Rex Stout - A Family Affair

I got to bed Tuesday night at twenty past one, almost exactly twenty-four hours after the bomb had interrupted me before I got my pants off. It was a good bet that I would be interrupted before I got them on again Wednesday morning by an invitation from the DA's office, but I wasn't, so I got my full eight hours, and I needed them, and it was ten minutes to ten when I entered the kitchen, went to the refrigerator for orange juice, told Fritz good morning, and asked if Wolfe had had breakfast, and Fritz said yes, at a quarter past eight as usual.

"Was he dressed?"

"Of course."

"Not of course. He was played out, he said so himself. He went up?"

"Of course."

"All right, have it your way. Any word for me?"

"No. I'm played out too, Archie, all day the phone ringing and people coming, and I didn't know where he was."

I went to the little table and sat and reached to the rack for the Times. It had made the front page, a two-column lead toward the bottom and continued on page, where there were pictures of both of us. Of course I was honored because I had found the body. Also of course I read every word, some of it twice, but none of it was news to me, and my mind kept sliding off. Why the hell hadn't he told Fritz to send me up? I was on my third sausage and second buckwheat cake when the phone rang, and I scowled at it as I reached. Again of course, the DA.

But it wasn't; it was Lon Cohen of the Gazette.

"Nero Wolfe's office. Arch -" "Where in God's name were you all day yesterday, and why aren't you in jail?"

"Look, Lon, I-" "Will you come here, or must I go there?"

"Right now, neither one, and quit interrupting. I admit I could tell you twenty-seven things that your readers have a right to know, but this is a free country and I want to stay free. The minute I can spill one bean I know where to find you. I'm expecting a call so I'm hanging up."

I hung up.

I will never know whether there was something wrong with the buckwheat cakes or with me. If it was the cakes, Fritz was played out. I made myself eat the usual four to keep him from asking questions and finding out that he had left something out or put too much of something in.

In the office I pretended it was just another day-dusting, emptying the wastebaskets, changing the water in the vase, opening the mail, and so forth. Then I went to the shelf where we keep the Times and the Gazette for two weeks, got them for the last four days, and took them to my desk. Of course I had read the accounts of the murder of Harvey H. Bassett, but now it was more than just news. The body had been found in a parked Dodge Coronet on West Ninety-third Street near Riverside Drive late Friday night by a cop on his rounds. Only one bullet, a., which had entered at exactly the right spot to go through his pump and keep going, clear through. It had been found stuck in the right front door, so the trigger had been pulled by the driver of the car, unless Bassett had pulled it himself, but by Monday's Times that was out. It was murder.

I was on Tuesday's Gazette when the sound came of the elevator descending. My watch said:. Right on schedule. I swiveled and as Wolfe entered said brightly, "Good morning. I'm having a look at the reports on Harvey H. Bassett. If you're interested, I'm through with the Times."

He put a raceme of orchids which I didn't bother to identify in the vase on his desk, and sat. "You're spleeny. You shouldn't be. After that night and yesterday, you might sleep until noon, and there was no urgency. As for Mr. Bassett, I keep my copies of the Times in my room for a month, as you know, and I took -" The doorbell. I went to the hall for a look and stepped back in. "I don't think you've ever met him. Assistant District Attorney Coggin. Daniel F. Coggin. Friendly type with a knife up his sleeve. Handshaker."

"Bring him," he said, and reached for the pile of mail.

So when I ushered the member of the bar in after giving him as good a hand as he gave and taking his coat and hat, Wolfe had a circular in one hand and an unfolded letter in the other, and it wouldn't have been polite to put him to the trouble of putting one of them down, so Coggin didn't. Evidently, though he hadn't met him, he knew about his kinks. He just said heartily, "I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Wolfe, so I welcome this opportunity."

He sat, in the red leather chair, and sent his eyes around. "Nice room. A good room. That's a beautiful rug."

"A gift from the Shah of Iran," Wolfe said.

Coggin must have known it was a barefaced lie, but he said, "I wish he'd give me one. Beautiful."

He glanced at his wristwatch. "You're a busy man, and I'll be as brief as possible. The District Attorney is wondering why you and Mr. Goodwin were-well, couldn't be found yesterday, though that isn't how he put it-when you knew you were wanted and needed. And your telephone wasn't answered. Nor your doorbell."

"We had errands to do and did them. No one was here but Mr. Brenner, my cook, and when we are out he prefers not to answer bells."

Coggin smiled. "He prefers?"

Wolfe smiled back, but his smile shows only at one corner of his mouth, and it takes good eyes to see it. "Good cooks must be humored, Mr. Coggin."

"I wouldn't know, Mr. Wolfe. I haven't got a cook, can't afford it. Now. If you're wondering why I came instead of sending for you, we discussed it at the office. What you said to Inspector Cramer yesterday. Considering your record and your customary-uh-reactions. It was decided to have your license as a private investigator revoked at once, but I thought that was too drastic and suggested that upon reflection you might have realized that you had been -uh-impetuous. I have in my pocket warrants for your arrest you and Mr. Goodwin, as material witnesses, but I don't want to serve them. I would rather not. I even came alone, I insisted on that. I can understand, I do understand, why you reacted as you did to Inspector Cramer, but you and Goodwin can't withhold information regarding the murder of a man in your house-a man you had known for years and had talked with many times. I don't want you and Goodwin to lose your licenses. He can take shorthand and he can type. I want to leave here with signed statements."

When Wolfe is facing the red leather chair he has to turn his head a quarter-circle to face me. He turned. "Your notebook, Archie."

I opened a drawer and got it, and a pen. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and spoke.

"When Pierre Ducos died by violence in a room of my house at- The exact time, Archie?"

"One-twenty-four."

"One-twenty-four A.M. on October twenty-ninth, comma, nineteen seventy-four, comma, I knew nothing about him or any of his affairs except that he was an experienced and competent restaurant waiter. Period. Archie Goodwin also knew only that about him, comma, plus what he had learned in a brief con- versation with him when he arrived at my house shortly before he died. Period. All of that conversation was given verbatim by Mr. Goodwin in a signed statement given by him to a police officer that night at my house. Period. Therefore all knowledge that could possibly be relevant to the death by violence of Pierre Ducos known to either Mr. Goodwin or me at the moment his body was discovered by Mr. Goodwin has been given to the police. Paragraph.