Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 17 (11 page)

There were four managers whom Whitten wanted to fire immediately, and one that he wanted to transfer
to headquarters in New York. Within five minutes he had got sarcastic and personal, and Pompa was yelling at the top of his voice. Pompa, according to Marko, had always been a yeller and always would be. When Mrs. Whitten, intervening, lined up on her husband’s side, it was too much. Pompa yelled that he was done, finished, and through for good, and tramped out and down the stairs. Mrs. Whitten came after him, caught him in the reception hall, and pulled him into the living room. She appealed to him, but he stood pat. She made him sit down, and practically sat on him, and insisted. She was keenly aware, she said, that no one, not even her Floyd, was capable of directing successfully the complex and far-flung
AMBROSIA
enterprise without long and thorough preparation. Her attempt to put her son Mortimer in charge had taught her a lesson. One more year was all she asked of Pompa. She knew he owed no loyalty to her, and certainly not to Floyd, but what about the dead H. R. Landy and
AMBROSIA
itself? Would he desert the magnificent structure he had helped to build? As for the immediate point at issue, she would promise that Floyd should have no authority regarding unit managers for at least six months. Pompa, weakening, stated that Floyd was not even to mention managers. Mrs. Whitten agreed, kissed Pompa on the cheek, took his hand, and led him out of the room and across the reception hall to the stairs. They had been in the living room with the door closed, by Pompa’s best guess, about half an hour.

As they started to mount the stairs they heard a noise, a crash of something falling, from the dining room.

Mrs. Whitten said something like “My God.” Pompa strode to the door to the dining room and
threw it open. It was dark in there, but there was enough light from the hall, through the door he had opened, to see that there were people. He stepped to the wall switch and flipped it. By then Mrs. Whitten was in the doorway, and they both stood and gaped. There were indeed people, five of them, now all on their feet: the two Landy sons, Jerome and Mortimer; the two Landy daughters, Eve and Phoebe; and the son-in-law, Eve’s husband, Daniel Bahr. As for the noise that had betrayed them, there was an overturned floor lamp.

Pompa, having supposed that these sons and daughters of
AMBROSIA
wealth were miles away on Independence Day weekends, continued to gape. So, for a moment, did Mrs. Whitten. Then, in a voice shaking either with anger or something else, she asked Pompa to go and wait for her in the living room. He left, closing the dining-room door behind him, and stood outside and listened.

The voices he heard were mostly those of Jerome, Eve, Daniel Bahr, and Mrs. Whitten. It was Bahr, the son-in-law—the only one, according to Pompa, not in awe of Mother—who told her what the conclave was for. They had gathered thus secretly and urgently to consider and discuss the matter of Floyd Whitten. Did the intention to train him to become the operating head of
AMBROSIA
mean that he would get control, and eventually ownership, of the source of the family fortune? If so, could anything be done, and what? He, Bahr, had come because Eve asked him to. For his part, he was glad that Mr. and Mrs. Whitten had unexpectedly arrived on the scene, and that an accidental noise had betrayed their presence; they had been sitting in scared silence, as darkness came, for nearly two hours, afraid even to sneak away because of the
upstairs windows overlooking the street, talking only in low whispers, which was preposterous conduct for civilized adults. The way to handle such matters was open discussion, not furtive scheming. The thing to do now was to get Whitten down there with them and talk it out—or fight it out, if it had to be a fight.

The others talked some too, but Bahr, the professional word user, had more to use. Pompa had been surprised at Mrs. Whitten. He had supposed she would start slashing and mow them down, reminding them that
AMBROSIA
belonged exclusively to her, a fact she frequently found occasion to refer to, but apparently the shock of finding them there in privy powwow, ganging up on her Floyd, had cramped her style. She had not exactly wailed, but had come close to it, and had reproached them bitterly for ever dreaming that she could forget or ignore their right to a proper share in the proceeds of their father’s work. For that a couple of them apologized. Finally Bahr took over again, insisting that they should bring Whitten down and reach a complete understanding. There were murmurs of agreement with him, and when Mrs. Whitten seemed about to vote yes too, Pompa decided it was time for him to move. He walked out the front door and went home.

That was all we had from Pompa. He wasn’t there when Mrs. Whitten and her son Jerome and Daniel Bahr went upstairs together to get Whitten, and found him hunched over on the table with a knife in him from the back. It was one of the pointed slicing knives, with an eight-inch blade.

