Rex Stout - Three Doors to Death (The Rex Stout Library)

"He might, sure, if she hooked him deep enough."

"Have you any facts that contradict the assumptions?"

"No."

"Then we'll keep them. You understand, of course, that there are no alibis. There were four hours for it: from eleven o'clock, when Miss Lauer said good night to Mr. Krasicki and left him, to three o'clock, when you and Mr. Krasicki entered the greenhouse to fumigate. Everyone was in bed, and in separate rooms except for Mr. and Mrs. Imbrie. Their alibi is mutual, but also marital and therefore worthless. His motive we have assumed. Hers is of course implicit in the situation as you describe it, and besides, women do not require motives that are comprehensible by any intellectual process."

"You said it," Gus acquiesced feelingly. "They roll their own."

I wondered what the girl at Bedford Hills had done now. Wolfe went on.

"Let's finish with the women. What about Miss Pitcairn?"

"Well -" Gus opened his mouth wide to give his lips a stretch, touched the upper one with the tip of his tongue, and closed up again. "I guess I don't understand her. I feel as if I hate her, but I don't really know why, so maybe I don't understand her."

"Perhaps I can help?"

"I doubt it. She puts up a hell of a front, but one day last summer I came on her in the grove crying her eyes out. I think it's a complex, only she must have more than one. She had a big row with her father one day on the terrace, when I was working there in the shrubs and they knew it – it was a couple of weeks after Mrs. Pitcairn's accident and he was letting the registered nurse go and sending for a practical nurse which turned out later to be this Dini Lauer – and Miss Pitcairn was raising the roof because she thought she ought to look after her mother herself. She screamed fit to be tied, until the nurse called down from an upstairs window to please be quiet. Another thing, she not only seems to hate men, she says right out that she does. Maybe that's why I feel I hate her, just to balance it up."

Wolfe made a face. "Does she often have hysterics?"

"I wouldn't say often, but of course I'm hardly ever in the house." Gus shook his head. "I guess I don't understand her."

"I doubt if it's worth an effort. Don't try. What I'd like to get from you, if you have it, is not understanding but a fact. I need a scandalous fact about Miss Pitcairn. Have you got one?"

Gus looked bewildered. "You mean about her and Dini?"

"Her and anyone or anything. The worse the better. Is she a kleptomaniac or a drug addict? Does she gamble or seduce other women's husbands or cheat at cards?"

"Not that I know of." Gus took a minute to concentrate. "She fights a lot. Will that help?"

"I doubt it. With what weapons?"

"I don't mean weapons; she just fights – with family, friends, anyone. She always knows best. She fights a lot with her brother. As far as he's concerned, it's a good thing somebody knows best, because God knows he don't."

"Why, does he have complexes too?"

Gus snorted. "He sure has got something. The family says he's sensitive – that's what they tell each other, and their friends, and him. Hell, so am I sensitive, but I don't go around talking it up. He has a mood every hour on the hour, daily including Sundays and holidays. He never does a damn thing, even pick flowers. He's a four-college man – he got booted out of Yale, then Williams, then Cornell, and then something out in Ohio."

"What for?" Wolfe demanded. "That might help."

"No idea."

"Confound it," Wolfe complained, "have you no curiosity? A good damning fact about the son might be even more useful than one about the daughter. Haven't you got one?"

Gus concentrated again, and when a minute passed without any sign of contact on his face, Wolfe insisted, "Could his expulsion from those colleges have been on account of trouble with women?"

"Him?" Gus snorted again. "If he went to a nudist camp and they lined the men up on one side and the women on the other, he wouldn't know which was which. With clothes on I suppose he can tell. Not that he's dumb, I doubt if he's a bit dumb, but his mind is somewhere else. You asked if he has complexes -"

There was a knock at the door. I went and opened it and took a look, and said, "Come in."

Donald Pitcairn entered.

I had surveyed him before, but now I had more to go on and I checked. He didn't look particularly sensitive, though of course I didn't know which mood he had on. He had about the same weight and volume as me, but it's no flattery to say that he didn't carry them the same. He needed tuning. He had dark deep-set eyes, and his face wouldn't have been bad at all if he had felt better about it.

"Oh, you here, Gus?" he asked, which wasn't too bright.

"Yeah, I'm here," Gus replied, getting that settled.

Donald, blinking in the light, turned to Wolfe. His idea was to make it curt. "We wondered why it took so long to pack Andy's things. That's what you said you wanted to do, but it doesn't look as if you're doing it."

"We were interrupted," Wolfe told him.

"I see you were. Don't you think it would be a good idea to go ahead and pack and get started?"

"I do, yes. We'll get at it shortly. I'm glad you came, Mr. Pitcairn, because it provides an opportunity for a little chat. Of course you are under -"

"I don't feel like chatting," Donald said apologetically, and turned and left.

The door closed behind him and we heard his steps across the porch.

"See?" Gus demanded. "That's him to a T. Papa told him to come and chase you out, and did you hear him?"

"Yes, I heard him. With sensitive people you never know." Wolfe sighed. "We'd better get on, since I want to get back to the house before Mr. Pitcairn decides to come at us himself. What about him? Not what he's like, I've seen him and spoken with him, but the record – what you know of it. I got the impression this afternoon that he does not share his son's confusion about the sexes. He can tell a woman from a man?"

"I'll say he can." Gus laughed shortly. "With his eyes shut. From a mile off."

"You say that as if you could prove it."

Gus had his mouth open to go on, but he shut it. He cocked an eye at Wolfe, tossed me a glance, and regarded Wolfe again.

"Oh," he said. "Now you want me to prove things."

"Not at all. I don't even insist on facts. I'll take surmises – anything you have."

Gus was considering, rubbing the tips of his thumbs with his forefingers and scowling again. Finally he made a brusque gesture. "To hell with it," he decided. "I was sore at you for crossing Andy, and you don't owe him anything, and here look at me. There's other jobs. He choked a girl once."

"Mr. Pitcairn did?"

"Yes."

"Choked her to death?"

"Oh, no, just choked her. Her name's Florence Hefferan. Her folks used to live in a shack over on Greasy Hill, but now they've got a nice house and thirty acres down in the valley. I don't think it was Florence that used the pliers on him, or if she did her old man made her. I know for a fact it took twenty-one thousand dollars to get that thirty acres, and also Florence was by no means broke when she beat it to New York. If it didn't come from Pitcairn, then where? There are two versions about the choking. One is that he was nuts about her and he was jealous because he thought the baby she was going to have wasn't his – that's what Florence told her best friend, who is a friend of mine. The other is that he was sore because he was being forced to deliver some real dough – that came from Florence too, later, after she had gone to New York, I guess because she thought it sounded better. Anyhow I know he choked her enough to leave marks because I saw them."