Rex Stout - The Red Box

“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.

I said, “If you ask me, I could be even more offensive and still hope to make the grade to heaven.” I got Mrs. Frost’s eyes again. “For instance, I might remark on your phony la-de-da about asking me to sit down in your house. It isn’t your house, it’s your daughter’s, unless she gave it to you—” There was a gasp at my right from the client, and Mrs. Frost’s mouth opened, but I went on ahead of the rush: