Too Many Clients (4 page)

“Jesus Kee-rist!”

“Your new home,” I told him. “I do hope you’ll be happy here. The idea is, you take your pick from the pictures. Something like the Mountain Room at the Churchill with live trout and you choose the one you want for lunch. I strongly recommend the one over there sitting on a rose bush. If she can stand thorns she can stand you.”

He put his bag down. “You know, Archie, I’ve always wondered why you didn’t marry. How long have you had it?”

“Oh, ten years, I guess. I have others here and there around town. I’m turning this one over to you for a while. Kitchen, bathroom, TV, maid service. Like it?”

“Good God. I’m a married man.”

“Yeah. Too bad. I’d like to stay and explain the pictures to you, but I have to go. The point is, if a visitor comes, someone should be here to receive her. It could be a him, but more likely it would be a her. Most likely there won’t be any, but there might be. She might come at any hour, day or night. The less you know the better; just take my word for it that if she steps out of that elevator you are in a position to refuse to let her get back in, and there’s no other way out of here. Identify yourself or not, as you prefer. Ring me, and I’ll come.”

He was frowning. “Alone with a woman, restraining her by force isn’t so good.”

“You won’t have to touch her unless she starts it.”

“She sticks her head out a window and yells police.”

“Not a chance. There’s no window, and she wouldn’t want anyone to know she’s here, least of all a cop. The one thing she’ll want is to get out, and fast.”

He was still frowning. “The hole that Yeager’s body was found in is right out front. Maybe I ought to know a little more.”

“Not from me. Why drag in Yeager'He’s dead; I read it in the paper. If the phone rings take it and ask who it is and see what happens, but don’t say who you are. That’s the door to the kitchen.” I pointed. “There’s some fancy stuff in the refrigerator when you get hungry. The people down below are Mr. and Mrs. Cesar Perez and their daughter Maria. Did you see Maria?”

“No.”

“I’m going to marry her when I find time. I’ll tell Mrs. Perez to bring you up a loaf of bread, and if you have to have anything she’ll get it. She and her husband are out on a limb and they’re counting on me to get a ladder. Okay, enjoy the pictures. You couldn’t ask for a better chance to study anatomy.” I opened the elevator door.

“What if it’s a man that comes?”

“It won’t be. If it is, stick to the program; that’s why I told you to have a gun.”

“What if it’s a cop?”

“One chance in a million. Not even that. Tell him you’ve forgotten your name and he’ll have to ring me at Nero Wolfe’s office. Then I’ll know what happened.”

“And I’ll be in the coop.”

“Right. But not for long. We’ll have you out by Christmas easy. There’s half a pound of fresh caviar in the refrigerator, twenty dollars’ worth. Help yourself.”

I entered the elevator. Downstairs I explained the situation to Mrs. Perez and asked her to take up a loaf of bread, and left the house. My watch said noon, on the dot, as I headed for Columbus Avenue for a taxi.

At five minutes past one, Wolfe, at his desk, growled at me, “Your objective was to find an acceptable client, not a pair of wretches who probably killed him and another wretch who offers a reward for a cigarette case. I concede your craft, your finesse, and your gumption, and I even felicitate you, but if you have discovered the culprits, as seems probable, where do you send a bill?”

I had reported in full, omitting only one detail, a factual description of Maria. He was quite capable of assuming, or pretending to assume, that I was prejudiced in favor of Mr. and Mrs. Perez on account of their daughter. I had described the place accurately and completely, and had even included my handling of the nightie problem. I had admitted that I had tried to get Saul Panzer (ten dollars an hour), and had got Fred Durkin instead (seven-fifty an hour) only because Saul was not available.

“I won’t see them,” he said.

I knew, or thought I did, where the real snag was, but I had to go easy. I nodded thoughtfully. “Of course they could have killed him,” I said, “but one will get you five that they didn’t. For the reasons I gave. His tone and his expression when he told me why he put the tarp over the body. The fact that she let the daughter come to the door when I rang the bell. If she had killed him she would have come herself. But chiefly, with him alive they were in clover. Of course he was paying them plenty. With him dead they’re not only minus a fat income, they’re in a hell of a fix, and they would have been even if I hadn’t got to them. When the executor of his estate learns that he owned that house and goes to inspect it?”

I crossed my legs. “Naturally,” I said, “you don’t like it, I understand that. If it was just a nice place he had fixed up where he could safely spend a night now and then with his mistress, that wouldn’t be so bad, but obviously it wasn’t that. There are probably half a dozen women with keys to that door and elevator, and maybe twenty or more. I realize that you wouldn’t like to be involved with that kind of setup, but now that I have�”

“Nonsense,” he said.

I raised a brow. “Nonsense?”

“Yes. A modern satyr is part man, part pig, and part jackass. He hasn’t even the charm of the roguish; he doesn’t lean gracefully against a tree with a flute in his hand. The only quality he has preserved from his Attic ancestors is his lust, and he gratifies it in dark corners or other men’s beds or hotel rooms, not in the shade of an olive tree on a sunny hillside. The preposterous bower of carnality you have described is a sorry makeshift, but at least Mr. Yeager tried. A pig and a jackass, yes, but the flute strain was in him too�as it once was in me, in my youth. No doubt he deserved to die, but I would welcome a sufficient inducement to expose his killer.”

