Rex Stout: Invitation to Murder

“Practically anything,” I assured her. “Name it.”

“Well — Mr. Huck feels sure that his brother-in-law is trying to blackmail him, and so do I. What do you think?”

Her gray-green eyes were at mine, intent, earnestly wanting to know what I thought. She couldn’t possibly have been that free of guile, so I realized she was pretty good. “I’m afraid,” I told her, “you’ll have to fill in some. Usually a man knows whether he’s being blackmailed or not without telling his good-looking secretary to ask a brainy detective what he thinks. Look out or you’ll have your fingers in a hard knot and they won’t come loose.”

She jerked her fingers apart, extended a hand as if to touch me in appeal, and then took it back without reaching me.

“I wish we could talk just like two people,” she said hopefully. “I wish I knew how to ask you to help me.”

“Nothing could be simpler. Help you what?”

“With Mr. Huck.” Her eyes were holding mine. “I said he depends on me, and he always has, but now I don’t know. Your coming here like this has made him suspicious. He knows that his nephew, Paul Thayer, is friendly with Mr. Lewent, and he thinks Paul and I are friends, and I think he suspects we are in a plot to blackmail him. He hasn’t said so, but I think he does, and you know that isn’t true. Why can’t you tell me exactly how it stands, exactly what Mr. Lewent is after, and then possibly I can suggest something? I know Mr. Huck so well. I know how his mind works. Whatever it is you’re after for Mr. Lewent, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to make me lose a good job by getting Mr. Huck suspicious of me. Would you?”

“I should say not.” I was emphatic. “But you said you agree with Huck, you feel sure that Lewent is trying to blackmail him. Since Lewent is our client, that hurts me, and I think we ought to clear it up. How about coming with me to ask Lewent and see what he has to say?”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

She hesitated a moment, then stood up. “Come on.”

In the hall we turned to the stairs instead of the elevator, and began the ascent. By the time we were up one flight, halfway, I had decided how to back out of it and postpone the discovery until I had had a chance to see a few more faces. But I didn’t have to do any backing. When we reached the second landing and I turned to her, she had already stopped, and was standing, straight and stiff, her head tilted back a little for her eyes to slant up at me.

“No,” she said.

“No what?”

“It wouldn’t do any good. I can’t! I can’t talk with that man.” A shiver ran over her. “He gives me the creeps! I don’t want you—” She broke off, caught her lower lip with her teeth, and turned and headed along the hall toward the door to Huck’s room. She didn’t run, but she sure didn’t loiter. When she reached the door she knocked, and, without waiting for an invitation, opened, entered, and shut the door. I moved noiselessly on the thick carpet, got to the wide door and put an ear to the crack, and heard a faint murmur of voices, much too low to catch any words. I stayed put, hoping for more decibels if they got agitated, and was still at the crack when a sound from above warned me. I was standing at the elevator door and had pressed the button by the time feet and shapely calves had come into sight on the stairs.

It was Sylvia Marcy. At the foot, instead of turning toward the next flight down, she turned my way and approached, with the intention, as I thought, of switching on the coo, but I was wrong. She did not merely toss me a glance, she kept her eyes straight at my face as she advanced, and even swiveled her head to prolong it until she was nearly even with me, but she kept right on going and uttered no sound. I could have stuck out a foot and tripped her as she passed. She went to the door to Huck’s room, knocked, and entered without waiting. By then the elevator had stopped at my level, and I pulled the door open, stepped in, and pushed the button marked B.

Down in the basement I found the kitchen and walked in. It was big and clean and smelled good. An inmate I had not see before, a plump little woman with extra chins, was at a table peeling mushrooms, and Mrs. O’Shea was across from her, sorting slips of paper.

I spoke as I approached. “I should have told you, Mrs. O’Shea, I doubt if Mr. Lewent will show up for dinner. From what he said when he asked me to stay, I think he feels that under the circumstances it would be better if he were not there.”

She went on with the slips a moment before she looked up to reply. “Very well. You were going to talk with me.”

“I got sidetracked.” I glanced at the cook. “Here?”

“As well here as anywhere.”

I parked half of my fundament on the edge of the table. She resumed with the slips of paper, distributing them in piles, and as I watched her arm and hand in quick, deft movement I considered whether they could have struck the blow that killed Lewent, though my mind might easily have been better occupied, since actually a ten-year-old could have done it with the right weapon and the right frame of mind.

“From what you said earlier upstairs.” I remarked, “I got the impression that you feel sorry for Mr. Lewent — in a way.”

She compressed her lips. “Mr. Lewent is a thoroughly immoral man. And this trouble he’s making — he deserves no sympathy from anyone.”

“Then my impression was wrong?”

“I didn’t say that.” She sent the deep blue eyes straight at me, and they were much too cold to show sorrow for anyone or anything whatever. “Frankly, Mr. Goodwin, I am not interested in your impressions. I speak with you at all only because Mr. Huck asked us to.”

“And I speak with you, Mrs. O’Shea, only because the man whose father built this house thinks he’s been rooked and has hired me to find out. That doesn’t interest you either?”

“No.” She resumed with the slips of paper.

I eyed her. My trouble with her, as with the rest of them, was that it would take some well-chosen leading questions to jostle her loose, and all the best questions were out of bounds as long as Lewent was supposed to be still breathing.

“Look,” I said, “suppose we try this. It’s been more than two hours since I talked with you ladies up in the sewing room. Have you discussed the matter with Mr. Lewent? If so, when and where, and what was said?”

She sent me a sharp sidewise glance. “Ask him.”

“I intend to, but I want—”

I got interrupted. A door in the kitchen’s far wall was standing open, and through it, rolling almost silently on rubber tires, came a large cabinet of stainless steel. It was more than four feet high, its top reaching almost to the shoulders of Paul Thayer, who was behind it, pushing it. He rolled it across to the neighborhood of Mrs. O’Shea’s chair and halted it.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “Just a bum wire, and I put in a new one. At your service. Invoice follows.”

“Thank you, Paul.” She had clipped the slips of paper together and was putting them in a drawer. “I’m glad you got it fixed. Mr. Goodwin is staying for dinner, so I suppose you’ll bring him up for cocktails. Harriet, don’t forget about the capers. Mr. Huck will not have it without the capers.”

The plump little woman said she knew it, and Mrs. O’Shea left us, with, I noticed, the hip-swing in action, so it hadn’t been a special demonstration for Huck.

I turned to Paul Thayer. “Lewent asked me to stay for dinner, but he’s going to skip it, so do you think I rate a cocktail?”

“Sure, it’s routine.” He was matter-of-fact. “It was started by my aunt a couple of years ago when his legs went bad, and he has kept it up. How goes it? Have you spotted her?”