Archie Goes Home Read online

  Archie Goes Home

  A Nero Wolfe Mystery

  Robert Goldsborough

  To John O’Loughlin

  for his constant

  enthusiasm and encouragement

  Chapter 1

  This all began innocently, although I have been around long enough to be suspicious of what seems to be an innocuous telephone call like the one I received on a sunny June morning as I sat in the office with coffee after breakfast. The voice at the other end belonged to my aunt Edna, who was phoning from down in southern Ohio, the area where I was born and reared.

  Edna usually calls when she’s concerned about my mother, which has gotten to be a little more frequently the last few years. “Is it about Mom?” I asked, clenching the receiver as if I were trying to strangle it.

  “Oh, well, she is . . . all right, Archie, she is just fine,” my aunt said without conviction. “And please don’t tell her that I telephoned you. I have enough of a reputation as a busybody as it is.”

  “Then what is the problem?” I learned long ago that you don’t rush Edna Wainwright, my mother’s slightly younger sister. She is going to tell a story at her own pace, and there is nothing anyone can do to speed her up. Maybe that’s because of where she lives. Everything in that hilly, semirural region down near the Ohio River moves at a pace New Yorkers would call excruciatingly slow. I leaned back in my desk chair and drained the last of Fritz Brenner’s fine brew from my cup. The sweep second hand on my watch had nearly made a full revolution when Aunt Edna cleared her throat. Progress.

  “I am sure that you must remember Logan Mulgrew.”

  “How could I forget him, even after all the years I’ve been away,” I said. “He has run the Farmer’s State Bank & Trust since long before I snuck out of town and headed to New York lo those many eons ago.”

  “He doesn’t run it anymore, Archie. He was found dead at home three days ago.”

  “Hardly a surprise. He must have been close to eighty, wasn’t he?”

  “Eighty-four, to be exact. But he did not die of natural causes,” Aunt Edna said. “When he had not shown up at the bank for two days, his grandniece got worried and went to his house—you know, that big old pile of brick and stone south of town out on the Portsmouth Road, not far from where your mother lives.”

  “I remember the house well; it was the largest place around by far, wasn’t it?”

  “And without doubt the gloomiest,” she said. “Logan had lived there alone ever since his wife, Sylvia, died early last year. And they never had any children. Anyway, when Donna Newman, that’s the grandniece, went into the house, she found her uncle dead on the sofa in the living room, with a hole in his temple and a pistol lying on the seat cushion next to his outstretched hand. He had been dead for some time.”

  “Suicide,” I said.

  “Not likely,” Aunt Edna replied in a tone that defied contradiction. “I probably knew Logan as well as almost anyone in the area, and he was not a man to take his own life, that much I can say.”

  “He probably found out that he had a terminal illness, and he didn’t want to—”

  “No, Archie, no,” my aunt interrupted. “His grandniece said he recently had a checkup, and the physician found him so fit that he could have passed for a man at least fifteen years younger.”

  “What do the police think?”

  “The police—that would be our young chief, Tom Blankenship—has said the doctor who examined the body found nothing to indicate anything suspicious in the way of a disease.”

  “What is your opinion of this Blankenship?”

  “Oh, he’s all right, I suppose,” Edna said dismissively. “He has been on the job for five . . . well, almost six years now, and there really hasn’t been much crime around here, unless you count a car chase after a holdup in which a couple of shots got fired, which fortunately didn’t hit anybody. This isn’t like New York, you know, where violence is just a way of life.”

  “It really is not that bad,” I told her, but I was not about to press the point. I knew the image that small-town America—Aunt Edna included—has of New York and other large cities, while exaggerated, contains some merit. “So what do you plan to do about Mr. Mulgrew’s death?”

  “It has been quite a while since you came down here to see your mother,” Edna remarked, in what seemed to be a non sequitur. But I knew damned well what she was up to.

  “You are aware that she spent two weeks with me in New York just a couple of years ago,” I said in an attempt to parry her.

  “That simply is not the same,” she replied. “I know, Archie, that she would love to have you stay with her for a time. It would mean so much to her.”

  “You say that her health’s been good?”

  “Well, we are all getting older, you know, that is just a fact of life. Nobody knows just how much time they have left,” she said, sidestepping my question.

  “Has she been sick in the last few months? She hasn’t mentioned anything in her letters, or in the telephone call we had a few weeks ago.”

  “If there are any problems, she wouldn’t talk about it, Archie. And she probably wouldn’t say anything to me. You know how she is, never been one to complain.”

  I was getting frustrated with my aunt’s evasiveness, and I saw no benefit in prolonging the conversation, so I told her that I would consider a trip to Ohio at some point, if only to get her off the subject. When Edna pressed me further, I had to bring out the artillery. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Wolfe is signaling me. It seems we have a crisis in a case we’re struggling with. I really have to go. It was good talking to you, as it always is.”

