Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 17 (19 page)

“I’ll stay here,” Andy said. The trance look was gone from his eyes and he was fully conscious again, but his color hadn’t returned and there were drops of sweat on his forehead. He repeated it. “I’ll stay here.”

It took two good minutes to get him to let me have the honor. Finally he shoved off, with Wolfe behind, and after they had left that room I could see them, through the glass partitions, crossing the warm and cool rooms and opening the door to the workroom. They closed it behind them, and I was alone, but of course you’re never really alone in a greenhouse. Not only do you have the plants and flowers for company, but also the glass walls give you the whole outdoors. Anyone within seeing distance, in three directions,
was really with me, and that led me to my first conclusion: that Dini Lauer, alive or dead, had not been rolled behind that canvas between the hours of seven in the morning and five in the afternoon. The question, alive or dead, made me want a second conclusion, and again I squatted to lift the canvas in search of it. When, some four years previously, the ciphogene tank had been installed in Wolfe’s plant rooms to replace cyanogas and Nico-Fume, I had read the literature, which had included a description of what you would look like if you got careless, and a second thorough inspection of Dini’s face and throat brought me my second conclusion: she had been alive when she was rolled or pushed under the bench. It was the ciphogene that did it. Since it seemed improbable that she had consciously and obligingly crawled under the bench and lain still, I went on to look and feel for a bump or broken skin, but found neither.

As I got upright again a noise came, knuckles on wood, and then a man’s voice, raised to carry through the wood.

“Andy!” It raised some more. “Andy!”

The wood belonged to a large door at the end of the room, the end where the greenhouse was attached to the mansion. The benches stopped some twenty feet short of that end, leaving room for an open space where there was a floor mat flanked by tubs and jars of oversized plants. The pounding came again, louder, and the voice, also louder. I stepped to the door and observed three details: that it opened away from me, presumably into the house, that it was fastened with a heavy brass bolt on my side, and that all its edges, where it met the frame and sill, were sealed with wide bands of tape.

The voice and knuckles were authoritative. No good could come of an attempt to converse through the bolted door, me with the voice of a stranger. If I merely kept still, the result would probably be an invasion at the other end of the greenhouse, via the workroom, and I knew how Wolfe hated to be interrupted when he was having a talk. And I preferred not to let company enter, under the circumstances.

So I slid the bolt back, pushed the door open enough to let myself through, shut it by backing against it, and kept my back there.

The voice demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

It was Joseph G. Pitcairn, and I was in, not a hall or vestibule, but the enormous living room of his house. He was not famous enough to be automatically known, but when we had started, by mail, to try to steal a gardener from him, I had made a few inquiries and, in addition to learning that he was an amateur golfer, a third-generation coupon clipper, and a loafer, I had got a description. The nose alone was enough, with its list to starboard, the result, I had been told, of an accidental back stroke from someone’s Number Four iron.

“Where’s Andy?” he demanded, without giving me time to tell him who the hell I was.

“My name—” I began.

“Is Miss Lauer in there?” he demanded.

My function, of course, was to gain time for Wolfe. I let him have a refined third-generation grin in exchange for his vulgar glare, and said quietly, “Make it an even dozen and I’ll start answering.”

“A dozen what?”

“Questions. Or I’ll trade you. Have you ever heard of Nero Wolfe?”

“Certainly. What about him? He grows orchids.”

“That’s one way of putting it. As he says, the point is not who owns them but who grows them. In his case, Theodore Horstmann was in the plant rooms twelve hours a day, sometimes more, but he had to leave because his mother took sick. That was a week ago yesterday. After floundering around, Mr. Wolfe decided to take Andy Krasicki away from you. You must remember that he—”

It wasn’t Joseph G. who made me break off. He and I were not alone. Standing back of him were a young man and young woman; off to one side was a woman not so young but still not beyond any reasonable deadline, in a maid’s uniform; and at my right was Neil Imbrie, still in his coveralls. It was the young woman who stopped my flow by suddenly advancing and chopping at me.

“Quit stalling and get away from that door. Something’s happened and I’m going in there!” She grabbed my sleeve to use force.

