Corpus Corpus Page 5

  A few moments later he presented the drink. "Here you go, Miss Dane. Champagne for one."

  Taking it, she said, "I see you know your corpus, Sergeant." "Beg pardon?"

  " 'Champagne for One.' One of Wolfe's finest cases," answered Wiggins as he waddled away in the direction of a cluster of men crowding around Janus. Holding a martini, he stood like an oak.

  "I'm sorry to disappoint you," said Bogdanovic, "but that 'champagne for one' remark was sheer coincidence. I had no idea it was a tide. On the subject of Nero Wolfe, I'm an ignoramus."

  "Are you also an abstainer? You're not drinking."

  He looked at her smilingly. "Never on duty."

  The ring of a spoon-struck glass cut through the din. Then came Wiggins's commanding voice. "Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the first toast of the evening by Judge Reginald Simmons."

  Thin to the point of being skeletal, he moved to the front of the room with the practiced dignity of his calling. "Appreciating that we all came here tonight for the drinks and the food, not a lot of talk, I'll be brief. Archie Goodwin is sharp, inquisitive, impetuous, skeptical, pertinacious, and resourceful. With those traits, this paragon ought to have been a judge. To Archie Goodwin!"

  As a hundred voices echoed the name, Dane said to Bogdanovic, "Wiggins was right, Sergeant. You are the spitting image of Archie Goodwin."

  Bogdanovic laughed nervously. "Is that a compliment?"

  "Oh definitely. Archie is very handsome. The brown hair and brown eyes. Broad shoulders. Narrow hips. How tall are you?"

  "Six-two."

  "A little off there. Archie is a trace under six feet. You have his nose. It's a fine one, but, like Archie's, not perfect." "It was broken twice in the Marine Corps." "Archie was in the army."

  "I got slugged in the schnoz once more when I was in the uniformed ranks of the force. A perpetrator who did not care to come along quietly expressed that opinion by throwing a brick at me. Then he got himself a Civil Liberties Union lawyer and filed a complaint alleging police brutality. Never mind that it was my nose that got broken and my uniform with blood on it."

  "When did you put away the blues for plain clothes?"

  "It seems like a lifetime."

  "Like Archie you are obviously very particular about your wardrobe. You pay a lot for your suits and you take care of them. You don't go around with your coat pocket flaps pushed in. What about smoking?"

  "I never miss an opportunity to light up a good a cigar."

  "See if you can wangle one out of Theo. He's always got a couple on him. Serve him martinis with two olives before dinner and a good cigar after and he's a happy man."

  "There's nothing like a good cigar. But I'll buy my own."

  "When you're off duty what do you drink?"

  "Whiskey. All kinds."

  "How about martinis?"

  "Occasionally I'll have one," he said, watching a waiter deliver Janus a fresh martini on a silver tray. 'Just one!"

  "This is truly uncanny. Archie once had four martinis to be sociable but when he realized he'd missed an important point of a case as a result of them he limited himself to one during working hours. I'd like to meet you off duty sometime. As the young lady said to Archie in Over My Dead Body, I've never had a drink with such a darned good-looking detective."

  A glass chimed again. The room quieted. Wiggins announced, "Toasting Inspector Cramer will be our beloved writer of a dozen best-selling thrillers, the inimitable Marian Pickering Henry."

  Although the author of very thick books, she made her salute to the policeman brief. "There can be no finer tribute to Cramer than the words of Nero Wolfe. He undoutedly means well. And we must never forget that Archie said of Inspector Cramer that he never fiddle-faddles much and he is by no means a nitwit."

  Over laughter, shouts of "Here here," and clapping, Bogdanovic said to Dane, "Tell me about Lily Rowan. Are you like her?"

  "Not a bit. First of all, Lily is very rich. I live off the salary of a deputy district attorney. She's a blond. Blue eyes. Mine are green. My father preferred to say they were emerald. He was Irish, as was Lily's father, so that's one thing Lily and I have in common. Plus a passion for opera. What about you?"

  "Do I like opera? I went to a performance of Aida years ago. But my knowledge of operatic music is pretty much confined to the well-known arias and what I hear of it on programs with Luciano Pavarotti on television. When I go out I take in a movie."

