Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout

Author:Rex Stout [Stout, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Crime
ISBN: 9780553272901
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1995-11-01T21:01:54.765000+00:00

9

I SAT AND WATCHED and listened and felt cynical. Wolfe rubbed his cheek with the tip of his forefinger, slowly and rhythmically, which meant he was irritated but attentive. Dina Laszio was on a chair facing him, with her cloak thrown back, her smooth neck showing above a plain black dress with no collar, her body at ease, her eyes dark in shadow.Wolfe said, “No apology is needed, madam. Just tell me about it. I’m expecting callers and am pressed for time.”

“It’s about Marko,” she said.

“Indeed. What about Marko?”

“You’re so brusque.” She smiled a little, and the smile clung to the corners of her mouth. “You should know that you can’t expect a woman to be direct like that. We don’t take the road, we wind around. You know that. Only I wonder how much you know about women like me.”

“I couldn’t say. Are you a special kind?”

She nodded. “I think I am. Yes, I know I am. Not because I want to be or try to be, but…” She made a little gesture. “It has made my life exciting, but not very comfortable. It will end… I don’t know how it will end. Right now I am worried about Marko, because he thinks you suspect him of killing my husband.”

Wolfe stopped rubbing his cheek. He told her, “Nonsense.”

“No, it isn’t. He thinks that.”

“Why? Did you tell him so?”

“No. And I resent-” She stopped herself. She leaned forward, her head a little on one side, her lips not quite meeting, and looked at him. I watched her with pleasure. I suppose she was telling the truth when she said she didn’t try to be a special kind of woman, but she didn’t have to try. There was something in her-not only in her face, it came right out through her clothes-that gave you an instinctive impulse to start in that direction. I kept on being cynical, but it was easy to appreciate that there might be a time when cynicism wouldn’t be enough.

She asked with a soft breath, “Mr. Wolfe, why do you always jab at me? What have you got against me? Yesterday, when I told you what Phillip told me about the arsenic… and now when I tell you about Marko…”

She leaned back. “Marko told me once, long ago, that you don’t like women.”

Wolfe shook his head. “I can only say, nonsense again. I couldn’t rise to that impudence. Not like women? They are astounding and successful animals. For reasons of convenience, I merely preserve an appearance of immunity which I developed some years ago under the pressure of necessity. I confess to a specific animus toward you. Marko Vukcic is my friend; you were his wife; and you deserted him. I don’t like you.”

“So long ago!” She fluttered a hand. Then she shrugged. “Anyway, I am here now in Marko’s behalf.”

“You mean he sent you?”

“No. But I came, for him. It is known, of course, that you have engaged to free Berin of the charge of killing my husband.

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