“I’d do it for you too. Mother, I would.”

  “I believe you would. But I hope …” Mrs. Blount let it hang. She turned. “Mr. Goodwin, it seems to be your lot to hear our intimate affairs. That evening I didn’t shake hands with you because I wouldn’t mean it, but I would now.” She extended a hand. “If you would.”

  I moved to take the hand. It was small and firm, and cold “There’s no longer a difference of opinion,” I said “Why not sit down?”

  Sally had sat, and where, do you suppose? In the red leather chair. As I moved up one of the yellow ones for her mother I was thinking that jealousy wasn’t enough, it was more complicated than that, but Mrs. Blount was speaking. “May I see Nero Wolfe? If he’s not too busy?”

  I said I’d see, and went. In the kitchen Wolfe was on the stool at the big table, drinking beer and watching Fritz peel shallots. He gave me a frown and asked, “They’re bickering?”

  “No, sir. They’re both sorry, but Sally copped the red leather chair. Mrs. Blount wants to see you if you’re not too busy. She shook hands with me, so be prepared for physical contact with a woman.”

  Nothing doing. He said something to Fritz, left the stool, picked up the glass with one hand and the bottle with the other, proceeded to the office and on in, stopped three paces short of the yellow chair, said, “I’m Nero Wolfe, Mrs. Blount,” bowed from the waist like an ambassador or a butler, went to his desk, put the glass and bottle down, sat, and asked Sally, “Should you be up? Dr. Vollmer said you need rest and quiet.”

  “I’m all right,” she said. She didn’t look it.

  He turned to the mother. “You wanted me?”

  She nodded. “Yes. My husband does. He wants you to come—he wants to see you. Today.”

  Wolfe grunted. “You have spoken with him?”

  “No, but Mr. McKinney has. He’s the senior partner in the law firm. He saw him this morning. My husband told him that he wouldn’t—oh. Perhaps you don’t know. Did Mr. Kalmus tell you, before he—did he tell you yesterday that my husband had written to you to engage your services?”

  “No.”

  “He told me, on the phone yesterday afternoon. He said—”

  “What time did he phone you?”

  “About six o’clock. A little before six.”

  “Where did he phone from?”

  “I don’t know. He said he had told my husband that he thought you should be engaged to investigate something, and my husband had written to you. Then this morning—”

  “Did Mr. Kalmus say what I was to investigate?”

  “He didn’t say what, just that it was something only he and my husband knew about. Then this morning Mr. McKinney went to see my husband, and—” She stopped, and smiled. It wasn’t actually a smile, just a little twist of her lips that it took good eyes to see. “It isn’t natural for me,” she said, “saying ‘my husband, my husband.’ Since you’re going to … I call him Matt. If I may?”

  “As you please, madam.”

  “This morning Mr. McKinney went to see him, to tell him about Dan—Mr. Kalmus, and he said he wants to see you. He wouldn’t tell Mr. McKinney what you are to investigate. Mr. McKinney is getting a permit for you from the District Attorney. He wanted to phone you, to ask you to come to see him, but I told him I would rather come to you. I … I insisted.”

  She didn’t look like an insister or sound like one, but toughness is as toughness does, and there she was, no red in her eyes and no sag to her jaw, only a few hours after she had heard about Kalmus. But she wasn’t cold, though her hand had been; you couldn’t possibly look at her and call her cold.

  Wolfe had his arms folded. “The permit will have to be for Mr. Goodwin,” he said, “since I leave my house only on personal errands. But I need—”

  “Matt told Mr. McKinney that he must see you.”

  “Outside this house Mr. Goodwin is me, in effect—if not my alter ego, my vicar. But I need some information from you. I presume it’s your opinion that your husband did not kill Paul Jerin.”

  “Not my opinion. Of course he didn’t.”

  “Have you considered the alternatives?”

  “Why … yes. Yes, I have.”

