Rex Stout: The Gun with Wings

“Miss Bosley, we haven’t heard from you. Which side were you on?”

Adele Bosley had been sitting taking it in, sipping occasionally at her rum collins — now her second one — and looking, I thought, pretty damn intelligent. Though it was the middle of August, she was the only one of the six who had a really good tan. Her public relations with the sun were excellent.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t on either side, Mr. Wolfe. My only interest was that of my employer, the Metropolitan Opera Association. Naturally we wanted it settled privately, without any scandal. I had no opinion whatever on whether — on the point at issue.”

“And expressed none?”

“No. I merely urged them to get it settled if possible.”

“Fair enough!” Clara James blurted. It was a sneer. “You might have helped my father a little, since he got your job for you. Or had you—”

“Be quiet, Clara!” James told her with authority.

But she ignored him and finished it. “Or had you already paid in full for that?”

I was shocked. Judge Arnold looked pained. Rupert the Fat giggled. Doc Lloyd took a gulp of bourbon and water.

In view of the mildly friendly attitude I was developing toward Adele I sort of hoped she would throw something at the slim and glistening Miss James, but all she did was appeal to the father. “Can’t you handle the brat, Gif?”

Then, without waiting for an answer, she turned to Wolfe. “Miss James likes to use her imagination. What she implied is not on the record. Not anybody’s record.”

Wolfe nodded. “It wouldn’t belong on this one anyhow.” He made a face. “To go back to relevancies, what time did that conference break up?”

“Why — Mr. James and Judge Arnold left first, around four-thirty. Then Dr. Lloyd, soon after. I stayed a few minutes with Mion and Mr. Grove, and then went.”

“Where did you go?”

“To my office, on Broadway.”

“How long did you stay at your office?”

She looked surprised. “I don’t know — yes, I do too, of course. Until a little after seven. I had things to do, and I typed a confidential report of the conference at Mion’s.”

“Did you see Mion again before he died? Or phone him?”

“See him?” She was more surprised. “How could I? Don’t you know he was found dead at seven o’clock? That was before I left the office.”

“Did you phone him? Between four-thirty and seven?”

“No.” Adele was puzzled and slightly exasperated. It struck me that Wolfe was recklessly getting onto thin ice, mighty close to the forbidden subject of murder. Adele added, “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Neither do I,” Judge Arnold put in with emphasis. He smiled sarcastically. “Unless it’s force of habit with you, asking people where they were at the time a death by violence occurred. Why don’t you go after all of us?”

“That’s what I intend to do,” Wolfe said imperturbably. “I would like to know why Mion decided to kill himself, because that has a bearing on the opinion I shall give his widow. I understand that two or three of you have said that he was wrought up when that conference ended, but not despondent or splenetic. I know he committed suicide; the police can’t be flummoxed on a thing like that; but why?”

“I doubt,” Adele Bosley offered, “if you know how a singer — especially a great artist like Mion — how he feels when he can’t let a sound out, when he can’t even talk except in an undertone or a whisper. It’s horrible.”

“Anyway, you never knew with him,” Rupert Grove contributed. “In rehearsal I’ve heard him do an aria like an angel and then rush out weeping because he thought he had slurred a release. One minute he was up in the sky and the next he was under a rug.”

Wolfe grunted. “Nevertheless, anything said to him by anyone during the two hours preceding his suicide is pertinent to this inquiry, to establish Mrs. Mion’s moral position. I want to know where you people were that day, after the conference up to seven o’clock, and what you did.”

“My God!” Judge Arnold threw up his hands. The hands came down again. “All right, it’s getting late. As Miss Bosley told you, my client and I left Mion’s studio together. We went to the Churchill bar and drank and talked. A little later Miss James joined us, stayed long enough for a drink, I suppose half an hour, and left. Mr. James and I remained together until after seven. During that time neither of us communicated with Mion, nor arranged for anyone else to. I believe that covers it?”

“Thank you,” Wolfe said politely. “You corroborate, of course, Mr. James?”

“I do,” the baritone said gruffly. “This is a lot of goddam nonsense.”

“It does begin to sound like it,” Wolfe conceded. “Dr. Lloyd? If you don’t mind?”

He hadn’t better, since he had been mellowed by four ample helpings of our best bourbon, and he didn’t. “Not at all,” he said cooperatively. “I made calls on five patients, two on upper Fifth Avenue, one in the East Sixties, and two at the hospital. I got home a little after six and had just finished dressing after taking a bath when Fred Weppler phoned me about Mion. Of course I went at once.”

“You hadn’t seen Mion or phoned him?”

“Not since I left after the conference. Perhaps I should have, but I had no idea — I’m not a psychiatrist, but I was his doctor.”

“He was mercurial, was he?”

“Yes, he was.” Lloyd pursed his lips. “Of course, that’s not a medical term.”

“Far from it,” Wolfe agreed. He shifted his gaze. “Mr. Grove, I don’t have to ask you if you phoned Mion, since it is on record that you did. Around five o’clock?”

Rupert the Fat had his head tilted again. Apparently that was his favorite pose for conversing. He corrected Wolfe. “It was after five. More like a quarter past.”

“Where did you phone from?”

“The Harvard Club.”

I thought, I’ll be damned, it takes all kinds to make a Harvard Club.

“What was said?”

“Not much.” Grove’s lips twisted. “It’s none of your damn business, you know, but the others have obliged, and I’ll string along. I had forgotten to ask him if he would endorse a certain product for a thousand dollars, and the agency wanted an answer. We talked less than five minutes. First he said he wouldn’t and then he said he would. That was all.”

“Did he sound like a man getting ready to kill himself?”

“Not the slightest. He was glum, but naturally, since he couldn’t sing and couldn’t expect to for at least two months.”

“After you phoned Mion what did you do?”

“I stayed at the club. I ate dinner there and hadn’t quite finished when the news came that Mion had killed himself. So I’m still behind that ice cream and coffee.”

“That’s too bad. When you phoned Mion, did you again try to persuade him not to press his claim against Mr. James?”

Grove’s head straightened up. “Did I what?” he demanded.

“You heard me,” Wolfe said rudely. “What’s surprising about it? Naturally Mrs. Mion has informed me, since I’m working for her. You were opposed to Mion’s asking for payment in the first place and tried to talk him out of it. You said the publicity would be so harmful that it wasn’t worth it. He demanded that you support the claim and threatened to cancel your contract if you refused. Isn’t that correct?”

“It is not.” Grove’s black eyes were blazing. “It wasn’t like that at all! I merely gave him my opinion. When it was decided to make the claim I went along.” His voice went up a notch higher, though I wouldn’t have thought it possible. “I certainly did!”