Poison à la Carte

IV

It had sounded to me as if Cramer had about said his say and would soon be moving along, and if he bumped into Helen Iacono in the hall she might be too embarrassed to give me her phone number, if that was what she had come for, so as I opened the door I pressed a finger to my lips and sshhed at her, and then crooked the finger to motion her in. Her deep dark eyes looked a little startled, but she stepped across the sill, and I shut the door, turned, opened the first door on the left, to the front room, motioned to her to enter, followed, and closed the door.

“What’s the matter?” she whispered.

“Nothing now,” I told her. “This is soundproofed. There’s a police inspector in the office with Mr. Wolfe and I thought you might have had enough of cops for a while. Of course if you want to meet him—”

“I don’t. I want to see Nero Wolfe.”

“Okay, I’ll tell him as soon as the cop goes. Have a seat. It shouldn’t be long.”

There is a connecting door between the front room and the office, but I went around through the hall, and here came Cramer. He was marching by without even the courtesy of a grunt, but I stepped to the front to let him out, and then went to the office and told Wolfe, “I’ve got one of them in the front room. Helen Iacono, the tawny-skinned Hebe who had you but gave her caviar to Kreis. Shall I keep her while I get the rest of them?”

He made a face. “What does she want?”

“To see you.”

He took a breath. “Confound it. Bring her in.”

I went and opened the connecting door, told her to come, and escorted her across to the red leather chair. She was more ornamental in it than Cramer, but not nearly as impressive as she had been at first sight. She was puffy around the eyes and her skin had lost some glow. She told Wolfe she hadn’t had any sleep. She said she had just left the District Attorney’s office, and if she went home her mother would be at her again, and her brothers and sisters would come home from school and make noise, and anyway she had decided she had to see Wolfe. Her mother was old-fashioned and didn’t want her to be an actress. It was beginning to sound as if what she was after was a place to take a nap, but then Wolfe got a word in.

He said drily, “I don’t suppose, Miss Iacono, you came to consult me about your career.”

“Oh, no. I came because you’re a detective and you’re very clever and I’m afraid. I’m afraid they’ll find out something I did, and if they do I won’t have any career. My parents won’t let me even if I’m still alive. I nearly gave it away already when they were asking me questions. So I decided to tell you about it and then if you’ll help me I’ll help you. If you promise to keep my secret.”

“I can’t promise to keep a secret if it is a guilty one — if it is a confession of a crime or knowledge of one.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then you have my promise, and Mr. Goodwin’s. We have kept many secrets.”

“All right. I stabbed Vincent Pyle with a knife and got blood on me.”

I stared. For half a second I thought she meant that he hadn’t died of poison at all, that she had sneaked upstairs and stuck a knife in him, which seemed unlikely since the doctors would probably have found the hole.

Apparently she wasn’t going on, and Wolfe spoke. “Ordinarily, Miss Iacono, stabbing a man is considered a crime. When and where did this happen?”

“It wasn’t a crime because it was in self-defense.” Her rich contralto was as composed as if she had been telling us the multiplication table. Evidently she saved the inflections for her career. She was continuing. “It happened in January, about three months ago. Of course I knew about him, everybody in show business does. I don’t know if it’s true that he backs shows just so he can get girls, but it might as well be. There’s a lot of talk about the girls he gets, but nobody really knows because he was always very careful about it. Some of the girls have talked but he never did. I don’t mean just taking them out, I mean the last ditch. We say that on Broadway. You know what I mean?”

“I can surmise.”

“Sometimes we say the last stitch, but it means the same thing. Early last winter he began on me. Of course I knew about his reputation, but he was backing Jack in the Pulpit and they were about to start casting, and I didn’t know it was going to be a flop, and if a girl expects to have a career she has to be sociable. I went out with him a few times, dinner and dancing and so forth, and then he asked me to his apartment, and I went. He cooked the dinner himself — I said he was very careful. Didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he was. It’s a penthouse on Madison Avenue, but no one else was there. I let him kiss me. I figure it like this, an actress gets kissed all the time on the stage and the screen and TV, and what’s the difference? I went to his apartment three times and there was no real trouble, but the fourth time, that was in January, he turned into a beast right before my eyes, and I had to do something, and I grabbed a knife from the table and stabbed him with it. I got blood on my dress, and when I got home I tried to get it out but it left a stain. It cost forty-six dollars.”

“But Mr. Pyle recovered.”

“Oh, yes. I saw him a few times after that, I mean just by accident, but he barely spoke and so did I. I don’t think he ever told anyone about it, but what if he did? What if the police find out about it?”

Wolfe grunted. “That would be regrettable, certainly. You would be pestered even more than you are now. But if you have been candid with me you are not in mortal jeopardy. The police are not simpletons. You wouldn’t be arrested for murdering Mr. Pyle last night, let alone convicted, merely because you stabbed him in self-defense last January.”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” she agreed. “That’s not it. It’s my mother and father. They’d find out about it because they would ask them questions, and if I’m going to have a career I would have to leave home and my family, and I don’t want to. Don’t you see?” She came forward in the chair. “But if they find out right away who did it, who poisoned him, that would end it and I’d be all right. Only I’m afraid they won’t find out right away, but I think you could if I helped you, and you said last night that you’re committed. I can’t offer to help the police because they’d wonder why.”

“I see.” Wolfe’s eyes were narrowed at her. “How do you propose to help me?”

“Well, I figure it like this.” She was on the edge of the chair. “The way you explained it last night, one of the girls poisoned him. She was one of the first ones to take a plate in, and then she came back and got another one. I don’t quite understand why she did that, but you do, so all right. But if she came back for another plate that took a little time, and she must have been one of the last ones, and the police have got it worked out who were the last five. I know that because of the questions they asked this last time. So it was Peggy Choate or Nora Jaret or Carol Annis or Lucy Morgan.”

