Probably my conception of a widow was formed in my early boyhood in Ohio, from a character called Widow Rowley, who lived across the street. I have known others since, but the conception has not been entirely obliterated, so there is always an element of shock when I meet a female who has been labeled widow and I find that she has some teeth, does not constantly mutter to herself, and can walk without a cane.
Mrs. Sarah Jaffee was not visibly burdened with any handicaps whatever. She was probably more than one-third the age Widow Rowley had been, but not much. That much, along with the shock, took only one good glance as she admitted me to her sixth-floor apartment on East Eightieth Street, and the glance also furnished another mild shock. Although it was ten in the morning of a pleasant and sunny June day, there in her foyer was a man’s topcoat thrown carelessly over the back of a chair, and on a polished tabletop was a man’s felt hat. I kept my brows down, merely remarking to myself, as she led me though a large and luxurious living room, that since I had phoned for permission to come, and so was expected, it might have been supposed that a widow would have taken the trouble to tidy up a little.
When, beyond the living room, we came upon a table in an alcove with breakfast tools in place for two, I will not say that I blushed, but I felt that I had not been properly briefed.
“I was in bed when you phoned,” she said, sitting and picking up a spoon. “I assume you’ve had breakfast, but how about some coffee? Sit down — no, not there, that’s my husband’s place. Olga! A coffee cup, please!”
A door swung open and a Valkyrie entered with a cup and saucer in her hand.
“On a tray, my pet,” Mrs. Jaffee said, and the Valkyrie whirled and disappeared. Before the door had stopped swinging she breezed in again with cup and saucer on a tray, and I backstepped not to get trampled. When she had gone I got my coffee from my hostess and went to a chair on the other side. She took her spoon and scooped a bite of melon.
“It’s all right,” she said, reassuring me. “I’m a nut, that’s all.” She opened wide for the bite of melon, and there was no question about her having teeth, very nice ones. I took a sip of coffee, which was barely drinkable for a man used to Fritz’s.
“You know my husband is dead,” she stated.
I nodded. “So I understood.”
She took another bite of melon and disposed of it. “He was in the Reserve, a major, a Signal Corps technician. When he went away, one day in March a year ago, he left his hat and coat there in the hall. I didn’t put them away. When I got word he had been killed, three months later, they were still there. That was a year ago, and there they are, and I’m sick of looking at them, I’m simply sick to death of looking at them, but there they are.”
She pointed. “There’s his breakfast place too, and I’m sick of looking at that. Weren’t you surprised when I told you on the phone, all right, come ahead? You, a complete stranger, a detective wanting to ask me questions about a murder?”
“A little, maybe,” I conceded, not to be cranky.
“Of course you were.” She dropped a slice of bread into the slot of the toaster and spooned another bite of melon. “But at that I lost my nerve. A while back I decided to quit being a nut, and I decided the way I would do it — I would have a man do it for me. I would have a man sit here with me at breakfast, in Dick’s place — my husband’s place — and I would have him take that awful hat and coat out of that hall. But do you know what?”
I said I didn’t.
She finished the melon, popped the toast out, and started putting butter on it before telling me what. “There wasn’t a man I could ask! Out of all the men I know, there wasn’t one that would have understood! But I was determined it had to be done that way, so there I was. And this morning, when you phoned, I was all shaky anyway, it was so horrible about Pris, the way she died, and I thought to myself, This man’s a stranger, it doesn’t matter whether he understands or not, he can sit and eat breakfast with me and he can take that coat and hat out of there.”
She turned her palms up and made a face. “And did you hear me?” She mimicked herself. “‘I assume you’ve had breakfast — no, not there, that’s my husband’s place.’ I just simply lost my nerve. Do you suppose I really am a nut?”
I arose, circled the end of the table, sat in the chair at her right, took the napkin, picked up the plate and extended my arm, and demanded, “That piece of toast, please?”
She goggled at me a full three seconds before she moved a hand for the toast, slow motion. The hand was quite steady.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but I suppose I ought to eat it if you want this to stick, and it’s that godawful cellophane special, so if there’s any jelly or marmalade or honey...”
