Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 16 - In the Best Families by Rex Stout

Author:Rex Stout [Stout, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-75601-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-07-21T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

On my previous visit to Birchvale I had got the impression that Annabel Frey had her head on right side up, and her conduct that Monday evening strengthened it. For one thing, she had had sense enough not to gather that bunch around a dining table but invite them for half-past eight. With the kind of attitudes and emotions that were crisscrossing among those six people, an attempt to feed them at the same trough would have resulted in an acidosis epidemic.

In her first phone call, Wednesday, she had indicated that it was not a tête-à-tête she had in mind, so I was expecting to find company, probably the widower and the cousin, but to my surprise it was a full house. They were all there when I was shown into the big living room. Annabel Frey, as hostess there now, came to meet me and gave me her hand. The other five gave me nothing but dirty looks. I saw right off that my popularity index was way down, so I merely stood, gave them a cool collective greeting, and lifted a brow at my hostess.

“It’s not you, Goodwin,” the politician Pierce assured me, but in a raspy tone. “It’s simply the strain of this unbearable situation. We haven’t been all together like this since that terrible night.” He glared at Annabel. “It was a mistake to get us here.”

“Then why did you come?” Barry Rackham demanded, really nasty. “Because you were afraid not to, like the rest of us. We all hated to come, but we were all afraid to stay away. A bunch of cowards—except one, of course. You can’t blame that one for coming.”

“Nonsense,” said Dana Hammond, the banker. The look he was giving Rackham was just the opposite of the kind of look a banker is supposed to give a millionaire. “It has nothing to do with cowardice. Not with me. By circumstances beyond my control I am forced into an association that is hateful to me.”

“Have they,” Lina Darrow asked him sweetly, “finished with the audit of your department?”

“They haven’t finished anything,” Calvin Leeds growled, and I didn’t know he was aiming at her until he went on. “Not even with wondering what you see in Barry Rackham all of a sudden—if it is sudden.”

Rackham was out of his chair, moving toward Leeds, snarling, “You can eat that, Cal, or—”

“Oh, stop it!” Annabel stepped to head Rackham off. She whirled, taking them in. “My God, isn’t it bad enough without this?” She appealed to me. “I didn’t know this was how it would be!” To Rackham, “Sit down, Barry!”

Rackham backed up and sat. Lina Darrow, who had been standing, went and stretched out on a couch, detaching herself. The others stayed put, with Annabel and me on our feet. I have had plenty of contacts with groups of people, all kinds, who have suddenly had a murder explode among them, but I don’t think I have ever seen a bunch blown quite so high.

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