Рекс Стаут - In the Best Families

Barry Rackham had me stumped and also annoyed. Either I was dumber than Nero Wolfe thought I was, and twice as dumb as I thought I was, or he was smarter than he looked. New York was full of him, and he was full of New York. Go into any Madison Avenue bar between five and six-thirty and there would be six or eight of him there: not quite young but miles from being old; masculine all over except the fingernails; some tired and some fresh and ready, depending on the current status; and all slightly puffy below the eyes. I knew him from A to Z, or thought I did, but I couldn’t make up my mind whether he knew what I was there for, and that was the one concrete thing I had hoped to get done. If he knew, the question whether he was on Zeck’s payroll was answered; if he didn’t, that question was still open.

And I still hadn’t been able to decide when, at the dinner table, we had finished the dessert and got up to go elsewhere for coffee. At first I had thought he couldn’t possibly be wise, when I had him sized up for a dummy who had had the good luck to catch Mrs. Rackham’s eye somewhere and then had happened to take the only line she would fall for, but further observation had made me reconsider. His handling of his wife had character in it; it wasn’t just yes or no. At the dinner table he had an exchange with Pierce about rent control, and without seeming to try he got the statesman so tangled up he couldn’t wiggle loose. Then he had a good laugh, took the other side of the argument, and made a monkey out of Dana Hammond.

I decided I’d better start all over.

On the way back to the living room for coffee, Lina Darrow joined me. “Why did you take it out on me?” she demanded.

I said I didn’t know I had.

“Certainly you did. Trying to indict me for dog poisoning. You went after me much harder than you did the others.” Her fingers were on the inside of my arm, lightly.

“Certainly,” I conceded. “Nothing new to you, was it? A man going after you harder than the others?”

“Thanks. But I mean it. Of course you know I’m just a working girl.”

“Sure. That’s why I was tougher with you. That, and because I wondered why you were playing dumb.”

The statesman Pierce broke us up then, as we entered the living room, and I didn’t fight for her. We collected in the neighborhood of the fireplace for coffee, and there was a good deal of talk about nothing, and after a while somebody suggested television, and Barry Rackham went and turned it on. He and Annabel turned out lights. As the rest of us got settled in favorably placed seats, Mrs. Rackham left us. A little later, as I sat in the semi-darkness scowling at a cosmetic commercial, some obscure sense told me that danger was approaching and I jerked my head around. It was right there at my elbow: a Doberman pinscher, looking larger than normal in that light, staring intently past me at the screen.

Mrs. Rackham, just behind it, apparently misinterpreting my quick movement, spoke hastily and loudly above the noise of the broadcast. “Don’t try to pat him!”

“I won’t,” I said emphatically.

“He’ll behave,” she assured me. “He loves television.” She went on with him, farther forward. As they passed Calvin Leeds the affectionate pet halted for a brief sniff, and got a stroke on the head in response. No one else was honored.

Ninety minutes of video got us to half-past ten, and got us nothing else, especially me. I was still on the fence about Barry Rackham. Television is raising hell with the detective business. It used to be that a social evening at someone’s house or apartment was a fine opportunity for picking up lines and angles, moving around, watching and talking and listening; but with a television session you might as well be home in bed. You can’t see faces, and if someone does make a remark you can’t hear it unless it’s a scream, and you can’t even start a private inquiry, such as finding out where a young widow stands now on skepticism. In a movie theater at least you can hold hands.

However, I did finally get what might have been a nibble. The screen had been turned off, and we had all got up to stretch, and Annabel had offered to drive Leeds and me home, and Leeds had told her that we would rather walk, when Barry Rackham moseyed over to me and said he hoped the television hadn’t bored me too much. I said no, just enough.

“Think you’ll get anywhere on your job for Leeds?” he asked, jiggling his highball glass to make the ice tinkle.

I lifted my shoulders and let them drop. “I don’t know. A month’s gone by.”

He nodded. “That’s what makes it hard to believe.”

“Yeah, why?”

“That he would wait a month and then decide to blow himself to a fee for Nero Wolfe. Everybody knows that Wolfe comes high. I wouldn’t have thought Leeds could afford it.” Rackham smiled at me. “Driving back tonight?”

“No, I’m staying over.”

“That’s sensible. Night driving is dangerous, I think. The Sunday traffic won’t be bad this time of year if you leave early.” He touched my chest with a forefinger. “That’s it, leave early.” He moved off.

Annabel was yawning, and Dana Hammond was looking at her as if that was exactly what he had come to Birchvale for, to see her yawn. Lina Darrow was looking from Barry Rackham to me and back again, and pretending she wasn’t looking anywhere with those eyes. The Doberman pinscher was standing tense, and Pierce, from a safe ten feet — one more than springing distance — was regarding it with an expression that gave me a more sympathetic feeling for him than I ever expected to have for a statesman.

Calvin Leeds and Mrs. Rackham were also looking at the dog, with a quite different expression.

“At least two pounds overweight,” Leeds was saying. “You feed him too much.”

Mrs. Rackham protested that she didn’t.

“Then you don’t run him enough.”

“I know it,” she admitted. “I will from now on, I’ll be here more. I was busy today. I’ll take him out now. It’s a perfect night for a good walk — Barry, do you feel like walking?”

He didn’t. He was nice about it, but he didn’t. She broadened the invitation to take in the group, but there were no takers. She offered to walk Leeds and me home, but Leeds said she would go too slow, and he should have been in bed long ago since his rising time was six o’clock. He moved, and told me to come on if I was coming.

We said good night and left.

The outdoor air was sharper now. There were a few stars but no moon, and alone with no flashlight I would never have been able to keep that trail through the woods and might have made the Hillside Kennels clearing by dawn. For Leeds a flashlight would have been only a nuisance. He strode along at the same gait as in the daytime, and I stumbled at his heels, catching my toes on things, teetering on roots and pebbles, and once going clear down. I am not a deerstalker and don’t want to be. As we approached the kennels Leeds called out, and the sound came of many movements, but not a bark. Who wants a dog, let alone thirty or forty, not even human enough to bark when you come home?

Leeds said that since the poisoning he always took a look around before going to bed, and I went on in the house and up to the little room where I had put my bag. I was sitting on the bed in pajamas, scratching the side of my neck and considering Barry Rackham’s last-minute remarks, when Leeds entered downstairs and came up to ask if I was comfortable. I told him I soon would be, and he said good night and went down the short hall to his room.

I opened a window, turned out the light, and got into bed; but in three minutes I saw it wasn’t working. My practice is to empty my head simultaneously with dropping it on the pillow. If something sticks and doesn’t want to come out I’ll give it up to three minutes but no more. Then I act. This time, of course, it was Barry Rackham that stuck. I had to decide that he knew what I was there for or that he didn’t, or, as an alternative, decide definitely that I wouldn’t try to decide until tomorrow. I got out of bed and went and sat on a chair.