Too Many Cooks

Wolfe shook his head impatiently. “You can’t do that, madam. Give it up. I mean your affected insouciance. I don’t mind fencing when there’s time for it, but it’s midnight and there are men in that other room waiting to see me.—Please let me finish. Let me clear away some fog. I have admitted an animus toward you. I knew Marko Vukcic both before and after he married you. I saw the change in him. Then why was I not grateful when you suddenly selected a new field for your activities? Because you left débris behind you. It is not decent to induce the cocaine habit in a man, but it is monstrous to do so and then suddenly withdraw his supply of the drug. Nature plainly intends that a man should nourish a woman, and a woman a man, physically and spiritually, but there is no nourishment in you for anybody; the vapor that comes from you, from your eyes, your lips, your soft skin, your contours, your movements, is not beneficent but malignant. Ill grant you everything: you were alive, with your instincts and appetites, and you saw Marko and wanted him. You enveloped him with your miasma—you made that the only air he wanted to breathe—and then by caprice, without warning, you deprived him of it and left him gasping.”

She didn’t bat an eyelash. “But I told you I was a special kind—”

“Permit me. I haven’t finished. I am seizing an opportunity to articulate a grudge. I was wrong to say caprice, it was cold calculation. You went to Laszio, a man twice your age, because it was a step up, not emotionally but materially. Probably you had also found that Marko had too much character for you. The devil only knows why you went no higher than Laszio, in so broad a field as New York, who after all—from your standpoint—was only a salaried chef; but of course you were young, in your twenties—how old are you now?”

She smiled at him.

He shrugged. “I suppose, too, it was a matter of intelligence. You can’t have much. Essentially, in fact, you are a lunatic, if a lunatic is an individual dangerously maladjusted to the natural and healthy environment of its species—since the human equipment includes, for instance, a capacity for personal affection and a willingness to strangle selfish and predatory impulse with the rope of social decency. That’s why I say you’re a lunatic.” He sat up and wiggled a finger at her. “Now look here. I haven’t time for fencing. I do not suspect Marko of killing your husband, though I admit it is possible he did it. I have considered all the plausible inferences from the coincidence of the radio, am still considering them, and have reached no conclusion. What else do you want to know?”

“All that you said. …” Her hand fluttered and rested again on the arm of her chair. “Did Marko tell you all that about me?”

“Marko hasn’t mentioned your name for five years. What else do you want to know?”

She stirred. I saw her breast go up and down, but there was no sound of the soft sigh. “It wouldn’t do any good, since I’m a lunatic. But I thought I would ask you if Malfi had told you about Zelota.”

“No. What about him? Who is he?”

I horned in. “He told me.” Their eyes moved to me and I went on, “I hadn’t had a chance to report it. Malfi told me in the parlor after dinner that Laszio stole something a long time ago from a guy named Zelota, and Zelota had sworn to kill him, and about a month ago he showed up in New York and went to Malfi to ask for a job. Malfi wouldn’t give him one, but Vukcic did, at Rusterman’s, and Zelota only lasted a week and then disappeared. Malfi said he told Liggett and Mrs. Laszio about it and they thought he ought to tell you.”

“Thanks.—Anything else, madam?”

She sat and looked at him. Her lids were so low that I couldn’t see what her eyes were like, and I doubted if he could. Then without saying anything she pulled a hot one. She got up, taking her time, leaving her cloak there on the back of the chair, and stepped over to Wolfe and put her hand on his shoulder and patted it. He moved and twisted his big neck to look up at her, but she stepped away again with a smile at the corners of her mouth, and reached for the cloak. I hopped across to hold it for her, thinking I might as well get a pat too, but apparently she didn’t believe in spoiling the help. She told Wolfe good-night, neither sweet nor sour, just good-night, and started off. I went to the foyer to let her out.

I returned and grinned down at Wolfe. “Well, how do you feel? Was she marking you for slaughter? Or putting a curse on you? Or is that how she starts the miasma going?” I peered at the shoulder she had patted. “About this Zelota business, I was going to tell you when she interrupted us. You noticed that Malfi said she told him to tell you about it. It seems that Malfi and Liggett were with her during the afternoon to offer consolation.”

Wolfe nodded. “But, as you see, she is inconsolable. Bring those men in.”

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