I suppose I was staring. “You would?”

“Certainly. But who is likely to offer it'Granting that you have shown commendable alacrity and wit, and that you are right about Mr. and Mrs. Perez, where are we'Where is a prospective client'To whom can we disclose the existence of that preposterous bower and his connection with it'Neither his family nor his business associates, surely. They would be more likely to want it concealed than disclosed, and are we blackmailers'I concede that there is one remote possibility: who is the man who came here yesterday posing as Yeager, and why did he come?”

I shook my head. “Sorry I can’t oblige. Have you read my report?”

“Yes. Manifestly he is a man with a special and educated fondness for words. He said, ‘Else there was no use coming.’ He said, ‘I can speak in assured confidence?’ He said, ‘That will suffice.’ The last two are merely noticeable, but the first is extraordinary. ‘Else’ instead of ‘or’ or ‘otherwise’'Remarkable.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. But also, merely talking along, he quoted from John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi: ‘Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.’ He quoted from John Harington’s Alcilia: ‘Treason doth never prosper.’ He quoted from Browning’s Paracelsus: ‘Measure your mind’s height by the shade it casts.’ People quote to display their erudition, but why to you'You heard him and were looking at him. Was he trying to impress you?” “No. He was talking, that was all.”

“Just so. And he had sentences at the tip of his tongue from two Elizabethans and Robert Browning. Not one man in ten thousand is familiar with both Webster and Browning. He’s a pedagogue. He’s a teacher of literature.”

“You’re not.”

“I recognized only Webster. I looked up the others. I don’t know Harington, and Browning repels me. So he is one in ten thousand, and there are less than a thousand of him in New York. I invite a trial of your ingenuity: if he knew Yeager was dead, either because he had killed him or otherwise, why did he come here with that tarradiddle?”

“I pass. I’ve already tried it, last night. If he had killed him, the only possibility was that he was cracked, and he wasn’t. If he hadn’t killed him but knew he was dead, the best I could do was that he wanted to call attention to that block on Eighty-second Street and that house, and to buy that I’d have to be cracked myself. An anonymous phone call to the police would have been quicker and simpler. Can you do any better?”

“No. No one can. He did not know Yeager was dead. Then, thinking Yeager alive, what did he hope to accomplish by that masquerade'He could not assume with confidence that when Yeager failed to appear you would either telephone his house or go there, but he knew that before long, either last evening or this morning, you would communicate with him, you would learn that your caller was an impostor, and you would tell Yeager about it. With what result'Merely that Yeager would know what the impostor had told you. If he identified the impostor from your description, he would know that that man knew of his visits to the Eighty-second Street address, but I reject that. If the impostor wanted Yeager to know who knew about that house, why all the fuss of coming to you'Why not just tell him, by phone or mail or face-to-face, or even in an anonymous note'No. He knew that Yeager would not identify him from your description. He merely wanted Yeager to know that someone knew of his connection with that house, and possibly also that you and I now knew about it. So I doubt if he could or would be helpful, but all the same I would like to speak with him.”

“So would I. That was one reason I got Fred there. There’s a bare chance that he has keys and will show up.”

Wolfe grunted. “Pfui. The chance that anyone at all will come there is minute and you know it. You got Fred there because I cannot now say merely that the incident is closed. I would have to tell you to recall him, and you know that I respect your commitments as I do my own. Yes, Fritz?”

“Lunch is ready, sir. The parsley had wilted and I used chives.”

“We’ll see.” Wolfe pushed his chair back and arose. “Pepper?”

“No, sir. I thought not, with chives.”

“I agree, but we’ll see.”

I followed him out and across the hall to the dining room. As we finished the clam juice Fritz came with the first installment of dumplings, four apiece. Some day I would like to see how long I can keep going on Fritz’s marrow dumplings, of chopped beef marrow, bread crumbs, parsley (chives today), grated lemon rind, salt, and eggs, boiled four minutes in strong meat stock. If he boiled them all at once of course they would get mushy after the first eight or ten, but he does them eight at a time, and they keep coming. They are one of the few dishes with which I stay neck and neck with Wolfe clear to the tape, and they were the reason I had let it pass when he had said he wouldn’t see the clients I had got. Those marrow dumplings induce a state of mind in which anybody would see anybody. And it worked. We had finished the salad and returned to the office, and Fritz had brought coffee, when the doorbell rang. I went to the hall for a look through the one-way glass, stepped back in, and told Wolfe, “Meg Duncan. At least we might as well collect for the cigarette case. Say two bucks?”

He glared. “Confound you.” He put his cup down. “What if she killed him'Does that concern us'Very well, you invited her. Five minutes.”

