Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 01 (17 page)

Fox interrupted. “I’m not sure I can take the job. I understand you sent for Andrew Grant. I’m working for Grant and I can’t undertake—”

“There’ll be no conflict unless Grant killed Arnold and I don’t think he did.”

“What did you send for him for?”

“Because my daughter asked me to. Also because he was there at the bungalow and I wanted to question him myself.”

“All right,” Fox conceded, “I’ll talk it over, anyhow. I already have an idea about that letter you got—”

“It’ll have to wait,” said Thorpe brusquely. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Good gracious, it’s eleven o’clock. I only called you in now to get that letter. Colonel Brissenden of the state police is here and he’ll want to see it. I’ll get rid of him as soon as possible, but then I must have to talk with some of my business associates who have come up from New York. This thing is making a lot of trouble and causing a lot of foolish rumors. You’ll have to wait till I’m through. If you get hungry, find my daughter and tell her to give you some lunch.”

“It’s only a thirty-minute drive to my place. I’ll go there and you can phone—”

“I’d rather you’d wait here. I may be through sooner than I expect. Take a dip in the pool or something. Vaughn, bring Colonel Brissenden.”

Fox returned to the outdoors by the way he had come. Two men were standing talking in the living room as he passed through, one large and fat and
florid, the other angular and hollow-cheeked, with a nose whose bridge took all the space between his eyes. They looked worried and ill-humored and stopped talking when Fox appeared. He continued on to the flagged terrace at the side of the house and found that its only remaining occupant was Henry Jordan, still in his chair. He got his glass from the table where he had left it and finished the drink before inquiring:

“Did they go off and leave you?”

Jordan nodded. “The young lady jumped up and went, and young Thorpe followed her.”

“Which way did they go?”

“Down that path.”

A glance showed that the path was deserted up to a bend where it disappeared around a rose trellis. Fox shrugged and informed Jordan, “I’m sorry, but we’re held up here. Thorpe has to see a policeman and then have a business talk first. It may be a couple of hours or more. Did you have any breakfast?”

Jordan looked morose. “I’m all right. My daughter gave me a biscuit and tea. I wouldn’t eat anything at this place. I’d just as soon not see Thorpe. Is there any chance of him coming out here?”

“No, I don’t think so. He’s in the library on the other side of the house, busy dominating. I don’t like him much either. Want to walk around a little?”

Jordan said he was all right where he was, and Fox left him and strolled on to the lawn. Some scale on a limb of dogwood caught his eye and he stopped to examine it with a frown. It was a shame, he reflected, that with millions of dollars a man couldn’t keep scale off his dogwood. Going on, he found himself skirting the border of an elaborate series of trellises covered with climbing roses. As he neared its farther end
there was a halt in his step, as of a momentary inclination to turn towards a gap in the trellis; then he resumed his course. Another vast expanse of lawn, punctuated with trees and shrubbery, opened to his view; and there were two moving figures at a distance. Nancy Grant was strolling along the straggling edge of a planting of junipers and fifty paces behind her, now sidling forward, now pausing as if for a reinforcement of resolution, was Jeffrey Thorpe. Fox stood there watching them, then suddenly burst into laughter, turned and entered the central path between the trellises, marched down it for ten yards, stopped abruptly and said aloud:

“Hello, when did you get here?” Then he started laughing again.

The bulk of a broad-shouldered man emerged from the luxuriant thorniness of a golden climber and Dan Pavey’s rumble announced aggressively, “Something is funny.”

“Yes,” Fox agreed.

“You saw me as you went by.”

“Yes. I wondered what you were watching from ambush. I went on and saw them. It struck me as funny. It also struck me as funny when I saw you were blushing. I never saw you blush before. So that’s why you volunteered that advice to Miss Grant last night; you were covering up. I didn’t get it at the time.”

Dan, scowling, uttered a sound that was half growl and half grunt. “What do you mean, covering up?” he demanded. “Covering what up?”

“Nothing.” Fox waved a hand. “I apologize. None of my business. How long have you been here?”

“I got here at 10:47,” said Dan stiffly. “Jordan wasn’t around his boat. Nobody was. I phoned
Thorpe’s office and got your message to come here, and I came. They told me you were in with Thorpe. The first thing I see is Jordan sitting on a terrace. I didn’t know whether you knew he was here, so I—”

“You’re going to tell me it was him you were watching?”

