The Red Box (28 page)

I don’t know whether Wolfe regarded my automatic mostly as stage property or not, but I didn’t. Mrs. Edwin Frost had stood up, and she had a fair-sized black leather handbag she was clutching. I’ll admit it was unlikely she would be lugging an atomizer loaded with nitrobenzene into Wolfe’s office, to have it found if she was searched, but that wasn’t a thing to take a chance on. I thought I’d better butt in for the sake of an understanding. I did so:

“I ought to tell you, Mrs. Frost, if you don’t like this gun pointed at you, give me that bag or lay it on the floor.”

She ignored me, looking at Wolfe. She said with
calm indignation, “I can’t be compelled to listen to this rubbish.” I saw a little flash back in her eyes from the fire inside. “I am going. Helen! Come.”

She moved toward the door. I moved after her. Cramer was on his feet and got in front of her before I did. He blocked her way but didn’t touch her. “Wait, Mrs. Frost. Just a minute.” He looked at Wolfe. “What have you got? I’m not playing this blind.”

“I’ve got enough, Mr. Cramer.” Wolfe was crisp. “I’m not a fool. Take that bag from her and keep her in here or you’ll eternally regret it.”

Cramer didn’t hesitate more than half a second. That’s one thing I’ve always liked about him, he never fiddle-faddles much. He put a hand on her shoulder. She stepped back, away from it, and stiffened. He snapped, “Give me the bag and sit down. That’s no great hardship. You’ll have all the chance for a comeback you want.”

He reached for it and took it. I noticed that at that juncture she didn’t appeal to her masculine relatives; I don’t imagine she was very strong on appeals. She wasn’t doing any quivering, either. She gave Cramer the straight hard eye:

“You keep me here by force. Do you?”

“Well …” Cramer shrugged. “We think you’ll stay for a while. Just till we get through.”

She walked back and sat down. Glenna McNair sent her one swift glance, and then looked back at Wolfe. The men weren’t looking at her.

Wolfe said testily, “These interruptions will help no one. Certainly not you, Mrs. Frost; nothing can help you now.” He looked at our client. “You want to know how. In 1916 Mrs. Frost went with her baby daughter Helen, then only a year old, to the east coast of Spain. There, a year later, her daughter died. Under the
terms of her deceased husband’s will, Helen’s death meant that the entire fortune went to Dudley and Llewellyn Frost. Mrs. Frost did not like that, and she made a plan. It was wartime, and the confusion all over Europe made it possible to carry it out. Her old friend Boyden McNair had a baby daughter almost the same age as Helen, just a month apart, and his wife was dead and he was penniless, with no means of making a livelihood. Mrs. Frost bought his daughter from him, explaining that the child would be better off that way anyhow. Inquiry is now being made in Cartagena regarding a manipulation of the record of deaths in the year 1917. The idea was, of course, to spread the report that Glenna McNair died and Helen Frost lived.

“Immediately Mrs. Frost took you, as Helen Frost, to Egypt, where there was little risk of your being seen by some traveler who had known you as a baby in Paris. When the war ended even Egypt was too hazardous, and she went on to the Far East. Not until you were nine years old did she chance your appearance in this part of the world, and even then she avoided France. You came to this continent from the west.”

Wolfe stirred in his chair, and gave his eyes a new target. “I suppose it would be more polite, Mrs. Frost, from this point on, to address myself to you. I am going to speak of the two unavoidable difficulties your plan encountered—one from the very beginning. That was your young friend Perren Gebert. He knew all about it because he was there, and you had to pay for his silence. You even took him to Egypt with you, which was a wise precaution even if you didn’t like to have him around. As long as you paid him he represented no serious danger, because he was a man who
knew how to hold his tongue. Then a cloud sailed into your sky, about ten years ago, when Boyden McNair, who had made a success in London and regained his self-respect, came to New York. He wanted to be near the daughter he had lost, and I have no doubt that he made a nuisance of himself. He kept to the essentials of the bargain he had made with you in 1917, because he was a scrupulous man, but he made annoying little pecks at you. He insisted on his right to make himself a good friend of his daughter. I presume that it was around this time that you acquired, probably on a trip to Europe, certain chemicals which you began to fear might some day be needed.”

Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. She sat straight and motionless, her eyes level at him, the lips of her proud mouth perhaps a little tighter than ordinary. He went on, “And sure enough, the need arose. It was a double emergency. Mr. Gebert conceived the idea of marrying the heiress before she came of age, and insisted on the help of your influence and authority. What was worse, Mr. McNair began to get his scruples mixed up. He did not tell me the precise nature of the demands he made, but I believe I can guess them. He wanted to buy his daughter back again. Didn’t he? He had made even a greater success in New York than in London, and so had plenty of money. True, he was still bound by the agreement he had made with you in 1917, but I suspect he had succeeded in persuading himself that there was a higher obligation, both to his paternal emotions and to Glenna herself. No doubt he was outraged by Mr. Gebert’s impudent aspiration to marry Glenna and by your seeming acquiescence.

“You were certainly up against it, I can see that. After all your ingenuity and devotion and vigilance, and twenty years of control of a handsome income.
With Mr. Gebert insisting on having her for a wife, and Mr. McNair demanding her for a daughter, and both of them threatening you daily with exposure, the surprising thing is that you found time for the deliberate cunning you employed. It is easy to see why you took Mr. McNair first. If you had killed Gebert, McNair would have known the truth of it no matter what your precautions, and would have acted at once. So your first effort was the poisoned candy for McNair, with the poison in the Jordan almonds, which you knew he was fond of. He escaped that; it killed an innocent young woman instead. He knew of course what it meant. Here I permit myself another surmise: my guess is that Mr. McNair, being a sentimental man, decided to reclaim his daughter on her real twenty-first birthday, April second. But knowing your resourcefulness, and fearing that you might somehow get him before then, he made certain arrangements in his will and in an interview with me. The latter, alas, was not completed; your second attempt, the imitation aspirin tablets, intervened. And just in the nick of time! Just when he was on the verge—Miss McNair! I beg you …”

Glenna McNair disregarded him. I suppose she didn’t hear him. She was on her feet, turned away from him, facing the woman with the straight back and proud mouth whom for so many years she had called mother. She took three steps toward her. Cramer was up too, beside her; and Lew Frost was there with a hand on her arm. With a convulsive movement she shook his hand off without looking at him; she was staring at Mrs. Frost. A little quiver ran over her, then she stood still and said in a half-choked voice:

“He was my father, and you killed him. You killed
my father. Oh!” The quiver again, and she stopped for it. “You … you
woman!
”

Llewellyn sputtered at Wolfe, “This is enough for her—good God, you shouldn’t have let her be here—I’ll take her home—”

Wolfe said curtly, “She has no home. None this side of Scotland. Miss McNair, I beg you. Sit down. You and I are doing a job. Aren’t we? Let’s finish it. Let’s do it right, for your father’s sake. Come.”

She quivered once more, shook off Lew’s hand again, and then turned and got to her chair and sat down. She looked at Wolfe: “All right. I don’t want anybody to touch me. But it’s all over, isn’t it?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Not quite. We’ll go on to the end.” He straightened out a finger to aim it at Mrs. Frost. “You, madam, have a little more to hear. Having got rid of Mr. McNair, you may even have had the idea that you could stop there. But that was bad calculation, unworthy of you, for naturally Mr. Gebert knew what had happened and began at once to put pressure on you. He was even foolhardy about it, for that was his humor; he told Mr. Goodwin that you had murdered Mr. McNair. He presumed, I suppose, that Mr. Goodwin did not know French, and did not know that
calida
, your name, is a Latin word meaning ‘ardently.’ No doubt he meant merely to startle you. He did indeed startle you, with such success that you killed him the next day. I have not yet congratulated you on the technique of that effort, but I assure you—”

“Please!” It was Mrs. Frost. We all looked at her. She had her chin up, her eyes at Wolfe, and didn’t seem ready to do any quivering. “Need I listen to your … need I listen to that?” Her head pivoted for the eyes to aim at Cramer. “You are a police inspector. Do you realize what this man is saying to me? Are you
responsible for it? Are you … am I charged with anything?”

Cramer said in a heavy official tone, “It looks like you’re apt to be. Frankly, you’ll stay right here until I have a chance to look over some evidence. I can tell you now, formally, don’t say anything you don’t want used against you.”

