When Wolfe heard my voice on the phone he was peevish on principle, since I’m not supposed to disturb him when he is up in the plant rooms, and this was the second time in twenty minutes. I was peevish too, but not on principle.
“Hold it,” I told him. “I am about to ask a favor. Twenty minutes ago I reported no progress, but I was wrong. We can’t possibly disappoint our client, because he’s dead. Murdered.”
“Pfui.”
“No phooey. I’m telling you — from a booth in a drugstore. I found the body, and I want to ask a favor.”
“Mr. Lewent is dead?”
“Yes. In order to ask the favor I’ll have to lead up to it — not a full report, but the high spots.”
“Go ahead.”
I did. I gave him no conversations verbatim, but described the cast of characters and the setting, and covered movements and events up to opening the door of Lewent’s room. At that point I got particular.
“It would stand some questions,” I told him. “The first ten feet inside the door it’s not a room at all, merely a passage less than four feet wide. Beyond that is the room proper. The body is in that passage, diagonal, with the feet toward the door. When the door is opened wide its edge comes within ten inches of Lewent’s right foot. There’s a runner the length of the passage, an Oriental, not fastened down, and it’s in place. The body’s on it, of course. There is nothing disarranged in either the room or the passage. Everything is just as it was when I was there an hour earlier.”
“Except Mr. Lewent.” Wolfe’s tone was dry and disgusted.
“Yeah. He was hit in the back of the head at the base of the skull with something heavy and hard enough to smash the whole bottom of the skull. The thing was comparatively smooth, because the skin is not broken, only bruised. No blood. I am not a laboratory, but on a bet there was only one blow and it came from beneath, traveling upward. The weapon is not in the passage—”
“Under him.”
“No. I lifted him and put him back. Nor is it open to view in the room. Won’t that stand some questions?”
“It will indeed. No doubt the police will ask them.”
“I’m coming to that. I was not seen entering that room or leaving it. I might as well come on home, or, better still, go and keep my weekend date, if it weren’t for one thing — the grand Lewent paid us. I’ve only been here three hours, and I doubt if I’ve been earning three hundred and and thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents an hour, considering what’s happened. Our client may not have been one of nature’s top products, but to come here to do a job for him and just fiddle around while someone croaked him and then find his corpse is not my idea of a masterpiece. I don’t like it. I won’t like the remarks that will occur to Cramer and Stebbins if I phone the cops to say that Mr. Wolfe has had a client murdered while my back was turned and will they please come and take over. Nor will you.”
“I won’t hear them. Is there an alternative?”
“Yes. That’s the favor I’m asking. My feelings are hurt.”
“Naturally.”
“I resent the assumption that it is perfectly okay to kill a client of yours practically in my presence. I want to ram that assumption down somebody’s throat. I had already told Mrs. O’Shea that I am staying for dinner, and I ask your permission to do so. One of those people is stretched good and tight, waiting for the body to be found, and if I’m half as good as I think I am I’ll see it or hear it or feel it. Anyhow I want to try.”
“How sure are you that you’re clear?”
“Completely. For a hair of my head on a rug, or a fingerprint, I was in there before. As for being seen, not a chance. I will mention that if you feel you owe Lewent some return for what he paid us, for which I could cite a couple of precedents, we’re more likely to deliver this way than with the cops in command. And of course I can find the body any time I want to if that seems to be called for.”
He grunted. “You won’t be home to dinner.”
I told him no and hung up, and sat a while, getting my mind arranged. The probability of the murderer’s giving himself away while under the suspense of waiting for someone to find the body would be reduced by about nine-tenths if any word or look of mine aroused a suspicion that I already knew. Or would it? It might be better. Finally I left the booth, walked back to the house and rang the bell, and was admitted by the viqueen. She was as stolid as ever, so presumably there had been no discovery while I was out. As I started for the stairs down to the kitchen, intending to find Mrs. O’Shea, my name was called, and I turned to see Dorothy Riff coming through a door.
“I was looking for you.” she said.
“I went out to phone Mr. Wolfe. What time do you go home?”
“I usually leave around six, but today...” She fluttered a hand. “I told Mr. Huck I’d stay until you’re through.” She glanced around. “This isn’t very private, is it? Let’s go in here.”
