Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families (14 page)

So I was not entirely correct when I said that I got no word at all from Wolfe during those weeks and months, but you must admit it was pretty vague. How far a man gets on five grand, and where he goes, depends on so many things.

When I returned to the office from a morning walk on the third day of May, a Wednesday, and called the phone-answering service as usual, I was told there had been three calls but only one message—to ring a Mount Kisco number and ask for Mrs. Frey. I considered the situation, told myself the thing to do was skip it, and decided that I must be hard of hearing when I became aware that I had dialed the operator and asked for the number. Then, after I had got it and spelled my name and waited a minute, Annabel Frey’s voice was in my ear. At least
the voice said it was her, but I wouldn’t have recognized it. It was sort of tired and hopeless.

“You don’t sound like you,” I told her.

“I suppose not,” she conceded. “It seems like a million years since you came that day and we watched you being a detective. You never found out who poisoned the dog, did you?”

“No, but don’t hold it against me. I wasn’t expected to. You may have heard that that was just a blind.”

“Yes, of course. I don’t suppose Nero Wolfe is back?”

“Nope.”

“You’re running his office for him?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it running. I’m here.”

“I want to see you.”

“Excuse me for staring, but do you mean on business?”

“Yes.” A pause, then her voice got more energetic. “I want you to come up here and talk with us. I don’t want to go on like this, and I’m not going to. When people look at me I can see it in their eyes—was it me that killed my mother-in-law?—or in some of them I can see it, and that makes me think it’s there with all of them. It’s been nearly a month now, and all the police are doing—but you read the papers. She left me this place and a lot of money, and I wish I could hire Nero Wolfe. You must know where he is.”

“Sorry. I don’t.”

“Then I want to hire you. You’re a good detective, aren’t you?”

“Opinions vary. I rate myself close to the top, but you have to discount that for my bias.”

“Could you come up here today? This evening?”

“I couldn’t make it today.” My brain was having some exercise for the first time in weeks. “Look, Mrs. Frey, I wouldn’t be in a hurry about this. There’s—”

“A hurry?” She sounded bitter. “It’s been nearly a month!”

“I know, and that’s why another few days won’t matter. There’s nothing fresh about it, to get stale. Why don’t you do this, let me do a little looking around, just on my own, and then you’ll hear from me. After that you can decide whether you want to hire me or not.”

“I’ve already decided.”

“I haven’t. I don’t want your dough if there’s no chance of earning it.”

Since her mind had been made up before she called me, she didn’t like it my way but finally settled for it.

I discovered when I hung up that my mind was made up too. It had made itself up while I was talking to her. I couldn’t go on like this forever, nothing but a damn caretaker with no telling from day to day how long it might last. Nor could I, while drawing pay as Wolfe’s assistant, take a boat for Europe or run for Mayor of New York or buy an island and build up a harem, or any of the other things on my deferred list; and certainly, while taking his pay, I couldn’t personally butt into a case that he had run away from.

But there was nothing to prevent me from taking advantage of the gratitude that was still felt, even after paying the fee, by certain former clients of ours, and I took up the phone again and got the president of one of the big realty outfits, and was glad to learn that I hadn’t overestimated his gratitude.
When I had explained my problem he said he would do all he could to help, starting right then.

So I spent the afternoon looking at offices in the midtown section. All I wanted was one little room with a light that worked, but the man that the realty president sent to go around with me was more particular than I was, and he turned his nose up at two or three that I would have bought. We finally got to one on Madison Avenue, tenth floor, in the forties, which he admitted might do. It wouldn’t be vacated until the next day, but that didn’t matter much because I still had to buy furniture. I was allowed to sign for it on a month-to-month basis.

The next couple of days I had to keep myself under control. I had never been aware of any secret longing to have my own agency, but I had to choke off an impulse to drop in at Macgruder’s Thursday morning and blow a couple of thousand of my own jack on office equipment. Instead, I went to Second Avenue and found bargains. Having decided not to take anything from Thirty-fifth Street, I made up a shopping list of about forty items, from ash trays to a Moorhead’s Dictionary, and shot the works.