  "Action pictures, I'll bet."

  "Actually, I prefer little movies with real people in them. Ones with good stories. I see enough violence on the job."

  "Books?"

  "The chief is always after me to read more detective novels. I prefer biography and history. American. What do you read?"

  "Legal briefs mostly. But when I have time, John Grisham. Marian Pickering Henry. Agatha Christie. Rex Stout, of course."

  "Surely you've read all the Nero Wolfe there is by now."

  "You can never get tired of rereading Nero Wolfe. Your boss is right about reading mysteries. You can learn a lot. When I was starting out in law, my boss insisted I read up on all the famous trials in American history. As usual, Theodore R. Janus's counsel was right on point. I learned so much from him. Still learning. He's the best there is."

  "That's pretty darn forgiving of you, considering what he did to undermine your case against that wife killer," he said, his eyes on Janus draining his martini glass. "Watching that guy on television, I felt like putting a fist through the screen. I was stunned when I heard you were giving Janus an award."

  "Why shouldn't I? We're old friends. And he deserves it."

  Again, Wiggins's voice cut through the clamor. "The rest of the toasts will come during dinner, which is now being served."

  "As to seating arrangements," said Wiggins, taking Bogdanovic by the arm. "On Chief Goldstein's advice, I have fixed it so that you will be as far away from Theodore Janus and as close to Maggie Dane as possible. The geography wasn't easy. You will be at table three. That's adjacent to the head table, where Chief Goldstein will be seated beside Theo. Sharing your table will be Judge Reginald Simmons, retired, and Oscar Pendelton, whom you know from that recent unpleasantness regarding Morgan Griffith. Oscar's companion is Marian Pickering Henry. Such a charmer for someone who finds time to cultivate a prizewinning garden and grind out best-selling thrillers as if her word processor were a sausage machine! The other two will be Nicholas Stamos, of our steering committee, and his absolutely stunning missus, Ariadne."

  Finding Dane seated alone, Bogdanovic looked around the room and let out a sigh. "Banquet halls I have known."

  "I gather you attend a lot of these dinners."

  "The chief attends," he said, sitting. "I go along. There are a lot of crazies around who might want to settle a score."

  Leaning close, she whispered, "Hence, the pistol under your coat."

  "Most of the events he goes to are given by civic groups who want to hear what the police are doing about the crime problem. But you can never know about crowds. This is the first time I've been to this event."

  As he spoke they were joined at the table by Pendelton and Henry. With closely trimmed gray beard and hora-rimmed eyeglasses that gave him an owlish look, and a natty English-tweed shooting jacket, the publisher of Mysterious Doings Books said, "Let's hope tonight's festivities will not turn out like the Mystery Writers dinner two years ago, Sergeant, when the guy who received the Grand Master Award wound up being murdered that very evening." He turned to the woman at his side. "Have you met Marian Pickering Henry, Sergeant?" "No, I haven't had the pleasure."

  "Marian, this is Detective Sgt. John Bogdanovic. And the lady seated beside him is the incomparable Margaret Dane, scourge of criminals and defense lawyers alike."

  "Having abandoned my garden and my computer to watch you on television every day during that trial," said Henry, "I feel I've known you all my life."

  "And I you through your books. I've read them all. As to the Mystery
Writers murder, Oscar, I followed it in the press."

  "Oscar tried in vain to persuade me to write a book on the events of that incredible episode," Henry said.

  "Alas," sighed Pendelton as they sat, "she felt the true story was so outrageous that if she were to present it as a novel, nobody in the world would believe it. But I am happy to say that I have finally persuaded her that the True Crime genre is coming close to outstripping fiction in popularity. I need only point to the drama in the courtroom that involved the man whom we chose to recognize with our highest award tonight."

  All eyes turned in the direction of a knot of excited Wolfe Pack members surroundingjanus at the head table. A standout in his white hat, he alternately nibbled a wedge of bread slathered with salmon paste and sipped a martini with two olives in it.

  "The same man," said Bogdanovic bitterly, "who managed to get the killer in the Mystery Writers murder off easy."