She led the way into the room where I had watched the TV with Mrs. O’Shea, and through an arch into a larger room where a table toward one end was set with six places. She was telling me, “Since Mrs. Huck died we eat in here mostly, only I’m not often here for dinner. Sit down. We’ll have cocktails later, upstairs with Mr. Huck.”
We sat, not at the table. She was saying, “I was Mrs. Huck’s secretary for four years, and when she died Mr. Huck kept me. He depends on me a lot. I wish you’d tell me something.”
“Practically anything,” I assured her. “Name it.”
“Well — Mr. Huck feels sure that his brother-in-law is trying to blackmail him, and so do I. What do you think?”
Her gray-green eyes were at mine, intent, earnestly wanting to know what I thought. She couldn’t possibly have been that free of guile, so I realized she was pretty good. “I’m afraid,” I told her, “you’ll have to fill in some. Usually a man knows whether he’s being blackmailed or not without telling his good-looking secretary to ask a brainy detective what he thinks. Look out or you’ll have your fingers in a hard knot and they won’t come loose.”
She jerked her fingers apart, extended a hand as if to touch me in appeal, and then took it back without reaching me.
“I wish we could talk just like two people,” she said hopefully. “I wish I knew how to ask you to help me.”
“Nothing could be simpler. Help you what?”
“With Mr. Huck.” Her eyes were holding mine. “I said he depends on me, and he always has, but now I don’t know. Your coming here like this has made him suspicious. He knows that his nephew, Paul Thayer, is friendly with Mr. Lewent, and he thinks Paul and I are friends, and I think he suspects we are in a plot to blackmail him. He hasn’t said so, but I think he does, and you know that isn’t true. Why can’t you tell me exactly how it stands, exactly what Mr. Lewent is after, and then possibly I can suggest something? I know Mr. Huck so well. I know how his mind works. Whatever it is you’re after for Mr. Lewent, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to make me lose a good job by getting Mr. Huck suspicious of me. Would you?”
“I should say not.” I was emphatic. “But you said you agree with Huck, you feel sure that Lewent is trying to blackmail him. Since Lewent is our client, that hurts me, and I think we ought to clear it up. How about coming with me to ask Lewent and see what he has to say?”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
She hesitated a moment, then stood up. “Come on.”
In the hall we turned to the stairs instead of the elevator, and began the ascent. By the time we were up one flight, halfway, I had decided how to back out of it and postpone the discovery until I had had a chance to see a few more faces. But I didn’t have to do any backing. When we reached the second landing and I turned to her, she had already stopped, and was standing, straight and stiff, her head tilted back a little for her eyes to slant up at me.
“No,” she said.
“No what?”
“It wouldn’t do any good. I can’t! I can’t talk with that man.” A shiver ran over her. “He gives me the creeps! I don’t want you—” She broke off, caught her lower lip with her teeth, and turned and headed along the hall toward the door to Huck’s room. She didn’t run, but she sure didn’t loiter. When she reached the door she knocked, and, without waiting for an invitation, opened, entered, and shut the door. I moved noiselessly on the thick carpet, got to the wide door and put an ear to the crack, and heard a faint murmur of voices, much too low to catch any words. I stayed put, hoping for more decibels if they got agitated, and was still at the crack when a sound from above warned me. I was standing at the elevator door and had pressed the button by the time feet and shapely calves had come into sight on the stairs.
It was Sylvia Marcy. At the foot, instead of turning toward the next flight down, she turned my way and approached, with the intention, as I thought, of switching on the coo, but I was wrong. She did not merely toss me a glance, she kept her eyes straight at my face as she advanced, and even swiveled her head to prolong it until she was nearly even with me, but she kept right on going and uttered no sound. I could have stuck out a foot and tripped her as she passed. She went to the door to Huck’s room, knocked, and entered without waiting. By then the elevator had stopped at my level, and I pulled the door open, stepped in, and pushed the button marked B.
Down in the basement I found the kitchen and walked in. It was big and clean and smelled good. An inmate I had not see before, a plump little woman with extra chins, was at a table peeling mushrooms, and Mrs. O’Shea was across from her, sorting slips of paper.
