Three For The Chair (7 page)

Wolfe flattened his palms on the chair arms and took in the audience. 'There it is,' he said. 'I didn't want to tell you about it and go all over it again for Mr. Cramer. Any questions?'

David was slumped in the red leather chair, his head down, staring at the floor. At Wolfe's question he slowly lifted his head and slowly moved it, taking in the others, one by one, and then going to Wolfe. He squeezed words out.

'I suppose I ought to feel sorry, but I don't. I always thought Bert killed his father. I always thought Vince's alibi was false, that he lied to save Bert, but I see it now. Without it Bert would probably have been convicted, so it did save him, but it saved Vince too. Of course Bert knew it was false, he knew he and Vince hadn't been together all evening, but if he said so, if he said Vince had gone out for a while, that would have destroyed his own alibi, and he didn't dare ' and he didn't know Vince had killed our father. He might have suspected, but he didn't know. I see it now. I even see the Mrs. Dobbs part.' He frowned. 'I'm trying to remember her testimony. She said she hadn't heard either of them go out, but probably she had, and she might have known which one, but if she said she heard either of them leave the house that would have ruined Bert's alibi, and she was crazy about Bert and she hadn't liked our father. Not many people liked our father.'

He thought he was going to say more, decided not to, rose from the chair, and turned to his brother. 'Was this what you were after, Paul'Did you suspect this?'

'Hell no,' Paul said harshly. 'You know damn well what I suspected, and who, and if this fat slob is right about the dry ice' ' he bounced out of his chair and wheeled to face Johnny Arrow ' 'why couldn't it have been him'He had a key to the apartment! I never said I knew exactly how he did it! And if you ' now lay off!'

David had stepped across and grabbed his arm, and for a second I thought Paul was going to sock his elder brother, but evidently David knew him better than I did. David said nothing, but he didn't have to. He merely hung onto his arm, steered him around back of the other chairs, and headed him towards the hall. They disappeared, and Saul went to let them out.

'I have no questions,' Doctor Buhl said. He arose and looked down at the Tuttles, then at Wolfe. 'My God, after twenty years. You used a phrase, 'a window for death.' You have certainly opened one.' He looked down again. 'Louise, you have been my patient nearly all your life. Do you need me'Are you all right?'

'I'm all right.' Her high thin voice was trying not to be a wail. 'I don't believe it.'

Buhl opened his mouth to say more, decided not to, and turned and went. Wolfe spoke to the man and wife who owned a fine drugstore. 'If you have no questions you might as well go.'

Louise, with her teeth bearing down on her lip, tugged at her husband's sleeve. He took a deep breath, put a hand on her shoulder, and raised himself from the chair, and she came up with him. Side by side they headed for the door, and I left them to Saul too. When they were out of sight Wolfe sent his eyes in the direction of the pair in the rear and said sharply, 'Well'Have I fixed it up for you?'

Damned if they weren't holding hands, and they continued to hold as they got up and approached the desk. I am perfectly capable of holding hands, but not in public. Anne looked as if she wanted to cry but didn't intend to. Luckily it was Johnny's left hand she had, for he wanted to use the other one. When they got to the desk he stretched his arm across it and said, 'Shake.'

I SHOULD EXPLAIN ONE THING. Since Johnny and Anne had no part in the performance, why did Wolfe tell me to invite them'I didn't have to ask him. I know him. One little grand is a pretty skimpy fee for a job like that, spotting a murderer, and if Johnny Arrow came and saw the neat process by which the guy who had killed his partner was dug out he might feel inclined to show his appreciation by contributing a small hunk of uranium. That was the idea, no question about it, and for some weeks, as I flipped through the morning mail, I had my eye out for an envelope with his return address. It never came, and I quit expecting it.

But last week, just four days after a jury had convicted Vincent Tuttle of the first-degree murder of Bertram Fyfe's father ' it had been decided to try him for that one because it was a tighter case, especially after Mrs. Dobbs opened up ' here came an envelope with Fyfe-Arrow Mining Corporation, Montreal, in the corner, and when I opened it and saw the amount of the check I raised my brows as high as they would go. A really nice hunk.

There was no letter, but that was understandable. He had no time for writing letters. He was much too busy showing his wife how to prospect.

I STOOD WITH my arms folded, glaring down at Nero Wolfe, who had his 278 pounds planted in a massive armchair which was made of heavy pine slats, with thick rainbow rugs draped over the back and on the seat for a cushion. It went with the rest of the furniture, including the bed, in that room of River Bend, the sixteen-room mountain lodge belonging to O. V. Bragan, the oil tycoon.

'A fine way to serve your country,' I told him. 'Not. In spite of a late start I get you here in time to be shown to your room and unpack and wash up for dinner, and now you tell me to go tell your host you want dinner in your room. Nothing doing. I decline.'

He was glaring back. 'Confound it, I have lumbago!' he roared.

'You have not got lumbago. Naturally your back's tired, since all the way from Thirty-fifth Street, Manhattan, to the Adirondacks, three hundred and twenty-eight miles, you kept stiff on the back seat, ready to jump, even with me at the wheel. What you need is exercise, like a good long walk to the dining room.'

'I say it's lumbago.'

'No. It's acute mooditis, which is a medical term for an inflamed whim.' I unfolded my arms to gesture. 'Here's the situation. We were getting nowhere on that insurance case for Lamb and McCullough, which I admit was a little annoying for the greatest detective alive, and you were plenty annoyed, when a phone call came from the State Department. A new ambassador from a foreign country with which our country wanted to make a deal had been asked if he had any special personal desires, and he had said yes, he wanted to catch an American brook trout, and, what was more, he wanted it cooked fresh from the brook by Nero Wolfe. Would you be willing to oblige'Arrangements had been made for the ambassador and a small party to spend a week at a lodge in the Adirondacks, with three miles of private trout water on the Crooked River. If a week was too much for you, two days would do, or even one, or even in a pinch just long enough to cook some trout.'

I gestured again. 'Okay. You asked me what I thought. I said we had to stay on the Lamb and McCullough job. You said our country wanted that ambassador softened up and you must answer our country's call to duty. I said nuts. I said if you wanted to cook for our country you could enlist in the Army and work your way up to mess sergeant, but I would admit that the Lamb and McCullough thing was probably too tough for you. Days passed. It got tougher. The outcome was that we left the house at eleven-fourteen this morning and I drove three hundred and twenty-eight miles in a little under seven hours, and here we are. The setup is marvelous and very democratic. You're just here as a cook, and look at this room you've got.' I swept a hand around. 'Not a hardship in sight. Private bath. Mine is somewhat smaller, but I'm only cook's assistant, I suppose I might call it culinary attache. We were told dinner at six-thirty because they have to get up early to go fishing, and it is now six-thirty-four, and I am instructed to go tell Bragan you'll eat in your room. Where would that leave me'They wouldn't want me at the table without you, and when will I get another chance to watch an ambassador eat'If you've got lumbago it's not in your back, it's in your psyche. It is called psychic lumbago. The best treatment -'

'Archie. Stop gibbering. 'Lumbago' denotes locality. From the Latin lumbus, meaning 'loin.' The psyche is not in the loin.'

'No'Prove it. I'll concede that yours may not be, but I have known cases ' for example, remember that guy, I forget his name, that wanted to hire you to arrange a meeting of his first four wives and persuade them -'

'Shut up!' He put his hands on the chair arms.

'Yes, sir.'

'There are degrees of discomfort, and some of them stop short of torment, thank heaven. Very well.' He levered himself upright, making some faces, assorted, on the way. 'It is lumbago. And with it I am to sit at a strange table with a jumble of strangers. Are you coming?'

He headed for the door.

THERE WAS A HARDSHIP after all; the lodge had no dining room. Or maybe it did; but the assorted heads of deer and bear and moose on the walls, with planked fish here and there, made it also a trophy room; the billiard table at one end made it a game room; the cabinets of weapons and rods made it a gun-and-tackle room; the chairs and rugs and scattered tables with lights made it a living room; and the over-all size made it a barn.

There was nothing wrong with the food, which was served by two male experts in uniform, but I damn near roasted. There were nine of us at the big square table, with three seated at each of three sides, and no one at the side next to the fireplace. The fireplace was twelve feet wide, and from a distance it was cheerful and sporty, with flame curling around the eight-foot logs their whole length, but my seat at a forward corner of the table was not at a distance. By the time I had finished my clams I was twisting my legs around to the left to keep my pants from blazing up, and my right cheek was about ready for basting. As the soup was being served I twisted the legs still further, and my foot nicked the ankle of my neighbor on the left.

