Evidently I lost my aplomb. I may even have stared with my jaw hanging open. Anyhow, I came to when Wolfe fired at me:
“What’s the matter with you? Palsy?”
Fred Durkin says I tittered. I did not. I merely said in a composed tone, “Mr. Brenner would like to speak to you a moment privately. In the hall.”
He glared at me suspiciously, then lifted his bulk with a grunt, crossed, and passed through the door which I opened. I pulled the door shut.
“Well?” he demanded.
I said in an undertone, “We’re being stalked. Engage in earnest whispered conversation, mumble umble, diddie riggie...”
The footsteps I had heard became Mr. John Charles Dunn and his wife June. Coming up the stairs, they reached our level, and, turning for the corridor, saw us. Dunn called:
“Have you seen Prescott, Mr. Wolfe? He’s here and wants to talk with you.”
Wolfe replied that he hadn’t seen the lawyer but would do so presently. Dunn nodded and, his wife beside him, dragged his feet along the corridor to the next flight of stairs. As soon as they were out of sight I switched to English again:
“Naomi Karn is down in the living room, but that’s not what gave me palsy. Daisy Hawthorne is there with her, talking to her.”
He growled, “What the devil did you drag me out here for? If you think this is a time for childish flummery—”
“No, sir, I don’t. Far from it. I’m telling you, the veiled widow is there in the library. She is also downstairs chatting with Naomi Karn. I just this second saw her. Someone’s playing a funny joke. But who’s the joke on, us up here, or Naomi down there?”
“Do you mean to tell me someone is masquerading—”
“Yeah, that’s the idea. These Hawthorne girls certainly are cards. But which is which?”
“In the living room talking with Miss Karn?”
“Yep.”
“You just saw them?”
“Yep.”
“Did you see Orrie?”
“Yep. She led him here at 2:28 and was admitted by the butler.”
He frowned at me a moment, pursing his lips, and then said, “Ask Fred to come here.”
I did so. Wolfe told him: “Go on up there and do your utmost to keep awake. Don’t lose the letter to Mr. Ames. Don’t get in a fight. I’ll be either here or at home.”
“Mr. Wolfe, I’m sorry I—”
“So am I. Go on.”
Fred went. Wolfe eyed me. “Now. We don’t need to flounder around with this. I’ll sit where I was. You sit beyond her. I’ll ask you to hand me something, and as you pass her you will lift that confounded veil.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I don’t blame you. Please open the door.”
That was one of the times I would have resigned on the spot but for the practical certainty that he would have given the job to Johnny Keems out of pure cussedness. I am not a softy. I once smacked a dainty little Cuban lassie out of her senses when she came to the office with a dagger in her sock, with the intention of presenting it to Nero Wolfe point first because he had draped a smuggling job around the neck of her blackeyed boy friend. But as I followed Wolfe back into the library and obeyed his instructions by taking a chair the other side of our version of Daisy Hawthorne, I was gulping down repugnance till I could feel it sticking in my throat.
However, I did it. I mean I tried to. First Wolfe asked a few questions and got her to talk a little. As near as I could tell, her voice, high-pitched, with a strain in it that gave you the feeling that it wasn’t coming from a mouth, was exactly the same as it had been in the office the day before. I decided it was either Daisy herself or the best mimic I had ever heard; and it was in my mind, naturally, that while a great actress isn’t necessarily a fine mimic, by public repute April Hawthorne was. Wolfe tried another trick, asking her what time it was, but when she looked at her wrist watch she did so with exactly the same slant to her head, using the left eye apparently, as the previous day when she had read the paper he gave her.
Wolfe asked me to hand him the notes I had taken of the interview with the others. I got up and started for him. When I was even with her chair I stumbled and lurched against her and grabbed to keep from falling, and what I got hold of was the lower edge of the veil. I knew it was anchored and would take a good jerk, and since it had to be done I was going to do it right, but I simply wasn’t prepared for what happened. A hurricane hit me. An awful screech split the air, and thirty wildcats flew at my face, which wasn’t protected by any veil, with all their claws working. Being stubborn, I was going on through and die fighting, but Wolfe called my name sharply and I jammed on the brake. She was ten feet away, and I never have been able to figure out how she got there and performed mayhem simultaneously.
