Рекс Стаут: In the Best Families

“Of course he did,” Leeds assured her, apparently meaning it.

She nodded and looked thoughtful, looking into space and seeing something not there. She jerked herself impatiently back to Wolfe. “I admit that before he went away to war, he got married, and he married a very beautiful girl. It is not true that I wished he had taken one who resembled me, even a little bit, but naturally I couldn’t help but see that he had gone to the other extreme. Annabel is very beautiful. It made me proud for my son to have her — it seemed to even my score with all the beautiful women I had known and seen. She thinks I hate her, but that is not true. People as neurotic as I am should not be judged by normal standards. Not that I blame Annabel, for I know perfectly well that when the news came that he had been killed in Germany her loss was greater than mine. He wasn’t mine any longer then, he was hers.”

“Excuse me,” Wolfe put in politely but firmly. “You wanted to consult me about your husband. You say you’re divorced?”

“Certainly not! I—” She caught herself up. “Oh. This is my second husband. I only wanted you to understand.”

“I’ll try. Let’s have him now.”

“Barry Rackham,” she said, pronouncing the name as if she held a copyright on it, or at least a lease on subsidiary rights. “He played football at Yale and then had a job in Wall Street until the war came. At the end of the war he was a major, which wasn’t very far to get in nearly four years. We were married in 1946 — three years and seven months ago. He is ten years younger than I am.”

Mrs. Barry Rackham paused, her eyes fixed on Wolfe’s face as if challenging it for comment, but the challenge was declined. Wolfe merely prodded her with a murmur.

“And?”

“I suppose,” she said as if conceding a point, “there is no one in New York who does not take it for granted that he married me simply for my money. They all know more about it than I do, because I have never asked him, and he is the only one that knows for sure. I know one thing: it does not make him uncomfortable to look at me. I know that for sure because I’m very sensitive about it, I’m neurotic about it, and I would know it the first second he felt that way. Of course he knows what I look like, he knows how ugly I am, he can’t help that, but it doesn’t annoy him a particle, not even—”

She stopped and was blushing. Calvin Leeds coughed and shifted in his chair. Wolfe closed his eyes and after a moment opened them again. I didn’t look away from her because when she blushed I began to feel a little uncomfortable myself, and I wanted to see if I could keep her from knowing it.

But she wasn’t interested in me. “Anyway,” she went on as the color began to leave, “I have kept things in my own hands. We live in my house, of course, town and country, and I pay everything, and there are the cars and so on, but I made no settlement and arranged no allowance for him. That didn’t seem to me to be the way to handle it. When he needed cash for anything he asked for it and I gave it to him freely, without asking questions.” She made a little gesture, a flip of a hand. “Not always, but nearly always. The second year it was more than the first, and the third year more again, and I felt he was getting unreasonable. Three times I gave him less than he asked for, quite a lot less, and once I refused altogether — I still asked no questions, but he told me why he needed it and tried to persuade me; he was very nice about it, and I refused. I felt that I must draw the line somewhere. Do you want to know the amounts?”

“Not urgently,” Wolfe muttered.

“The last time, the time I refused, it was fifteen thousand dollars.” She leaned forward. “And that was the last time. It was seven months ago, October second, and he has not asked for money since, not once! But he spends a great deal, more than formerly. For all sorts of things — just last week he gave a dinner, quite expensive, for thirty-eight men at the University Club. I have to know where he gets it. I decided that some time ago — two months ago — and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to speak to my lawyer or banker about a thing like this, or in fact anybody, and I couldn’t do it myself, so I asked my cousin, Calvin Leeds.” She sent him a glance. “He said he would try to find out something, but he hasn’t.”

We looked at Leeds. He upturned a palm.

“Well,” he said, half apology and half protest, “I’m no trained detective. I asked him straight, and he just laughed at me. You didn’t want anyone else to get a hint of it, that you were curious about money he wasn’t getting from you, so I was pretty limited in my asking around. I did my best, Sarah, you know I did.”

“It seems to me,” Wolfe told her, “that Mr. Leeds had one good idea — asking him. Have you tried that yourself?”

“Certainly. Long ago. He told me that an investment he had made was doing well.”

“Maybe it was. Why not?”

“Not with my husband.” She was positive. “I know how he is with money. It isn’t in him to make an investment. Another thing: he is away more now. I don’t know where he is as much as I used to. I don’t mean weeks or even days, just an afternoon or evening — and several times he has had an appointment that he couldn’t break when I wanted him to—”

Wolfe grunted, and she was at him. “I know! You think I feel that I’ve bought him and I own him! That’s not it at all! All I really want is to be like a wife, just any wife — not beautiful and not ugly, not rich and not poor — just a wife! And hasn’t a wife a right to know the source of her husband’s income — isn’t it her duty to know? If you had a wife wouldn’t you want her to know?”

Wolfe made a face. “I can tell you, madam, what I don’t want. I don’t want this job. I think you’re gulling me. You suspect that your husband is swindling you, either emotionally or financially, and you want me to catch him at it.” He turned to me. “Archie. You’ll have to change that formula. Hereafter, when a request comes for an appointment, do not say merely that we will not undertake to get divorce or separation evidence. Make it clear that we will not engage to expose a husband for a wife, or a wife for a husband, under any camouflage. May I ask what you are doing, Mrs. Rackham?”

She had opened her brown leather handbag and taken out a checkfold and a little gold fountain pen. Resting the checkfold on the bag, she was writing in it with the pen. Wolfe’s question got no reply until she had finished writing, torn out the check, returned the fold and pen to the bag, and snapped the bag shut. Then she looked at him.

“I don’t want you to expose my husband, Mr. Wolfe.” She was holding the check with her thumb and fingertip. “God knows I don’t! I just want to know. You’re not ugly and afraid and neurotic like me, you’re big and handsome and successful and not afraid of anything. When I knew I had to have help and my cousin couldn’t do it, and I wouldn’t go to anyone I knew, I went about it very carefully. I found out all about you, and no one knows I did, or at least why I did. If my husband is doing something that will hurt me that will be the end; but I don’t want to expose him, I just have to know. You are the greatest detective on earth, and you’re an honest man. I just want to pay you for finding out where and how my husband is getting money, that’s all. You can’t possibly say you won’t do it. Not possibly!”

She left her chair and went to put the check on his desk in front of him. “It’s for ten thousand dollars, but that doesn’t mean I think that’s enough. Whatever you say. But don’t you dare say I want to expose him! My God — expose him?”