Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 45

by Please Pass the Guilt

  The doorbell rang. I put the Marley in the drawer and closed it, and went. But in the hall, I saw more than I expected. I stepped back in and asked Wolfe, “Did you invite Mrs. Odell too?”

  “No.”

  “Then she invited herself. She came along. So?”

  He shut his eyes, opened them, shut them, opened them. “Very well. You may have to drag her to the front room.”

  That would have been a pleasure—preferably by the hair with her kicking and screaming. She performed as expected. When I opened the front door, she brushed past me rudely and streaked down the hall, with Miss Haber at her tail, trotting to keep up. Thinking she might actually scratch or bite, I was right behind as she entered the office and opened up, heading for Wolfe’s desk. I’m not sure whether the five words she got out were “If you think you can” or “If you think you’re going,” before Wolfe banged a fist on the desk and bellowed at her:

  “Shut up!”

  I don’t know how he does it. His bellow is a loud explosion, a boom, as a bellow should be, but also it has an edge, it cuts, which doesn’t seem possible. She stopped and stood with her mouth open. I was between her and him.

  “I told Miss Haber to come,” Wolfe said in his iciest tone. “Not you. If you sit and listen, you may stay. If you don’t, Mr. Goodwin will remove you—from the room and the house. He would enjoy it. I have something to say to Miss Haber, and I will not tolerate interruption. Well?”

  Her mouth was even wider than normal because her teeth were clamped on her lower lip. She moved, not fast, toward the red leather chair, but Wolfe snapped, “No. I want Miss Haber in that chair. Archie?”

  I went and brought a yellow chair and put it closer to my desk than his. She gave me a look that I did not deserve, and came and sat. I doubted if Charlotte Haber would make it to the red leather chair without help, so I went and touched her arm, and steered her to it.

  Wolfe’s eyes at her were only slits. “I told you on the telephone,” he said, “that if you were not here by twelve o’clock, I would telephone a policeman, Inspector Cramer of Homicide South, and tell him what you told me Sunday evening about your telephone call to Mr. Browning on May sixteenth. I’ll probably find it necessary to tell him anyway, but I thought it proper to give you a chance to explain. Why did you tell me that lie?”

  She was making a fair try at meeting his eyes. She spoke: “It wasn’t—” Her tongue got in the way and she stopped and started over: “It wasn’t a lie. It was exactly like I told you. If Mr. Browning won’t admit it, if he denies—”

  “Pfui. I haven’t discussed it with Mr. Browning. The conclusive evidence that you couldn’t have made that call did not come from him. Even candor may not serve you now, but certainly nothing else will. Unless you tell me what and who induced you to tell me that lie, you’re in for it. You’ll leave here not with your employer, but with a policeman, probably for detention as a material witness. I will not—”

  “You can’t!” Mrs. Odell was on the edge of her chair. “You know you can’t! You guaranteed in writing!”

  “Remove her, Archie,” Wolfe said. “If necessary, drag her.”

  I rose. She tilted her head to focus up at me and said, “You don’t dare. Don’t dare to touch me.”

  I said, “I dare easy. I admit I’d rather not, but I have bounced bigger and stronger women than you and have no scars. Look. You tried to steal home and got nailed, and no wonder. You didn’t even have sense enough to check where Browning was that Friday night. As for that guarantee in that receipt you got, it says, quote, ‘Unless circumstances arise that put me or him under legal compulsion to reveal it.’ End quote. Okay, the circumstances are here. The cops have spent a thousand hours trying to find out why your husband went to the room and opened the drawer, and who knew he was going to. Now I know. So I’m withholding essential evidence in a murder case, and there’s a statute that puts me under legal compulsion to reveal it. Also, I’m not just a law-abiding citizen, I’m a licensed private detective, and I don’t want to lose my license and have to start a new career, like panhandling or demonstrating. So even if Mr. Wolfe got big-hearted and decided just to bow out, there would still be me. I feel responsible. I am responsible. I started this by writing you that letter. Mr. Wolfe told Miss Haber that unless she comes clean he will open the bag. I may or may not stay with him on the unless. I am good and sore, and for a dirty crinkled dollar bill with a corner gone I would go now to the drug store on the corner and ring a police sergeant I know. I also know a man on the Gazette who would love to have a hot item for the front page, and I could back it up with an affidavit. And would.”

