Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 45

by Please Pass the Guilt

  It was after four o’clock and Wolfe was up in the plant rooms when I finally got her. She said right off, “Thank you for the beautiful flowers.” Neither warm nor cool, just polite.

  “You’re welcome. I suggested them, Mr. Wolfe picked them, and we both packed them. It’s a bribe. Mr. Wolfe thinks I understand women better than he does and wants me to have a talk with you. I don’t think this office is the best place for it because that’s too much like telling you to come to a—oh, the District Attorney’s office. I can come to your place, or we can meet anywhere you say, or we can share a meal in the little pink room at Rusterman’s. Perhaps dinner this evening? Women are supposed to like pink rooms, as of course you know. I’m going on talking to give you time to consider it; I didn’t suppose you’d have a yes right at the tip of your tongue.”

  “I haven’t got one anywhere. Thank you, but no.”

  “Then the pink room is out. Have you a suggestion?”

  “I have a question. Has Mrs. Odell asked you to talk with me?”

  “Mrs. Odell hasn’t asked me anything. She has hired Nero Wolfe to do a job, and she has asked people at CAN to cooperate, from Mr. Abbott down, as you know. We would like to suit their convenience. In this case, your convenience.”

  “Mrs. Odell didn’t hire you, she hired Nero Wolfe.”

  “I work for him.”

  “I know you do. And I work for Mr. Browning. When he wants to talk with someone, he doesn’t expect them to be willing to talk with me instead. If Mr. Wolfe wants to talk with me, all right, I suppose I’ll have to. At his office, of course. When does he want me to come?”

  There was no point in prolonging it. I said distinctly, “At six o’clock today. An hour and a half from now.”

  She said distinctly, “Very well, I’ll be there,” and hung up.

  I went to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of milk, and told Fritz, “I’m done. Washed up. I’ve lost my touch. I’m a has-been. You knew me when.”

  He was at the big table doing something to a duckling. “Now, Archie,” he said. “He told me about that woman’s diet when I took his breakfast up this morning, but you ate a good lunch. What else has happened?”

  “Another woman. She spit at me just now. Spat. On the phone.”

  “Then she is washed up, not you. You are looking at the wrong side. Just turn it over, that’s all you ever have to do, just turn it over.”

  “I’ll be damned.” I stared at him. “You sound like a guru.”

  There was no telling what would happen if Wolfe came down at six o’clock and found an unexpected female sitting in the red leather chair—or rather, there was—so when the glass of milk was down I went up three flights, entered, walked down the aisles between the rainbow benches of the three rooms—cool, medium, and warm—and opened the door of the potting room. He and Theodore were at the long bench, making labels. I stopped halfway across and said, “I’m not breaking a rule. Emergency. We have wasted forty dollars’ worth of orchids.”

  He waited until I stopped to turn his head. “She’s not available?”

  “Oh, she’s available, but not for menials. When she dies—the sooner, the better—and ascends, she won’t waste her breath on Saint Peter, she’ll speak only to Him, with a capital H. She’ll be here at six o’clock to speak to You, with a capital Y. I apologize and will expect a pay cut.”

  “Pfui. I agree that you have not broken a rule.” He made a face. “I’ll be prompt.”

  On the way out I stopped to apologize to the two pots of Broughtonia sanguinea. On the way down, I decided that the milk needed help and went to the kitchen for a tall glass of gin and tonic with a sprig of mint and a dash of lime juice. Also for Fritz. I needed friendly companionship.

  I was supposing she would be strictly punctual, maybe even a couple of minutes early, but no. She was female. She came at 6:18, in a peach-colored blouse with long sleeves and a brownish skirt, narrow, down to a couple of inches below her knees, and she talked to me. She said, “I’m sorry I’m a little late.” Not being in a mood to meet her halfway, I said, “So am I.”

  Wolfe had not told me how he intended to proceed, though he had come down from the plant rooms on the dot at six o’clock, and though he often asks my advice on how to handle a woman and sometimes even follows it. He soon showed me, and her, that this time he needed no help with his game plan. As she got to the red leather chair, he said, “Good afternoon, Miss Lugos. Thank you for coming,” and when she was seated and had her ankles crossed and her skirt tugged, he rose, crossed almost to the door, turned, and said, “I have an errand to do in the kitchen. My agent, Mr. Goodwin, will ask you some questions on behalf of Mrs. Odell.”

  He went.

  “I’m as surprised as you are,” I told her, “but it’s just like him. No consideration for other people. I think I told you that he thinks I understand women better than he does. He actually believes that. So here we are, in a private detective’s office which could be bugged, instead of the pink room at Rusterman’s. If you like something wet after a day’s work, name it and we may have it.”

  Her lips were twitching a little. “I ought to get up and go,” she said. “But I suppose—that would only—”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “it would only. Anyway, you’ve flubbed it. On the phone you stiff-armed me. You put me in my place. But if you really meant it, you would have sent the orchids back, or even brought them. Unless you dropped them in the wastebasket?”

