I put the 1938–39 edition of Who’s Who in America, open, on the leaf of my desk, because it was getting too heavy to hold on a hot day.
“They were sprinkled at discreet intervals,” I stated aloud. “If they didn’t fudge when they supplied the dope, April is thirty-six, May forty-one, and June forty-six. Five years apart. Apparently their parents started at the middle of the calendar and worked backwards, and also apparently they named June that because she was born in June, 1893. But the next one shows an effort of the imagination. I prefer to suppose it was Mamma who thought of it. Although the baby was actually born in February, they named it May...”
There was no sign that Nero Wolfe was listening as he leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed, but I went on anyhow. On that hot July day, in spite of the swell lunch Fritz had served us, I would have sold the world for a dime. My vacation was over. The news from Europe was enough to make you want to put signs at every ten yards along the seacoast, “Private Shore. No Sharks or Statesmen Allowed.” I had bandages on my arms where the black flies had bored for blood in Canada. Worst of all, Nero Wolfe had gone in for a series of fantastic expenditures, the bank balance was the lowest it had been for years, and the detective business was rotten; and just to be contrary, instead of doing his share of the worrying about it he seemed to have adopted the attitude that it would be impertinent to attempt to interfere with natural laws. Which had me boiling. He might be eccentric enough to find pleasure in a personal and intimate test of the operations of the New Deal WPA, but if I had my way about it the only meaning WPA would ever have for yours truly would be Wolfe Pays Archie.
So I went on buzzing. “It all depends,” I declared, “on what it is that’s biting them. It must be something pretty painful, or they wouldn’t have made an appointment to call on you in a body. The death of their brother Noel has probably taken care of their financial potentialities. Noel’s in here too.” I frowned at the Who’s Who. “He was forty-nine, the eldest, three years older than June, and was next to Cullen himself in Daniel Cullen and Company. Did it all himself, started there as a runner in 1908 at twelve bucks a week. That was in his obit in the Times, day before yesterday. Did you read it?”
Wolfe was motionless. I made a face at him and resumed.
“They’re not due for twenty minutes yet, so I might as well give you the benefit of my research. There’s more in this magazine article I dug up than in Who’s Who. A lot of rich and colorful details. For instance, it says that May has worn cotton stockings ever since the Japs bombed Shanghai. It says that Mamma was an amazing woman because she was the mother of four extraordinary children. I have never understood why, in cases like this, it is assumed that Papa’s contribution was negligible, but there’s no time to go into that now. It’s the extraordinary children we’re dealing with.”
I flipped a page of the magazine. “To sum up about Noel, who died Tuesday. It seems he had a row of buttons installed on his desk in the Wall Street offices of Daniel Cullen and Company; one for each country in Europe and Asia, not to mention South America. When he pressed a button, that country’s government resigned and they telephoned him to ask who to put in next. You can’t say that wasn’t extraordinary. The eldest daughter, June, was, as I say, born in June, 1893. At the age of twenty she wrote a daring and sensational book called Riding Bareback, and a year later another one entitled Affairs of a Titmouse. Then she married a brilliant young New York lawyer named John Charles Dunn, who is at the present moment the Secretary of State of the United States of America. He sent a cogent letter to Japan last week. The magazine states that Dunn’s meteoric rise is in great part due to his remarkable wife. Mamma again. June is in fact a mamma, having a son, Andrew, twenty-four and a daughter, Sara, twenty-two.”
I shifted to elevate my feet. “The other two extraordinaries are still named Hawthorne. May Hawthorne never has married. They are thinking of prosecuting her under the anti-trust law for her monopoly on brain cells. At the age of twenty-six she revolutionized colloid chemistry, something about bubbles and drops. Since 1933 she has been president of Varney College, and in those six years has increased its endowment funds by over twelve million bucks, showing that she has gone from colloidal to colossal. It says her intellectual power is extraordinary.
“I was wrong when I said the other two are still named Hawthorne. In April’s case I should have said ‘again’ instead of ‘still’. While she was taking London by storm in 1927 she glanced over the prostrate nobility at her feet and picked out the Duke of Lozano. Four other dukes, a bunch of earls and barons, and two soap manufacturers committed suicide. But alas. Three years later she divorced Lozano, while she was taking Paris by storm, and became April Hawthorne again, privately as well as publicly. She is the only actress, alive or dead, who has played both Juliet and Nora. At present she is taking New York by storm for the eighth time. I can confirm that personally, because a month ago I paid a speculator five dollars and fifty cents for a ticket to Scrambled Eggs. You may remember that I tried to persuade you to go. I figured that since April Hawthorne is the acknowledged queen of the American stage, you owed it to yourself to see her.”
