Rex Stout - Too Many Cooks

“Lies! You know it’s lies-”

“Dina! Shut up!”

It was Domenico Rossi, glaring at his daughter. Vukcic, with his jaw set, was gazing at her. Others sent glances at her and looked away again.

“But he tells lies-”

“I say shut up!” Rossi was much quieter, and more impressive, than when he was picking a scrap. “If he tells lies, let him tell all of them.”

“Thank you, sir.” Wolfe inclined his head half an inch. “I think now we had better decide who Mr. White is. You will notice that the fearful risks he took in this room Tuesday night were more apparent than real. Up to the moment he sank the knife into Laszio’s back he was taking no risk at all; he was merely an innocent masquerader. And if afterwards he was seen-well, he was seen, and what if he was, since he was blacked up? The persons who saw him here Tuesday night have all seen him since, with the blacking and livery gone, and none has suspected him. He depended for safety on his certainty that he would never be suspected at all. He had several bases for that certainty, but the chief one was that on Tuesday evening he wasn’t in Kanawha Spa; he was in New York.”

Berin burst out, “God above! If he wasn’t here-”

“I mean he wasn’t supposed to be here. It is always assumed that a man is where probability places him, unless suspicion is aroused that he is somewhere else, and Mr. White figured that such a suspicion was an impossibility. But he was too confident and too careless. He permitted his own tongue to create the suspicion in a conversation with me.

“As you all know, I’ve had wide experience in affairs of this kind. It’s my business. I told Mr. Tolman Tuesday night that I was sure Berin hadn’t done it, but I withheld my best reason for that assurance, because it wasn’t my case and I don’t like to involve people where I have no concern. That reason was this, I was convinced that Mrs. Laszio had signaled to the murderer by turning on the radio. Other details connected with that might be attributed to chance, but it would take great credulity to believe that her hanging onto Vukcic in that dance, delaying his trip to the dining room while her husband was being killed, was also coincidence. Especially when, as I did, one saw her doing it. She made a bad mistake there. Ordinary intelligence might have caused her to reflect that I was present and that therefore more subtlety was called for.

“When Berin was arrested I did become interested, as you know, but when I had got him released I was again unconcerned With the affair. Whereupon another idiotic mistake was made, almost unbelievable. Mr. White thought I was discovering too much, and without even taking the trouble to learn that I had withdrawn, he sneaked through the shrubbery outside my window and shot me. I think I know how he approached Upshur Pavilion. My assistant, Mr. Goodwin, an hour or so later, saw him dismounting from a horse at the hotel. The bridle path runs within fifty yards of the rear of Upshur. He could easily have left the path, tied his horse, advanced through the shrubbery to my window, and after the shot got back to the horse again and off on the path without being seen. At all events, he made that mistake, and by it, instead of removing me, he encountered me. My concern revived.

“I assumed, as I say, that the murderer was in league with Mrs. Laszio. I dismissed the idea that it was solely her project and he had been hired by her, for that would have rendered the masquerade meaningless; besides, it was hard to believe that a hired murderer, a stranger to Laszio, could have entered this room, got a knife from the table, enticed Laszio behind the screen, and killed him, without an outcry or any struggle. And just as yesterday, when Berin was arrested and I undertook to find evidence to free him, I had one slender thread to start with, Mrs. Coyne’s appeal to her husband to kiss her finger because she had caught it in a door, so to-day, when I undertook to catch the murderer, I had another thread just as slender. It was this. Yesterday about two o’clock Mr. Malfi and Mr. Liggett arrived at Kanawha Spa after a nonstop airplane flight from New York. They came directly to my room at Upshur Pavilion before talking with anyone but servants, and had a conversation with me. During the conversation Liggett said-I think this is verbatim: ‘It seems likely that whoever did it was able to use finesse for other purposes than tasting the seasonings in Sauce Printemps.’ Do you remember that, sir?”

“For God’s sake.” Liggett snorted. “You damn fool, are you trying to drag me into it?”

“I’m afraid I am. You may enter your action for slander along with Mrs. Laszio. Do you remember saying that?”

“No. Neither do you.”

Wolfe shrugged. “It’s unimportant now. It was vital in its function as my thread.-Anyway, it seemed suitable for inquiry. It seemed unlikely that such a detail as the name of the sauce we were tasting had been included in the first brief reports of the murder wired to New York. I telephoned there, to an employee of mine, and to Inspector Cramer of the police. My requests to Mr. Cramer were somewhat inclusive: for instance, I asked him to check on all passengers of airplanes, scheduled or specially chartered, from all airports, leaving New York Tuesday, which had stopped no matter where in this part of the country in time for a passenger to have arrived at Kanawha Spa by nine o’clock Tuesday evening. I made it nine o’clock because when we went to the parlor after dinner Tuesday Mrs. Laszio immediately disappeared and was not seen again for an hour; and if there was anything to my theory at all it seemed likely that that absence was for a rendezvous with her collaborator. I also asked Mr. Cramer to investigate Mrs. Laszio’s life in New York-her friends and associates-now, madam. Please. You’ll get a chance.-For suspicion was at that point by no means confined to Liggett. There was even one of you here not entirely clear; and I want to express publicly to Mr. Blanc my thanks for his tolerance and good nature in assisting with the experiment which eliminated him. No doubt he thought it ridiculous.

“At one o’clock this afternoon I received a telegram telling me that Sauce Printemps had not been mentioned in the account in any New York paper Tuesday morning. Since Liggett had left in the airplane before ten o’clock, had come non-stop, and had talked with no one before seeing me, how had he known it was Sauce Printemps? Probably he had talked with someone. He had talked with Mrs. Laszio around nine-thirty Tuesday evening, somewhere in the grounds around this building, making the arrangements which resulted in Laszio’s murder.”

I wasn’t any too well pleased, because I couldn’t see Liggett’s hands; he was across from me and the table hid them. Nor his eyes either, because they were on Wolfe. All I could see was the corner of his thin smile on the side of his mouth that was toward me, and the cord on the side of his neck as he held his jaw clamped. From where he sat he couldn’t see Dina Laszio, but I could, and she had her lower lip caught by her teeth. And at that, that was the only outward sign that she wasn’t quite as nonchalant as she had been when she patted Wolfe’s shoulder.

Wolfe went on, “At three o’clock I had a phone call from Inspector Cramer. Among other things, he told me that Saul Panzer, my employee, had left on an airplane for Charleston in accordance with my instructions. Then-I might as well mention this-around six o’clock another silly mistake was made. To do Mr. Liggett justice, I doubt if it was his own idea; I suspect it was Mrs. Laszio who thought of it and persuaded him to try it. He came to my room and offered me fifty thousand dollars cash to ask Mr. Berin to take the job of chef de cuisine at the Hotel Churchill.”