by Rex Stout
"No," Whipple said.
"What do you mean, no? You heard him! He's impossible!"
"But he …" Whipple let it hang. "I think you should consider it, Harold. Isn't it reasonable, his wanting to see them and ask them questions? It isn't—"
"I have seen them and asked them questions! I know them! Come on! If we need a detective, there are others!"
"Not like him," Whipple said. "No, Harold. You're being hasty. If you don't want to ask them to come, all right, I will. I'm sure Tom Henchy will see that it's reasonable. He's a—"
"You do that, Paul, and you'll get another lawyer, you and Dunbar. I'm warning you. I'm telling you."
"You're being hasty, Harold."
"I'm telling you!"
"You certainly are." Whipple's head was tilted back. I had his profile, and for the first time I saw in him the cocky college boy at Kanawha Spa years and years back. "I know you're a good lawyer, Harold, but I don't know if you're good enough to get Dunbar out of this trouble. I'm being frank, and I doubt it. If anybody can, Nero Wolfe can. If it has to be you or Nero Wolfe, I'll see Dunbar in the morning and tell him what I think, and he'll agree. I'm sure he will." His eyes went to Wolfe. "Mr. Wolfe, it's not only the impression you made on me long ago when I was a raw kid. I've followed your career. As far as I'm concerned, you're in charge." Back to Oster: "Don't go, Harold. Sit down."
Oster was chewing his lip. "It's ridiculous," he said. "I'm an attorney-at-law, a respected member of the bar. He's a—a gumshoe."
"Mr. Oster," Wolfe said.
"What?"
"I suggest that Mr. Whipple's extravagance should be ignored. Let's put it that the legal defense of Dunbar Whipple is in your hands, and the search for evidence to support that defense is in my hands. I knew we would clash, and we have. There are no casualties. Oblige me by sitting down. Naturally I expected, and expect, you to be present at the conference tomorrow evening. If you wish to object to anything I say or do, you have a tongue. You have indeed. I don't wonder that you tried to drum me out; I'm difficult, though not really impossible. If you wish to debate it with Mr. Whipple, you can do so later." He looked at the clock. "No doubt you have information for me, and suggestions, and in less than half an hour it will be dinnertime. If you and Mr. Whipple will dine with us, we'll have the evening for it. Wild duck with Vatel sauce—wine vinegar, egg yolk, tomato paste, butter, cream, salt and pepper, shallots, tarragon, chervil, and peppercorns. Is any of those distasteful to you?"
Oster said no.
"To you, Mr. Whipple?"
Whipple said no.
"Tell Fritz, Archie."
I got up and went to the kitchen. It was a good thing neither of them had said yes, for Fritz was well along with the sauce, as Wolfe had known he would be. He didn't welcome my news. Not that he didn't like guests at meals, but he thought there wouldn't be enough duck. I told him it would do Wolfe good to go easy for a change, returned to the office, and found that Oster was back in the red leather chair, evidently on speaking terms, and Wolfe had a pen and pad of paper, taking notes. I interrupted to ask about drinks, got orders for a martini and a vodka on the rocks, and went to the kitchen to fill them.
Only two kinds of guests ever dine at that table: (a) men for whom Wolfe has personal feelings—there are eight altogether, and only two of them live in or near New York—and (b) people who are involved in his current problem. With both kinds he makes a point of steering the table talk to subjects that he thinks the guests will be interested in; for him, as he once remarked, a guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality—a little fancy maybe, but a fine sentiment. As Fritz was serving the mussels I was wondering what it would be for those two. It was William Shakespeare. After the skimpy portions of mussels, in white wine with creamed butter and flour, had been commented on, Wolfe asked them if they had read the book by Rowse. They hadn't. But they were interested in Shakespeare? Oh, yes. Not many lawyers or professors would dare to say no. Of course they were familiar with Othello? They were. I cocked an eye at Wolfe. Surely it wasn't very tactful, with those dinner guests to deliberately drag Othello in.
He swallowed his last bite of mussel. "There's an interesting point," he said. "A question. If the facts were established as they are presented in the play, could Iago, today in the State of New York, be legally charged with murder as an accessory, and be successfully prosecuted?"