Not a flicker. He wouldn’t rouse.
“Of course,” I said sarcastically, “it is deplorable that these extraordinary Hawthorne gals have no more consideration for your privacy than to come charging in here before you finish digesting your lunch. No matter what is biting them, no matter if their brother Noel left them a million dollars apiece and they want to pay you half of it for putting a tail on their banker, they ought to have more regard for common courtesy. When June phoned this morning I told her—”
“Archie!” His eyes opened. “I am aware that you call Mrs. Dunn, whom you have never met, by her first name, because you think it irritates me. It does. Don’t do it. Shut up.”
“—I told Mrs. Dunn it was an intolerable invasion of your inalienable right to sit here in peace and watch the bank balance disappear in the darkening twilight of the slow but inevitable dispersion of your mental powers and the pitiful collapse of your instinct of self-preservation—”
“Archie!” He thumped the desk.
It was time to side-step, but I was rescued from that necessity by the door’s opening and the appearance of Fritz Brenner. Fritz was beaming, and I could guess why. The visitors he had come to announce had probably impressed him as something unusually promising in the way of clients. The only secrets in Nero Wolfe’s old house on 35th Street near the Hudson River were professional secrets. It was unavoidable that I, his secretary, bodyguard, and chief assistant, should be aware that the exchequer was having its bottom scraped; but Fritz Brenner, cook and gentleman of the household, and Theodore Horstmann, custodian of the famous and expensive collection of orchids which Wolfe maintained in the plant rooms on the roof — they knew it too. And Fritz was beaming, obviously, because the trio whose arrival he was announcing looked more like a major fee than anything the office had seen for weeks. He did it in style. Wolfe told him, with no enthusiasm, to show them in. I took my feet off the desk.
Though the extraordinary Hawthorne gals did not strongly resemble one another, my discreet glances of appraisal as I got them arranged into chairs made it credible that they were daughters of the same amazing mother. April I had seen on the stage; now that I got a look at her off it, I was ready to concede that she could probably take Nero Wolfe’s office by storm if she cared to let loose. She looked hot, peevish, beautiful and overwhelming. When she thanked me for her chair I decided to marry her as soon as I could save up enough to buy a new pair of shoes.
May, the intellectual giant and college president, surprised me. She looked sweet. Later, seeing how determined her mouth could get, and how cutting her voice, when the occasion required it, I made drastic revisions, but then she just looked sweet, harmless, and not quite middle-aged. June, Mrs. Dunn to you, was slenderer than either of her younger sisters, next door to skinny, with hair that was turning gray, and restless dark burning eyes — the kind of eyes that have never been satisfied and never will be. Where they all looked alike was chiefly the forehead — broad, rather high, with well-marked temple depressions and strong eye ridges.
June did the introducing; first herself and her sisters, and then the two males who accompanied them. Their names were Stauffer and Prescott. Stauffer was probably under forty, maybe five years older than me, not a bad-looking guy if he had been a little more careless with his face. He was living up to something. The other one, Prescott, was nearer fifty. He was medium-short, with a central circumference that made it seem likely he would grunt if he bent over to tie his shoestring. Nothing, of course, like Nero Wolfe’s globular grandeur. I recognized him from a picture I had seen in the rotogravure when he had been elected to something in the Bar Association. He was Glenn Prescott of the law firm of Dunwoodie, Prescott & Davis. He had on a Metzger shirt and tie, and a suit that cost a hundred and fifty bucks, and wore a flower in his buttonhole.
The flower was the cause of a little diversion right at the beginning. I have given up trying to decide whether Wolfe does those things just to establish the point that he’s eccentric, or because he’s curious, or to spar for time to size someone up, or what. Anyhow, they had barely got settled in their chairs when he aimed his eyes at Prescott and asked politely:
“Is that a centaurea?”
“I beg your pardon?” Prescott looked blank. “Oh, you mean my buttonhole. I don’t know. I just stop at the florist’s and select something.”
“You wear a flower without knowing its name?”
“Certainly. Why not?”
Wolfe shrugged. “I never saw a centaurea of that color before.”
“It isn’t,” Mrs. Dunn put in impatiently. “A centaurea cyanus has a much closer formation—”
“I didn’t say centaurea cyanus, madam.” Wolfe sounded testy. “I had in mind centaurea leucophylla.”
