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“Nonsense.” It was a brusque dismissal of the situation – I couldn’t say reality, honestly – and it had a fair bit of weight behind it, coming as it did from a man who currently measured in at an eighth of a ton. (Wolfe hadn’t entirely recovered yet from his conditioning walks and the shorter rations during the war.)
Pardon me. I should start that again or at least introduce us.
My name is Archie Goodwin. I’m the second-best operative in New York – Saul Panzer’s the best, and sometimes we hire him to help out – and the third-best detective, behind Saul and my employer, Nero Wolfe. Not that I would ever admit that where Wolfe could hear it, because part of my job is to prod him into working occasionally and sometimes, I have to spur his bulk into motion by jabbing him in his vanity.
All that said? Yeah. The possible job I’d just presented probably was nonsense. But it was nonsense that came with a healthy fee, taxes had gone up steadily since Pearl Harbor, and Wolfe hadn’t worked a day since I’d gotten demobilized from the Army two months ago. So.
I started over, trying to point out the brotherhood of man, or at least service to country. “Look. Major Mosby came home shy part of an arm, to a home shy two parents and all of his brothers, older and younger. Okay. So, he thinks this cabinet has the family papers – including the signed copy of the will -- and that it needs someone with two hands and some smarts to get it open. Seeing as his mother was, in fact, a genius, although not the kind of sensible genius that leaves instructions for these vital things. But as Saul says, Man plans, God sends the flu.”
“Pfui. Saul has never resorted to such crassness. The Hebrew version would be Man plans, God disposes. The Romans, on the other hand, said it more honestly: The Fates lead him who will. Him who won’t? They drag.”
“We can discuss the other variations on that over dinner tonight,” I told him, “but right now we are discussing helping out a wounded veteran and new-made orphan.”
“Taking his money to open secret compartments is a job for a cabinet-maker,” Wolfe said, but his shoulders had sagged a quarter of an inch and his eyebrows had unknotted. It wasn’t a big job, but it was the first pebble in the earthquake it took to get him moving. I’d take it.
“Figuring out where the compartments might be is a job for a genius because this cabinet has the kind of inlay work I’d expect to see in a museum. Say, the one looted after the Russian Revolution.”
That got a measuring look that first considered my shroud, but eventually measured the time available today. We had it to spare and he knew it. He conceded.
“Really. Well. Perhaps it won’t be a complete waste of an afternoon,” Wolfe admitted. “But they will have to bring the piece here. I am willing to go out in the service of my adoptive country, but not for a client: veteran, orphaned, and wounded or not.” He glanced at the clock and said, “After lunch.”
“He’s already set up movers to bring it at 2:30,” I assured Wolfe’s back.
He continued to the kitchen to discuss the substitution of marjoram for oregano in tonight’s planned dinner.
I strolled to my desk to call our client and tell Mosby he was, in fact, now a client.
The movers had the cabinet in place before lunch was quite done, which irritated Wolfe.
What actually annoyed him was the part where I abandoned lunch to let the movers in and then watched them work until they left. Wolfe would have to cope; he was well aware that I had a policy of not leaving strangers unattended in the brownstone. I like us with our skins intact and the house unbombed. He has a policy of not letting business interfere with food, for the sake of his digestion, so I pointed out that worrying about unexpected bombs is bad for mine.
My absence did let him snag an extra piece of the egg and ham pie Fritz had made for lunch, and I even brought him his current book after they left. I wanted a chance to examine the cabinet while I polished off the dust and threads from the moving blankets.
Until I saw the piece, I thought the whole job was ridiculous. I accepted, provisionally, because I wanted to blast Wolfe out of his post-VE slump, but now that I could study this cabinet instead of a photo? I understood why Mosby wanted an expert to handle this job.
This piece wasn’t just a family heirloom, or a puzzle, or (maybe) the repository of his last connections to his kin. Beyond all of that, their cabinet was a work of art.
It had to be at least a hundred years old, well-polished but with an occasional small nick or scuff brought on by years of being used. The varnish along the edges could stand to be touched up; the bronze loops to open the doors and bottom drawers would benefit from some polish.
That wasn’t enough to make it less than beautiful. It was a gorgeous mix of pale maple and white oak for the frame, and another dozen woods in the marquetry. At four feet wide, six feet tall, and a good two feet deep, it might well weigh as much as I did, which explained the cursing as the movers brought it in. The craftsman who’d made it had inset a stand of trees across the top doors, which Mosby could open to reveal shelves usually full of books, probably, although Saul would maybe store knick-knacks instead. Under that was a panel that folded out into a writing surface; more inlaid woods brightened it into a garden of yellow, white, and gold flowers.
I bent to take a closer look and realized some of that was amber, mother of pearl, small bits of either onyx or obsidian set into the wood to pattern butterfly wings, and even a few pieces of what I thought might be jade for an occasional leaf.
For an afternoon, the brownstone was almost a museum.
Wolfe came in from his lunch, drew a breath for some sarcastic comment about my lack of routine… and for once fell silent. Then, to my utter shock, he actually fetched the ottoman from beside the globe, set it in front of the cabinet, and sat down to study it up close.
Over the next half hour until our client arrived, Wolfe actually exercised -- for him, anyway. He studied every inch of the piece, muttering about inlay and dovetailing, about stain and beeswax and the types of flowers he recognized. I had to bring over the Audubon Guides to flowers, trees, and birds before the doorbell rang.
When I brought Major Mosby back down the hallway, looking better than he had that morning – maybe he’d had that nap I suggested; God knew all Uncle Sam’s officers needed one in this autumn of 1946 – Wolfe actually stood up from the ottoman and nodded his head an entire inch in greeting. “This escritoire is a remarkable piece of art, sir. It has been an unexpected pleasure to examine it. I thank you.”
Luke Mosby was a tall, slim man – thin, now, honestly, but he looked like he probably spent a lot of time running from his older brothers growing up. Made sense; he’d told me that morning that his family had had an heir, a spare, and him into the Army even before Hitler tried a march to the sea. The lines currently showing on his face aged him another year or so every time the sling shifted his arm the wrong way. He nodded to Wolfe and while he didn’t look relieved, those lines eased a little and then he was a good-looking gentleman again, although more the Jimmy Stewart model than Cary Grant.
He nodded, and smiled a little at the escritoire, and said simply, “Thank you for taking on this project, sir. I was always busier with my studies than with paying attention to my mother, and more fool me.”
Wolfe brushed that off. “Young men rarely pay sufficient attention to our parents; we think there will be time. And I believe that, until you become accustomed to the loss of that hand, this might still have given you trouble. I will commit, on my own behalf and that of Mr. Goodwin, to keeping the secret of how this opens.”
I raised an eyebrow of my own at Wolfe and resolved not to let him add that to the bill, but he was definitely in gear again. I was almost tempted to give Mosby a discount just for that.
“You already know, sir?” Mosby believed it; he was just surprised and relieved.
“I do. You’ve been blinded by grief, sir, and exhaustion, and pressed by time. This was quite within your capabilities, I believe. Come and see.” Wolfe actually moved to let him take the ottoman and, for the next five minutes, broke Sherlock Holmes’ rule: He explained how he’d figured it out.
More, in a kindness I hadn’t expected of him, although maybe I should have, Wolfe pointed out his discoveries slowly enough to let Mosby solve it himself. The areas where the varnish was thin. The flowers that weren’t quite perfectly flush with the wood. He even smiled when Mosby told him, not quite laughing, that now he understood why his mother had insisted one of the boys have the middle name of Hortense.
A few flowers were pressed in, the escritoire folded out… and there, barely disarranged by the moves, were sets of envelopes.
One stack was topped with a letter addressed to ‘My sweet Rose’ and tied off in a bright red ribbon; he moved those aside.
Another set tied off with navy blue had a top envelope addressed to a Virgil Mosby; our Mosby didn’t quite flinch, but he set that neatly back in a pigeonhole too, saying, “Mother left letters to all of us, she told me once. Said it had been a habit since her first pregnancy.”
In the last set, tied off in emerald and black ribbons, the top envelope was addressed, ‘In the event of my death.’ The copperplate handwriting was exquisite, the ink a somber, judicially approved black, and the bottom corner of the envelope bore the notation ‘Part 1/10: Will.’
Mosby swallowed, nodded, and placed that stack, too, back in its pigeonhole. “This is actually more than I was looking for or hoped for. I believe I will read these later, at home. I apologize for disturbing you three times in one day, gentlemen, but….”
I shook my head and finished for him. “No. That’s family business, a family heirloom, and you want to deal with the letters among your family home. Yeah, of course. I can be here to let movers back in.” I’d apologize to Fritz if it looked like it would interfere with his plans for my dinner.
That got a small smile more genuine than the ones he’d managed this morning; the lessening of pain and grief did him a lot of favors, I have to say. Even without suddenly being sole heir of a family that had afforded this beauty of a cabinet, he’d have no trouble finding company. “I appreciate it, Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Wolfe, may I pay in cash, or shall I have a check mailed?” He shrugged with the wounded arm and said, “I am, actually, ambidextrous, but I always wrote more with the right and I’m having to practice to get the signature back to something a bank will trust.”
“Cash will be fine, sir.” Wolfe looked at the clock and, for a wonder, didn’t complain that he was two minutes late for his orchids. He gave the escritoire one last look, and said simply, “This has been something of a labor of love on my part as well. Good evening, Major.”
I ended up going to Westchester with him. Why not? I had nowhere I needed to be that evening, once I told Fritz not to worry about me for dinner. Mosby could cope with the movers, sure, but I wasn’t going to make a client who paid up that promptly ride in the cab of a truck with springs that bad. And it was too lovely a cabinet not to help get it unwrapped, cleaned up, and properly polished and open.
And it was a favor to a fellow major, after all. I called and let Fritz know I’d be home in the morning; Mosby could use a helping hand.
If I was a little tired the next morning, well, what man just out of Uncle Sam’s Army wasn’t? And if Wolfe gave me an old-fashioned look over the mail the next morning? Well, that was nothing new either.
Time to find another case, before Wolfe got too comfortable in his big yellow chair again. That was reassuringly back to normal, too.