by Rex Stout
“Always in the same place?”
“Yes.”
“How wide is it?”
“You know, Scotch tape, about that wide.” She held a thumb and fingertip about half an inch apart.
“What color?”
“Brown—or maybe it looks brown because the bottle is.”
“Always the same color?”
“Yes.”
“Then it couldn’t have been very conspicuous.”
“I didn’t say it was conspicuous. It wasn’t.”
“You have good eyesight, of course, at your age.” Wolfe glanced at the clock and turned to me. “When is the next train for Atlantic City?”
“Four-thirty,” I told him.
“Then you have plenty of time. Give Mrs. Shepherd enough to cover all expenses. You will take her and her daughter to the station. Since they do not wish it to be known that they have made this trip, it would be unwise for them to do any telephoning, and of course you will make sure that they board the right train, and that the train actually starts. As you know, I do not trust trains either to start or, once started, to stop.”
“We’re going back,” Mom said, unbelieving but daring to hope.
Chapter 11
THERE WAS ONE LITTLE incident I shouldn’t skip, on the train when I had found their seats for them and was turning to go. I had made no effort to be sociable, since their manner, especially Nancylee’s, had made it plain that if I had stepped into a manhole they wouldn’t even have halted to glance down in. But as I turned to go Mom suddenly reached up to pat me on the shoulder. Apparently the pat I had given her at one of her darkest moments had been noticed after all, or maybe it was because I had got them Pullman seats. I grinned at her, but didn’t risk offering to shake hands in farewell. I ride my luck only so far.
Naturally another party was indicated, but I didn’t realize how urgent it was until I got back to the office and found a note, on a sheet from Wolfe’s memo pad, waiting for me under a paperweight on my desk—he being, as per schedule, up in the plant rooms. The note said:
AG—
Have all seven of them here at six o’clock.
Just like snapping your fingers. I scowled at the note. Why couldn’t it be after dinner, allowing more time both to get them and to work on them? Not to mention that I already had a fairly good production record for the day, with the 11:00 A.M. delivery I had made. My watch said ten to five. I swallowed an impulse to mount to the plant rooms and give him an argument, and reached for the phone.
I ran into various difficulties, including resistance to a summons on such short notice, with which I was in complete sympathy. Bill Meadows balked good, saying that he had already told Wolfe everything he knew, including the time he had thrown a baseball through a windowpane, and I had to put pressure on him with menacing hints. Madeline Fraser and Deborah Koppel were reluctant but had to admit that Wolfe should either be fired or given all possible help. They agreed to bring Elinor Vance. Nathan Traub, whom I got first, at his office, was the only one who offered no objection, though he commented that he would have to call off an important appointment. The only two I fell down on were Savarese and Strong. The professor had left town for the week end, I supposed to hunt formulas, and Tully Strong just couldn’t be found, though I tried everywhere, including all the sponsors.
Shortly before six I phoned up to Wolfe to report. The best he had for me was a grunt. I remarked that five out of seven, at that hour on a Friday, was nothing to be sneezed at. He replied that seven would have been better.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ve sent Savarese and Strong telegrams signed Al, but what if they don’t get them on time?”
So there were five. Wolfe doesn’t like to be seen, by anyone but Fritz or me, sitting around waiting for people, I imagine on the theory that it’s bad for his prestige, and therefore he didn’t come down to the office until I passed him the word that all five were there. Then he favored us by appearing. He entered, bowed to them, crossed to his chair, and got himself comfortable. It was cozier and more intimate than it had been three days earlier, with the gate-crashers absent.
There was a little conversation. Traub offered some pointed remarks about Wolfe’s refusal to admit reporters for an interview. Ordinarily, with an opening like that, Wolfe counters with a nasty crusher, but now he couldn’t be bothered. He merely waved it away.
“I got you people down here,” he said, perfectly friendly, “for a single purpose, and if you’re not to be late for your dinners we’d better get at it. Tuesday evening I told you that you were all lying to me, but I didn’t know then how barefaced you were about it. Why the devil didn’t you tell me about the piece of tape on Miss Fraser’s bottle?”
