Invitation to Murder

1

The neat little man resented it. He was hurt. “No, sir,” he protested, “you are wrong. It is not what you called it, sordid familial flimflam. It is perfectly legitimate for me to inquire into anything affecting the disposal of the fortune my father made, is it not?”

Weighing rather less than half as much as Nero Wolfe, he was lost in the red leather chair three steps from the end of Wolfe’s desk. Comfortably filling his own outsized chair behind the desk, Wolfe was scowling at the would-be client, Mr. Herman Lewent of New York and Paris. I, at my desk with notebook and pen, was neutral, because it was Friday and I had a weekend date, and if Lewent’s job was urgent and we took it, good-by weekend.

Wolfe, as usual when solicited, was torn. He hated to work, but he loved to eat and drink, and his domestic and professional establishment in the old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street, including the orchids in the plant rooms on the roof, had an awful appetite for dollars. The only source of dollars was his income as a private detective, and at that moment, there on his desk near the edge, was a little stack of lettuce with a rubber band around it. Herman Lewent, who had put it there, had stated that it was a thousand dollars.

Nevertheless Wolfe, who hated to work and was torn, demanded, “Why is it legitimate?”

Lewent was small all over. He was slim and short, his hands and feet were tiny, and his features were in scale, with a pinched little mouth that had no room at all for lips. Also he was old enough to have started to shrink some and show creases. Still I would not have called him a squirt. When his quick little gray eyes met yours straight, as they did, you had the feeling that he knew a lot of the answers and could supply good guesses on the ones he hadn’t worked out.

He was still resenting Wolfe but holding it in. “I came to you,” he said, “because this is a very delicate matter, and the combination you have here, you and Mr. Goodwin, may be able to handle it. So I’m prepared to suffer your rudeness. The inquiry is legitimate because it was my father who made the fortune — in mining, mostly copper mining. My mother died when I was a child, and I never learned how to behave myself. I have never learned, and I am now too old to. A few months ago I had three mistresses, one in Paris, one in Toulouse, and one in Rome, and one of them tried to poison me.”

I gave him an eye and decided to believe nothing he said. He just wasn’t built for it.

He was proceeding. “I am no longer wild; I’m too old; but I was wild when young. Though my father didn’t approve of me and finally refused to see me, he didn’t let me starve — in fact, he was fairly generous. But when he died — I was thirty-six then; that was twenty years ago — he left everything to my sister, Beryl, with a request that she consider my needs. She did so, up to a point, until she died a year ago. She was born knowing how to behave, my sister was. I was abroad when she died — I have lived mostly abroad — but of course I flew over for the funeral.”

He shrugged like a Frenchman, or anyhow not like an American. “Out of all the millions she had inherited from our father, she left me nothing. Not a cent, not a sou. It all went to her husband, Theodore Huck, with a request that he consider my needs, worded exactly like the request in my father’s will. As I said, my sister knew how to behave. I had a talk with Huck and suggested that it would be simpler to transfer a lump sum to me — say a million or even half a million — but he thought not. He said he knew what Beryl’s wishes were and felt bound to carry them out, and he agreed to send me the same amount she had been sending the last two years, a thousand dollars a month. I didn’t do what I should have done.”

He wanted a question, and Wolfe obliged. “What should you have done?”

“I should have killed him. He sat there in his wheelchair — his arteries have gone bad, and he can’t walk — he sat there in my father’s house, the owner of it, and he said he would send me a thousand a month from the money my father had made. It was an invitation to murder. If I had killed him, with due precaution of course, under my sister’s will I would have received for the rest of my life an annual income of some forty thousand dollars. The idea did occur to me, but I’m no good at all with any kind of intricacy, and though I have never learned how to behave, my instinct of self-preservation is damned keen.”

He gestured. “That’s what brought me here, that instinct. If for any reason this creature, this brother-in-law, this Theodore Huck in a wheelchair, stopped considering my needs, I would shortly die of starvation. I am incapable of sustaining life, even my own — especially my own. So when, at my rooms in Paris, I received a communication warning me of possible danger, I took a plane to New York. My brother-in-law made me welcome at my father’s house — damned gracious of him — and I’ve been there nearly two weeks now, and I’m stumped, and that’s why I’m here. There are three—”

He stopped abruptly, aimed the quick little gray eyes at me, sent them back to Wolfe, and said, “This is confidential.”

Wolfe nodded. “Things discussed in this room usually are. Your risk, sir.”

“Well.” He screwed his pinched little mouth, making it even smaller. He shrugged. “Well. I think the warning I got was valid. There are three women in that house with him, besides the cook and maids: the housekeeper, Mrs. Cassie O’Shea, who is a widow; a nurse, Miss Sylvia Marcy; and a so-called secretary, Miss Dorothy Riff. They’re all after him, and I think one of them is getting him, but I don’t know which one and I can’t find out. The trouble is, I have developed a formula for getting on terms with women, but in this case I can’t use it and I’m lost. I need to know as soon as possible which one of those women is landing my brother-in-law.”

Wolfe snorted. “So you can intervene? With your formula?”

“Good God, no.” Lewent was shocked. “It would be a damned nuisance, and anyway there would soon be another one and I would have time for nothing else. Also I would like to get back to Europe before the holidays. I merely want to engage her sympathetic interest. I want to secure her friendship. I want to make absolutely certain that she will be permanently well disposed toward me after she lands Huck. That will take me three weeks if it is Miss Marcy or Miss Riff, four if it is Mrs. O’Shea. It is not a sordid familial flimflam. It’s a perfectly legitimate inquiry. Isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Wolfe conceded. “But it’s fantastic.”