“I have no intention of saying anything.” She stopped, and I saw that her teeth had a hold on her lower lip. But her voice was still good when she went on, “There is nothing to say to such a fable. In fact, I …” She stopped again. Her head pivoted again, for Wolfe. “If there is evidence for such a story about my daughter, it is forged. Haven’t I a right to see it?”

Wolfe’s eyes were slits. He murmured, “You spoke of a lawyer. I believe a lawyer has a legal method for such a request. I see no occasion for that delay.” He put his hand on the red box. “I see no reason why—”

Cramer was on his feet again, and at the desk. He was brisk and he meant business: “This has gone far enough. I want that box. I’ll take a look at it myself—”

It was Cramer I was afraid of at that point. Maybe if I had let Wolfe alone he could have managed him, but my nerves were on edge, and I knew if the inspector once got his paws on that box it would be a mess, and I knew damned well he couldn’t take it away from me. I bounced up and got it. I pulled it from under Wolfe’s hand and held it in my own. Cramer growled and stared at me, and I returned the stare but I don’t growl. Wolfe snapped:

“That box is my property. I am responsible for it and shall continue to be so until it is legally taken from my possession. I see no reason why Mrs. Frost should not look at it, to save delay. I have as much at stake as
you, Mr. Cramer. Hand it to her, Archie. It is unlocked.”

I crossed to her and put it in her extended hand, black-gloved. I didn’t sit down again because Cramer didn’t, and I stayed five feet closer to Mrs. Frost than he was. Everybody looked at her, even Glenna McNair. She put the box on her lap with the keyhole toward her, and opened the lid part way; no one could see in but her; she was deliberate, and I couldn’t see a sign of a tremble in her fingers or anywhere else. She looked in the box and put her hand in, but didn’t take anything out. She left her hand inside, with the lid resting on it, and gazed at Wolfe, and I saw that her teeth were on her lip again.

Wolfe said, leaning a little toward her, “Don’t suspect a trick, Mrs. Frost. There is no forgery in the contents of that box; it is genuine. I know, and you know, that all I have said here today is the truth. In any event, you have lost all chance at the Frost fortune; that much is certain. It is also certain that the fraud you have practiced for nineteen years can be proved with the help of Mr. McNair’s sister and corroboration from Cartagena, and will be made public; and of course the money goes to your nephew and brother-in-law. Whether you will be convicted of the three murders you committed, frankly, I cannot be sure. It will doubtless be a bitterly fought trial. There will be evidence against you, but not absolutely conclusive, and of course you are an extremely attractive woman, just middle-aged, and you will have ample opportunity for smirking at the judge and jury, weeping at the proper intervals for arousing their compassion; and unquestionably you will know how to dress the part—ah, Archie!”

She did it as quick as lightning. Her left hand had
been holding the lid of the box partly open, and her right hand, inside, had been moving a little—not fumbling, just efficiently moving; I doubt if anyone but me noticed it. I’ll never forget the way she handled her face. Her teeth stayed fastened to her lip, but aside from that there was no sign of the desperate and fatal thing she was doing. Then, like a flash, her hand came out of the box and went to her mouth with the bottle, and her head went back so far that I could see her white throat when she swallowed.

Cramer jumped for her, and I didn’t move to block him because I knew she could be depended on to get it down. As he jumped he let out a yell:

“Stebbins! Stebbins!”

I submit that as proof that Cramer had a right to be an inspector, because he was a born executive. As I understand it, a born executive is a guy who, when anything difficult or unexpected happens, yells for somebody to come and help him.

I
nspector Cramer said, “I’d like to have it in the form of a signed statement.” He chewed at his cigar. “It’s the wildest damned stuff I ever heard of. Do you mean to say that was all you had to go on?”

It was five minutes past six, and Wolfe had just come down from the plant rooms. The Frosts and Glenna McNair had long been gone. Calida Frost was gone too. The fuss was over. The chain was on the front door to make it easier for Fritz to keep reporters out. Two windows were wide open and had been for over two hours, but the smell of bitter almonds, from some that had spilled on the floor, was still in the air and seemed to be there to stay.

Wolfe, nodding, poured beer. “That was all, sir. As for signing a statement, I prefer not to. In fact, I refuse. Your noisy indignation this afternoon was outrageous; furthermore, it was silly. I resented it then; I still do.”