Lew!”
Llewellyn stopped to murmur something to Helen, nodded to his aunt, ignored
Gebert, and hurried after his father to assist in the defense of their castle.
There were rumblings from the entrance hall, and then the door opening and closing.
Mrs. Frost stood up and looked down at her daughter. She spoke to her quietly:
“This is frightful, Helen. That this should come…and just now, just when you will soon be a woman and ready for your life as you want it. I know what Boyd was to you, and he was a great deal to me, too. Just now you're holding things against me that time will make you forget…you're remembering that I thought it wise to temper the affection you had for him. I thought it best; you were a girl, and girls should look to youth. Helen, my dear child…”
She bent down and touched her daughter's shoulder, touched her hair and straightened up again. “You have strong impulses, like your father, and sometimes you don't quite manage them. I don't agree with Perren when he sneers at you for trying to buy vengeance. Perren loves to sneer; it's his favorite pose; he would call it being sardonic…but you know him. I think the impulse that led you to hire this detective was a generous one. Certainly I have every reason to know that you are generous.” Her voice stayed low, but it got more of a ring in it, a music of metal. “I'm your mother, and I don't believe you really want to bring people here who tell me that I refuse to discuss…this matter…because I don't intend to get involved. I'm sorry I was brusque with you today on the telephone, but my nerves were on edge. Policemen were here, and you were away, just making more trouble for us to no good purpose.
Really…really, don't you see that? Cheap insults and bullying for your own family won't help any. I think you've learned, in twenty-one years, that you can depend on me, and I'd like to feel that I can depend on you too…”
Helen Frost stood up. Seeing her face, with no color in it and her mouth twisted, it looked shaky to me, and I considered butting in, but decided to keep my trap shut. She stood straight, with her hands, fists, hanging at her sides, and her eyes were dark with trouble but held level at Mrs. Frost, which was why
I didn't speak. Gebert took a couple of steps toward her and stopped.
She said, “You can depend on me, mother. But so can Uncle Boyd. That's all right, isn't it? Oh, isn't it?” She looked at me and said in a funny tone like a child, “Don't insult my mother, Mr… Goodwin.” Then she turned abruptly and ran out on us, skipped the shebang. She left by a door on the right, not toward the hall, and closed it behind her.
Perren Gebert shrugged his shoulders and thrust his hands into his pockets, then pulled one out to rub the side of his thin nose with his forefinger. Mrs. Frost, with a couple of teeth clamped on her lower lip, looked at him and then back at the door where her daughter had gone.
I said brightly, “I don't think she fired me. I didn't understand it that way.
What do you think?”
Gebert showed me a thin smile. “You leave now. No?”
“Maybe.” I still had my notebook open in my hand. “But you folks might as well understand that we mean business. We're not just having fun, we do this for a living. I don't believe you can talk her out of it. This place belongs to her.
I'm willing to have a showdown right now; say we go to her bedroom or wherever she went, and ask if I'm kicked out.” I directed my gaze at Mrs. Frost. “Or have a little chat right here. You know, they might find that red box at Dudley
Frost's, at that. How would that set with you?”
She said, “Stupid senseless tricks.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. Even Stephen. If you bounced me, Inspector Cramer would send me right back here with a man if Wolfe asked him to, and you're in no position to ritz the cops, because they're sensitive and they would only get suspicious. At present they're not actually suspicious, they just think you're hiding something because people like you don't want any publicity except in society columns and cigarette ads. For instance, they believe you know where the red box is. You know, of course, it's Nero Wolfe's property; McNair left it to him. We really would like to have it, just for curiosity.”
Gebert, after listening to me politely, cocked his head at Mrs. Frost. He smiled at her: “You see, Calida, this fellow really believes we could tell him something. He's perfectly sincere about it. The police, too. The only way to get rid of them is to humor them. Why not tell them something?” He waved a hand inclusively. “All sorts of things.”
She looked at him without approval. “This is nothing to be playful about.
Certainly not your kind of playfulness.”
He lifted his brows. “I don't mean to be playful. They want information about
Boyd, and unquestionably we have it, quantities of it.” He looked at me. “You do shorthand in that book? Good. Put this down: McNair was an inveterate eater of snails, and he preferred calvados to cognac. His wife died in childbirth because he was insisting on being an artist and was too poor and incompetent to provide proper care for her. – What, Calida? But the fellow wants factsl -Edwin Frost once paid McNair two thousand francs-at that time four hundred dollars-for one of his pictures, and the next day traded it to a flower girl for a violet-not a bunch, a violet. McNair named his daughter Glenna because it means valley, and she came out of the valley of death, since her mother died at her birth-just a morsel of Calvinistic merriment. A light-hearted man, Boyd was! Mrs. Frost here was his oldest friend and she once rescued him from despair and penury; yet, when he became the foremost living designer and manufacturer of women's woolen garments, he invariably charged her top prices for everything she bought. And he never-”
“Perren! Stop it!”
“My dear Calida! Stop when I've just started? Give the fellow what he wants and he'll let us alone. It's a pity we can't give him his red box; Boyd really should have told us about that. But I realize that his chief interest is in
Boyd's death, not his life. I can be helpful on that too. Knowing so well how
Boyd lived, surely I should know how he died. As a matter of fact, when I heard of his death last evening, I was reminded of a quotation from Norboisin-the girl
Denise gasps it as she expires: ‘Au moins, je meurs ardemment!’ Might not Boyd have used those very words, Calida? Of course, with Denise the adverb applied to herself, whereas with Boyd it would have been meant for the agent-”
“Perren!” It was not a protest this time, but a command. Mrs. Frost's tone and look together refrigerated him into silence. She surveyed him: “You are a babbling fool. Would you make a jest of it? No one but a fool jests at death.”
Gebert made her a little bow. “Except his own, perhaps, Calida. To keep up appearances.”
“You may. I am Scotch, too, like Boyd. It is no joke to me.” She turned her head and let me have her eyes again. “You may as well go. As you say, this is my daughter's house; we do not put you out. But my daughter is still a minor-and anyway, we cannot help you. I have nothing whatever to say, beyond what I have told the police. If you enjoy Mr. Gebert's vaudeville I can leave you with him.”
I shook my head. “No, I don't like it much.” I stuck my notebook in my pocket.