Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families (7 page)

After a few preliminary words to individuals Archer spoke to them collectively. “This is a terrible thing, an awful thing. It is established that Mrs. Rackham was stabbed to death out there in the woods—and the dog that was with her. We have the knife that was used, as you know—it has been shown to you—one of the steak knives that are kept in a drawer here in the dining room—they were used by you at dinner last evening. We have statements from all of you, but of course I’ll have to talk further with you. I won’t try to do that now. It’s after three o’clock, and I’ll come back in the morning. I want to ask whether any of you has anything to say to me now, anything that shouldn’t wait until then.” His eyes went over them. “Anyone?”

No sound and no movement from any quarter. They sure were a chatty bunch. They just stood and stared at him, including me. I would have liked to relieve the tension with a remark or question, but didn’t want to remind him that I was present.

However, he didn’t need a reminder. After all the
others, including the servants, had cleared out, Leeds and I were moving toward the door when Ben Dykes’ voice came. “Goodwin!”

Leeds kept going. I turned.

Dykes came to me. “We want to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

District Attorney Archer joined us, saying, “In there with Noonan, Ben.”

“Him and Noonan bring sparks,” Dykes objected. “Remember last year at Sperling’s?”

“I’ll do the talking,” Archer stated, and led the way to the hall and along to the smaller room where Noonan was still seated at the table, conferring with a colleague—the one who had brought me from Hillside Kennels. The colleague moved to stand against the wall. Noonan arose, but sat down again when Archer and Dykes and I had pulled chairs up.

Archer, slightly plumper than he had been a year ago, with his round red face saggy and careworn by the stress of an extremely bad night for him, put his forearms on the table and leaned at me.

“Goodwin,” he said earnestly but not offensively, “I want to put something up to you.”

“Suits me, Mr. Archer,” I assured him. “I’ve never been ignored more.”

“We’ve been busy. Lieutenant Noonan has of course reported what you told him. Frankly, I find it hard to believe. Almost impossible to believe. It is well known that Nero Wolfe refuses dozens of jobs every month, that he confines himself to cases that interest him, and that the easiest and quickest way to interest him is to offer him a large fee. Now I—”

“Not the only way,” I objected.

“I didn’t say it was. I know he has standards—
even scruples. Now I can’t believe that he found anything interesting in the poisoning of a dog—certainly not interesting enough for him to send you up here over a weekend. And I doubt very much if Calvin Leeds, from what I know of him, is in a position to offer Wolfe a fee that would attract him. His cousin, Mrs. Rackham, might have, but she did not have the reputation of throwing money around carelessly—rather the contrary. We’re going to ask Wolfe about this, naturally, but I thought I might save time by putting it up to you. I appeal to you to cooperate with us in solving this dastardly and cowardly murder. As you know, I have a right to insist on it; knowing you and Wolfe as I do, I prefer to appeal to you as to a responsible citizen and a man who carries a license to work in this state as a private detective. I simply do not believe that you were sent up here merely to investigate the poisoning of a dog.”

They were all glaring at me.

“I wasn’t,” I said mildly.

“Ha, you weren’t!”

“Hell, no. As you say, Mr. Wolfe wouldn’t be interested.”

“So you lied, you punk,” Noonan gloated.

“Wrong, as usual.” I grinned at him. “You didn’t ask me what I was sent here for or even hint that you would like to know. You asked if I was investigating the dog poisoning, and I told you I spent an hour at it, which I did. You asked if I had made any progress, and I told you nothing remarkable. Then you wanted to know what I had seen and heard here, and I told you, in full. It was one of the bummest and dumbest jobs of questioning I have ever run across, but you may learn in time. The first—”

Noonan blurted, “Why, you goddam—”

“I’ll handle it,” Archer snapped at him. Back to me: “You might have supplied it, Goodwin.”

“Not to him,” I said firmly. “I tried supplying him once and he was displeased. Anyway, I doubt if he would have understood it.”

“See if I can understand it.”

