Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 46 (5 page)

“Nero Wolfe,” I told her. “W-O-L-F-E. To see Mr. Ducos. He will probably know the name. And Goodwin, Archie Goodwin. We knew Pierre for years.”

“Parlez-vous français?”
she said.

I knew that much, barely. “Mr. Wolfe does,” I said. “Hold it.” I turned. “She said parly voo fransay. Here.” He took the receiver, and I moved to make room. He didn’t have to stoop quite as much as me to get his mouth at the right level. Since what he said was for me only noise, I spent the couple of minutes enjoying the idea of a homicide dick pushing that button and hearing parly voo fransay, and hoping it was Lieutenant Rowcliff. Also a couple of journalists I had met, especially Bill Wengert of the
Times
. When Wolfe hung up the receiver, I put a hand on the inside door and, when the click sounded, pushed it open. And there was a do-it-yourself elevator with the door standing open.

If you speak French and would prefer to have a verbatim report of Wolfe’s conversation with Léon Ducos, Pierre’s father, I’m sorry I can’t deliver. All I got was an idea of how it was going from their tones and looks. I’ll report what I saw. First, at the door of the apartment it wasn’t Pierre’s sister. She had said good-by to fifty and maybe even sixty. She was short and dumpy, with a round face and a double chin, and she
sported a little white apron, and a little white cap thing on top of her gray hair. Probably she spoke English, at least some, but she didn’t look it. She took Wolfe’s coat and hat and ushered us to the front room. Ducos was there in a wheelchair by a window. The best way to describe him is just to say that he was shriveled but still tough. He probably weighed thirty pounds less than he had at fifty, but what was left of him was intact, and when I took his offered hand I felt his grip. During the hour and twenty minutes we were there he didn’t say a word that I understood. Probably he spoke no English at all, and that was why she had asked if I spoke French.

In twenty minutes, even less, their tone and manner had made it plain that no blood would be shed, and I left my chair, looked around, and crossed to a cabinet with a glass door and shelves in the far corner. Most of the shelves had things like little ivory and china figures and sea shells and a wooden apple, but on one there was a collection of inscribed trophies, silver cups and a medal that might have been gold, and a couple of ribbons. The only word on them that I knew was a name, Léon Ducos. Evidently his bistro had done something that people liked. I sent my eyes around, detecting. You do that in the home of a man who has just been murdered, and, as usual, nothing suggested anything. A framed photograph on a table was probably of Pierre’s mother.

The white apron appeared at a door nearby and went and said something to Ducos, and he shook his head, and as she was leaving I asked if I could use the bathroom. She showed me, down the hall, and I went, though I really had nothing much to pass but the time, and on the way back there was an open door and I entered. A good detective doesn’t have to be invited. There had been no signs anywhere of a daughter, but that room was full of them. It was here. Everything in it
said so, and one of the items tagged her good—the contents of a bookcase over by the wall. There were some novels and nonfiction, some of whose titles I recognized, hard covers, and some paperbacks with French titles, but the interesting shelf was the middle one. There were books by Betty Friedan and Kate Millett and four or five more I had heard of, and three by Simone de Beauvoir in French. Of course one or two of them might be on anybody’s shelf, but not a whole library. I took one of them out for a look, and her name, Lucile Ducos, was on the title page, and a second one also, and was reaching for another when a voice came from behind.

“What are you doing?”

The white apron. “Nothing much,” I said. “I couldn’t join in or even understand them and saw these books as I was passing. Are they yours?”

“No. She wouldn’t want a man in here, and she wouldn’t want a man handling her books.” I won’t try to spell her accent.

“I’m sorry. Don’t tell her, but of course there’ll be fingerprints. I didn’t touch anything else.”

“Did you say your name’s Archie Goodwin?”

“I did. It is.”

“I knew about you from him. And the radio today. You’re a detective. And a policeman wanted to know if you had been here. He told me to call a number if you came.”

“I’ll bet he did. Are you going to?”

“I don’t know, I’ll ask Muhsieuw Ducos.” I can’t spell Muhsieuw the way she said it.

Evidently she wasn’t going to leave me there, so I moved, on past her at the door and back to the front room. They were still jabbering, and I went and stood at another window, looking out at the traffic.

