorbell, and I made a face. It probably wasn’t a Homicide man, since the murder was four days old, but it could be, and I cocked my ear and heard Marie’s voice, so faint I didn’t get the words. The voice stopped, and there were footsteps.

  She appeared at the door. “A man down there says his name is Sol Panzaire and Nero Wolfe sent him. He wants to come up.”

  “Did you tell him I’m here?”

  “Yes.”

  “You told him my name?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess Nero Wolfe sent him to help me.”

  I got the rest of the bills from my pocket and crossed over to her. “He does that sometimes without telling me.”

  Her apron pocket was empty, and I folded one of the twenties and reached to put it in. “Saul Panzer is a good man, Nero Wolfe trusts him. With him to help, it won’t take so long.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “We don’t like it either, Marie, but we want to find the man that killed Pierre.”

  She turned and went. I started to follow her, decided not to, went back to the desk, listened for the sound of the elevator, and didn’t hear it until it stopped on that floor. I opened the drawer and was taking a letter from an envelope when there were footsteps and then Saul’s voice. “Any luck, Archie?”

  He would. Saving his surprise until there were no other ears to hear it. “Don’t push,” I told him. “I just got started.”

  I walked to the door for a look in the hall. Empty. I shut the door. He was putting his coat on the chair with mine. “So that’s where he was yesterday afternoon,” I said. “He went to see you. I’ll try not to get in your way, but I’m not going to leave.”

  We were
face to face, eye to eye. “You’re on,” he said.

  “You’re damn right I’m on. I’m on my own.”

  He laughed. Not with his mouth, no noise; he laughed with bis eyes, and by shaking his head. And he didn’t stop. “Laugh your goddam head off,” I said, “but don’t get in my way. I’m busy.”

  I went to the desk and reached to the drawer for a letter, and my hand was trembling. Saul’s voice came from behind.

  “Archie, this is the first time I ever knew you to miss one completely. I supposed you had it figured and was enjoying it. You actually didn’t know that he thought you’d kill him? That he thinks he knows you would?”

  The letter dropped from my hand, and I guess my mouth dropped open as I turned. “Balls,” I said.

  “But he does. He says you wouldn’t do it with a gun or a club, just with your hands. You’d hit him so hard you’d break his neck, or you’d throw him so hard and so far he’d break his neck when he landed. I didn’t try to argue him out of it, because he knew it.”

  “I thought he knew me. And you think it’s funny.”

  “I know it’s funny. He does know you. I thought you knew him. It’s just that he wants to kill him himself. So do I. So do you.”

  “Were you on?”

  “Wot till he came yesterday, but I should have been. A lot of things-Pierre not telling you, that room at Rusterman’s, her asking Lily Rowan about you, him and women, him offering to work for nothing, him wanting to take Lucile Ducos-certainly should have been on.”

  He tapped his skull with his knuckles. “Empty.”

  “Mine too, until last night. Have you got anything?”

  “Nothing solid. I only started to look yesterday at half past five. I’ve got an idea how he might have met her. As you know, he often does jobs for Del Bascom, and Bascom took on something for Bassett, for NATELEC, about a year ago. At noon I decided to take a look here, and here you are ahead of me.”

  “Not much ahead, I just started. Okay. I came for myself, and you came for him. Who’s in charge?”

  He grinned. “It’s a temptation, sure it is, but I’m not like Oscar Wilde, I can resist it. Where do you want me to start?”

  I was returning the grin. Saul doesn’t often drag in such facts as that he knows about people like Oscar Wilde and I don’t. “You might try this desk,” I said I’ve only done the top drawer. There’s a lot of books, and I’ll start on them.”

  Two hours later, when Mane came, we had covered a lot of ground at least Saul had, and had found exactly nothing. He had done the desk, chairs, closet, bed, floor, dresser, pictures on the wall and a stack of magazines, and had really done them. Flipping through the hundred and some books had taken me half an hour, and then I had settled down to it starting over and turning the pages one by one, making sure not to skip. Saul was having another go at shoes from the closet, examining the insides, when the door opened and Marie was there with a loaded tray. She crossed to the table and put the tray down and said, “I went out for the beer. We only drink mineral water. I hope you like fromage de cochon. Monsieur Ducos makes it himself. His chair won’t go in the kitchen, and I put things in the hall for him.”

  I had joined her. “Thank you very much,” I said. “I admit I’m hungry. Thank you.”

  My hand came out of my pocket, but she showed me a palm. “No,” she said, “you are guests”-and walked out.

  There was a plate with a dozen slices of something, a long, slender loaf of bread, and the beer. Of course Pierre had told her that Nero Wolfe liked beer, and we were from Nero Wolfe, so she went out for beer. I would remember to tell him. We moved the table over by the bed, and I sat on the bed and Saul on the chair. There was no bread knife. Of course; you yank it off. No butter. The slices, fromage de cochon, which I looked up a week later, was head cheese, and I hope Fritz doesn’t read this, because I’m going to state a fact: it was better than his. We agreed that it was the best head cheese we had ever tasted, and the bread was good enough to go with it. I told Saul I was glad we were getting something for the six double sawbucks I had given her.

