And Be a Villain

Chapter Five

There are four rooms on the ground floor of Wolfe's old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street not far from the Hudson River. As you enter from the stoop, on your right are an enormous old oak clothes rack with a mirror, the elevator, the stairs, and the door to the dining-room. On your left are the doors to the front room, which doesn't get used much, and to the office. The door to the kitchen is at the rear, the far end of the hall.

The office is twice as big as any of the other rooms. It is actually our living-room too, and since Wolfe spends most of his time there you have to allow him his rule regarding furniture and accessories: nothing enters it or stays in it that he doesn't enjoy looking at. He enjoys the contrast between the cherry of his desk and the cardato of his chair, made by Meyer. The bright yellow couch cover has to be cleaned every two months, but he likes bright yellow. The three-foot globe over by the bookshelves is too big for a room that size, but he likes to look at it. He loves a comfortable chair so much that he won't have any other kind in the place, though he never sits on any but his own.

So that evening at least our guests were at ease, however the rest of them may have felt. There were nine of them present, six invited and three gate-crashers.

Of the eight I had wanted Deborah Koppel to get, Nancylee Shepherd hadn't been asked, and Professor F. O. Savarese couldn't make it. The three gate-crashers were Starlite's president and public relations man, Anderson and Owen, who had previously only got as far as the stoop, and Beech, the F.B.C. vice-president.

At nine o'clock they were all there, all sitting, and all looking at Wolfe.

There had been no friction at all except a little brush I had with Anderson. The best chair in the room, not counting Wolfe's, is one of red leather which is kept not far from one end of Wolfe's desk. Soon after entering Anderson had spotted it and squat-claimed it. When I asked him courteously to move to the other side of the room he went rude on me. He said he liked it there.

“But,” I said, “this chair, and those, are reserved for the candidates.”

“Candidates for what?”

“For top billing in a murder trial. Mr Wolfe would like them sort of together, so they'll all be under his eye.”

“Then arrange them that way.”

He wasn't moving. “I can't ask you to show me your stub,” I said pointedly, “because this is merely a private house, and you weren't invited, and my only argument is the convenience and pleasure of your host.”

He gave me a dirty look but no more words, got up, and went across to the couch.

I moved Madeline Fraser to the red leather chair, which gave the other five candidates more elbow room in their semi-circle fronting Wolfe's desk. Beech, who had been standing talking to Wolfe, went and took a chair near the end of the couch. Owen had joined his boss, so I had the three gate-crashers off to themselves, which was as it should be.

Wolfe's eyes swept the semi-circle, starting at Miss Fraser's end. “You are going to find this tiresome,” he said conversationally, “because I'm just starting on this and so shall have to cover details that you're sick of hearing and talking about. All the information I have has come from newspapers, and therefore much of it is doubtless inaccurate and some of it false. How much you'll have to correct me on I don't know.”

“It depends a lot,” said Nathan Traub with a smile, “on which paper you read.”

Traub, the agency man, was the only one of the six I hadn't seen before, having only heard his smooth low-pitched voice on the phone, when he had practically told me that everything had to be cleared through him. He was much younger than I had expected, around my age, but otherwise he was no great surprise. The chief difference between any two advertising executives is that one goes to buy a suit at Brcoks Brothers in the morning and the other one goes in the afternoon. It depends on the conference schedule. The suit this Traub had bought was a double-breasted grey which went very well with his dark hair and the healthy colour of his cheeks.

“I have read them all.” Wolfe's eyes went from left to right again. “I did so when I decided I wanted a job on this case. By the way, I assume you all know who has hired me, and for what?”

There were nods. “We know all about it,” Bill Meadows said.

“Good. Then you know why the presence of Mr Anderson, Mr Owen, and Mr Beech is being tolerated. With them here, and of course Miss Fraser, ninety-five per cent of the clients' interest is represented. The only one absent is White Birch Soap.”

They're not absent.” Nathan Traub was politely indignant. “I can speak for them.”

“I'd rather you'd speak for yourself,” Wolfe retorted. “The clients are here to listen, not speak.” He rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and put the tips of his thumbs together. With the gate-crashers put in their places, he went on: “As for you, ladies and gentlemen, this would be much more interesting and stimulating for you if I could begin by saying that my job is to learn which one of you is guilty of murder-and to prove it. Unfortunatelv we can't have that fillip, since two of the eight - Miss Shepherd and Mr Savarese-didn't come. I am told that Mr Savarese had an engagement, and there is a certain reluctance about Miss Shepherd that I would like to know more about.”

“She's a noisy little chatterbox.” From Tully Strong, who had removed his spectacles and was gazing at Wolfe with an intent frown.

“She's a pain in the neck.” From Bill Meadows.

Everybody smiled, some nervously, some apparently meaning it.

“I didn't try to get her,” Deborah Koppel said. “She wouldn't have come unless Miss Fraser herself had asked her, and I didn't think that was necessary. She hates all the rest of us.”

“Why?”

“Because she thinks we keep her away from Miss Fraser.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. We try to.”

“Not from me too, I hope.” Wolfe sighed down to where a strip of his yellow shirt divided his vest from his trousers, and curled his palms and fingers over the ends of his chair arms. “Now. Let's get at this. Usually when I talk I dislike interruptions, but this is an exception. If you disagree with anything I say, or think me in error, say so at once. With that understood: “Frequently, twice a week or oftener, you consider the problem of guests for Miss Fraser's programme. It is in fact a problem, because you want interesting people, famous ones if possible, but they must be willing to submit to the indignity of lending their presence, and their assent by silence, if nothing more, to the preposterous statements made by Miss Fraser and Mr Meadows regarding the products they advertise. Recently-”

“What's undignified about it?”

