Rex Stout - Three at Wolfe's Door

"Okay," I said, "show me." I took "Quinn" and put it back of "Leacraft." "There's no argument about that, Marjorie Quinn brought the first plate and gave it to Leacraft. Remember there was just one mix-up, started by Peggy when she saw Pyle had been served and gave hers to Nero Wolfe. Try having any girl bring in a second plate--or bring in two at once if you still think that might have happened--without either serving Pyle or starting a second mixup."

My memory has had a long stiff training under the strains and pressures Wolfe has put on it, but I wouldn't undertake to report all the combinations they tried, huddled around me on the floor, even if I thought you cared. They stuck to it for half an hour or more. The most persistent was Peggy Choate, the redhead. After the others had given up she stayed with it, frowning and biting her lip, propped first on one hand and then the other. Finally she said, "Nuts," stretched an arm to make a jumble of all the pieces of paper, guests and girls, got up, and returned to her chair. I did likewise.

"It's just a trick," said Carol Annis, perched on the couch again.

"I still don't believe it," Nora Jaret declared. "I do not believe that one of us deliberately poisoned a man--one of us sitting here." Her big brown eyes were at me. "Good lord, look at us! Point at her! Point her out! I dare you to!"

That, of course, was what I was there for--not exactly to point

40 3 & Wolfe's Door

her out, but at least to get a hint. I had had a vague idea that one might come from watching them maneuver the pieces of paper, but it hadn't. Nor from anything any of them had said. I had been expecting Helen lacono to introduce the subject of Vincent Pyle's modus operandi with girls, but apparently she had decided it was up to me. She hadn't spoken more than twenty words since we arrived.

"If I could point her out," I said, "I wouldn't be bothering the rest of you. Neither would the cops if they could point her out. Sooner or later, of course, they will, but it begins to look as if they'll have to get at it from the other end. Motive. They'll have to find out which one of you had a motive, and they will--sooner or later--and on that maybe I can help. I don't mean help them, I mean help you--not the one who killed him, the rest of you. That thought occurred to me after I learned that Helen lacono had admitted that she had gone out with Pyle a few times last winter. What if she had said she hadn't? When the police found out she had lied, and they would have, she would have been in for it. It wouldn't have proved she had killed him, but the going would have been mighty rough. I understand that the rest of you have all denied that you ever had anything to do with Pyle. Is that right? Miss Annis?"

"Certainly." Her chin was up. "Of course I had met him. Everybody in show business has. Once when he came backstage at the Coronet, and once at a party somewhere, and one other time but I don't remember where."

"Miss Morgan?"

She was smiling at me, a crooked smile. "Do you call this helping us?" she demanded.

"It might lead to that after I know how you stand. After all, the cops have your statement."

She shrugged. "I've been around longer than Carol, so I had seen him to speak to more than she had. Once I danced with him at the Flamingo, two years ago. That was the closest I had ever been to him."

"Miss Choate?"

"I never had the honor. I only came to New York last fall. From

Poison ci la Carte 41

Montana. He had been pointed out to me from a distance, but he never chased me."

"Miss Jaret?"

"He was Broadway," she said. "I'm TV."

"Don't the twain ever meet?"

"Oh, sure. All the time at Sardi's. That's the only place I ever saw the great Pyle, and I wasn't with him."

I started to cross my legs, but the wobbly chair leg reacted, and I thought better of it. "So there you are," I said, "you're all committed. If one of you poisoned him, and though I hate to say it I don't see any way out of that, that one is lying. But if any of the others are lying, if you saw more of him than you admit, you had better get from under quick. If you don't want to tell the cops tell me, tell me now, and I'll pass it on and say I wormed it out of you. Believe me, you'll regret it if you don't."

"Archie Goodwin, a girl's best friend," Lucy said. "My bosom pal."

No one else said anything.

"Actually," I asserted, "I am your friend, all of you but one. I have a friendly feeling for all pretty girls, especially those who work, and I admire and respect you for being willing to make an~ honest fifty bucks by coming there yesterday to carry plates of grub to a bunch of finickers. I am your friend, Lucy, if you're not the murderer, and if you are no one is."

I leaned forward, forgetting the wobbly chair leg, but it didn't object. It was about time to put a crimp in Helen's personal project. "Another thing. It's quite possible that one of you did see her returning to the kitchen for another plate, and you haven't said so because you don't want to squeal on her. If so, spill it now. The longer this hangs on the hotter it will get. When it gets so the pressure is too much for you and you decide you have got to tell it, it will be too late. Tomorrow may be too late. If you go to the cops with it tomorrow they probably won't believe you; they'll figure that you did it yourself and you're trying to squirm out. If you don't want to tell me here and now, in front of her, come with me down to Nero Wolfe's office and we'll talk it over,"

They were exchanging glances, and they were not friendly

42 3 at Wolfe's Door

glances Wlen I had arrived probably not one of them, excluding the murderer, had believed that a poisoner was present, but now they all did, or at least they thought she might be; and when Z feeling takes hold it s good-by to friendliness. It would have bei convenient af I could have detected fear in one of the glances

toUt5rnfaSpT�n ^ ^^ - t0� ^ ^ "n faces' "You area help," Carol Annis said bitterly. "Now you've got us hatmg each odier. Now everybody suspects everybody I had quit being nice and sympathetic. "It's about time" I told her. I glanced at my wrist. "It's not midnight yet. If I've made � all realize that this is no Broadway production, or TV either, and the longer the pay-off is postponed the tougher it will be for everybody I te� helped." I stood up. "Let's go. I don't say Mr Wolfe can do it by just snapping his fingers, but he might surprise you. He has often surprised me." �"*pnse

"All right,'' Nora said She arose. "Come on. This is getting too damn painful. Come on." a K

I don't pretend that that was what I had been heading for I admit that I had just been carried along by my tongue. If I arrived with that gang at midnight and Wolfe had gone to bed, he ZS almost certamly refuse to play. Even if he were still up height refuse to work, just to teach me a lesson, since I had not stuck to my instructions Those thoughts were at me as Peggy Choate bounced up and Carol Annis started to leave the couch

But they were wasted. That tussle with Wolfe never'came off A door at the end of the room which had been standing ajar suddenly swung open, and there in its frame was a two-legged figure with shoulders a most as broad as the doorway, and I waf squinfeg at Sergeant Parley Stebbins of Manhattan Homicide West h! moved forward, croaking, "I'm surprised at you, Goodwin These ladies ought to get some sleep."

Poison & la Carte 43

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I Of course I was a monkey. If it had been Stebbins who had

made a monkey of me I suppose I would have leaped for a window I and dived through. Hitting the pavement from a fourth-story window should be enough to finish a monkey, and life wouldn't be worth living if I had been bamboozled by Purley Stebbins. But obviously it hadn't been him; it had been Peggy Choate or Nora Jaret, or both; Purley had merely accepted an invitation to come and listen in.