“You clumsy fool,” said Wolfe. “Apologize.”
“Yes, sir.” I looked at the veil, as intact as if I’d never touched it. “I stumbled. I’m very sorry, Mrs. Hawthorne.”
“The door,” said Wolfe. “That scream must have alarmed people.”
As I reached it I heard hurried footsteps outside, and, opening it, saw Andy Dunn and his father looking white and startled, trotting toward me, and in the background Celia Fleet’s white shirt and blouse and the faded blue gown May Hawthorne was sporting. I sang out, “Okay! Sorry! I slipped and fell and scared Mrs. Hawthorne! Excuse it please!”
They said something which I shut off by closing the door almost in their faces. Apparently my explanation satisfied them that we hadn’t bumped Daisy off and the scream wasn’t her expiring cry, for they didn’t enter to investigate. I looked around for a mirror and didn’t see one. My face felt as if someone had scattered gunpowder on it and touched a match.
“You’d better find a bathroom and wash that blood off,” said Wolfe curtly. “Then please go down to the living room and get the notes you left there. Look them over and see if they’re what I want.”
I was too irate to speak, so I departed without a word. In the bathroom down the hall I surveyed the devastation in the mirror. My lovely smooth skin was a sight. “Occupational hazard,” I said bitterly. “To hell with it. I’m going to get a job as an executive.” I wet a towel and dabbed at it and did it smart.
And what Wolfe had meant, of course, was that I was to proceed to the living room, to the other Daisy, and turn the other cheek. If he thought I was going to represent the firm at any more unveiling ceremonies, he was deficient above the neck, but in my judgment that would prove unnecessary. I did not believe that anyone, even April Hawthorne, could act the part of thirty wildcats with that amount of fervor; that one in the library actually was thirty wildcats. I had not observed the other one with any particularity, and hadn’t heard her speak; probably a few sharp glances and a little conversation would do the trick. So when I had done all I could with the dabbing I moseyed on downstairs to the living room.
I was too late. Naomi Karn was still there, seated in the same chair as before, but she was alone. I walked over to her. Her eyes slanted up at me, and I met them. My mind was sufficiently on something else so that as far as I was concerned she was about as dangerous as a snake charmer in a circus.
I said, “I wanted to ask Mrs. Hawthorne something. Do you know where she went?”
Miss Karn shook her head. “She said she’d be back shortly.”
“How long ago did she leave?”
“How long? Oh, ten minutes.”
“I just wondered, because Mr. Wolfe is expecting her upstairs, when she gets through with you.” I gazed down at her. “I told Mr. Wolfe you’re here, and he said it would be a shame if you closed a deal with these people yourself, since in that case we’d be out a fee.”
“I’m not interested in your fee.”
“No, I suppose not. Did Mrs. Hawthorne phone and ask you to come, or did you just come?”
She let that one go by. A corner of her lip curled. “You may tell Mr. Wolfe that his bluff didn’t work. I have learned that his ridiculous offer of a hundred thousand dollars was not authorized by his clients. I’ll do a great deal better than that.”
“Good. We don’t deserve a fee anyhow. I am strongly opposed to the detective tariff. Why should you contribute to our sensual ease? I agree with whoever it was, millions for defemmes but not one cent for tribute. Excuse me a minute.”
A sudden bright idea had occurred to me. The draperies, heavy red folds from the ceiling to the floor, behind which Daisy had disappeared that morning, were there in the middle of the wall only three paces away. My idea was vague; there was no sense in supposing that she had chosen that exit again and was there eavesdropping; but I was curious about what was behind them anyhow. I stepped over and parted them enough to look in. Then, seeing what I saw, I passed through and let them fall behind me.
Osric Stauffer stood there, his back to the wall, with his finger pressed against his lips to shush me. I met his eyes, and met an appeal for silence there too, in spite of the dim light.
I glanced around. It was a small room, with a small window in the left rear corner. At one side was a bar, about ten feet long, with an array of glasses and bottles on shelves behind it, and a big picture of barefooted girls picking grapes. A rug on the floor completed the furnishings. In the right rear corner was a door, shut.
Stauffer hadn’t moved. He didn’t look very menacing, so I saw no reason to interfere with his method of passing the time. I turned around and pawed my way out and was standing in front of Miss Kara again.
