Archie Meets Nero Wolfe (7 page)

“And you are usually outside with Tommie?” I put in.

“Always, at least until ... until yesterday.” More twisting of the hankie.

“What does he normally do during that time?”

“Yesterday, he was gathering different kinds of leaves for a school project,” she said. “Sometimes, we fly a kite or hit tennis balls around on the court or take a short swim in the pool or he has a brief ride on one of his mother’s horses, the tamest one. When that happens, which is once or twice a week, I ride along with him on another horse.”

“Is everyone on the household staff familiar with these routines?” Panzer asked.

“Oh yes. Our schedule varies somewhat in the summer, when Tommie is not in school, but even then, we usually are outside in the back at some point during the morning. The property is so large and so well equipped, there is always something to do.”

“Were you surprised to get summoned to the telephone yesterday?”

“Yes—that has never happened before.”

“Please describe the situation.”

“I was ... in the backyard, about, oh, only about ten or fifteen yards from the house, helping Tommie identify leaves, when Mary—that’s Mary Trent, the housemaid—came to the door of the terrace and called out to me that I had a telephone call, and that it sounded urgent. My mother in Virginia has been very ill, heart problems, and I was afraid that’s what the call was about. I ran inside without ... well, without thinking about Tommie.”

“Were the Williamsons and the others on the staff aware of your mother’s health problems?” Panzer posed.

“Oh yes. We are a fairly close-knit group most of the time, particularly the women, which is comforting.”

“So you ran into the house. What next?”

“Mary was waiting at the French doors and told me that the call came to the instrument in the hallway just off the dining room. When I got there and picked up the receiver, there was no one on the other end. I clicked the cradle several times, but got no answer, nothing at all. I’m afraid that I started shouting ‘Who is there?’ or something similar to that. Then, I got the operator on the wire, but she couldn’t help me at all. I wasted all that time, while Tommie was ... She lifted her shoulders and let them drop.

“What did Mary Trent tell you about the voice of the caller and what this individual said to her?”

“She told me it was a man, and he said to her in a frantic voice, a hoarse voice, ‘I must talk to Sylvia Moore right away. It is terribly important, a matter of life and death! Get her—and please hurry!’”

Panzer ran a hand through his hair. “How long would you estimate you were in the house?”

“Umm, maybe three or four minutes; I don’t think any longer than that. It is really hard to tell exactly, though, because I was so upset about my mother. Also, it took time to reach the operator.”

“And you went back out into the yard then?”

“Yes. When I didn’t see Tommie where I had left him, I thought he must have come inside while I was on the telephone. But we—me, Mary, Emily Stratton, the housekeeper—all looked around the house and couldn’t find him anywhere. That’s when we told Mrs. Williamson what had happened, and we all moved out to the grounds. Everybody on the staff became part of the search.”

“Did the rest of them, the staff that is, know that you would be outside with Tommie collecting leaves in the morning?” I asked.

“Why ... yes, they did. I mentioned it when we were at dinner in our kitchen the night before, but that’s not at all uncommon. I often talk about what projects Tommie and I are working on. The others, particularly the women, like to hear what he’s up to. They’re all very fond of him,” she said, her upper lip quivering.

Panzer gave her an understanding look. “Miss Moore, has it occurred to you that the purpose of that call was to get you into the house and away from Tommie?”

She struggled to maintain her composure. “Not until some time later, after I had called my mother and learned she was all right, and found that no one back home had placed a long-distance telephone call to me. What I cannot understand is how the caller knew I would be outside with Tommie at that very moment, and how he got word to whoever took Tommie.”

“That is what we intend to discover,” Panzer said, “and very quickly. Can you show us the exact spot in the yard where Tommie was when you got called into the house?”

We left the house, walked across a terrace with its tables and umbrellas, and down four steps into a yard that seemed to go on forever, past the pool and tennis courts. Off to the left were both a greenhouse and what I later learned were the stables.

We crossed a gravel driveway that curved around the house from the front and led to the garage. A few yards beyond the driveway, Sylvia Moore bent down and pointed to a small stack of leaves. “These were what Tommie was collecting when I left him right here,” she sniffled, picking up the leaves and handling them as though they were precious objects. We had not had rain for days, so any kind of tracks on the grass were out of the question, and the gravel on the driveway appeared to have recently been raked.