  I turned to Wolfe. “If I may offer a suggestion. If you still want her bounced, okay, but from her face I think she has got it down.”

  I turned back to her. “If you get the idea that you can say it was all a lie, that you wanted to fasten it on Browning and made it all up, nothing doing. They found the LSD in your husband’s pocket and they’ve got it. You’re stuck, absolutely, and if you try to wriggle you’ll just make it worse.”

  She had kept her eyes at me. Now they went to her right, clear around past Wolfe to Miss Haber, and they certainly saw nothing helpful. Below the crease in the narrow forehead, the secretary’s eyes weren’t aimed anywhere. They could have been seeing her hands clasped on her lap, but probably they weren’t seeing anything.

  Mrs. Odell aimed hers at Wolfe. “You said you haven’t discussed it with Browning. The—the LSD. Who have you discussed it with?”

  “Mr. Goodwin. No one else.”

  “Then how did you—How can you—”

  “Mr. Goodwin talked this morning with a man who owns a yacht. At nine o’clock in the evening of Friday, May sixteenth, when he anchored in a cove on the Long Island shore, two of the guests aboard were Mr. and Mrs. Amory Browning. In all my experience with chicanery, madam, I have never encountered a more inept performance. A factor in our animus is probably the insult to our intelligence; you should have known that we would inquire as to Mr. Browning’s whereabouts that evening, and therefore you should have. By the glance you just gave Miss Haber I suspect that you are contemplating another inanity: saying it was some other evening. Pfui. Don’t try it. Look at Miss Haber.”

  She didn’t have to; she already had. And she proceeded to demonstrate that she was by no means a complete fool. She cocked her head at me for a long, steady look, and then cocked it at Wolfe. “I don’t believe,” she said, “that you have really decided to tell the police about it. If you had, you wouldn’t have phoned Miss Haber and—”

  “I haven’t said I have decided. I said, to Miss Haber, ‘Unless you tell me what and who induced you to tell that lie.’”

  “I’ll tell you. I induced her.”

  “When?”

  “Three days ago. Saturday evening. And Sunday morning, before I called Goodwin. What induced her was money. She needs money. She has a younger brother who has got himself into—but that doesn’t matter, what she needs it for. And anyway, I think Browning put that bomb there. I’m sure he did. I don’t know how he knew Peter was going to open that drawer, but I’m sure he did. Maybe Peter told somebody. You didn’t know Peter, you don’t know what a wonderful man he was. He married me for my money, but he was a wonderful husband. And Browning killed him, and with all the money I have, now there’s only one thing I want to do with it. I don’t think the police will ever get him, and you know something they don’t know. Can you handle Goodwin?”

  “No.” He was scowling at her. “No one can ‘handle’ Mr. Goodwin. But he handles himself reasonably well, and he wouldn’t divulge information he got as my agent without my consent. My problem is handling me. Your fatuous attempt to hoodwink me relieves me of my commitment, but I too am a licensed private detective. If Mr. Cramer learns that those seven people were here last evening, as he probably will, and if he comes to see me, as he almost certainly will, I’ll be in a pickle. I have many times refused to disclose information on the ground that it wa
s not material, but the fact that your husband went to that room and opened that drawer in order to put LSD in the whisky is manifestly material. Confound it, they even have the LSD—that is, you say they have it.”

  “They do. They showed it to me.” She opened her bag and took out the checkfold. “I’ve made one idiotic mistake with you and I don’t intend to make another one. I’m going to give you a check for one hundred thousand dollars, but I have sense enough to know that I have to be careful how I do it. If you think that I think I can pay you and Goodwin for not telling the police about the LSD, I don’t. I know I can’t. But I do think they will never get Browning, and I think you might. I think the only chance of getting him is if you do it. I don’t care what it costs. The hundred thousand dollars is just to start. You may have to give somebody twice that much for something.” She slid the pen out and started to write on the check stub.