  "Evidently, the case wasn't as open and shut as believed," Dane teased. "As I recall, John, Theo gave you a pretty rough time on cross-examination."

  Bogdanovic fidgeted. "Sure it was spirited. But I'm a flesh-and-blood detective, not a words-on-paper one."

  Carrying a glass of plain water, a concession to diabetes, Judge Simmons appeared at the table. Tall, gaunt, and looking ill, he stated, "Nero Wolfe never did less than well at anything, but most of his tangles with prosecutors occurred before a case got to court."

  "Sergeant, meet the distinguished jurist Reginald Simmons," said Pendelton. "He is known to his friend as Reggie."

  "The one instance of Wolfe's testifying," Henry said as Simmons sat, "is found in the story tided 'The Next Witness.' He did not enjoy the experience. That's because Wolfe found very little enjoyable about leaving his house. With the exception of Rusterman's, he would not dine in a restaurant. To assure superb meals in his home he had a full-time Swiss chef, Fritz Brenner, complete with a cook's hat and apron."

  "Naturally, he was a gourmet," Dane said, "as tonight's meal clearly proves."

  Picking up a menu card, Bogdanovic read:

  OYSTERS BAKED IN THE SHELL

  TERRAPIN MARYLAND

  BEATEN BISCUITS

  PAN-BROILED YOUNG TURKEY

  RICE CROQUETTES WITH QUINCE JELLY

  LIMA BEANS IN CREAM

  AVOCADO TODHUNTER

  PINEAPPLE SHERBET

  SPONGE CAKE

  WISCONSIN DAIRY CHEESE

  BLACK COFFEE

  "It's the meal Wolfe ordered served at Kanawha Spa," Dane explained as waiters appeared from the kitchen with the first course. "The guests were fifteen master chefs."

  "I think I saw the movie. Someone was killing all the great chefs of Europe."

  "Not the same story. In Too Many Cooks only one master chef was murdered," Pendelton said.

  "Wolfe nabbed him, of course?"

  "Not without being wounded himself. He was rewarded with the recipe for saucisse minuit," said Pendelton.

  "I was hoping it would be on the menu tonight," Henry said.

  A movement next to her caused her to look up.

  "Good evening, Nick! I swear, somehow you get handsomer and handsomer. What is it about you Greek men?"

  "It's all that olive oil and fish," Pendelton said. "What have you done with your wife?"

  "Ariadne is being Ariadne. She'll be along. You know how she is. She waits for the moment to make an entrance!" With a slight bow toward Bogdanovic, he said, "You must be the brilliant detective Wiggins told me about. I'm Nick Stamos! Don't get up on my account, Mr. Bogdanovic. I'm so glad you, unlike that movie director, haven't felt the need to add the h at the end of your name so that people would know to pronounce the v-i-c as 'vich.' "

  Bogdanovic shrugged. "To each his own."

  "My wife is Hungarian," Stamos went on. "Her maiden name is Fotash. But she was raised in Zagreb. She is looking forward to speaking Croatian with you. You do speak it?"

  "With my parents," Bogdanovic answered. "But English is my native tongue. I was born at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn."

  Stamos smiled and sat. "Very wise of you." Turning toward the entrance and a tall blond woman in a pale blue evening dress trimmed in gold, he said, "Ah! Here's Ariadne now."

  As she proceeded slowly across the room, Bogdanovic said, "I notice there are quite a few women in attendance. When my boss took me to a Baker Street Irregulars dinner I was told that women were banned because Sherlock Holmes distrusted women. I gather Nero Wolfe didn't share Holmes's views on the opposite sex."

  "He regarded them as astonishing and successful animals," Simmons replied, "that for reasons of convenience he chose to regard with indifference."

  Maggie Dane lightly touched Bogdanovic's shoulder. "Archie was quite the opposite."

  "The more I hear about Archie," Bogdanovic said, rising to greet Ariadne Stamos as she slipped as softly as a breeze into the chair next to her husband, "the more I like him."

  Introduced to him, Ariadne Stamos greeted him flawlessly in his father's native language. "Kokosi."

  He responded, "Tasam dobro tebe."

  "Very cosmopolitan," said Pendelton. "Too bad no one else at the table knows what it means, Sergeant."

