Рекс Стаут: In the Best Families

“Wait.” I had never heard him so grim. “First get Marko’s number. I want to speak to Fritz.”

“Now? For God’s sake, now?”

“Yes. Now. A man has a right to have his satisfactions match his pains. I wish to use Mr. Zeck’s phone to tell Fritz to go home and get dinner ready.”

I dialed the operator.

Three days later, Friday afternoon, I said to Wolfe, “Anyway, it’s all over now, isn’t it?” “No, confound it,” he said peevishly. “I still have to earn that fee.”

It was six o’clock, and he had come down from the plant rooms with some more pointed remarks about the treatment the plants had got at Hewitt’s place. The remarks were completely uncalled for. Considering the two journeys they had taken, out to Long Island and then back again, the plants were in splendid shape, especially those hard to handle like the Miltonias and Phalaenopsis. Wolfe was merely trying to sell the idea, at least to himself, that the orchids had missed him.

Fritz might have been a mother whose lost little boy has been brought home after wandering in the desert for days, living on cactus pulp and lizards’ tails. Wolfe had gained not an ounce less than ten pounds in seventy-two hours, in spite of all the activity of getting resettled, and at the rate he was going he would be back to normal long before Thanksgiving. The pleats in his face were already showing a tendency to spread out, and of course the beard was gone, and the slick had been shampooed out of his hair. I had tried to persuade him to stay in training, but he wouldn’t even bother to put up an argument. He just spent more time than ever with Fritz, arranging about meals.

He had not got home for dinner Tuesday evening after all, in spite of the satisfaction he had got by putting in a call to Fritz on Zeck’s phone. We were now cleaned up with Westchester, but it had not been simple. The death of Arnold Zeck had of course started a chain reaction that went both deep and wide, and naturally there had been an earnest desire to make goats out of Wolfe and me, but they didn’t have a damn thing on us, and when word came from somewhere that Wolfe, during his association with Zeck, might have collected some facts that could be embarrassing to people who shouldn’t be embarrassed, the attitude toward us changed for the better right away.

As for the scene that ended with the death of Zeck and Rackham, we were clean as a whistle. The papers in Roeder’s brief case, which of course the cops took, proved nothing on anybody. By the time the cops arrived there had been no one on the premises but Wolfe and me and the two corpses. A hot search was on, especially for Schwartz and Harry, but so far no take. No elaborate lying was required; our basic story was that Wolfe, in his disguise as Roeder, had got in with Zeck in order to solve the murder of Mrs. Rackham, and the climax had come that afternoon when Zeck had put the screws on Rackham by saying that he had evidence that would convict him for killing his wife, and Rackham had pulled a gun, smuggled somehow past the sentinels, and had shot Zeck, and Schwartz and Harry had rushed in and drilled Rackham. It was surprising and gratifying to note how much of it was strictly true.

So by Friday afternoon we were cleaned up with Westchester, as I thought, and therefore it was a minor shock when Wolfe said, “No, confound it, I still have to earn that fee.”

I was opening my mouth to ask him how come, when the phone rang. I got it. It was Annabel Frey. She wanted to speak to Wolfe. I told him so. He frowned and reached for his phone, and I stayed on.

“Yes, Mrs. Frey? This is Nero Wolfe.”

“I want to ask you a favor, Mr. Wolfe. That is, I expect to pay for it of course, but still it’s a favor. Could you and Mr. Goodwin come up here this evening? To my home, Birchvale?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Frey, but it’s out of the question. I transact business only in my office. I never leave it.”

That was a little thick, I thought, from a guy who had just spent five months the way he had. And if she read newspapers she knew all about it — or anyhow some.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “because we must see you. Mr. Archer is here, the District Attorney, and I’m calling at his suggestion. We have a problem — two problems, really.”

“By ‘we’ do you mean you and Mr. Archer?”

“No, I mean all of us — all of us who inherited property from Mrs. Rackham, and all of us who were here the night she was killed. Our problem is about evidence that her husband killed her. Mr. Archer says he has none, none that is conclusive — and perhaps you know what people are saying, and the newspapers. That’s what we want to consult you about — the evidence.”

“Well.” A pause. “I’m trying to get a little rest after a long period of overexertion. But — very well. Who is there?”

“We all are. We met to discuss this. You’ll come? Wonderful! If you—”

“I didn’t say I’ll come. All five of you are there?”

“Yes — and Mr. Archer—”

“Be at my office, all of you, at nine o’clock this evening. Including Mr. Archer.”

“But I don’t know if he will—”

“I think he will. Tell him I’ll be ready then to produce the evidence.”

“Oh, you will? Then you can tell me now—”

“Not on the phone, Mrs. Frey. I’ll be expecting you at nine.”

When we had hung up I lifted the brows at him. “So that’s what you meant about earning that fee? Maybe?”

He grunted, irritated that he had to interrupt his convalescence for a job of work, sat a moment, reached for a bottle of the beer Fritz had brought, grunted again, this time with satisfaction, and poured a glass with plenty of foam.

I got up to go to the kitchen, to tell Fritz we were having company and that refreshments might be required.

I was mildly interested when the six guests arrived — a little early, five to nine — in such minor issues as the present state of relations between Annabel Frey and the banker, Dana Hammond, and between Lina Darrow and the statesman, Oliver Pierce, and whether Calvin Leeds would see fit to apologize for his unjust suspicions about Wolfe and me.

To take the last first, Leeds was all out of apologies. The spring was in his step all right, but not in his manners. First to enter the office, he plunged himself down in the red leather chair, but I figured that Archer rated it ex officio and asked him to move, which he did without grace. As for the others, there was too much atmosphere to get any clear idea. They were all on speaking terms, but the problem that brought them there was in the front of their minds, so much so that no one was interested in the array of liquids and accessories that Fritz and I had arranged on the table over by the big globe. Annabel was in the most comfortable of the yellow chairs, to Archer’s left; then, working toward me at my desk, Leeds and Lina Darrow; and Hammond and Pierce closest to me.

Wolfe’s eyes swept the arc.

“This,” he said, “is a little awkward for me. I have met none of you before except Mr. Leeds. I must be sure I have you straight.” His eyes went along the line again. “I think I have. Now if you’ll tell me what you want — you, Mrs. Frey, it was you who phoned me.”

Annabel looked at the DA. “Shouldn’t you, Mr. Archer?”

He shook his head. “No, you tell him.”

She concentrated, at Wolfe. “Well, as I said, there are two problems. One is that it seems to be supposed that Barry Rackham killed his wife, but it hasn’t been proven, and now that he is dead how can it be proven so that everyone will know it and the rest of us will be entirely free of any suspicion? Mr. Archer says there is no official suspicion of us, but that isn’t enough.”