Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe (3 page)

“Come with me,” he snapped, and kept going.

The way to the kitchen from the dining room was through a pantry, twenty feet long, with counters and shelves and cupboards on both sides. Wolfe marched through with me behind. In the kitchen the twelve maidens were scattered around on chairs and stools at tables and counters, eating. A woman was busy at a sink. Zoltan was busy at a refrigerator. Fritz, who was pouring a glass of wine, presumably for himself, turned as Wolfe entered and put the bottle down.

Wolfe went to him, stood, and spoke. “Fritz. I offer my apologies. I permitted Mr. Hewitt to cajole you. I should have known better. I beg your pardon.”

Fritz gestured with his free hand, the wineglass steady in the other. “But it is not to pardon, only to regret. The man got sick, that's a pity, only not from my cooking. I assure you.”

“You don't need to. Not from your cooking as it left you, but as it reached him. I repeat that I am culpable,
but I won't dwell on that now; it can wait. There is an aspect that is exigent.” Wolfe turned. “Archie. Are those women all here?”

I had to cover more than half a circle to count them, scattered as they were. “Yes, sir, all present. Twelve.”

“Collect them. They can stand”—he pointed to the alcove—“over there. And bring Felix.”

It was hard to believe. They were eating; and for him to interrupt a man, or even a woman, at a meal, was unheard of. Not even me. Only in an extreme emergency had he ever asked me to quit food before I was through. Boiling was no name for it. Without even bothering to raise a brow, I turned and called out, “I'm sorry, ladies, but if Mr. Wolfe says it's urgent that settles it. Over there, please? All of you.” Then I went through the pantry corridor, pushed the two-way door, caught Felix's eye, and wiggled a beckoning finger at him, and he came. By the time we got to the kitchen the girls had left the chairs and stools and were gathering at the alcove, but not with enthusiasm. There were mutterings, and some dirty looks for me as I approached with Felix. Wolfe came, with Zoltan, and stood, tight-lipped, surveying them.

“I remind you,” he said, “that the first course you brought to the table was caviar on blinis topped with sour cream. The portion served to Mr. Vincent Pyle, and eaten by him, contained arsenic. Mr. Pyle is in bed upstairs, attended by three doctors, and will probably die within an hour. I am speaking—”

He stopped to glare at them. They were reacting, or acting, no matter which. There were gasps and exclamations, and one of them clutched her throat, and another, baring her arms, clapped her palms to her ears. When the glare had restored order Wolfe went on, “You will please keep quiet and listen. I am speaking of
conclusions formed by me. My conclusion that Mr. Pyle ate arsenic is based on the symptoms: burning throat, faintness, intense burning pain in the stomach, dry mouth, cool skin, vomiting. My conclusion that the arsenic was in the first course is based, first, on the amount of time it takes arsenic to act; second, on the fact that it is highly unlikely it could have been put in the soup or the fish; and third, that Mr. Pyle complained of sand in the cream or caviar. I admit the possibility that one or both of my conclusions will be proven wrong, but I regard it as remote and I am acting on them.” His head turned. “Fritz. Tell me about the caviar from the moment it was put on the individual plates. Who did that?”

I had once told Fritz that I could imagine no circumstances in which he would look really unhappy, but now I wouldn't have to try. He was biting his lips, first the lower and then the upper. He began, “I must assure you—”

“I need no assurance from you, Fritz. Who put it on the plates?”

“Zoltan and I did.” He pointed. “At that table.”

“And left them there? They were taken from that table by the women?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Each woman took one plate?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, they were told to. I was at the range.”

Zoltan spoke up. “I watched them, Mr. Wolfe. They each took one plate. And believe me, nobody put any arsenic—”

“Please, Zoltan. I add another conclusion: that no one put arsenic in one of the portions and then left to chance which one of the guests would get it. Surely the poisoner intended it to reach a certain one—either Mr.
Pyle, or, as an alternative, some other one and it went to Mr. Pyle by mishap. In any case, it was the portion Pyle ate that was poisoned, and whether he got it by design or by mischance is for the moment irrelevant.” His eyes were at the girls. “Which one of you took that plate to Mr. Pyle?”