  Half an hour later it was looking as though that was all we were going to get. We looked at each other, and Saul said, “I skipped something. I didn’t look close enough at the inside of the covers. Did you?”

  I said maybe not, and we each took a book, he from the top shelf and I from the middle one, and the third book I took, there it was. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. The inside of the back cover was pasted-on paper like all books, but it bulged a little in the middle and at the outside edge the edge of another paper showed, about a sixty-fourth of an inch. I got out my knife and opened the small thin blade Saul put his book back on the shelf and said, “Easy does it,” and I didn’t even glance at him, which showed the condition we were in. We never say things like that to each other.

  I went easy all right. It took a good five minutes to make sure that it was glued down tight except for a small part in the-middle, a rectangle about one inch by an inch and a half, where the little bulge was. Then came the delicate part, getting under to the edge of whatever made the bulge. That took another five minutes, but once I had the edge it was simple. I slit along to the comer, then across the end and down the other side, and across the other end. And there it was. A piece of thin paper glued to the paper that had bulged, with writing on it in ink. I am looking at it right now, and the other day I took a picture of it with my best camera to reproduce here: I handed it to Saul, and he took a look and handed it back and said, “She wrote it.”

  “Sure. The one Pierre found on the tray, Orrie gave him a hundred dollars for it. That was four days after the dinner, so Pierre had it four days. I said a week ago that she found it and made a copy of it, and she would try to put the squeeze on him and would get killed. ESP.”

  I got out my card case and slipped the piece of paper in under cellophane.

  I stood up. “Have you got a program? I have. I’m not going to report in person. I’m going to the nearest phone booth.”

  “I don’t suppose I could listen in?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  We took a look around. Everything was in order except the table, which was still by the bed, and we put it back where it belonged. Saul took our coats and the book, and I took the tray. We found Marie in the kitchen, which was about one-fourth the size of Wolfe’s. I told her the bread and wonderful head cheese had saved our lives, that we hadn’t found what we had hoped to find, and that we were taking just one thing, a book that we wanted to have a good look at because it might tell us something. She wouldn’t let me pay for the book, because Miss Ducos was dead and they didn’t want it. She declined my offer to let her go through our pockets and came to the door to let us out. All in all, we had got my money’s worth.

  Out on the sidewalk I told Saul, “I said the nearest phone booth, but if you listen in it will be crowded. How about your place?”

  He said fine, and that his car was parked in the lot near Tenth Avenue, and we headed west. He doesn’t like to talk when he’s driving any more than I do, but he’ll listen, and I told him about the uninvited guest who had come that morning, and he said he wished he had been there, he would have liked to have a look at her.

  We left the car in the garage on Thirty-ninth Street where he keeps it and walked a couple of blocks. He lives alone on the top floor of a remodeled house on Thirty-eighth Street between Lexington and Third. The living room is big, lighted with two floor lamps and two table lamps. One wall had windows, one was solid with books, and the other two had doors to the closet and hall, and pictures, and shelves that were cluttered with everything from chunks of minerals to walrus tusks. In the far corner was a grand piano. The telephone was on a desk between windows. He was the only operative in New York who asked and got twenty dollars an hour that year, and he had uses for it.

  When I sat at the desk and started to dial, he left for the bedroom, where there’s an extension. It was a quarter past four, so Wolfe would be down f
rom the plant rooms. Fritz might answer, or he might; it depended on what he was doing.

  “Yes?”

  Him.

  “Me. I have a detailed report. I’m with Saul at his place. I didn’t take Mrs. Bassett home. At “a quarter past twelve I started to search the room of Lucile Ducos. At half past, Saul came and offered to help me. Marie Garrou brought us a plate of marvelous head cheese, for which I paid her a hundred and twenty dollars. I mention that so you won’t have to ask if I have eaten. At half past three we found a slip of paper which Lucile had hidden in a book, on which she had written Orrie’s name and address. I knew it was Orrie last night when you mentioned what Hahn and Igoe had said about Bassett’s obsession on his wife. Saul says you thought I would kill him-that you knew I would. Nuts. You may be a genius, but nuts. I once looked genius up in that book of quotations. Somebody said that all geniuses have got a touch of madness. Apparently yours-” “Seneca.”

  “Apparently your touch of madness picks on me. That will have to be discussed someday. Now there is a problem, and finding that slip of paper in one of her books-it was The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, and I’ve got it-that settles it, and Saul won’t have to do any more digging. As I said, I’m at his place. Fred will be expecting word from you; he won’t be working. We’re going to have him come, and we’ll decide what to do, us three. I have an idea, but we’ll discuss it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re out of it. You told us your emotions had taken over on Nixon and Watergate, and they have certainly taken over on this-what you thought you knew about me. So. I won’t hang up; I’ll listen if you want to talk.”

  He hung up.

  I went to the piano and spread my fingers to hit a chord that shows you’ve decided something, according to Lily. When I turned, Saul was standing there. He didn’t say anything, just stood with his brows raised.

  I spoke. “I was just following instructions. He instructed us to ignore his decisions and instructions.”

  “That’s a funny sentence.”

  “I feel funny.”

  “So do I. Do you want to call Fred, or shall I?”