“Anything else that we should know?” Panzer asked the young woman.

Sylvia shook her head and studied her shoes. “Only that this is all my fault,” she murmured, “all my fault.”

“I don’t believe the Williamsons are blaming you,” I told her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Well, they should!” she said as she walked back toward the mansion.

A
s we piled into the Heron sedan for the trip back to Manhattan, Fred Durkin beat Orrie Cather to the spot next to the driver, drawing a frown from Cather. “Oh, can it, Orrie, you’re slimmer than I am,” Fred snapped, looking over his shoulder. “You can stand to be back there better than me.”

“I can’t help it if you’re overweight. Besides, I’m the one who found out today just how the kid got hustled off the estate.”

“What?” barked Del Bascom. “When did you—?”

“That’s enough,” Panzer interrupted as he started the car. “We’re not going to discuss anything about this case till we’re with Mr. Wolfe. He needs to hear everything fresh, not after we’ve hashed it over among ourselves.”

“Oh yeah? Just who put you in charge?” Cather said, practically hissing.

“As a matter of fact, Mr. Wolfe did. Go ahead and ask him if you don’t believe me.”

That shut Cather up, and for the rest of the drive into Manhattan, the conversation centered on the pennant races, and whether both the Giants and the Yankees would make it into the World Series. The verdict: Yankees, yes; Giants, no. It turned out that neither team made it. As we neared West Thirty-Fifth Street, Panzer checked his wristwatch. “Mr. Wolfe should be coming down right now.”

“Coming down from where?” I asked.

“The plant rooms, Archie,” Durkin said. “He spends four hours a day in a greenhouse up on the top floor of his place, where he grows thousands of orchids, all different colors. I’ve only been up there once, but I will never forget the sight. I can’t believe there’s a nursery anyplace with more orchids than he’s got.”

“I’ll be damned. Four hours a day?”

“That’s right,” Panzer said. “Nine to eleven and four to six. He is very rigid about it, almost never misses a day, even when he’s knee-deep in a case.”

“And he’s got a crabby gardener up there to help tend them orchids,” Cather put in. “Grouchy old coot named Horstmann.”

“Anybody would figure to be crabby with you coming into the house, Orrie,” Durkin shot back. “He’s probably only grouchy when you’re hanging around.”

“Children, children,” Panzer said as he pulled the Heron up to the curb in front of Wolfe’s brownstone. “Remember, we are on the job, which does not include bickering like a bunch of grammar-school kids.”

Fritz, whose last name I now knew to be Brenner, opened the front door and ushered us in. We trooped down the hall to the office, taking the same seats we had earlier in the day. Wolfe was settled in at his desk, two bottles of beer and a pilsner glass in front of him. “Gentleman,” he said with a barely perceptible nod. “Can I offer you some refreshments?”

This time, everyone accepted. Saul asked for a scotch on the rocks, Orrie a bourbon highball, and Fred and Del, beer. Figuring it was time for me to learn how to drink, I ordered scotch and water.

After Fritz had efficiently filled our requests, Wolfe swallowed beer, dabbed his lips with a handkerchief, and fastened his gaze on Saul Panzer. “Well?”

“We each talked to the people we were assigned to,” he said.

“And you have not discussed your discoveries with one another?” Saul shook his head.

“Satisfactory. Please proceed.”

Saul gave what seemed to me to be a verbatim report of our meetings with both of the Williamsons and Sylvia Moore. On several occasions, he looked at me questioningly, as if seeking confirmation for his accuracy. Each time I nodded, awed by his recall and vowing to ensure that I could do as well—or better.

After the report, Wolfe asked Saul for his impressions of all three. “They are each pretty shaken right now, which is hardly surprising under the circumstances. Williamson is trying to put on a brave front, stiff upper lip and all, but the waiting for a call from the kidnapper is getting to him, wouldn’t you agree, Archie?”

“Absolutely. The guy is trying to hold his emotions in, but he looks like he’s about to snap. It’s painful to watch.”