The young man called to her without moving, “Watch it, Sibby! It must be Archie Goodwin and he’d just as soon hit a woman as—”

“Be quiet, Donald!” Joseph G. ordered him. “Sybil, may I suggest a little decent restraint?” His cold gray eyes came back to me. “Your name is Archie Goodwin and you work for Nero Wolfe?”

“That’s right.”

“You say you came to see Krasicki?”

I nodded. “To get him away from you.” I rubbed that in hoping to get a nice long argument started, but he didn’t bite.

“Does that excuse your bursting into my house and barricading a door?”

“No,” I conceded. “Andy invited me into the greenhouse, and I was standing there when I heard you knocking and calling him. He was busy with Mr. Wolfe, and I saw the door was bolted, and I thought it must be you and you certainly had a right to have the door of your own greenhouse opened, so I opened it. As for the barricading, that’s where we get to the point. I admit I’m not acting normal. Assuming that the reason is somehow connected with this Miss Lauer, whom I have never met, naturally I would like to know why you asked me if Miss Lauer is in there. Why did you?”

Joseph G. took one long stride, which was all he needed to reach me. “Get away,” he said, meaning it.

I shook my head, keeping my grin refined, and opened my mouth to speak just as he reached for me. I had already decided that it wouldn’t be tactful to let the cold war get hot, especially since he had Donald and Neil Imbrie in reserve, and that as a last resort I would release some facts, but it didn’t get that far. As my muscles tightened in reflex to the touch of his hand, the sound of a car’s engine came from outdoors. From where Imbrie stood he had to move only two steps to get a view through a window, and he did so, staring out. Then he turned to his employer.

“State police, Mr. Pitcairn,” he said. “Two cars.”

Evidently Wolfe’s talk with Andy had been short and sour, since he hadn’t waited long to do something that he never resorts to if he can help it: calling the cops.

Five hours later, at three o’clock in the afternoon, seated in the one decent chair in the workroom of the greenhouse, Nero Wolfe was making a last frantic despairing try.

“The charge,” he urged, “can be anything you choose to make it, short of first degree murder. The bail can be any amount and it will be furnished. The risk will be minimal, and in the end you’ll thank me for it, when I’ve got the facts and you’ve got to take them.”

Three men shook their heads with finality.

One said, “Better give up and get yourself a gardener that’s not a killer.” That was Ben Dykes, head of the county detectives.

Another said nastily, “If it was me you’d be wanting bail yourself as a material witness.” That was Lieutenant Con Noonan of the State Police. He had been a stinker from the start, and it was only after the arrival of the DA, who had good reason to remember the Fashalt case, that Wolfe and I had been accepted as human.

The third said, “No use, Wolfe. Of course any facts you get will be welcome.” That was Cleveland Archer, District Attorney of Westchester County. Any common murder he would have left to the help, but not one that a Joseph G. Pitcairn was connected with, no matter how. He went on, “What can the charge be but first degree murder? That doesn’t mean the file is closed and I’m ready for trial. Tomorrow’s another day, and there are a couple of points that need some attention and they’ll get it, but it looks as if he’s guilty.”

The five of us were alone at last. Wolfe was in the
best chair available, I was perched on a corner of a potting bench, and the other three were standing. The corpse had left long ago in a basket, the army of official scientists had finished and gone, ten thousand questions had been asked and answered by everyone on the premises, the statements had been signed, and Andy Krasicki had departed for White Plains in a back seat, handcuffed to a dick. The law had made a quick clean job of it.

And Wolfe, having had nothing to eat since breakfast but four sandwiches and three cups of coffee, was even more desperate than when he had sent me for the car that dark December morning. Andy had been his, and he had lost him.

The case against him was fair to middling. There was general agreement that he had been jelly for Dini Lauer since he had first sighted her, two months back, when she had arrived to take care of Mrs. Pitcairn, who had tumbled down some steps and hurt her back. That had been testified to even by Gus Treble, the young man in the rainbow shirt, Andy’s assistant, who was obviously all for Andy. Gus said that Dini had given Andy the fanciest runaround he had ever seen, which wasn’t too bright of Gus if he had his sympathy on straight.