“There are no preposterous statements!”

“What's this got to do with what we're paying you for?”

You disagree.” Wolfe was unruffled. “I asked for it. Archie, p include it in your notes that Mr Traub and Mr Strong disagree. You may ignore Mr Owen's protest, since my invitation to interrupt did not extend to him.”

He took in the semi-circle again. “Recently a suggestion was made that you corral, as a guest, a man who sells tips on horse races. I understand that your memories differ as to when that suggestion was first made.”

Madeline Fraser said: “It's been discussed off and on for over a year.”

“I've always been dead against it,” Tully Strong asserted.

Deborah Koppel smiled. “Mr Strong thought it would be improper. He thinks the programme should never offend anybody, which is impossible. Anything and everything offends somebody.”

“What changed your mind, Mr Strong?”

“Two things,” said the secretary of the Sponsors' Council. “First, we got the idea of having the audience vote on it-the air audience-and out of over fourteen thousand letters ninety-two point six per cent were in favour. Second, one of the letters was from an assistant professor of mathematics at Columbia University, suggesting that the second guest on the programme should be him, or some other professor who could speak as an expert on the law of averages. That gave it a different slant entirely, and I was for it. Nat Traub, for the agency, was still against it.”

“And I still am,” Traub declared. “Can you blame me?”

“So,” Wolfe asked Strong, “Mr Traub was a minority of one?”

That's right. We went ahead. Miss Vance, who does research for the programme in addition to writing scripts, got up a list of prospects. I was surprised to find, and the others were too, that more than thirty tip sheets of various kinds are published in New York alone. We boiled it down to five and they were contacted.”

I should have warned them that the use of contact as a verb was not permitted in that office. Now Wolfe would have it in for him.

Wolfe frowned. “All five were invited?”

“Oh, no. Appointments were made for them to see Miss Fraser-the publishers of them. She had to find out which one was most likely to go over on the air and not pull something that would hurt the programme. The final choice was left to her.”

“How were the five selected?”

“Scientifically. The length of time they had been in business, the quality of paper and printing of the sheets, the opinions of sports writers, things like that.”

“Who was the scientist? You?”

“No…I don't know…”

“I was,” a firm, quiet voice stated. It was Elinor Vance. I had put her in the chair nearest mine because Wolfe isn't the only one who likes to have things around that he enjoys looking at. Obviously she hadn't caught up on sleep yet, and ever so often she had to clamp her teeth to keep her chin from quivering, but she was the only one there who could conceivably have made me remember that I was not primarily a detective, but a man. I was curious how her brown eyes would look if and when they got fun in them again some day. She was going on: “First I took out those that were plainly impossible, more than half of them, and then I talked it over with Miss Koppel and Mr Meadows, and I think one or two others-I guess Mr Strong-yes, I'm sure I did-but it was me more than them. I picked the five names.”

“And they all came to see Miss Fraser?”

“Four of them did. One of them was out of town-in Florida.”

Wolfe's gaze went to the left. “And you, Miss Fraser, chose Mr Cyril Orchard from these four?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“How did you do that? Scientifically?”

“No.” She smiled. “There's nothing scientific about me. He seemed fairly intelligent, and he had much the best voice of the four and was the best talker, and I liked the name of his sheet, Track Almanac-and then I guess I was a little snobbish about it too. His sheet was the most expensive-ten dollars a week.”

“Those were the considerations that led you to select him?”

“Yes.”

“You had never seen or heard of him before he came to see you as one of the four?”

“I hadn't seen him, but I had heard of him, and I had seen his sheet.”

“Oh?” Wolfe's eyes went half-shut. “You had?”

“Yes, about a month before that, maybe longer, when the question of having a tipster on the programme had come up again, I had subscribed to some of the sheets-three or four of them-to see what they were like. Not in my name, of course. Things like that are done in my manager's name-Miss Koppel. One of them was this Track Almanac? “How did you happen to choose that one?”

“My God, I don't know!” Madeline Fraser's eyes flashed momentarily with irritation. “Do you remember, Debby?1 Deborah shook her head. “I think we phoned somebody.”

“The New York State Racing Commission,” Bill Meadows offered sarcastically.

“Well.” Wolfe leaned forward to push a button on his desk. “I’m going to have some beer. Aren't some of you thirsty?”

That called for an intermission. No one had accepted a previous offer of liquids I had made, but now they made it unanimous in the affirmative, and I got busy at the table at the far wall, already equipped. Two of them joined Wolfe with the beer, brought by Fritz from the kitchen, and the others suited their fancy. I had suggested to Wolfe that it would be fitting to have a case of Starlite in a prominent place on the table, but he had merely snorted. On such occasions he always insisted that a red wine and a chilled white wine must be among those present. Usually they had no takers, but this time there were two, Miss Koppel and Traub, who went for the Montrachet; and, being strongly in favour of the way its taste insists on sneaking all over the inside of your head, I helped out with it. There is only one trouble about serving assorted drinks to a bunch of people in the office on business. I maintain that it is a legitimate item for the expense account for the clients, and Wolfe says no, that what anyone eats or drinks in his house is on him. Another eccentricity. Also, he insists that they must all have stands or tables at their elbows for their drinks.

So they did.