Archie in the Crosshairs

Chapter 21

On the drive back to New York, I considered the plights of the Hutchinson siblings: two bloodied survivors of rancorous divorces; one successful but apparently dissatisfied advertising copywriter; an artist who was broke and going nowhere; and a guileless tourist who had met one charming and slick-talking Italian too many. Whoever it was that warned of “the trials of abounding wealth” certainly knew what he was talking about. Over lunch, Doug had wondered aloud about whether his misfortunes were the stuff of a novel. I wasn’t sure about that, but if you took the experiences of each member of the younger Hutchinson generation and put them all together, they would make quite a saga, and not a particularly happy or uplifting one.

It was almost four thirty when I returned to the brownstone after having dropped the roadster off at the garage. Wolfe was up in the greenhouse enjoying his afternoon session with the orchids and Fritz bustled around the kitchen preparing the evening meal.

“Will you be dining with us tonight, Archie?” he asked, a touch of scolding in his tone.

“Yes, I have missed far too many of your fine meals lately, and it is time I put a stop to that. Notice that I am not even going to ask you about tonight’s menu, because whatever it is will be better than anything I have had outside these walls over the last few days.”

That put a smile on Fritz’s puss. He would deny it if asked, but he loves to hear praise for his culinary skills — and they merit quite a bit of praise.

“Tonight, I am serving one of your favorites: veal bird in casserole with mushrooms and white wine. I do remember that the last time I served it, you talked about it for days,” Fritz said.

“It was well worth talking about for days. I’m not sure how I can stand to wait until seven, but somehow I will manage.”

I left Fritz a happy man and went to the office to telephone Marlene Peters, the last person on my to-be-interviewed list. Cordelia had given me two numbers for Marlene: her apartment on the Lower East Side and the bookshop in the same neighborhood where she lived. There was no answer at home, so I dialed the number at the store.

“Mason’s Book Nook,” a young-sounding female voice chirped.

“I would like to speak to Marlene Peters.”

“This is she. How may I help you?” I told her who I was and why I was calling. There was silence for several seconds. “How did you get my number?” she demanded, no longer chirping.

I told her that Cordelia had given it to me.

“Well, I really can’t imagine why,” she snapped. “I was in Florence when she was, that much is true, but I certainly don’t know about any sort of blackmailing. It really sounds terrible.”

“Yes, it does, and Cordelia is extremely upset, as I’m sure you can imagine. My boss, Nero Wolfe, and I are trying to determine who the blackmailer is. It would be helpful if I could talk to you about your time in Florence with Cordelia. Without even realizing it, you may have some insights.”

“I am sorry, Mr... Goodwin. I’m at work and really am not free to talk. Even if I could, I don’t know what I could say that would be of any help.”

“What time do you get off today?”

“Nine o’clock, that’s when we close up.”

“Fine, I’ll stop by then. We can get a cup of coffee or a sandwich someplace nearby. Where is the shop?”

“On Second Avenue, just north of Sixth Street. But I really don’t see any use in this.”

“Consider it as doing a favor for your good friend. And if you are worried about me, I can only say that I am honest and trustworthy. You can call Cordelia and ask her about me. When we meet, I will show you my private investigator’s license, complete with a picture. It was issued to me by the great State of New York, and they have never had reason to revoke it.”

I could hear deep breathing. “Well... all right, as long as Cordelia said you should call me. I’ll try to remember everything I can think of about the time when she and I were together in Florence.”

When Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at six, I told him where I had been and where I would be later in the evening. He held fast in his insistence that I wait until after my meeting with Marlene Peters to give him the rundown on all of my interviews. “I do not want to receive these reports in piecemeal form,” he grumped. “Your memory is good enough to store everything up until such time as you can repeat it all to me.”

I appreciated his faith in my ability to give verbatim reports on extended conversations, although I would have liked to unload some of my information then. But Wolfe is a genius and I am not, so that settled the matter without further discussion.