To the question why should Andy want to get rid of Dini the very day she consented to marry him, the answer was, who says she consented? Only Andy. No one else had heard tell of it, and he himself had announced the good news only to Wolfe and me. Then had he fumigated her to death merely because he couldn’t have her? That was probably one of the points which the DA thought needed attention. For a judge and jury some Grade A jealousy would have helped. That was a little ticklish, and naturally the
DA wanted a night to sleep on it. Who had been the third point of the jealous triangle? Of those present. Neil Imbrie didn’t look the part, Gus Treble didn’t act it, and Pitcairn and son were not the sort of people a DA will take a poke at if he can help it. So he couldn’t be blamed for wanting to take a look around. Besides, he had asked them all questions, plenty, and to the point, without getting a lead.

Noonan and Dykes had got all their personal timetables early in the game, but when the quickie report on the p.m. had come from White Plains, telling about the morphine, the DA had had another try at them. The laboratory reported that there was morphine present but not enough to kill, and that it could safely be assumed that Dini had died of ciphogene poisoning. The morphine answered one question—how had she been made unconscious enough to stay put under the bench until the ciphogene would take over?—but it raised another one. Was the law going to have to prove that Andy had bought morphine? But that had been a cinch. They had it covered in a matter of minutes. Vera Imbrie, the cook, Neil’s wife, whom I had seen in the background in uniform when I invaded the living room, was troubled with facial neuralgia and kept a box of morphine pellets in a cupboard in the kitchen. She hadn’t had to use them for nearly a month, and now the box was gone. Andy, along with everyone else, had known about them and where she kept them. It gave the law a good excuse to search the whole house, and a dozen or so spent an hour at it, but found no morphine and no box. Andy’s cottage had of course already been frisked, but they had another go at that too.

So the DA checked over their personal timetables with them, but found nothing new. Of course Andy
was featured. According to him, at a tête-à-tête in the greenhouse late in the afternoon Dini had at last surrendered and had agreed not only to marry him sometime soon, but also, since he wanted to accept the offer from Nero Wolfe, to quit the Pitcairn job and get one in New York. She had asked him to keep it quiet until she had broken the news to Mrs. Pitcairn. That had been around five o’clock, and he had next seen her some four hours later, a little after nine, when he had been in the greenhouse on his evening round and she had entered through the door that connected with the living room. They had looked at flowers and talked, and then had gone to sit in the workroom and talk some more, and to drink beer, which Dini had brought from the kitchen. At eleven o’clock she had said good night and left via the door to the living room, and that was the last he had seen of her. That’s how he told it.

He too had left, by the outside door, and gone to his cottage and written the letter to Wolfe, deciding not to go to bed because, first, he was so excited with so much happiness, and second, he would have to be up at three anyway. He had worked at propagation records and got his things in order ready to pack. At three o’clock he had gone to the greenhouse and had been joined there by Gus Treble, who was to get his last lesson in the routine of preparation for fumigation. After an hour’s work, including bolting and taping the door to the living room, and opening the ciphogene master valve in the workroom for eight minutes and closing it again, and locking the outside door and putting up the
DOOR TO DEATH
sign, Gus had gone home and Andy had returned to the cottage. Again he admitted he had not gone to bed. At seven o’clock he had gone to the greenhouse and opened the vents with outside controls, returned to the cottage,
finally felt tired, and slept. At eight-thirty he awoke, ate a quick breakfast and drank coffee, and was ready to leave for the day’s work when there was a knock on the door and he opened it to find Nero Wolfe and me.

The timetables of the others, as furnished by them, were less complicated. Gus Treble had spent the evening with a girl at Bedford Hills and stayed late, until it was time to leave for his three o’clock date with Andy at the greenhouse. Neil and Vera Imbrie had gone up to their room a little before ten, listened to the radio for half an hour, and gone to bed and to sleep. Joseph G. Pitcairn had left immediately after dinner for a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Northern Westchester Taxpayers’ Association, at somebody’s house in North Salem, and had returned shortly before midnight and gone to bed. Donald, after dining with his father and Dini Lauer, had gone to his room to write. Asked what he had written, he said fiction. He hadn’t been asked to produce it. Sybil had eaten upstairs with her mother, who was by now able to stand up and even walk around a little but wasn’t venturing downstairs for meals. After eating, she had read aloud to her mother for a couple of hours and helped her with going to bed, and had then gone to her own room for the night.