The Red Box (17 page)

“No more than here, as far as I remember—of course I was young then. He was wounded in the war, and afterwards came to visit us in Spain—that is, my mother, I was only two years old—and he went to Egypt with us a little later, but when we went on to the Orient he went back—”

“One moment, please.” Wolfe was frowning. “Let us tidy up the chronology. There seems to have been quite a party in Spain; almost Mr. McNair’s last words were that he had gone to Spain with his baby daughter. We’ll start when your life started. You were born, you told me yesterday, in Paris—on May 7th, 1915. Your father was already in the war, as a member of the British Aviation Corps, and he was killed when you were a few months old. When did your mother take you to Spain?”

“Early in 1916. She was afraid to stay in Paris, on account of the war. We went first to Barcelona and then to Cartagena. A little later Uncle Boyd and Glenna came down and joined us there. He had no
money and his health was bad, and mother … helped him. I think Perren came, not long after, partly because Uncle Boyd was there—they had both been friends of my father’s. Then in 1917 Glenna died, and soon after that Uncle Boyd went back to Scotland, and mother took me to Egypt because they were afraid of a revolution or something in Spain, and Perren went with us.”

“Good. I own a house in Egypt which I haven’t seen for twenty years. It has Rhages and Veramine tiles on the doorway. How long were you in Egypt?”

“About two years. In 1919, when I was four years old—of course mother has told me all this—three English people were killed in a riot in Cairo, and mother decided to leave. Perren went back to France. Mother and I went to Bombay, and later to Bali and Japan and Hawaii. My uncle, who was the trustee of my property, kept insisting that I should have an American education, and finally, in 1924—I was nine years old then—we left Hawaii and came to New York. It was from that time on, really, that I knew Uncle Boyd, because of course I didn’t remember him from Spain, since I had been only two years old.”

“He had his business in New York when you got here?”

“No. He has told me—he started designing for Wilmerding in London and was very successful and became a partner, and then he decided New York was better and came over here in 1925 and went in for himself. Of course he looked mother up first thing, and she was a little help to him on account of the people she knew, but he would have gone to the top anyway because he had great ability. He was very talented. Paris and London were beginning to copy him. You would never have thought, just being with him, talking
with him … you would never have thought …”

She faltered, and stopped. Wolfe began to murmur something at her to steady her, but an interruption saved him the trouble. Fritz appeared to announce lunch. Wolfe pushed back his chair:

“Your coat will be all right here, Miss Frost. Your hat? But permit me to insist, as a favor; to eat with a hat on, except in a railroad station, is barbarous. Thank you. Restaurant? I know nothing of restaurants; short of compulsion, I would not eat in one were Vatel himself the chef.”

Then, after we were seated at the table, when Fritz came to pass the relish platter, Wolfe performed the introduction according to his custom with guests who had not tasted that cooking before:

“Miss Frost, Mr. Frost, this is Mr. Brenner.”

Also according to custom, there was no shop talk during the meal. Llewellyn was fidgety, but he ate; and the fact appeared to be that our new client was hungry as the devil. Probably she had had no breakfast. Anyway, she gave the fricandeau a play which made Wolfe regard her with open approval. He carried the burden of the conversation, chiefly about Egypt, tiles, the uses of a camel’s double lip, and the theory that England’s colonizing genius was due to her repulsive climate, on account of which Britons with any sense and willpower invariably decided to go somewhere else to work. It was two-thirty when the salad was finished, so we went back to the office and had Fritz serve coffee there.

Helen Frost telephoned her mother. Apparently there was considerable parental protest from the other end of the wire, for Helen sounded first persuasive, then irritated, and finally fairly sassy. During that performance Llewellyn sat and scowled at her,
and I couldn’t tell whether the scowl was for her or the opposition. It had no effect on our client either way, for she was sitting at my desk and didn’t see it.