“Oh. I’ve never seen one. Anyway, that isn’t a centaurea leuco-anything. It’s a dianthus superbus.”
April started to laugh. May smiled at her as Einstein would smile at a kitten. June darted her eyes that way and April stopped laughing and said in her famous rippling voice:
“You win, Juno. It’s a dianthus superbus. I don’t mind your always being right, not a bit, but when anything strikes me as funny it’s my nature to laugh. And, I might inquire, was I dragged down here to hear you treat the audience to a spot of botany?”
“You weren’t dragged,” the elderly sister retorted. “At least not by me.”
May fluttered a deprecating hand. “You must forgive us, Mr. Wolfe. Our nerves are quite ragged. We do wish to consult you about something serious.” She looked at me and smiled so sweetly that I smiled back. Then she added to Wolfe, “And something extremely confidential.”
“That’s all right,” Wolfe assured her. “Mr. Goodwin is my âme damnée. I could do nothing without him. The spot of botany was my fault; I started it. Tell me about the something serious.”
Prescott inquired reluctantly, “Shall I explain?”
April, waving a hand to extinguish the match with which she had lit a cigarette, and squinting to keep the smoke from her eyes, shook her head at him. “Fat chance of a man explaining anything with all three of us present.”
“I think,” May suggested, “it would be better if June—”
Mrs. Dunn said abruptly, “It’s my brother’s will.”
Wolfe frowned at her. He hated fights about wills, having once gone so far as to tell a prospective client that he refused to engage in a tug of war with a dead man’s guts for a rope. But he asked not too rudely, “Is there something wrong with the will?”
“There is.” June’s tone was incisive. “But first I’d like to say — you’re a detective. It’s not a detective we need. It was my idea we should come to you. Not so much on account of your reputation, more because of what you did once for a friend of mine, Mrs. Llewellyn Frost. She was then Glenna McNair. Also I have heard my husband speak highly of you. I gathered that you had done something difficult for the State Department.”
“Thank you. But,” Wolfe objected, “you say you don’t need a detective.”
“We don’t. But we very much need the services of an able, astute, discreet and unscrupulous man.”
“That’s diplomacy for you,” said April, tapping ash from her cigarette.
It was ignored. Wolfe inquired, “What kind of services?”
I decided what it was about June’s face that needed adjustment. Her eyes were the eyes of a hawk, but her nose, which should have been a beak to go with the eyes, was just a straight, good-looking nose. I preferred to look at April. But June was talking:
“Very exceptional services, I’m afraid. My husband says nothing but a miracle will do, but he’s a cautious and conservative man. You know of course that my brother died on Tuesday, three days ago. The funeral was held yesterday afternoon. Mr. Prescott — my brother’s attorney — collected us last evening to read the will to us. Its contents shocked and astonished us — all of us, without exception.”
Wolfe made a little sound of distaste. I knew it for that, but I suppose it might have passed for sympathy to people who had just met him. But he said dryly:
“Those disagreeable shocks would never occur if the inheritance tax were one hundred per cent.”
“I suppose so. You sound like a Bolshevik. But it wasn’t the disappointment of expectant legatees, it was something much worse—”
“Excuse me,” May put in quietly. “In my case it was. He had told me he was leaving a million dollars to the science fund.”
“I am merely saying,” June declared impatiently, “that we are not hyenas. Certainly none of us was calculating on any imminent inheritance from Noel. We knew of course that he was wealthy, but he was only forty-nine and in extremely good health.” She turned to Prescott. “I think, Glenn, the quickest way will be for you to tell Mr. Wolfe briefly the provisions of the will.”
The lawyer cleared his throat. “I must remind you again, June, that once it is made public—”
“Mr. Wolfe will take it in confidence. Won’t you?”
Wolfe nodded. “Certainly.”
“Well.” Prescott cleared his throat again. He looked at Wolfe. “Mr. Hawthorne left a number of small bequests to servants and employees, a total of one hundred and sixty-four thousand dollars. A hundred thousand to each of the two children of his sister, Mrs. John Charles Dunn, and a like amount to the science fund of Varney College. Five hundred thousand to his wife; he had no children. An apple to his sister June, a pear to his sister May, and a peach to his sister April.” The lawyer looked uncomfortable. “I assure you that Mr. Hawthorne, who was not only my client but my friend, was not a freak. There was a statement that his sisters needed nothing of this, that he made those bequests only as symbols of his regard.”
