Murder in E Minor

1

November, 1977

Nero Wolfe and I have argued for years about whether the client who makes his first visit to us before or after noon is more likely to provide an interesting — and lucrative — case. Wolfe contends that the average person is incapable of making a rational decision, such as hiring him, until he or she has had a minimum of two substantial meals that day. My own feeling is that the caller with the greater potential is the one who has spent the night agonizing, finally realizes at dawn that Wolfe is the answer, and does something about it fast. I’ll leave it to you to decide, based on our past experience, which of us has it better pegged.

I’d have been more smug about the timing of Maria Radovich’s call that rainy morning if I’d thought there was even one chance in twenty that Wolfe would see her, let alone go back to work. It had been more than two years since Orrie Cather committed suicide — with Wolfe’s blessing and mine. At the time, the realization that one of his longtime standbys had murdered three people didn’t seem to bother Wolfe, but since then I had come to see that the whole business had rocked him pretty good. He would never admit it, of course, with that ego fit for his seventh of a ton, but he was still stung that someone who for years had sat at his table, drunk his liquor, and followed his orders could be a cool and deliberate killer. And even though the D.A. had reinstated both our licenses shortly after Orrie’s death, Wolfe had stuck his head in the sand and still hadn’t pulled it out. I tried needling him back to work, a tactic that had been successful in the past, but I got stonewalled, to use a word he hates.

“Archie,” he would say, looking up from his book, “as I have told you many times, one of your most commendable attributes through the years has been your ability to badger me into working. That former asset is now a liability. You may goad me if you wish, but it is futile. I will not take the bait. And desist using the word ‘retired.’ I prefer to say that I have withdrawn from practice.” And with that, he would return to his book, which currently was a rereading of Emma by Jane Austen.

It wasn’t that we did not have opportunities. One well-fixed Larchmont widow offered twenty grand for starters if Wolfe would find out who poisoned her chauffeur, and I couldn’t even get him to see her. The murder was never solved, although I leaned toward the live-in maid, who was losing out in a triangle to the gardener’s daughter. Then there was the Wall Street money man — you’d know his name right off — who said Wolfe could set his own price if only we’d investigate his son’s death. The police and the coroner had called it a suicide, but the father was convinced it was a narcotics-related murder. Wolfe politely but firmly turned the man down in a ten-minute conversation in the office, and the kid’s death went on the books as a suicide.

I couldn’t even use the money angle to stir him. On a few of our last big cases, Wolfe insisted on having the payments spread over a long period, so that a series of checks — some of them biggies — rolled in every month. That, coupled with a bunch of good investments, gave him a cash flow that was easily sufficient to operate the old brown-stone on West Thirty-fifth Street near the Hudson that has been home to me for more than half my life. And operating the brown-stone doesn’t come cheap, because Nero Wolfe has costly tastes. They include my salary as his confidential assistant, errand boy, and — until two years ago — man of action, as well as those of Theodore Horstmann, nurse to the ten thousand orchids Wolfe grows in the plant rooms up on the roof, and Fritz Brenner, on whom I would bet in a cook-off against any other chef in the universe.

I still had the standard chores, such as maintaining the orchid germination records, paying the bills, figuring the taxes, and handling Wolfe’s correspondence. But I had lots of free time now, and Wolfe didn’t object to a little free-lancing. I did occasional work for Del Bascomb, a first-rate local operative, and also teamed with Saul Panzer on a couple of jobs, including the Masters kidnapping case, which you may have read about. Wolfe went so far as to compliment me on that one, so at least I knew he still read about crime, although he refused to let me talk about it in his presence anymore.

Other than having put his brain in the deep freeze, Wolfe kept his routine pretty much the same as ever: breakfast on a tray in his room; four hours a day — 9 to 11 A.M. and 4 to 6 P.M. — in the plant rooms with Theodore; long conferences with Fritz on menus and food preparation; and the best meals in Manhattan. The rest of the time, he was in his oversized chair behind his desk in the office reading and drinking beer. And refusing to work.

Maria Radovich’s call came at nine-ten on Tuesday morning, which meant Wolfe was up with the plants. Fritz was in the kitchen working on one of Wolfe’s favorite lunches, sweetbreads in béchamel sauce and truffles. I answered at my desk, where I was balancing the checkbook.