It was a quarter past four when we were back in the
Heron and rolling out of the parking lot. To Ninth Avenue and downtown. All Wolfe had said was that Ducos had told him something and we would go home and discuss it. He doesn’t talk when he’s walking or in the car. At the garage Tom said a dick had come a little before noon to see if the car was there—of course it had been—and another one had come around four o’clock and asked if he knew where I had gone with it. From there around the corner and half a block on Thirty-fifth Street to the brownstone, more exercise for Wolfe, and I knew why. If I had driven him home and then taken the car to the garage, somebody might be camped on the stoop.

There wasn’t. We mounted the seven steps, and I pushed the button and Fritz came, saw us through the one-way glass panel, slid the chain bolt, and opened the door, and we entered. As I hung Wolfe’s coat up he asked Fritz, “Did that man come?”

“Yes, sir. Two of them. They’re up there now. Several men came, five of them not counting those two. The phone has rung nine times. Since you weren’t sure about dinner, I didn’t stuff the capon, so it may be a little late. It’s nearly five o’clock.”

“It could have been later. Please bring beer. Milk, Archie?”

I said no, make it gin and tonic, and we went to the office. The mail was there under a paperweight on his desk, but after he got his bulk properly distributed in the chair that had been made to order for it, he shoved the mail aside, leaned back, and shut his eyes. I expected, I may even have hoped, to see his lips start moving in and out, but they didn’t. He just sat. After four minutes of it, maybe five, I said, “I don’t want to interrupt, but you might like to know that the daughter,
whose name is Lucile, is a Women’s Libber. Not just one of the herd, a real one. She has—”

His eyes had opened. “I was resting. And you know I will not tolerate that locution.”

“All right, Liberationist. She has three books by Simone de Beauvoir, who you have admitted can write, in French, and a shelf full of others I have heard of, some of which you have started but didn’t finish. Also she wouldn’t want a man in her room. I’m talking because someone should say something, and apparently you don’t want to.”

Fritz came with the tray. There’s something I don’t like about my taking something from a tray held by Fritz, and as he reached Wolfe’s desk I went and got my gin and tonic. Wolfe opened the drawer to get the solid gold opener. When he had poured, he spoke.

“Miss Ducos feeds facts to a computer at New York University. She usually gets home about half past five. You will see her.”

“She may not speak to men.” I settled back in my chair. He was going to talk.

He grunted. “She will about her father. She was attached to him but didn’t want to be. Mr. Ducos is perceptive and articulate—that is, he was with me. Pierre told you that I am the greatest detective in the world. He told his father that I am the greatest gourmet in the world. His father told me that was why he had told the police nothing, and wouldn’t, but he would tell me. He said that only after he learned that I speak French well. Of course that’s absurd, but he doesn’t know it. Most of what he told me about his son was irrelevant to our purpose, and I won’t report it. Or I will, I should, if you insist.”

That sounded better than it actually was. Yes, I usually reported in full to him, frequently verbatim, but
that wasn’t why he was offering to. It was just that if and when he spotted the man who had killed Pierre before I did, he didn’t want me to say sure, his father spoke French.

But I kept the grin inside. “Maybe later,” I said. “It can wait. Did he tell you anything relevant?”

“He may have. He knew about Pierre’s habit of betting on horse races, and they frequently discussed it. He said that Pierre never asked him for money on account of it, but that was a lie. That was one of the few points, very few, about which he was not candid. Also it is one of the points on which you may want a full report later. I mention it now only because it was in a discussion about the betting that Pierre told him about a man giving him a hundred dollars. Last Wednesday morning, six days ago, Pierre told him that one day the preceding week—Mr. Ducos thinks it was Friday but isn’t sure—there had been a slip of paper left on a tray with the money by a customer, and later when he went to return it the customer was gone. And the day before, Tuesday—the day before the talk with his father—a man had given him a hundred dollars for the slip of paper.”

Wolfe turned a palm up. “That’s all. But a hundred dollars for a slip of paper? Even with the soaring inflation, that seems extravagant. And another point. Was the man who gave Pierre that hundred dollars the man who had left the slip of paper on the tray? Of course I tried to get the exact words used by Pierre in the talk with his father, and perhaps I did—the important ones. Mr. Ducos is certain that he did not use the word
rendre
. Return. Give back. If he had been returning the slip to the man who had left it on the tray, a hundred dollars could have been merely exuberant gratitude,
but if it was not the same man—I don’t need to descant on that.”