Wednesday morning, as I said, in Wolfe’s bedroom, when he started to save old Virgil Pompa by getting Mrs. Whitten on the phone before he finished breakfast, instead of getting Mrs. Whitten he got coffee in his windpipe. He coughed explosively, gasped, and went on coughing.

“You shouldn’t try to drink when you’re mad,” I told him. “Peristalsis is closely connected with the emotions. Anyhow, I think it was only a butler. Naturally she has brought the hired help in from the country. Do you care whether a butler has heard of you? I don’t.”

With the panic finally out of his windpipe, Wolfe took off his yellow silk pajama top, revealing enough hide to make shoes for four platoons, tossed it on the bed, and frowned at me.

“I have to see those people. Preferably all of them, but certainly Mrs. Whitten. Apparently they squirm if she grunts. Find out about her.”

So that was what I spent the day at.

The Homicide Bureau was of course a good bet, and, deciding a phone call would be too casual, I did a few morning chores in the office and then went to 20th Street. Inspector Cramer wasn’t available, but I got to Sergeant Purley Stebbins. I was handicapped because my one good piece of bait couldn’t be used. It was a fair guess that Mrs. Whitten and the Landy children had given the cops a distorted view of the reason for the secret gathering in the dining room and the two-hour silent sit in the dark—possibly even a fancy lie. If so, it would have helped to be able to give Purley the lowdown on it, but I couldn’t. Pompa, when first questioned by the city employees, had
stated that when Mrs. Whitten had asked him to go to the living room and wait there for her, he had done so, and had left when he got tired of waiting. The damn fool hadn’t wanted to admit he had eavesdropped, and now he was stuck with it. If he tried to change it, or if Wolfe and I tried to change it for him, it would merely make his eye blacker than ever and no one would believe him.

Therefore the best I could do with Purley was to tell him Wolfe had been hired to spring Pompa, and of course that went over big. He was so sure they had Pompa for good that after a couple of supercilious snorts he got bighearted and conversed a little. It seemed that the secret meeting of scions in the dining room had been to discuss a scrape Mortimer had got into—a threatened paternity suit—which mamma mustn’t know about. So for me they were a bunch of barefaced liars, since Wolfe had decided to take Pompa for gospel. Purley had lots of fun kidding me, sure as he was that for once Wolfe had got roped in for a sour one. I took it, and also took all I could get on Mrs. Whitten and other details. The Homicide and DA line was that while waiting for Mrs. Whitten in the living room Pompa had got bored and, instead of just killing time, had trotted upstairs and killed Whitten, who was about to toss him out of his job.

Altogether I saw eight or nine people that day, building up an inventory on Mrs. Whitten and her offspring, and bought a drink for nobody, since there was no client’s expense account. They were a couple of radio men, a realtor who had once paid Wolfe a fee, a gossip peddler, and others, naturally including my friend Lon Cohen of the
Gazette.
During the afternoon Lon was tied up on some hot item, and I got to him so late that I made it back to West 35th Street barely in
time for dinner. Marko Vukcic was there when I arrived.

After a meal fully as good as the one Marko had fed us the evening before, the three of us went across the hall to the office. Wolfe got himself arranged in the chair behind his desk, the only chair on earth he really loves; Marko sat on the red leather one; and I stood and had a good stretch.

“Television?” Wolfe inquired politely.

“In the name of God,” Marko protested. “Pompa will die soon, perhaps tonight.”

“What of?”

“Fear, rage, mortification. He is old.”

“Nonsense. He will live to get his eye back, if for nothing else.” Wolfe shook his head. “As you said yesterday, Marko, you’re a Boniface, not a detective. Don’t crack a whip at me. What have you got, Archie?”

“No news.” I pulled my chair away from my desk and sat. “Are we still swallowing Pompa whole?”

“Yes.”

“Then they’re all lying about what they were there for, except Daniel Bahr, Eve’s husband, who merely says it was a family matter which he prefers not to discuss. They say they met to consider a jam Mortimer is in with a female by the name of—”

“No matter. Mrs. Whitten?”

