Рекс Стаут: Please Pass the Guilt

“Not ‘less’ than twenty. ‘Fewer.’”

“Thank you. I happened to learn that Mrs. Odell’s pile goes to eight figures, maybe even nine. The alternatives were (a) quit this job and make her an offer, or (b) get her to make you an offer. I tossed a coin and you won. So I wrote her that letter.”

“Now,” he said through his teeth with his lips barely moving, “ I have alternatives.”

“Certainly. Fire me, or go to work. If you fire me I won’t expect severance pay. I would have to draw the check, and for more than a month every time I have drawn a check I have had to set my jaw. In deciding, please remember that at least twice you have yourself put out a hook when the bank balance got too low for comfort. The last time was when you sent me to see a woman named Fraser. The only difference is that this time I did it without consulting you. I like to earn part of my pay.”

He cupped his hands over the ends of the chair arms, leaned back, and shut his eyes. But his lips didn’t start to work in and out, so he didn’t really have a problem; he was just looking at it. He may have thought I was holding my breath, but probably not, because he knows me nearly as well as I know him.

I was about to swivel and resume with my copy of the Times when he opened his eyes and straightened up and spoke. “Regarding my remark to you about the most important fact that is not getting the attention it deserves. She will of course want to know what it is, and so do I. Have you a suggestion?”

“Sure. I have already told her, yesterday. It’s that Odell entered Browning’s room and opened the drawer of his desk that everybody knew had only bourbon in it. Why? That’s the most important question. You have only read the newspaper accounts, but I have also discussed it for an hour and a half with Lon Cohen and learned a few things that haven’t been printed.”

“Confound it.” He made a face. “Very well. Talk. From Mr. Cohen, the substance. Your conversation with that woman, verbatim.”

I talked.

Most of the people who enter that office for the first time have something eating them, but even so they often notice one or more of the objects in view — the fourteen-by-twenty-six Keraghan rug or the three-foot globe or the floral display in the vase on Wolfe’s desk. Mrs. Peter J. Odell didn’t. When I escorted her to the office, her eyes fixed on Wolfe and stayed there as she crossed the rug and stopped just short of his desk. Of course he stayed put in his chair, as usual.

“Charlotte Haber is my secretary,” she said. “I have brought her because I may need her.” She went to the red leather chair, sat, and put her handbag on the little stand at her elbow. Meanwhile I had moved up one of the yellow chairs for the secretary. From the look Miss Haber had given me at the door, and the one she was now giving Wolfe, it was a good guess that she would rather have been somewhere else. The crease in her narrow forehead made it even narrower, and the way she was puckering her mouth, which was too small anyway, made it almost invisible.

“I have asked three men about you,” Mrs. Odell told Wolfe. “You’re highhanded and opinionated, and you charge high fees, but you’re dependable.”

Wolfe grunted. “You should have inquired further. Competence?”

“Oh, apparently you’re smart enough. I’ll decide that myself. Your man told me that you said the police are neglecting the most important question, why did my husband go to Browning’s room and open that drawer? I want to know why that is so important.” She got her bag and opened it and took out a checkfold. “How much for telling me that?”

He shook his head. “I discuss details only with clients and you haven’t hired me. But since Mr. Goodwin has presumed to quote me to you — without my prior knowledge — I’ll make an exception. On trial for murder, a man may be convicted without proof of motive. Establishment of motive of course helps with a jury, but it is not requisite. But in an investigation of a murder, motive is of first importance. The question was first asked in an ancient language many centuries ago: Cui bono? To try to learn who put that bomb in that drawer without knowing whom it was intended for is close to hopeless, and to learn whom it was intended for it is essential to know why your husband entered the room and opened the drawer, and who knew he was going to. Actually that’s the most important question: Who knew he was going to? Did anybody? If it were my problem I would begin by concentrating on that question to the exclusion of all others. I give you that, madam, with my compliments, since Mr. Goodwin quoted me without bothering to get permission.”

She still had the checkfold in her hand. “The police think it was intended for Amory Browning.”

“No doubt. A reasonable assumption. But if it was actually intended for your husband, they’re wasting their time and they’ll get nowhere.”

“Why do you think it was intended for my husband?”

“I don’t. But I think it might have been — and I repeat, I would want first to learn if anyone knew he was going to enter that room and open that drawer, and if so, who.”

She sat and looked at him. Then she turned her head to look at me, and turned it further to look at Charlotte Haber. I don’t know if that was any help, but probably she had already made up her mind and didn’t even know she was doing it. She opened the checkfold, slid a pen out of its loop, wrote, on both the stub and the check, and tore the check out. “You said I haven’t hired you,” she said. “Now I have. This twenty thousand dollars is for a retainer. I’m going to tell you something and ask you what to do, with the understanding that it is in confidence and you will never tell anyone about it — under any circumstances.”

Wolfe shook his head. “I can’t accept it on those terms.”

“My god, why not? A lawyer would.”

“I am not a member of the bar. What a client tells me is not a privileged communication. Archie. Your notebook.”

I got it from a drawer, and a pen.

“One carbon,” he said. “I acknowledge receipt of a check for twenty thousand dollars from Mrs. Peter J. Odell as a retainer for my services. Period. I guarantee that any information she gives me will be revealed to no one, comma, either by me or by Archie Goodwin, comma, without her consent, comma, unless circumstances arise that put me or him under legal compulsion to reveal it.” He turned to her. “I assure you that we do not invite or welcome legal compulsion. Will that do?”

“I don’t — I’ll look at it.”

I put paper in the typewriter and hit the keys. On the wall back of my desk is a mirror four feet high and six feet wide, and in it I could see that Miss Haber was looking surprised. No female secretary thinks a man can use eight fingers and two thumbs on a typewriter. I rolled it out, kept the carbon, and got up to hand Wolfe the original. He signed it and handed it back, and I took it to Mrs. Odell. She read it, pursed her lips, read it again, folded it and put it in her bag, and handed me the check. I gave it a look and took it to Wolfe, and without even a glance at it he dropped it on his desk.

He looked at the client: “I signed that receipt, madam, but I shall not consider myself definitely committed until I learn what you want me to do. I hope it won’t be necessary for me to return your check, but I can if I must. In any case, what you tell me will be held in confidence if possible. What do you want?”

“I want advice. I want to know what I can do. I know why my husband went to Amory Browning’s room and opened that drawer. So does Miss Haber. That’s why she’s here. I know the bomb was intended for him, and I know who put it there.”