  “Eliminating the two men in the kitchen, the cook and the steward, and on that I accept the conclusion of the police and the District Attorney, one of four men must have put the arsenic in the chocolate. The four messengers. You realize that?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s manifest. But what was the motive? None of them had had any connection or association with Jerin. Therefore I concluded that the purpose was to injure your husband—indeed, to destroy him—and that purpose had apparently been attained. Yesterday my attention was centered on Mr. Kalmus as the most likely of the four. His objective was you. He wanted you, and your husband was in the way. When Mr. Goodwin—”

  “That’s absurd, Mr. Wolfe. Absurd.”

  He shook his head. “It still isn’t absurd, now that I’ve seen you. For any man vulnerable to the lure of a woman, and most men are, you would be a singular temptation. Kalmus’s death by violence has made the assumption of his guilt untenable, but it hasn’t rendered it absurd. Now we have the other three—Hausman, Yerkes, and Farrow, your nephew. By the only acceptable hypothesis left to us, one of them killed both Jerin and Kalmus—Jerin to injure your husband, and Kalmus because he knew or suspected the truth and threatened exposure. When Mr. Goodwin sees your husband he may learn what it is that Kalmus knew, but you are here and I have questions for you; and if you hope to see your husband cleared you will answer with complete candor. Which of those three men had reason to destroy your husband?”

  Her eyes were meeting his, straight. “None of them,” she said. “Or if they did … no. It’s impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible in the relations between men and women. Your nephew, Morton Farrow. It has been suggested that he calculated that with your husband gone, through you he would be able to take control of the corporation. Is that impossible?”

  “It certainly is. I wouldn’t give my nephew control of anything whatever, and he knows it.” Again the little twist of her lips. “He came to see you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  Wolfe nodded. “Quite. But it’s still possible that he miscalculated. Mr. Hausman?”

  She made a little gesture. “Ernst Hausman is Matt’s oldest friend. He is our daughter’s godfather. He would do anything for Matt, anything. I’m absolutely sure.”

  “He’s a dotard. Just short of demented. He came Monday evening to propose a scheme to extricate your husband unequaled, in my experience, for folly and fatuity. Either he’s unhinged or he’s exceptionally crafty, and if the latter you have been hoodwinked. Mr. Yerkes?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Your daughter got him to come here, and he told me himself of dissension with your husband. He wants to be president of his bank, and your husband favors another candidate.”

  She nodded. “I know. Matt has told me. Mr. Yerkes knows why, and he doesn’t resent it. It hasn’t affected their friendship.”

  “Pfui. Are they paragons? But granting that, even a paragon is still a man. If it wasn’t absurd to suppose that Mr. Kalmus coveted you, what about Mr. Yerkes? He has seen much of you, hasn’t he?”

  For five seconds I thought she wasn’t going to reply. She sat stiff, her eyes level at him. Then she said, “Must you go out of your way to be offensive, Mr. Wolfe?”

  “Nonsense,” he snapped. “Offensive to whom? I suggest that you have a person and a personality capable of arousing desire; should that offend you? I suggest that Mr. Yerkes is not blind and has sensibility; should that offend him? We are not tittle-tattling, madam; we are considering your husband’s fate. I asked for candor. How does Mr. Yerkes feel toward you?”

  “We are friends.” She stayed stiff. “But only because he and my husband are friends. My daughter has given you a wrong impression.” She turned to the daughter. “I’m not blaming you, Sally, but you have.” Back to Wolfe. “If you didn’t mean to offend … very well. But I’m just what I am, a middle-aged woman, and what you suggest, I can’t believe it. I certainly can’t believe it of Charles Yerkes.”

  Obviously she meant every word. Lon Cohen had been right, she simply didn’t know it. Wolfe’s eyes were narrowed at her. The minute we were alone he would ask his expert on females for the low-down on her, and the expert was ready.

  “Then we’ve wasted ten minutes,” he said. He looked up at the wall clock. “What is to be done, what can be done, now depends on what Mr. Goodwin learns from your husband, and speculation on that would be idle. Can you reach Mr. McKinney now? To tell him that the permit must be for Mr. Goodwin?”

  “Yes. At his office. He said he would be there.”

  “Do you know his number?”

