Please Pass the Guilt

at all. To go right on being with Mrs. Odell every day--1 had to tell her.' Please Pass the Guilt 37 Wolfe turned to the prospective client. 'That was two weeks ago. Why haven't you dismissed her?' 'That's a silly question,' Mrs. Odell said. 'She might tell anyone. She might tell the police. I'm not hiring you to analyze what Miss Haber has done--or what I have done. I want to know how we can make Browning pay for what 'he did without telling what we did.' Wolfe closed his eyes, and the forefinger of his right hand started making little circles on his desk blotter. But he wasn't tackling a tough one; his lips didn't move. So he had made his decision and was merely considering whether he should ask more questions before announcing it In half a minute he quit making circles, lifted his hand to give his forehead a rub, and swiveled to look at me. If they hadn't been there he would have put it into words: 'You got me into this. I concede the desirability of a fee, but you got me into this' Having looked it, long enough to count ten, he swiveled back to her. 'Very well. It's an impossible job, but I'll accept the retainer. My fee will be based on effort and risk, not on accomplishment. I'll need facts, many facts, but it's nearly dinner time, and anyway I want them at first hand. Archie, list these names: Mr. Browning. Mr. Abbott. Mr. Falk. Mr. Meer. Mrs. Browning. Miss Lugos. Miss Venner.' Back to the client: 'Will you have those people here tomorrow evening at nine o'clock?' She stared at him. 'I will not. How can I?' 'I don't know, but it shouldn't be too difficult. They were associates of your husband, who was murdered. They should be willing to help you learn who murdered him, and you are concerned at the lack of progress in the official investigation and have engaged my services. Shouldn't they sacrifice an evening at your request?' 'They might. I don't want to ask them. And I won't.' Wolfe picked up the check and held it out. 'Take it. You 38 Please Pass the Guilt have wasted your time and mine. You want a miracle, and miracles are not in my repertory. Give me the receipt.' 'My god,' she said, 'you are highhanded. What can they tell you?' 'I don't know, and I need to know. If there is a fact that will help me do what you want done, I want it. If you think I may inadvertently disclose what you have told me, even a hint of it, if you think me capable of such ineptitude, you were a ninny to come to me at all.' She was chewing her lip. 'Is this the only--do you have to do this?' 'If I take the job as you defined it, yes.' She looked at me, and saw only an open, intelligent, interested, sympathetic phiz. 'Damn it,' she said. 'Give me the list.' 6 since the state of the bank account had been responsible for the state of my nerves for at least six weeks, it might be supposed that ten o'clock Monday morning would find me at the door of the Continental Bank and Trust Company, waiting for it to open so I could deposit the check, but I wasn't. I knew darned well that Wolfe would not be firmly and finally committed until Mrs. Odell came through, and I couldn't blame him. Of the people on the list I had given her, there wasn't one that he could tell me to go and bring with any right or reason to expect me to fill the order, and if he expected to fill her order, he had to get some questions answered, and not just by her and Miss Haber. So it was possible that the twenty grand would have to be returned, and if so, it would be neater to return her check than to deposit it and then have to draw one of Wolfe's. And at four o'clock Monday afternoon, it became about ten to one that she was going to get her check back. She had done fine with the invitations; she reported by phone that all of them had said yes. The hitch was that when she told me she would come a little early, around half past eight, I had to tell her, as instructed by Wolfe, that he had decided she shouldn't come at all. She wasn't invited and wouldn't be admitted. So she blew her top. I tried to explain why, but she wouldn't listen. She commanded me to get Wolfe to change his mind and ring her, and if she hadn't heard from me by four-thirty, she 40 Please Pass the Guilt would tell them not to come. I went to the kitchen to tell Fritz I was going on an errand, ran, not walked, to the garage on Tenth Avenue where the Heron sedan that Wolfe owns and I drive is kept, made it to Sixty-third and Madison in nineteen minutes, probably a record for that time of day, and was inside the Odell mansion at 4:28. If I reported that conversation verbatim you would think I was tooting my horn, so I'll merely say that I sold her. I explained that when Browning told lies, as he surely would, if she was there she would almost certainly horn in, and if she expected Wolfe to get results she would have to let him do it his way. Also, of course, if she told them not to come, the deal was off and she would have to find someone who would do it her way, and obviously she didn't have any or she wouldn't have gone to Wolfe and given him a check for twenty grand. She