I spoke as I approached. “I should have told you, Mrs. O’Shea, I doubt if Mr. Lewent will show up for dinner. From what he said when he asked me to stay, I think he feels that under the circumstances it would be better if he were not there.”
She went on with the slips a moment before she looked up to reply. “Very well. You were going to talk with me.”
“I got sidetracked.” I glanced at the cook. “Here?”
“As well here as anywhere.”
I parked half of my fundament on the edge of the table. She resumed with the slips of paper, distributing them in piles, and as I watched her arm and hand in quick, deft movement I considered whether they could have struck the blow that killed Lewent, though my mind might easily have been better occupied, since actually a ten-year-old could have done it with the right weapon and the right frame of mind.
“From what you said earlier upstairs.” I remarked, “I got the impression that you feel sorry for Mr. Lewent — in a way.”
She compressed her lips. “Mr. Lewent is a thoroughly immoral man. And this trouble he’s making — he deserves no sympathy from anyone.”
“Then my impression was wrong?”
“I didn’t say that.” She sent the deep blue eyes straight at me, and they were much too cold to show sorrow for anyone or anything whatever. “Frankly, Mr. Goodwin, I am not interested in your impressions. I speak with you at all only because Mr. Huck asked us to.”
“And I speak with you, Mrs. O’Shea, only because the man whose father built this house thinks he’s been rooked and has hired me to find out. That doesn’t interest you either?”
“No.” She resumed with the slips of paper.
I eyed her. My trouble with her, as with the rest of them, was that it would take some well-chosen leading questions to jostle her loose, and all the best questions were out of bounds as long as Lewent was supposed to be still breathing.
“Look,” I said, “suppose we try this. It’s been more than two hours since I talked with you ladies up in the sewing room. Have you discussed the matter with Mr. Lewent? If so, when and where, and what was said?”
She sent me a sharp sidewise glance. “Ask him.”
“I intend to, but I want—”
I got interrupted. A door in the kitchen’s far wall was standing open, and through it, rolling almost silently on rubber tires, came a large cabinet of stainless steel. It was more than four feet high, its top reaching almost to the shoulders of Paul Thayer, who was behind it, pushing it. He rolled it across to the neighborhood of Mrs. O’Shea’s chair and halted it.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “Just a bum wire, and I put in a new one. At your service. Invoice follows.”
“Thank you, Paul.” She had clipped the slips of paper together and was putting them in a drawer. “I’m glad you got it fixed. Mr. Goodwin is staying for dinner, so I suppose you’ll bring him up for cocktails. Harriet, don’t forget about the capers. Mr. Huck will not have it without the capers.”
The plump little woman said she knew it, and Mrs. O’Shea left us, with, I noticed, the hip-swing in action, so it hadn’t been a special demonstration for Huck.
I turned to Paul Thayer. “Lewent asked me to stay for dinner, but he’s going to skip it, so do you think I rate a cocktail?”
“Sure, it’s routine.” He was matter-of-fact. “It was started by my aunt a couple of years ago when his legs went bad, and he has kept it up. How goes it? Have you spotted her?”
“Not to paste a label on.” I aimed a thumb at the cabinet. “What’s this, a dishwasher?”
“Hell no, a chow wagon. Designed by my aunt and made to order. Plug it in any outlet.”
“It’s quite a vehicle.” I moved to it. “Mr. Wolfe ought to have one for breakfast in his room. May I take a look?”
“Sure, go ahead. I’ve got to wash my hands.”
He went to the sink and turned on a faucet. I opened the door of the cabinet. There was room enough inside for breakfast for a family, with many grooves for the shelves so that the spaces could be arranged as desired. I slid a couple of them out and in, tapped the walls, and inspected the thermostat.
“Very neat,” I said admiringly. “Just what I want for my ninetieth birthday.”
“I’ll remember and send you one.” He was patting his hands with a paper towel.
“Do so.” I neared him. “Tell me something. Did Lewent say anything — uh — disagreeable about Miss Riff to you this afternoon?”
He squinted at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m just asking. Did he?”
“No. I haven’t seen Lewent this afternoon, not since he brought you up to my room and left us. Now I’ve answered, why did you ask?”
“Something someone said. Forget it.”
“Who said what?”
I shook my head. “Later. If you don’t want to forget it, I’ll save it for after dinner. We’ll be late for cocktails.”