“Nero Wolfe’s residence. Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“I need to see Mr. Wolfe — today. May I make an appointment?” It was the voice of a young woman, shaky, and with an accent that seemed familiar to me.

“I’m sorry, but Mr. Wolfe isn’t consulting at the present time,” I said, repeating a line I had grown to hate.

“Please, it’s important that I see him. I think my—”

“Look, Mr. Wolfe isn’t seeing anyone, honest. I can suggest some agencies if you’re looking for a private investigator.”

“No, I want Mr. Nero Wolfe. My uncle has spoken of him, and I am sure he would want to help. My uncle knew Mr. Wolfe many years ago in Montenegro, and—”

“Where?” I barked it out.

“In Montenegro. They grew up there together. And now I am frightened about my uncle...”

Ever since it became widely known that Wolfe had retired — make that “withdrawn from practice” — would-be clients had cooked up some dandy stories to try to get him working again. I was on their side, but I knew Wolfe well enough to realize that almost nothing would bring him back to life. This was the first time, though, that anyone had been ingenious enough to come up with a Montenegro angle, and I admire ingenuity.

“I’m sorry to hear that you’re scared,” I said, “but Mr. Wolfe is pretty hard-hearted. I’ve got a reputation as a softie, though. How soon can your uncle be here? I’m Mr. Wolfe’s confidential assistant, and I’ll be glad to see him, Miss...”

“Radovich, Maria Radovich. Yes, I recognized your name. My uncle doesn’t know I am calling. He would be angry. But I will come right away, if it’s all right.”

I assured her it was indeed all right and hung up, staring at the open checkbook. It was a long shot, no question, but if I had anything to lose by talking to her, I couldn’t see it. And just maybe, the Montenegro bit was for real. Montenegro, in case you don’t know, is a small piece of Yugoslavia, and it’s where Wolfe comes from. He still has relatives there; I send checks to three of them every month. But as for old friends, I doubted any were still alive. His closest friend ever, Marko Vukcic, had been murdered years ago, and the upshot was that Wolfe and I went tramping off to the Montenegrin mountains to avenge his death. And although Wolfe was anything but gabby about his past, I figured I knew just about enough to eliminate the possibility of a close comrade popping up. But there’s no law against hoping.

I got a good, leisurely look at her through the one-way glass in the front door as she stood in the drizzle ringing our bell. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, and slender, she had a touch of Mia Farrow in her face. And like Farrow in several of her roles, she seemed frightened and unsure. But looking through the glass, I was convinced that with Maria Radovich, it was no act.

She jumped when I opened the door. “Oh! Mr. Goodwin?”

“The selfsame,” I answered with a slight bow and an earnest smile. “And you are Maria Radovich, I presume? Please come in out of the twenty-percent chance of showers.”

I hung her trench coat on the hall rack and motioned toward the office. Walking behind her, I could see that her figure, set off by a skirt of fashionable length, was a bit fuller than I remembered Mia Farrow’s to be, and that was okay with me.

“Mr. Wolfe doesn’t come down to the office for another hour and ten minutes,” I said, motioning to the yellow chair nearest my desk. “Which is fine, because he wouldn’t see you anyway. At least not right now. He thinks he’s retired from the detective business. But I’m not.” I flipped open my notebook and swiveled to face her.

“I’m sure if Mr. Wolfe knew about my uncle’s trouble, he would want to do something right away,” she said, twisting a scarf in her lap and leaning forward tensely.

“You don’t know him, Miss Radovich. He can be immovable, irascible, and exasperating when he wants to, which is most of the time. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, at least for now. Maybe we can get Mr. Wolfe interested later, but to do that, I’ve got to know everything. Like for starters, who is your uncle and why are you worried about him?”

“He is my great-uncle, really,” she answered, still using only the front quarter of the chair cushion. “And he is very well-known. Milan Stevens. I am sure you have heard of him — he is music director, some people say conductor, of the New York Symphony.”