“As for the wife,” Panzer continued, “the strain shows on her a lot more, and like her husband, she resolutely rejects any suggestion that a member of the household staff has any connection with the kidnapping—and that includes that gardener and the stable master.” He looked at me and I nodded my agreement.

“Then we have the, uh ... nanny,” Panzer said as Wolfe made a face. “If anything, Sylvia Moore seems even more upset than the boy’s parents, partly because she blames herself for what happened. She told us she has no idea who might have telephoned her and then hung up when she came on the line. Her mother in Virginia has been quite ill, and when the maid called to her out in the yard and said someone urgently wanted to speak to her, she immediately imagined the worst and dashed inside, although you probably know all that yourself from talking to Williamson.”

“He recounted the occurrence essentially the same way, having also heard Miss Moore’s description of it,” Wolfe said.

Panzer went on. “I asked her if she had seen anyone suspicious on the grounds, and she said no. Have I missed anything, Archie?”

“No, it’s all there.”

Wolfe looked around the room, passing over Orrie Cather, who was squirming in his chair like a high school sophomore wanting to be called on by the teacher because he knew the answer. “Fred, your report?”

Durkin pulled out his notebook and knit his brow as he flipped the pages. “First, I talked to the gardener, Lloyd Carstens, who’s worked for the Williamsons for about eleven years. And you sure were right about him, Saul. He’s a crusty, crabby character, who obviously didn’t want to waste any time with me. We met in the greenhouse, a huge place, and he kept telling me how busy he was. I didn’t think he acted very concerned at all about the kidnapping. He seemed more interested about all his flowers and bushes and kept going on about what a big job it is to maintain the grounds and how hard he has to work.”

“Does he have help in his work?”

“Yeah, he does, Mr. Wolfe,” Durkin said. “Says he brings in outside crews to mow and plant flower beds in season. But he said none of these part-timers had been on the grounds in the last week or two. I asked if he had seen anyone around recently who didn’t belong, and he said definitely not.

“Carstens has an apartment in Lynbrook, which he said is about an eight-mile drive from the Williamsons’. He’s married, has no children.”

Wolfe drained the beer from his glass and opened a second bottle. “Saul mentioned that there was animus between Mr. Carstens and Mark Simons, who runs the stable. Did you find that to be the case?”

Durkin nodded. “It came up, all right. Carstens griped about how Simons always acts like he’s the most important person on the estate and that he’s always complaining about how the mowing crew messes up the bridle path, which he then has to spend time raking smooth again.”

“Is there a telephone in the greenhouse?” Wolfe asked.

“There is,” Durkin said. “I made a point of locating it. Carstens has a small office nook in one corner, with the instrument sitting on a desk. And it’s an outside line, all right.”

“You also talked to Mr. Simons?”

“Yes, sir, I did. He has worked for the Williamsons for just over nine years. He’s every bit as grouchy as Carstens, and even more arrogant. The main difference I could detect between them is that Simons seems much more concerned about the kidnapped boy. He also seems very devoted to Mrs. Williamson and talks about her almost like she’s a saint. He said he used to ride around the estate’s bridle path with her until Sylvia Moore got hired. Now the Moore girl usually rides with the missus, and I got the impression that Simons doesn’t much care for that young woman.”

“Did he comment on other members of the staff?”

Durkin said no. “And when I asked, he said he hadn’t seen anyone out of the ordinary hanging around the house or the grounds. His stables are very clean and neat, at least for a barn. There’s three horses in all, and he went on about what magnificent animals they are, almost as if he was talking like they were his children. And oh, yeah, he’s got a phone with an outside line in his own little office, just like Carstens does. On the wall above his desk there’s a photo of a horse. He says it’s Man o’ War, which he calls ‘the finest piece of horseflesh that’s ever lived and ever will live.’”

Consulting his notebook, the thickset detective continued: “Simons drives in every day from Hempstead, just a few miles from the estate. Says he’s got what he describes as ‘a small cottage’ where he lives with his wife. A married son who’s got a couple kids has a house close by theirs.”

Wolfe gave Durkin a nod and turned toward Del Bascom, once again ignoring an anxious Orrie Cather, who clearly was dying to speak. “You talked to the chauffeur and the housekeeper?”