  She flushed and her lips tightened. I believe I have mentioned that her face was different from any two angles, and it was different flushed. With most faces that you enjoy looking at, you know exactly why, but not with her kind. Flushed, it was again quite different, and I approved of that too. Then suddenly it became another face entirely. She laughed, with her mouth open and her head back, and I think I grinned with pleasure. I really did.

  “All right, Mr. Goodwin,” she said, “you win. I didn’t drop them in the wastebasket. They’re in a vase. I almost wish we were at Rusterman’s. But as you said, here we are. So ask your questions.”

  I had erased the grin. “Would you like a drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Then let’s see. First, I guess, that evening you heard what those people said, six of them, when Mr. Wolfe asked them where they were that weekend. Were they all telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know. How could I?”

  “You might. Maybe you have heard Browning say something that shows he wasn’t on a boat from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, or maybe Kenneth Meer has said something that shows he wasn’t hiking in Vermont. From your look I think you think I’m a damn fool to suppose you would tell me things like that. But I’m not. In an investigation like this only a damn fool would expect a full and honest answer to any question he asks anybody, but he asks them. For instance, the question I ask you now. This: Did Dennis Copes know that Kenneth Meer looked in that drawer every day to check on the whisky supply?”

  “That’s a trick question. It assumes that Kenneth Meer did look in the drawer every day.”

  “So it does. All right, did he?”

  “No. As far as I know, he didn’t. Mr. Browning checked on the whisky supply himself.”

  “Did he buy it himself?”

  “He buys it by the case. It’s sent to his home and he brings it, two bottles at a time.”

  “Does Kenneth Meer drink bourbon?”

  “I don’t think so. He drinks vodka.”

  “Do you drink bourbon?”

  “Very seldom. I don’t drink much of anything.”

  “Did you look in the drawer every day to check on the whisky supply?”

  “No. Mr. Browning did the looking himself.”

  “I thought secretaries checked everything.”

  “Well—that’s what you thought.”

  “You know Dennis Copes.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Two people think he might have planted the bomb to get Meer because he wants
Meer’s job. If so, he might have thought Meer looked in the drawer every day. Have you any idea why he might think that?”

  “No. I have no idea why he thinks anything.”

  “One person thinks that Kenneth Meer planted the bomb to get Browning because you go to bed with him. Have you any idea about that?”

  “Yes, I have. It’s absurd.”

  “A newspaperman I know doesn’t think it’s absurd. Of course it’s really three ideas. One, that you are intimate with Browning, two, that Meer knows it and can’t stand it, and three, that he planted the bomb. Are they all absurd?”

  She wasn’t visibly reacting. No flush on her skin, no flash in her eyes. She said, with no change in pitch, “The police have asked me about this. My relations with Mr. Browning are my business and his. Certainly not yours. Women do go to bed with men, so it may not be absurd for people to think I am intimate with Amory Browning, but the idea that Kenneth Meer tried to kill him, that’s absurd. Kenneth Meer has big ideas about his future. He thinks he’s headed for the top, and he’s counting on Amory Browning to help him along.”

  “But you’re there. What if he wants you more than anything else? This is my business, Miss Lugos. The police think it’s theirs, too, you just said so. It’s not absurd to think a man’s desire for a woman can be so hot that no other desire counts. There have been cases.”

  “Kenneth Meer isn’t one of them. You don’t know him, but I do. How much longer is this going to take?”

  “I don’t know. It depends. Not as long as it would with Mr. Wolfe. He likes to ask questions that seem to be just to pass the time, but I try to stick to the point. For instance, when Mr. Wolfe asked you that evening if you thought the person who put the bomb in the drawer was here in the room, you said you had no idea, but naturally you would say that, with them here. What would you say now, not for quotation?”

  “I would say exactly the same, I have no idea. Mr. Goodwin, I—I’m tired. I’d like some—some whisky?”

  “Sure. Scotch, bourbon, rye, Irish. Water, soda, ice.”

  “Just whisky. Any kind—bourbon. It doesn’t matter.”

  She wasn’t tired. The fingers of both hands, in her lap, had been curling and uncurling. She was tight. I mean tense, taut. As I went to the kitchen and put a bottle of bourbon—not Ten-Mile Creek—and a glass and a pitcher of water on a tray, I was trying to decide if it was just the strain of discussing her personal affairs with a mere agent, or something even touchier. I still hadn’t decided when I had put the tray on the little table by her chair and was back at my desk. She poured about two fingers, downed it with three swallows, made a face and swallowed nothing a couple of times, poured half a glass of water, and swallowed that.

  “I told you—” she began, didn’t like how it sounded or felt, and started over. “I told you I don’t drink much.”

  I nodded. “I can bring some milk, but it’s an antidote for whisky.”

  “No, thank you.” She swallowed nothing again.

  “Okay. You said you have no idea who put the bomb in the drawer.”

  “Yes, I haven’t.”