“I am.”

“Don’t do it. I’d have to laugh again. The first time I ever saw you blush. I have to stick around here for a talk with Thorpe. You might as well go on home.”

“You mean now?”

“Yes. There are enough complications as it is. Go home and look at yourself in a mirror. If I need you I’ll let you know.”

Dan, with his jaw set square, with no protest or comment, without even any attempt to propose a superior alternative, tramped off down the trellis path. Fox, watching the broad back receding through the bower of roses, waited till it had disappeared at the far end before muttering to himself, “I shouldn’t have laughed, I handled that wrong.”

Leaving the trellis by a transverse path, he wandered across the lawn, back past the scale-infested dogwood in the direction of the east side terrace. Jordan was still there, with his chin gloomily on his chest, and Fox veered to the left. Continuing, he heard voices and, proceeding around a corner of the house, he came to a much larger and more elaborate terrace and saw two people standing at the edge of it, talking. He approached.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pemberton. Hello, Andy.”

They returned his greeting. Miranda looked slim, cool and informally impeccable in a white blouse and yellow slacks. Grant asked Fox, “Have you seen my niece around anywhere?”

Fox waved a hand. “Off in that direction being stalked by young Mr. Thorpe. Mrs. Pemberton, I may have to ask you to change that dinner invitation to a lunch. I’m waiting around for a talk with your father and it may be a long wait.”

“I’ll be glad to feed you,” she declared, “but it won’t cancel the dinner. I’m trying to persuade Mr. Grant to stay.”

“And I interrupted. I apologize. May I wander around a little and look at things?”

She said yes but didn’t offer to accompany him, so he strolled off. Around on the third side of the home he chatted a little with a man who was removing the unsightly tops of oriental poppies and learned, among other things, that they did not use miscible oil as a dormant spray on dogwoods. Stopping to inspect various objects on the way, such as a mole trap of a construction he had not seen and a new kind of border sprinkler, he came to a drive which headed in the direction of a group of outbuildings and followed it. In front of a stone garage which would have held at least six cars, with living quarters above, a man was jacking up a wheel of a limousine. Fox passed the time of day and wandered on. On the other side of an extensive plot of grass was a large greenhouse and he gave that thirty minutes or more. He always found a greenhouse fascinating, but of course there were very few things that he did not find fascinating. There seemed to be no one around, but as he emerged at the far end he heard a voice and, circling a bed of asparagus, he saw whose it was. A little girl sat on the steps of the porch of a little stone cottage, talking to Mrs. Simmons. He saw her affected gestures with her hands and heard her affected mincing tones:

“You know, Mrs. Simmons, it’s really
frightful!
Would you believe it, they go to the movies every
day!
Oh, Mrs. Simmons, I don’t know what to
do!
My children say to me and my husband, they say if
they
can go to the movies every day, why can’t
they
go too and my nerves just get all out of my control
—Ooh!
Who are you?”

“Excuse me,” said Fox, smiling down at her. “I apologize.” He bowed politely to empty space at the left. “How do you do, Mrs. Simmons? I guess I frightened you too. I apologize.” He turned to the other lady. “I’m just a man who came to see Mr. Thorpe and he told me I could walk around. My name is Fox. Do you live here?”

“Yes. You scared me.”

“I’m sorry. I said excuse me. I suppose you know who Mr. Thorpe is?”

“Of course I do.” She was scornful. “He owns my daddy. Anyway my mommie says he does. I heard her. Does he own you too?”

“No, he doesn’t own me, he just rents me.”

She shrieked in derision. “Aw, go on! You can’t rent a man!”

“Well you can’t own one either, or at least you shouldn’t. Is your daddy the gardener?”

“No, he isn’t. He’s the
head
gardener. My name is Helen Gustava Flanders.”

“Thank you very much. I’ll call you Helen. You can call me Mr. Fox. Those are very beautiful gloves you have on, but they look as if they’re too big for you.”

She looked complacently at the yellow cotton gloves baggy on her little hands, with the fingers flopping. “They’re streemly nice,” she declared.

“Sure,” Fox admitted, “they’re nice enough, but they’re a little too big. Besides, they’re not mates. They’re both for the left hand. See how that thumb’s
in the wrong place? Would you mind telling me where you got them?”

