A CAB PILOTED BY A gabby, neatly bearded Bulgarian who claimed to speak six languages fluently dropped me back at the brownstone at ten-fifty. I had my key poised at the lock when Fritz pulled the front door open.
“Archie, it’s good that you’re back before he comes down from the plants,” he said over the cacophony of hammering, drilling, and yelling that came from the elevator shaft. “A woman is in there.” He jerked a thumb toward the front room door. “She arrived at ten-thirty-five and demands to see you or Mr. Wolfe. She is a peri—the best-looking woman who has come here in years—except for Miss Rowan, of course.”
“Ever the diplomat,” I responded, making a note to look up peri in the dictionary. “Does our guest happen to be named Debra Mitchell?”
Fritz beamed. His faith in me had been confirmed. “I should have known you had met her before. You attract beautiful women like the flame draws the moth. You need to learn to share.”
“In all honesty, I don’t really think you’d enjoy being with this one,” I told him. “I concede her beauty, but from what I have observed of the lady so far, that beauty is, to use the old cliché, only skin-deep.”
Fritz nodded soberly. “Perhaps. But sometimes that is enough.”
“So you say, and you might be right. Actually, the two of you might just find happiness together at that. You could admire her creamy complexion and raven hair and she would doubtless admire your shad roe with Creole sauce. She seems like the type who enjoys the finer things of life, and your cuisine certainly falls into that category. But all of that remains for the two of you to work out. Right now, though, I had better see her before the lord of the manor makes his perilous descent. How’s his mood this morning?”
“About the same as yesterday,” Fritz responded glumly. He shook his head. “I don’t know what bothers him most, the lack of an elevator or the terrible noise involved in getting a new one. He is more irritable than usual.”
“And having a woman in the house will hardly improve that condition. Well, I’m off to see the peri,” I said, opening the door to the front room. Debra Mitchell, dressed in a pleated, eggshell-colored skirt and a red blazer, was seated on the sofa flipping pages of The New Yorker. She looked up, unsmiling.
“Sorry you had to wait,” I said amiably, getting a whiff of her perfume, which smelled like something Lily likes to wear. “But then, I was not informed you were coming.”
“I didn’t know it myself,” was the cool reply. “It was spur-of-the-moment. I suppose I could have called, but I prefer seeing the people I’m speaking to. I want to know what progress you and Nero Wolfe are making in finding out who murdered Charles.” The last sentence was spoken in the tone of one used to getting her way.
I gave the woman points for directness if not for tact. “Technically, neither Mr. Wolfe nor I have to answer that question, as you are not our client,” I said, still amiable. “However, in this house we try not to get hung up on technicalities. If you’ll excuse me, I will see if Mr. Wolfe is available,” I told her.
“Are you going to just leave me here waiting, like that Frenchman who answered the door did?” she snapped.
“He is Swiss, and, not incidentally, he also happens to be the finest chef in the world, no contest,” I snapped back. I know Wolfe has said more than once that a guest is a jewel resting on a cushion of hospitality; but this particular jewel, glittering as she was, had flaws to the degree where I didn’t feel much like playing the role of the hospitality cushion—or doormat.
“I will be gone no more than two minutes; time me on that beautiful watch of yours,” I told her, stepping into the hall and closing the door behind me. If Fritz ever learned that she had called him a Frenchman, it would be all over between them. I vowed to keep silent.
Instead of using the soundproofed connecting door, I walked the eight paces along the hall to the office, where Wolfe was getting settled behind his desk. “Good morning, Archie. Did you sleep well?” he asked as he arranged his seventh of a ton and rang for beer. It was nice to see that even in time of crisis, he held to certain social niceties.
“I slept the sleep of the innocent,” I assured him. “But enough about my somnolence. At this moment, a person who may be a key figure in our current investigation awaits in the front room. I feel it is important that you see this individual.”
He bristled. “Who is she?”
“I don’t recall using a gender-specific pronoun,” I said, trying to look hurt.
“Archie, you are as transparent as the crystal in a Czechoslovakian chandelier. I repeat my question.”
“As we speak, Debra Mitchell cools her very attractive heels next door. She is eager, very eager, to find out how we—make that you—are progressing in the search for the murderer of her fiancé.”
Wolfe scowled. “She is not a client,” he murmured. “Talk to her; tell her we owe her no information and no explanations.”
“Sorry, but I decline. If I did that, we would be turning our backs on a potential resource. As somebody once said, ‘Waste not, want not.’ ”
“That somebody was named Rowland Howard, and he also penned such memorable phrases as ‘Practice what you preach,’ and ‘You never miss the water till the well runs dry,’ “ Wolfe said, his facial expression making it clear what he thought about the wisdom of Mr. Howard.