No reply. No sound, no movement.

Wolfe grunted. “Pfui. If you didn't know his name, you do now. The man who left during the fish course and who is now dying. Who served him?”

No reply; and I had to hand it to them that no pair of eyes left Wolfe to fasten on Peggy Choate, the redhead. Mine did. “What the heck,” I said. “Speak up, Miss Choate.”

“I didn't!” she cried.

“That's silly. Of course you did. Twenty people can swear to it. I looked right at you while you were dishing his soup. And when you brought the fish—”

“But I didn't take him that first thing! He already had some! I didn't!”

Wolfe took over. “Your name is Choate?”

“Yes.” Her chin was up. “Peggy Choate.”

“You deny that you served the plate of caviar, the first course, to Mr. Pyle?”

“I certainly do.”

“But you were supposed to? You were assigned to him?”

“Yes. I took the plate from the table there and went in with it, and started to him, and then I saw that he had some, and I thought I had made a mistake. We hadn't seen the guests. That man”—she pointed to Felix—“had shown us which chair our guest would sit in, and mine was the second from the right on this side as I went in, but that one had already been served, and I thought someone else had made a mistake or I was
mixed up. Anyway, I saw that the man next to him, on his right, hadn't been served, and I gave it to him. That was you. I gave it to you.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe was frowning at her. “Who was assigned to me?”

That wasn't put on. He actually didn't know. He had never looked at her. He had been irritated that females were serving, and besides, he hates to twist his neck. Of course I could have told him, but Helen Iacono said, “I was.”

“Your name, please?”

“Helen Iacono.” She had a rich contralto that went fine with the deep dark eyes and dark velvet skin and wavy silky hair.

“Did you bring me the first course?”

“No. When I went in I saw Peggy serving you, and a man on the left next to the end didn't have any, so I gave it to him.”

“Do you know his name?”

“I do,” Nora Jaret said. “From the card. He was mine.” Her big brown eyes were straight at Wolfe. “His name is Kreis. He had his when I got there. I was going to take it back to the kitchen, but then I thought, someone had stage fright but I haven't, and I gave it to the man at the end.”

“Which end?”

“The left end. Mr. Schriver. He came and spoke to us this afternoon.”

She was corroborated by Carol Annis, the one with hair like corn silk who had no sense of humor, “That's right,” she said. “I saw her. I was going to stop her, but she had already put the plate down, so I went around to the other side of the table with it when I saw that Adrian Dart didn't have any. I didn't mind because it was him.”

“You were assigned to Mr. Schriver?”

“Yes. I served him the other courses, until he left.”

It was turning into a ring-around-a-rosy, but the squat was bound to come. All Wolfe had to do was get to one who couldn't claim a delivery, and that would tag her. I was rather hoping it wouldn't be the next one, for the girl with the throaty voice had been Adrian Dart's, and she had called me Archie and had given Helen Iacono a nice tribute. Would she claim she had served Dart herself?

No. She answered without being asked. “My name is Lucy Morgan,” she said, “and I had Adrian Dart, and Carol got to him before I did. There was only one place that didn't have one, on Dart's left, the next but one, and I took it there. I don't know his name.”

I supplied it. “Hewitt. Mr. Lewis Hewitt.” A better name for it than ring-around-a-rosy would have been passing-the-buck. I looked at Fern Faber, the tall self-made blonde with a wide lazy mouth who had been my first stop on my phone-number tour. “It's your turn, Miss Faber,” I told her. “You had Mr. Hewitt. Yes?”

“I sure did.” Her voice was pitched so high it threatened to squeak.

“But you didn't take him his caviar?”

“I sure didn't.”

“Then who did you take it to?”

“Nobody.”

I looked at Wolfe. His eyes were narrowed at her. “What did you do with it, Miss Faber?”

“I didn't do anything with it. There wasn't any.”

“Nonsense. There are twelve of you, and there were twelve at the table, and each got a portion. How can you say there wasn't any?”

“Because there wasn't. I was in the john fixing my hair, and when I came back in she was taking the last
one from the table, and when I asked where mine was he said he didn't know, and I went to the dining room and they all had some.”

“Who was taking the last one from the table?”

