Too Many Clients (9 page)

I was going, but she spoke. “If we go away, we’ll tell you before we go.”

“We’re not going,” Perez said. “We’re citizens of the United States of America.”

“That’s the spirit,” I said, and went to the elevator and pushed the button. It came, and I entered and was lifted.

That bower of carnality grew on you. Emerging from the elevator and seeing that all was serene, that Fred hadn’t had to use the coverlet again, I let my eyes glance around. Unquestionably the place had a definite appeal. It would have been an interesting and instructive experiment to move in and see how long it would take to get used to it, especially a couple of pictures across from the-

But I had work to do. Fred was in a yellow silk chair, at ease, with a glass of champagne in his hand, and on a couch facing him, also with a glass of champagne, was a female who went with the surroundings much better than either Meg Duncan or Julia McGee, though of course they hadn’t been relaxed on a couch. This one was rather small, all curves but not ostentatious, and the ones that caught your eye and held it were the curves of her lips-her wide, but not too wide, full mouth. As I approached she extended a hand.

“I know you,” she said. “I’ve seen you at the Flamingo. I made a man mad once saying I wanted to dance with you. When Fred said Archie Goodwin was coming I had to sit down to keep from swooning. You dance like a dream.”

I had taken the offered hand. Having shaken hands with five different murderers on previous occasions, I thought one more wouldn’t hurt if it turned out that way. “I’ll file that,” I told her.

“If we ever team up for a ton I’ll try not to trample you. Am I intruding'Are you and Fred old friends?”

“Oh no, I never saw him before. It just seems silly to call a man Mister when you’re drinking champagne with him. I suggested the champagne.”

“She put it in the freezer,” Fred said, “and she opened it, and why waste it'I don’t like it much, you know that.”

“No apology needed. If she calls you Fred, what do you call her?”

“I don’t call her. She said to call her Dye. I was just waiting for you.”

On the couch, at arm’s length from her, was a leather bag shaped like a box. I was close enough so that all I had to do to get it was bend and stretch an arm. Her hand darted out, but too late, and I had it. As I backed up a step and opened it, all she said was, “That’s not nice, is it?”

“I’m only nice when I’m dancing.” I went to the end of the couch and removed items one by one, putting them on the couch. There were only two things with names on them, an opened envelope addressed to Mrs. Austin Hough, 64 Eden Street, New York 14, and a driver’s license, Dinah Hough, same address, thirty, five feet two inches, white, brown hair, hazel eyes. I put everything back in, closed the bag, and replaced it on the couch near her.

“I left the gun at home,” she said, and took a sip of champagne.

“That was sensible. I only wanted to know how to spell Di. I may be able to save you a little trouble, Mrs. Hough. Nero Wolfe wants to see anyone who comes to this room and has keys to the door downstairs and the elevator�by the way, I left them in your bag�but if we went there now he’d be just starting lunch and you’d have to wait. We might as well discuss matters here while you finish the champagne.”

“Will you have some'The bottle’s in the refrigerator.”

“No, thanks.” I sat on the couch, four feet away, twisted around to face her. “I don’t suppose the champagne’s what you came here for. Is it?”

“No. I came to get my umbrella.”

“Yellow with a red plastic handle?” “No. Gray with a black handle.”

“It’s there in a drawer, but you’ll have to manage without it for a while. If and when the police get interested in this place they won’t like it if things have been taken away. How did it get here?”

“I need a refill.” She was off of the couch and on her feet in one smooth movement. “Can’t I bring you some?”

“No, thanks.”

“You, Fred?”

“No, one’s enough of this stuff.”

She crossed to the kitchen door and on through. I asked Fred, “Did she try to buy you off or talk you off?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t try anything. She gave me a look and saw I’m twice as big as she is, and she said, T don’t know you, do I'What’s your name?’ She’s a damn cool specimen if you ask me. Do you know what she asked me after we got talking'She asked me if I thought this would be a good place to have meetings of the Parent-Teachers Association. Believe me, if I was a woman and I had keys to this place and I came and found a stranger�”

Mrs. Hough had reappeared, with a full glass. She came and resumed her place on the couch without spilling a drop, lifted the glass, said, “Faith, hope, and charity,” and took a sip. She adjusted her legs. “I left it here,” she said. “Two weeks ago Friday, three weeks this coming Friday. It was raining. Tom Yeager had told me he knew a place that was different, worth seeing, he said, and he gave me keys and told me how to get in. When I came, this is what I found.” She waved a hand. “You have to admit it’s different. But there was no one here but him, and he had ideas I didn’t like. He didn’t actually assault me, say nothing but good of the dead, but he was pretty difficult, and I was glad to get away without my umbrella but with everything else.”

