Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 46 by A Family Affair Read Free Book Online Page B

he put something somewhere it would be in this room. Have you remembered anything he said?”
    “No.”
    “Have you tried to?”
    “I told you I knew I couldn’t because he hadn’t said anything.”
    Her voice had a little too much nose. I looked down at her. Up to a few inches above her knees, she had good legs. A pity. I decided to try another approach. “You know, Miss Ducos,” I said, “I have tried to be polite and sympathetic, I really have. But I wonder why you don’t give a damn who killed your father. That doesn’t seem very—well, natural.”
    She nodded. “You would. You think I should be weeping and wailing or maybe doing a Medea. Bullshit. I was a good daughter, good enough. Of course I give a damn who killed him, but I don’t think you’re going to find out the way you’re going at it, all this about a man who gave him some money for a piece of paper. Or if youdo, it won’t be by nagging me to remember something that didn’t happen.”
    “What would you suggest? How would you do it?”
    “I don’t know. I’m not a great detective like Nero Wolfe. But you say what killed him was a bomb put in his pocket by someone. Who put it there? I’d find out where he was yesterday and who he saw. That would be the first thing I would do.”
    I nodded. “Sure. And have your toes tramped on by a few dozen homicide experts who are doing just that. If he can be tagged that way, they’ll get him without any help from Nero Wolfe. Of course one person your father saw yesterday was you. I haven’t asked you about your relations with him, and I’m not going to, because the cops certainly have. And they’re asking around about you. You were at the District Attorney’s office five hours, you said, so you know how that is. They know all about people killing their fathers. Also, of course they asked you if there was anyone who might have wanted him dead. What did you say?”
    “I said no.”
    “But someone did want him dead.”
    She sneered. I admit I didn’t like her, but I’m not being unfair. She sneered. “I knew you’d say that,” she said. “They did too, and it’s not only obvious, it’s dumb. Somebody might have thought his coat belonged to someone else.”
    “Then you think it was just a mistake?”
    “I didn’t say I
think
it. I said it might have been.”
    “Didn’t your grandfather tell you what Nero Wolfe told him your father told me?”
    “No. He never tells me anything. He thinks women haven’t any brains. You probably do too.”
    I wanted to say that I merely thought
some
women were a little shy on brains, present company not excepted,but I skipped it. I said, “Your father told me that a man was going to kill him, so it wasn’t a mistake. Also it wasn’t you, since you’re not a man. So let’s go back. Evidently your father didn’t agree with your grandfather about women, because your grandfather told Mr. Wolfe that your father often asked your advice about things. That’s why I think he might have told you something about a man who gave him a hundred dollars for a slip of paper.”
    “He never asked my
advice
. He just wanted to see what I would say.”
    I gave up. I wanted to ask her what the difference was between asking her advice and wanting to see what she would say, just to see what she would say, but we were expecting company at the office at eleven o’clock or soon after and I should be there. So I gave up on her, and I had finished the job on the room, since it wasn’t likely that he had pried up a floorboard or taken the back off a picture frame. I will concede that she had fairly good manners. She went to the hall with me and opened the door and told me good night. Apparently Mr. Ducos and the white apron had both gone to bed.
    It was ten after eleven when I mounted the stoop of the old brownstone, found the bolt wasn’t on so I didn’t need help to get in, and went to the office. Wolfe would be deep in either a book or a crossword puzzle, but he