I had to hand it to him. Unquestionably Othello concerned a subject in which they were interested, and putting the spot on Iago and a question of law made it discussable. They discussed it up one side and down the other. By the time the duck and trimmings had been disposed of, and Fritz had brought the fig soufflé, it looked to me as if Iago was on the ropes.
Fritz answers the doorbell during meals, so when it rang as I started on my soufflé I stayed put. It would be Cramer. Having read the report, he had come with questions, and they were welcome, because that was better than being invited to the DA's office. But it wasn't Cramer. The sound of voices came from the hall, Fritz's and another, and then another, not recognized. They stopped. There was no use trying to hear a door closing; not only does Fritz close doors quietly, but also Oster was talking. Fritz appeared, crossed the sill, and told Wolfe, "Two men and a woman, sir." Formerly he would have said two gentlemen and a lady, but Wolfe had stopped that. He went on, "Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Brooke and Mr. Peter Vaughn. In the front room. I told them I thought you were engaged for the evening."
Wolfe looked at me. I nodded, "Her brother." He told Fritz he could bring the cheese and we would have coffee there instead of in the office, and forked a bite of soufflé. Oster asked, "Susan's brother?'' and I said yes. He asked Wolfe, "You weren't expecting him?"
Wolfe swallowed the bite. "Not him specifically. I was rather expecting someone, this evening or tomorrow. The hook I baited." In the office he would have been smug, but not with guests, at the table. "I need another hour or so with you and Mr. Whipple, but it will have to wait. Perhaps Mr. Goodwin could call at your office in the morning?"
"I want to sit in on this. With these people."
"No, sir. We would probably start bickering in front of them. I'll report it to you—at my discretion."
Fritz came with the cheese.
Chapter 7
I STOOD IN the alcove at the rear end of the hall, looking through the hole in the wall. On the alcove side it's just a hole, a rectangle with a sliding panel. On the office side it's covered by a picture of a waterfall which you can see through from the alcove. I was seeing through, for a preview of the two men and a woman whom Fritz had conducted to the office after Whipple and Oster had left. Wolfe, standing beside me, had already looked. Kenneth Brooke, in the red leather chair, had his head turned to face the other two, talking with them. He was chunky and solid, not slim like his sister. His wife, in the chair Paul Whipple had occupied before dinner, was a full-sized, positive blonde. I mean positive not as opposed to negative, but as opposed to vague. The other man, Peter Vaughn, of whom I had never heard, in a chair Fritz had moved up, was long and lanky, with a narrow bony face. Wolfe and I had been there, looking and listening, for six or seven minutes, but the listening hadn't helped any. They were discussing a picture on the wall back of Wolfe's desk, not the waterfall. Vaughn thought it was an unsigned Van Gogh, which it wasn't. It had been painted by a man named McIntyre whom Wolfe had once got out of a scrape.
Wolfe wiggled a finger, and I slid the noiseless panel shut. He looked a question at me, had I ever seen any of them? I shook my head, and he led the way to the office. Entering, he detoured around Brooke to his desk, and I passed behind the other two to mine. Before he sat he spoke. "I'm sorry you had to wait. Usually I see callers only by appointment, but I make exceptions. You are Susan Brooke's brother?"
Brooke nodded. "I am. My wife. Mr. Vaughn. Peter Vaughn. We came—uh—on the spur of the moment. We appreciate—"
"That piece in the Gazette," Mrs. Brooke said. She talked positive too. "We think you're right. We kno
w you're right!"
"Indeed. That's gratifying." Wolfe moved a hand to indicate me. "Mr. Goodwin, my confidential assistant. We are both gratified. We thought you were probably going to say we are wrong. How do you know we're right?"
They all spoke at once, or started to. Mrs. Brooke won. "You tell us," she said, "how you know. Then we'll tell you." She was making eyes at him. "They say ladies first, but we can make exceptions too. This time gentlemen first."
Wolfe's lips were tight. I thought he was going to cut loose, but he held it. He was almost polite. "But madam," he said, "consider my position. I am engaged on behalf of a man who may be put on trial for murder. He may be compelled to present his defense to a judge and jury. To disclose particulars of that defense now to you, to anyone, would be to betray him." He looked at the man beside her. "Who and what are you, Mr. Vaughn? Are you on the staff of the district attorney?"
"No," Vaughn said, "nothing like that. I'm just a—a friend. I sell automobiles—Herons." He got a case from a pocket, extracted a card, and got up to hand it to Wolfe.
