Archie Meets Nero Wolfe Page 6

  “Children, children,” Panzer said as he pulled the Heron up to the curb in front of Wolfe’s brownstone. “Remember, we are on the job, which does not include bickering like a bunch of grammar-school kids.”

  Fritz, whose last name I now knew to be Brenner, opened the front door and ushered us in. We trooped down the hall to the office, taking the same seats we had earlier in the day. Wolfe was settled in at his desk, two bottles of beer and a pilsner glass in front of him. “Gentleman,” he said with a barely perceptible nod. “Can I offer you some refreshments?”

  This time, everyone accepted. Saul asked for a scotch on the rocks, Orrie a bourbon highball, and Fred and Del, beer. Figuring it was time for me to learn how to drink, I ordered scotch and water.

  After Fritz had efficiently filled our requests, Wolfe swallowed beer, dabbed his lips with a handkerchief, and fastened his gaze on Saul Panzer. “Well?”

  “We each talked to the people we were assigned to,” he said.

  “And you have not discussed your discoveries with one another?” Saul shook his head.

  “Satisfactory. Please proceed.”

  Saul gave what seemed to me to be a verbatim report of our meetings with both of the Williamsons and Sylvia Moore. On several occasions, he looked at me questioningly, as if seeking confirmation for his accuracy. Each time I nodded, awed by his recall and vowing to ensure that I could do as well—or better.

  After the report, Wolfe asked Saul for his impressions of all three. “They are each pretty shaken right now, which is hardly surprising under the circumstances. Williamson is trying to put on a brave front, stiff upper lip and all, but the waiting for a call from the kidnapper is getting to him, wouldn’t you agree, Archie?”

  “Absolutely. The guy is trying to hold his emotions in, but he looks like he’s about to snap. It’s painful to watch.”

  “As for the wife,” Panzer continued, “the strain shows on her a lot more, and like her husband, she resolutely rejects any suggestion that a member of the household staff has any connection with the kidnapping—and that includes that gardener and the stable master.” He looked at me and I nodded my agreement.

  “Then we have the, uh ... nanny,” Panzer said as Wolfe made a face. “If anything, Sylvia Moore seems even more upset than the boy’s parents, partly because she blames herself for what happened. She told us she has no idea who might have telephoned her and then hung up when she came on the line. Her mother in Virginia has been quite ill, and when the maid called to her out in the yard and said someone urgently wanted to speak to her, she immediately imagined the worst and dashed inside, although you probably know all that yourself from talking to Williamson.”

  “He recounted the occurrence essentially the same way, having also heard Miss Moore’s description of it,” Wolfe said.

  Panzer went on. “I asked her if she had seen anyone suspicious on the grounds, and she said no. Have I missed anything, Archie?”

  “No, it’s all there.”

  Wolfe looked around the room, passing over Orrie Cather, who was squirming in his chair like a high school sophomore wanting to be called on by the teacher because he knew the answer. “Fred, your report?”

  Durkin pulled out his notebook and knit his brow as he flipped the pages. “First, I talked to the gardener, Lloyd Carstens, who’s worked for the Williamsons for about eleven years. And you sure were right about him, Saul. He’s a crusty, crabby character, who obviously didn’t want to waste any time with me. We met in the greenhouse, a huge place, and he kept telling me how busy he was. I didn’t think he acted very concerned at all about the kidnapping. He seemed more interested about all his flowers and bushes and kept going on about what a big job it is to maintain the grounds and how hard he has to work.”

  “Does he have help in his work?”

  “Yeah, he does, Mr. Wolfe,” Durkin said. “Says he brings in outside crews to mow and plant flower beds in season. But he said none of these part-timers had been on the grounds in the last week or two. I asked if he had seen anyone around recently who didn’t belong, and he said definitely not.

  “Carstens has an apartment in Lynbrook, which he said is about an eight-mile drive from the Williamsons’. He’s married, has no children.”

  Wolfe drained the beer from his glass and opened a second bottle. “Saul mentioned that there was animus between Mr. Carstens and Mark Simons, who runs the stable. Did you find that to be the case?”