I went to the front and opened the door. It wasn’t a thirty-year-old female with a good enough face, in a plain gray suit and a plain little hat, who gave me a smile that would warm a glacier as she crossed the sill. The face had been arranged by a professional and was being handled by a professional, and while the dress and jacket were not spectacular they were by no means plain. And the voice was the voice of an angel who might consider taking a week off if she got an invitation that appealed to her. Not only did she use it on me in the hall, but also on Wolfe when I steered her to the office and he stood, inclined his head an eighth of an inch, and indicated the red leather chair.

Her smile was on full. Granting that it was professional, it was a damned good smile. “I know how busy you men are with important things,” she said, “so I won’t take your time.” To me: “Did you find it?”

“He did,” Wolfe said. He sat. “Sit down, Miss Duncan. I like eyes at my level. A brief discussion may be necessary. If you answer two or three questions satisfactorily you may have the cigarette case when you have paid me fifty thousand dollars.”

The smile went. “Fifty thousand'That’s fantastic!”

“Sit down, please.”

She looked at me, saw merely a working detective, moved to the red leather chair, sat on the edge, and said, “Of course you don’t mean that. You can’t.”

Wolfe, leaning back, regarded her. “I do and I don’t. Our position�I include Mr. Goodwin�is peculiar and a little delicate. The body of a man who had died by violence was found in that hole on that street near that house. He was a man of means and standing. The police don’t know of his connection with that house and his quarters there, but we do, and we intend to use that knowledge to our profit. I don’t suppose you are familiar with the statutes regarding suppression of evidence of a crime. It may even�”

“My cigarette case isn’t evidence of a crime!”

“I haven’t said it is. It may even lead to a charge of accessory to murder. Interpretation of that statute is in some respects vague, but not in others. Knowingly concealing or disposing of a tangible object that would help to identify the criminal or convict him would of course be suppression of evidence; but words may be evidence or may not. Usually not. If you were to tell me now that you entered that room Sunday night, found Yeager’s body there, and got Mr. Perez to help you take it from the house and put it in that hole, that would not be evidence. I couldn’t be successfully prosecuted if I failed to tell the police what you had told me; I would merely swear that I thought you were lying.”

She had slid back in the chair a little. “I wasn’t in that room Sunday night.”

“Not evidence. You may be lying. I’m only explaining the delicacy of our position. You told Mr. Goodwin you would pay him a thousand dollars to find your cigarette case and keep it for you, and give it to you later at his discretion. We can’t accept that offer. It would engage us not to turn it over to the police even if it became apparent that it would help to identify or convict a murderer, and that’s too great a risk for a thousand dollars. You may have it for fifty thousand, cash or a certified check. Do you want it?”

I think he meant it. I think he would have handed it over for thirty grand, or even twenty, if she had been dumb enough to pay it. He had let me go up to 82nd Street with five Cs in my pocket for one specific reason, to see if I could flush a prospect for a worthy fee, and if she was fool enough, or desperate enough, to pay twenty grand, not to mention fifty, for her cigarette case, he could call it a day and leave the murder investigation to the law. As for the risk, he had taken bigger ones. He was saying only that he would give her the case, not that he would forget about it.

She was staring at him. “I didn’t think,” she said, “that Nero Wolfe was a blackmailer.”

“Neither does the dictionary, madam.” He swiveled to the stand that had held the three Websters he had worn out and now held a new one. Opening it and finding the page, he read: ” ‘Payment of money exacted by means of intimidation; also, extortion of money from a person by threats of public accusation, exposure, or censure.’” He swiveled back. “I don’t fit. I haven’t threatened or intimidated you.”

“But you . . .” She looked at me and back to him. “Where would I get fifty thousand dollars'You might as well say a million. What are you going to do'Are you going to give it to the police?”

“Not by choice. Only under the compulsion of circumstance. A factor would be your answers to my questions.” “You haven’t asked me any questions.”

“I do now. Were you in that room Sunday evening or night?”

“No.” Her chin was up.

“When were you last there'Before today.”

“I haven’t said I was ever there.”

“That’s egregious. Your behavior this morning. Your offer to Mr. Goodwin. You had keys. When?”

She set her teeth on her lip. Five seconds. “More than a week ago. A week ago Saturday. That’s when I left the cigarette case. Oh my God.” She extended a hand, not a professional gesture. “Mr. Wolfe, this could ruin my career. I haven’t seen him since that night. I don’t know who killed him, or why, or anything. Why must you drag me into it'What good will it do?”

“I didn’t drag you there this morning, madam. I don’t ask how often you visited that room because your answer would be worthless, but when you did visit it were others there?”

“No.”

“Was anyone ever there when you were besides Mr. Yeager?” “No. Never.”

“But other women went there. That’s not surmise, it’s established. Of course you knew that; Mr. Yeager was not concerned to conceal it. Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t deny that you knew there were others?”

She thought she was going to, but his eyes had her pinned. She swallowed the yes and said, “No. I knew that.”

“Of course. He wanted you to. His arrangement for keeping slippers and garments testifies that he derived pleasure not only from his present companion but also from her awareness that she had�uh�colleagues. Or rivals. So surely he wasn’t silent about them'Surely he spoke of them, in comparison, in praise or derogation'And if he didn’t name them he must have aroused conjecture. This is my most instant question, Miss Duncan: who are they?”