Rex Stout: In the Best Families

Chapter Four

Having been given by Leeds my choice of driving over-three minutes-or taking a trail through the woods, I voted for walking. The edge of the woods was only a hundred yards to the rear of the kennels. It had been a warm day for early

April, but now, with the sun gone over the hill, the sharp air made me want to step it up, which was just as well because I had to, to keep up with Leeds. He walked as if he meant it. When I commented on the fact that we ran into no fence anywhere, neither in the woods nor in the clear, he said that his place was merely a little corner of Mrs Rackham's property which she had let him build on some years ago.

The last stretch of our walk was along a curving gravel path that wound through lawns, shrubs, trees, and different-shaped patches of bare earth. Living in the country would be more convenient if they would repeal the law against paths that go straight from one place to another place. The bigger and showier the grounds are, the more the paths have to curve, and the main reason for having lots of bushes and things is to compel the paths to curve in order to get through the mess. Anyhow, Leeds and I finally got to the house, entered without ringing or knocking, apparently he was more or less a member of the household too.

All six of them were gathered in a room that was longer and wider than Leeds' whole house, with twenty rugs to slide on and at least forty different things to sit on, but it didn't seem as if they had worked up much gaiety, in spite of the full stock of the portable bar, because Leeds and I were greeted as though nothing so nice had happened in years. Leeds introduced me, since I wasn't supposed to have met Mrs Rackham, and after I had been supplied with liquid

Annabel Frey gave a lecture on how I worked. Then Oliver

A. Pierce, the statesman, wanted me to demonstrate by grilling each of them as suspected dog poisoners. When I tried to beg off they insisted, so I obliged. I was only so-so.

Pierce was a smooth article. His manner was of course based on the law of nature regulating the attitude of an elected person towards everybody old enough to vote, but his timing and variations were so good that it was hard to recognise it, although he was only about my age. He was also about my size, with broad shoulders and a homely honest face, and a draw on his smile as swift as a flash bulb. I made a note to look up whether I lived in his assembly district. If he got the breaks the only question about him as how far and how soon.

If in addition to his own equipment and talents he acquired Lina Darrow asa pa, it would probably be farther and sooner. She was, I would have guessed, slightly younger than Annabel Frey-twenty-six maybe-and I never saw a finer pair of eyes.

She was obviously underplaying them, or rather what was back of them. When I was questioning her she pretended I had her in a corner, while her eyes gave it away that she could have waltzed all around me if she wanted to. I didn't know whether she thought she was kidding somebody, or was just practising, or had some serious reason for passing herself off as a flub.

Barry Rackham had me stumped and also annoyed. Either I was dumber than Nero

Wolfe thought I was, and twice as dumb as I thought I was, or he was smarter than he looked. New York was full of him, and he was full of New York. Go into and Madison Avenue bar between five and six-thirty and there would be six or eight of him there: not quite young but miles from being old; masculine all over except the fingernails; some tired and some fresh and ready, depending on the current status; and all slightly puffy below the eyes. I knew him from A to Z, or thought I did, but I couldn't make up my mind whether he knew what I was there for, and that was the one concrete thing I had hoped to get done. If he knew, the question whether he was on Zeck's payroll was answered; if he didn't, that question was still open.

And I still hadn't been able to decide when, at the dinner table, we had finished the dessert and got up to go elsewhere for coffee. At first I had thought he couldn't possibly be wise, when I had him sized up for a dummy who had had the good luck to catch Mrs Rackham's eye somewhere and then had happened to take the only line she would fall for, but further observation had made me reconsider. His handling of his wife had character in it; it wasn't just yes or no. At the dinner table he had an exchange with Pierce about rent control, and without seeming to try he got the statesman so tangled up he couldn't wiggle loose. Then he had a good laugh, took the other side of the argument, and made a monkey out of Dana Hammond.

I decided I'd better start all over.

On the way back to the living-room for coffee, Lina Darrow joined me. “Why did you take it out on me? she demanded.

I said I didn't know I had.

“Certainly you did. Trying to indict me for dog poisoning. You went after me much harder than you did the others. Her fingers were on the inside of my arm, lightly.

“Certainly, I conceded. “Nothing new to you, was it? A man going after you harder than the others?

“Thanks. But I mean it. Of course you know I'm just a working girl.

“Sure. That's why I was tougher with you. That, and because I wondered why you were playing dumb.

The statesman Pierce broke us up then, as we entered the living-room, and I didn't fight for her. We collected in the neighbourhood of the fireplace for coffee, and there was a good deal of talk about nothing, and after a while somebody suggested television, and Barry Rackham went and turned it on. He and

Annabel turned out lights. As the rest of us got settled in favourably placed seats, Mrs Rackham left us. A little later, as I sat in the semi-darkness scowling at a cosmetic commercial, some obscure sense told me that danger was approaching and I jerked my head around. It was right there at my elbow: a

Doberman pinscher, looking larger than normal in that light, staring intently past me at the screen.

Mrs Rackham, just behind it, apparently misinterpreting my quick movement, spoke hastily and loudly above the noise of the broadcast. “Don't try to pat him!

“I won't, I said emphatically.

“He'll behave, she assured me. “He loves television. She went on with him, farther forward. As they passed Calvin Leeds the affectionate pet halted for a brief sniff, and got a. stroke on the head in response. No one else was honoured.

Ninety minutes of video got us to half-past ten, and got us nothing else, especially me. I was still on the fence about Barry Rackham. Television is raising hell with the detective business. It used to be that a social evening at someone's house or apartment was a fine opportunity for picking up lines and angles, moving around, watching and talking and listening; but with a television session you might as well be home in bed. You can't see faces, and if someone does make a remark you can't hear it unless it's a scream, and you can't even start a private inquiry, such as finding out where a young widow stands now on scepticism. In a movie theatre at least you can hold hands.

However, I did finally get what might have been a nibble. The screen had been turned off, and we had all got up to stretch, and Annabel offered to drive Leeds and me home, and Leeds had told her that we would rather walk, when Barry