  Durkin nodded. “It came up, all right. Carstens griped about how Simons always acts like he’s the most important person on the estate and that he’s always complaining about how the mowing crew messes up the bridle path, which he then has to spend time raking smooth again.”

  “Is there a telephone in the greenhouse?” Wolfe asked.

  “There is,” Durkin said. “I made a point of locating it. Carstens has a small office nook in one corner, with the instrument sitting on a desk. And it’s an outside line, all right.”

  “You also talked to Mr. Simons?”

  “Yes, sir, I did. He has worked for the Williamsons for just over nine years. He’s every bit as grouchy as Carstens, and even more arrogant. The main difference I could detect between them is that Simons seems much more concerned about the kidnapped boy. He also seems very devoted to Mrs. Williamson and talks about her almost like she’s a saint. He said he used to ride around the estate’s bridle path with her until Sylvia Moore got hired. Now the Moore girl usually rides with the missus, and I got the impression that Simons doesn’t much care for that young woman.”

  “Did he comment on other members of the staff?”

  Durkin said no. “And when I asked, he said he hadn’t seen anyone out of the ordinary hanging around the house or the grounds. His stables are very clean and neat, at least for a barn. There’s three horses in all, and he went on about what magnificent animals they are, almost as if he was talking like they were his children. And oh, yeah, he’s got a phone with an outside line in his own little office, just like Carstens does. On the wall above his desk there’s a photo of a horse. He says it’s Man o’ War, which he calls ‘the finest piece of horseflesh that’s ever lived and ever will live.’”

  Consulting his notebook, the thickset detective continued: “Simons drives in every day from Hempstead, just a few miles from the estate. Says he’s got what he describes as ‘a small cottage’ where he lives with his wife. A married son who’s got a couple kids has a house close by theirs.”

  Wolfe gave Durkin a nod and turned toward Del Bascom, once again ignoring an anxious Orrie Cather, who clearly was dying to speak. “You talked to the chauffeur and the housekeeper?”

  “Yes, I saw the housekeeper first, Mr. Wolfe,” Bascom said. “As Saul has described, Emily Stratton is thin, almost painfully so, although she carries herself ramrod straight, and her demeanor matches her posture. It’s like pulling teeth to get answers to even the most harmless questions from her. She seems to think anything she says will somehow reflect badly on her employers—and herself.

  “I hammered away at her, though, and the more we talked, the more it seemed like she doesn’t like any of the others on the staff. Oh, she didn’t come right out and attack them in so many words; it was more in what she didn’t say. I’d ask about one or another of them, and she would make a face or shrug. The closest she came to outright criticism was when I asked about Sylvia Moore. She said, ‘Well, I have never felt little Tommie was looked after carefully enough. So now we are seeing the results of that carelessness.’”

  “Did Miss Stratton indicate there had been other occasions when the boy had been left without supervision?” Wolfe asked.

  “No, but I did press her on that point,” Bascom replied, “and she just brushed it off. She added that there had never been another kidnapping attempt on the boy, at least as far as she knows.”

  “Tell us about the chauffeur.”

  “Charles Bell is very pleased with himself, to say the least. He’s been driving for the Williamsons fo
r three years, and he acts like he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to the family. He loves to talk about the cars he drives and says Williamson always takes his advice when getting ready to purchase a new automobile.”

  Bascom consulted his notes and continued. “Bell’s single, never been married, he says. He lives in a nicely furnished four-room apartment above the garages—with an outside phone line. He showed me around and is very proud of the setup. I would be, too. He insists he has never seen anybody suspicious hanging around the house and grounds and says he was up in his rooms shaving and getting ready to drive Tommie to school when the boy disappeared. Never heard a thing,” he said.

  Wolfe shifted his bulk and frowned. “On his trips to and from the school with the boy, did Mr. Bell ever sense he was being followed?”

