The Irrepressible Peccadillo

again after paying the five grand, but I’m still not convinced that he actually paid her anything at all. Damn it, he didn’t have to make any down payment, like he said, and it doesn’t seem reasonable that he would have done it unless he honestly planned to give her the rest later. In that case he might have done it, because it wouldn’t have made any difference one way or another. If he intended to kill her, though, he would’ve simply put her off until the next day for the full amount. It would’ve been easy enough to do, and as I’ve said before, he wouldn’t have had the money turning up later to suggest a blackmail motive. Besides, what the hell kind of a reason for lolling someone is this bigamy business? Or even for paying blackmail? It wasn’t deliberate, and he could have proved it. He could even have proved that Beth had tricked him into it by a kind of fraud or something, which would have put her in a hell of a lot more trouble than he was in. The most it would have meant to him in the end, I suspect, was a little scandal and humiliation and the inconvenience of getting his second marriage legalized. I can maybe see a rich man laying out a bundle to avoid a scandal and all, but I’m damned if I can see him committing murder over it. Not if he’s got any brains whatever, which Wilson Thatcher has.”

“Speaking of brains,” Sid said, “you have almost convinced me that you may have some yourself.”

“What’s that?” Cotton said.

“Well,” Sid said, “you have obviously thought everything through, and weighed one thing against another, and come up finally with all these brilliant deductions and everything, and it seems to me that this requires a certain amount of brains, however inadequate.”

“It’s kind of you to say so,” Cotton said. His ears had turned red, and I could see that he was somewhat hotter than the hot day. “Thanks very much for the compliment, however inadequate.”

“You’re welcome, I’m sure,” Sid said. “I don’t agree, however, that your final conclusion regarding Wilson Thatcher is sound. The weight of evidence surely indicates that he is sadly deficient in brains, if not totally without them. He has certainly talked like an idiot, saying first one thing and then another, and I consider it likely that he may have acted like one. For the purpose of being compatible, however, I’ll concede that he must have had the glimmering of intelligence required to keep him from getting into a great sweat over the silly bigamy business, but I can tell you another person who would have got into the greatest sweat imaginable, even if she had all the brains in the world, and the person I mean, if you want to know, is no one but Mrs. Wilson Thatcher.”

Cotton was looking at her with his mouth open, and so was I, even though I knew her somewhat better than Cotton and shouldn’t have been particularly surprised by what was comparable to what had often happened before. Finally Cotton drained his can of beer and then began to read the label, at least the big print, as if it were something instructive or comforting, possibly a short prayer.

“Now what in hell, exactly,” he said, “made you say that?”

“What made me say it,” she said, “is being a woman with a husband, and I don’t mind admitting that I would be considerably upset, to put it mildly, if another woman came along suddenly and told me that he had been her husband first and still was. Moreover, if this happened to be the result of a deliberate damn dirty trick, I’m sure I would try my best to make her sorry or dead. Women are more inclined to be sensitive to deceit and humiliation than men are, especially if they are practiced and imposed on by another woman. Although I have more brains than I need, and am not given to behaving as if I needed more than I have, I’m bound to say that my own reaction would be more emotional than intelligent in such a case.” Cotton was still reading the label, forming with his lips the shapes of the words. He did this silently, his expression rather imbecilic, but I could tell that he was listening intently and thinking as furiously as his inadequate brains permitted.

“There’s something else I’ll tell you, if you care to listen,” Sid said.

“I don’t believe I care to,” I said.

“As for me,” Cotton said, “I’m listening.”

“It is apparent to anyone who has ever taken the trouble to consider it,” Sid said, “that someone who is emotional about something is also vulnerable and likely to be more susceptible to threats than someone who isn’t, and if I were married to a man who was also married to someone else, and if I wanted to make a good thing of it in the way of getting some money, I’d surely give serious consideration to the woman as the one to get it from. What I mean is, there is a good chance in my opinion that the man would simply tell me to go fly a kite or something, especially if he happened to be perfectly innocent so far as his intentions went, but you might be surprised to know how absolutely neurotic a woman who thought she was a legal wife would feel about having it known by everybody that she was really an illegal one and had been sleeping practically publicly with someone else’s husband. She would feel a perfect fool, which is the worst way a woman can possibly feel. Or maybe there’s no such thing as an illegal wife. Is there? Maybe she would simply not be a wife at all.”

“As a lawyer,” I said, “I decline to give an opinion without consulting a lawyer.”

Cotton turned his beer can, now empty, around and around in his hands. He seemed