I rather doubted if anyone would be up and around so early at the castle of culture, but evidently recent events had caused some changes in routine. Five seconds after I pushed the button in the vestibule there were steps inside. The door opened and Paul Hannah was there. He blinked. “My eye,” he said. “Rubbing against culture at this hour?”
“I’m a fanatic,” I told him. I stepped in. “I got interrupted yesterday by that sergeant. I know it’s early, but there’s something I want to clear up.”
A voice came down from above, Tammy Baxter’s: “Who is it, Paul?”
I called up, “Archie Goodwin! Good morning! I know I’m a nuisance, but it can’t be helped. Is there any chance of having a conference?”
“With me?”
“With all of you. I have a little problem to settle. Do you suppose they can be roused?”
“I’ll see. I don’t know if Ray... I’ll see.”
Paul Hannah asked if I had had breakfast and I said yes but I could use a cup of coffee if there was any to spare, and he headed for the rear. I followed, but detoured into the parlor to put my coat and hat on the sofa. As I entered the kitchen Hannah was at the range pouring coffee. “I guess,” he said, “I’m a misfit as an actor. I have always liked to get up in the morning and I can’t break the habit. What’s the problem you want to settle?”
I could have told him he would also have to do something about his chubby cheeks, but didn’t. “Nothing much,” I said. “Probably nothing at all. Pumpkin pie?”
He nodded. “Another habit, pie for breakfast. My favorites are mince and lemon meringue, but they didn’t have any yesterday. Have a piece?” I said no, thanks, and he changed the subject. “What do you think of Clement Brod?”
That was a challenge. When anyone asks what you think of somebody you never heard of, the game is to place him without letting on. You can nearly always win if you play it right, and that time it was a cinch. Without a single fumble I had learned that Clement Brod was a well-off young man in his twenties who had had a book of poems published, had written an off-beat play called Do As Thou Wilt, had worn a beard for a year but shaved it off, and owned a Jaguar, by the time Hannah had finished his second piece of pie and third cup of coffee; and I would soon have been an authority on Brod if we hadn’t been interrupted. The four of them arrived together — Tammy Baxter, Martha Kirk, Noel Ferris, and Raymond Dell. The girls were dressed for anybody and their faces and hair had been attended to. Ferris had combed his hair but was in shirt sleeves and no tie. Dell’s marvelous white mane was tousled and his costume was an ancient blue dressing gown with spots on it. As he entered he boomed: “Monstrous! Flagitious!”
“There’s plenty of coffee,” Hannah said. “Kippers, anyone?”
Noel Ferris stretched, yawned, muttered, “Give me the sun,” and came and sat. Martha Kirk went and got cups. Tammy Baxter said, “You have made history, Mr. Goodwin,” and pulled up a chair. Dell sank onto one where it was, took an orange from the pocket of his gown, and started peeling it.
“I apologize,” I told them. “I don’t know what ‘flagitious’ means, in fact I didn’t know it was pronounced like that, but I admit it’s monstrous. My excuse is that I wanted to get here before any of you went out.”
“More coffee?” Martha Kirk asked me. Looking up at her, from an angle, the dimple seemed a little off-center, but it wasn’t.
“I believe I will, thanks.” I wanted to be one of them.
“It had better be good,” Noel Ferris drawled. His lazy brown eyes were only half open. “Good heavens! I hope you’re not going to evict us?”
I would have liked to tell him it would be a pleasure to evict a man who answered the phone by asking who is this. “No,” I said, “for that I would need a badge and I’m strictly private.” I took a sip of coffee. “I just want to settle a little matter. Why I phoned yesterday and asked for Miss Annis, I had seen her and talked with her. She had come to see Nero Wolfe, but he was busy, and she was coming back at a quarter past eleven. She never came, and I wondered why. When I phoned of course I didn’t know she had been killed.”
“You asked for Miss Baxter,” Ferris said.
“Yeah. I knew she lived here. I had met her somewhere. Later, when I learned what had happened to Miss Annis, I thought over what she had told me, and on account of something she had said, something she had told me was confidential, I wanted to take a look at her effects. I wanted to know what to do about what she had told me in confidence. So I came, and was talking with Miss Baxter when we were interrupted. And here I am again. I’m going to glance through Miss Annis’ things, her papers mostly. Did she have a desk somewhere?”
“A good idea.” Ferris yawned. “Go to it. Second floor front. If you find a will leaving the house to Ray Dell we’ll be fixed for life.”
“That’s brutal,” Martha Kirk said. “The poor woman isn’t even in her grave yet.”
“She left nothing to me,” Dell rumbled. “She regarded me as a sloven. All my eloquence couldn’t persuade her that orange peel, as it dries in a waste basket, gives a scent pleasant to a discriminating nose.”
“She was right,” Martha declared. “It smells terrible.”
“Is it all right to do that?” Paul Hannah asked me. “Go through her things? Isn’t there a law about it?”
“If there is,” Ferris said, “he should break it. We all should, in her memory. She hated cops.”
“I won’t be breaking any law,” I assured them, “unless I pinch something, and I’m not going to. Of course the strictly proper thing would be to get permission from the executor of the estate, but who is it? Do any of you know?”
They didn’t.
“Has anyone been here officially? Someone claiming to be an heir? Or a lawyer?”
They said no. “Hattie was a relict,” Raymond Dell declared. “The last of her line. It is my belief that she was without kith or kin — unless we are to be considered her kith. That appeals to me.” He thumped his chest. “Raymond Dell, of the kith of Hattie Annis. May I have a napkin, Martha?”
Tammy Baxter spoke for the first time since she had told me I had made history. “You may not find what you’re looking for, Mr. Goodwin. That police sergeant was in Miss Annis’ room for more than an hour last night after he finished with us. He may have taken it.”
“Which suggests a question,” Ferris said. He put his cup down. “You’re a detective, you ought to know everything. Why the inquisition? Why are we beset? Why did that bloodhound tell us not to leave the jurisdiction? What is the jurisdiction? Why did Hattie go to see Nero Wolfe? What did she tell you in confidence? What do you expect to find among her papers?”
“That’s seven questions,” I protested. “Have a heart.”
“They’re damn good questions,” Paul Hannah said. He was at the range again. “I’d like to ask them myself. I think we all would. Especially the first two. As far as we know, Hattie was crossing the street and got hit by a goon who had stolen a car.” His chubby cheeks were flushed. “Why don’t they find him and cut off his hands and feet? What have we got to do with it?”
I shook my head. “Search me. That’s not my territory. As for what Miss Annis told me in confidence, now that she’s dead it may be that I ought to tell it, and that’s what I want to find out. Specifically, about the package she left with me — a little package wrapped in brown paper. She didn’t tell me what was in it. I don’t want to slander the dead, but from something she said I got the notion that it might have belonged to one of you and she had swiped it. Are any of you minus such a package? Or anything that could be put in such a package?”