I gave myself a black mark. I had not only heard of him, I had seen him, casually. His father was Sam Vaughn, owner and operator of Heron Manhattan, Inc., which I visited at least once a year, to trade in Wolfe's sedan for a new one.
Wolfe's head turned. "And you, Mr. Brooke?"
"Does that matter? I'm Susan's brother. I'm an engineer by profession. Electronics. I assure you, we don't want you to betray anyone—quite the contrary."
"We want to know," his wife said, "if you know the truth, the truth about Susan."
Wolfe grunted. "So do I. I certainly don't know all of it. Perhaps you can help me. What fragment of the truth about her would you like me to know?"
"What she was like," Mrs. Brooke said.
"Her character, her personality," Brooke said.
"Her quality," Vaughn said. "She couldn't possibly have been … with a black man … that apartment. I was going to marry her."
"Indeed. She was engaged?"
"Well … it was understood. It had been for nearly two years. I was waiting until she had had enough of her—kink."
"Kink?"
"Well—caprice. Do-gooding."
"It wasn't just do-gooding," Mrs. Brooke declared. "I flatter myself that I do a little good myself sometimes. But Susan had to go all-out. Giving them money wasn't enough, and even working with them wasn't enough. She had to have that place right in the middle of the Harlem slums and even eat and sleep there sometimes."
Wolfe asked, "Were you ever there—that apartment?"
"Yes, I went with Mother Brooke—her mother. She insisted on seeing it. It was terrible—the neighborhood, the dirt and the smell, and the awful people. They don't want to be called niggers, but that's what they are. But the idea that Susan could be … with one of them … could have one of them with her in that apartment, that's absolutely absurd. She was a lady. She had a kink all right, but she was a lady. So you're perfectly right, that Dunbar Whipple didn't kill her. She was killed by some black hoodlum. Heaven knows there's enough of them."
Wolfe nodded. "Your logic seems sound. I understand the police have considered that possibility and reject it because valuables were there in plain sight, not taken, and Miss Brooke had not been sexually assaulted."
"That doesn't prove anything. Something scared him, some noise or something. Or he hadn't intended to kill her, and that scared him."
"Quite possible. As a conjecture, certainly admissible. But it will take more than a conjecture to clear Mr. Whipple; he was in the apartment; he had been there more than half an hour when the police arrived. The hoodlum theory is futile unless he is found and established. I'm not sure I understand your position. If, as you said, the idea that Miss Brooke 'could have one of them with her in that apartment' is absurd, how do you account for Mr. Whipple being there?"
"He went to ask her something or tell her something about her work. He lives only a few blocks away."
"But I understand that he went there frequently, that he has told the police that he and Miss Brooke were planning to be married."
"He's a liar," Vaughn said.
"That's absolutely absurd," Mrs. Brooke said.
"I don't understand your position," Brooke said. "According to the piece in the paper, you have good reason to believe that Dunbar Whipple is innocent, but you don't talk like it. You call the hoodlum theory futile. Will you tell us why you think he's innocent?"
"No, sir. Why do you? If you do."
"I'm not sure I do."
"Your wife said that you know I'm right."
"She should have said that we hope you're right." Brooke was forward in the chair, leaning forward. "When she showed me that piece in the paper, I said, 'Thank God.' My sister is dead, nothing can be done about that, but what's being printed and said about her—it's killing her mother. My mother. It's so ugly—that apartment and a Negro. If he didn't kill her and you can prove it, that will be different. Maybe he did go there just to talk about her work, and found her dead. That will be different. It might save my mother's life. I guess you know what I'm saying. I'm admitting that it's not impossible that my sister intended to marry a colored man—"
"Kenneth! Are you crazy?"
"I'm talking, Dolly." He stayed at Wolfe. "I wouldn't like it—who would?—but I admit it's possible. But they weren't married. Were they?"
"No."
"Then if he killed her it was—ugly. Sordid and ugly. But if you can prove he didn't kill her, that will be different. I'm repeating myself, but you know what I'm trying to say. It's the murder that counts. If someone else killed her, people will forget about Dunbar Whipple. Even my mother will forget about him—not really forget, I suppose, but it will be different. So we want—I want to know why you say Whipple is innocent."