Not wanting to look stupid or disappoint her, or both, I nodded. I’ve been to the Symphony four or five times, always with Lily Rowan, and it was always her idea. Milan Stevens may have been the conductor one or more of those times, but I wouldn’t take an oath on it. The name was only vaguely familiar.

“Mr. Goodwin, for the last two weeks my uncle has been getting letters in the mail — awful, vile letters. I think someone may want to kill him, but he just throws the letters away. I am frightened. I am sure that—”

“How many letters have there been, Miss Radovich? Do you have any of them?”

She nodded and reached into the shoulder bag she had set on the floor. “Three so far, all the same.” She handed the crumpled sheets over, along with their envelopes, and I spread them on my desk. Each was on six-by-nine-inch notepaper, plain white, the kind from an inexpensive tear-off pad. They were hand-printed, in all caps, with a black felt-tip pen. One read:

In fact, all three weren’t exactly alike. The wording differed, though only slightly. The “on your own” in the last sentence was missing from one note, and the first sentence didn’t have an exclamation point in another. Maria had lightly penciled the numbers one, two, and three on the back of each to indicate the order in which they were received. The envelopes were of a similar ordinary stock, each hand-printed to Milan Stevens at an address in the East Seventies. “His apartment?” I asked.

Maria nodded. “Yes, he and I have lived there since we came to this country, a little over two years ago.”

“Miss Radovich, before we talk more about these notes, tell me about your uncle, and yourself. First, you said on the phone that he and Mr. Wolfe knew each other in Montenegro.”

She eased back into the chair and nodded. “Yes, my uncle — his real name is Stefanovic, Milos Stefanovic. We are from Yugoslavia. I was born in Belgrade, but my uncle is a Montenegrin. That’s a place on the Adriatic. But of course I don’t have to tell you that — I’m sure you know all about it from Mr. Wolfe.

“My uncle’s been a musician and conductor all over Europe — Italy, Austria, Germany. He was conducting in London last, before we came here. But long ago, he did some fighting in Montenegro. I know little of it, but I think he was involved in an independence movement. He doesn’t like to talk about that at all, and he never mentioned Mr. Wolfe to me until one time when his picture was in the papers. It was something to do with a murder or a suicide — I think maybe your picture was there too?”

I nodded. That would have been when Orrie died. “What did your uncle say about Mr. Wolfe?”

“I gather they had lost touch over the years. But he didn’t seem at all interested in trying to reach Mr. Wolfe. At the time I said, ‘How wonderful that such an old friend is right here. What a surprise! You’ll call him, of course?’ But Uncle Milos said no, that was part of the past. And I got the idea from the way he acted that they must have had some kind of difference. But that was so long ago!”

“If you sensed your uncle was unfriendly toward Mr. Wolfe, what made you call?”

“After he told me about knowing Mr. Wolfe back in Montenegro, Uncle Milos kept looking at the picture in the paper and nodding his head. He said to me, ‘He had the finest mind I have ever known. I wish I could say the same for his disposition.’”

I held back a smile. “But you got the impression that your uncle and Mr. Wolfe were close at one time?”

“Absolutely,” Maria said. “Uncle Milos told me they had been through some great difficulty together. He even showed me this picture from an old scrapbook.” She reached again into her bag and handed me a gray-toned photograph mounted on cardboard and ragged around the edges.

They certainly fit my conception of a band of guerrillas, although none looked to be out of his teens. There were nine in all, posed in front of a high stone wall, four kneeling in front and five standing behind them. Some were wearing long overcoats, others had on woolen shirts, and two wore what I think of as World War I helmets. I spotted Wolfe instantly, of course. He was second from the left in the back row, with his hands behind his back and a bandolier slung over one shoulder. His hair was darker then, and he weighed at least one hundred pounds less, but the face was remarkably similar to the one I had looked at across the dinner table last night. And his glare had the same intensity, coming at me from a faded picture, that it does in the office when he thinks I’m badgering him.

To Wolfe’s right in the photo was Marko Vukcic, holding a rifle loosely at his side. “Which one’s your uncle?” I asked Maria.

She leaned close enough so I could smell her perfume and pointed to one of the kneelers in front. He was dark-haired and intense like most of the others, but he appeared smaller than most of them. None of the nine, though, looked as if he were trying to win a congeniality contest. If they were as tough as they appeared, I’m glad I wasn’t fighting against them.