She took a sip. “And when I read about his death, about his body being found in a hole in the street, this street, you can imagine. I wasn’t worried about being suspected of having something to do with his death, that wasn’t it, but I knew how clever they are at tracing things, and if the umbrella was traced to me, and this room described in the papers�well . . .” She gestured. “My husband, my friends, everyone who knows me�and if it got bad enough my husband might even lose his job. But this place wasn’t mentioned in the papers yesterday, and when it wasn’t mentioned again today I thought they probably didn’t know about it, and I decided to come and see and perhaps I could get my umbrella. So here I am.”

She took a sip. “And you say I can’t have it and talk about going to see Nero Wolfe. It would be fun to see Nero Wolfe, I wouldn’t mind that, but I want my umbrella, and I have an idea. You say it’s here in a drawer?”

“Right.”

“Then you take it, and tonight take me to the Flamingo and we’ll dance. Not just a turn, we’ll dance till they close, and then you might feel like letting me have the umbrella. That may sound conceited, but I don’t mean it that way, I just think you might, and it won’t hurt to find out, and anyhow you’ll have the umbrella.”

“Yeah.” The curve of her lips really caught the eye. “And it won’t be here. I appreciate the invitation, Mrs. Hough, but I’ll be working tonight. Speaking of working, why would your husband lose his job'Does he work for Continental Plastic Products?”

“No. He’s an assistant professor at NYU. A wife of a faculty member getting involved in a thing like this�even if I’m not really involved…”

There was a click in my skull. It wasn’t a hunch; you never know where a hunch comes from; it was the word “professor” that flipped a switch. “What’s he professor of?” I asked.

“English literature.” She took a sip. “You’re changing the subject. We can go to the Flamingo tomorrow night. You won’t be losing anything except a few hours if you don’t like me, because you’ll have the umbrella.” She looked at her wrist watch. “It’s nearly half past one. Have you had lunch?”

“No.”

“Take me to lunch and maybe you’ll melt a little.”

I was listening with only one ear. Teacher of literature. Measure your mind’s height by the shade it casts, Robert Browning. I would have given ten to one, which would have been a sucker’s bet, but a detective has as much right to look on the bright side as anyone else.

I stood up. “You’re getting on my nerves, Mrs. Hough. It would be no strain at all to call you Di. I haven’t seen anyone for quite a while that I would rather take to lunch or dance with, melting would be a pleasure, but I have to go. Nero Wolfe will still want to see you, but that can wait. Just one question: Where were you Sunday night from seven o’clock on?”

“No.” Her eyes widened. “You can’t mean that.”

“Sorry, but I do. If you want to have another conference with yourself, I’ll wait while you go to fill your glass again.”

“You really mean it.” She emptied the glass, taking her time. “I didn’t go to the kitchen to have a conference with myself. Sunday night I was at home, at our apartment, with my husband. Seven o’clock on'We went to a restaurant in the Village a little after six for dinner, and got home after eight�around half past eight. My husband worked at some papers, and I read and watched television, and I went to bed around midnight, and stayed there, really I did. I seldom get up in the middle of the night and go and shoot a man and drop his body in a hole.”

“It’s a bad habit,” I agreed. “Now Mr. Wolfe won’t have to ask you that. I suppose you’re in the phone book?” I turned to Fred. “Don’t let her talk you out of the umbrella. How’s the room service here'Okay?”

“No complaints. I’m beginning to feel at home. How much longer?”

“A day or a week or a year. You never had it softer.” “Hunh. You leaving her?”

“Yeah, she might as well finish the bottle. I’ve got an errand.” As I made for the elevator Dinah Hough left the couch and headed for the kitchen. She was in there when the elevator came and I entered. Down below Mr. and Mrs. Perez were still in their kitchen, and I poked my head in and told them that their only hope of steering clear of trouble was to sit tight, and blew. At the corner of 82nd and Columbus was a drugstore where I could have treated my stomach to a glass of milk, but I didn’t stop. I had a date with an assistant professor of English literature, though he didn’t know it.

