Рекс Стаут - A Family Affair

He tightened his lips, then: “I suggest an alternative. Either you stay and take the risk, or you leave the jurisdiction immediately. The country. Either Canada or Mexico. Of course, at my expense. If you go, you shouldn’t delay. At once. Tonight.”

“I’ll stay,” Fred said. “I’ve got an idea about Vilar.”

“What the hell,” Orrie said. “Of course we stay.”

“I won’t say that,” Saul said, “but I want to say something. ” He said it to Wolfe. “I’m surprised, really surprised, that you thought we might go.”

“I didn’t,” Wolfe said.

Nuts. Saul knew damn well he didn’t. They were all just putting on a charade.

I admit that, like everybody else, I like to think that I have hunches. For instance, the time that I was in the office of the head of a Wall Street brokerage firm and he brought in four members of his staff, and after talking with them five minutes I thought I knew which one of them had been selling information to another firm, and two weeks later he confessed. Or the time a woman came and asked Wolfe to find out who had taken her emerald and ruby bracelets, and when she left I had told him she had given them to her nephew, and he had taken it on anyhow because he wanted to buy some orchid plants, and had regretted it later when he had to sue to get his fee. By the way, that was one of the reasons he thought I could size up any woman in ten minutes.

But I’m not going to say it was a hunch I had that Saturday morning, because I don’t see how it could have been. It might have been just something I had for breakfast, but I don’t see how that was possible either, because Fritz had catered it as usual.

Whatever caused it, I had it. When I am dressing and getting packed for a weekend at Lily Rowan’s pad in Westchester, which she calls The Glade, I thoroughly approve of the outlook. I enjoy shaving. I think my hair looks fine, and my zipper works like a dream. I’m willing to admit that being away from him for forty-eight hours is a factor — a change is good for you — but also I would breathe some fresh air and so forth.

But not that time. The electric shaver was too noisy. My fingers didn’t like the idea of tying shoestrings. The tips of my necktie didn’t want to come out even. I could go on, but that’s enough to give you the idea. However, I made it. At least I didn’t trip going downstairs.

Lily was expecting me out in front with the Heron at eleven o’clock, and it was only ten-twenty-five and there was no hurry, so I put my bag down in the hall, went to the kitchen to tell Fritz I was off, and to the office for a glance around. And as I was trying the knob of the safe, the phone rang. I should have left it to Fritz, but habit is habit, and I went and picked it up. “Nero Wolfe’s resid—”

“I want to ask you just one question.” Lon Cohen.

“If it can be answered yes or no, shoot.”

“It can’t. Where and when did you last see Lucile Ducos alive?”

I couldn’t sink onto my chair, because it was turned wrong. I kicked it to swivel it and sat on the edge. “I don’t believe it. Goddam it, I do not believe it.”

“Yeah, they always say that. Are your eyes pop—”

“Quit clowning. When?”

“Forty minutes ago. We’ve just got a flash. On the sidewalk on Fifty-fourth Street a few yards from the house she lived in. Shot somewhere in the middle. Freebling is there, and Bob Adams is on the way. If—”

I hung up.

And my hand started for it to pick it up again. Actually. To pick it up and ring Homicide South to ask questions. Of course I pulled it back and sat and stared at it, first with my jaw set and then with my mouth open. Then I shut my eyes and my mouth. Then I did pick the phone up and dialed a number.

After six rings. “Hello?”

“Me. Good morning, only it isn’t. Just as I was leaving, Lon Cohen phoned. There has been another murder, less than an hour ago. Lucile Ducos, Pierre’s daughter. I’m stuck. I’m worse than stuck, I’m in up to my neck, and so is Wolfe. I hope you have a nice weekend. We don’t say ‘I’m sorry,’ so I won’t say it and neither will you. I’ll think of you every hour on the hour. Please think of me.”

“I don’t ask if I can do anything, because if I could, you would tell me.”

“I sure would. I will.”

We hung up. I sat another three minutes, and then I got up and went and mounted the three flights to the plant rooms, taking my time. That was the third time, or maybe the fourth, I went down the aisles through those three rooms — the cool, then the moderate, then the warm — without seeing a thing. The benches could have been empty.

In the potting room Theodore was sitting at his little desk, writing on his pad of forms, and Wolfe was standing at the long bench, inspecting something in a big pot — presumably an orchid plant, but at that moment I wouldn’t have known an orchid from a ragweed. As I crossed over he turned and scowled at me and said, “I thought you had gone.”

“So did I. Lon Cohen phoned. Lucile Ducos was shot and killed about an hour ago on the sidewalk a few steps from her house. That’s all Lon knew.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“That’s exactly what I said. I didn’t either until I sat and went through the multiplication table. I beg your pardon for breaking a rule and interrupting you up here.”

“Confound it, go.”

I nodded. “Of course. Also of course Stebbins will be there and will take me down. You probably won’t see me for—”

“No. Go to the country. Have your weekend. Tell Fritz to put the bolt on and ignore the telephone. I’ll call Saul and tell him to call Fred and Orrie.”

“Uhuh. You haven’t sat and thought. For you two minutes should be enough. If the white apron — the maid — if she hasn’t talked, she will. They’ll know we were there. They’ll know she found me in Lucile’s room. They’ll know Lucile sat and watched me for an hour while I did Pierre’s room. So I know things about her they should know, and what I know, of course you know. If I disappear for the weekend and you bolt the door and don’t answer the phone, that will only make it worse. I have phoned Miss Rowan.”

Up there, when he sits it’s usually on one of the stools at a bench, but there’s a chair nearly big enough over in a corner, and he crossed to it. Since he hates to tilt his head to look up at someone standing, I went and got one of the heavy boxes for shipping plants in pots and brought it over and sat.

“It’s Saturday,” he said.

“Yes, sir. Parker will be somewhere playing golf, and even if I found him, judges won’t be available, and Coggin almost certainly has still got those warrants. If you want to sleep in your house tonight, you have got to count ten and consider letting go. Don’t scowl at me . I’m not trying to sell it, I’m not even suggesting it, I’m just telling you where I was when I finished the multiplication table. It seemed to me that even if we unloaded we could still go right on making inquiries about the commission of a capital crime on our private premises.”

He growled, “You are trying to sell it.”

“I am not. I’m game if you are. It’s eleven o’clock, time to go down anyway, so come and sit in that chair and lean back and shut your eyes and work your lips. Cramer may be on his way here now. If not, he soon will be, and he may actually have handcuffs. We have been getting away with murder, and you know it and he knows it. Now three murders, because if the white apron is talking he knows about that dinner and the slip of paper Pierre did not tell me about.”

He got up and walked out. Marched out. He always moves as if he weighed a twelfth of a ton instead of a seventh. When the door to the warm room had closed behind him, Theodore said, “It’s always bad when you come up here.”