Рекс Стаут - Please Pass the Guilt

“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.

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.”

“Do 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.”