“She’s in on the lie, of course. Probably she clucked them into it. During Landy’s life he was absolutely the rooster, and she merely came along with the flock, but when he died she took command and kept it. She is of the flock, by the flock, and for the flock, or at least she was until Whitten got his hooks in. Since her marriage she has unquestionably been for Whitten, though there has been no sign that she
intended to swear off clucking—at least there wasn’t until a month ago, when she installed Whitten in the big corner office that had been Landy’s. Pompa never moved into it. She is fifty-four, fairly bright, watches her figure, and looks as healthy as she is.”

“Have you seen her?”

“How could I? She wouldn’t even talk to you on the phone.”

“The son, Mortimer. Is he really in a scrape? Does he urgently need money?”

“Sure, I suppose so, like lots of other people, but this girl trouble is apparently nothing desperate, only enough of a mess so they could drag it in. About people urgently needing money, who knows? Maybe they all do. Jerome owns part of a real estate business, but he’s a big spender. Mortimer could owe a million. Eve and her husband might be betting on horse races, if you want to be trite. Phoebe may want to finance a big deal in narcotics, though that would be pretty precocious at twenty-four. There are plenty—”

“Archie. Quit talking. Report.”

I did so. It filled an hour and went on into the second, my display of all the little scraps I had collected, while Wolfe leaned back with his eyes closed and Marko obviously got more and more irritated. When the question period was finished too Marko exploded.

“Sacred Father above! If I prepared a meal like this my patrons would all starve to death! Pompa will die not of fear but of old age!”

Wolfe made allowances. “My friend,” he said patiently, “when you are preparing a meal the cutlet or loin does not use all possible resource, cunning, resolution, and malice to evade your grasp. But a murderer does. Assuming that Mr. Pompa is innocent, as I
do on your assurance, manifestly one of those six people is behind a shield that cannot be removed by a finger’s flick. They may even be in concert, if one of them went upstairs and dealt with Mr. Whitten while Mrs. Whitten and Mr, Pompa were in the living room. But before I can move I must start.” Wolfe looked at the clock on the wall, which said ten past ten, and then at me. “Archie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get them down here. As many of them as possible.”

“Yeah. During the week?”

“Tonight. Now.”

I gawked at him. “You don’t mean it.”

“The devil I don’t.” He was positively serious. “You probably can’t do it, but you can try. Confound it, look at Marko! At least you can bring the younger daughter. A woman that age likes to be with you no matter where you go, heaven knows why.”

“It’s my glass eye and wooden leg.” I stood up. “This is Wednesday. Hold your breath until Saturday.” I crossed to the door, and asked over my shoulder, “Have you any suggestions?”

“None. The circumstances may offer one.”

Since there would be no parking problem in the East Seventies at that hour, I decided to take my own wheels and went around the corner to the garage for the car.

On the way uptown I went over it. I was quite aware that Wolfe didn’t really expect me to deliver, not even Phoebe. He merely wanted to get Marko off
his neck, and sending me out to pass a miracle was his first and most natural notion, and also the least trouble for him. He knew it would make me sore, so the first thing I decided was not to be sore. When, stopping for a light on Fifth Avenue in the Forties, I caught myself muttering, “The fat lazy bum,” I saw that wasn’t working very good and took a fresh hold.

I parked a few yards west of the house I wanted to get into, on the same side of the street, just back of a dark gray sedan with an MD plate alongside the license. Sitting there with my eyes on the house entrance, which was the sort of granite portal to be expected in that upper-bracket neighborhood, I tried going over it again. I could get the door to open just by pushing the bell button. I could get inside by the momentum of 180 pounds. There were even simple stratagems that would probably get me to Mrs. Whitten. But what about from there on? With the house right there in front of me I got ambitious. It would be nice to make a delivery that Wolfe didn’t expect. The notion of playing it straight, saying that we had been engaged by Pompa and would like to have a conversation with the family, had been rejected before I had got to 42nd Street. I had other notions, some risky, some screwy, and some clever, but nothing that seemed to fit all the requirements. When I looked at my wrist watch and saw 10:40 I decided I had better settle for one and shoot it, did so, and climbed out to the sidewalk. As I swung the car door shut, I saw a man emerging from the entrance I was bound for. The light wasn’t very bright there, but there was plenty to see that it wasn’t either of the sons or the son-in-law. He was past middle age, and he was carrying the kind of black case that means doctor anywhere. He crossed the sidewalk to the gray sedan with an MD
plate on it, got in, and rolled away. Naturally, with my training and habits, I automatically noted the license number and filed it.