They all muffed it badly, even Miss Fraser, with the sole exception of Traub. He alone looked just bewildered.
“Tape?” he asked. “What tape?”
It took the other four an average of three seconds even to begin deciding what to do about their faces.
“Who is going to tell me about it?” Wolfe inquired. “Not all of you at once. Which one?”
“But,” Bill Meadows stammered, “we don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Nonsense.” Wolfe was less friendly. “Don’t waste time on that. Miss Shepherd spent most of the day here and I know all about it.” His eyes stopped on Miss Fraser. “She couldn’t help it, madam. She did quite well for a child, and she surrendered only under the threat of imminent peril to you.”
“What’s this all about?” Traub demanded.
“It’s nothing, Nat,” Miss Fraser assured him. “Nothing of any importance. Just a little … a sort of joke … among us … that you don’t know about…”
“Nothing to it!” Bill Meadows said, a little too loud. “There’s a perfectly simple—”
“Wait, Bill.” Deborah Koppel’s voice held quiet authority. Her gaze was at Wolfe. “Will you tell us exactly what Nancylee said?”
“Certainly,” Wolfe assented. “The bottle served to Miss Fraser on the broadcast is always identified with a strip of Scotch tape. That has been going on for months, nearly a year. The tape is either brown, the color of the bottle, or transparent, is half an inch wide, and encircles the neck of the bottle near the shoulder.”
“Is that all she told you?”
“That’s the main thing. Let’s get that explained. What’s the tape for?”
“Didn’t Nancylee tell you?”
“She said she didn’t know.”
Deborah was frowning. “Why she must know! It’s quite simple. As we told you, when we get to the studio the day of a broadcast Miss Vance takes the bottles from the cabinet and puts them in the refrigerator. But that gives them only half an hour or a little longer to get cold, and Miss Fraser likes hers as cold as possible, so a bottle for her is put in earlier and the tape put on to tell it from the others.”
“Who puts it there and when?”
“Well—that depends. Sometimes one of us puts it there the day before … sometimes it’s one left over from the preceding broadcast…”
“Good heavens,” Wolfe murmured. “I didn’t know you were an imbecile, Miss Koppel.”
“I am not an imbecile, Mr. Wolfe.”
“I’ll have to have more than your word for it. I presume the explanation you have given me was concocted to satisfy the casual curiosity of anyone who might notice the tape on the bottle—and, incidentally, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was offered to Miss Shepherd and after further observation she rejected it. That’s one thing she didn’t tell me. For that purpose the explanation would be adequate—except with Miss Shepherd—but to try it on me! I’ll withdraw the ‘imbecile,’ since I blurted it at you without warning, but I do think you might have managed something a little less flimsy.”
“It may be flimsy,” Bill Meadows put in aggressively, “but it happens to be true.”
“My dear sir.” Wolfe was disgusted. “You too? Then why didn’t it satisfy Miss Shepherd, if it was tried on
her, and why was she sworn to secrecy? Why weren’t all the bottles put in the refrigerator in advance, to get them all cold, instead of just the one for Miss Fraser? There are—”
“Because someone—” Bill stopped short.
“Precisely,” Wolfe agreed with what he had cut off. “Because hundreds of people use that studio between Miss Fraser’s broadcasts, and someone would have taken them from the refrigerator, which isn’t locked. That’s what you were about to say, but didn’t, because you realized there would be the same hazard for one bottle as for eight.” Wolfe shook his head. “No, it’s no good. I’m tired of your lies; I want the truth; and I’ll get it because nothing else can meet the tests I am now equipped to apply. Why is the tape put on the bottle?”
They looked at one another.
“No,” Deborah Koppel said to anybody and everybody.
“What is all this?” Traub demanded peevishly.
No one paid any attention to him.
“Why not,” Wolfe inquired, “try me with the same answer you have given the police?”
No reply.
Elinor Vance spoke, not to Wolfe. “It’s up to you, Miss Fraser. I think we have to tell him.”
“No,” Miss Koppel insisted.
“I don’t see any other way out of it, Debby,” Madeline Fraser declared. “You shouldn’t have told him that silly lie. It wasn’t good enough for him and you know it.” Her gray-green eyes went to Wolfe. “It would be fatal for me, for all of us, if this became known. I don’t suppose you would give me your word to keep it secret?”