  “No, sir,” Bascom said. “I posed that question to him, and he told me he’s always been on his guard when taking Tommie anywhere, whether to school or to a playmate’s house. He may be a snobbish fellow, but I was left with the strong impression that he is very protective of the boy. At one point, he said, ‘If I ever find the bastard that did this, I’ll ... His words trailed off, but he had a fierce expression and he pounded a fist into an open palm.”

  “Did you sense he was overacting?”

  Bascom paused before responding. “No, not really, sir. In fact, it was the only time during our talk that he stopped behaving like a pompous, puffed-up jackass. It seemed like I was seeing the real Charles Bell just then, without any of those airs he likes to put on.”

  “Orrie,” Wolfe said, “your report, please.”

  Cather tensed, leaning forward on the sofa as if he was about to leap to his feet. “I know how they took the kid away!” he blurted.

  “Really?” Wolfe’s eyebrows went up, and he took his beer glass away from his lips without taking a swallow.

  “Yeah, here’s how I figure—”

  “Enough, Orrie,” Wolfe snapped, holding up a palm. “You should know by now that I like to receive my reports in a methodical fashion, and in the order in which the information has been learned.”

  Cather looked chagrined, but only for a moment. “Well, I first talked to the cook, Mrs. Price, given name Hazel, and Saul is correct: the woman has never been married, despite the label. From the looks of her, she enjoys her own cooking a lot, and she rules like a queen over a kitchen that’s got to be more than twice the size of my flat. Even though it’s down in the basement, it’s got a high ceiling, and—”

  “That’s enough description, Orrie.”

  “Yes, sir. The first thing I asked her was whether anything unusual had happened yesterday, and that’s when I hit pay dirt.” He glanced around at the rest of us with a grin, as if savoring his moment in the spotlight. A look from Nero Wolfe got him back on track.

  “She says it was pretty much like most days, although one thing puzzled her a little bit. Around 8:45 or so, she said there was a knocking at the outside door of the kitchen, the one that opens to a few steps that lead up to the driveway and the backyard. It’s the door where all the deliveries are received. Anyway, she opens the door and there’s a guy she’s never seen before carrying two crates of vegetables. He was tall and quite thin, she said, with dark hair parted in the center. ‘Your order from Mitchell & Sons Purveyors, Mrs. Price,’ he told her.

  “‘I have never heard of this Mitchell & Sons company of yours,’ she said to him. ‘I always get my produce from Baxter & Hart, and have for years.’ At this point, the man pulled out a typewritten sheet with an order for vegetables—carrots, spinach, broccoli, and the like. She said it had her name on it and the Williamson address at the top.

  “She told this guy—she never got his name—that there had been a mistake and asked him to take the food away. He argued, trying to get her to accept the vegetables, and she told me she finally had to practically push him out the door.”

  “How much time did all this foofaraw take?” Wolfe asked.

  “She said she didn’t know for sure, maybe two or three minutes, five at the most. I asked why she hadn’t mentioned anything about this before, and she told me she didn’t think it was important. Simply a mistake, or else one company trying to cut in on the business of another, she said.”

  “So she had told no one before?” Wolfe asked, eyebrows still raised.

  “Only me,” Cather said proudly.

  “Did she get a look at the man’s vehicle?” I cut in, receiving a glare from Wolfe for my trouble.

  “Yeah, she did,” Cather answered, looking at me as if he had forgotten I was in the room. “She followed him up the steps from the basement and watched as he got into a small enclosed white truck, the type food purveyors use. They’re as common as street-corner hot dog vendors. But, of course, she didn’t get his plate number, and she doesn’t know enough about automobiles and trucks to know what make it was.”

  “And the truck had no lettering of any kind on it, right?” I put in.

  “That’s exactly it!” Cather said. “What do you want to bet the Williamson kid was inside it?”

  “Anything else from the cook, Orrie?” Wolfe asked.

  “No, sir, not really, although she seemed puzzled that I was so interested in this mysterious purveyor. ‘That silly business can’t have had anything to do with Tommie’s ... with what has happened,’ she said. When I asked if she had any other ideas on who might have kidnapped him, she just shook her head and started muttering about all the evil in the world today. I thought she was going to launch into a sermon on sin.”