“Or you.”

“No, it wasn’t me.” Just matter-of-fact. “So it was one of them. And she didn’t poison him just for nothing, did she? You’d have to have a very good reason to poison a man, I know I would. So all we have to do is find out which one had a good reason, and that’s where I can help. I don’t know Lucy Morgan, but I know Carol a little, and I know Nora and Peggy even better. And now we’re in this together, and I can pretend I want to talk about it. I can talk about him because I had to tell the police I went out with him a few times, because I was seen with him and they’d find out, so I thought I’d better tell them. Dozens of girls went out with him, but he was so careful that nobody knows which ones went to the last ditch except the ones that talked. And I can find out which one of those four girls had a reason, and tell you, and that will end it.”

I was congratulating myself that I hadn’t got her phone number; and if I had got it, I would have crossed it off without a pang. I don’t say that a girl must have true nobility of character before I’ll buy her a lunch, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Thinking that Wolfe might be disgusted enough to put into words the way I felt, I horned in. “I have a suggestion, Miss Iacono. You could bring them here, all four of them, and let Mr. Wolfe talk it over with them. As you say, he’s very clever.”

She looked doubtful. “I don’t believe that’s a good idea. I think they’d be more apt to say things to me, just one at a time. Don’t you think so, Mr. Wolfe?”

“You know them better than I do,” he muttered. He was controlling himself.

“And then,” she said, “when we find out which one had a reason, and we tell the police, I can say that I saw her going back to the kitchen for another plate. Of course just where I saw her, where she was and where I was, that will depend on who she is. I saw you, Mr. Wolfe, when I said you could if I helped you, I saw the look on your face. You didn’t think a twenty-year-old girl could help, did you?”

He had my sympathy. Of course what he would have liked to say was that it might well be that a twenty-year-old hellcat could help, but that wouldn’t have been tactful.

“I may have been a little skeptical,” he conceded. “And it’s possible that you’re over-simplifying the problem. We have to consider all the factors. Take one: her plan must have been not only premeditated but also thoroughly rigged, since she had the poison ready. So she must have known that Mr. Pyle would be one of the guests. Did she?”

“Oh, yes. We all did. Mr. Buchman at the agency showed us a list of them and told us who they were, only of course he didn’t have to tell us who Vincent Pyle was. That was about a month ago, so she had plenty of time to get the poison. Is that arsenic very hard to get?”

“Not at all. It is in common use for many purposes. That is of course one of the police lines of inquiry, but she knew it would be and she is no bungler. Another point: when Mr. Pyle saw her there, serving food, wouldn’t he have been on his guard?”

“But he didn’t see her. They didn’t see any of us before. She came up behind him and gave him that plate. Of course he saw her afterward, but he had already eaten it.”

Wolfe persisted. “But then? He was in agony, but he was conscious and could speak. Why didn’t he denounce her?”

She gestured impatiently. “I guess you’re not as clever as you’re supposed to be. He didn’t know she had done it. When he saw her she was serving another man, and—”

“What other man?”

“I don’t know. How do I know? Only it wasn’t you, because I served you. And anyway, maybe he didn’t know she wanted to kill him. Of course she had a good reason, I know that, but maybe he didn’t know she felt like that. A man doesn’t know how a girl feels — anyhow, some girls. Look at me. He didn’t know I would never dream of going to the last ditch. He thought I would give up my honor and my virtue just to get a part in that play he was backing, and anyhow it was a flop.” She gestured again. “I thought you wanted to get her. All you do is make objections.”

Wolfe rubbed the side of his nose. “I do want to get her, Miss Iacono. I intend to. But like Mr. Pyle, though from a different motive, I am very careful. I can’t afford to botch it. I fully appreciate your offer to help. You didn’t like Mr. Goodwin’s suggestion that you get them here in a body for a discussion with me, and you may be right. But I don’t like your plan, for you to approach them singly and try to pump them. Our quarry is a malign and crafty harpy, and I will not be a party to your peril. I propose an alternative. Arrange for Mr. Goodwin to see them, together with you. Being a trained investigator, he knows how to beguile, and the peril, if any, will be his. If they are not available at the moment, arrange it for this evening — but not here. Perhaps one of them has a suitable apartment, or if not, a private room at some restaurant would do. At my expense, of course. Will you?”

It was her turn to make objections, and she had several. But when Wolfe met them, and made it plain that he would accept her as a colleague only if she accepted his alternative, she finally gave in. She would phone to let me know how she was making out with the arrangements. From her manner, when she got up to go, you might have thought she had been shopping for some little item, say a handbag, and had graciously deferred to the opinion of the clerk. After I graciously escorted her out and saw her descend the seven steps from the stoop to the sidewalk, I returned to the office and found Wolfe sitting with his eyes closed and his fists planted on the chair arms.

“Even money,” I said.

“On what?” he growled.

“On her against the field. She knows damn well who had a good reason and exactly what it was. It was getting too hot for comfort and she decided that the best way to duck was to wish it on some dear friend.”

His eyes opened. “She would, certainly. A woman whose conscience has no sting will stop at nothing. But why come to me? Why didn’t she cook her own stew and serve it to the police?”

“I don’t know, but for a guess she was afraid the cops would get too curious and find out how she had saved her honor and her virtue and tell her mother and father, and father would spank her. Shall I also guess why you proposed your alternative instead of having her bring them here for you?”

“She wouldn’t. She said so.”

“Of course she would, if you had insisted. That’s your guess. Mine is that you’re not desperate enough yet to take on five females in a bunch. When you told me to bring the whole dozen you knew darn well it couldn’t be done, not even by me. Okay, I want instructions.”

“Later,” he muttered, and closed his eyes.