“How could I, madam?” Wolfe turned a palm up. “Under the circumstances? But I’ll share it as reluctantly, and as narrowly, as the circumstances will permit.”
“All right. Damn that Cyril Orchard, for making this necessary. The tape on the bottle shows that it is for me. My bottle doesn’t contain Hi-Spot. I can’t drink Hi-Spot.”
“Why not?”
“It gives me indigestion.”
“Good God!” Nathan Traub cried, his smooth low-pitched voice transformed into a squeak.
“I can’t help it, Nat,” Miss Fraser told him firmly, “but it does.”
“And that,” Wolfe demanded, “is your desperate and fatal secret?”
She nodded. “My Lord, could anything be worse? If that got around? If Leonard Lyons got it, for instance? I stuck to it the first few times, but it was no use. I wanted to cut that from the program, serving it, but by that time the Hi-Spot people were crazy about it, especially Anderson and Owen, and of course I couldn’t tell them the truth. I tried faking it, not drinking much, but even a few sips made me sick. It must be an allergy.”
“I congratulate you,” Wolfe said emphatically.
“Good God,” Traub muttered. He pointed a finger at Wolfe. “It is absolutely essential that this get to no one. No one whatever!”
“It’s out now,” Miss Koppel said quietly but tensely. “It’s gone now.”
“So,” Wolfe asked, “you used a substitute?”
“Yes.” Miss Fraser went on: “It was the only way out. We used black coffee. I drink gallons of it anyhow, and I like it either hot or cold. With sugar in it. It looks enough like Hi-Spot, which is dark brown, and of course in the bottle it can’t be seen anyway, and we changed to dark blue glasses so it couldn’t be seen that it didn’t fizz.”
“Who makes the coffee?”
“My cook, in my apartment.”
“Who bottles it?”
“She does—my cook—she puts it in a Hi-Spot bottle, and puts the cap on.”
“When, the day of the broadcast?”
“No, because it would still be hot, or at least warm, so she does it the day before and puts it in the refrigerator.”
“Not at the broadcasting studio?”
“Oh, no, in my kitchen.”
“Does she put the tape on it?”
“No, Miss Vance does that. In the morning she gets it—she always comes to my apartment to go downtown with me—and she puts the tape on it, and takes it to the studio in her bag, and puts it in the refrigerator there. She has to be careful not to let anyone see her do that.”
“I feel better,” Bill Meadows announced abruptly. He had his handkerchief out and was wiping his forehead.
“Why?” Wolfe asked him.
“Because I knew this had to come sooner or later, and I’m glad it was you that got it instead of the cops. It’s been a cockeyed farce, all this digging to find out who had it in for this guy Orchard. Nobody wanted to poison Orchard. The poison was in the coffee and Orchard got it by mistake.”
That finished Traub. A groan came from him, his chin went down, and he sat shaking his head in despair.
Wolfe was frowning. “Are you trying to tell me that the police don’t know that the poisoned bottle held coffee?”
“Oh, sure, they know that.” Bill wanted to help now. “But they’ve kept it under their hats. You notice it hasn’t been in the papers. And none of us has spilled it, you can see why we wouldn’t. They know it was coffee all right, but they think it was meant for Orchard, and it wasn’t, it was meant for Miss Fraser.”
Bill leaned forward and was very earnest. “Damn it, don’t you see what we’re up against? If we tell it and it gets known, God help the program! We’d get hooted off the air. But as long as we don’t tell it, everybody thinks the poison was meant for Orchard, and that’s why I said it was a farce. Well, we didn’t tell, and as far as I’m concerned we never would.”
“How have you explained the coffee to the police?”
“We haven’t explained it. We didn’t know how the poison got in the bottle, did we? Well, we didn’t know how the coffee got there either. What else could we say?”
“Nothing, I suppose since you blackballed the truth. How have you explained the tape?”
“We haven’t explained it.”
“Why not?”
“We haven’t been asked to.”
“Nonsense. Certainly you have.”
“I haven’t.”