“Not at all. It’s practical and damned sensible. My income for the rest of my life depends entirely on the goodwill of my brother-in-law. If he marries, especially if he marries a woman considerably younger than he is, how long will his goodwill last — twelve thousand dollars’ worth, year after year — if his wife hasn’t got it too?”

Wolfe grunted. “What precisely would be my engagement?”

“To find out as soon as possible which one of them is hooking him.” Lewent aimed a thumb at the little stack he had put on Wolfe’s desk. “That thousand dollars is yours, succeed or fail, but it will have to cover everything because it’s all I can afford. It might seem hardly worth your while, but actually, since you never leave this house on business, it will take little of your time and talent. The work will be done by Mr. Goodwin, and you have to pay his salary anyhow, and the expense will be negligible — taxi fares to and from my father’s house on Sixty-ninth Street, now owned by Theodore Huck. I know something of Goodwin’s record and prowess, and one trip, one day, might be all he would require — with consultation with you, of course. He can go up there with me now.”

I didn’t throw him a kiss. I can take a compliment raw, with no chaser, as well as the next one, but I hope I have learned how to behave, and I had a weekend date.

Wolfe’s scowl had deteriorated to a mild frown. “You say you received a warning. From whom?”

“From Paul Thayer, Huck’s nephew. Huck lets him live there in the house. He’s as useless as I am — he composes music that no one will listen to. He hopes to inherit some of my father’s money from Huck, and he got alarmed and wrote me.”

“What alarmed him?”

“Some little things and one big thing. A man with cases came from Tiffany’s and was with Huck in his study for nearly an hour. That could mean only one thing: Huck was buying something expensive for a woman — one of those three.”

“Why? There are other women.”

Lewent shook his head. “Not for Huck. He can’t walk, and he hasn’t been out of the house more than two or three times since my sister died. No woman ever comes to see him. It’s one of those three. You might think Paul or I could discover which one, but it’s not so simple. He has his meals in his room or his study, and we see very little of him. Paul has tried approaching the women on it, and I have made a few little efforts in that direction myself, but it’s a delicate business.”

“Make friends with all three of them.”

“It couldn’t be done. They’re too jealous of one another.”

“Wait until you see one of them wearing the gift from Tiffany’s. That will settle it.”

“It would settle me too. It would be too damned obvious. None of them is a numskull.”

“But,” Wolfe objected, “it will be equally obvious if she is flushed by Mr. Goodwin — in consultation with me.”

“I don’t expect him to flush her. I don’t want him to.” Lewent slid forward on the smooth leather seat. “My God, can’t you find out things without people knowing it? I couldn’t take Goodwin into that house to cross-examine them about their relations with Huck, even if I wanted to. It is my father’s house, but Huck owns it. We’ll have to use a subterfuge, especially for Goodwin to talk with Huck. I just decided—”

He was stopped by a noise from Wolfe — an explosive noise, half grunt and half snort. It was meant for a stopper. Lewent’s quick little gray eyes widened in startled inquiry. “What’s the matter?”

“You.” Wolfe was mildly disgusted. “I might conceivably engage to pry into the amatory designs of a wealthy widower if I were hard put and the bait was spectacular, but as it is you’re wasting your time. And mine. Good day, sir.”

It sounded positively final. Lewent’s pinched little mouth worked from side to side and up and down. “You mean you won’t do it.”

“That’s right.”

“I didn’t think you would, but I thought I’d try it that way.” He clasped his hands together. “So here goes. Now this is confidential.”

“You said that before.”

“I know I did, but this is different. My sister died here in New York, at my father’s house, of ptomaine poisoning from something she ate. Huck cabled me in Paris, and I flew home for the funeral, as I said. I never had any suspicions about it until two things happened. First, Odelette, my mistress in Toulouse, tried to poison me when she was mad with jealousy, showing me that anyone may commit murder if the motive is good enough; and second, I was warned by Paul Thayer that Huck was being bagged by one of these women. That started me thinking, and I went to a library and read up on ptomaines. Those women were all present when my sister was poisoned. I believe that one of them murdered her.”

“On what evidence?”

“None. I believe that she already had Huck or was sure she could get him. I’ve been here nearly two weeks, and I firmly believe that, but what can I do? I don’t even dare ask any questions of anyone. Of course the police would laugh at me. Naturally I thought of you, but the most I could scrape up was a thousand dollars, and that’s small change for you, so I decided to try to get you started on it by not mentioning murder and just saying what I wanted — well, you heard me.”

He gestured. “I want to head her off, and I think maybe I can if I can find out which one it is.”

“How will you head her off without evidence?”

“That’s up to me. Leave that to me, if once I know her. For an absolutely legitimate purpose, I want to pay in advance for a thousand dollars’ worth of Goodwin’s time and talent and consultation with you as required. Ten hours of Goodwin and ten minutes of you? Whatever it is, I want to buy it.”

Abruptly Wolfe rolled his chair back and arose. “I have an important phone call to make,” he told Lewent, “and will leave you with Mr. Goodwin. Since, as you say, the work will be done by him, I won’t be needed, even for the decision whether to take the job.”

He marched across to the door to the hall and was gone, but not, as I knew, to make a phone call. Not wanting to refuse to take money, but not caring to shoulder the blame for spoiling my weekend for the sake of a measly grand, he was putting it up to me. As for him, he would go to the kitchen, open a bottle of beer, and make suggestions to Fritz about preparations for lunch. As for me, I was stuck. If I shooed Lewent out it would be months before I could again open my trap to ride Wolfe for turning down jobs. So I got the little stack which the little man had put on Wolfe’s desk, counted it, and found that it was twenty fifties.

“Okay,” I told him, “I’ll give you a receipt. First I think our approach to Huck will stand some discussion. Do you agree?”

He did, and I sat, and we discussed.