didn't like it, but she lumped it. Then, leaving, I got a break. I had had to double-park, on Sixty-third Street, and it was a pleasant surprise to see that no city employee had happened by to put a ticket on the windshield. The return trip took thirty-one minutes. When Wolfe came down at six o'clock and I reported, he didn't even say 'Satisfactory.' He merely scowled and rang for beer. His outlook was bleak. It was now settled that he was going to have to work, and with an obstreperous female for a client. They all came. The first to arrive, Sylvia Venner, showed a little before nine, and the last, Kenneth Meer, at 9:08. Cass R. Abbott rated the red leather chair on two counts: he was the president of CAN, and, being close to seventy, he had seniority. So I put him there. For the others I had placed two rows of yellow chairs facing Wolfe's desk. I have a sort of rule that when there is company and one of them is, or is supposed to be, a murderer, the place for him or her is the front row nearest to me, so that was where I put Amory Browning. Next to him was his wife, and then Theodore Falk. In the back row Kenneth Meer was in the middle, with Helen Lugos on his right and Sylvia Venner on his left. The only one I had ever Please Pass the Guilt 41 seen before was Kenneth Meer. When I let him in, he had looked me in the eye and asked, 'More tricks?' and I said, 'No, and we have made no use of that one. If anyone here knows about your bloody hands, he didn't learn it from us.' Since you're meeting them, you should see them. Cass R. Abbott, the president, looked like one. The mop of welltended white hair, which he had a right to be proud of and probably was, was a good cap for the well-arranged, long, pale face. Amory Browning, who would soon be president if he wasn't otherwise engaged, didn't rate it on looks. If he was fifty-two, which would have been my guess, he had probably been pudgy for about five years, and he would be bald in another five. Theodore Falk, the Wall Street Falk, was about the same age, but he had kept himself lean and limber and had a deep tan. He probably played tennis. You have already seen Kenneth Meer's long, pointed nose and wide, square chin. As for the females, I would have recognized Sylvia Venner from the dozen or so times I had seen her do 'The Big Town,' the program Browning had bounced her from. She was easy to look at, especially when she was using certain muscles to show her dimples, but TV girls, like all actresses, are always working at it and if you get really interested you have to make allowances. I don't want to be unfair to Mrs. Browning merely because our client had her husband tagged for murder, but the truth is she was scrawny. I could give details, but why rub it in? She was about her husband's age, and she was scrawny, and facts are facts. Helen Lugos, Browning's secretary, was the one you would have to see with your own eyes, because she was the kind with whom details like color of eyes and hair, and shape of face, and kind of mouth don't really tell it. She was probably three or four years under thirty, but that was only another unimportant detail. The point was that I had put her in the back row chair the other side of Kenneth Meer because that was where I could see her best and oftenest without turning my head much. I would have liked to put her in the red 42 Please Pass the Guilt leather chair where I would have had her full face, but of course that was the president's place. Hers was the kind of face that is different from any two angles. I had invited orders for liquids, but they had all been declined, and when Kenneth Meer was in and seated, I went to Wolfe's desk and gave the kitchen button three stabs, and in a moment he came, detoured between the red leather chair and the wall to his desk, sat, and sent his eyes around. As I pronounced the seven names, he gave each of them a nod--am nod, about an eighth of an inch. 'On behalf of Mrs. Odell,' he said, 'I thank you for coming. She intended to be here, but she conceded my point that her presence would make our discussion more difficult, both for you and for me. I know, of course, that you have all been questioned at length by officers of the law, and I shall not try to emulate them, either in pertinacity or in scope. I frankly admit that I strongly doubt if I'll get what Mrs. Odell wants. She hired me to learn who killed her husband, and the prospect is forlorn. Apparently no one knows whether his death was premeditated, or fortuitous--except the person who put the bomb in the drawer.' His eyes went right, then left. 'What information I have has come from three sources: the newspapers, Mrs. Odell, and four or five journalists who have worked on the case and with whom Mr. Goodwin is on friendly terms. There is no agreement among the opinions they have formed. One of them thinks that Mr. Odell went to that room and opened that drawer, and put the bomb in it, in order to--' '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. BrownPlease Pass the Guilt 43 ing 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