“Thanks, Bill.” It was Madeline Fraser, smiling at him. “But there’s no use trying to save any pieces.” She turned to Wolfe. “He’s trying to protect me from—don’t they call it tampering with evidence? You remember that after the doctor came Mr. Strong took the four bottles from the table and started off with them, just a foolish impulse he had, and Mr. Traub and I took them from him and put them back on the table.”
Wolfe nodded.
“Well, that was when I removed the tape from the bottle.”
“I see. Good heavens! It’s a wonder all of you didn’t collectively gather them up, and the glasses, and march to the nearest sink to wash up.” Wolfe went back to Bill. “You said Mr. Orchard got the poisoned coffee by mistake. How did that happen?”
“Traub gave it to him. Traub didn’t—”
Protests came at him from both directions, all of them joining in. Traub even left his chair to make it emphatic.
Bill got a little flushed, but he was stubborn and heedless. “Since we’re telling it,” he insisted, “we’d better tell it all.”
“You’re not sure it was Nat,” Miss Koppel said firmly.
“Certainly I’m sure! You know damn well it was! You know damn well we all saw—all except Lina—that Orchard had her bottle, and of course it was Traub that gave it to him, because Traub was the only one that didn’t know about the tape. Anyhow I saw him!—That’s the way it was, Mr. Wolfe. But when the cops started on us apparently we all had the same idea—I forget who started it—that it would be best not to remember who put the bottle in front of Orchard. So we didn’t. Now that you know about the tape, I do remember, and if the others don’t they ought to.”
“Quit trying to protect me, Bill,” Miss Fraser scolded him. “It was my idea, about not remembering. I started it.”
Again several of them spoke at once. Wolfe showed them a palm:
“Please!—Mr. Traub. Manifestly it doesn’t matter whether you give me a yes or a no, s
ince you alone were not aware that one of the bottles had a distinction; but I ask you pro forma, did you place that bottle before Mr. Orchard?”
“I don’t know,” Traub said belligerently, “and I don’t care. Meadows doesn’t know either.”
“But you did help pass the glasses and bottles around?”
“I’ve told you I did. I thought it was fun.” He threw up both hands. “Fun!”
“There’s one thing,” Madeline Fraser put in, for Wolfe. “Mr. Meadows said that they all saw that Mr. Orchard had my bottle, except me. That’s only partly true. I didn’t notice it at first, but when I lifted the glass to drink and smelled the Hi-Spot I knew someone else had my glass. I went ahead and faked the drinking, and as I went on with the script I saw that the bottle with the tape on it was a little nearer to him than to me—as you know, he sat across from me. I had to decide quick what to do—not me with the Hi-Spot, but him with the coffee. I was afraid he would blurt out that it tasted like coffee, especially since he had taken two big gulps. I was feeling relieved that apparently he wasn’t going to, when he sprang up with that terrible cry … so what Mr. Meadows said was only partly true. I suppose he was protecting me some more, but I’m tired of being protected by everybody.”
“He isn’t listening, Lina,” Miss Koppel remarked.
It was a permissible conclusion, but not necessarily sound. Wolfe had leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, and even to me it might have seemed that he was settling for a snooze but for two details: first, dinner time was getting close, and second, the tip of his right forefinger was doing a little circle on the arm of his chair, around and around. The silence held for seconds, made a minute, and started on another one.
Someone said something.
Wolfe’s eyes came half open and he straightened up.
“I could,” he said, either to himself or them, “ask you to stay to dinner. Or to return after dinner. But if Miss Fraser is tired of being protected, I am tired of being humbugged. There are things I need to know, but I don’t intend to try to pry them out of you without a lever. If you are ready to let me have them, I’m ready to take them. You know what they are as well as I do. It now seems obvious that this was an attempt to kill Miss Fraser. What further evidence is there to support that assumption, and what evidence is there, if any, to contradict it? Who wants Miss Fraser to die, and why? Particularly, who of those who had access to the bottle of coffee, at any time from the moment it was bottled at her apartment to the moment when it was served at the broadcast? And so on. I won’t put all the questions; you know what I want. Will any of you give it to me—any of it?”