“Those phrases make sense to me. Shall I bring Miss Mitchell in?”
He made a growling noise but said nothing, a tacit admission of surrender. I went to that soundproofed door connecting the office with the front room, opening it. “Miss Mitchell, Mr. Wolfe will see you now,” I told her over the sudden banging of the elevator crew and a metallic screech overhead I preferred not to contemplate.
The additional minutes spent waiting hadn’t brightened her disposition any. Debra Mitchell marched into the office with smoke coming out of her pretty ears. I motioned her to the red leather chair and made the introductions before sliding in behind my desk. This figured to be interesting.
She wasted no time on preliminaries. Leaning forward, hands cupping one knee, she said: “Mr. Wolfe, last Thursday—six days ago now—Mr. Goodwin came to see me. He told me that you were investigating Charles’s death. I want to know if you’ve made any progress at all.” She kept the tone even, but it was obvious that anger simmered just beneath the surface.
Wolfe considered her through lidded eyes. “You look more intelligent than that.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that I am not to be dragooned,” he said, flipping a palm. “I have a client, and when I have something to report, that individual will be the sole recipient of the information.”
“I am aware of who your client is—Horace Vinson,” Mitchell fired back. “Why do I know that? Because he told me he was coming to you. I know Horace, and I am just as interested as he is—probably more interested—in seeing Charles’s murderer caught.”
“Just so. But I owe you nothing.”
“I had been told you were arrogant, and that it was to be expected because you’re a genius. Well, if you’re so damn brilliant, why, after all this time, do you still fail to see the obvious?”
“Which is?”
“That Patricia Royce murdered him,” she pronounced venomously. “It hardly takes a genius to figure that out. It is entirely possible that Horace is throwing his money away.”
Wolfe eyed her without enthusiasm. “You sing a different tune from the one you warbled to Mr. Goodwin when he visited you last week,” he said after he had drained the beer in his glass. “At that time, you stopped short of accusing Miss Royce of murder. Something to do with the laws of libel and slander, I believe.”
She leaned back and folded her arms, a sour smile creasing her photogenic face. “That was last week, and in that time apparently not the slightest progress has been made, so I’ll chance it now. Besides, what’s the penalty for libeling somebody who’s a cold-blooded murderer? To hell with worrying about it.”
“I know you told Mr. Goodwin why you think Patricia Royce killed your fiancé,” Wolfe said. “But indulge me, please, madam, by repeating that litany.”
“Hah! I guess that’s really what it is, a litany,” Debra Mitchell responded without hostility. “I know I’m probably wasting my time going over this again, but you asked for it. Patricia really had it bad for Charles—maybe it takes another woman to see that. It was obvious, though, and I met her only a few times, three or four. She’d known Charles for years, since long before I entered his life, and she had what she felt were proprietary rights to him. Then I came along and ruined everything for her, albeit inadvertently. She resented me, to say the least. She probably made one last attempt to talk him out of marrying me, and when that didn’t work, she went into a rage and shot him with his own pistol. She must have been aware he had it. I knew about it, and she was at his apartment a lot more often than I was, using his word processor to work on her damn book. Claimed that her own PC was always breaking down.”
“Indeed. Did Mr. Childress inform you that Miss Royce badgered him to break off his engagement to you?”
She tossed her head in what had to be a well-practiced motion. “No, but then he wouldn’t have. Charles had an irascible side—the way he lashed out at reviewers and editors and others he came in contact with in the professional world. But when it came to interpersonal relationships, he was very tight-lipped. For instance, he never wanted to discuss any of his old flames with me, or any other aspects of his private life, including his family.”
Wolfe glared accusingly at his empty beer glass. “Did you ever question him about the nature of his relationship with Miss Royce?”
“Just once. As I said to Mr. Goodwin when he came to see me last week, I told Charles on one occasion a few months ago that I thought Patricia was in love with him. He just laughed at me. He said they were just friends, professional friends, and that the idea of Patricia being romantically interested in him was laughable. So I dropped the subject. After all, I was the one who was going to marry him, not our Little-Miss-Phony-Meek-and-Mild.” Debra Mitchell’s voice rose with each word until she was almost shouting at the end of the sentence. She suddenly looked surprised, probably at hearing her own voice, and she sunk back into the chair, exhaling loudly.
“Did you believe Mr. Childress when he said Miss Royce was not interested in him?” Wolfe asked.
“I believe that he believed it. But it’s remarkable how many men, even supposedly sensitive ones, are totally oblivious to the signals women send out.” She seemed to speak from centuries of experience.
“Did Miss Royce ever threaten you?”
“No, but threats aren’t her style. I see her as more the sneaky type.”