She got up and left through the swinging door. In a little she was back with an assortment of jars on a tray. I selected one that was labeled plum jam and helped myself. She made another piece of toast, buttered it and took a bite, and poured more coffee for us. She ate the last crumb of toast before she spoke.
“If you hadn’t been rude about the bread I would soon have been crying.”
“Yeah, I thought so.”
“Will you take that coat and hat away with you?”
“Certainly.”
She was frowning at me. She put out a hand as if to touch my arm, then withdrew it. “Do you mean to say you understand?”
“Gosh, no, I’m just a stranger.” I pushed my coffee cup back. “Look, Mrs. Jaffee, it’s like this. Nero Wolfe is investigating the murder of Priscilla Eads for a client. As I told you on the phone, we have no idea that you know anything at all about the murder, directly or indirectly, but you may have information that will help. You inherited from your father ten per cent of the stock of Softdown, Incorporated, and for a time you were Priscilla Eads’s closest friend. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“When did you see her last?”
She used her napkin on lips and fingers, dropped it on the table, pushed back her chair, and arose. “We’ll be more comfortable in the other room,” she said, and moved. I followed, through to the living room, where it was cooler, with the slanted Venetian blinds admitting only a dim and restful light. The furniture was all wearing light blue slipcovers that looked as if none of them had been sat on yet. After she had got cigarettes from an enameled box and I had lit them, she perched with cushions on an oversized divan, looking less than ever like Widow Rowley, and I took a chair.
“You know,” she said, “my mind is a very funny thing. I guess there’s no doubt I’m a nut. When you asked me just now about seeing Pris, when I saw her last, I realized for the first time that someone did it.”
“Did what? Killed her?”
She nodded. “I didn’t hear about it until late yesterday afternoon, when a friend told me on the phone. I never see an evening paper, and I haven’t looked at this morning’s paper yet, and anyhow I probably wouldn’t read about it because I can’t stand things like that. I seem to just shut my eyes to things I can’t stand. So I knew Pris was dead, found dead in her apartment, strangled, but that was all. When you asked me when I saw her last, it hit me all of a sudden that someone actually did it! She didn’t do it herself, did she?”
“Not unless somebody helped out by removing the cord for her afterward. She was strangled with some kind of cord.”
Mrs. Jaffee shivered and seemed to shrink into the cushions. “Did that — would that take long?”
“Probably not.”
“How long?”
“If the cord was good and tight, only a few seconds until she lost consciousness.”
Her hands were fists, and I suspected that the sharp nails were marking her palms. “What could a woman do if a man was strangling her with a cord and had it pulled tight?”
“Nothing except die if he meant business.” I got gruff. “You’re taking it too hard. If I had started strangling you when you started feeling it a minute ago, it would be all over by now.” I reached to mash the cigarette she had dropped into the tray. “Let’s go back and try again. When did you see Miss Eads last?”
She took a long deep breath with her lips parted, and her fists loosened some. “I don’t think I want to talk about it.”
“That’s just fine.” I was indignant. “You owe me three dollars.”
“What? What for?”
“Taxi fare here to take your husband’s place at breakfast, which was why you let me come. It will be more going back because I’ll have to stop at the Salvation Army to get rid of the hat and coat I promised to take. Three bucks will cover it, and I prefer cash.”
She shook her head, frowning at me. “Have I ever met you before?”
“Not that I remember, and I think I would. Why?”
“You seem to know exactly the right things to say, as if you knew all about me. What day’s today?”
“Wednesday.”
“Then the last time I saw Pris was one week ago today, last Wednesday. She phoned and asked me to have lunch with her, and I did. She wanted to know if I would come to a special meeting of Softdown stockholders on July first, the day after her twenty-fifth birthday.”
“Did you say you would?”
“No. That’s another way my mind is funny. Since my father died, seven years ago, and left me twelve thousand shares of Softdown stock, I have never gone near the place, for meetings or anything else. I get a very good income from it, but I don’t know one single thing about it. Have you met a man named Perry Helmar?”
I said I had.
“Well, he’s been after me for years to come to meetings, but I wouldn’t, because I was afraid that if I did something would happen to the business that would reduce my income, and it would be my fault. Why should I run a risk like that when all I had to do was stay away? Do you know any of those people down there — Brucker and Quest and Pitkin and that Viola Duday?”