  “No,” Wolfe said. “You can’t pay me at all on the terms you imply. I certainly would not engage to demonstrate that Mr. Browning killed your husband. I might engage to try to learn who killed your husband and to get evidence that would convict him. As for withholding information from the police, that must be left to my discretion. Mr. Goodwin and I are disinclined to share with others information that gives us an advantage.”

  “It was Browning. Why do you think it wasn’t?”

  “I don’t. He is as likely a candidate as anyone—much the most likely, if he knew of your husband’s intention to drug the whisky.” He swiveled to face the red leather chair. “Miss Haber. You didn’t tell Mr. Browning about it, but whom did you tell?”

  “Nobody.” It came out louder than she intended, and she repeated it, lower. “Nobody.”

  “This is extremely important. I must know. This time you are expected to tell me the truth.”

  “I am telling you the truth. I couldn’t have told anyone because I didn’t know myself. I didn’t know what the LSD was for until last Saturday evening, three days ago, when Mrs. Odell told me … When she asked me …”

  Wolfe turned to Mrs. Odell with his brow up.

  “I believe her,” she said, and he turned back to the secretary.

  “Do you go to church, Miss Haber?”

  “Yes, I do. Lutheran. Not every Sunday, but often.”

  He turned to me. “Bring a Bible.”

  On the third shelf from the bottom, at the left of the globe, there were nine of them, four in different editions in English and five in foreign languages. I picked the one that looked the part best, in black leather, and crossed to the red leather chair.

  “Put your right hand on it,” Wolfe told her, “and repeat after me: With my hand on the Holy Bible I swear.”

  I held it at her level and she put her hand on it, palm down, flat, the fingers spread a little. “With my hand on the Holy Bible I swear.”

  “That I did not know what Mr. Odell intended to do.”

  She repeated it.

  “With the LSD I had procured from Mrs. Odell.”

  She repeated it.

  “Until Saturday, June seventh.”

  She repeated it.

  Wolfe turned to the client. “You can suspect Mr. Browning only if you assume that he knew what your husband was going to do. Miss Haber didn’t. I don’t suppose you or your husband told him. Whom did you tell?”

  “I didn’t tell anybody. Absolutely nobody. So Peter must have. I wouldn’t have thought—but he must have. Of course there were people who wanted Peter to be the new president, not Browning, and he must have told one of them. For instance, Ted Falk, but Ted wouldn’t have told Browning. I can give you names. Sylvia Venner. Then there’s a man in public relations—”

  “If you please.” He had turned his head to look at the wall clock, “It’s my lunch time. You can make a list of the names, with relevant comments. But there must be no misunderstanding about what you expect me to do. My commitment is to try to learn who killed your husband and get evidence that will convict him. Just that. Is that clearly understood?”

  “Yes. But I want to be sure … No. I suppose I can’t be.” She opened the checkfold. “But if it wasn’t Browning … Oh, damn it. God damn it.” She wrote the check.

  8

  at twenty minutes to seven, Theodore Falk, in the red leather chair with his legs crossed, told Wolfe, “It would depend on what it was he was going to do.”

  In the four and a half hours since lunch, much had been done but nothing visible had been accomplished. We had discussed the Cramer problem. If and when he came, I could open the door only the two inches the chain on the bolt allowed and tell him Wolfe wasn’t available and there was no telling when he would be, and I was under instructions to tell nobody anything whatever. He probably couldn’t get a warrant, since all he could tell a judge was that some of the people involved in a murder case had spent part of an evening in the house, but if he did, and used it, we would stand mute—or sit mute. Or I could open the door wide and let him in, and Wolfe would play it by ear, and we voted for that. There was always a chance that he would supply one or more useful facts.

  We had also decided to spend thirty-one dollars an hour, for as long as necessary, of the client’s money, on Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather—eight each for Fred and Orrie, and fifteen for Saul. If no one had known that Odell intended to go to Browning’s room, the bomb couldn’t have been intended for him, and it was going to take more doing than having people come to the old brownstone for some conversation. I had phoned Saul and Orrie and asked them to come Wednesday at ten o’clock, and left a message for Fred. And I had phoned Theodore Falk, Odell’s best and closest friend, and told him that Wolfe wanted to have a talk with him, without an audience, and he said he would come around six o’clock.

