The Red Box (18 page)

Lew Frost got in. “What are you trying to insinuate? If you mean that my father—”

Wolfe snapped, “Don’t do that! I insinuate nothing; I merely state the fact of my client’s ignorance regarding her property. It may be augmented; it may be depleted; she doesn’t know. Do you, Miss Frost?”

“No.” She was frowning. “I don’t know. I know that for over twenty years the income has been paid in full, promptly every quarter. Really, Mr. Wolfe, I think we’re getting—”

“We shall soon be through; I must leave you shortly. As for irrelevance, I warned you that we might wander anywhere. Indulge me in two more questions about your father’s will: do you enter into complete possession and control on May seventh?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And in case of your death before your twenty-first birthday, who inherits?”

“If I were married and had a child, the child. If not, half to my uncle and half to his son, my cousin Lew.”

“Indeed. Nothing to your mother even then?”

“Nothing.”

“So. Your father fancied his side of that controversy.” Wolfe turned to Llewellyn. “Take good care of your cousin for another five weeks. Should harm befall her in that time, you will have a million dollars and the devil will have his horns on your pillow. Wills are noxious things. Frequently. It is astonishing, the amount of mischief a man’s choler may do long after the brain-cells which nourished the choler have rotted away.” He wiggled a finger at our client. “Soon, of course, you yourself must make a will, to dispose of
the pile in case you should die on—say—May eighth, or subsequently. I suppose you have a lawyer?”

“No. I’ve never needed one.”

“You will now. That’s what a fortune is for, to support the lawyers who defend it for you against depredation.” Wolfe glanced at the clock. “I must leave you. I trust the afternoon has not been wasted; I suppose you feel that it has. I don’t think so. May I leave it that way for the present? I thank you for your indulgence. And while we continue to mark time, waiting for that confounded box to be found, I have a little favor to ask. Could you take Mr. Goodwin home to tea with you?”

Llewellyn’s scowl, which had been turned on for the past hour, deepened. Helen Frost glanced at me and then back at Wolfe.

“Why,” she said, “I suppose … if you want …”

“I do want. I presume it would be possible to have Mr. Gebert there?”

She nodded. “He’s there now. Or he was when I phoned mother. Of course … you know … mother doesn’t approve …”

“I’m aware of that. She thinks you’re poking a stick in a hornet’s nest. But the fact is the police are the hornets; you’ve avoided them, and she hasn’t. Mr. Goodwin is a discreet and wholesome man and not without acuity. I want him to talk with Mr. Gebert, and with your mother too if she will permit it. You will soon be of age, Miss Frost; you have chosen to attempt a difficult and possibly dangerous project; surely you can prevail on your family and close friends for some consideration. If they are ignorant of any circumstance regarding Mr. McNair’s death, all the more should they be ready to establish that point and help us to stumble on a path that will lead us away from
ignorance. So if you would invite Mr. Goodwin for a cup of tea …”

Llewellyn said sourly, “I think Dad’s there, too, he was going to stay till we got back. It’ll just be a big stew—if it’s Gebert you want, why can’t we send him down here? He’ll do anything Helen tells him to.”

“Because for two hours I shall be engaged with my plants.” Wolfe looked at the clock again, and got up from his chair.

Our client was biting her lip. She quit that, and looked at me. “Will you have tea with us, Mr. Goodwin?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Much obliged.”

Wolfe, moving toward the door, said to her, “It is a pleasure to earn a fee from a client like you. You can come to a yes or no without first encircling the globe. I hope and believe that when we are finished you will have nothing to regret.” He moved on, and turned at the threshold. “By the way, Archie, if you will just get that package from your room before you leave. Put it on my bed.”

He went to the elevator. I rose and told my prospective hostess I would be back in a minute, left the office and hopped up the stairs. I didn’t stop at the second floor, where my room was, but kept going to the top, and got there almost as soon as the elevator did with the load it had. At the door to the plant rooms Wolfe stood, awaiting me.

“One idea,” he murmured, “is to observe the reactions of the others upon the cousins’ return from our office before there has been an opportunity for the exchange of information. Another is to get an accurate opinion as to whether any of them has ever seen the red box or has possession of it now. The third is a general assault on reticence.”

“Okay. How candid are we?”

“Reasonably so. Bear in mind that with all three there, the chances are many to one that you will be talking to the murderer, so the candor will be one-sided. You, of course, will be expecting cooperation.”

