Rex Stout: Nero Wolfe and the Vanishing Clue

Wolfe nodded approvingly. “You have covered the point admirably, doctor, but you have also raised one. The air-conditioner. What if someone moved the regulator, after the nurse’s departure, to its lowest extreme? Could it have cooled the room sufficiently to cause your patient to die when you expected him to live?”

“I would say no. I considered that possibility. Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle have assured me that they did not touch the regulator and that the room’s temperature remained equable, and anyway on so hot a night the conditioner couldn’t have cooled the air to that extent. I wanted to be satisfied on that point, since no nurse had been there, and I arranged with the hotel to check it Saturday night, in that room. After the regulator had been at its extreme for six hours, the temperature was sixty-nine — too low for a pneumonia patient, even one well covered, but certainly not lethal.”

“I see,” Wolfe murmured. “You did not rely on the assurance of Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle.”

Buhl smiled. “Is that quite fair? I relied on them as wholly as you rely on me. I was being thorough. I am thorough.”

“An excellent habit. I have it too. Did you have any suspicion, with or without reason, that someone might have contrived to help the pneumonia kill your patient?”

“No. I was merely being thorough.”

Wolfe nodded. “Well.” He heaved a deep sigh, and when it had been disposed of turned his head to focus on the nurse. During the conversation she had sat with her back straight, her chin up, and her hands folded in her lap. I had her profile. There are not many female chins that rate high both from the front and from the side.

Wolfe spoke. “One question, Miss Goren — or two. Do you concur with all that Doctor Buhl has told me — all that you have knowledge of?”

“Yes, I do.” Her voice was a little husky, but she hadn’t been using it.

“I understand that while the others were at the theater Paul Fyfe made advances to you which you repulsed. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did that cause you to neglect your duties in any way? Did it interfere with your proper care of your patient?”

“No. The patient was sound asleep, under sedation.”

“Have you any comment or information to offer? I have been hired by David Fyfe to determine whether anything about his brother’s death warrants a police inquiry. Can you tell me anything whatever that might help me decide?”

Her eyes left him to go to Buhl, then came back again. “No, I can’t,” she said. She stood up. Of course nurses are expected to rise from a chair without commotion, but she just floated up. “Is that all?”

Wolfe didn’t reply, and she moved. Buhl got to his feet. But when she was half way to the door Wolfe called, considerably above a murmur, “Miss Goren! One moment!” She turned to look at him. “Sit down, please?” he invited her.

She hesitated, glanced at Buhl, and came back to the chair. “Yes?” she asked.

Wolfe regarded her briefly, and then turned to Buhl. “I could have asked you before,” he said, “why you brought Miss Goren. It seemed quite unnecessary, since you were fully prepared and qualified to deal with me, and surely it was inconsiderate to drag her into a matter so delicate. It was a reasonable inference that you expected me to ask some question that she could answer and you couldn’t, so you had to have her with you. Evidently I didn’t ask it, but I did provoke her. When I asked if she could tell me anything she looked at you. Manifestly she is withholding something, and you know what it is. I can’t pump it out of you, with no bribe to offer and no threat to brandish, but my curiosity has been aroused and must somehow be satisfied. You may prefer to satisfy it yourself.”

Buhl had sat and, his elbow on the chair arm, was pulling at his fine straight nose with a thumb and forefinger. He let his hand drop. “You’re not just a windbag,” he said. “You’re quite correct. I expected you to bring up something that would require Miss Goren’s presence, and I’m astonished that you didn’t. I wanted to consider it, but I’m perfectly willing to bring it up myself. Haven’t they mentioned the hot-water bags to you?”

“No, sir. I have been told nothing about hot-water bags.”

“Then I suppose Paul — but it doesn’t matter what I suppose. Tell him about it, Anne.”

“He already knows about it,” she said scornfully. “One of them hired him.”

“Tell me anyway,” Wolfe suggested, “for comparison.” His method with women is neither Paul’s nor mine.

“Very well.” Her lovely chin was up. “I was keeping two hot-water bags on the patient, one on each side of his chest, and changing the water every two hours. I changed it just before I left — before Mrs. Tuttle ordered me to leave. Sunday evening Paul Fyfe came to my apartment — I have a little apartment on Forty-eighth Street with a friend, another nurse. He said that when he found his brother was dead that morning he pulled the covers down, and the hot-water bags were there, but they were empty, and he took them and put them in the bathroom. Later his sister, Mrs. Tuttle, saw them and called him to look at them and said the nurse had neglected to fill them, and she was going to report it to the doctor. He asked if she hadn’t changed the water herself before she went to bed, and she said no, she hadn’t thought is was necessary because the nurse had changed it just before she left.”

Miss Goren’s voice wasn’t husky now. It was clear and firm and positive. “He said that he had told his sister that when he took the bags to the bathroom he had emptied the water out of them. He said he told her that on the spur of the moment, to keep her from reporting me to the doctor, but he had realized since that perhaps he shouldn’t have told her that because the empty bags might have had something to do with his brother’s death, and he asked me to go and have dinner with him so we could talk it over. We were standing at the door of the apartment, I hadn’t let him in, and I slammed the door in his face. The next day, yesterday, he phoned three times, and last evening he came to the apartment again, but I didn’t open the door. So he told his brother David and got him to come to you. How does it compare?”

Wolfe was frowning at her. “Pfui,” he said, and gave her up and turned to Buhl. “So that’s it,” he growled.

Buhl nodded. “Miss Goren phoned to tell me about it Sunday evening, and again yesterday, and again last night. Naturally, since her professional competence was in question. Do you wonder that I expected you to bring it up?”

“No indeed. But I hadn’t heard of it. How much chance is there that Miss Goren did in fact fail to put water in the bags?”

“None whatever, since she says she put it in. She trained at the Mount Kisco Hospital, and I know her well. I always use her, if she’s available, when I have a patient in New York. That can be eliminated.”

“Then either Paul Fyfe is lying, or someone took the bags from the bed, emptied them, and put them back. Which seems senseless. Certainly it could have had no appreciable effect on the patient. Could it?”

“No. Appreciable, no.” Buhl passed a palm over his distinguished gray hair. “But it could have an effect on Miss Goren’s professional reputation, and I feel some responsibility. I put her on the case. You haven’t asked me for an opinion, but I offer one. I think Bertram Fyfe died of pneumonia, with no contributing factors except those he contributed himself — his refusal to go to a hospital, his rejection of the oxygen tent, perhaps his capricious insistence on having them come to dinner despite his illness. He was a headstrong boy, and apparently he never changed. As for the hot-water bags, I think Paul Fyfe is lying. I don’t want to slander him, but the vagaries of his conduct with women are common knowledge in his home community. A woman who strikes his fancy doesn’t merely attract him; he is obsessed. It would be consonant with his former known behavior if, seeing the bags in the bed, he had formed the notion of acquiring a weapon to use on Miss Goren and took the bags to the bathroom and emptied them.”