“Madam,” Wolfe said, “if Miss Royce were as distressed as you suggest, and as enamored of Mr. Childress as you suggest, does it not seem likely that she would do violence to you, the interloper, rather than to him, the beloved?”
“Huh! You’re being logical, which I would expect, but people in love rarely are.” She sneered triumphantly. “They act on impulse. I know, I’ve been there on occasion myself.”
“While in the throes of romance, you, too, have been impulsive?”
Debra Mitchell started to smile but checked herself. “Yes—not to the point of murder, of course. I was tempted to do violence to a man once, years ago, but … well, that’s another story,” she said, brushing her hair away from her face with a hand. “Back to Patricia Royce; there is no question whatever in my mind that she aimed that gun at Charles and pulled the trigger.”
“I will not dispute the depth of your conviction, but there appears little substance behind it,” Wolfe pronounced evenly. “Mr. Childress never spoke to you—or apparently to anyone else—about Miss Royce having a romantic interest in him. And when you questioned him, he laughed it off. Miss Royce said nothing to you—or apparently to anyone else—about her feelings toward Mr. Childress. Can you suggest some other individual who might be able to supply details about the relationship between these two?”
She shook her head. “I can’t,” she responded in barely more than a whisper. “I told you earlier that Charles was extremely close-mouthed about his personal relationships. He was extremely uncomfortable discussing his feelings. I don’t think he had any true confidants. He probably was as close to Horace as to anybody else—other than me, of course. And he only mentioned Patricia to him once or twice, and then just in passing. I know—I asked Horace about it after Charles was killed.”
Wolfe rubbed an index finger on the side of his nose. “So we have nothing, other than your supposition, to link Mr. Childress and Miss Royce romantically?”
“All right—so there’s nothing!” Debra snarled through clenched, capped teeth. “But you’re supposed to be the genius. Talk to her. Question her. You can get the truth out of her if anyone can.”
“Madam, what devices would you suggest I utilize? Bullying? Harangue? Intimidation?”
Debra threw up her manicured hands. “You’ve been questioning people for years, for God’s sake. Use whatever works. How much is Horace paying you?”
I hid a smile behind my hand as Wolfe’s eyes grew large. “If you were to reflect upon that question, I believe you would see it as inappropriate,” he parried. This female was clearly pushing her luck.
“I don’t see it as inappropriate at all,” she told him firmly, tilting her head back. “I have some money socked away, a fair amount, actually. As I told Mr. Goodwin when he came to my office, my late uncle was a pioneer in developing a computer chip, and he was generous to me in his will—very generous. Anyway, whatever Horace is paying you, I will top it by a substantial amount. You will find me easy to negotiate with.”
“Your proposal is nonsensical, as you undoubtedly realize,” he declared. “Were I to start changing clients in mid-case, word of such harlequinade would spread, and soon I would be a pariah among those seeking to enlist the aid of a private investigator. Further, what you obviously desire is a resolution in which Miss Royce is found guilty of Mr. Childress’s murder. I do not accept commissions that are contingent upon a specific finding, or that coerce me, however subtly, to reach such a finding. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a prior engagement.” Wolfe rose, dipped his chin in his guest’s direction, and stomped out.
“My God, he’s arrogant,” Debra Mitchell said to me in the wake of Wolfe’s departure.
“He tends toward brevity,” I told her. “Some interpret that as arrogance.”
“Put me down as one of them,” she replied caustically. “Tell me, you did interview Patricia, didn’t you?”
“Yes, not long after I visited you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “And what did you think of her?”
“She seemed straightforward. Said her relationship with Childress was not a romantic one.”
“Which of course is precisely what she would say. And I’ll bet she also said she was positive he committed suicide, right?”
“Right.”
“Did you find her believable?”
“That’s a tough question,” I responded. “Through the years, I’ve been lied to by experts, and I must admit that a few of them got away with it. But overall, I like to think I’ve got a pretty good batting average when it comes to reading people. On balance, I think she was straight.”
Debra tilted her head back and sent me what I would call a knowing smile. “So she fooled you, too, eh? What did she say about me?”
I gave her my own knowing smile. “I’m not sure you want to hear it.”
“Of course I do, or I wouldn’t have asked.”
“All right. She said she thought Childress was planning to break off his engagement to you.”
Her dark eyes flashed. “That damn, lying—well, I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised.” She was struggling to put a lid on her anger. “What she told you just isn’t true. You can believe that or not.”
I smiled again. “I’ll reserve judgment for now. Anything else?”
“That sounds suspiciously like a dismissal,” she said. “All right, I’ll go quietly. But I appeal to you and your boss to take another look at Patricia Royce.” With that, Debra Mitchell rose, pivoted fluidly, and marched out the door and into the hall. Rarely has anyone departed from the office so gracefully. I only regretted that Wolfe wasn’t there to see it.