The veal bird casserole was as good as I had remembered, maybe even better, and it was followed by a dessert of raspberries in sherry cream, another of my all-time favorites. Could this be Fritz’s way of reminding me just how much I had been missing recently?

Wolfe stuck to his inflexible rule of never discussing business during meals, holding forth on the various reasons New York had become the largest and most important city in the country and why it would likely stay that way for decades, if not centuries, to come. As usual, I mainly nodded, listened, and chewed, having nothing significant to add.

After dinner, we had coffee in the office, but there was little conversation, as Wolfe immersed himself in his latest book, My Three Years in Moscow by Walter Bedell Smith. At eight-twenty, I rose and announced I was off to the Lower East Side, but got no reaction from the man who signs my checks. A fascinating book, no doubt. A light drizzle had begun to fall, so I grabbed my raincoat from the hall rack and headed for Ninth Avenue to hail a southbound cab. Twenty-five minutes later, I found myself at the corner of Second Avenue and Sixth Street.

I spotted Mason’s Book Nook, a narrow storefront whose cheerful inside lighting was a welcome contrast to the closed and darkened establishments on either side. When I stepped in, a little bell over the door announced my arrival. A man at the cash register with no hair on his head but plenty on his upper lip peered over half-glasses at me and smiled. “Welcome to Mason’s,” he said. “If we haven’t got what you want, we’ll do our darndest to get it. Just tell us how might we help you, young fella?”

“Just by calling me ‘young fella’ you have lifted my spirits,” I told him, shaking the raindrops off my coat. “I’m looking for Miss Marlene Peters. I believe she is expecting me.”

He threw me a suspicious look but quickly erased it. “Marlene!” he called, “A gentleman here to see you. At least I hope he’s a gentleman,” he added, winking at me to show that he sensed I was all right.

A short, slim redhead with a turned-up nose wearing a skirt, sweater, and large tortoise shell glasses emerged from the shadowy bowels of the store and fixed me with an expression somewhere between curious and cautious.

“It’s Mr. Goodwin, isn’t it?” she said, cocking her head.

“That’s me all right. Did you check me out with your friend Cordelia?”

A slight smile creased her face as she shook her head. “No, I really didn’t think I had to, and you don’t need to show me your license.”

“That is reassuring,” I said. “I know I’m a little early, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just browse around until closing time.”

“Marlene, it’s been a slow night,” the bald man said, stroking his white mustache. “You might as well take off now; I can close up.”

“Are you sure, Mr. Mason?”

“Absolutely, unless Mr. Goodwin here really does want to do some browsing, which I certainly would not object to.”

“You know, my boss is a lover of Charles Dickens’ work, and he is also a lover of handsome volumes,” I told him. “Do you happen to have anything that might make a good birthday gift?”

Mason, whom I assumed to be the owner, rubbed his palms together and stood, a grin creasing his face. “I believe I may have just the thing, Mr. Goodwin,” he said, heading toward the back of the store as Marlene Peters got her purse from under the counter and ran a comb though her hair. Mason returned holding a small book with a calfskin binding and gilt edging. “This is a limited-edition number of Great Expectations that is as well made as any Dickens volume I’ve seen come through here in years,” he said. “It was printed in London about 1910. Here’s what I can let you have it for,” he said, naming a price. The amount was about what I normally spent on Wolfe’s birthday gift, so we had ourselves a deal. Marlene wrapped the book in silver gift paper with a red ribbon while I paid Mason.

As we walked out, he said, “Marlene, why don’t you tell Mr. Goodwin about some of the other treasures that we have here? Who knows, maybe we can make a regular customer of him.”

“Your boss seems like a nice guy,” I said as we walked along Second Avenue toward a coffee shop Marlene had suggested.

“He is; he’s just wonderful to work for. His wife died about a year ago, and none of his children live anywhere near New York, so the shop is pretty much his whole life now.”

“Have you been there for a long time?”

