Rex Stout - Prisoner's Base

Mrs. Jaffee shivered and seemed to shrink into the cushions. “Did that — would that take long?”

“Probably not.”

“How long?”

“If the cord was good and tight, only a few seconds until she lost consciousness.”

Her hands were fists, and I suspected that the sharp nails were marking her palms. “What could a woman do if a man was strangling her with a cord and had it pulled tight?”

“Nothing except die if he meant business.” I got gruff. “You’re taking it too hard. If I had started strangling you when you started feeling it a minute ago, it would be all over by now.” I reached to mash the cigarette she had dropped into the tray. “Let’s go back and try again. When did you see Miss Eads last?”

She took a long deep breath with her lips parted, and her fists loosened some. “I don’t think I want to talk about it.”

“That’s just fine.” I was indignant. “You owe me three dollars.”

“What? What for?”

“Taxi fare here to take your husband’s place at breakfast, which was why you let me come. It will be more going back because I’ll have to stop at the Salvation Army to get rid of the hat and coat I promised to take. Three bucks will cover it, and I prefer cash.”

She shook her head, frowning at me. “Have I ever met you before?”

“Not that I remember, and I think I would. Why?”

“You seem to know exactly the right things to say, as if you knew all about me. What day’s today?”

“Wednesday.”

“Then the last time I saw Pris was one week ago today, last Wednesday. She phoned and asked me to have lunch with her, and I did. She wanted to know if I would come to a special meeting of Softdown stockholders on July first, the day after her twenty-fifth birthday.”

“Did you say you would?”

“No. That’s another way my mind is funny. Since my father died, seven years ago, and left me twelve thousand shares of Softdown stock, I have never gone near the place, for meetings or anything else. I get a very good income from it, but I don’t know one single thing about it. Have you met a man named Perry Helmar?”

I said I had.

“Well, he’s been after me for years to come to meetings, but I wouldn’t, because I was afraid that if I did something would happen to the business that would reduce my income, and it would be my fault. Why should I run a risk like that when all I had to do was stay away? Do you know any of those people down there — Brucker and Quest and Pitkin and that Viola Duday?”

I said I did.

“Well, they’ve been after me too, every one of them at different times, to give them a proxy to vote my stock at a meeting, and I wouldn’t do that either. I didn’t—”

“You mean give them a proxy jointly — all of them?”

“Oh, no, separately. They’ve been after me one at a time, but the worst was that woman Duday. Isn’t she a terror?”

“I guess so. I don’t know her as well as you do. Why did Miss Eads want you at a special stockholders’ meeting?”

“She said she wanted to elect a new board of directors, and it would be all women, and they would elect Viola Duday president of the corporation — that’s right, isn’t it, president of the corporation?”

“It sounds like it. Did she say who would be on the new board of directors?”

“Yes, but I don’t — wait, maybe I do. She and I were to be — Pris and I — and Viola Duday, and some woman in charge of something at the factory — I forget her name — and Pris’s maid, the one that’s been with her so long — her name’s Margaret, but I forget her last name.”

I supplied it. “Fomos. Margaret Fomos.”

“No, that’s not — oh, yes, of course. She’s been married.”

I nodded. “She has also been killed. She was waylaid on the street and strangled to death Monday night, a couple of hours before Priscilla Eads.”

Sarah Jaffee’s eyes popped. “Margaret has — too?”

“Yes. Was that all, those five, to be—”

“She was strangled just like Pris?”

“Yes. Apparently the idea was to get a key to Miss Eads’s apartment, since there was a key in the maid’s bag and the bag was taken. Were they to make up the new board of directors, those five women?”

“Yes.”

“But you told her you wouldn’t go to the meeting?”

Mrs. Jaffee’s hands were fists again, but not as tight as before. “And I told her I wouldn’t be a director either. I didn’t want to get mixed up in it in any way at all. I didn’t want to have anything whatever to do with it. She said I seemed to be perfectly willing to accept the dividend checks, and I said certainly I was and I hoped they would keep coming forever, and they probably wouldn’t if I started butting in. I told her I hoped her new arrangement, the board of directors and the president, would work all right, but if it didn’t there was nothing I could do about it.”

“Had she asked you before about coming to a stockholders’ meeting?”

“No, that was the first time. I hadn’t seen her for more than a year. She phoned and came to see me when she heard about Dick’s — my husband’s — death.”

“I thought she was your closest friend.”

“Oh, that was a long time ago.”

“How long?”

She eyed me. “I’m not enjoying this a bit.”

“I know you’re not.”

“It’s not doing anyone any good either.”

“It might. However. I figure I’ve got a dollar’s worth, so I’ll settle for two bucks if you insist.”

She turned her head and called, “Olga!” In a moment the Valkyrie came marching in, by no means silently. Mrs. Jaffee asked her if there was any coffee left, and she said there was and was requested to bring some. She went and soon was back with the order, this time on a tray without being told. Mrs. Jaffee wriggled to the edge of the divan, poured, and sipped.

“I can tell you how old I was,” she said, “when I first met Pris.”

I said I would appreciate it very much.

She sipped more coffee. “I was four years old. Pris was about two weeks. My father was in her father’s business, and the families were friends. Of course, with children four years is a big difference, but we liked each other all along, and when Pris’s mother died, and soon afterward her father, and Pris went to live with the Helmars, she and I got to be like sisters. We were apart a lot, since we went to different schools, and I graduated from college the year she started, but we wrote to each other — we must have written a thousand letters back and forth. Do you know about her leaving college and setting up a menage in the Village?”

I said I did.

“That was when we were closest. My father had died then, and my mother long before, and I practically lived with Pris, though I had a little place of my own. The trouble with Pris is she has too much money.”

“Was and had,” I corrected.

“Oh. Yes. Her income was enormous. After a few months of the Village all of a sudden she was off, and do you know what her excuse was? Her maid — that was Margaret — she had to take Margaret to New Orleans to see her sick mother! Did you ever hear anything to beat it? Off she went, leaving me to close up the place in the Village, We were still friends all right; she wrote me from New Orleans raving about it, and the first thing I knew, here came a letter saying that she had found her prince and married him, and they were off for Peru, where he had an option on the Andes Mountains, or approximately that.”

Mrs. Jaffee finished the coffee, put the cup and saucer down on the tray, and wriggled back until she was against the cushions. “That,” she said, “was the last letter I ever got from Pris. The very last. Maybe I still have it — I remember she enclosed a picture of him. I wondered why she didn’t write, and then one day she phoned me — she was back in New York, and she was alone, except for Margaret, and she was calling herself Miss Priscilla Eads. I saw her a few times, and when she bought a place up in Westchester I went there once, but she was a completely different person, and she didn’t invite me again, and I wouldn’t have gone if she had. For nearly three years I didn’t see her at all, until she had been to Reno and come back and joined the Salvation Army — do you know about that?”