'Sorry,' I told him. 'What's the name of that animal that can live in fire?'

'Salamander.' He was a gravelly tenor, a wiry little specimen with black hair slicked back and broad bulgy shoulders away out of proportion to the rest of him. 'What,' he asked, 'are you doing here?'

'Frying.' I turned my head square to him to give my cheek a break. 'Please remember this, these may be my last words. My name is Archie Goodwin, and I came here by invitation to bring fourteen things: parsley, onions, chives, chervil, tarragon, fresh mushrooms, brandy, bread crumbs, fresh eggs, paprika, tomatoes, cheese, and Nero Wolfe. That's only thirteen, so I must have left out one. They are ingredients of baked brook trout Montbarry, except the last; Mr. Wolfe is not exactly an ingredient.'

He giggled. 'I hope not. It would be a very greasy dish, yes?'

'No. That's not fat, it's solid muscle. You should see him lift a pen to sign a letter, absolutely effortless. What are you doing here?'

He tackled his soup and kept at it, so I did likewise. I thought he had crossed me off as a delivery boy, but when his cup was empty he turned to me. 'I am an expert, a financier, and a man of guile. I am here -'

'The name first, please. I didn't catch it.'

'Certainly, forgive me. Spiros Papps. I am here with my friend, Mr. Theodore Kelefy, the ambassador, to advise him on technical aspects of his mission. I am also here, at this spot, to catch trout, and in the four days we have been here I have caught thirty-eight. Eleven this morning ' much better than the ambassador, who got only three. It is claimed that your eastern brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis, is the most savory of all on earth, but I am reserving my opinion until I have tasted one prepared by Mr. Wolfe. Did you say onions?'

'Don't worry,' I assured him. 'He just waves one at the pan. Do you give advice only to ambassadors, or could I have a little'About these people. The introductions were a little skimpy.'

We were interrupted by a servitor with a platter of roast beef, and then one with vegetables, but after that had been attended to he briefed me around the table, keeping his tenor down. O. V. Bragan, the host, was at the best side in the center, the one farthest from the fire. He was a burly six-footer with cold and sharp gray eyes and a square bony chin, somewhere between Wolfe and me in age, and in our brief exchange with him on arrival I had felt no impulse to switch to Hemoco gas, a product of the Hemisphere Oil Company, of which he was it.

Sharing the best side with him, on his right, was Theodore Kelefy, the ambassador. Short but broad, a little pudgy, with no neck to speak of, he looked as if he had been taking on a deep tan for ten years, but it could have been for ten generations. He thought he spoke English, and maybe he did know the words, but he could have used some advice from Spiros Papps on how to pronounce them. On Bragan's other side, his left, was David M. Leeson. If you had looked him over and listened to him ' his cool professional smile, his cool cultivated baritone, his cool well-kept and well-handled face ' you would have guessed that he was a career diplomat who had worked up to Assistant Secretary of State before he was forty, and you would have hit it right on the nose. It was he who had phoned Wolfe to ask him to cook for his country. One of his footholds on the way up, Spiros Papps told me, had been a couple of years as secretary of the embassy in the capital that Ambassador Kelefy came from.

It helps a career diplomat to have a helpful wife, and, according to Papps, Leeson had one. Papps spoke highly of her, keeping his voice down because she was there on the other side of him, between him and the ambassador. I had no serious objection to her looks, but she had too much forehead for a top rating. Smooth fair skin, light brown hair in a bun, quick brown eyes ' that was all very well, but another trouble was the mouth. It had probably started out all right, but something had pulled the corners down. Either she had got bitter about something or she was working too hard on the career. If she had been a little younger I wouldn't have minded finding out which it was and suggesting steps. If Wolfe could serve his country by cooking trout for an ambassador, why couldn't I serve it by perking up the helpful wife of an Assistant Secretary of State'

The other woman at the table didn't need any perking. At the opposite side of the table, kitty-cornered from me, was Adria Kelefy, not the ambassador's daughter, as might have been thought, but his wife. She didn't look especially helpful, but she certainly looked. Small and dark and dainty, with sleepy dark eyes and silky black hair. She was unquestionably fit to pick up and carry somewhere, if only to a drugstore to buy her a Coke, though I doubt if that would have been her idea of a treat. Assistant Secretary Leeson was on her right and Nero Wolfe on her left, and she was going great with both of them. Once she put her hand on Wolfe's arm and kept it there ten seconds, and he didn't pull away. Considering two of his strongest feelings, one about physical contacts and the other about women, I decided it was my duty to get close enough to study her.

