Rex Stout - Alphabet Hicks

“Great enough,” Rosario agreed. “Except too fat. God above, if you catch me eating!”

Hicks left him. At the curb he climbed into the company car. At the corner of Second Avenue he halted at a newsstand for an evening paper and slipped the sonograph plate in its folds. At 31st Street he stopped in front of a drugstore, entered and found the phone booth, and called the Dundee number at Katonah. Heather Gladd’s voice answered.

“This is Hicks. How are you?”

“Oh — I’m all right.”

“Where are you, at the house?”

“No, at the office. I’m trying to clean up some work. I wasn’t — I couldn’t just sit any more. Where did you—”

“Are there any cops around?”

“I think not. Two of them left about an hour ago—”

“Well, here’s some exercise for you. Mental. One of them may be listening in at the house, or they may even have the wire tapped. If so, they don’t need to know your private affairs. You will probably have a visitor in an hour or so, the gentleman who was present at the reading of your love letters. He is no longer in a fog. He intends to straighten things out, which he is not competent to do, and among other things he will want to know about the one that was not a love letter. I have told him he is dreaming. You will tell him the same. You will discuss nothing with anyone whatever. Have you kept your promise?”

A silence.

“Have you?”

“Yes. But I want those—”

“Don’t use any words that a third-rate intelligence would understand. You’re in danger. Your life is in danger. I’ll be up there later, or I may phone you. You shouldn’t be around in the open. You could come to New York—”

“Nonsense. Nobody has any reason to do anything to me.” Heather’s voice was scornful. “But if he comes — the police—”

“Forget it. He’s out of it.”

“How do you know—”

“I know everything. Up to a certain point. You be a good girl and hold everything until you hear from me, and drink plenty of water and keep your feet warm.”

Hicks rang off, and dialed another number. The second conversation was much briefer. He asked to speak to Mrs. Dundee, and after a wait her voice was in his ear.

“This is Hicks. I’m coming to see you. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“I don’t know...” She hesitated. “My husband is here—”

“Good! Keep him! Fifteen minutes.”

It could not have been called a happy family scene.

A man habitually careless in apparel and grooming may yet be quite personable, and often is, but when one who is ordinarily well combed and brushed and closely shaven, and impeccably dressed, becomes temporarily unkempt, the effect is deplorable. R. I. Dundee, seated on a Louis Quinze chair in his wife’s dressing room, presented the appearance, if not exactly of a bum, of a man who had been bumming. By contrast, his wife, even with visible puffs under her eyes and a sag to her shoulders, was dainty and fresh and congruous in the daintily furnished and decorated room.

She was standing when Hicks was ushered in, and shook hands with him. Dundee stayed in his chair and offered no hand. Hicks, invited, took a seat when Mrs. Dundee did, covering his lap with a newspaper folded only twice — not a common way to carry a newspaper.

“You were here last night,” Dundee said irritably.

Hicks nodded. “I’m working for your wife.”

“Damn little work you seem to be doing for anyone.” Dundee’s tone was a sneer. “For her or me or anyone. I came here to try to get her out of this mess and keep her out. She has betrayed me, she has half ruined my business that I’ve spent my life building up, but she still bears my name, she is my wife, and I don’t intend to have her involved in that idiotic murder!”

“I’m not trying to involve her,” Hicks declared mildly.

“You might as well be!” A fleck of moisture came from between Dundee’s lips, sailing into the air. “Excuse me,” he said bitterly. “I even spit when I talk! You advised her to tell that detective she wasn’t there yesterday! You told her to deny it!”

“You’re insane, Dick,” his wife said quietly. “I denied it because it wasn’t true. I mean it literally, you’re insane.”

“You’re damn right I’m insane!” His chin trembled. “You’re damn right I am!”

“Even so,” Hicks put in, “you might help us to clear up a point. Calm down a little. What makes you so sure your wife was there yesterday?”

“I’ve told her!”

“Tell me.”

“It’s perfectly absurd,” Mrs. Dundee said. “The same thing that man said last night. Ross heard me talking. Of course he didn’t.”

Hicks’s eyes stayed on Dundee. “The chief trouble with you,” he stated, “is that your blood goes to your head too easy. You need a valve fixed. It makes you assume that everyone but you is a fool. I’m not a fool. About that murder, they’re trying to involve your wife because they’ve learned that Cooper, the husband, didn’t do it, and they think they’ve caught your wife in a lie.”

“He was here again this morning,” Mrs. Dundee said.

“And he’ll keep on coming. Whereas the only ones who have lied to them, to my knowledge, are you and me.” Hicks was looking at Dundee. “What if I decide to protect myself by telling the truth? Wouldn’t that be nice? I want to know where Ross was when he heard his mother’s voice.”

Dundee was scowling, with his lips compressed. He opened them enough to say, “He was on the terrace.”

“What time was it?”

“About three o’clock. When he got to the house. Just after he met you by the bridge.”

“Where did the voice come from?”

“Through the open window. From inside the living room.”

“Didn’t he go in?”

“No. He went around to the rear and up the back stairs to his room. He didn’t want to meet his mother just then. He knew I was coming out to have a talk with him, and he wanted to talk with me first. He thought she had come with me. Later, out of his window, when he saw me drive in, he thought she had come with you. He called to me from the window and I went up to his room, and we had a talk, but he didn’t tell me his mother was there. After I left to go to the laboratory he went downstairs to see her, and she wasn’t there. Of course she did go with you, and when she saw me drive in she left.”

“You say. Did Ross go to the terrace?”

“No. The house was empty. Mrs. Powell had gone to the village. He called his mother and got no answer.”

“What was it he heard her saying through the living room window?”

“She said, ‘Then I’ll wait here for you.’ ”

“Just that?”

“Just that. Then he heard her hanging up. The phone. He thought she might be coming to the terrace, so he hurried off.” Dundee was glaring at Hicks. “Later, after the dead woman was found, he got worried, and the damn fool phoned here to ask his mother about her being there, and discovered he was being overheard. Then when that detective came here you and she made it worse by denying that she was there. You should have admitted that she went out there with you and came back alone. You can’t lie about things like that when a murder is being investigated. Maybe she couldn’t be expected to have better sense, but by heaven, you could!”

“Then you and Ross are both convinced she was there?”

“Certainly we are!”

“On account of that one short sentence he heard through a window?”

“He knows his mother’s voice, doesn’t he?”

“I suppose he thinks he does.” The glint was in Hicks’s eyes. “And rather than assume he was mistaken, which is not beyond possibility, you prefer to think that your wife is lying about it — not to mention me?”