Rex Stout - Too Many Cooks

“I have done so. Of course, I covered everybody pretty fast.”

“Then cover them again. Another possibility: someone could have been concealed behind either of the screens and struck from there when the opportunity offered.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say.” Wolfe frowned. “I may as well tell you, Mr. Tolman, I am extremely skeptical regarding your two chief suspects, Mr. Berin and Mr. Vukcic. That is putting it with restraint. As for Mr. Blanc, I am without an opinion; as you have pointed out, he could unquestionably have left his room, made an exit at the end of the left wing corridor, circled the building, entered by the dining room terrace, achieved his purpose, and returned the way he had come. In that case, might he not have been seen by Mrs. Coyne, who was outdoors at the time, looking at the night?”

Tolman shook his head. “She says not. She was at the front and the side both. She was no one but a nigger in uniform, and stopped him and asked him what the sound of a whippoorwill was. We’ve found him-one of the boys from the spring on his way to Mingo Pavilion.”

“So. As for Berin and Vukcic, if I were you I would pigeonhole them for the present. Or at least-I offer a suggestion: get the slips, the tasting reports, from Mr. Servan-”

“I have them.”

“Good. Compare them with the correct list, which you also got from Mr. Servan no doubt-”

“He didn’t have it. It was in Laszio’s pocket.”

“Very well. Compare each list with it, and see how nearly each taster was correct.”

Sheriff Pettigrew snorted. Tolman asked dryly, “You call that being helpful, do you?”

“I do. I am already-by the way!” Wolfe straightened a little. “If you have the correct list there-the one you took from Laszio’s pocket-do you mind if I look at it a moment?”

Tolman, with his brows up, shuffled through the papers before him, extracted one, handed it to me, and I passed it to Wolfe. Wolfe looked at it with his forehead wrinkled, and exclaimed, “Good God!” He looked at it again, and turning to me, shaking the paper in his hand. “Archie. Coyne was right! Number 3 was shallots!”

Tolman asked sarcastically, “Comedy relief? Much obliged for that help.”

I grinned at him. “Comedy hell, he won’t sleep for a week, he guessed wrong.”

Wolfe reproved me: “It was not a guess. It was a deliberate conclusion, and it was wrong.” He handed me the paper. “Pardon me, Mr. Tolman, I’ve had a blow. Actually. I wouldn’t expect you to appreciate it. As I was saying, I am already more than skeptical regarding Berin and Vukcic. I have known Mr. Vukcic all my life. I can conceive of his stabbing a man, under hypothetical conditions, but I am sure that if he did you wouldn’t find the knife in the man’s back. I don’t know Mr. Berin well, but I saw him at close range and heard him speak less than a minute after he left the dining room last night, and I would stake something that he wasn’t fresh from the commission of a cowardly murder. He had but a moment before sunk a knife in Mr. Laszio’s back, and I detected no residue of that experience in his posture, his hands, his eyes, his voice? I don’t believe it.”

“And about comparing these lists-”

“I’m coming to that. I take it that Mr. Servan has described the nature of that test to you-each sauce lacking one or another of the seasonings. We were permitted but one taste from each dish-only one! Have you any conception of the delicacy and sensitivity required? It took the highest degree of concentration and receptivity of stimuli. To detect a single false note in one of the wood winds in a symphonic passage by full orchestra would be the same. So, compare those lists. If you find that Berin and Vukcic were substantially correct-say seven or eight out of nine-they are eliminated. Even six. No man about to kill another, or just having done so, could possibly control his nervous system sufficiently to perform such a feat. I assure you this is not comedy.”

Tolman nodded. “All right, I’ll compare them.”

“It would be instructive to do so now.”

“I’ll attend to it. Any other suggestions?”

“No.” Wolfe got his hands on the chair arms, pulled his feet back, braced, and arose. “The ten minutes are up.” He did his little bow. “I offer you again, gentlemen, my sympathy and best wishes.”

The sheriff said, “I understand you’re sleepin’ in Upshur. Of course you realize you’re free to go anywhere you want to around the grounds here.”

“Thank you, sir.” Wolfe sounded bitter. “Come, Archie.”

Not to crowd the path, I let him precede me among the greenery back to Upshur Pavilion. We didn’t go through darkness, but through the twilight of dawn, and there were so many birds singing you couldn’t help noticing it. In the main hall of the pavilion the lights were turned on, and a couple of state cops were sitting there. Wolfe passed them without a glance.

I went to his room with him to make sure that everything was jake. The bed had been turned down, and the colored rugs and things made it bright and pleasant, and the room was big and classy enough to make it worth at least half of the twenty bucks a day they charged for it, but Wolfe frowned around as if it had been a pigpen.

I inquired, “Can I help on the disrobing?”

“No.”

“Shall I bring a pitcher of water from the bathroom?”

“I can walk. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, boss.” I went.

His voice halted me at the door. “Archie. This Mr. Laszio seems to have had unpleasant characteristics. Do you suppose there is any chance he deliberately made that list incorrect, to disconcert his colleagues-and me?”

“Huh-uh. Not the faintest. Professional ethics, you know. Of course I’m sorry you got so many wrong-”

“Two! Shallots and chives! Leave me! Get out!”

He sure was one happy detective that night.

5

AT TWO O’CLOCK the next day, Wednesday, I was feeling pretty screwy and dissatisfied with life, but in one way completely at home. Getting to bed too late, or having my sleep disturbed unduly, poisons my system, and I had had both to contend with. Having neglected to hang up a notice, a damn fool servant had got me to the door of our suite at nine o’clock to ask if we wanted baths drawn or any other little service, and I had told him to return at sundown. At ten-thirty the phone woke me; my friend Barry Tolman wanted to speak to Wolfe. I explained that Wolfe’s first exposure to the light of day would have to be on his own initiative, and told the operator no more calls until further notice. In spite of that, an hour later the phone rang again and kept on ringing. It was Tolman, and he just had to speak to Wolfe. I told him absolutely nothing doing, without a search and seizure warrant, until Wolfe had announced himself as conscious. But that time I was roused enough to become aware of other necessities besides sleep, so I bathed and shaved and dressed and phoned Room Service for some breakfast, since I couldn’t go and get it under the circumstances. I had finished the third cup of coffee when I heard Wolfe yelling for me. He was certainly getting demoralized. At home in New York, I hadn’t heard him yell more than three times in ten years.