Too Many Cooks/Champagne for One by Rex Stout

Author:Rex Stout [Stout, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780307762184
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2009-04-28T04:00:00+00:00

17

Jerome Berin said positively, “She’ll stick to it. She’ll do whatever will push danger farthest from her, and that will be it.”

The train was sailing like a gull across New Jersey on a sunny Friday morning, somewhere east of Philadelphia. In sixty minutes we would be tunneling under the Hudson. I was propped against the wall of the pullman bedroom again, Constanza was on the chair, and Wolfe and Berin were on the window seats with beer between them. Wolfe looked pretty seedy, since of course he wouldn’t have tried to shave on the train even if there had been no bandage, but he knew that in an hour the thing would stop moving and the dawn of hope was on his face.

Berin asked, “Don’t you think so?”

Wolfe shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care. The point was to nail Liggett down by establishing his presence at Kanawha Spa on Tuesday evening, and Mrs. Laszio was the only one who could do that for us. As you say, she is undoubtedly just as guilty as Liggett, maybe more, depending on your standard. I rather think Mr. Tolman will try her for murder. He took her last night as a material witness, and he may keep her that way to clinch his case against Liggett—or he may charge her as an accomplice. I doubt if it matters much. Whatever he does, he won’t convict her. She’s a special kind of woman, she told me so herself. Even if Liggett is bitter enough against her to confess everything in order to involve her in his doom, to persuade any dozen men that the best thing to do with that woman is to kill her would be quite a feat. I question whether Mr. Tolman is up to it.”

Berin, filling his pipe, frowned at it. Wolfe upped his beer glass with one hand as he clung to the arm of the seat with the other.

Constanza smiled at me. “I try not to hear them. Talking about killing people.” She shivered delicately.

I grunted. “You seem to be doing a lot of smiling. Under the circumstances.”

She lifted brows above the dark purple eyes. “What circumstances?”

I just waved a hand. Berin had got his pipe lit and was talking again. “Well, it turned my stomach. Poor Rossi, did you notice him? Poor devil. When Dina Rossi was a little girl and I had her many times on this knee, and she was quiet and very sly but a nice girl. Of course, all murderers were once little children, which seems astonishing.” He puffed until the little room was nicely filled with smoke. “By the way, did you know that Vukcic made this train?”

“No.”

Berin nodded. “He came leaping on at the last minute, I saw him, like a lion with fleas after him. I haven’t seen him around this morning, though I’ve been back and forth. No doubt your man told you that I stopped here at your room around eight o’clock.”

Wolfe grimaced. “I wasn’t dressed.”

“So he told me.

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