Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 03 (14 page)

Monday morning he got a telephone call from Mrs. Pomfret. There was a drag to her voice that he had not heard before; indeed, he would scarcely have recognized it. She asked him to come to see her as soon as possible. He said he would be there at two that afternoon.

He arrived punctually on the hour, and from a corner of the reception hall was taken in a private elevator to the second floor of the duplex apartment and along a corridor to a chamber more feminine in its scents and silks than anything he would have expected of her—a sitting room or dressing room; the latter, he thought. The curtains were drawn, but even in the half light he could see that her face was as changed as her voice; the merry shrewd eyes were glassy slits between red-rimmed lids, and the skin that Rubens would have admired was leaden and lusterless. That Fox saw as he crossed to where she sat and took the hand she offered.

“I’m played out,” she said—an explanation, not a
bid for sympathy. “I get dizzy if I stand up. Take that chair, it’s the most comfortable. You’ve just had a shave.”

Fox smiled at her. “You should have seen me this morning.”

“I’m glad I didn’t. I want you to find out who murdered my son.”

Fox screwed up his lips. “Well, Mrs. Pomfret—”

“Somebody has to. It has been a week. It has been eight days. I don’t want you to think I’m a vindictive old woman.”

“I shouldn’t suppose, right now, it matters much to you what I think.”

“Well, you’re wrong. It does.” She took a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “I’m not crying, it’s just that my eyes are sore. I’ve always disapproved of vindictive people, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I’m one myself. But you ought to be able to realize how it is. Right here in my house, right in front of my eyes, my son died. Murdered by one of those people. Is it reasonable to expect me to drag along like this indefinitely, maybe forever, not knowing who did it? Some of them were my friends! I asked my lawyer to investigate you.”

“That’s all right. I’ve been investigated before.”

“I suppose you have. He reported that you are flashy but dependable and sound. I didn’t want a slick shyster. He also found an old rumor about your killing two men on account of something about a young woman.”

Fox froze. For a second he sat rigid and immobile, then he stood up. “If what you want is rumors,” he said icily, and was going. An exclamation to his back did not stop him; but before he reached the door fingers with a
grip of surprising strength closed on his arm, and he halted. She was exigent but not apologetic:

“This is absurd! Did I know you were touchy about it? I merely blurted it out! I do blurt things—”

“It’s a bad habit, Mrs. Pomfret. Please let go of my arm.”

She relinquished her grip, let her hand fall, retreated a step, and looked up at him, unflinching at the cold penetration of his eyes. “Don’t go,” she said. “I beg your pardon. I suppose it is a bad habit. I need you. I form my own judgments of people. I told my lawyer I intended to engage you, and it was he who wanted to investigate you. I didn’t need to. When Diego told me of your contribution to the fund for Jan’s violin, naturally I thought you were doing it to gain an entrée to my circle, but when you declined my invitation to the presentation party, obviously that wasn’t it. But you’re not going to decline this. I won’t let you. I don’t care whether you think I’m a vindictive old woman or not. The police have accomplished nothing. Either they have no wits or they’re outwitted.”

She swayed a little, steadied herself. “I can’t stand up for two minutes. I can’t sleep and I won’t take things. This has hit me—hit me cruelly—Give me your arm, please?”

Fox moved to her side and let her have his elbow for a support back to her chair. It was credible that she was in fact shattered—must have been, indeed, since she had twice applied the phrase “old woman” to herself, which would have been unthinkable ten days ago. Besides, it was always the case that if and when super-egotists finally get it, they get it good and hard.

“Sit down,” she said. “If you wish, I’ll beg your pardon again. I can’t undertake to change my habits, not even now. Wait, before you sit down, get that
check there under that vase on the table. As a retainer. If it isn’t enough, say so.”

“There’s no hurry about that.” Fox sat. “Are you sure you want to hire me for this job, Mrs. Pomfret?”

“Certainly I am. I don’t do things unless I’m sure I want to. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Because, as you said, some of those people are your friends. You said ‘were.’ If I take the job I’ll either finish it or break a leg. What if, for instance, Dora Mowbray did it?”

“Dora? She didn’t.”

“She could have. Or your husband, or Diego. I ask you to consider that seriously. This isn’t a matter of a stolen vase or varnish in a violin; it’s premeditated murder. If I, hired by you, get proof of guilt, it won’t be reported privately and exclusively to you. One of those people will be tried and convicted and will die. That’s all right with me. Is it all right with you?”

“Die,” she said harshly. She repeated it, “Die.…”

Fox nodded. “That’s the penalty.”

“My son died. In agony. I saw it. Didn’t he?”

“He did.”

“Then—yes.”

“Very well. Please tell me what your son said to you Sunday afternoon. When I wanted to ask him about the violin and you insisted on speaking with him first.”