It was 1:40 when I left that house. It was 6:10, four and a half hours later, when I said to Austin Hough, “You know damn well you can’t. Come on.”

During the four and a half hours I had accomplished a good deal. I had learned that in a large university a lot of people know where an assistant professor ought to be or might be, but no one knows where he is. I had avoided getting trampled in corridors twice, once by diving into an alcove and once by fighting my way along the wall. I had sat in an anteroom and read a magazine article entitled “Experiments in Secondary Education in Japan.” I had sweated for fifteen minutes in a phone booth, reporting to Wolfe on the latest developments, including the acquisition of a house by Cesar and Felita Perez. I had taken time out to find a lunch counter on University Place and take in a corned-beef sandwich, edible, a piece of cherry pie, not bad, and two glasses of milk. I had been stopped in a hall by three coeds, one of them as pretty as a picture (no reference to the pictures on the top floor of the Perez house), who asked for my autograph. They probably took me for either Sir Laurence Olivier or Nelson Rockefeller, I’m not sure which.

And I never did find Austin Hough until I finally decided it was hopeless and went for a walk in the direction of 64 Eden Street. I didn’t phone because his wife might answer, and it wouldn’t have been tactful to ask if her husband was in. The thing was to get a look at him. So I went there and pushed the button in the vestibule marked Hough, opened the door when the click sounded, and entered, mounted two flights, walked down the hall to a door which opened as I arrived, and there he was.

He froze, staring. His mouth opened and closed. I said, not aggressively, just opening the conversation, “Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.”

“How in the name of God. . .”he said.

“How doesn’t matter,” I said. “We meet again, that’s enough. Is your wife at home?”

“No. Why?”

“Why doesn’t matter either if she’s not here. There’s nothing I’d enjoy more than chatting with you a while, but as you mentioned Monday, Mr. Wolfe comes down from the plant rooms at six o’clock, and he’s in the office waiting for you. Come along.”

He was deciding something. He decided it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I mentioned nothing to you Monday. I’ve never seen you before. Who are you?”

“I’m Thomas G. Yeager. His ghost. Don’t be a sap. If you think it’s just my word against yours, nuts. You can’t get away with it. You know damn well you can’t. Come on.”

“We’ll see if I can’t. Take your foot away from the door. I’m shutting it.”

There was no point in prolonging it. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll answer the question you didn’t finish. This afternoon I had a talk with your wife. I got your name and address from an envelope I took from her bag.”

“I don’t believe it. That’s a he.”

“Also in her bag was her driving license. Dinah Hough, born April third, nineteen-thirty, white, hair brown, eyes hazel. She likes champagne. She tilts her head a little to the right when she�”

“Where did you see her?”

“Where doesn’t matter either. That’s all you’ll get from me. I told Mr. Wolfe I’d have you there at six o’clock, and it’s a quarter past, and if you want�”

“Is my wife there?”

“No, not now. I’m telling you, Mr. Yeager�excuse me, Mr. Hough�if you don’t want all hell to pop you’ll take my hand and come along fast.”

“Where’s my wife?”

“Ask Mr. Wolfe.”

He moved, and I sidestepped not to get bumped. He pulled the door shut, tried it to make sure the lock had caught, and headed for the stairs. I followed. On the way down I asked which direction was the best bet for a taxi and he didn’t reply. My choice would have been Christopher Street, but he turned right at the corner, towards Seventh Avenue, and won the point. We had one in three minutes, at the worst time of day. He had nothing to say en route. There was a chance, one in ten, that Cramer had a man staked to keep an eye on the old brownstone, but he wouldn’t know Hough from Adam, and going in the back way through the passage from 34th Street was complicated, so we rolled to the curb in front. Mounting the stoop and finding the chain bolt was on, I had to ring for Fritz to let us in.

Wolfe was at his desk, scowling at a crossword puzzle in the Observer. He didn’t look up as we entered. I put Hough in the red leather chair and went to mine, saying nothing. When a master brain is working on a major problem you don’t butt in. In twenty seconds he muttered, “Confound it,” slammed his pencil on the desk, swiveled, focused on the guest, and growled, “So Mr. Goodwin rooted you out. What have you to say for yourself?”