He tossed the paper towel at a wastebasket, missed it, growled something, went and picked it up and dropped it in, told me to come on, and led the way to the elevator.
The provision for drinks in Huck’s room, which was large and lush with luxury, was ample and varied. They were on a portable bar near the center of the room, and alongside it was Huck in his wheelchair, freshly shaven, his hair brushed with care, wearing a lemon-colored shirt, a maroon bow tie, and a maroon jacket. Also the plaid woolen shawl that had covered his lower half had been replaced by a maroon quilted one. The room was lit softly but well enough, with lamps around — one of them a rosy silk globe at the end of a metal staff clamped to the frame of Huck’s chair. As Thayer and I approached, Huck greeted us.
“Daiquiri as usual, Paul? And you, Mr. Goodwin?”
Having spotted a bottle of Mangan’s Irish in the collection, I asked for that. Huck poured it himself, and Sylvia Marcy passed it to me. She had changed from her nurse’s uniform to a neat little number, a dress of exactly the same color as Huck’s shirt, as well as I could tell in that light; but she hadn’t changed her coo. Mrs. O’Shea stood off to one side, sipping something on the rocks, and Dorothy Riff was there by the bar with a half-emptied long one. With my generous helping of Mangan’s, I backed off a little and looked and listened. I have good eyes and ears, and they have had long training under the guidance of Nero Wolfe, but I couldn’t see a movement or hear a word or tone that gave the faintest hint that one of them knew a body with a crushed skull was lying only fifty feet away, waiting to be found. They talked and got refills and laughed at a story Huck told. It was a nice little gathering, not hilarious, but absolutely wholesome.
At the end Huck made it more wholesome still. Mrs. O’Shea was starting to leave, and he called to her, and when she rejoined us he leaned over to reach a low rack at the side of his chair. Coming up with three little boxes bearing the name of Tiffany, he addressed the females.
“I’m sure you know, you three, that if it weren’t for you my life would be miserable, crippled as I am. It is you who make it not merely bearable, but pleasant, really pleasant, and I’ve been thinking how I can show my appreciation.”
He tapped the top box with a finger. “I was going to give these to you next Wednesday, my birthday, but I decided to do it today on account of Mr. Goodwin. His mission here, at the instance of my brother-in-law, is an imputation against you that I feel is utterly unjustified. Mr. Lewent is my wife’s brother and so must be humored to the limit of tolerance; he was born in this house, and I will never challenge his right to live here and die here; but I want you to know that I have complete confidence in you, all three of you, and to make that as emphatic as possible I’m making this little presentation in the presence of Mr. Goodwin. Mrs. O’Shea?”
He extended a hand with one of the boxes, and the housekeeper stepped up and took it.
“Miss Riff?”
She took hers.
“Miss Marcy?”
She took hers.
As they got their eyes on their loot there were exclamations and expressions of delight. Sylvia Marcy let out a running broad coo that would have brought tears to my eyes if I hadn’t been so busy using them.
“They’re good timekeepers too,” Huck, said, beaming.
Without being too vulgar I managed to get enough of a look to see that the presents were all wristwatches, apparently just alike, and if the red stones were Burma rubies Sylvia’s coo was no exaggeration. Paul Thayer, looking flabbergasted, poured rum into his glass and gulped it down. Mrs. O’Shea, her little box clasped tightly in her hand, hustled from the room, and in a moment I heard the faint hum of the elevator. Before long I heard it again, and the wide door of the room opened and Mrs. O’Shea reappeared, pushing the stainless steel portable oven on rubber tires; it was nearly as tall as she was, and much bigger around. Miss Marcy moved the bar away, and Mrs. O’Shea put the oven there, beside Huck’s chair.
“I’ll just serve the soup?” she suggested.
“Now you know,” Huck reproached her, “I’d rather do it myself.” He swung a shelf of the chair around to make a table, and reached to a rack attached to the oven for a napkin.
There was a general movement toward the door, and I joined it. In the hall Thayer and I were in the rear, and he muttered at me, “The damn old goat’s got a caliph complex. All three of ’em!”
Going to the stairs to descend, we passed within a few feet of the door to Lewent’s room. As far as I could tell, no one gave it a glance.