“Sure, I always do, because I’m wholesome.”

I ran back downstairs and found that our client had on her hat and coat and gloves and her cousin was standing beside her, looking grave but a little doubtful.

I grinned at them. “Come on, children.”

S
trictly speaking, that wasn’t my job. I know pretty well what my field is. Aside from my primary function as the thorn in the seat of Wolfe’s chair to keep him from going to sleep and waking up only for meals, I’m chiefly cut out for two things: to jump and grab something before the other guy can get his paws on it, and to collect pieces of the puzzle for Wolfe to work on. This expedition to 65th Street was neither of those. I don’t pretend to be strong on nuances. Fundamentally I’m the direct type, and that’s why I can never be a really fine detective. Although I keep it down as much as I can, so it won’t interfere with my work, I always have an inclination in a case of murder to march up to all the possible suspects, one after the other, and look them in the eye and ask them, “Did you put that poison in the aspirin bottle?” and just keep that up until one of them says, “Yes.” As I say, I keep it down, but I have to fight it.

The Frost apartment on 65th Street wasn’t as gaudy as I had expected, in view of my intimate knowledge of the Frost finances. It was a bit shiny, with one side of the entrance hall solid with mirrors,
even the door to the closet where I hung my hat, and, in the living room, chairs and little tables with chromium chassis, a lot of red stuff around in upholsteries and drapes, a metal grille in front of the fireplace, which apparently wasn’t used, and oil paintings in modern silver frames.

Anyway, it certainly was cheerfuller than the people that were in it. Dudley Frost was in a big chair at one side, with a table at his elbow holding a whiskey bottle, a water carafe, and a couple of glasses. Perren Gebert stood near a window at the other end, with his back to the room and his hands in his pockets. As we entered he turned, and Helen’s mother walked toward us, with a little lift to her brow as she saw me.

“Oh,” she said. To her daughter: “You’ve brought …”

Helen nodded firmly. “Yes, mother.” She was holding her chin a little higher than natural, to keep the spunk going. “You—all of you have met Mr. Goodwin. Yesterday morning at … that candy business with the police. I’ve engaged Nero Wolfe to investigate Uncle Boyd’s death, and Mr. Goodwin works for him—”

Dudley Frost bawled from his chair, “Lew! Come here! Damn it, what kind of nonsense—”

Llewellyn hurried over there to stem it. Perren Gebert had approached us and was smiling at me:

“Ah! The fellow that doesn’t like scenes. You remember I told you, Calida?” He transferred the smile to Miss Frost. “My dear Helen! You’ve engaged Mr. Wolfe? Are you one of the Erinyes? Alecto? Megaera? Tisiphone? Where’s your snaky hair? So one can really buy anything with money, even vengeance?”

Mrs. Frost murmured at him, “Stop it, Perren.”

“I’m not buying vengeance.” Helen colored a little. “I told you this morning, Perren, you’re being especially hateful. You’d better not make me cry again, or I’ll … well, don’t. Yes, I’ve engaged Mr. Wolfe, and Mr. Goodwin has come here and he wants to talk to you.”

“To me?” Perren shrugged. “About Boyd? If you ask it, he may, but I warn him not to expect much. The police have been here most of the day, and I’ve realized how little I really knew about Boyd, though I’ve known him more than twenty years.”

I said, “I stopped expecting long ago. Anything you tell me will be velvet. —I’m supposed to talk to you, too, Mrs. Frost. And your brother-in-law. I have to take notes, and it gives me a cramp to write standing up …”

She nodded at me, and turned. “Over here, I think.” She started toward Dudley Frost’s side of the room, and I joined her. Her straight back was graceful, and she was unquestionably streamlined for her age. Llewellyn started carrying chairs, and Gebert came up with one. As we got seated and I pulled out my notebook and pencil, I noticed that Helen still had to keep her chin up, but her mother didn’t. Mrs. Frost was saying:

“I hope you understand this, Mr. Goodwin. This is a terrible thing, an awful thing, and we were all very old friends of Mr. McNair’s, and we don’t enjoy talking about it. I knew him all my life, from childhood.”

I said, “Yeah. You’re Scotch?”

She nodded. “My name was Buchan.”

“So McNair told us.” I jerked my eyes up quick from my notebook, which was my habit against the handicap of not being able to keep a steely gaze on the
victim. But she wasn’t recoiling in dismay; she was just nodding again.