Wolfe started in on her again, resuming the Perren Gebert tune, but for the first half hour or so it was spotty because the telephone kept interrupting. Johnny Keems called to say that he could leave the Pritchard job if we needed him, and I told him that we’d manage to struggle along somehow. Dudley Frost phoned to give his son hell, and Llewellyn took it calmly and announced that his cousin Helen needed him where he was, whereupon she kept a straight face but I smothered a snicker. Next came a ring from Fred Durkin, to say that they had arrived and taken possession of Glennanne, finding no one there, and had begun operations; the phone at the cottage was out of order, so Saul had sent Fred to the village to make that report. A man named Collinger phoned and insisted on speaking to Wolfe, and I listened in and took it down as usual; he was Boyden McNair’s lawyer, and wanted to know if Wolfe could call at his office right away for a conference regarding the will, and of course the bare idea set Wolfe’s digestion back at least ten minutes. It was arranged that Collinger would come to 35th Street the following morning. Then, a little after three o’clock, Inspector Cramer got us, and reported that his army was making uniform progress on all fronts: namely, none. No red box and no information about it; no hide or hair of motive anywhere; nothing among McNair’s papers that could be stretched to imply murder; no line on a buyer of potassium cyanide; no anything.

Cramer sounded a little weary. “Here’s a funny item, too,” he said in a wounded tone, “we can’t find the young Frosts anywhere. Your client, Lew, isn’t at
his home or his office in the Portland Theatre or anywhere else, and Helen, the daughter, isn’t around either. Her mother says she went out around eleven o’clock, but she doesn’t know where, and I’ve learned that Helen was closer to McNair than anyone else, very close friends, so she’s our best chance on the red box. Then what’s she doing running around town, with McNair just croaked? There’s just a chance that something’s got too hot for them and they’ve faded. Lew was up at the Frost apartment on 65th Street and they went out together. We’re trying to trail—”

“Mr. Cramer. Please. I’ve mumbled at you twice. Miss Helen Frost and Mr. Llewellyn Frost are in my office; I’m conversing with them. They had lunch—”

“Huh? They’re there now?”

“Yes. They got here this morning shortly after you left.”

“I’ll be damned.” Cramer shrilled a little. “What are you trying to do, lick off some cream for yourself? I want to see them. Ask them to come down—or wait, let me talk to her. Put her on.”

“Now, Mr. Cramer.” Wolfe cleared his throat. “I do not lick cream; and this man and woman came to see me unannounced and unexpected. I am perfectly willing that you should talk with her, but there is no point—”

“What do you mean, willing? What’s that, humor? Why the devil shouldn’t you be willing?”

“I should. But it is appropriate to mention it, since Miss Frost is my client, and is therefore under my—”

“Your client? Since when?” Cramer was boiling. “What kind of a shenanigan is this? You told me Lew Frost hired you!”

“So he did. But that—er—we have changed that. I have—speaking as a horse—I have changed riders in
the middle of the stream. I am working for Miss Frost. I was about to say there is no point in a duplication of effort. She has had a bad shock and is under a strain. You may question her if you wish, but I have done so and am not through with her, and there is little likelihood that her interests will conflict with yours in the end. She is as anxious to find Mr. McNair’s murderer as you are; that is what she hired me for. I may tell you this: neither she nor her cousin has any knowledge of the red box. They have never seen it or heard of it.”

“The devil.” There was a pause on the wire. “I want to see her and have a talk with her.”

Wolfe sighed. “In that infernal den? She is tired, she has nothing to say that can help you, she is worth two million dollars, and she will be old enough to vote before next fall. Why don’t you call at her home after dinner this evening? Or send one of your lieutenants?”

“Because I—Oh, the hell with it. I ought to know better than to argue with you. And she doesn’t know where the red box is?”

“She knows nothing whatever about it. Nor does her cousin. My word for that.”

“Okay. I’ll get her later maybe. Let me know what you find, huh?”

“By all means.”

Wolfe hung up and pushed the instrument away, leaned back and locked his fingers on his belly, and slowly shook his head as he murmured, “That man talks too much. —I’m sure, Miss Frost, that you won’t be offended at missing a visit to police headquarters. It is one of my strongest prejudices, my disinclination to permit a client of mine to appear there. Let us hope that Mr. Cramer’s search for the red box will keep him entertained.”