“When Mrs. Hawthorne comes back,” I said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d finish with her as soon as possible, because Mr. Wolfe wants her. Why don’t you come up and see Wolfe while you’re waiting? He’d love to have a chat with you.”
She just looked through me. I shrugged. “Okay, suit yourself. I understand you had a good talk with an old friend of mine this morning. Inspector Cramer. He was warning Wolfe about you and telling about your alibis for Tuesday afternoon.”
She stirred on her chair. “I doubt,” she said, “if at any time in my life I would have regarded you as funny.”
“Pooh.” I looked her in the eye. “Let me tell you something, Miss Karn. Up to now I am reserving judgment as to whether it was you who blew Hawthorne’s head off. If it was, you’d better be making your own will instead of fussing around about his. But if it wasn’t, the best thing you can do is trot upstairs without delay and lay your pretty head confidingly on Nero Wolfe’s shoulder. I’m telling you. The popping noises around here do not come from firecrackers, which might singe your eyelashes but that’s all. Someone’s going to get a bad burn out of this before it’s over.”
Leaving that for her to consider at leisure, I marched off. Reflecting that if the downstairs Daisy was the counterfeit she had had plenty of time to discard her masquerade, and that therefore peeking through keyholes would have been wasted effort, I decided on a swift gallop around the field before returning to G.H.Q. The result was negative. I dispensed with such niceties as knocking on doors. The other three rooms on the ground floor, including the music room, were uninhabited. In a sitting room one flight up, two doors from the library, I flushed Dunn and his wife, and Prescott, apparently discussing their troubles. Mrs. Hawthorne’s apartment on the floor above was empty. Andy Dunn and Celia Fleet saw me enter it and leave it, from a bench they were occupying in the hall. They didn’t look interrupted; evidently they weren’t discussing anything, just sitting close enough to touch. In the room across the hall where I had found the library edition of Daisy when Wolfe sent me after her, May Hawthorne was lying on a bed with her bare feet protruding beyond the hem of the veteran gown, and her eyes closed. She asked, “Who is it?” without moving or opening her eyes, and I said, “Nobody much,” and went out again.
That left two to go. I found them together, in a room at the street end of the corridor. April was stretched out on a chaise longue, with her arms flung above her head, dressed in a green thing of thin silk which smoothed itself out on her high spots like a soft skin, and wearing no veil. Sara was on a chair near her, with a book open. Sara stared at me. April’s head didn’t move, but she got me from the corner of her eyes.
She said, “You might knock, you know. Does that man want me again?”
“No, I’m just looking.”
“Thank heaven.” She sighed with relief. “My niece is reading The Cherry Orchard’ to me. Of course I know it by heart. Would you care to listen?”
I said no, much obliged, and departed. Having observed a writing desk in Daisy Hawthorne’s suit, I returned there, found some paper in a drawer, got out my pen and sat down and wrote:
Downstairs Daisy disappeared. Told Naomi would return shortly but hasn’t. Naomi, waiting for her return, scorns you and says I’m not funny. Stauffer is lurking behind a curtain ten feet from her, God knows why. Made a survey and everyone accounted for. Sara is reading “The Cherry Orchard” (Chekhov) to April. Either one could have done it. I resign.
I blotted it, went out and descended to the library, and handed it to Wolfe, saying:
“I doubt if that’s it. It’s the only one I left in the living room.”
As he read it I got myself into a chair, this time one at the end of the desk, as far as practical from our own Daisy. I glanced at her sitting there behind her screen, and then looked somewhere else.
Wolfe grunted and passed the paper back to me. “It can wait. Mrs. Hawthorne and I have been discussing the matter of the will. It is her opinion that it expresses the wishes of her husband and his deliberate intention to deprive her of her rightful share of his fortune. She is not surprised at her husband’s duplicity, but strongly resents the fact that Mr. Prescott did not inform her of the will’s contents at the time it was drawn, though I have told her that had he done so it would have been a flagrant breach of ethics. Please make a note of these remarks. I asked Mrs. Hawthorne if she has dealt, or attempted to deal, directly with Miss Karn in the matter, and she says she has not and would not. I believe that covers the points we’ve discussed, madam?”