“Yes. I gathered from what the policemen said that Boyden had told Mr. Wolfe a good deal of his early life. Of course you have the advantage of knowing what it was he had to say to Mr. Wolfe. I knew, naturally, that Boyden was not well … his nerves …”

Gebert put in, “He was what you call a wreck. He was in a very bad condition. That is why I told the police, they will find it was suicide.”

“The man was crazy!” This was a croak from Dudley Frost. “I’ve told you what he did yesterday! He instructed his lawyer to demand an accounting on Edwin’s estate! On what grounds? On the ground that he is Helen’s godfather? Absolutely fantastic and illegal! I always thought he was crazy—”

That started a general rumpus. Mrs. Frost expostulated with some spirit, Llewellyn with respectful irritation, and Helen with a nervous outburst. Perren Gebert looked around at them, nodded at me as if he and I shared an entertaining secret, and got out a cigarette. I didn’t try to put it all down, but just surveyed the scene and listened. Dudley Frost was surrendering no ground:

“… crazy as a loon! Why shouldn’t he commit suicide? Helen, my dear, I adore you, you know damned well I do, but I refuse to assume respect for your liking for that nincompoop merely because he is no longer alive! He had no use for me and I had none for him! So what’s the use pretending about it? As far as your dragging this man in here is concerned—”

“Dad! Now, Dad! Cut it out—”

Perren Gebert said to no one, “And half a bottle gone.” Mrs. Frost, sitting with her lips tight and
patient, glanced at him. I leaned forward to get closer to Dudley Frost and practically yelled at him:

“What is it? Where does it hurt?”

He jerked back and glared at me. “Where does what hurt?”

I grinned. “Nothing. I just wanted to see if you could hear. I gather you would just as soon I’d go. The best way to manage that, for all of you, is to let me ask a few foolish questions, and you answer them briefly and maybe honestly.”

“We’ve already answered them. All the foolish questions there are. We’ve been doing that all day. All because that nincompoop McNair—”

“Okay. I’ve already got it down that he was a nincompoop. You’ve made remarks about suicide. What reason did McNair have for killing himself?”

“How the devil do I know?”

“Then you can’t think one up offhand?”

“I don’t have to think one up. The man was crazy. I’ve always said so. I said so over twenty years ago, in Paris, when he used to paint rows of eggs strung on wires and call it The Cosmos.”

Helen started to burst, “Uncle Boyd was never—” She was seated at my right, and I reached and tapped her sleeve with the tips of my fingers and told her, “Swallow it. You can’t crack every nut in the bag.” I turned to Perren Gebert:

“You mentioned suicide first. What reason did McNair have for killing himself?”

Gebert shrugged. “A specific reason? I don’t know. He was very bad in his nerves.”

“Yeah. He had a headache. How about you, Mrs. Frost? Have you got a reason?”

She looked at me. You couldn’t take that woman’s eyes casually; you had to make an effort. She said,
“You make your question a little provocative. Don’t you? If you mean, do I know a concrete motive for Boyden to commit suicide, I don’t.”

“Do you think he did?”

She frowned. “I don’t know what to think. If I think of suicide, it is only because I knew him quite intimately, and it is even more difficult to believe that there was anyone who … that someone killed him.”

I started to sigh, then realized that I was imitating Nero Wolfe, and choked it off. I looked around at them. “Of course, you all know that McNair died in Nero Wolfe’s office. You know that Wolfe and I were there, and naturally we know what he had been telling us about and how he was feeling. I don’t know how carefully the police are with their conclusions, but Mr. Wolfe is very snooty about his. He has already made one or two about this case, and the first one is that McNair didn’t kill himself. Suicide is out. So if you have any idea that that theory will be found acceptable, either now or eventually, obliterate it. Guess again.”

Perren Gebert extended a long arm to crush his cigarette in a tray. “For my part,” he said, “I don’t feel compelled to guess. I made one to be charitable. Suppose you tell us why it wasn’t suicide.”

Mrs. Frost said quietly, “I asked you to sit down in my house, Mr. Goodwin, because my daughter brought you. But I wonder if you know when you are being offensive? We … I have no theory to advance …”

Dudley Frost started to croak: “Take no notice of him, Calida. Disregard him. I refuse to speak to him.” He reached for the whiskey bottle.