  She said she did, and floated up, and I vacated my chair for her; and she came and took it and dialed. My eyes went to Sally, and the look she gave me said as plain as words, And now of course you’ve fallen for her too. Which was a lie. I merely agreed with Wolfe that she had a person and a personality capable of arousing desire, a purely objective judgment.

  12

  At a quarter to five that afternoon I was seated on a wooden chair at a wooden table, face to face with Matthew Blount, with my notebook on the table and my pen in my hand. After years of practice I had proved more than once that I could report verbatim, without notes, an hour-long three- or four-way conversation, but I was taking no chances with this one. Once before, six years back, I had been admitted to the hoosegow to confer with a man in for the big one, by name Paul Herold, alias Peter Hays, but that time there had been a grill between us, in a big room which contained other inmates and visitors. This time the room was small and we had no company; the guard who had brought him was standing outside the glass door. Of course there were two reasons why the DA had let me come at an off hour and given us some privacy: one, Blount was a prominent citizen with plenty of prominent friends; and two, the murder of Kalmus had made him suspect that he had hold of the short end of the stick.

  Matthew Blount, forty-seven, Harvard 1937, did not look as you would expect of a man who had been in the jug for twelve days on a murder rap. Not that he was chipper, but the skin of his well-arranged face, shaved that day, was smooth and clear, his hair had been trimmed within three or four days, his hands were perfectly clean and so were his nails, his custom-made jacket might have been pressed that morning, his shirt was on its first day, and he had a necktie on. He could have gone as was to Peacock Alley for a drink if he could have got past the guard at the door and on out.

  It wasn’t easy to persuade him that I was as good as Nero Wolfe. I explained that even if Wolfe had broken the one rule he never broke, and come, it wouldn’t have made any difference, because as soon as he got home he would have told me everything that was worth telling.

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Blount said. “He would have been bound to secrecy.”

  “Not a chance,” I said. “No one has ever bound him to secrecy or ever will if it means leaving me out. He leaves me out only if and when he wants to. If he had come and you insisted that he keep it strictly to himself he would have walked out on you.”

  He shook his head. “I have told this to no one, not even my wife, because I was ashamed of it. I still am. Only Kalmus knew about it, and he’s dead. I don’t—oh. You’re Archie Goodwin? You went there and found him, and my daughter was with you?”

  “Right.”

  “Did my daughter—how was she?”

  “She did fine. Three minutes after we found him she could leave on her own feet, alone, take the elevator down, and get a taxi. Your wife and daughter are both fine, as I told you, Mr. Blount. As soon as—”

  “Forget the Mister.”

  “Sure. As soon as it had been arranged for me to get the permit to see you they left together, for home.”

  “I want a straight answer to a straight question. Did my wife tell Wolfe what it is that I want him to investigate?”

  “No. She said she didn’t know. She said no one knew—except Kalmus.”

  He nodded. “Then he kept his word. There aren’t many men you can rely on absolutely. Dan Kalmus was one. And he’s dead.” He set his jaw. In a moment he went on. “This thing I’m ashamed of, I have told no one. McKinney wanted me to tell him this morning, he insisted, but I wouldn’t. I didn’t tell Kalmus, he knew all about it. From what he told me about Nero Wolfe, I decided he was the man to tell. Now you say I must tell you.”

  “Not you must. I only say that telling me is the same as telling Mr. Wolfe. I add this, that I will tell only him. Also I’ll tell you what he would say if you tried to bind him to secrecy. He would say that the best protection for your secret would be his discretion, and that if a circumstance arose that made him think, it necessary to disclose it he would first tell you. That’s the best you’d get from him. From me, you get my word that I’ll tell him and no one else in any circumstances whatever.”

  Our eyes were meeting, and he knew how to meet eyes. “Kalmus was my lawyer,” he said.

  “I know he was.”

  “Now I’ll have to get another one, and I won’t tell him, and I won’t want you or Wolfe to tell him.”

  “Then we won’t. What the hell, Blount, what is it? After all this—did you poison that chocolate yourself?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  I stared. “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then no wonder.” I put the pen in my pocket and closed the notebook, which I hadn’t used. For this I preferred my memory to a notebook, which could be lost or even possibly taken from me on my way out. I demanded, “This is the fact known only to Kalmus and you that he was counting on to clear you?”