Mrs. Pomfret blinked her red-rimmed eyes. “You were there when the inspector asked me that and I told him. He said nothing.”

“I know. You said he laughed at you, reassured you, swore that in taking the violin from the parcel he had only been pulling my leg. But you’re not talking to the police now, you’re talking to your hired man, and believe me, your son’s going for that violin was not for
fun and games. There was nothing funny about it. I’d like to know exactly what he said when you asked him about it.”

An hour later Fox was still there and Mrs. Pomfret was still on her chair, her shoulders sagging, answering his questions. Another hour later she was reclining on a chaise lounge with her eyes closed and Fox was seated beside her, still asking. It was going on five o’clock when he finally left. He took with him a great many things he had not had on his arrival, among them the following:

She suspected that Perry had been carrying on an affair with Garda Tusar, from remarks Jan had made; but her recollection of the remarks was vague.

Garda had broken an engagement to marry Diego Zorilla when the accidental loss of his fingers had ruined his career, and Diego was still hopelessly infatuated with her.

The Wan Li vase had been stolen at the party given by her for presentation of the violin to Jan.

Hebe Heath should be in jail.

If Hebe had not stolen the vase, Adolph Koch
had, for his own collection, which was “much inferior to my husband’s.”

Koch was a goat and a libertine.

Most of which, Fox reflected as, reaching the sidewalk, he sought a drugstore for a phone booth, was not without interest as subsidiary material for a student of mankind, but it appeared to have little or no bearing on the questions of who poisoned Perry Dunham or drove Jan Tusar to suicide. Worse, the only line of inquiry it suggested was the one most distasteful to him personally; but he had taken the job.

He called the number of Diego’s apartment, got no answer, tried the Metropolitan Broadcasting Company studios, and found him there. Diego was gruff and scarcely civil; he was busy with a score, he said, and would be for some time; importuned, he agreed to be at his apartment at six o’clock. Fox hung up, frowned at the transmitter for half a minute, dialed another number, and had better luck. Returning to his parked car, he drove to the offices of the Homicide Squad on Twentieth
Street, sent his name in to Inspector Damon, and was admitted at once.

Anyone curious as to the true status of the police investigation of the Dunham murder would have needed only to observe Inspector Damon’s reception of Tecumseh Fox. He got up and came around his desk to greet the visitor and shook hands as if he meant it.

Fox smiled at him. “My lord, is it as bad as that?”

“Everything’s always bad here.” Damon waved him to a chair. “All we get is crime. Something on your mind?”

“Nope. I’m in a mental blackout. I’m sorry if you thought I was Santa Claus. How’s the Dunham case getting along?”

“Fine. Who wants to know?”

“Me and my employer. I’ve got a job.” Fox took an envelope from his pocket, extracted a sheet of notepaper, and handed it over. “You’ll be pleased to know that at least I was able to persuade Mrs. Pomfret not to have you fired.”

Damon took in the brief note with a glance. He handed it back, grunted, and regarded Fox grimly. “When you get the Dunham case cleaned up,” he said sarcastically, “there’s a stabbing up in Harlem you can have.”

“Thanks. I’ll get in touch with you. I just got that commission from Mrs. Pomfret an hour ago. There’s no corking or covering involved; she wants to know who killed her son. That’s straight. If you already know, I’ll mail this back to her and go home. Do you?”

“They sell papers at the corner.”

Fox frowned. “All right. But I don’t think that’s very profound. Have I ever gone around blowing lids off? When I got lucky and broke the Coromander case, did I—”

“You’ll need plenty of luck to break this one, my boy.”

“Then you haven’t opened a seam yet?”

“I have not. I know just exactly as much about who killed Dunham as I did when I walked in there a week ago yesterday. The papers think there’s been a hush, but there hasn’t. It’s simply a case of somebody being either damn clever or damn lucky. We’ve tried everything. I don’t need to tell you what we’ve done; you know what we do.”

“I thought maybe you had it lined up but were short on proof.”

“Proof?” Damon was bitter. “Hell, we haven’t even got to the guessing stage.”

“Have you got a few minutes to talk about it?”

“I never have a few minutes, but I’ll talk about it. What do you want to know?”

The “few minutes” stretched into nearly an hour, but when Fox left, at a quarter to six, returned to his car and headed back uptown, all he had to show for it was additional material for a student of mankind. The salient and interesting items were assorted in his head:

For the rest, only a disheartening row of negations. No trail found from a purchase of potassium cyanide. No fingerprints on the paper container of the poison or the fragments of the whisky bottle picked up in the street corner, except, in the case of the bottle, those of Schaeffer and Perry Dunham. No trail from a purchase of varnish, nor evidence of its possession. No significant result from four days’ surveillance of all those involved, abandoned after vigorous protests from Adolph Koch and Henry Pomfret. No hint of hidden designs, desires, intrigues, motives.… No this, no that.…