But that had to wait. Next to Wolfe, across from me, was the ninth and last, a tall skinny guy with a perpetual squint and a thin tight mouth that was just a hyphen between his bony jaws. His left cheek was four shades redder than his right one, which I understood and sympathized with. The fireplace, on my right, was on his left. His name, Papps said, was James Arthur Ferris. I said he must be something scrubby like a valet or a varlet, since he had been stuck in the other baking seat.

Papps giggled. 'Not a valet, not at all. A very important man, Mr. Ferris. I am responsible for his presence. Mr. Bragan would as soon have invited a cobra, but since he had maneuvered to get the ambassador and Secretary Leeson here I thought it only fair that Mr. Ferris should be invited too, and I insisted. Also I am a man of malice. It entertains me to see big men displaying bad blood. You say you are frying. Why are you frying'Because the table is too close to the fire. Why was it placed too close to the fire'So Mr. Bragan could seat Mr. Ferris where he would be highly uncomfortable. No little man is ever as petty as a big man.'

My plate empty, I arranged my knife and fork on it according to Hoyle. 'Which are you, little or big?'

'Neither. I am unbranded. What you Americans call a maverick.'

'What makes Ferris big?'

'He represents big interests ' a syndicate of five great oil companies. That is why Mr. Bragan would like to scorch him. Hundreds of millions are at stake. These four days here, we have fished in the morning, squabbled in the afternoon, and fraternized in the evening. Mr. Ferris has gained some ground with the ambassador, but not, I fear, with Secretary Leeson. I find that entertaining. In the end the decision will in effect be mine, and I invite a situation that should mean another ten or twenty million for the government that employs me. If you think I am indiscreet you are wrong. If you repeat what I have said to Mr. Wolfe, and it goes from him to any or all of the others, including Secretary Leeson, I would not reproach you as a chatterbox. I am a man of simple candor. In fact I would go so far as -'

I didn't get to hear how far a man of guile and malice and simple candor would go, on account of an interruption. James Arthur Ferris suddenly shoved his chair back, not quietly, left it, marched the length of the room to the far wall, a good twenty paces, and took a billiard cue from the rack. All heads turned to him, and probably I wasn't alone with my notion that he was going to march back and take a swing at our host, but he merely put the cue ball on the head spot, and, not bothering with any sawing, smashed it into the cluster. The heads turned to Bragan, and then to one another, in dead silence. I grabbed the opportunity. Bragan's scorching Ferris was nothing to me, but scorching me too was uncalled for, and here was my chance. I got up and went to the billiard table and asked Ferris politely, 'Shall I rack 'em up and we'll lag for the break?'

He was so damn mad he couldn't speak. He just nodded.

A couple of hours later, going on ten o'clock, Nero Wolfe said to me, 'Archie. About your leaving the dinner table. You know what I think of any disturbance at a meal.'

'Yes, sir.'

We were in his room, bound for bed. Mine was down the hall, and I had stopped in at his by request.

'I concede,' he said, 'that there may be exceptions, and this was one. Mr. Bragan is either a dunce or a ruffian.'

'Yeah. Or both. At least I wasn't tied to a stake ' I must remember to thank him. You going fishing tomorrow?'

'You know I'm not.' Seated, he grunted as he bent over to unlace his shoes. That done, he straightened. 'I inspected the kitchen and equipment, and it will serve. They'll be back at eleven-thirty with the morning's catch, and lunch will be at twelve-thirty. I'll take over the kitchen at ten. The cook is civil and fairly competent. I wish to make an avowal. You were right to oppose this expedition. These people are engaged in bitter and savage combat, with Ambassador Kelefy at the center of it, and in his present humor I doubt if he could distinguish between trout Montbarry and carp fried in lard. As for the others, their mouths would water only at the prospect of long pig. Do you know what that is?'

I nodded. 'Cannibal stew. Only each one would want to pick the pig.'

'No doubt.' He kicked his shoes off. 'If we leave immediately after lunch, say three o'clock, will we be home by bedtime?'

I said sure, and told him good night. As I opened the door he spoke to my back, 'By the way, it is not lumbago.'