Rex Stout – Nero Wolfe – More Deaths Than One

Which one?” “But,” Bill Meadows stammered, “we don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Nonsense.” Wolfe was less friendly. “Don’t waste time on that. Miss Shepherd spent most of the day here and I know all about it.” His eyes stopped on Miss Fraser. “She couldn’t help it, madam. She did quite well for a child, and she surrendered only under the threat of imminent peril to you.” What’s this all about?” Traub demanded.

“It’s nothing, Nat,” Miss Fraser assured him. “Nothing of any importance. Just a little…a sort of joke…among us…that you don’t know about…” “Nothing to it!” Bill Meadows said, a little too loud. There’s a perfectly simple—” “Wait, Bill.” Deborah Koppel’s voice held quiet authority. Her gaze was on Wolfe. “Will you tell us exactly what Nancylee said?” “Certainly,” Wolfe assented. “The bottle served to Miss Fraser on the broadcast is always identified with a strip of Scotch tape. That has been going on for months, nearly a year. The tape is either brown, the colour of the bottle, or transparent, is half an inch wide, and encircles the neck of the bottle near the shoulder.” “Is that all she told you?” “That’s the main thing. Let’s get that explained. What’s the tape for?” “Didn’t Nancylee tell you?” “She said she didn’t know.” Deborah was frowning. “Why, she must know! It’s quite simple. As we told you, when we get to the studio the day of a broadcast Miss Vance takes the bottles from the cabinet and puts them in the refrigerator. But that gives them only half an hour or a little longer to get cold, and Miss Fraser likes hers as cold as possible, so a bottle for her is put in earlier and the tape put on to tell it from the others.” “Who puts it there and when?” Well—that depends. Sometimes one of us puts it there the day before…sometimes, it’s one left over from the preceding broadcast…” “Good heavens,” Wolfe murmured. “I didn’t know you were an imbecile, Miss Koppel.” “I am not an imbecile, Mr Wolfe.” “I’ll have to have more than your word for it. I presume the explanation you have given me was concocted to satisfy the casual curiosity of anyone who might notice the tape on the bottle—and, incidentally, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was offered to Miss Shepherd and after further observation she rejected it.

That’s one thing she didn’t tell me. For that purpose the explanation would be adequate—except with Miss Shepherd—but to try it on me! I’ll withdraw the ‘imbecile’, since I blurted it at you without warning, but I do think you might have managed something a little less flimsy.” “It may be flimsy,” Bill Meadows put in aggressively, “but it happens to be true.” “My dear sir.” Wolfe was disgusted. “You too? Then why didn’t it satisfy Miss Shepherd, if it was tried on her, and why was she sworn to secrecy? Why weren’t all the bottles put in the refrigerator in advance, to get them all cold, instead of just the one for Miss Fraser? There are—” “Because someone—” Bill stopped short.

“Precisely,” Wolfe agreed with what he had cut off. “Because hundreds of people use that studio between Miss Fraser’s broadcasts, and someone would have taken them from the refrigerator, which isn’t locked. That’s what you were about to say, but didn’t, because you realized there would be the same hazard for one bottle as for eight.” Wolfe shook his head. “No, it’s no good. I’m tired of your lies; I want the truth; and I’ll get it because nothing else can meet the tests I am now equipped to apply. Why is the tape put on the bottle?” They looked at one another.

“No,” Deborah Koppel said to anybody and everybody.

“What is all this?” Traub demanded peevishly.

No one paid any attention to him.

“Why not?” Wolfe inquired, “try me with the same answer you have given the police?” No reply.

Elinor Vance spoke, not to Wolfe. “It’s up to you, Miss Fraser. I think we have to tell him.” “No,” Miss Koppel insisted.

“I don’t see any other way out of it, Debby,” Madeline Fraser declared. “You shouldn’t have told him that silly lie. It wasn’t good enough for him and you know it.” Her grey-green eyes went to Wolfe. “It would be fatal for me, for all of us, if this became known. I don’t suppose you would give me your word to keep it secret?” “How could I, madam?” Wolfe turned a palm up. “Under the circumstances? But I’ll share it as reluctantly, and as narrowly, as the circumstances will permit.” “All right. Damn that Cyril Orchard, for making this necessary. The tape on the bottle shows that it is for me. My bottle doesn’t contain Starlite. I can’t drink Starlite.” “Why not?” “It gives me indigestion.” “Good God!” Nathan Traub cried, his smooth low-pitched voice transformed into a squeak.