I said I did.
“Well, they’ve been after me too, every one of them at different times, to give them a proxy to vote my stock at a meeting, and I wouldn’t do that either. I didn’t—”
“You mean give them a proxy jointly — all of them?”
“Oh, no, separately. They’ve been after me one at a time, but the worst was that woman Duday. Isn’t she a terror?”
“I guess so. I don’t know her as well as you do. Why did Miss Eads want you at a special stockholders’ meeting?”
“She said she wanted to elect a new board of directors, and it would be all women, and they would elect Viola Duday president of the corporation — that’s right, isn’t it, president of the corporation?”
“It sounds like it. Did she say who would be on the new board of directors?”
“Yes, but I don’t — wait, maybe I do. She and I were to be — Pris and I — and Viola Duday, and some woman in charge of something at the factory — I forget her name — and Pris’s maid, the one that’s been with her so long — her name’s Margaret, but I forget her last name.”
I supplied it. “Fomos. Margaret Fomos.”
“No, that’s not — oh, yes, of course. She’s been married.”
I nodded. “She has also been killed. She was waylaid on the street and strangled to death Monday night, a couple of hours before Priscilla Eads.”
Sarah Jaffee’s eyes popped. “Margaret has — too?”
“Yes. Was that all, those five, to be—”
“She was strangled just like Pris?”
“Yes. Apparently the idea was to get a key to Miss Eads’s apartment, since there was a key in the maid’s bag and the bag was taken. Were they to make up the new board of directors, those five women?”
“Yes.”
“But you told her you wouldn’t go to the meeting?”
Mrs. Jaffee’s hands were fists again, but not as tight as before. “And I told her I wouldn’t be a director either. I didn’t want to get mixed up in it in any way at all. I didn’t want to have anything whatever to do with it. She said I seemed to be perfectly willing to accept the dividend checks, and I said certainly I was and I hoped they would keep coming forever, and they probably wouldn’t if I started butting in. I told her I hoped her new arrangement, the board of directors and the president, would work all right, but if it didn’t there was nothing I could do about it.”
“Had she asked you before about coming to a stockholders’ meeting?”
“No, that was the first time. I hadn’t seen her for more than a year. She phoned and came to see me when she heard about Dick’s — my husband’s — death.”
“I thought she was your closest friend.”
“Oh, that was a long time ago.”
“How long?”
She eyed me. “I’m not enjoying this a bit.”
“I know you’re not.”
“It’s not doing anyone any good either.”
“It might. However. I figure I’ve got a dollar’s worth, so I’ll settle for two bucks if you insist.”
She turned her head and called, “Olga!” In a moment the Valkyrie came marching in, by no means silently. Mrs. Jaffee asked her if there was any coffee left, and she said there was and was requested to bring some. She went and soon was back with the order, this time on a tray without being told. Mrs. Jaffee wriggled to the edge of the divan, poured, and sipped.
“I can tell you how old I was,” she said, “when I first met Pris.”
I said I would appreciate it very much.
She sipped more coffee. “I was four years old. Pris was about two weeks. My father was in her father’s business, and the families were friends. Of course, with children four years is a big difference, but we liked each other all along, and when Pris’s mother died, and soon afterward her father, and Pris went to live with the Helmars, she and I got to be like sisters. We were apart a lot, since we went to different schools, and I graduated from college the year she started, but we wrote to each other — we must have written a thousand letters back and forth. Do you know about her leaving college and setting up a menage in the Village?”
I said I did.
“That was when we were closest. My father had died then, and my mother long before, and I practically lived with Pris, though I had a little place of my own. The trouble with Pris is she has too much money.”
“Was and had,” I corrected.
“Oh. Yes. Her income was enormous. After a few months of the Village all of a sudden she was off, and do you know what her excuse was? Her maid — that was Margaret — she had to take Margaret to New Orleans to see her sick mother! Did you ever hear anything to beat it? Off she went, leaving me to close up the place in the Village, We were still friends all right; she wrote me from New Orleans raving about it, and the first thing I knew, here came a letter saying that she had found her prince and married him, and they were off for Peru, where he had an option on the Andes Mountains, or approximately that.”