Late Saturday afternoon, with a package under my arm, I emerged from the elevator, went down the hall to the door of 1019, and backed off to give it a look.

ARCHIE GOODWIN
Private Detective

Not bad at all, I thought, unlocking the door and entering. I had considered having the painter put beneath it “By Appointment Only” to keep the crowd down, but decided to save the extra three bucks. I
put my package on the desk, unwrapped it, and inspected my new letterheads and envelopes. The type of my name was a little too bold, maybe, but otherwise it was pretty neat. I uncovered the typewriter, a rebuilt Underwood that had set me back $62.75, inserted one of the letterheads, and wrote:

I read it over and signed it. It looked businesslike, I thought, with the regulation initialing at the bottom, the “hs” being for “himself.” When I left, after putting the stationery in a drawer and getting things in order for the rush of business on Monday morning, I dropped the envelope in the mail chute. I was doing it that way, instead of phoning her, for three reasons: if she had changed her mind she could just ignore it; I had a date, purely personal, for the weekend; and I had drawn myself a salary check, the last one, for that week. On my way home I made a detour to Fifty-fourth Street, to tell Marko Vukcic what I had done, because I thought he should be the first to know.

He made it not only plain but emphatic that he disapproved. I told him, “Experience tells me that
pants wear out quicker sitting down than moving around. Intelligence tells me that it’s better to wait till you die to start to rot. I would appreciate it if you will convey that to him next time you write him or phone him.”

“You know perfectly good, Archie, that—”

“Not perfectly good. Perfectly well.”

“You know that I have said nothing, but nothing, that might make you think I can write him or phone him.”

“You didn’t need to. I know it’s not your fault, but where does it leave me? Let me know any time you get a buyer for the house, and I’ll move out.”

I left him still wanting to argue.

I was not kidding myself that I had really cut loose, since I hadn’t moved my bed out, but the way I figured it a caretaker who is drawing no pay has a right to a room; and besides, Fritz was still sleeping there and we were splitting on the groceries for breakfast, and I didn’t want to insult either him or my stomach by breaking that up.

I shall now have to specify when I say office—or, better, I’ll say office when I mean Wolfe’s office, and when I mean my Madison Avenue suite I’ll say 1019. Monday morning, arriving at 1019 a little after ten, I rang the phone-answering service and was told that there had been no calls, and then dug into the morning mail, which consisted of a folder from a window-cleaning outfit. After giving it full consideration, I typed notes on my new stationery to some personal friends, and an official letter to the City of New York giving notice of my change of address as a licensed detective. I was sitting trying to think who else I might write to when the phone rang—my first incoming call.

I picked it up and told the transmitter plainly, “Archie Goodwin’s office.”

“May I speak to Mr. Goodwin, please?”

“I’ll see if he’s in. Who is calling, please?”

“Mrs. Frey.”

“Yes, he’s in. This is me. You got my note?”

“It came this morning. I don’t know what you mean about representing no one but yourself.”

“I guess I didn’t make it very clear. I only meant I wouldn’t be acting as Nero Wolfe’s assistant. I’m just myself now.”

“Oh. Well—naturally, if you don’t even know where he is. Can you come this evening?”

“To Birchvale?”

“Yes.”

“What time?”

“Say eight-thirty?”

“I’ll be there.”

You can’t beat that, I thought to myself as I hung up, for the first incoming call to a new office—making a deal with a client who has just inherited a country estate and a million monetary units. Then, fearing that if it kept up like that I might get swamped, I closed the office for the day and headed for Sulka’s to buy a tie.

O
n my previous visit to Birchvale I had got the impression that Annabel Frey had her head on right side up, and her conduct that Monday evening strengthened it. For one thing, she had had sense enough not to gather that bunch around a dining table but invite them for half-past eight. With the kind of attitudes and emotions that were crisscrossing among those six people, an attempt to feed them at the same trough would have resulted in an acidosis epidemic.