“I can’t help it, Nat,” Miss Fraser told him firmly, “but it does.” “And that,” Wolfe demanded, “is your desperate and fatal secret?” She nodded. “My Lord, could anything be worse? If that got around? If Leonard Lyons got it, for instance? I stuck to it the first few times, but it was no use. I wanted to cut that from the programme, serving it, but by that time the Starlite people were crazy about it, especially Anderson and Owen, and of course I couldn’t tell them the truth. I tried faking it, not drinking much, but even a few sips made me sick. It must be an allergy.” “I congratulate you,” Wolfe said emphatically.

“Good God,” Traub muttered. He pointed a finger at Wolfe. “It is absolutely essential that this gets to no one. No one whatever!” “It’s out now,” Miss Koppel said quietly but tensely. “It’s gone now.” “So,” Wolfe asked, “you used a substitute?” “Yes.” Miss Fraser went on: “It was the only way out. We used black coffee. I drank gallons of it anyhow, and I like it either hot or cold. With sugar in it.

It looks enough like Starlite, which is dark brown, and of course in the bottle it can’t be seen anyway, and we changed to dark blue glasses so it couldn’t be seen that it didn’t fizz.” “Who makes the coffee?” “My cook, in my apartment.” “Who bottles it?” “She does—my cook—she puts it in a Starlite bottle, and puts the cap on.” “When, the day of the broadcast?” “No, because it would still be hot, or at least warm, so she does it the day before and puts it in the refrigerator.” “Not at the broadcasting studio?” “Oh, no, in my kitchen.” “Does she put the tape on it?” “No, Miss Vance does that. In the morning she gets it—she always comes to my apartment to go downtown with me—and she puts the tape on it, and takes it to the studio in her bag, and puts it in the refrigerator there. She has to be careful not to let anyone see her do that.” “I feel better,” Bill Meadows announced abruptly. He had his handkerchief out and was wiping his forehead.

“Why?”Wolfe asked him.

“Because I knew this had to come sooner or later and I’m glad it was you that got it instead of the.cops. It’s been a cock-eyed farce, all this digging to find out who had it in for this guy Orchard. Nobody wanted to poison Orchard.

The poison was in the coffee and Orchard got it by mistake.” That finished Traub. A groan came from him, his chin went down, and he sat shaking his head in despair.

Wolfe was frowning. “Are you trying to tell me that the police don’t know that the poisoned bottle held coffee?” “Oh, sure they know that.” Bill wanted to help now. “But they’ve kept it under their hats. You notice it hasn’t been in the papers. And none of us has spilled it, you can see why we wouldn’t. They know it was coffee all right, but they think it was meant for Orchard, and it wasn’t, it was meant for Miss Fraser.” Bill leaned forward and was very earnest. “Damn it, don’t you see what we’re up against? If we tell it and it gets known, God help the programme! We’d get hooted off the air. But as long as we don’t tell it, everybody thinks the poison was meant for Orchard, and that’s why I said it was a farce. Well, we didn’t tell, and as far as I’m concerned we never would.” “How have you explained the coffee to the police?” “We haven’t explained it. We didn’t know how the poison got in the bottle, did we? Well, we didn’t know how the coffee got there either. What else could we say?” “Nothing, I suppose, since you blackballed the truth. How have you explained the tape?” “We haven’t explained it.” “Why not?” “We haven’t been asked to.” “Nonsense. Certainly you have.” “I haven’t.” “Thanks, Bill.” It was Madeline Fraser, smiling at him. “But there’s no use trying to save any pieces.” She turned to Wolfe. “He’s trying to protect me from—don’t they call it tampering with evidence? You remember that after the doctor came Mr Strong took the four bottles from the table and started off with them, just a foolish impulse he had, and Mr Traub and I took them from him and put them back on the table.” Wolfe nodded.

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