“Indeed. Does that cover the estate? Around a million?”
“No.” Prescott looked even more uncomfortable. “The residue will be roughly seven million, after the deduction of taxes. Probably a little less. It was left to a woman whose name is Naomi Karn.”
“La femme,” said April. It was neither a sneer nor a flippancy, merely a statement of fact.
Wolfe sighed.
Prescott said, “The will was drawn by me after instructions from Mr. Hawthorne. It is dated March 7, 1938, and replaced one which had been drawn three years previously. It was kept in a vault in the office of my firm. I mention this on account of intimations made last evening by Mrs. Dunn and Miss May Hawthorne that I should have notified them of its contents at the time it was drawn. As you know, Mr. Wolfe, that would have been—”
“Nonsense,” May said cuttingly. “You know very well we were upset. We were gasping.”
“We still are.” June’s eyes pierced Wolfe. “You will please understand that my sisters and I are perfectly satisfied with our fruit. It isn’t that. But think of it, the sensation and scandal of it! I can hardly believe it! None of us can. It’s incredible. My brother leaving his entire fortune, the bulk of it, to that — that—”
“Woman,” April suggested.
“Very well. Woman.”
“It was his fortune,” Wolfe observed. “And apparently that’s what he did with it.”
“Meaning?” May inquired.
“Meaning that if it’s the sensation and scandal you object to, the less you say and do about it the sooner it will be forgotten.”
“Thank you,” said June sarcastically. “We need something better than that. The publication of the will alone would be bad enough. Considering that millions are involved, and the position of my husband, and of my sisters — My Lord! Don’t you realize that we’re the famous Hawthorne girls, whether we like it or not?”
“Of course we like it,” April asserted. “We love it.”
“Speak for yourself, Ape.” June kept her eyes on Wolfe. “You can imagine what the papers will do. Even so, I think your advice is good. I think the best plan would be to do and say nothing, let it run its course and ignore it. But it isn’t going to be allowed to run its course. Something utterly horrible is going to happen. Daisy is going to contest the will.”
Wolfe’s frown deepened. “Daisy?”
“Oh, excuse me. As my sister said, our nerves are in shreds. Our brother’s death was a staggering shock. Then its aftermath — yesterday the funeral — and then this. Daisy is my brother’s wife. His widow. She is well established as a tragic figure.”
Wolfe nodded. “The lady who wears a veil.”
“So you know the legend.”
“Not a legend,” May declared. “Much more than a legend. A fact.”
“I merely share the public knowledge,” said Wolfe. “Of the story that — some six years ago, I believe — Noel Hawthorne was doing archery and an arrow, which he let fly inadvertently, tore a path through his wife’s face, from her brow to her chin. She had been beautiful. Since then she has never been seen without a veil.”
April said, with a little shudder, “It was dreadful. I saw her in the hospital, and I still dream about it. She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw except a girl selling cigarettes in a café in Warsaw.”
“She was emotionally barren,” May asserted. “Like me, but without alternatives. She should never have married our brother or anyone else.”
June shook her head. “You’re both wrong. Daisy was too cold to be truly beautiful. The seeds of emotion were in her, waiting to germinate. The Lord knows they’re bearing fruit now. We all heard the vindictiveness in her voice last night, and that’s an emotion, isn’t it?” June’s eyes were at Wolfe again. “She implacable. She’s going to make it as ugly as she can. The income from half a million dollars would be ample for her, but she’s going to fight. You know what that will be like. Utterly horrible. So your advice to let the scandal run its course is inadequate. She hates the Hawthornes. My husband would be called as a witness. All of us would.”
May put in, with all the sweetness gone both from her tone and her eyes, “We are going to prevent it.”
“We want,” said April, letting fire with her ripple, “we want you to prevent it, Mr. Wolfe.”
“My husband spoke very highly of you,” June stated, as if that settled everything, including the weather.
“Thank you.” Wolfe sent a glance around at them, from one to the other, including the two men. “What am I supposed to do, obliterate Mrs. Hawthorne?”
“No.” June spoke with finality. “You can’t do anything with her. You’ll have to attack it from the other end. The woman, Naomi Karn. Get her to give up most of it — at least half of it. If you do that, we’ll do the rest. For some unknown reason Daisy really wants the money, though the Lord knows what she thinks she’s going to do with it. You may find it difficult, but surely not impossible. You can tell Miss Karn that if she doesn’t relinquish at least half of it she’ll have a fight on her hands, and she may lose considerably more than half.”