“Where’s my wife?” Hough blurted. He had been holding it

in.

“Wait a second,” I put in. “I’ve told him I talked with his wife this afternoon and got his name and address from items in her bag. That’s all.”

“Where is she?” Hough demanded.

Wolfe regarded him. “Mr. Hough. When I learned Monday evening that a man named Thomas G. Yeager had been murdered, it would have been proper and natural for me to give the police a description of the man who had been here that afternoon impersonating him. For reasons of my own, I didn’t. If I tell them about it now I’ll give them not a description, but your name and address. Whether I do or not will depend on your explanation of that strange imposture. What is it?”

“I want to know where Goodwin saw my wife and why, and where she is. Until I know that, I’m explaining nothing.”

Wolfe closed his eyes. In a moment he opened them. He nodded. “That’s understandable. If your wife was a factor, you can’t explain without involving her, and you won’t do that unless she is already involved. Very well, she is. Monday afternoon, posing as Yeager, you told Mr. Goodwin that you expected to be followed to One-fifty-six West Eighty-second Street. When your wife entered a room in the house at that address at noon today, she found a man there who is in my employ. He notified Mr. Goodwin, and he went there and talked with her. She had keys to the house and the room. That’s all I intend to tell you. Now your explanation.”

I seldom feel sorry for people Wolfe has got in a corner. Usually they have asked for it one way or another, and anyhow if you can’t stand the sight of a fish flopping on the gaff you shouldn’t go fishing. But I had to move my eyes away from Austin Hough. His long bony face was so distorted he looked more like a gargoyle than a man. I moved my eyes away, and when I forced them back he had hunched forward and buried his face in his hands.

Wolfe spoke. “Your position is hopeless, Mr. Hough. You knew that address. You knew Yeager’s unlisted telephone number. You knew that he frequented that address. You knew that your wife also went there. What did you hope to accomplish by coming here to send Mr. Goodwin on a pointless errand?”

Hough’s head raised enough for his eyes to come to me. “Where is she, Goodwin?” It was an appeal, not a demand.

“I don’t know. I left her in that room at that address at twenty minutes to two. She was drinking champagne but not enjoying it. The only other person there was the man in Mr. Wolfe’s employ. He wasn’t keeping her; she was free to go. I left because I wanted to have a look at you, but she didn’t know that. I don’t know when she left or where she went.”

“You talked with her'She talked?”

“Right. Twenty minutes or so.”

“What did she say?”

I sent a glance at Wolfe, but he didn’t turn his head to meet it, so I was supposed to use my discretion and sagacity. I did so.

“She told me a lie, not a very good one. She said she had been there only once and hadn’t stayed long. She had left her umbrella there and had gone today to get it. The part about the umbrella was okay; it was there in a drawer and still is. She invited me to take her to lunch. She invited me to take her to the Flamingo tonight and dance till they close.”

“How do you know it was a he, that she had been there only once?”

I shook my head. “You want too much for nothing. Just file it that I don’t think she lied; I know she did. And I know you know it too.”

“You do not.”

“Oh, nuts. Go climb a rope.”

Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “Mr. Hough. We have humored you, but our indulgence isn’t boundless. Your explanation.”

“What if I don’t give you one'What if I get up and walk out?”

“That would be a misfortune for both of us. Now that I know who you are I would be obliged to tell the police of your performance Monday afternoon, and I’d rather not, for reasons of my own. In that respect your interest runs with mine�and your wife’s. Her umbrella is still there.”

He was licked and he knew it. His face didn’t go gargoyle again, but his mouth was twisted and the skin around his eyes was squeezed in as if the light was too strong.

“Circumstances,” he said. “Men are the sport of circumstances. Good God, as I sat in this chair talking to Goodwin, Yeager was dead, had been dead for hours. When I read it in the paper yesterday morning I knew how it would be if you found me, and I decided what to say; I was going to deny it, but now that won’t do.”

He nodded, slowly. “So. Circumstances. Of course my wife shouldn’t have married me. It was a circumstance that she met me at a moment when she was�but I won’t go into that. I’ll try to keep to the point. I was a fool to think that I might still save our marriage, but I did. She wanted things that I couldn’t supply, and she wanted to do things that I am not inclined to and not equipped for. She couldn’t do them with me, so she did them without me.”