“Yes, sir. Mrs. Rackham phoned Thursday afternoon and made an appointment to see Mr. Wolfe. She came yesterday morning—Friday—at eleven o’clock, and had Leeds with her. She said that it had been her custom, since marrying Rackham three years and seven months ago, to give him money for his personal use when he asked for it, but that he kept asking for bigger amounts, and she began giving him less than he asked for, and last October second he wanted fifteen grand, and she refused. Gave him zero. Since then, the past seven months, he had asked for none and got none, but in spite of that he had gone on spending plenty, and that was what was biting her. She hired Mr. Wolfe to find out where and how he was getting dough, and I was sent up here to look him over and possibly get hold of an idea. I needed an excuse for coming here, and the dog poisoning was better than average.” I fluttered a hand. “That’s all.”

“You say Leeds was with her?” Noonan demanded.

“That’s partly what I mean,” I told Ben Dykes, “about Noonan’s notion of how to ask questions. He must have heard me say she had Leeds along.”

“Yeah,” Dykes said dryly. “But don’t be so damn cute. This is not exactly a picnic.” He spoke to Noonan. “Leeds didn’t make any mention of this?”

“He did not. Of course I didn’t ask him.”

Dykes stood up and asked Archer, “Hadn’t I better send for him? He went home.”

Archer nodded, and Dykes went. “Good God,” Archer said with feeling, not to Noonan or me, so probably to the People of the State of New York. He sat biting his lip a while and then asked me, “Was that all Mrs. Rackham wanted?”

“That’s all she asked for.”

“Had she quarreled with her husband? Had he threatened her?”

“She didn’t say so.”

“Exactly what did she say?”

That took half an hour. For me it was simple, since all I had to use was my memory, in view of the instructions from Wolfe to give them everything but the sausage. Archer didn’t know what my memory is capable of, so I didn’t repeat any of Mrs. Rackham’s speeches verbatim, though I could have, because he would have thought I was dressing it up. But when I was through he had it all.

Then I was permitted to stay for the session with Leeds, who had arrived early in my recital but had been held outside until I was done. At last I was one of the party, but too late to hear anything that I didn’t already know. With Leeds, who was practically one of the family, they had to cover not only his visit with his cousin to Wolfe’s office, but also the preliminaries to it, so he took another half-hour more. He himself had no idea, he said, where Rackham had been getting money. He had learned nothing from the personal inquiry he had undertaken at his cousin’s request. He had never heard, or heard of, any serious quarrel between his cousin and her husband. And so on. As for his failure to tell Noonan of the visit to Wolfe’s office and the real reason for
my presence at Birchvale, he merely said calmly that Noonan hadn’t asked and he preferred to wait until he was asked.

District Attorney Archer finally called it a night, got up and stretched, rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, asked Dykes and Noonan some questions and issued some orders, and addressed me. “You’re staying at Leeds’ place?”

I said I hadn’t stayed there much so far, but my bag was there.

“All right. I’ll want you tomorrow—today.”

I said of course and went out with Leeds. Ben Dykes offered to give us a lift, but we declined.

Together, without conversation, Leeds and I made for the head of the trail at the edge of the woods, giving the curving paths a miss. Dawn had come and was going; it was getting close to sunrise. The breeze was down and the birds were up, telling about it. The pace Leeds set, up the long easy slope and down the level stretch, was not quite up to his previous performances, which suited me fine. I was not in a racing mood, even to get to a bed.

Suddenly Leeds halted, and I came abreast of him. In the trail, thirty paces ahead, a man was getting up from his hands and knees to face us. He called, “Hold it! Who are you?”

We told him.

“Well,” he said, “you’ll have to keep off this section of trail. Go around. We’re just starting on it. Bright and early.”

We asked how far, and he said about three hundred yards, to where a man had started at the other end. We stepped off the trail, to the right into the rough, and got slowed down, though the woods were fairly clean. After a couple of minutes of that I asked
Leeds if he would know the spot, and he said he would.

Soon he stopped, and I joined him. I would have known it myself, with the help of a rope they had stretched from tree to tree, making a large semicircle. We went up to the rope and stood looking.

“Where’s Hebe?” I asked.

“They had to come for me to get her. She’s in Nobby’s kennel. He won’t be needing it. They took him away.”

We agreed, without putting it in words, that there was nothing there we wanted, and resumed our way through the woods, keeping off the trail until we reached the scientist at the far end of the forbidden section, who not only challenged us but had to be persuaded that we weren’t a pair of bloodthirsty liars. Finally he was bighearted enough to let us go on.

