Rex Stout: If Death Ever Slept

Having got it in my notebook, along with ten pages of other items, that Wyman, the son, and Lois, the daughter, were Jarrell’s children by his first wife, who had died long ago, I had supposed that there were so many variations in taste among the rooms because Jarrell and the first wife and the current marital affliction, Trella, had all had a hand at it, but was set right on that the second day by Roger Foote, Trella’s brother. It was decorators. At least eight decorators had been involved. Whenever Jarrell decided he didn’t like the way a room looked he called in a decorator, never one he had used before, to try something else. That added to the confusion the architects had contributed. The living room, about the right size for badminton, which they called the lounge because some decorator had told them to, was blacksmith modern — black iron frames for chairs and sofas and mirrors, black iron and white tile around the fireplace, black iron and glass tables; and the dining room, on the other side of an arch, was Moorish or something. The arch itself was in a hell of a fix, a very bad case of split personality. The side terrace outside the dining room was also Moorish, I guess, with mosaic tubs and boxes and table tops. It was on the first floor, which was ten stories up. The big front terrace, with access from both the reception hall and the lounge, was Du Pont frontier. The tables were redwood slabs and the chairs were chromium with webbed plastic seats. A dozen pink dogwoods in bloom, in big wooden tubs, were scattered around on Monday, the day I arrived, but when I went to the lounge at cocktail time on Wednesday they had disappeared and been replaced by rhododendrons covered with buds. I was reminded of the crack George Kaufman made once to Moss Hart — “That just shows what God could do if only he had money.”

Jarrell’s office, which was called the library, was also on the first floor, in the rear. When I arrived with him, Monday afternoon, he took me straight there after turning my luggage over to Steck, the butler. It was a big square room with windows in only one wall, and no decorator had had a go at it. There were three desks, big, medium, and small. The big desk had four phones, red, yellow, white, and black; the medium one had three, red, white and black; and the small one had two, white and black. All of one wall was occupied by a battery of steel filing cabinets as tall as me. Another was covered by shelves to the ceiling, crammed with books and magazines; I found later that they were all strictly business, everything from Profits in Oysters to North American Corporation Directory for the past twenty years. The other wall had three doors, two big safes, a table with current magazines — also business — and a refrigerator.

Jarrell led me across to the small desk, which was the size of mine at home, and said, “Nora, this is Alan Green, my secretary. You’ll have to help me show him the ropes.”

Nora Kent, seated at the desk, tilted her head back to aim a pair of gray eyes at me. Her age, forty-seven, was recorded in my notebook, but she didn’t look it, even with the gray showing in her soft brown hair. But the notebook also said that she was competent, trustworthy, and nobody’s fool, and she looked that. She had been with Jarrell twenty-two years. There was something about the way she offered a hand that gave me the feeling it would be more appropriate to kiss it than to grip it, but she reciprocated the clasp firmly though briefly.

She spoke. “Consider me at your service, Mr. Green.” The gray eyes went to Jarrell. “Mr. Clay has called three times. Toledo operator seven-nineteen wants you, a Mr. William R. Bowen. From Mrs. Jarrell there will be three guests at dinner; the names are on your desk, also a telegram. Where do you want me to start with Mr. Green?”

“There’s no hurry. Let him get his breath.” Jarrell pointed to the medium-sized desk, off to the right. “That’s yours, Green. Now you know your way here, and I’ll be busy with Nora for a while. I told Steck — here he is.” The door had opened and the butler was there. “Steck, before you show Mr. Green to his room take him around. We don’t want him getting lost. Have you told Mrs. Jarrell he’s here?”

“Yes, sir.”

Jarrell was at his desk. “Don’t come back, Green. I’ll be busy. Get your bearings. Cocktails in the lounge at six-thirty.”

Steck moved aside for me to pass, pulled the door shut as he backed out, said, “This way, sir,” and started down the corridor a mile a minute.

I called to him, “Hold it, Steck,” and he braked and turned.

“You look harassed,” I told him. He did. He was an inch taller than me, but thinner. His pale sad face was so long and narrow that he looked taller than he was. His black tie was a little crooked. I added, “You must have things to do.”

“Yes, sir, certainly, I have duties.”

“Sure. Just show me my room.”

“Mr. Jarrell said to take you around, sir.”

“You can do that later, if you can work it in. At the moment I need a room. I want to gargle.”

“Yes, sir. This way, sir.”

I followed him down the corridor and around a corner to an elevator. I asked if there were stairs and was told that there were three, one off the lounge, one in the corridor, and one for service in the rear. Also three elevators. The one we were in was gold-plated, or possibly solid. On the upper floor we went left, then right, and near the end of the hall he opened a door and bowed me in. He followed, to tell me about the phones. A ring would be for the green one, from the outside world. A buzz would be for the black one, from somewhere inside, for instance from Mr. Jarrell. I would use that one to get Steck when I was ready to be taken around. I thanked him out.

The room was twelve by sixteen, two windows with Venetians, a little frilly but not bad, mostly blue and lemon-yellow except the rugs, which were tan with dark brown stripes. The bed was okay, and so was the bathroom. Under ordinary circumstances I would have used the green phone to ring Wolfe and report arrival, but I skipped it, not wanting to rub it in. After unpacking, taking my time, deciding not to shave, washing my hands, and straightening my tie, I got out my notebook, sat by a window, and turned to the list of names:

Mrs. Otis Jarrell (Trella)

Lois Jarrell, daughter by first wife

Wyman Jarrell, son by ditto

Mrs. Wyman Jarrell (Susan)

Roger Foote, Trella’s brother

Nora Kent, stenographer

James L. Eber, ex-secretary

Corey Brigham, friend of family who queered deal

The last two didn’t live there, but it seemed likely that they would need attention if I was going to get anywhere, which was doubtful. If Susan was really a snake, and if the only way to earn a fee was to get her bounced out of the house and the family, leaving her husband behind, it would take a lot of doing. My wristwatch said there was still forty minutes before cocktail time. I returned the notebook to my bag, the small one, which contained a few personal items not appropriate for Alan Green, locked the bag, left the room, found the stairs, and descended to the lower floor.

It would be inaccurate to say I got lost five times in the next quarter of an hour, since you can’t get lost when you have no destination, but I certainly got confused. Neither of the architects had had any use for a straightaway, but they had had conflicting ideas on how to handle turns and corners. When I found myself passing an open door for the third time, recognizing it by the view it gave of a corner of a grand piano, and the blah of a radio or TV, with no notion of how I got there, I decided to call it off and make for the front terrace, but a voice came through to my back. “Is that you, Wy?”

I backtracked and stepped through into what, as I learned later, they called the studio.