I nodded. “A dozen possibles. And if it was the same man, why did Pierre wait four days to return it? Or why didn’t he just give it to Felix and ask him to mail it to him? I like it. Is that the crop?”

“Yes. Of course other things that Mr. Ducos told me might possibly repay inquiry, but this was much the most likely.” He turned his head to look at the clock. “Nearly two hours to dinner. If you go now?”

“I doubt it. Felix, I suppose, and maybe some of the waiters, but Philip is by far the best bet, and you know how it is in the kitchen at this hour, especially for a sauce man. Also I had four hours’ sleep and I’m not—”

The doorbell. I went to the hall for a look, stepped back in, and said, “Cramer.”

He made a noise. “How the devil—was he across the street?”

“No, but someone was and phoned. Naturally.”

“You’ll have to stay.”

He rarely uses breath to say things that are obvious, but of course that was. I went and slid the bolt and swung the door open.

Inspector Cramer of Homicide South has been known to call me Archie. He also has been known to pretend he doesn’t remember my name, and that time maybe he really didn’t. He marched on by, to the office door and in, and when I got there he was saying, “… and every goddam minute from the time you woke up until now. You
and
Goodwin. And you’ll sign it.”

Wolfe was shaking his head, tilted back. “Pfui,” he said.

“Don’t phooey me! Of all the—”

“Shut up!”

Cramer gawked. He had heard Wolfe tell a hundred people to shut up, and I had heard him tell a thousand, including me, but never Cramer. He didn’t believe it.

“I don’t invite you to sit,” Wolfe said, “or to remove your coat and hat, because I am going to tell you nothing. No, I retract that. I do tell you that I know nothing about the death of Pierre Ducos except what Mr. Goodwin has told me, and he has told Mr. Stebbins everything he told me. Beyond that I shall tell you absolutely nothing. Of course I had to permit examination of that room by qualified men, and I left instructions to admit them. They are still up there. If we are taken in custody as material witnesses, by either you or the District Attorney, we’ll stand mute. Released on bail, we’ll still stand mute. I am going to learn who killed that man in my house. I doubt if you can and I hope you don’t, except from me when I’m ready to tell you.”

Wolfe aimed a straight finger at him, up at his face, another first. “If I sound uncivil, I do not apologize. I am in a rage and out of control. Whether you have warrants or not, arrest us now and take us; let’s get that over with. I have a job to do.” He extended his arms, stretched out, the wrists together for handcuffs. Beautiful. I would have loved to do it too, but that would have been piling it on.

If Cramer had had cuffs in his pocket he might actually have used them, judging from the look on his big red face. Knowing Wolfe as well as he did, what
could
he do? His mouth opened and closed again. He looked at me and back at Wolfe. “Out of control,” he growled. “Balls.
You
out of control. I know one thing. I know—”

“Oh! We didn’t know you were here, Inspector.”

Two men were there at the door, a tall rangy one and a broad bulky one with only one arm. Of course I
should have heard them; my ears must have been more eager to hear what Cramer would say than I realized. When he turned to face them they saluted, but he didn’t return it.

“It took you long enough,” he said.

“Yes, sir. It was a job. We didn’t know you were here. We—”

“I came to see why it took so damn long. Did you—No. You can tell me in the car.” He was moving. They sidestepped to let him by and followed him out. I stayed put. Experts wouldn’t need help opening a door. When the sound came of the front door opening and closing, I went for a look down the hall, came back, and said, “What a break for him. He
couldn’t
have left without us. He ought to move them up a peg. Of course it was a break for us too, with you out of control.”

“Grrrh,” he said. “Sit down.”

A
t ten o’clock that evening I was standing by a reading lamp, flipping through the pages of a book entitled
Les Sauces du Monde
. Going through a room trying to find something doesn’t take long if you’re after a diamond necklace or an elephant tusk or a gun. But if it’s a twenty-dollar bill, anything at all that could be between the pages of a book without bulging it, that takes time if there are books in the room. For the Library of Congress, I would say 2748 years.