  I hung up and took a deep breath, thinking about my mother. There was no way Edna Wainwright could know that Nero Wolfe never came down to the office from his morning visit with his ten thousand orchids in the greenhouse on the roof until eleven o’clock, which was still more than an hour away.

  When Wolfe did come down, by elevator as usual, he carried a raceme of purple Cymbidium, placed it in a vase on his blotter, settled his seventh of a ton into his reinforced chair, and asked if I had slept well. I replied in the affirmative. He then pressed the button in the leg-hole of his desk, which triggered a buzzer in the kitchen that alerted Fritz to bring him two bottles of Remmers beer along with a chilled glass.

  As he flipped through the mail I had opened and stacked on his desk, he looked up at me. “Is something troubling you?” he asked.

  “No, should it?”

  “Your forehead is creased, which is a rare occurrence and one usually brought on by some degree of angst. And yet we have no cases at present for you to stew over,” he said, returning to his perusal of the mail.

  I long ago gave up trying to mask my feelings from Wolfe, whose radar is always in operation. I reported the telephone conversation with Aunt Edna as he popped the cap off a bottle of beer and poured its contents into the glass, eyeing the foam as it settled. “You of course have not heard the last of that woman, who assuredly will continue to badger you.”

  “In all probability,” I conceded.

  “As I just said, we have no case at present, and as you reported to me yesterday, our bank balance is healthier than it has been in months, maybe even in years.”

  “I take it you’re suggesting I go down to Ohio and stick my nose into the death of an old banker?”

  “I suggest nothing,” Wolfe replied as he picked up his current book, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock. “But such a trip would at least give you an opportunity to visit your mother, with whom you have remained close.”

  “Who would open your mail and pay
the bills and make sure that the orchid germination records are kept up to date?”

  “Saul Panzer has on occasion performed those roles and others admirably over the years in your absence—that is, if you have no objection to his sitting at your desk.”

  “No objection whatever,” I said. “That is not to say I am going to Ohio, however.” Wolfe chose to make no response, immersing himself in the book.

  Chapter 2

  For the next several days, I gave no thought either to Aunt Edna or to the late Logan Mulgrew, although I was concerned about my mother and considered calling her. Then on a rainy Wednesday morning in the office, I sorted through the bundle that had been delivered by the postal carrier and was surprised to see an envelope bearing my name in neat, precise Palmer Method handwriting.

  I rarely receive mail, other than cards from my mother and various siblings on my birthday in October. This letter, in a peach-colored envelope, had a return address that reminded me of what Wolfe had said about Aunt Edna continuing to badger me. Yes, this piece of mail was from her.

  I slit the envelope and pulled out its contents, which consisted of a neatly folded letter in a color that matched the envelope, along with a newspaper clipping. First the letter:

  Dear Archie,

  It was so nice to hear your voice over the wire last week. You sound just as I remember you from years ago. You simply do not seem to age! After our conversation, I felt that you would surely want to see this article, which ran in our local newspaper, the Trumpet, this week. I talked to your mother yesterday, and she seems to be bearing up well, despite the challenges of age that beset us all.

  Your loving Aunt Edna

  I unfolded the newspaper piece, a column titled Around and About by a writer named Verna Kay Padgett.

  QUESTIONS ABOUT BANKER’S DEATH

  The recent apparent suicide of longtime bank president Logan Mulgrew has some local residents wondering why a man in such apparent good health would choose to do away with himself. “It makes no sense whatever,” said one woman who asked not to be identified. “There is more to this than we are being told. Others agree with me, and I can give you names.”

  Police Chief Tom Blankenship bristled when I suggested that he look further into Mulgrew’s death. “Look, the whole business is cut and dried,” he said. “A coroner’s jury came up with a verdict of ‘death by suicide,’ pointing out that he shot himself with a revolver he had a license for.

  Period, end of a sad story.”

  When this reporter pointed out that coroner’s juries are nothing more than rubber stamps and do little or no investigating, Chief Blankenship suggested I was guilty of “trying to sensationalize a tragedy,” which is not true. I promise my readers that I will continue looking into this case.

  Nero Wolfe was right when he said I had not heard the last from Aunt Edna. Her fingerprints were all over that column by Verna Kay Padgett, who probably had been hungering for a big story in a small town for years. She no doubt was an easy prey for Edna’s theory.

  When Wolfe came down from the plant rooms, I showed him the column, which drew a scowl. “I know and respect your mother, a sensible and intelligent woman who has been a welcome guest here on several occasions. Is her sister so much different that she would indulge herself in what may be a fool’s errand?”

  “Well, for starters, Edna has always been something of a gossip, no question of that whatever, and if pressed, she would be the first to admit it. I have never known her to subscribe to conspiracy theories, though, which this would seem to be.”

  Wolfe made a face again. “Do you feel this situation necessitates your presence in that part of the country whence you came?”

  “Probably not,” I told him, “although this business has gotten me to think more about visiting my mother. As you know, I harbor no nostalgia for what you refer to as ‘that part of the country whence I came.’ However, it has been several years since I went down there.”