  “And the others you interviewed?”

  “Next I jawed with the butler, Waverly, in a small parlor just off the living room, and I did ninety percent of the talking. The guy’s a clam, I’ll tell ya. If I was to ask him if the sun came up today, he’d mull over his answer. He told me he was up in his room on the top floor of the house going over the household accounts at the time the boy disappeared. He says the first he knew about it was when the Stratton woman, the housekeeper, knocked on his door, yelling ‘something terrible has happened!’” Orrie took a sip of his highball and continued.

  “I asked him if the family had been concerned over the years about the possibility of Tommie being kidnapped, and he said they always made sure there was an adult with him when he was out in the yard. But he added that most of the families of other kids in Tommie’s school also were very protective of their children, given how wealthy the area is.”

  “Have there been other incidences of kidnapping in those environs?” Wolfe asked.

  “I asked him that,” Cather said proudly, “and he said that to his knowledge, there had been none, at least in the twenty years he has worked for the Williamsons. Before that, he says he was in England. I also pumped him on what he thought of the other members of the staff, and here he got very tight-lipped. If he has bad feelings about any of them, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let on to me about them.”

  Wolfe drained his second beer. “Anything further to add on Mr. Waverly?”

  “No, that’s it. Next, I talked to the young housemaid, Mary Trent. Saul described her very accurately to you—she’s small and dark haired, looks even younger than her nineteen years, and is very shy, I would even say timid. Maybe that’s understandable, given that she is by far the youngest person on the staff and this is her first job.

  “It was almost as hard to get her to talk as it was the butler. She did tell me how fond she is of Tommie and how she would spend time playing games with him when Sylvia Moore was out riding with Mrs. Williamson or otherwise occupied. I asked her if she recognized the voice of the person who telephoned for Miss Moore, and I thought she hesitated for just a second or so too long before saying no, as if maybe it really was someone she knew ... like perhaps somebody else in the house who had maybe disguised their voice.”

  “That is speculation on your part, Orrie,” Wolfe said with a sniff, “although it very well may have some merit. Now if we can—” Wolfe got interrupted by the ringin
g of his telephone, and he scowled as he reached for the instrument.

  “Yes? I see ... He picked up a pen and wrote on a pad for more than a minute. “Yes, yes, I have it. I understand, sir. Yes. I will be back to you shortly, and we will firm up the plan we discussed earlier,” he said, cradling the receiver and looking at each of us in turn.

  “Gentlemen, that was Mr. Williamson. He has received instructions by telephone from the purported kidnapper.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Here is the content of the message Mr. Williamson received over the telephone line at his home a few minutes ago,” Wolfe said, reading from his notepad. “‘Your son is safe. We mean him no harm whatever. But he will be returned to you only after we receive the money mentioned in the note, in unmarked, nonsequential bills. Tonight, you are to take the money in a briefcase or satchel to a telephone booth at the corner of the Grand Concourse and Bedford Park Boulevard in the Bronx. At precisely nine o’clock, the instrument in that booth will ring and you will receive further instructions. You are to be alone. No police. You will be watched.’”

  “Where is Williamson going to get that kind of dough that fast?” Durkin asked.

  “He already has it,” Wolfe replied. “Immediately after he received the threatening note, he withdrew a hundred thousand dollars in used currency, fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills. This money now fills a suitcase.”

  “Must be nice to have that kind of mazuma,” Cather said.

  “It would be a damn sight nicer to have your child back home with you,” Bascom observed.

  Wolfe drew in air and exhaled. “Mr. Williamson naturally is prepared to part with this money, and even more, if necessary, as recompense for the return of his son. My sole commission is to reunite the boy with his parents. The eventual retrieval of the money is of secondary importance, if indeed it is of any importance whatever to the Williamson family. Saul, you know every corner and byway of New York City and its environs. Describe the locale where the money is to be delivered. The Grand Concourse, it is called?”