Rex Stout: Invitation to Murder

“Herman! Come down here!”

I know now what had put the whole household on the alert — Paul Thayer, Huck’s nephew, had let it out that I was Nero Wolfe’s Archie Goodwin — but I didn’t know then, and it was a little spectacular to see them coming at us from all directions — Dorothy Riff from a door on that floor, Mrs. O’Shea up the stairs from below, and Lewent and Sylvia Marcy down the stairs from above — none of them bothering with the elevator. They stopped flurrying when they saw Huck sitting composed in his chair and me standing beside him at graceful ease, and approached in no apparent agitation.

Lewent standing was exactly the same height as Huck sitting. He asked as he came, “You want me, Theodore?”

The girls were closing in.

“Yes, I do,” Huck told his brother-in-law. “Mr. Goodwin has described the situation to me, and I want you to hear what I say to Mrs. O’Shea and Miss Marcy and Miss Riff.” His eyes moved to his womenfolk. “I suppose you have heard of a private detective named Nero Wolfe. Mr. Lewent went to see him this morning and engaged him to investigate something, and he has sent Mr. Goodwin here to make inquiries. Mr. Goodwin wishes to question you three ladies. You will answer at your discretion, as you please and think proper. That’s all I have to say. I want to make it clear that I am imposing no restriction on what Mr. Goodwin asks or what you answer, but I also wish you to understand that this is a private inquiry instigated by Mr. Lewent, and you are free to judge for yourselves what is fitting and relevant.”

I didn’t care for it a bit. You might have thought he knew what I was there for and was making damn sure I wouldn’t get it. Not by a flicker of an eyelash had he given any ground for a decent guess as to which one had him hooked.

They took me up in the elevator, two flights, to a room they called the sewing room. The name must have been a carry-over from bygone days, as there was no sign of sewing equipment or supplies in sight. Mrs. O’Shea was going to seat us around a table, but I wanted it more informal and got it staged with her and me in easy chairs facing a couch on which the other two were comfortable against cushions.

They were good listeners all right. I took my time about getting to the point, since there was no question about having my audience. I told of Lewent’s coming to Wolfe’s office. I touched upon his childhood and young manhood, with no mother, not making it actually maudlin. I admitted he had been irresponsible. I told of his having been left out of his father’s will. Miss Riff’s gray-green eyes, and Miss Marcy’s dark eyes, and Mrs. O’Shea’s deep blue ones, all concentrated on me, were pleasantly stimulating and made me rather eloquent but not fancy. I told of the promise Lewent’s sister had made him a year before her death — which was, of course, pure invention — of his conviction that she had kept it, and his suspicion that a substantial sum in cash or securities had been entrusted by her to someone to be given to him. I added that he thought it possible that the trustee was one of the women there present, and would they mind answering a few questions?

Mrs. O’Shea stated that Lewent was a frightful little shrimp. Miss Marcy said it was utterly ridiculous. Miss Riff, with her nose turned up, asked, “Why a few questions? You can ask us one, did Mrs. Huck give any of us anything to give to her brother, and we say no, and that settles it.”

“It does for you,” I conceded. “But as Mr. Huck told you, I’m here to investigate, and that’s no way to do it. For instance, what if I were investigating something really tough, like a suspicion of murder? What if Lewent suspected that one of you poisoned his sister so you could marry Huck?”

“That’s more like it,” Miss Marcy said approvingly, with the coo still in her voice.

“Yeah. But then what? I ask if you did it, and you say no, and that settles it? Hardly. I ask plenty, about your relations with Mr. and Mrs. Huck and one another, and about your movements and what you saw and heard, not only the day she died, but a week, a month, a year. You can answer or refuse to answer. If you answer, I check you. If you refuse, I check you double.”

“Ask me something,” Miss Marcy offered.

“To be suspected of murder,” Miss Riff declared, “would at least be exciting. But a thing like this, and from Herman Lewent—” She shivered elegantly. “No, really.”

“Okay.” I was sociable. “But don’t think I’m not going to grill you, because that’s what I came for. First, though, I’d like to have your reaction to a little idea of my own. It seems to me that if Mrs. Huck wanted to leave something for her brother like that, the logical person for her to leave it with would have been her husband. Lewent is sure she didn’t, because he says Huck is an honest man and would have turned it over. Which may satisfy Lewent, but not me. Huck could be entirely too honest. He could figure that in leaving a gob of dough for her brother his wife was ignoring her father’s wishes, and that was wrong, and he wouldn’t go through with it. I think that’s quite possible, but you ladies know him better than I do. What kind of a man is he? Do you think he might do that?”

No reply. Nor was there any exchange of glances. I insisted, “What do you think, Mrs. O’Shea?”

She shook her head, with a corner of her mouth turned up. “That’s no kind of question to ask.”

“We work for Mr. Huck, you know,” Sylvia Marcy cooed.

“He’s a very fine man,” Dorothy Riff declared. “Very, very fine. That’s why one of us poisoned Mrs. Huck so she could marry him. What is she waiting for? It’s been a year.”

I upturned a palm. “That’s only common sense. You have to watch your step on a thing like that, and besides, that might not have been the motive. In fact, here’s one I like better: Mrs. Huck handed her a real bundle, say a hundred grand, to be given to Lewent if and when Mrs. Huck died. But as the months went by and Mrs. Huck stayed perfectly healthy, good for another twenty or thirty years, our heroine got impatient and acted. Of course she is now in a pickle. She has the hundred grand, but even after a year has passed she doesn’t dare to start spending it.”

Mrs. O’Shea permitted herself a refined snort. “It wouldn’t surprise me if that Lewent creature actually believed that rot.” Her tone was chilly, and her deep blue eyes were far from warm. “Mr. Huck said you would ask us question and we would answer as we please and think proper. Go ahead.”

I stuck with them for an hour. I have had chores that were far more disagreeable, but none less fruitful. There were assorted indications that there was no love lost among them, and various hints that Huck was not regarded solely as a source of wages by any of them, but to pick one for Lewent at the end of the hour I would have had to use eeny, meeny, miny, mo. I was disappointed in me. Deciding that I had made a mistake to bunch them, I arose, thanked them for their patience and co-operation, said that I would like to talk with each of them singly a little later, asked where I would be apt to find Lewent, and was told that his room was on the floor below us, two flights up from the ground and one up from Huck’s study. Sylvia Marcy offered to show me and preceded me out and down the stairs. She had cooed throughout. It was a pleasant and even a musical coo, but what the hell. If I had been, like Huck, exposed to it continually, after a couple of days I would either have canned her or sent for a justice of the peace to perform a ceremony.

To my knock Lewent opened the door of his room and invited me in. For the first four paces his room was only a narrow hall, as rooms frequently are in big old houses where bathrooms have been added later, but then it widened to a spacious chamber. He asked me to sit, but I declined, saying I had had a warming-up session with the suspects and would like to meet Paul Thayer, Huck’s nephew, if he was available. He said he would see, and left the room, me following, mounted two flights of stairs, which put us on the floor above the sewing room, and went down a hall and knocked on a door. A voice within told us to enter.