Llewellyn put in, “In my opinion, that’s the only thing to do anyway, wait till it’s found. All this hash of ancient history—if you were as careful to protect your client from your own annoyance as you are—”

“I remind you, sir, you are here by sufferance. Your cousin has the sense, when she hires an expert, to permit him his hocus-pocus. —What were we saying, Miss Frost? Oh, yes. You were telling me that Mr. Gebert came to New York in 1931. You were then sixteen years old. You said that he is forty-four, so he was then thirty-nine, not an advanced age. I presume he called upon your mother at once, as an old friend?”

She nodded. “Yes. We knew he was coming; he had written. Of course I didn’t remember him; I hadn’t seen him since I was four years old.”

“Of course not. Did he perhaps come on a political mission? I understand that he was a member of the
camelots du roi.
”

“I don’t think so. I’m sure he didn’t—but that’s silly, certainly I can’t be sure. But I think not.”

“At any rate, as far as you know, he doesn’t work, and you don’t like that.”

“I don’t like that in anyone.”

“Remarkable sentiment for an heiress. However. If Mr. Gebert should marry you, that would be a job for him. Let us abandon him to that slim hope for his redemption. It is getting on for four o’clock, when I must leave you. I need to ask you about a sentence you left unfinished yesterday, shortly after I made my unsuccessful appeal to you. You told me that your father died when you were only a few months old, and that therefore you had never had a father, and then you said, ‘That is,’ and stopped. I prodded you, but you said it was nothing, and we let it go at that. It may in fact be nothing, but I would like to have it—whatever
was ready for your tongue. Do you remember?”

She nodded. “It really was nothing. Just something foolish.”

“Let me have it. I’ve told you, we’re combing a meadow for a mustard seed.”

“But this was nothing at all. Just a dream, a childish dream I had once. Then I had it several times after that, always the same. A dream about myself …”

“Tell me.”

“Well … the first time I had it I was about six years old, in Bali. I’ve wondered since if anything had happened that day to make me have such a dream, but I couldn’t remember anything. I dreamed I was a baby, not an infant but big enough to walk and run, around two I imagine, and on a chair, on a napkin, there was an orange that had been peeled and divided into sections. I took a section of the orange and ate it, then took another one and turned to a man sitting there on a bench, and handed it to him, and I said plainly, ‘For daddy.’ It was my voice, only it was a baby talking. Then I ate another section, and then took another one and said ‘For daddy’ again, and kept on that way till it was all gone. I woke up from the dream trembling and began to cry. Mother was sleeping in another bed—it was on a screened veranda—and she came to me and asked what was the matter, and I said, ‘I’m crying because I feel so good.’ I never did tell her what the dream was. I had it quite a few times after that—I think the last time was when I was about eleven years old, here in New York. I always cried when I had it.”

Wolfe asked, “What did the man look like?”

She shook her head. “That’s why it was just foolish.
It wasn’t a man, it just looked like a man. There was one photograph of my father which mother had kept, but I couldn’t tell if it looked like him in the dream. It just … I just simply called it daddy.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe’s lips pushed out and in. At length he observed, “Possibly remarkable, on account of the specific picture. Did you eat sections of orange when you were young?”

“I suppose so. I’ve always liked oranges.”

“Well. No telling. Possibly, as you say, nothing at all. You mentioned a photograph of your father. Your mother had kept only one?”

“Yes. She kept that for me.”

“None for herself?”

“No.” A pause, then Helen said quietly. “There’s no secret about it. And it was perfectly natural. Mother was bitterly offended at the terms of father’s will, and I think she had a right to be. They had a serious misunderstanding of some sort, I never knew what, about the time I was born, but no matter how serious it was … anyway, he left her nothing. Nothing whatever, not even a small income.”

Wolfe nodded. “So I understand. It was left in trust for you, with your uncle—your father’s brother Dudley—as trustee. Have you ever read the will?”

“Once, a long while ago. Not long after we came to New York my uncle had me read it.”

“At the age of nine. But you waded through it. Good for you. I also understand that your uncle was invested with sole power and authority, without any right of oversight by you or anyone else. I believe the usual legal phrase is ‘absolute and uncontrolled discretion.’ So that, as a matter of fact, you do not know how much you will be worth on your twenty-first birthday;
it may be millions and it may be nothing. You may be in debt. If any—”