“The point,” Wolfe said.

“Yes. This is the first time I have ever said a word about my relations with my wife to anyone. About a year ago she suddenly had a watch that must have cost a thousand dollars or more. Then other things�jewelry, clothes, a fur coat. She had frequently spent evenings out without me, but it became more than evenings; occasionally she came home after dawn. You realize that now that I’ve started it’s difficult to confine myself to the essentials.” “Do so if possible.”

“I’ll try. I descended to snooping. Curiosity creeps into the homes of the unfortunate under the names of duty or pity. When my wife�”

“Is that Pascal?”

“No, Nietzsche. When my wife went out in the evening I followed her�not always, but when I could manage it. Mostly she went to a restaurant or the address of a friend I knew about, but twice she went to that address on Eighty-second Street and entered at the basement door. That was incomprehensible, in that kind of neighborhood, unless it was a dive of some sort�dope or God knows what. I went there one afternoon and pushed the button at the basement door, but learned nothing. I am not a practiced investigator like you. A man, I think a Puerto Rican, told me only that he had no vacant rooms.”

He stopped to swallow. “I also snooped at home, and one day I found a phone number that my wife had scribbled on the back of an envelope. Chisholm five, three-two-three-two. I dialed it and learned that it was the residence of Thomas G. Yeager. It wasn’t listed. I made inquiries and found out who he was, and I saw him, more by luck than design. Do you want to know how it happened?”

“No. You met him?”

“No. I saw him at a theater. That was two weeks ago. And three days later, Friday, a week ago last Friday, I followed her when she went out, and she went again, that was the third time, to that house on Eighty-second Street. I went and stood across the street, and very soon, not more than five minutes, Yeager came, walking. It was still daylight. He turned in, to the basement entrance, and entered. What would you have done?”

Wolfe grunted. “I wouldn’t have been there.”

Hough turned to me. “What would you have done, Goodwin?”

“That’s irrelevant,” I said. “I’m not you. You might as well ask what I would do if I were a robin and saw a boy robbing my nest. What did you do?”

“I walked up and down the block until people began to notice me, and then went home. My wife came home at six o’clock. I didn’t ask her where she had been; I hadn’t asked her that for a year. But I decided I must do something. I considered various things, various plans, and rejected them. I finally settled on one Sunday evening. We had had dinner�”

“Which Sunday?”

“Last Sunday. Three days ago. We had had dinner at a restaurant and returned home. My wife was watching television, and I was in my room working, only I wasn’t working. I was deciding what to do, and the next day I did it. I came here and saw Archie Goodwin. You know what I said to him.”

“Yes. Do you think you’ve accounted for it?”

“I suppose not. It was like this: I knew that when Yeager didn’t turn up Goodwin would find out why, either phone him �that was why I gave him the number�or go to the house. He would want to see Yeager, and he would tell him about me and what I had said. So Yeager would know that someone, someone he wouldn’t identify from Goodwin’s description, knew about his going to that house. He would know that Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe also knew about it. And he would tell my wife about it and describe me to her, and she would know I knew. That was the most important. I couldn’t tell her, but I wanted her to know that I knew.”

His eyes came to me and returned to Wolfe. “Another thing. I knew that Archie Goodwin wouldn’t just dismiss it from his mind. He would wonder why I had mentioned that particular address, and he would wonder what secret connection there might be between Yeager and that house in that neighborhood, and when Archie Goodwin wonders about anything he finds out. All of this was in my mind, but the most important was that my wife would know that I knew.”

His mouth worked, and he gripped the chair arms. “And that evening on the radio, the eleven-o’clock news, I learned that Yeager was dead, and yesterday morning in the paper I learned that he had died, had been murdered, Sunday night, and his body had been found in a hole in front of that house. Thank God my wife wasn’t there Sunday night.” “You’re sure of that?”

“Certainly I’m sure. We sleep in separate beds, but when she turns over I hear her. You realize�” He stopped. “What?”

“Nothing. I was going to say you realize that I have told you things I wouldn’t have thought I could possibly ever tell anybody, but you don’t care about that. Perhaps I have blundered again, but I was trapped by circumstance. Is there any chance, any chance at all, that it will stay with you'I can’t ask you for any consideration, I know that, after the way I imposed on Goodwin Monday afternoon. But if you could find it possible. . .”