The Return of the Black Widowers

by Isaac Asimov

  "I agree with Mr. Trumbull, sir. I think that Mr. Wayne should forget the matter."

  Wayne rolled his eyes upward and shook his head firmly.

  "However," Henry went on, "I have a specific reason for suggesting it, one that perhaps Mr. Wayne will agree with."

  "Good," said Gonzalo. "What is it, Henry?"

  "I couldn't help but notice, sir, that all of you, in referring to what Mr. Pennyworth said on the phone, mentioned that he said he was going northwestward. That, however, isn't quite so. When Mr. Wayne first mentioned the phone conversation, he quoted Mr. Pennyworth as saying, 'I'm going northwest.' Is that correct?"

  Wayne said, "Yes, as a matter of fact, that is what he said, but does it matter? What is the difference between 'northwestward' and 'northwest'?"

  "A huge difference, Mr. Wayne. To go 'northwestward' can only mean traveling in a particular direction, but to go 'northwest' need not mean that at all."

  "Of course it needs to mean that."

  "No, sir. I beg your pardon, Mr. Wayne, but 'to go northwest' could mean one's intention to take a plane belonging to Northwest Airlines, one of our larger plane lines."

  The pause that followed was electric. Then Wayne whispered, "Good Lord!"

  "Yes, sir. And in that case, everything explains itself. Mr. Pennyworth may have been mistaken about being followed, but, even if he thought he was, he was not sufficiently worried over the situation to follow any circuitous route. He told you he was taking

  a Northwest airplane, speaking of the matter elliptically, as many people do, and assuming you would understand.

  "Despite the name of the plane line, which may have been more accurate at its start, Northwest Airlines serves the United States generally and you can take one of its planes from Minneapolis to New York, traveling eastward. I'm sure that but for the coincidence that you had a home in North Dakota, you might have interpreted Mr. Pennyworth's remark correctly.

  "Mr. Pennyworth, under the impression he had told you he was flying to New York, said he would see you soon—meaning, in New York. And he hung up suddenly probably because his flight announced that it was ready for boarding."

  "Good Lord!" said Wayne, again.

  "Exactly, sir. Then when Mr. Pennyworth got home and found you had been to North Dakota, he could honestly see no connection between that and anything he might have done, so that it never occurred to him to apologize for his actions. He couldn't have asked you why you had gone to North Dakota; as a servant, it wasn't his place to. Had you explained of your own accord, he would have understood the confusion and would undoubtedly have apologized for contributing to it. But you remained silent."

  "Good Lord!" said Wayne, a third time. Then, energetically, "I have spent over a year making myself miserable over nothing at all. There's no question about it. Batman has made a terrible mistake."

  "Batman," said Henry, "has, as you yourself have pointed out, the great advantage, and the occasional disadvantage, of being only human."

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  YES, BUT WHY?

  J

  ames Drake, smoking his cigarette slowly and patiently, sat on the staircase, third step from the bottom, and nodded slightly as Thomas Trumbull strode toward him. Trumbull was almost always the last to arrive at the monthly Black Widowers banquet, but this time he was not quite as late as he often was. Drake stood up and Trumbull, braking suddenly, said, inevitably, "Why are you waiting down here, Jim?"

  "To talk to you. You're the only one I haven't been able to reach this last week. Why don't you get an answering service? Or an answering machine?"

  "Because," growled Trumbull, "I don't want to be too damned accessible and I don't want too many messages. Those who need to reach me know how."

  "Exactly. I needed to."

  "All right, now you have me. What's up?" He scowled suddenly. "Bad news?"

  "No. Puzzling news. A week ago, Henry called me—"

  "What Henry? Our waiter?”

  "What other Henry would 1 be referring to on Black Widowers night, Tom? Of course, our waiter. He called me because it's my turn to host the shindig tonight and he asked me if it would be possible for me to refrain from bringing a guest."

  Trumbull registered utter surprise. "Why?"

  "The point is he wants to be the guest."

  "He? Who'll wait on us?"

  215 "No, no. He'll do the waiting as always. He's not suggesting he sit down and eat with us.—Though he could if he wished; he's a member of the club."

  "I know," said Trumbull. "The best one among us. But what's it all about then?"

  "He wants to be grilled after the banquet. He's got a problem."

  "He's got a problem?"Trumbull's voice went up half an octave and several decibels.

  Drake put a finger to his lips and looked apprehensively up the stairs to where the four others were having their drinks. "Keep it down. Yes, he does."

  "What kind of problem?"

  "He didn't say."

  "But he's the one who always solves the problems. I don't recall a single time when any of the others of us have managed."

  "I know, I know. I told him that," said Drake. "He said he's too close to it, and he wants our help. —Well, listen, I just couldn't refuse him."

  "No," said Trumbull," of course not. But it could create problems."

  "I know. I've arranged to have Manny Rubin talk about the plot of the mystery novel he's working on now. So don't you stop him this time. We need normal conversation during the dinner or we might embarrass Henry."

  "Very well. I'll let him talk, but it surely goes against the grain to hear him pontificate on mystery writing."

  The turtle soup and the crab salad had gone the way of all flesh and the roast lamb was being brought on. Emmanuel Rubin drew a breath and continued to speak. "But what you have to be most careful of is the motive. Suppose you have a traditional murder mystery with a closed cast of characters. One of the individuals in the book committed the murder and you know for a fact that no outsider could possibly be involved.

  "Well, they might all have access to the means by which the murder was committed; they might all have had the opportunity; you might arrange for no one to have an alibi. That part is easy. But now comes the question of motive.

  "If one of the characters has an overwhelming motive for killing the victim and everyone else stands only to lose heavily by his death, then you make it almost certain that the person with the motive committed the crime.

  "There are several ways out of it. You can make the victim so saintly a person that no one would seem to have a motive for killing him. Or you can make the victim so evil a person that everyone would have a motive for killing him. Or—"

  Mario Gonzalo interrupted, "You can have a character with a hidden motive, cant you?"

  Rubin stared at him hotly through the thick lenses of his glasses and his sparse beard seemed to bristle, "I said 'Or,' Mario. Do you mind if I finish?"

  "Go ahead," said Geoffrey Avalon, in his impressive baritone. "You know no one can stop you when you're in full flight."

  Rubin said, "Or—to finish what I was saying—you can indeed give one person an overwhelming motive, but you can give another character, or several others, motives that are not known at the start and are only gradually revealed."

  Roger Halsted said, "It's for that reason I always know for sure that the character with the overwhelming motive is innocent."

  "Every once in a while, wise guy," said Rubin, "a clever writer can turn the tables and, having forced attention away from the obvious killer, reveal him as the killer after all."

  Rubin went into greater detail, but the conversation began to flag when the coffee and dessert showed up. The evil moment could not be long delayed and when Henry served the brandy—having maintained his imperturbable countenance throughout—Drake, with a sinking sensation, clattered his spoon against his water glass.

  "Gentlemen," he said, "as you all know, our esteemed Henry, the man who makes
these banquets what they are, wishes to present a problem to us. I have made it quite plain that our record in these matters is an abysmally poor one, but he will have it so, and, of course, we are always at his service figuratively as he is at ours literally. So, Henry, please take a seat at the table."

  Henry demurred. "That would not be at all necessary, Dr. Drake."

  "Host's decision, Henry. You're a member of the club and from this moment on, you're a partaker of the banquet. Sit down. Mario, drag up a chair."

  With a slight nod, Henry seated himself.

  Drake said to Halsted, "Roger, you've got the softest voice and are the least opinionated of us. So why don't you do the grilling?"

  Halsted took a gentle sip of his Grand Marnier and said, "Henry, I won't ask you to begin by justifying your existence. We know very well how your existence is justified. It is by seeing to it that we have the best banquets in the city, or perhaps in the world. But we want those banquets to continue. Would you object to having us probe into your private life, to have us question what you have to say, to have us try to catch you out in your own statements? In short, will this ruin our relationship?"

  Henry said, gently, "I have myself asked for this session, Mr. Halsted. I have heard the manner in which you have grilled dozens of guests, and I am ready to take my turn."

  A silence fell over the table and after a full minute, Halsted said, "It's obvious, Henry, that each of us is reluctant to question you, despite your offer to be grilled. May we therefore start with you? Could you tell us, in your own words, what problem is disturbing you, and perhaps, as you speak, questions may occur to us and we may ask them."

  "As you wish," said Henry. He paused, as though collecting his thoughts, then said "Gentlemen, we have had a long and happy association—happy on my part, certainly—but it has been, if I may use the expression, a purely professional one. The circumstances of my private life are unknown to you, I believe. You have never questioned me and I have never forced my confidences on you—till now. Gentlemen, as some of you may have taken for granted, I am not married."

  Avalon said, softly, "Have you ever been married, Henry?"

  "No, Mr. Avalon, never. I am an old bachelor and growing older. As you have no doubt heard, old bachelors become accustomed to their own ways and, as the years pass, their singleness becomes ever more precious to them, though there are times, since even old bachelors are human, when they feel lonely. There is a woman—"

  "Aha," said Gonzalo, lifting one finger, then falling silent, as though abashed.

  "Yes," said Henry, with a small smile, "I have in my lifetime made friends with those of the opposite sex, and have even engaged in some romantic situations—but not so much in recent years. For the last year and a half, though, I have known a woman only slightly younger than myself, who has been a good friend. Her name is Hester Amberley, and that is her real name. I know, better than anyone else, the conditions of confidentiality that exist at these banquets, and so there is no need to conceal anything.

  "Hester is as old-fashioned as her name; in fact, as old-fashioned as I am. We have quiet times; we discuss books and the news of the day; we take strolls in the park; we enjoy the newly refurbished Central Park Zoo; we occasionally take in a show. It is a quiet life, but one that is very satisfying. She was married in the past and is a widow, but she has a modest competence as a result. We each have a comfortable apartment, neither of us has financial problems, we are each accustomed to a single life and it really has the potential for an idyllic existence. What we supply each other with is company and a community of interests. Nothing could be more convenient and delightful, until there came a time when—"

  "Aha," said Gonzalo again. "A serpent enters the Garden of Eden. Another man Henry?" "Oh, no,” said Henry. "Nor another woman, either. We are each of us beyond the point where we are searching out adventures. Besides, our friendship is sufficiently sensible to continue, I believe, even if third parties had made their appearance. No, the interfering phenomenon is something much more disturbing."

  Avalon said, "I would suggest, Henry, that you move on to this interfering phenomenon and tell us what it is."

  "In two words, Mr. Avalon, it's anonymous letters."

  "Blackmail?" Avalon s eyebrows were raised in surprise.

  Henry hesitated. "I can't say blackmail. Simply anonymous letters."

  "Suppose you tell us about them," said Halsted, gently.

  "They started arriving in the mail a bit over two months ago. They are short letters, printed in straggly fashion on cheap paper, in cheap envelopes. They seem almost illiterate, but the words are spelled correctly and I suppose they were printed with the left hand—or the right hand if the writer was left-handed."

  "Have you seen them yourself?" put in Gonzalo, abruptly.

  "Yes, I have, Mr. Gonzalo—three of them. Hester destroyed the first few, being very upset and not thinking clearly, I suppose, but when she couldn't stand it anymore she turned to me for help and showed me three letters she had not destroyed. The paper and the envelopes are untraceable, I'm sure, and the postmarks indicate no more than that the letters were mailed here in the city. Hester did not think to handle them with gloves, but the writer was being so careful that I imagine he or she was careful to leave no fingerprints."

  Halsted said, "Is it possible to tell us what the letters are about? —Why they upset her so?"

  Henry's mouth twitched as though he were meditating a smile and thought better of it. "They accuse her of various crimes, but quite minor ones. Hester is not the woman to have had a past that included murder, theft, or any of the more grandiose criminal activities."

  "And she's not accused of them?" said Halsted.

  "Not at all. Of the three letters I saw, one accused her of having bought lipstick at the age of sixteen, after her mother had strictly forbidden her to. One, that she had had dinner with a male friend once when her husband was out of town—it mentioned the dinner and it suggested nothing more. The third reminded her that she routinely used company postage for her private mail."

  Drake said, thoughtfully, "Those were only the three letters she showed you. Might not some of the letters she didn't show you contain meatier matter?"

  "It is possible, but Hester insists that these three are entirely typical, and I believe her. I have never found her dishonest or devious, even when honesty was—inconvenient."

  Drake shrugged, as though unconvinced, but he said, "In that case, if we accept your friend's statement, why should these things bother her? If I had a dollar for every teenager who buys and uses lipstick against parental instructions, for every employee who raids the petty-cash box, I'd be a rich man."

  "They bother her, Dr. Drake, because she doesn't know who's sending them."

  Rubin said, "Let's be logical. Just from the three letters you described, it's someone who knew her well enough to describe her high crimes and misdemeanors as an adolescent as well as a mature woman, so it must be someone who's known her all her life. There can't be many of those."

  "Worse than that, Mr. Rubin. There aren't any of those. Hester was born in Ames, Iowa, and moved to New York when she had turned twenty-two. Except for two brief visits in the 1950s, she has not been back to Ames. No one she knew there is here in New York—"

  "How can she know that?" said Rubin.

  "Well, if any are here in New York, Mr. Rubin, they haven't made themselves known to her."

  Halsted said, "Some thirty years have passed since her last visit. It's possible an old Ames acquaintance might not want to be known to her. She—or he—may be working at her place of business, and she's never really paid attention to her—or him—and might not recognize the person if she did."

  Gonzalo said, "Wait a while. Why does it have to be someone who's known her all her life? These days no one has any privacy. Everything's on computers. If someone tapped into the computers, which hackers seem to be doing all the time, they could find out anything they want."

  "No, they ca
n't, Mario," said Avalon, censoriously. "You're just being paranoid about computers. I don't deny that computers are full of details about the financial and medical histories of various people, and I admit this raises the possibility of enormous invasions of privacy, but the computers don't hold everything. You don't suppose any time a person takes a stamp from the postage drawer, a relay is tripped and the fact is recorded in a computer under the person's name, address, and Social Security number, do you? Or that every time a teenager explores the boundaries of parental permission, those computers are activated—and some forty years ago, at that, in Mrs. Amberley's case?"

  Gonzalo was on the defensive. "They can find out enough. They can find out she was born in Ames, Iowa, and they could go there to gather information about her younger years."

  "Why on Earth would they do that?" asked Trumbull, indignantly. "Who would make a round trip of two thousand miles and spend who knows how much time, just to pick up a lipstick misdemeanor?"

  Henry said, "That, indeed, is one of the difficulties. The perpetrator is someone who has known Hester all her life, and intimately too, or who can find out, without impossible trouble, the necessary details . . . because apparently all of the sins of which Hester is accused, while minor in the extreme, are real. Anyone who has known her that long and that well she would recognize, and she says there is no one."

  "That's not definite enough," insisted Trumbull. "With the best will in the world, she might not recognize something she's not really looking for. Someone who's not courting exposure would deliberately adopt some sort of simple disguise."

  "Or else," said Gonzalo in excitement, "it might not be one person at all. It could be two people, one who knows all the wrong things she's doing now, and one who remembers the terrible things she did as a youngster and whom she never even sees, and those two are pooling their efforts."

  Avalon said, "I believe we can fairly say if there is a person—or persons—unknown, who is working so hard to make your friend uncomfortable, Henry, it must be someone—or some people— who dislike her intensely. Now it strikes me that it is quite unlikely that person A would hate person B sufficiently to do this sort of thing, without person B being aware of person As hate. I have a pretty good idea which of the people I am thrown amongst dislike me and if one of them disliked me that much, I'm sure I'd know which one it was."