Mrs. Jaffee finished the coffee, put the cup and saucer down on the tray, and wriggled back until she was against the cushions. “That,” she said, “was the last letter I ever got from Pris. The very last. Maybe I still have it — I remember she enclosed a picture of him. I wondered why she didn’t write, and then one day she phoned me — she was back in New York, and she was alone, except for Margaret, and she was calling herself Miss Priscilla Eads. I saw her a few times, and when she bought a place up in Westchester I went there once, but she was a completely different person, and she didn’t invite me again, and I wouldn’t have gone if she had. For nearly three years I didn’t see her at all, until she had been to Reno and come back and joined the Salvation Army — do you know about that?”
I said yes.
“She was through with that too at the time she heard of my husband’s death and came to see me. She had decided to take up her father’s business where he had left off, only of course she wouldn’t own it until she was twenty-five. She seemed more like the old Pris, and we might have got together again, but I had just lost Dick and I was in no condition to get together with anyone, so, the way it went, I didn’t see her again until last week, and then I didn’t—”
She stopped abruptly and jerked her chin up. “For God’s sake, my not doing what she wanted — that didn’t have anything to do with her being killed, did it? Is that why you wanted to see me?”
I shook my head. “I can’t answer the first one, but it’s not why I wanted to see you. Did she get in touch with you again? A phone call or letter?”
“No.”
“Did any of the others, the Softdown people?”
“No.”
“Where were you Monday night? Not that I want an affidavit, but the police will be asking.”
“They will not!”
“Sure they will, unless they crack it before they get to you. Practice on me. Name the people you were playing Canasta with.”
“I wasn’t. I was at home. Here.”
“Any company? Or was Olga here?”
“No.”
I shrugged. “That requires no practice.” I leaned to her a little. “Look, Mrs. Jaffee, I might as well admit it. I’m here under false pretenses. I said we wanted information, Mr. Wolfe and I, and we do, but we also want help. Of course you know of the provisions of Priscilla’s father’s will? Now that she is dead, you know that five people — Helmar, Brucker, Quest, Pitkin, and Miss Duday — you know that they will own most of the Softdown stock?”
“Yes, certainly.” She was frowning, concentrating at me.
“Okay. You’re a stockholder. We want you to bring an action against those five people. Use your own lawyer, or we’ll recommend one. We want you to ask a court for an injunction restraining them from exercising any of the rights of ownership of that stock until it is determined whether one or more of them acquired it by the commission of a crime. We think that under the circumstances a court will entertain such a request and may grant it.”
“But what—” Her frown was deeper. “Why should I do that?”
“Because you have a legitimate interest in the proper handling of the firm’s affairs. Because you were Priscilla’s oldest friend, and formerly her closest one. Who do you think killed her?”
“I don’t know. I wish you — don’t do this!”
“This is what I came for. It may amount to nothing. The police may get it fast, today or tomorrow, and if so that settles it. But they may never get it, that has been known to happen, and a week or a month from now may be too late for Mr. Wolfe to start on it, and anyhow his client won’t wait. We can’t march in as the cops can. We have to have some way of getting at those people, we have to get a foot in, and this will do it. I’ll tell you, Mrs. Jaffee, I’m not going to contribute any cracks about your accepting dividend checks, but it is true that that business has been supporting you in pretty good style for a long time, and this isn’t much for it to ask in return, especially since you can be darned sure Priscilla Eads would be asking it too if she could talk. It won’t take—”
I stopped because only a sap goes on talking to someone who is walking out on him. As she left the divan and started off she said nothing, but she sure was walking out. At an arch at the far end of the room she turned and spoke. “I won’t do it! I won’t do that!”
She was gone. A moment later the sound came of a door closing — not slamming, but firmly closing. After standing and considering a little, and deciding that I was out of ammunition for that target at that time and place, I moved in the opposite direction to the one she had taken, to the entrance foyer. Crossing it, my eye caught the hat on the table and the coat on the back of the chair.
What the hell, I thought, and picked them up and took them along.