Rex Stout - Where There's a Will

“You clumsy fool,” said Wolfe. “Apologize.”

“Yes, sir.” I looked at the veil, as intact as if I’d never touched it. “I stumbled. I’m very sorry, Mrs. Hawthorne.”

“The door,” said Wolfe. “That scream must have alarmed people.”

As I reached it I heard hurried footsteps outside, and, opening it, saw Andy Dunn and his father looking white and startled, trotting toward me, and in the background Celia Fleet’s white shirt and blouse and the faded blue gown May Hawthorne was sporting. I sang out, “Okay! Sorry! I slipped and fell and scared Mrs. Hawthorne! Excuse it please!”

They said something which I shut off by closing the door almost in their faces. Apparently my explanation satisfied them that we hadn’t bumped Daisy off and the scream wasn’t her expiring cry, for they didn’t enter to investigate. I looked around for a mirror and didn’t see one. My face felt as if someone had scattered gunpowder on it and touched a match.

“You’d better find a bathroom and wash that blood off,” said Wolfe curtly. “Then please go down to the living room and get the notes you left there. Look them over and see if they’re what I want.”

I was too irate to speak, so I departed without a word. In the bathroom down the hall I surveyed the devastation in the mirror. My lovely smooth skin was a sight. “Occupational hazard,” I said bitterly. “To hell with it. I’m going to get a job as an executive.” I wet a towel and dabbed at it and did it smart.

And what Wolfe had meant, of course, was that I was to proceed to the living room, to the other Daisy, and turn the other cheek. If he thought I was going to represent the firm at any more unveiling ceremonies, he was deficient above the neck, but in my judgment that would prove unnecessary. I did not believe that anyone, even April Hawthorne, could act the part of thirty wildcats with that amount of fervor; that one in the library actually was thirty wildcats. I had not observed the other one with any particularity, and hadn’t heard her speak; probably a few sharp glances and a little conversation would do the trick. So when I had done all I could with the dabbing I moseyed on downstairs to the living room.

I was too late. Naomi Karn was still there, seated in the same chair as before, but she was alone. I walked over to her. Her eyes slanted up at me, and I met them. My mind was sufficiently on something else so that as far as I was concerned she was about as dangerous as a snake charmer in a circus.

I said, “I wanted to ask Mrs. Hawthorne something. Do you know where she went?”

Miss Karn shook her head. “She said she’d be back shortly.”

“How long ago did she leave?”

“How long? Oh, ten minutes.”

“I just wondered, because Mr. Wolfe is expecting her upstairs, when she gets through with you.” I gazed down at her. “I told Mr. Wolfe you’re here, and he said it would be a shame if you closed a deal with these people yourself, since in that case we’d be out a fee.”

“I’m not interested in your fee.”

“No, I suppose not. Did Mrs. Hawthorne phone and ask you to come, or did you just come?”

She let that one go by. A corner of her lip curled. “You may tell Mr. Wolfe that his bluff didn’t work. I have learned that his ridiculous offer of a hundred thousand dollars was not authorized by his clients. I’ll do a great deal better than that.”

“Good. We don’t deserve a fee anyhow. I am strongly opposed to the detective tariff. Why should you contribute to our sensual ease? I agree with whoever it was, millions for defemmes but not one cent for tribute. Excuse me a minute.”

A sudden bright idea had occurred to me. The draperies, heavy red folds from the ceiling to the floor, behind which Daisy had disappeared that morning, were there in the middle of the wall only three paces away. My idea was vague; there was no sense in supposing that she had chosen that exit again and was there eavesdropping; but I was curious about what was behind them anyhow. I stepped over and parted them enough to look in. Then, seeing what I saw, I passed through and let them fall behind me.

Osric Stauffer stood there, his back to the wall, with his finger pressed against his lips to shush me. I met his eyes, and met an appeal for silence there too, in spite of the dim light.

I glanced around. It was a small room, with a small window in the left rear corner. At one side was a bar, about ten feet long, with an array of glasses and bottles on shelves behind it, and a big picture of barefooted girls picking grapes. A rug on the floor completed the furnishings. In the right rear corner was a door, shut.

Stauffer hadn’t moved. He didn’t look very menacing, so I saw no reason to interfere with his method of passing the time. I turned around and pawed my way out and was standing in front of Miss Kara again.

“When Mrs. Hawthorne comes back,” I said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d finish with her as soon as possible, because Mr. Wolfe wants her. Why don’t you come up and see Wolfe while you’re waiting? He’d love to have a chat with you.”

She just looked through me. I shrugged. “Okay, suit yourself. I understand you had a good talk with an old friend of mine this morning. Inspector Cramer. He was warning Wolfe about you and telling about your alibis for Tuesday afternoon.”

She stirred on her chair. “I doubt,” she said, “if at any time in my life I would have regarded you as funny.”

“Pooh.” I looked her in the eye. “Let me tell you something, Miss Karn. Up to now I am reserving judgment as to whether it was you who blew Hawthorne’s head off. If it was, you’d better be making your own will instead of fussing around about his. But if it wasn’t, the best thing you can do is trot upstairs without delay and lay your pretty head confidingly on Nero Wolfe’s shoulder. I’m telling you. The popping noises around here do not come from firecrackers, which might singe your eyelashes but that’s all. Someone’s going to get a bad burn out of this before it’s over.”

Leaving that for her to consider at leisure, I marched off. Reflecting that if the downstairs Daisy was the counterfeit she had had plenty of time to discard her masquerade, and that therefore peeking through keyholes would have been wasted effort, I decided on a swift gallop around the field before returning to G.H.Q. The result was negative. I dispensed with such niceties as knocking on doors. The other three rooms on the ground floor, including the music room, were uninhabited. In a sitting room one flight up, two doors from the library, I flushed Dunn and his wife, and Prescott, apparently discussing their troubles. Mrs. Hawthorne’s apartment on the floor above was empty. Andy Dunn and Celia Fleet saw me enter it and leave it, from a bench they were occupying in the hall. They didn’t look interrupted; evidently they weren’t discussing anything, just sitting close enough to touch. In the room across the hall where I had found the library edition of Daisy when Wolfe sent me after her, May Hawthorne was lying on a bed with her bare feet protruding beyond the hem of the veteran gown, and her eyes closed. She asked, “Who is it?” without moving or opening her eyes, and I said, “Nobody much,” and went out again.

That left two to go. I found them together, in a room at the street end of the corridor. April was stretched out on a chaise longue, with her arms flung above her head, dressed in a green thing of thin silk which smoothed itself out on her high spots like a soft skin, and wearing no veil. Sara was on a chair near her, with a book open. Sara stared at me. April’s head didn’t move, but she got me from the corner of her eyes.

She said, “You might knock, you know. Does that man want me again?”