She pointed to Lucy Morgan. “Her.”

“Whom did you ask where yours was?”

She pointed to Zoltan. “Him.”

Wolfe turned. “Zoltan?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, yes, sir, she asked where hers was. I had turned away when the last one was taken. I don't mean I know where she had been, just that she asked me that. I asked Fritz if I should go in and see if they were one short and he said no, Felix was there and would see to it.”

Wolfe went back to Fern Faber. “Where is that room where you were fixing your hair?”

She pointed toward the pantry. “In there.”

“The door's around the corner,” Felix said.

“How long were you in there?”

“My God, I don't know, do you think I timed it? When Archie Goodwin was talking to us, and Mr. Schriver came and said they were going to start, I went pretty soon after that.”

Wolfe's head jerked to me. “So that's where you were. I might have known there were young women around. Supposing that Miss Faber went to fix her hair shortly after you left—say three minutes—how long was she at it, if the last plate had been taken from the table when she returned to the kitchen?”

I gave it a thought. “Fifteen to twenty minutes.”

He growled at her, “What was wrong with your hair?”

“I didn't say anything was wrong with it.” She was getting riled. “Look, Mister, do you want all the details?”

“No.” Wolfe surveyed them for a moment, not amiably, took in enough air to fill all his middle—say two bushels—let it out again, turned his back on them, saw the glass of wine Fritz had left on a table, went and picked it up, smelled it, and stood gazing at it. The girls started to make noises, and, hearing them, he put the glass down and came back.

“You're in a pickle,” he said. “So am I. You heard me apologize to Mr. Brenner and avow my responsibility for his undertaking to cook that meal. When, upstairs, I saw that Mr. Pyle would die, and reached the conclusions I told you of, I felt myself under compulsion to expose the culprit. I am committed. When I came down here I thought it would be a simple matter to learn who had served poisoned food to Mr. Pyle, but I was wrong. It's obvious now that I have to deal with one who is not only resourceful and ingenious, but also quick-witted and audacious. While I was closing in on her just now, as I thought, inexorably approaching the point where she would either have to contradict one of you or deny that she had served the first course to anyone, she was fleering at me inwardly, and with reason, for her coup had worked. She had slipped through my fingers, and—”

“But she didn't!” It came from one of them whose name I didn't have. “She said she didn't serve anybody!”

Wolfe shook his head. “No. Not Miss Faber. She is the only one who is eliminated. She says she was absent from this room during the entire period when the plates were being taken from the table, and she wouldn't dare to say that if she had in fact been here and taken a plate and carried it in to Mr. Pyle. She would certainly have been seen by some of you.”

He shook his head again. “Not her. But it could
have been any other one of you. You—I speak now to that one, still to be identified—you must have extraordinary faith in your attendant godling, even allowing for your craft. For you took great risks. You took a plate from the table—not the first probably, but one of the first—and on your way to the dining room you put arsenic in the cream. That wasn't difficult; you might even have done it without stopping if you had the arsenic in a paper spill. You could get rid of the spill later, perhaps in the room which Miss Faber calls a john. You took the plate to Mr. Pyle, came back here immediately, got another plate, took it to the dining room, and gave it to one who had not been served. I am not guessing; it had to be like that. It was a remarkably adroit stratagem, but you can't possibly be impregnable.”

He turned to Zoltan. “You say you watched as the plates were taken, and each of them took only one. Did one of them come back and take another?”

Zoltan looked fully as unhappy as Fritz. “I'm thinking, Mr. Wolfe. I can try to think, but I'm afraid it won't help. I didn't look at their faces, and they're all dressed alike. I guess I didn't watch very close.”

“Fritz?”

“No, sir. I was at the range.”

“Then try this, Zoltan. Who were the first ones to take plates—the first three or four?”

Zoltan slowly shook his head. “I'm afraid it's no good, Mr. Wolfe. I could try to think, but I couldn't be sure.” He moved his eyes right to left and back again, at the girls. “I tell you, I wasn't looking at their faces.” He extended his hands, palms up. “You will consider, Mr. Wolfe, I was not thinking of poison. I was only seeing that the plates were carried properly. Was I thinking which one has got arsenic? No.”