In her first phone call, Wednesday, she had indicated that it was not a tête-à-tête she had in mind, so I was expecting to find company, probably the widower and the cousin, but to my surprise it was a full house. They were all there when I was shown into the big living room. Annabel Frey, as hostess there now, came to meet me and gave me her hand. The other five gave me nothing but dirty looks. I saw right off that my popularity index was way down, so I merely stood, gave them a cool collective greeting, and lifted a brow at my hostess.

“It’s not you, Goodwin,” the politician Pierce assured me, but in a raspy tone. “It’s simply the strain
of this unbearable situation. We haven’t been all together like this since that terrible night.” He glared at Annabel. “It was a mistake to get us here.”

“Then why did you come?” Barry Rackham demanded, really nasty. “Because you were afraid not to, like the rest of us. We all hated to come, but we were all afraid to stay away. A bunch of cowards—except one, of course. You can’t blame
that
one for coming.”

“Nonsense,” said Dana Hammond, the banker. The look he was giving Rackham was just the opposite of the kind of look a banker is supposed to give a millionaire. “It has nothing to do with cowardice. Not with me. By circumstances beyond my control I am forced into an association that is hateful to me.”

“Have they,” Lina Darrow asked him sweetly, “finished with the audit of your department?”

“They haven’t finished anything,” Calvin Leeds growled, and I didn’t know he was aiming at her until he went on. “Not even with wondering what you see in Barry Rackham all of a sudden—if it is sudden.”

Rackham was out of his chair, moving toward Leeds, snarling, “You can eat that, Cal, or—”

“Oh, stop it!” Annabel stepped to head Rackham off. She whirled, taking them in. “My God, isn’t it bad enough without this?” She appealed to me. “I didn’t know this was how it would be!” To Rackham, “Sit down, Barry!”

Rackham backed up and sat. Lina Darrow, who had been standing, went and stretched out on a couch, detaching herself. The others stayed put, with Annabel and me on our feet. I have had plenty of contacts with groups of people, all kinds, who have suddenly had a murder explode among them, but I
don’t think I have ever seen a bunch blown quite so high.

Annabel said, “I didn’t want to have Mr. Goodwin come and discuss it just with me. I didn’t want any of you to think—I mean, all I wanted was to find out, for all of us. I thought it would be best for all of us to be here.”

“All of us?” Pierce asked pointedly. “Or all but one?”

“It was a mistake, Annabel,” Hammond told her. “You can see it was.”

“Exactly what,” Rackham inquired, “was your idea in sending for Goodwin?”

“I want him to work for us. We can’t let it go on this way, you all know we can’t. I’ll pay him, but he’ll be working for all of us.”

“All but one,” Pierce persisted.

“Very well, all but one! As it is now, it isn’t all but one, it’s all of us!”

Lina Darrow sang out from the couch, “Is Mr. Goodwin giving a guarantee?”

I had taken a chair. Annabel dropped into one facing me and put it to me. “What about it? Can you do anything?”

“I can’t give a guarantee,” I told her.

“Of course not. Can you do anything?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how it stands. Shall I try sketching it?”

“Yes.”

“Stop me if I go wrong. It’s true I was here when it happened, but that’s no help except what I actually saw and heard. Does everyone know what I was here for?”

“Yes.”

“Then they understand why I wasn’t much interested
in anyone but Rackham. And you and Miss Darrow, of course, but that interest wasn’t professional. It looks to me like a case that will probably never be solved by exhibits or testimony on facts. The cops have had plenty of good men on it, and if they had got anything usable on footprints or fingerprints, or getting the steak knife from the drawer, or alibis or timetables, or something like shoes that had been worn in the woods, someone would have been arrested long ago. And they’ve had it for a month, so no kind of routine would be any good now, and that’s all most detective work amounts to. Motive is no help, with four of you inheriting piles from two hundred grand up, and the other two possibly counting on marrying one of the piles. Only I must say, in the atmosphere here tonight, courtship doesn’t seem to be on the program.”