  “But in the interim, your mother has been to New York numerous times, and she invariably seems to enjoy herself. You go with her to restaurants and plays, and Miss Rowan has taken her to museums and, as I recall, also on what the two women refer to as ‘shopping sprees.’”

  I grinned. “She and Lily get along very well, no question about that. Maybe you are right. It’s probably time I got her to come up here again. I know I would not have to twist her arm, and—” I was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone, which I answered in the usual way during business hours: “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

  It was Aunt Edna, and she sounded breathless. “Archie, you may have thought earlier that I was making a mountain out of a molehill, but you just listen to what has happened: Verna Kay Padgett lives in an apartment on the second floor over Earl Mason’s hardware store on Main Street. You remember the shop, it’s been there forever. And the night before last, that would be Saturday, someone fired a shot through the window of her living room, where she sometimes writes her columns.”

  “Was Verna hit?”

  “No, fortunately. She said she was in the kitchen at the time. She heard glass breaking, and I know the police have been over at her place investigating.”

  “It could have been somebody who had a snoot full at some local tavern and then started shooting things up in town on a Saturday night,” I said.

  “Really, Archie!” my aunt admonished. “I do not know about you, but I do not believe in coincidences, never have. In the first place, I can’t remember the last time a firearm was discharged right in the middle of our peaceful town. And in the second place, doesn’t it seem strange to you that a bullet was fired through the window in the home of a woman who in print has publicly questioned the cause of the death of one of our leading citizens?”

  She had me there. “What is the police chief saying about it?”

  “I haven’t yet heard. But Mabel Ellis, who knows Verna Kay from hearing her speak at the women’s club, says the columnist thinks somebody is out to get her. And I happen to agree. Archie, I really think you need to come down here and put your detective skills to work.”

  “Aunt Edna, right now is not a good time, for several reasons. But I do understand your concern. I can’t talk right now, but I will get back to you.” After I hung up, Wolfe looked at me, eyebrows raised.

  “You heard enough of that conversation to know that all is not well down Ohio way.”

  “I did,” Wolfe said. “I believe it would put your mind at ease if you paid a visit to your mother—and to your aunt, of course. And I realize you are concerned about your mother’s health.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  Wolfe drew in a bushel of air and exhaled. “Archie, I believe it would be beneficial for you to visit Ohio. I suspect your mind is down there already. The death of Mr. Mulgrew may prove to be precisely what the local police believe it to be—a suicide. But you have an itch, and you need to scratch it.”

  “Are you suggesting that I’m curious about Mulgrew’s death?”

  “I am. I have known you long enough to recognize the signs.”

  “Which are, other than a creased forehead?”

  Wolfe’s cheeks deepened into folds, which for him constitutes a smile. “We must have some secrets from each other for life to remain bearable in this house. I am sure I possess traits that betray my feelings and state of mind to you. We are not automatons.”

  “Which I gather is a fancy word for robots. All right, I will call my mother and tell her to get one of her spare bedrooms ready for the return of the prodigal son.”

  Chapter 3

  My mother was at least mildly startled by my suggestion that I pay her a visit. “My heavens, of course I would be delighted to see you,” she said. “I am afraid, though, that you are going to find things just as dull around here as you remember them.”

  “I will take that
chance,” I said with a chuckle.

  “Although,” she added, “I should tell you there has been a death in town that some people think is suspicious. Do you remember Logan Mulgrew?”

  “The banker.”

  “The very same. He was found dead at home last week, sprawled on a sofa in his parlor with a hole in his forehead and a pistol next to him.”

  “Suicide?” I asked, playing the innocent.

  “Possibly, although some people, including a local newspaper columnist, seem to think otherwise.” My mother did not mention Edna, which probably means my aunt had not shared her suspicions with her sister.

  “What is your opinion?” I asked her.

  “Well, I certainly would not have thought that Logan Mulgrew was a candidate for suicide. But enough of that. When do you think you will be coming down?”

  I told her I planned to leave the next day and would telephone her when I reached Columbus so she could be ready for me. I then wrote checks for all the outstanding bills, got caught up on Wolfe’s correspondence, and entered into a file the germination records that orchid gardener Theodore Horstmann had brought down from the plant rooms.

  Next, I telephoned my good friend Lily Rowan to tell her about my plans. Calling Lily a “good friend” does not come anywhere close to describing our relationship. We met years ago in an Upstate New York meadow, where I was being chased by an angry bull while involved in a case.1 To avoid said animal’s horns, I leaped over a fence and sprawled on the ground at the feet of two young women, one of them clad in a yellow shirt and slacks who said to me, “Beautiful! I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.”

  That fetching female in the yellow shirt and slacks, and with blond hair and dark blue eyes, was Lily Rowan, whose companionship I have enjoyed ever since that fateful day. Lily, who still calls me “Escamillo” after the toreador in the opera Carmen, is a very wealthy woman, having inherited a fortune from her late father, an Irish immigrant who made his millions by building much of the New York City sewer system.