I was glad they had taken Nobby away, not caring much for another view of the little hall with that canine corpse on the bench. Otherwise the house was as before. Leeds had stopped at the kennels. I went up to my room and was peeling off the pants I had pulled on over my pajamas when I was startled by a sudden dazzling blaze at the window. I crossed to it and stuck my head out: it was the sun showing off, trying to scare somebody. I glanced at my wrist and saw 5:39, but as I said, maybe it wasn’t a true horizon. Not lowering the window shade, I went and stretched out on the bed and yawned as far down as it could go.

The door downstairs opened and shut, and there were steps on the stairs. Leeds appeared at my open door, stepped inside, and said, “I’ll have to be up and around in an hour, so I’ll close your door.”

I thanked him. He didn’t move.

“My cousin paid Mr. Wolfe ten thousand dollars. What will he do now?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t asked him. Why?”

“It occurred to me that he might want to spend it, or part of it, in her interest. In case the police don’t make any headway.”

“He might,” I agreed. “I’ll suggest it to him.”

He still stood, as if there was something else on his mind. There was, and he unloaded it.

“It happens in the best families,” he stated distinctly and backed out, taking the door with him.

I closed my eyes but made no effort to empty my head. If I went to sleep there was no telling when I would wake up, and I intended to phone Wolfe at eight, fifteen minutes before the scheduled hour for Fritz to get to his room with his breakfast tray. Meanwhile I would think of something brilliant to do or to suggest. The trouble with that, I discovered after some poking around, was that I had no in. Nobody would speak to me except Leeds, and he was far from loquacious.

I have a way of realizing all of a sudden, as I suppose a lot of people do, that I made a decision some time back without knowing it. It happened that morning at 6:25. Looking at my watch and seeing that that was where it had got to, I was suddenly aware that I was staying awake, not so I could phone Wolfe at eight o’clock, but so I could beat it the hell out of there as soon as I was sure Leeds was asleep; and I was now as sure as I would ever be.

I got up and shed my pajamas and dressed, not trying to set a record but wasting no time, and, with my bag in one hand and my shoes in the other, tiptoed to the hall, down the stairs, and out to the stone
slab. While it wasn’t Calvin Leeds I was escaping from, I thought it desirable to get out of Westchester County before anyone knew I wasn’t upstairs asleep. Not a chance. I was seated on the stone slab tying the lace of the second shoe when a dog barked, and that was a signal for all the others. I scrambled up, grabbed the bag, ran to the car and unlocked it and climbed in, started the engine, swung around the graveled space, and passed the house on my way out just as Leeds emerged through the side door. I stepped on the brake, stuck my head through the window, yelled at him, “Got an errand to do, see you later!” and rolled on through the gate and into the highway.

At that hour Sunday morning the roads were all mine, the bright new sun was at my left out of the way, and it would have been a pleasant drive if I had been in a mood to feel pleased. Which I wasn’t. This was a totally different situation from the other two occasions when we had crossed Arnold Zeck’s path and someone had got killed. Then the corpses had been Zeck’s men, and Zeck, Wolfe, and the public interest had all been on the same side. This time Zeck’s man, Barry Rackham, was the number one suspect, and Wolfe had either to return his dead client’s ten grand, keep it without doing anything to earn it, or meet Zeck head on. Knowing Wolfe as I did, I hit eighty-five that morning rolling south on the Sawmill River Parkway.

The dash clock said 7:18 as I left the West Side Highway at Forty-sixth Street. I had to cross to Ninth Avenue to turn south. It was as empty as the country roads had been. Turning right on Thirty-fifth Street, I went on across Tenth Avenue, on nearly to
Eleventh, and pulled to the curb in front of Wolfe’s old brownstone house.

Even before I killed the engine I saw something that made me goggle—a sight that had never greeted me before in the thousands of times I had braked a car to a stop there.

The front door was standing wide open.

M
y heart came up. I swallowed it down, jumped out, ran across the sidewalk and up the seven steps to the stoop and on in. Fritz and Theodore were there in the hall, coming to me. Their faces were enough to make a guy’s heart pop right out of his mouth.