Too Many Cooks/Champagne for One (35 page)

I nodded. “Yes, I’ll answer that. It was good enough to bring Inspector Cramer here when he hadn’t had much sleep. In my opinion it is good enough to keep them from crossing it off as suicide until they have dug as deep as they can go.”

“I see.” He rubbed his palms together. Then he rubbed them on the chair arms. He had transferred his gaze to a spot on the rug, which was a relief. It was a full minute before he came back to me. “You say you have told only the police, the District Attorney, and Nero Wolfe. I want to have a talk with Wolfe.”

I raised my brows. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?”

“Whether …” I let it trail, screwing my lips. “He doesn’t like to mix in when I’m involved personally. Also he’s pretty busy. But I’ll see.” I arose. “With him you never can tell.” I moved.

As I turned left in the hall Wolfe appeared at the corner of the wing. He stood there until I had passed and pushed the swing door, and then followed me into the kitchen. When the door had swung shut I spoke.

“I must apologize for that crack about salary. I forgot you were listening.”

He grunted. “Your memory is excellent and you shouldn’t disparage it. What does that man want of me?”

I covered a yawn. “Search me. If I had had some sleep I might risk a guess, but it’s all I can do to get enough oxygen for my lungs so my brain’s doing without. Maybe he wants to publish your autobiography. Or maybe he wants you to make a monkey of me by proving it was suicide.”

“I won’t see him. You have supplied a reason: that you are involved personally.”

“Yes, sir. I am also involved personally in the income of your detective business. So is Fritz. So is the guy who wrote you that letter from New Guinea, or he’d like to be.”

He growled, as a lion might growl when it realizes it must leave its cosy lair to scout around for a meal. I admit that for him a better comparison would be an elephant, but elephants don’t growl. Fritz, at the table shucking clams, started humming a tune, very low, probably pleased at the prospect of a client. Wolfe glared at him, reached for a clam, popped it into his mouth, and chewed. When I pushed the door open and held it, he waited until the clam was down before passing through.

He doesn’t like to shake hands with strangers, and when we entered the office and I pronounced names he merely gave Laidlaw a nod en route to his desk. Before I went to mine I asked Laidlaw to move to the red leather chair so I wouldn’t have him in profile as he faced Wolfe. As I sat, Laidlaw was saying that he
supposed Goodwin had told Wolfe who he was, and Wolfe was saying yes, he had.

Laidlaw’s straight, steady eyes were now at Wolfe instead of me. “I want,” he said, “to engage you professionally. Do you prefer the retainer in cash, or a check?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Neither, until I accept the engagement. What do you want done?”

“I want you to get some information for me. You know what happened at Mrs. Robilotti’s house last evening. You know that a girl named Faith Usher was poisoned and died. You know of the circumstances indicating that she committed suicide. Don’t you?”

Wolfe said yes.

“Do you know that the authorities have not accepted it as a fact that she killed herself? That they are continuing with the investigation on the assumption that she might have been murdered?”

Wolfe said yes.

“Then it’s obvious that they must have knowledge of some circumstance other than the ones I know about—or that any of us know about. They must have some reason for not accepting the fact that it was suicide. I don’t know what that reason is, and they won’t tell me, and as one of the people involved—involved simply because I was there—I have a legitimate right to know. That’s the information I want you to get for me. I’ll give you a retainer now, and your bill can be any amount you think is fair, and I’ll pay it.”

I was not yawning. I must say I admired his gall. Though he didn’t know that Wolfe had been at the hole, he must have assumed that I had reported the offer he had made, and here he was looking Wolfe
straight in the eye, engaging him professionally, and telling him he could name his figure, no matter what, whereas with me ten grand had been his limit. The gall of the guy! I had to admire him.

The corners of Wolfe’s mouth were up. “Indeed,” he said. Laidlaw took a breath, but it came out merely as used air, not as words.

“Mr. Goodwin has told me,” Wolfe said, “of the proposal you made to him. I am at a loss whether to respect your doggedness and applaud your dexterity or to deplore your naïveté. In any case I must decline the engagement. I already have the information you’re after, but I got it from Mr. Goodwin in confidence and may not disclose it. I’m sorry, sir.”