  By a couple of phone calls—one to a vice-president of our bank and one to Lon Cohen—I had learned that Falk was way up. He was a senior member of one of the oldest and solidest investment firms and sat on eight boards of directors. He had a wife and three grown-up children, and he and they were also solid socially. Evidently a man the race could be proud of, and from personal observation the only thing I had against him was his buttoned-down shirt collar. A man who hates loose flaps so much that he buttons down his collar should also button down his ears.

  He came at 6:34.

  Wolfe told him that he needed all the information he could get about Odell. Specifically, he needed the answer to a question: If Odell decided to do something secretly, some shabby deed that would help him and hurt someone else, how likely was it that he would have told anyone? And Falk said, “It would depend on what it was he was going to do. You say ‘shabby’?”

  Wolfe nodded. “Opprobrious. Mean. Furtive. Knavish. Tricky.”

  Falk uncrossed his legs, slid his rump clear back in the red leather chair, which is deep, recrossed his legs, and tilted his head back. His eyes went left and then right, in no hurry, apparently comparing the pictures on the wall—one of Socrates, one of Shakespeare, and an unwashed coal miner in oil by Sepeshy. (According to Wolfe, man’s three resources: intellect, imagination, and muscle.)

  In half a minute Falk’s head leveled and his eyes settled on Wolfe. “I don’t know about you,” he said. “I don’t know you well enough. A cousin of mine who is an assistant district attorney says you are sharp and straight. Does he know?”

  “Probably not,” Wolfe said. “Hearsay.”

  “You solicited Mrs. Odell.”

  I cut in. “No,” I said. “I did.”

  Wolfe grunted. “Not material.” To Falk: “Mr. Goodwin is my agent, and what he does is on my tally. He knew my bank balance was low. Does your firm solicit?”

  Falk laughed, showing his teeth, probably knowing how white they looked with his deep tan. “Of course,” he said, “you’re not a member of the bar.” He lifted a hand to rub his lip with a finger tip. That helped him decide to say something, and he said it. “You know that the police have a vial of LSD that was in Odell’s pocket.”

  “D
o I?”

  “Certainly. Mrs. Odell has told me that she told you. Has she told you what he was going to do with it?”

  “I’m sharp, Mr. Falk.”

  “So you are. Of course you’ll tell her what I say, but she already knows that I think she knew what Pete was going to do with the LSD, though she won’t admit it, and no wonder, not even to me.”

  “And you knew.”

  “I knew what?”

  “What he was going to do with the LSD.”

  “No, I didn’t. I don’t know even now, but I can make a damn good guess, and so can the police. So can you, if Mrs. Odell hasn’t told you. Going to Browning’s room and opening that drawer, with LSD in his pocket? Better than a guess. You would call it shabby and opprobrious for him to dope Browning’s whisky? And knavish?”

  “Not to judge, merely to describe. Do you disagree?”

  “I guess not. Not really. Anyway another good guess is that it was her idea, not his. You can tell her I said that, she already knows it. Of course your question is, did I know about it, did he tell me? He didn’t. He wouldn’t. If he told anybody it would have been me, but a thing like that he wouldn’t tell even me. The reason I’m telling you this, I’m beginning to doubt if the police are going to crack it, and you might. One reason you might, Mrs. Odell will probably tell you things she won’t tell them. Another reason is that with people like these, like us, the police have to consider things that you can ignore.”

  “And you want it cracked.”

  “Hell yes. Pete Odell was my favorite man.”

  “If no one knew he was going to open that drawer, he died by inadvertence.”

  “But whoever planted that bomb killed him.” Falk turned a palm up. “Look, why am I here? This will make me an hour late for something. I wanted to know if you were going to waste time on the idea that the bomb was intended for Odell. The police still think it could have been and there’s not a chance. Damn it, I knew him. It just isn’t thinkable that he would have told anyone he was going to try to bust Browning by doping his whisky.”