“Yes.” The veil inclined slightly forward and straightened up again.
Wolfe regarded it with half-closed eyes. “Well. Has Mr. Dunn told you that he has asked me to investigate your husband’s death?”
“No, but his wife has. My sister-in-law June.”
“Have you talked with the police?”
The veil was inclined again. “Last night. The district attorney. Mr. Skinner.”
“Are you willing to discuss it with me? I want to say, Mrs. Hawthorne, that I realize I am in your home, this is the library of your home, and I thank you for allowing me to work here. I assure you I shall clear out at the earliest possible moment. The luncheon — I shall not impose upon you for another meal if I can help it. But I do have a few questions to ask.”
“I am perfectly willing to answer them. I don’t believe — I doubt if I can help your investigation any, although I know quite well who killed my husband.”
“Oh. You do?”
“Yes. April.”
She had a special way of saying “April.” Anyone hearing her and not knowing what was meant would have guessed that April was a cross between a cockroach and a rattlesnake.
“I should think,” said Wolfe, “that will help my investigation a good deal. Provided you can give any reasons.”
“I can. April is sunk in debt and expected a legacy. She intends to marry Osric Stauffer. She pretends she’s playing with him, but she isn’t, she intends to marry him. She knows her beauty is going and she’ll need him. She thinks he’ll succeed to my husband’s partnership in Daniel Cullen and Company. She hated Noel’s influence over Andy. She wants Andy to marry that little blond fool Celia and be an actor. She knew Noel was leaving me next to nothing in his will, and she wanted me to have that blow too.”
She stopped. Wolfe asked, “Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“But you can’t have both ends, Mrs. Hawthorne. If she knew your husband was leaving you next to nothing, she must also have known what she was to get. A peach.”
“Not at all. Noel fooled them too. He told her what he was doing to me, but not what he was doing to her.”
“Do you have evidence of that?”
“I don’t need any.” The strain in her voice was more intense. “I know what my husband was like.”
“Do you possess any evidence that April Hawthorne did shoot her brother?”
“I don’t possess any, no. But she did.”
“You know, I suppose, that she says she was upstairs sleeping at the time it happened.”
“I know,” said the veil contemptuously. “But she wasn’t.”
“Did you see her leave the house or sneak into the woods?”
“No.”
Wolfe sighed. “I was hoping perhaps you had. I understand you were out in a field picking black-eyed susans.”
“I was picking daisies.”
“All right, daisies. I haven’t seen a map of the grounds, so I wouldn’t know whether you could see the house or the border of the woods from where you were. Could you?”
“Not the house actually, on account of trees around it. Besides the woods skirting the hill, there are clumps of trees all around there. They shielded me — that is, they shielded the house from my view, and the woods too. The reason I made that slip of the tongue — I am accustomed to regard myself as being in need of shielding.” A long thin finger touched the edge of the veil.
“Of course. I wouldn’t call that a slip. From where you were could you hear all three of the gunshots?”
“I don’t know whether I could or not, but I didn’t. The first shot was when we were finishing tea on the lawn; we spoke about it. Soon after that I went to the field for daisies. I heard no more shots. Often when I am alone like that my mind is on — on myself. That may be comprehensible to you. Perhaps I could have heard the shots, but I didn’t.”
“I see.” Wolfe closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them again and directed them at the veil. “If I were you,” he suggested, “I’d be a little circumspect about stating what you know, when you possess no evidence. After this thing gets in the papers it will be pretty nasty.”
“Nasty?” That awful little laugh fluttered the veil. “You mean what I said about April.”
“Yes. If she committed murder she’ll probably pay for it. In the meantime—”
“But she did! I know she did! I possess no evidence, but someone else does!”
“Indeed. Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is it?”
“I know that, but it wouldn’t do any good to tell you.”
“I’ll decide that,” Wolfe snapped. “Did you tell Mr. Skinner about it.”
“No. It wouldn’t do any good to tell him either.” The high-pitched voice went higher yet. “They would just deny it! How could I prove it? But I heard them, and I saw it!”
“Maybe I can prove it, Mrs. Hawthorne. I’d like to try. What was it?”
“It was a cornflower. Andy found a cornflower there near Noel’s body! And April had a bunch of them stuck in her belt when we were there having tea on the lawn!”