  "She said, 'Hi,' and I basically said, 'How you doin'?' "

  "English from now on, please. I hate feeling left out."

  A waiter set a plate of oysters before Henry. "I've always speculated that the first person to eat one of these things at the dawn of history must have been very hungry," she said as she looked down. "They really are disgusting to look at. But I do love them. So I say thanks to that unsung, heroic man."

  "Maybe it was a hungry woman," said Bogdanovic.

  "More than likely." Dane laughed. "No matter how hungry my former husband was, it never occurred to him to open the fridge."

  "Now I understand why the greatest poisoners in history were women. If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, it was also an easy way to get rid of him."

  "Only because the poor dears have always been the ones who were expected to do the cleaning," interjected Henry. "Knives and guns leave all those puddles of blood to mop up."

  "If you wanted to bump me off at this banquet," said Bogdanovic, "how could you be sure that I'd be the one who got the poison? We're all eating the same dishes. How could you be certain the waiter delivered a particular plate?"

  Henry smiled. "The poison would go into your food at the table. In your case, I'd have slipped it into your oysters while your attention was diverted by Ariadne's spectacular arrival."

  "How could you count on her coming in after the rest of us?"

  "Ariadne is famous for being late. Being a gentleman, you'd naturally stand to greet her."

  "But how could you know in advance I'd be a gentleman?"

  "If you proved not to be, the poison would go into some other dish. Sooner or later your attention would be diverted by someone or something. Not because you're a man. You are also a detective. Looking around you for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary is ingrained by nature and your training. I could never get close enough to shoot or stab you. Nor the man you are obviously here to guard. So you see, Sergeant Bogdanovic, you would be easy to poison. Child's play. Dare I say 'girl's' play?"

  As the oyster plates were replaced with the terrapin soup, Bogdanovic turned to the waiter and held up a hand. "Excuse me, but you can take mine away. I'd feel guilty eating a turtle."

  "It's mock, sir. Made from calf s liver."

  Bogdanovic winced. "I still pass."

  "I wouldn't give that soup to anyone else, waiter," Henry said with a devilish giggle. "There's poison in it."

  Blushing, Bogdanovic muttered, "It's all right, waiter. The lady's making a joke. And her point."

  When those who ate the soup were finished, Wiggins stood at the podium.

  "Attention, please, the toast to Fritz Brenner will be given by Oscar Pendelton. Let's hope it will be in the form of one of the charming and witty limericks with which Os
car regales us year after year."

  As a hush enveloped the room for the first time, Bogdanovic surmised that a treat lay in store.

  Rising, Pendelton perched half-moon reading glasses on his nose then took his time in drawing a small sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. He read:

  "For a giant guzzler of malty brews

  Fritz cook'd up possum stews

  Or dished him up with equal pace

  Shish-ke-bab with thyme and mace.

  No turde soup or oyster pie

  Beyond Wolfe's ken could lie;

  A shad roe dish was always fine

  Though a plate of eel was out of line.

  Roasted, baked, braised, or boiled

  Salted, peppered, or olive-oiled

  There was no dinner Wolfe wouldn't eat

  As long as it included meat.

  So here's to Fritz

  Who scorned the Ritz

  To get rich in

  The West Side kitchen

  Of Rex Stout's immortal hero

  The hungry Wolfe named Nero."

  "Bravo as usual, dear Oscar," exclaimed Henry as drinks were sipped around the room.

  Dane sighed. "I'm afraid my toast will pale in comparison."

  "You'll do fine," Bogdanovic said. 'Just picture all these people as members of a jury."

  "You overlook the fact that my last jury voted to acquit."

  "Thanks to Janus's smoke and mirrors," said the judge as he put down his glass of water.

  "Mind your manners, Reggie," whispered Pendelton. "The man of the hour is heading this way."

  The mellifluous voice preceded him. "Oscar, Oscar! Very well done. What a charming bit of doggerel." Suddenly towering above them, he removed his hat in a broad, sweeping gesture with one hand and with the other set his martini on the table. "I just had to come over here and visit awhile with the three most beautiful ladies in the room. And the handsomest men."