“Anyone can tell her that, madam.” Wolfe turned to the lawyer. “How does it stand legally? Would Mrs. Hawthorne have a case?”
“Well.” Prescott screwed up his lips. “She would have a case, of course. To begin with, under the common law—”
“No, please. Don’t brief it. In a word, could Mrs. Hawthorne break the will?”
“I don’t know. I think she might. In view of the way the will is worded, the law leaves it open to the facts.” Prescott was looking uncomfortable again. “You might appreciate that I am in an anomalous position. Dangerously close to an unethical position. I myself drew the will for Mr. Hawthorne, having been instructed by him to make it as contest-proof as possible. I cannot be expected to suggest ways and means of attack on my own document; rather it is my duty to defend it. On the other hand, as a friend of all the members of the Hawthorne family — not as an attorney — and I may say, also of Mr. Dunn, who holds a position of national eminence — I realize the incalculable harm that would result from a public trial of the issue. It is extremely desirable to avoid it if possible, and in view of the attitude Mrs. Hawthorne had unfortunately adopted—”
Prescott stopped, and screwed up his lips again. He went on, “I’ll tell you. Frankly and confidentially — and it is highly unethical for me to say this — I regard that will as an outrage. I told Noel Hawthorne so at the time it was drawn, but when he insisted, all I could do was obey his instructions. Entirely aside from its unfairness to Mrs. Hawthorne, I was aware that he had told his sister he would leave a million dollars to the Varney College Science Fund, and that he was making it only ten per cent of that amount. That was worse than unfair, it came close to improbity, and I told him so. Without effect. My opinion was, and still is, that under the influence of Miss Karn he had lost his balance.”
“I still don’t believe it.” It was May again, and she was continuing to do without sweetness. “I still believe that if Noel had decided not to do what he had said he would do, he would have told me so.”
“My dear Miss Hawthorne.” Prescott turned to her with his lips compressed in exasperation. “Last evening I was willing to overlook your remarks because I knew you were under the stress of a great and unexpected disappointment.” There was a tremble of indignation in his voice. “But that you should dare to insinuate, here in the presence of others, that the terms of Noel’s will are not in accordance with his precise instructions — my God, the man could read, couldn’t he—”
“Nonsense,” May interrupted cuttingly. “I was merely expressing incredulity. I would as soon attack the laws of thermodynamics as your integrity. Maybe you were both hypnotized.” Suddenly and flashingly she smiled at him, and swore plaintively. “Damn it. All of this is intolerably painful. I would be for letting it go, without a word, if it weren’t that Daisy’s ghoulish stubbornness makes it imperative to do something. As it is, I insist that in the settlement with Miss Karn there shall be an arrangement to increase the legacy to the science fund to the figure my brother intended at the time he discussed it with me.”
“Ah,” Wolfe murmured. Prescott, his lips still in a tight line, nodded at him as if to say, “Just so. Ah.”
June snapped at her sister. “You’re only making it more difficult, May, and perhaps impossible. Anyhow, you’re bluffing. I know you. You wouldn’t dream of stirring up this nasty mess. If Mr. Wolfe can talk that woman into it, all right; I’m perfectly willing your fund should get the million, but the main point is Daisy and you know it. We agreed on that—”
She stopped because the door from the hall opened. Fritz, entering, approached Wolfe’s desk and extended his hand with a card tray. Wolfe took the card, glanced at it, and placed it neatly under the paperweight. Then he looked at Mrs. Dunn and addressed her:
“This card says Mrs. Noel Hawthorne. ”
They all stared.
“Oh, my God!” April blurted. May said quietly, “We should have tied her up.” June arose from her chair and demanded, “Where is she? I’ll see her.”
“Please.” Wolfe pushed air down with his palm. “She is calling on me. I’ll see her myself—”
“But this is ridiculous.” June stayed on her feet. “She gave us until Monday. She promised to do nothing till then. I left my son and daughter with her to make sure—”
“You left them with her where?”
“At my brother’s home. Her home. We all spent the night there — not her home either, that’s one reason she’s acting the way she is, as a part of the residuary estate it will go to that woman and not to her — but she promised to do nothing—”
“Please sit down, Mrs. Dunn. I’d have to see her anyway, before I could accept this job. Bring Mrs. Hawthorne in, Fritz.”
“There are two ladies and a gentleman with her, sir.”
“Bring them all in.”