His wife had been trying to get a word in. She blurted it at him. "You're crazy, Kenneth! Susan would not have married a black man!"
"Oh, skip it, Dolly," he told her. "You know what you said just a month—"
"I was just talking!"
"Well, you said it." To Wolfe: "So I want to know. I not only want to know, I want to help. I know you get big fees, and I don't suppose Whipple or his father is very flush. If you'll tell me how it stands, I want to help."
Wolfe shook his head. "Possibly you can help but not with money. As for how it stands, it doesn't; it impends. I won't disclose the ground for my conclusion that Mr. Whipple is innocent, but it includes no inkling of the identity of the murderer. You might help with that; you were all close to her. If it was neither Mr. Whipple nor a hoodlum, who was it? Who is better off because she is dead? In mind or body or purse. That's always the question. Don't just shake your heads; consider it. Whose life is easier because hers is ended?"
"Nobody's," Brooke said.
"Pfui. Someone killed her, and someone who knew of that apartment. If you want to help me find him, search your memories. I have no memories; I start empty, and I'll start now. Mr. Brooke, where were you that evening between eight and nine o'clock?"
Brooke just stared at him.
"I'm quite serious," Wolfe said. "Sororicide is by no means unheard-of. Where were you?"
"Good God," Brooke said, still staring.
"You're shocked. So would you be if you killed her. Where were you?"
"I was at my laboratory."
"From eight to nine?"
"From seven till nearly midnight. I was there when my wife phoned me about Susan."
"Were you alone?"
"No. Three others were there."
"Then the shock was bearable." Wolfe's head went right. "Mr. Vaughn?"
His bony jaw was set. "I resent this," he said.
"Of course you do. Anybody would. Where were you?"
"At my club. Harvard. Eating dinner and then watching a bridge game."
"From eight to nine?"
"Yes. And before and after."
"Then your resentment is also bearable. Mrs. Brooke?"
"I resent it too." Her face was showing color. "It's ridiculous."
"But not impertinent, if you want to help. Where were you?"
"I was at home. All evening."
"Alone?"
"No. My son was there."
"How old is your son?"
"Eight."
"Anyone else? A servant?"
"No. The maid was out." She moved abruptly and was on her feet. Her bag dropped to the floor, and Vaughn bent over to get it. "This is insulting," she said. "I'm surprised that you tolerate it, Kenneth. If he won't tell us anything, I'm sorry I suggested coming. Take me home." She moved.
Brooke's eyes went to Wolfe, to me, and to Vaughn. Apparently they were inviting a suggestion but got none. His wife had stepped to the door. Rising, he told Wolfe, "I'm in the phone book, both my laboratory and my home. When I said I want to help I meant it. Come on, Peter."
Vaughn thought he was going to say something but vetoed it, and because of his hesitation I reached the hall ahead of them. Mrs. Brooke was at the rack, getting her coat, and I went and offered a hand. She ignored it, gave me a withering look, stood until the men approached, and said, "Hold my coat, Kenneth." I opened the door wide, quick, to let the cold air hit her before she got it on. As they went out and I shut the door I decided to see the eight-year-old son in the near future and ask him what time he had gone to bed on Monday, March 2. No woman can throw a pie at me and keep my goodwill.
I went to the office and told Wolfe, "Okay, Dolly Brooke killed her because she was going to marry a quote nigger unquote, and how do we prove it?"
He frowned. "I have told you not to use that word in my hearing."
"I was merely quoting. It isn't—"
"Shut up. I mean the word 'unquote' and you know it."
I took a good stretch and an unpatted yawn. "Too much sitting and no walk. Six hours at the typewriter. Mrs. Brooke deliberately insulted me on the way out. It was at her suggestion that they came. She wanted to find out how much you knew. A month ago she told her husband that she knew or suspected that Susan was going to marry a quote nigger end of quotation. She knew where the apartment was; she had been there. She had to kill Susan; it wouldn't have solved the problem to kill Dunbar because Susan would merely have picked another one—the way she saw it. The alibi is piddling. For something as important as a murder you couldn't be blamed for leaving a boy in bed asleep, or even for putting just a touch of pentobarbital sodium in his milk. Or Mother Brooke came and baby-sat, knowing or unknowing. Filicide is no more unheard-of than sororicide. What have I left out?"