“Not at all, I began just a couple of months ago,” she said as we entered the café. “I want to work for a publishing company, someday as an editor, I hope, and I’ve got a lot of résumés out. Mr. Mason knows that, but he agreed to hire me even if it’s only for a short time. The girl who was there before left to go back to college, so he needed someone as a replacement. The pay is not great, but I enjoy the place, and it’s close to where I live.”

We settled into a booth, and I insisted that Marlene order dinner. “This is on me,” I told her. “I dragooned you into seeing me, so the least I can do is to feed you for your trouble.”

“Dragooned. What an unusual term,” she said.

“It means something like forced or coerced. My boss, Nero Wolfe, has a huge vocabulary, and I’ve learned all sorts of words from him. Some of them I may even use correctly.”

That got a laugh out of Marlene. “Are you going to have something to eat, too?” she asked.

“I’ve already had dinner, but to keep you company, I’ll have a piece of pie and a glass of milk.”

She ordered a steak sandwich with fries and tied into her meal as if she hadn’t eaten in a week. I waited until she had finished before getting down to business. “Marlene, tell me about your trip to Florence.”

“I had been in that city before, and on this vacation to Europe, the only place in Italy I had planned to visit was Rome. But when I learned that Cordelia was going to Florence for the first time, I thought it would be fun if we were there at the same time, at least for a week or so, and I ended up altering my plans.”

“You had been classmates in college?”

“Yes, at Vassar. We lived in the same hall and got to know each other early on. And we’ve been friends ever since, five or six years now.”

“Nice to have long-running friendships like that. Cordelia said you got together several times in Florence.”

She nodded. “We did, sometimes just the two of us and sometimes with... well, with a man she had met.”

“Really? An Italian?”

“Yes, his name is Carlo. He lives in Florence and comes from a very wealthy family in the leather business.”

“Would you say this was a serious relationship?”

Marlene bit a lip. “I know they seemed to get along, but... how well do you know Cordelia?”

“Not very. I’ve only been with her a couple of times.”

“I feel funny talking about a good friend like this, but Cordelia is really quite inexperienced with men, at least for someone her age.”

“I was under the impression she had some sort of understanding with a man here in New York,” I said, improvising.

“Lanny Mercer, yes. I haven’t talked to Cordelia lately, but I know they were beginning to make plans. He seems like a nice fellow, based on the few times I’ve met him. His family owns a business that makes airplanes, mostly for private companies, I believe.”

“Do you feel her meeting this Carlo in Florence has had an effect on that relationship?”

“I just don’t know, Mr. Goodwin.” She frowned and shook her head.

“Well, do you think it is possible that the blackmailing has anything to do with this Carlo? And further, has Cordelia stayed in touch with him since she’s been back home?”

Marlene ran a hand through her hair. “I wish I could answer your questions, but I haven’t talked to Cordelia in a few weeks now. I’ve called her for lunch a couple of times, but she’s always been busy. And she seems very distracted over the telephone, maybe because of this blackmailing business that you’re talking about.”

“Maybe, but she refuses to get specific about it,” I said. “Her father, who hired us, knew something was bothering her and pushed her to tell him what it is. She finally did admit she was being blackmailed but would say nothing more about it. So it is up to us to figure out what’s going on.”

“Poor Cordelia. I wish there was something I could do for her.”

“You know her brother, Doug, don’t you?”

“Well, yes, in a way,” she said. “Cordelia thought we would get along well and introduced us. We went out a few times a while back, but it just didn’t click, maybe because he’s quite a bit older than I am.”

“So you don’t see him anymore?”

She shook her head. “That is all in the past for me.”

“Anything else you can think of that might help us understand what’s going on with Cordelia?”

“As I said when you telephoned me, Mr. Goodwin, I really don’t think so. What I will do is call Cordelia again for lunch. Perhaps something will come of that.”

“Please let me know if you learn something that is of interest.” I gave her my business card.

“I will, as long as I am not betraying any confidences. And thank you very much for dinner,” Marlene said, sliding out of the booth and moving toward the door.

“I would be happy to walk you home,” I said, but she told me she lived less than two blocks away. She seemed to be in a hurry to leave, and I was not about to slow her down.