“Why, of course, Mr. Fox.” She giggled. “I went shopping in the stores and I bought them. I paid sixty dollars.”

“No, Helen, I mean really. No faking.”

“Oh.” Her eyes looked at his. “If you mean no faking, Miss Knudsen gave them to me.”

“When did she give them to you?”

“Oh, about a year ago.”

He abandoned that detail. “Do you mean Miss Knudsen the cook?”

“She’s not a cook.” She was scornfully derisive again. “She’s Mrs. Pemberton’s maid. Mrs. Pemberton is Miss Miranda. She swims naked. I saw her.”

“Did Miss Knudsen give you the gloves yesterday? Or Monday?”

“Yes,” said Helen firmly.

“Well,” said Fox, “I think she was nice to give them to you, but I tell you what. Those are both for the left hand. You give them to me and I’ll bring you another pair that will—”

“No,” said Helen firmly.

“I’ll bring you two pairs, one yellow and one red—”

“No.”

It took time, tact, patience and guile; so much time, in fact, that Fox’s wristwatch told him it was 12:35 when, having circled back around the greenhouse, he stepped behind a shrub for a strictly private inspection of his loot and satisfied himself on these details; the gloves were yellow cotton of good quality, soiled now but little worn, were exactly alike, both for the left hand, and bore the Hartlespoon label. He put them in his pocket, left the shelter of the shrub and
cut across towards the garage, thinking to follow the drive back to the house as he had come. The limousine was still there in front of the garage, but not the man. He went back up the drive frowning, paying no attention to objects that had been worthy of keen interest an hour before. Suddenly he stopped dead still, jerked his chin up and stood motionless. From somewhere ahead of him a car had backfired. Or someone had shot a gun.

A car had backfired.

No, it sounded more like a shot.

He moved again, walked faster and went into a jog, leaving the drive to make a bee-line for the house, still at a distance beyond intervening trees. He heard excited voices, shouts, and broke into a run. To his right, he saw a man running, headed also for the house, one of the guards loping like a camel with a revolver in his hand. The guard was aiming for the front entrance, but Fox, judging by the direction of the voices, swerved to the left, crossed an expanse of open lawn, crashed through some shrubbery, saw French windows standing open and kept going right on through them.

He was in the library. So were a dozen other people, including Ridley Thorpe, who was sprawled on his face on the floor, and also including Colonel Brissenden, on his knee besides Thorpe, barking as Fox entered, “He’s dead!”

Helen Gustava Flanders’ gloves had been the sixth surprise of the day. This was the seventh.

T
wo seconds of the silence of stupefaction followed the colonel’s announcement. Then there were sounds, the little noises that men and women make when sudden shock has stretched their nerves too tight, primitive throat noises older by geological epochs than the articulation of words. Under cover of that, Tecumseh Fox’s gliding movement as he made the door to the hall went unnoticed. Two women in maid’s uniforms were in the hall clutching each other; he ignored them and proceeded swiftly to the music room. He had his hand on the lid of the grand piano when he heard steps from the other direction and Nancy Grant entered, panting. She saw him and demanded, “What is it? Where’s Uncle Andy? He was yelling my name….” Fox pointed and said, “On through there,” and as her back passed from view he lifted the lid of the piano with one hand and took the gloves from his pocket with the other, thrust the gloves in beside the last bass string and let the lid down. Then he returned to the library and with a glance took it in.

Jeffrey Thorpe was standing with his toes almost touching the body on the floor, looking down at it, his
face white and his mouth working. His sister was at his side, a little behind him, grasping his sleeve and looking not at the body but at him. Andrew Grant had his hands on his niece’s shoulders and was pushing her into a chair. Luke Wheer had his back flattened against a wall of books, his head bent and his eyes closed like a preacher leading a congregation in prayer. Bellows, the butler, had his hands clasped over his bosom, surely in unconscious imitation of a gesture seen in the movies. Henry Jordan sat on the edge of a chair, staring at what he could see of the form on the floor, rubbing his chin as though to get the lather in for a shave. Vaughn Kester’s rear, his back erect and rigid, was pressed against an edge of the desk; Fox couldn’t see his face. The two men whose talk Fox had interrupted in the music room, and three others whom he had not seen before, were grouped the other side of the stock ticker, which was still clicking away. A state trooper, bending over, was straightening up with something blue fluttering from his fingers. Brissenden barked at him: