Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 45

by Please Pass the Guilt

  “Oh for god’s sake.” It was Theodore Falk. “That kind of crap?”

  Wolfe nodded. “Certainly. In the effort to solve any complex problem, there are always many apparent absurdities; the job is to find the correct answer and demonstrate that it is not absurd. Another of the journalists thinks that Mr. Abbott put the bomb in the drawer because he didn’t want Mr. Browning to succeed him as president of CAN. Still another thinks that Mrs. Browning did it, or arranged to have it done, because she didn’t want her husband to continue to enjoy the favors of Miss Lugos. He hasn’t decided whom it was intended for, Mr. Browning or Miss Lugos. And another thinks that Miss Lugos did it because she did want Mr. Browning to continue to enjoy her favors but he—”

  “Tommyrot!” Cass R. Abbott, in the red leather chair, blurted it. “I came because Mrs. Odell asked me to, but not to hear a list of idiotic absurdities. She said you wanted to get some facts from us. What facts?”

  Wolfe turned a palm up. “How do I know? All of you have been questioned at length by the police; you have given them thousands of facts, and in assembling, comparing and evaluating a collection of facts they are well practiced and extremely competent. It’s possible that from the record of all the questions they have asked, and your answers to them, I might form a surmise or reach a conclusion that they have failed to see, but I doubt it. I confess to you, though I didn’t to Mrs. Odell, that I have little hope of getting useful facts from you. What I needed, to begin at all, was to see you and hear you. It seems likely that one of you put the bomb in the drawer. There are other possibilities, but probabilities have precedence. A question, Mr. Abbott: Do you think it likely that the person who put the bomb in the drawer is now in this room?”

  “That’s absurd,” Abbott snapped. “I wouldn’t answer that and you know it.”

  “But you have answered it. You didn’t give me a positive no, and you’re a positive man.” Wolfe’s eyes went right. “Mr. Falk. Do you think it likely?”

  “Yes, I do,” Falk said, “and I could name names, three of them, but I won’t. I have no evidence, but I have an opinion, and that’s what you asked for.”

  “I don’t expect names. Mrs. Browning. The same question.”

  “Don’t answer, Phyllis,” Browning said. A command.

  “Of course not. I wasn’t going to.” Her voice didn’t match her scrawniness; it was a full, rich contralto, with color.

  Wolfe asked, “Then you, Mr. Browning? Are you going to answer?”

  “Yes. I’ll tell you exactly what I have told the police and the District Attorney. I not only have no evidence, I have no basis whatever for an opinion. Not even an opinion as to whether the bomb was intended for me or for Odell. It was my room and my desk, but the fact remains that it was Odell who got it. I’ll also tell you that I am not surprised that Mrs. Odell has engaged you, and I don’t blame her. After nearly three weeks the official investigation is apparently completely stymied.”

  Wolfe nodded. “I may have better luck. Miss Lugos? The same question.”

  “The same as Mr. Browning,” she said. I acknowledge that her voice wasn’t as good as Mrs. Browning’s; it was thinner and pitched higher. “I have no idea. None at all.” Also she wasn’t a good liar. When you have asked about ten thousand people about a million questions you may not be able to spot a lie as well as you think you can, but you’re right a lot oftener than you’re wrong.

  “Mr. Meer?”

  Naturally I was wondering about Kenneth Meer. Like everybody who reads about murders in newspapers, I knew that he had been the fourth or fifth person to enter Browning’s room after the explosion, so he had seen blood all right, but that alone wouldn’t account for the blood-on-his-hands crisis that had sent him to the clinic, unless he had bad kinks in his nervous system, bad enough to keep him from working up to such an important job at CAN and hanging onto it. There was the obvious possibility that he had planted the bomb, but surely not for Browning, and if for Odell, how did he know Odell was going to the room and open the drawer? Of course Mrs. Odell had made the answer to that one easy: Browning had told him. Now, how would he answer Wolfe’s question?

  He answered it with a declaration which he had had plenty of time to decide on: “I think it extremely likely that the person who put the bomb in the drawer is now in this room, but that’s all I can say. I can’t give any reason or any name.”

  “You can’t, or you won’t?”

  “Does it matter? Just make it I don’t.”

  “But I ask you if—no. That will come later, if at all. Miss Venner?”

  She wasn’t showing the dimples. Instead, she had been squinting at Wolfe, and still was. “I don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t think you are dumb, but this is dumb, and I wonder why you’re doing it. Even if I thought I could name the person who put the bomb in the drawer, would I tell you with them here? Mr. Abbott is the head of the company that employs me, and Mr. Browning is going to be. I can’t, but even if I could … I don’t get it.”

  “You haven’t listened,” Wolfe told her. “I said that I had little hope of getting any useful facts from you, and I could have added that even if I do, you probably won’t know it. For instance, the question I ask you now. About three months ago CAN had a special program called ‘Where the Little Bombs Come From.’ Did you see it?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Then you know that the preparation for that program required extensive research. There had to be numerous contacts between members of the CAN staff and people who knew about bombs and had had experience with them. Call them the sources. Now I ask you regarding three weeks ago—Friday, May sixteenth, to Sunday, May eighteenth—where and how did you spend that weekend? It may help to remember that the Tuesday following, two days later, Mr. Odell died.”

  “But why do you—” She wasn’t squinting; her eyes were wide in a stare. “Oh. You think I went to one of the ‘sources’ and got a bomb. Well, I didn’t.”

  “I don’t ‘think’ anything. I’m trying to get a start for a thought. I asked where and how you spent that weekend. Have you a reason for not telling me?”

  “No. I have no reason for telling you either, but I might as well. I’ve told the police four or five times. I took a train to Katonah late Friday afternoon and was a house guest of friends—Arthur and Louise Dickinson. They know nothing about bombs. I came back by train Sunday evening.”

  I had got my notebook and a pen and was using them. Wolfe asked, “Mr. Meer? Have you any objection to telling me how you spent that weekend?”

  “Certainly not. I drove to Vermont Friday evening and I hiked about forty miles in the mountains Saturday and Sunday, and drove back Sunday night.”

  “Alone, or with companions?”

  “I was alone. I don’t like companions on a hike. Something always happens to them. I helped some with the research for that program, and none of the ‘sources’ was in Vermont.”

  “I am hoping that Mr. Browning will tell me about the sources. Later. Miss Lugos?”

  Her face was really worth watching. As he pronounced her name, she turned her head for a glance at Browning, her boss. It was less than a quarter-turn, but from my angle it wasn’t the same face as when she was looking at Wolfe. Her look at Browning didn’t seem to be asking or wanting anything; evidently it was just from habit. She turned back to Wolfe and said, “I stayed in town all that weekend. Friday evening I went to a movie with a friend. Saturday afternoon I did some shopping, and Saturday evening I went to a show with three friends. Sunday I got up late and did things in my apartment. In a file at the office we have a record of all the research for that program, all the people who were contacted, and I didn’t see any of them that weekend.”

  Wolfe’s lips were tight. In his house, “contact” is not a verb and never will be, and he means it. He was glad to quit her. “Mr. Falk?”

  Falk had been holding himself in, shifting in his chair and crossing and uncrossing his legs. Obviously he thought it was all crap. �
��You said,” he said, “that you wouldn’t try to emulate the police, but that’s what you’re doing. But Peter Odell was my best and closest friend, and there may be a chance that you’re half as good as you’re supposed to be. As for that weekend, I spent it at home—my place on Long Island. We had four house guests—no, five—and none of them was a bomb expert. Do you want their names and addresses?”

  “I may, later.” As Wolfe’s eyes went to Mrs. Browning, her husband spoke: “My wife and I were together that weekend. We spent it on a yacht on the Sound, guests of the man who owns it, James Farquhar, the banker. There were two other guests.”

  “The whole weekend, Mr. Browning?”

  “Yes. From late Friday afternoon to late Sunday afternoon.”

  I put my eyes on my notebook and kept them there. With all the practice I have had with my face, I should of course always have it under control, but I had got two jolts, not just one. First, was that why Wolfe had started the whole rigmarole about that weekend, to check on Browning, and second, had Browning heard it coming and got set for it, or had he just given a straight answer to a straight question? I don’t know how well Wolfe handled his face, since my eyes were on my notebook, but otherwise he did fine. There were two or three other questions he must have wanted to ask Browning, but he didn’t. He merely remarked that he doubted if Mr. Farquhar or the other guests were in the bomb business and then said, “And you, Mr. Abbott?” and my eyes left the notebook.

  “I resent this,” Abbott said. “I knew Pete Odell for twenty years and we worked together for ten of them, and I have a warm and deep sympathy for his wife, his widow, but this is ridiculous. I assumed you would have some new angle, some new approach, but all you’re doing, you’re starting the same old grind. Each of us has spent long hours with the police, answering questions and signing statements, and while we want to oblige Mrs. Odell, naturally we do, I certainly don’t think she should expect us to repeat the whole performance with you. Why doesn’t she ask the police to let you see their files? In one of them you’ll find out how I spent that weekend. I spent it at home, near Tarrytown. There were guests. I played golf all day and bridge at night. But I repeat, this is ridiculous.”

  A corner of Wolfe’s mouth was up. “Then it would be fruitless to continue,” he said—not complaining, just stating a fact. He put his hands on the edge of his desk for purchase, pushed his chair back, and rose. “I’ll have to contrive a new approach. On behalf of Mrs. Odell, I thank you again for coming. Good evening.” He moved, detoured again between the wall and the red leather chair, and, out in the hall, turned left.

  “I’ll be damned,” Theodore Falk said.

  I think they all said things, but if any of it was important, that will be a gap in this report. I wasn’t listening, as I went through the appropriate motions for godspeeding a flock of guests. I had heard enough, more than enough, for one evening. I didn’t even notice who went with whom as they descended the seven steps of the stoop to the sidewalk. Closing the door and sliding the chainbolt in its slot, I went to the kitchen. Fritz, who had kept handy to fill orders for refreshments if called for, was perched on the stool by the big center table with a magazine, but his eyes weren’t on it. They were on Wolfe, who was standing, scowling at a glass of beer in his hand, waiting for the bead to settle to the right level.

  “It’s going on eleven o’clock,” I said. “I would love to start on it right now, but I suppose I can’t.”

  “Of course not,” he growled. He drank beer. “Do we need to discuss it?”

  “I don’t think so.” I went and got a bottle of scotch from the cupboard. There are times when milk will not do. “I have a suggestion. Do you want it?”

  He said yes, and I gave it to him.

  7

  at five minutes past eleven Tuesday morning, I was seated in a comfortable chair at the end of a big, expensive desk in a big, expensive room on the thirtieth floor of a big, expensive building on Broad Street, near Wall, facing a man whose tan was much deeper than Theodore Falk’s—so deep that his hide might have been bronze.

  Getting to him had been simple, but first I had had to confirm that he existed and owned a yacht. At one minute past nine I had dialed the number of the magazine Fore and Aft; no answer. Modern office hours. Half an hour later I got them, and was told by a man, after I held the wire while he looked it up, that a man named James J. Farquhar had a fifty-eight-foot Derecktor cruiser named Prospero. So it was a yacht, not just a rowboat with a mast or an outboard motor. Next I dialed the number of the Federal Holding Corporation, and via two women and a man, which was par, got through to Avery Ballou. He sounded as if he still remembered what Wolfe and I had done for him three years ago, and still appreciated it. I told him we needed a little favor and asked if he knew a banker named James Farquhar.

  “Sure,” he said. “He’s next to the top at Trinity Fiduciary. What has he done?”

  “As far as I know, nothing. It isn’t another paternity problem. I want to ask him a couple of questions about something that he’s not involved in—and he won’t be. He’s the best bet for a piece of information we need, that’s all. But the sooner we get it, the better, and Mr. Wolfe thought you might be willing to ring him and tell him that if I phone him for an appointment, it would be a good idea for him to tell me to come right away and get rid of me.”

  He said he would, and ten minutes later his secretary phoned and said Farquhar was expecting a call from me. She even gave me the phone number, and I dialed it and got his secretary.

  So at 11:05 there I was, at his desk. I was apologizing. “Mr. Wolfe didn’t want to bother you,” I said, “about a matter that you will consider trivial, but he sort of had to. It’s about something that happened more than three weeks ago—Friday, May sixteenth. A lawyer has a client who is being sued for damages, fifty thousand dollars, and he has asked Mr. Wolfe to check on a couple of things. The client’s name is O’Neill, Roger O’Neill, and a man named Walsh claims that around half past eight that evening he was in his small boat, fishing in the Sound, near Madison, about a mile off shore, and O’Neill’s big cruiser came along fast, doing at least twenty, he says, and hit his boat right in the middle—cut it right in two. The sun had set but it wasn’t dark yet, and Walsh says he had a light up. He wasn’t hurt much, but his twelve-year-old son was; he’s still in the hospital.”

  Farquhar was frowning. “But where do I come in? I have a busy morning.”

  “I’m keeping it as brief as possible. Walsh says there were witnesses. He says a bigger boat, around seventy feet, was cruising by, about two hundred yards farther out, and there were people on deck who must have seen it happen. He tried to see its name, but he was in the water and the light was dim. He thinks it was Properoo.” I spelled it. “We can’t find a boat with that name listed anywhere, but your yacht, Prospero, comes close to it. Friday, May sixteenth. Three weeks ago last Friday. Were you out on the Sound that day?”

  “I’m out every Friday. That Friday … three weeks …” He shut his eyes and tilted his head back. “That was … No …. Oh, sure.” His eyes opened and his head leveled. “I was across the Sound. Nowhere near Madison. Before nine o’clock we anchored in a cove near Stony Brook, on the other shore.”

  “Then it wasn’t you.” I stood up. “Have you ever seen a boat named Properoo?”

  “No.”

  “If you don’t mind—Mr. Wolfe always expects me to get everything. Who was on board with you?”

  “My wife, and four guests. Mr. and Mrs. Percy Young, and Mr. and Mrs. Amory Browning. And the crew, two. Really, damn it—”

  “Okay. I’m sorry I bothered you for nothing, and Mr. Wolfe will be too. Many thanks.”

  I went.

  In the elevator, going down, a woman moved away from me, clear away. I wasn’t bothering to manage my face, and probably its expression indicated that I was all set to choke or shoot somebody. I was. Down in the lobby I went to a phone booth and dialed the number I knew best, and when Fritz answer
ed I said, “Me. I want him.”

  It took a couple of minutes. It always does; he hates the phone.

  “Yes, Archie?”

  “I’m in a booth in a building on Broad Street. I have just had a talk with James J. Farquhar. At nine o’clock Friday evening, May sixteenth, he anchored his yacht in a cove on the Long Island shore. The four guests aboard were Mr. and Mrs. Percy Young and Mr. and Mrs. Amory Browning. I’m calling because it’s nearly eleven-thirty, and if I proceed as instructed I couldn’t have her there in less than an hour, which would be too close to lunch. I suggest that I phone her instead of going to get her, and—”

  “No. Come home. I’ll telephone her. The number?”

  “On my yellow pad in the middle drawer. But wouldn’t it—”

  “No.” He hung up.

  So he too was set for murder. He was going to dial it himself. He was going to risk keeping lunch waiting. As I headed for the subway, which would be quicker than scouting for a taxi in that territory, I was trying to remember if any other client, male or female, had ever equaled this, and couldn’t name one.

  But when I entered the old brownstone, and the office, a few minutes before noon, I saw he wasn’t going to choke her or shoot her. He was going to slice her up. At his desk, with his oilstone and a can of oil on a sheet of paper, he was sharpening his penknife. Though he doesn’t use it much, he sharpens it about once a week, but almost never at that time of day. Evidently his subconscious had taken over. I went to my desk and sat, opened a drawer and took out the Marley .38, and asked, “Do I shoot her before you carve her, or after?”

  He gave me a look. “How likely is it that Mr. Browning telephoned him last night, or saw him, and arranged it?”

  “No. A hundred to one. I took my time with a phony buildup and watched his face. Also at least seven other people would have to be arranged: his wife, the four guests, and the crew. Not a chance. You got Miss Haber?”

  “Yes.” He looked at the clock. “Thirty-five minutes ago. I made it—”