Laidlaw took another breath. “I’m not as dogged as you are,” he declared. “Both of you. In the name of God, what’s so top secret about it? What are you afraid of?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Not afraid, Mr. Laidlaw, merely discreet. When a matter in which we have an interest and a commitment requires us to nettle the police we are not at all reluctant. In this affair Mr. Goodwin is involved solely because he happened to be there, just as you are, and I am not involved at all. It is not a question of fear or of animus. I am merely detached. I will not, for instance, tell the police of the offers you have made Mr. Goodwin and me because it would stimulate their curiosity about you, and since I assume you have made the offers in good faith I am not disposed to do you an ill turn.”

“But you’re turning me down.”

“Yes. Flatly. In the circumstances I have no choice. Mr. Goodwin can speak for himself.”

Laidlaw’s head turned to me and I had the eyes
again. I wouldn’t have put it past him to renew his offer, with an amendment that he would now leave the figure up to me, but if he had that in mind he abandoned it when he saw my steadfast countenance. When, after regarding me for eight seconds, he left his chair, I thought he was leaving the field and Wolfe wouldn’t have to go to work after all, but no. He only wanted to mull, and preferred to have his face to himself. He asked, “May I have a minute?” and, when Wolfe said yes, he turned his back and moseyed across the rug toward the far wall, where the big globe stood in front of bookshelves; and, for double the time he had asked for, at least that, he stood revolving the globe. Finally he about-faced and returned to the red leather chair, not moseying.

“I must speak with you privately,” he told Wolfe.

“You are,” Wolfe said shortly. “If you mean alone, no. If a confidence weren’t as safe with Mr. Goodwin as with me he wouldn’t be here. His ears are mine, and mine are his.”

“This isn’t only a confidence. I’m going to tell you something that no one on earth knows about but me. I’m going to risk telling you because I have to, but I’m not going to double the risk.”

“You will not be doubling it.” Wolfe was patient. “If Mr. Goodwin left us I would give him a signal to listen to us on a contraption in another room, so he might as well stay.”

“You don’t make it any easier, Wolfe.”

“I don’t pretend to make things easier. I only make them manageable—when I can.”

Laidlaw looked as if he needed to mull some more, but he got it decided without going to consult the globe again. “You’ll have all you can do to manage
this,” he declared. “I couldn’t go to my lawyer with it, or anyhow I wouldn’t, and even if I had it would have been too much for him. I thought I couldn’t go to anybody, and then I thought of you. You have the reputation of a wizard, and God knows I need one. First I wanted to know why Goodwin thinks it was murder, but evidently you’re not going—by the way—”

He took a pen from a pocket and a checkbook from another, put the book on the little table at his elbow, and wrote. He yanked the check off, glanced it over, got up to put it on Wolfe’s desk, and returned to the chair.

“If twenty thousand isn’t enough,” he said, “for a retainer and advances for expenses, say so. You haven’t accepted the job, I know, but I’m camping here until you do. You spoke of managing things. I want you to manage that if they go on with their investigation it doesn’t go deep enough to uncover and make public a certain event in my life. I also want you to manage that I don’t get arrested and put on trial for murder.”

Wolfe grunted. “I could give no guarantee against either contingency.”

“I don’t expect you to. I don’t expect you to pass miracles, either. And two things I want to make plain: first, if Faith Usher was murdered I didn’t kill her and don’t know who did; and second, my own conviction is that she committed suicide. I don’t know what Goodwin’s reason is for thinking she was murdered, but whatever it is, I’m convinced that he’s wrong.”

Wolfe grunted again. “Then why come to me in a dither? If you’re convinced it was suicide. Since they are human the police do frequently fumble, but usually they arrive at the truth. Finally.”

“That’s the trouble. Finally. This time, before they arrive, they might run across the event I spoke of, and if they do, they might charge me with murder. Not they might, they would.”

“Indeed. It must have been an extraordinary event. If that is what you intend to confide in me, I make two remarks: that you are not yet my client, and that even if you were, disclosures to a private detective by a client are not a privileged communication. It’s an impasse, Mr. Laidlaw. I can’t decide whether to accept your job until I know what the event was; but I will add that if I do accept it I will go far to protect the interest of a client.”