“This picture was taken up in the mountains,” Maria said. “Uncle Milos only showed it to me to point out Mr. Wolfe, but he wouldn’t talk any more about the other men or what they were doing.”

“Not going to a picnic,” I said. “I’d like to hang onto this for a while. Now, what about you, Miss Radovich? How does it happen you’re living with a great-uncle?”

She told me about how her mother, a widow, had died when she was a child in Yugoslavia, and that Stefanovic, her mother’s uncle, had legally adopted her. Divorced and without children, he was happy to have the companionship of a nine-year-old. Maria said he gave her all the love of a parent, albeit a strict one, taking her with him as he moved around Europe to increasingly better and more prestigious conducting jobs. At some time before moving to England, he had changed his name to Stevens — she couldn’t remember exactly when. It was while they were living in London that he was picked as the new conductor, or music director if you prefer, of the New York Symphony. Maria, who by that time was twenty-three, made the move with him, and she was now a dancer with a small troupe in New York.

“Mr. Goodwin,” she said, leaning forward and tensing again, “my uncle has worked hard all his life to get the kind of position and recognition he has today. Now somebody is trying to take it away from him.” Her hand gripped my forearm.

“Why not just go to the police?” I asked with a shrug.

“I suggested that to Uncle Milos, and he became very angry. He said it would leak out to the newspapers and cause a scandal at the Symphony, that the publicity would be harmful to him and the orchestra. He says these notes are from a crazy person, or maybe someone playing a prank. I was with him when he opened the first one, or I might not know about any of this. He read it and said something that means ‘stupid’ in Serbo-Croatian, then crumpled the note and threw it in the wastebasket. But he hardly spoke the rest of the evening.

“I waited until he left the room to get the note from the basket. It was then that I said we should call the police. He became upset and said it was probably a prankster, or maybe a season-ticket holder who didn’t like the music the orchestra had been playing.”

“How long until the next note?” I asked.

“I started watching the mail after that. Six days later, we got another envelope printed just like the first one. I didn’t open it — I never open my uncle’s mail. But again I found the crumpled note in the wastebasket next to his desk in the library. This time I didn’t mention it to him, and he said nothing about it to me, but again he seemed distressed.

“The third note came yesterday, six days after the second, and again I found it in the wastebasket. Uncle Milos doesn’t know that I’ve seen the last two notes, or that I’ve saved all three.”

“Miss Radovich, does your uncle have any enemies you know of, anyone who would gain by his leaving the Symphony?”

“The music director of a large orchestra always has his detractors.” She took a deep breath. “There are always people who think it can be done better. Some are jealous, others just take pleasure in scoffing at talented people. My uncle does not discuss his work very much at home, but I do know, from him and from others, that he has opposition even within the orchestra. But notes like this, I can’t believe—”

“Someone is writing them, Miss Radovich. I’d like to hear more about your uncle’s opposition, but Mr. Wolfe will be down in just a few minutes, and it’s best if you’re not here when he comes in. He may get interested in your problem, but you’ll have to let me be the one to try getting him interested.”

For the third time, Maria dove into her bag. She fished out a wad of bills and thrust it at me. “There’s five hundred dollars here,” she said. “That is just for agreeing to try to find out who’s writing the notes. I can pay another forty-five hundred dollars if you discover the person and get him to stop.” Five grand was a long way below what Wolfe usually got as a fee, but I figured that for Maria Radovich, it was probably big bucks. I started to return the money, then I drew back and smiled.

“Fair enough,” I said. “If I can get Nero Wolfe to move, we keep this. Otherwise, it goes back to you. Now we’ve got to get you out of here. You’ll be hearing from me soon — one way or the other.” I wrote her a receipt for the money, keeping a carbon, and hustled her out to the hall and on with her coat.

My watch said ten fifty-eight as she went down the steps to the street. I rushed back to the office, put the money and receipt in the safe, and arranged Wolfe’s morning mail in a pile on his blotter. Included in the stack was one item the carrier hadn’t delivered: a faded fifty-year-old photograph.