“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 Steven. 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 facts! — 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.”