“I’m desperate, Wolfe,” Laidlaw said. He pushed his hair back, but it needed more than a push. “I admit it. I’m desperate. You’ll accept the job because there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. What I’m going to tell you is known to no one on earth but me, I’m pretty sure of that, but not absolutely sure, and that’s the devil of it.”

He pushed at his hair again. “I’m not proud of this, what I’m telling you. I’m thirty-one years old. In August, nineteen fifty-six, a year and a half ago, I went into Cordoni’s on Madison Avenue to buy some flowers, and the girl who waited on me was attractive, and that evening I drove her to a place in the country for dinner. Her name was Faith Usher. Her vacation was to start in ten days, and by the time it started I had persuaded her to spend it in Canada with me. I didn’t use my own name; I’m almost certain she never knew what it was. She only had a week, and when we got back she went back to work at Cordoni’s, and I went to Europe and was gone two months. When I returned I had no idea of resuming any relations with
her, but I had no reason to avoid her, and I stopped in at Cordoni’s one day. She was there, but she would barely speak to me. She asked me, if I came to Cordoni’s again, to get someone else to wait on me.”

“I suggest,” Wolfe put in, “that you confine this to the essentials.”

“I am. I want you to know just how it was. I don’t like to feel that I owe anyone anything, especially a woman, and I phoned her twice to get her to meet me and have a talk, but she wouldn’t. So I dropped it. I also stopped buying flowers at Cordoni’s, but some months later, one rainy day in April, I went there because it was convenient, and she wasn’t there. I didn’t ask about her. I include these details because you ought to know what the chances are that the police are going to dig this up.”

“First the essentials,” Wolfe muttered.

“All right, but you ought to know how I found out that she was at Grantham House. Grantham House is an institution started by—”

“I know what it is.”

“Then I don’t have to explain it. A few days after I had noticed that she wasn’t at Cordoni’s a friend of mine told me—his name is Austin Byne, and he is Mrs. Robilotti’s nephew—he told me that he had been at Grantham House the day before on an errand for Mrs. Robilotti and had seen a girl there that he recognized. He said I might recognize her too—the girl with the little oval face and green eyes who used to work at Cordoni’s. I told him I doubted it, that I didn’t remember her. But I—”

“Was Mr. Byne’s tone or manner suggestive?”

“No. I didn’t think—I’m sure it wasn’t. But I wondered. Naturally. It had been eight months since the
trip to Canada, and I did not believe that she had been promiscuous. I decided that I must see her and talk with her. I prefer to think that my chief reason was my feeling of obligation, but I don’t deny that I also wanted to know if she had found out who I was, and if so whether she had told anyone or was going to. In arranging to see her I took every possible precaution. Shall I tell you exactly how I managed it?”

“Later, perhaps.”

“All right, I saw her. She said that she had agreed to meet me only because she wanted to tell me that she never wanted to see me or hear from me again. She said she didn’t hate me—I don’t think she was capable of hate—but that I meant only one thing to her, a mistake that she would never forgive herself for, and that she only wanted to blot me out. Those were her words: ‘blot you out.’ She said her baby would be given for adoption and would never know who its parents were. I had money with me, a lot of it, but she wouldn’t take a cent. I didn’t raise the question whether there could be any doubt that I was the father. You wouldn’t either, if it had been you, with her, the way she was.”

He stopped and set his jaw. After a moment he released it. “That was when I decided to quit playing around. I made an anonymous contribution to Grantham House. I never saw her again until last night. I didn’t kill her. I am convinced she killed herself, and I hope to God my being there, seeing me again, wasn’t what made her do it.”

He stopped again. Then he went on, “I didn’t kill her, but you can see where I’ll be if the police go on investigating and dig this up somehow—though I don’t know how. They would have me. I was standing
at the bar when Cecil Grantham came and got the champagne and took it to her. Even if I wasn’t convicted of murder, even if I was never put on trial, this would all come out and that would be nearly as bad. And evidently, if it weren’t for Goodwin, for what he has told them, they would almost certainly call it suicide and close it. Can you wonder that I want to know what he told them? At any price?”

“No,” Wolfe conceded. “Accepting your account as candid, no. But you have shifted your ground. You wanted to hire me to tell you what Mr. Goodwin has told the police, though you didn’t put it that way, and I declined. What do you want to hire me to do now?”