  “Yes. I bitterly regret it and I’m bitterly ashamed of it. As you know, I made the arrangements for Jerin to come to the club. I arranged all the details. I knew he drank chocolate when he was playing chess, and I told the steward to have some prepared. I don’t know, and I never will know, how in the name of God I conceived the idea of putting something in the chocolate that would befuddle him. I’m not a practical joker, I never have been. It may have been suggested by something somebody said, but if so I don’t remember it, and anyway it was I who did it. It’s even possible that I was prouder of my skill at chess than I thought I was and I had a subconscious resentment of a man who could give me odds of a rook and beat me. I hate to think I’m that petty, but damn it, I did it. I put something in the chocolate while I was taking it upstairs and stirred it with a pencil.”

  “Arsenic, to befuddle him?”

  “It wasn’t arsenic. It was poison, since anything toxic is a poison, but it wasn’t arsenic. I didn’t know exactly what it was until later, when I had it analyzed. Kalmus got it for me. I told him what I intended to do, as a precaution; there wasn’t much risk of discovery, but I wanted to know if it would be criminally actionable. He said no, and he liked the idea, and that wasn’t surprising because I thought he would, it was the kind of prank that would appeal to him. But he said I must be extremely careful of what I used, of course I knew that, and he offered to find out what would be best for the effect we wanted, and I asked him to get it, and he said he would. Which he did. He gave it to me that evening, that Tuesday evening, at the club. It was a two-ounce bottle, a liquid, and he told me to use about half of it. Which I did.” He pointed a finger at me. “Listen, Goodwin. I don’t want my wife or daughter ever to know what an incredible chump I was, in any circumstances.”

  “Yeah. I don’t blame you. So of course you had to go for the chocolate and take it to him.”

  “Of course.”

  “And when Yerkes came and told you Jerin was sick you went and got the pot and cup and washed them out and brought fresh chocolate.”

  “Of course. I went to see him, and obviously he had had enough.”

  “Did you suspect then that there was something in the chocolate besides what you put in?”

  “No, why should I? Kalmus had given me the bottle, and it had been in my pocket until I used it.”

  “When he got worse and Kalmus got Dr. Avery to go to him, didn’t you suspect then that something else had been put in the chocolate by someone?”

  “No. I didn’t suspect that until two days later, Thursday. What I did suspect was that a mistake had been made in preparing the contents of the bottle. So did Kalmus. I began to suspect that when Jerin got so bad he had to be taken to the hospital, and on my way to the hospital—I walked, and I was alone—I hid the bottle, and later, on my way home—”

  “Where did you hide it?”

  “In a plant tub. In the areaway of one of the houses I passed there was a tub with an evergreen shrub, and I put the bottle in under the peat moss. When I left the hospital later, that was after Jerin died, I got it and took it home, and the next day I took it to a laboratory to have it analyzed. I got the report—”

  “What laboratory?”

  “The Ludlow Laboratories on Forty-third Street. I got the report on the analysis the next day, Thursday, and showed it to Kalmus. It was just what he had ordered, a very mild dilution of a mixture of chloral hydrate and carbon tetrachloride. It couldn’t possibly have been fatal even if I had used all of it.”

  “No arsenic?”

  “No, damn it, just what I said.”

  “Where’s the report now?”

  “In a locked drawer in ray desk at my office, and the bottle too, with what’s left in it.”

  “Well.” I took a moment to look at it. “You didn’t suspect that someone else had put arsenic in the chocolate, you knew it. Didn’t you? Since you knew they had found arsenic in Jerin?”

  “Of course I knew it.”

  “Did you have any idea who?”

  “No.”

  “Have you any idea now?”

  “Apparently it must have been one of four men, the four who acted as messengers, because they were the only ones who entered the library. That didn’t seem possible because none of them could have had any reason. Then last week Kalmus had the idea that the purpose had been to get me—to get me where I am. But who? Of course not Kalmus, and which one of the other three could possibly have wanted to get me? They’re my friends. One of them is my wife’s nephew.”

 

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