  I got my notebook and pen. “For this, since this room is not bugged, I’ll have to make notes. I have to know where you were every minute of that day, that Tuesday, May 20. It was four weeks ago, four weeks tomorrow, but it shouldn’t strain your memory, since the police of course asked you that day or the day after. Anyone going to Browning’s room went through your room, so we’ll have to do the whole day, from the time you arrived. Around ten o’clock?”

  “There was another door to his room.”

  “But not often used except by him?”

  “Not often, but sometimes it was. I’m not going to do this. I don’t think you have a right to expect me to.”

  “I have no right to expect anything. But Mr. Wolfe can’t do the job Mrs. Odell hired him to do unless he can get answers to the essential questions, and this is certainly one of them. One reason I say that is that Kenneth Meer told a newspaperman that anyone who wanted to know how it happened should concentrate on Helen Lugos. Why did Meer say that?”

  “I don’t believe it.” She was staring at me, which made her face different again. “I don’t believe he said that.”

  “But he did. It’s a fact, Miss Lugos.”

  “To a newspaperman?”

  “Yes. I won’t tell you his name, but if I have to, I can produce him and he can tell you. He wasn’t a stranger to Meer. They were choir boys together at St. Andrew’s. When he tried to get Meer to go on, Meer clammed. I’m not assuming that when you tell me how and where you spent that day, I’ll know why Meer said that, since you’ll tell me exactly what you told the police and evidently it didn’t help them any, but I must have it because that’s how a detective is supposed to detect. You got to work at ten o’clock?”

  She said no, nine-thirty.

  Even with my personal and private shorthand it filled more than four pages of my notebook. The timing was perfect. It was exactly 7:30 when we had her in the file room and the sound and shake of the explosion came, and Fritz stepped in to reach for the doorknob. So it was time to eat. If I am in the office with company, and Wolfe isn’t, when dinner’s ready, Fritz comes and shuts the office door. That notifies me that food is ready to serve, and also it keeps the sound of voices from annoying Wolfe in the dining room across the hall, if I have to continue the conversation.

  That time I didn’t have to, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to consider a couple of the things she had said without her sitting there with her face, and I wanted my share of the ducklings with mushrooms and wild rice and wine while it was hot from the oven. It’s one of the dishes Wolfe and Fritz have made up together, and they call it American duckling on account of the wild rice, and I’m for it.

  So I said she was tired, and she said yes, she was, and got up, and I thanked her, and thanked her again as I opened the front door to let her out.

  Of course I didn’t mention her as I joined Wolfe at the dining table. He had one of the ducklings carved, so that would have been talking business during a meal, which is not done. But when we had finished and moved to the office and Fritz had brought coffee, he showed that the week of marking time was getting on his nerves by demanding, “Well?” before I had lifted my cup.

  “No,” I said.

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing for me. For you, I can’t say. I never can. You want it verbatim, of course.”

  “Yes.”

  I gave it to him, complete, up to the details of her day on Tuesday, May 20. For that I used the notebook. As usual, he just listened; no interruptions, no questions. He is the best listener I know. When I finished, the coffee pot and our cups were empty and Fritz had come for them.

  I put the notebook in the drawer. “So for me, nothing. Of course she didn’t open the bag and shake it, who does? She knows or suspects something that may or may not be true and might or might not help, and to guess what it is needs a better guesser than me. I don’t think she planted the bomb. She wasn’t there at her desk in the next room when it went off, which was lucky for her, but she says she often went to the file room for something, nearly always when Browning wasn’t in his room. Of course the cops have checked that. Also of course it was a waste of time to have her name the seventeen people she saw go into Browning’s room. The bomb wasn’t put in the drawer while Browning was there unless he did it himself, and there’s another door to his room. As for who entered his room when he wasn’t there, there was a total of nearly two hours when she wasn’t there, according to her. As for her reason that Kenneth Meer wouldn’t want to kill Browning, toss a coin. You’d have to use a lie detector on Meer himself.”

  He grunted. “Miss Venner, and now Miss Lugos.”

  “Meaning I should have seduced at least one of them. Fire me.”

  “Pfui. I complain of your conduct only directly, never by innuendo. You offend only deliberately, never by shortcoming. Miss Lugos did not plant the bomb?”
/>
  “One will get you ten.”

  “Does she know who did?”

  “No bet. She could think she knows. Or not.”

  “Confound it.” He got up and went to the shelves for a book.

  12

  six days later, at noon Sunday, June 22, the five of us sat in the office and looked at each other. Saul and Fred and Orrie and I looked at Wolfe, and he looked back, his eyes moving, not his head, from me past Orrie and Fred to Saul in the red leather chair.

  “No,” he said. “This is preposterous. Amphigoric. And insupportable.” He looked at me. “How much altogether, including you?”

  I shut my eyes and in less than half a minute opened them. “Say three thousand dollars. A little more.”

  “It will be a deduction on my tax return. Call Mrs. Odell and tell her I am quitting. Draw a check to her for the full amount of the retainer.”

  Fred and Orrie had to turn their heads to look at me. Saul, in the red leather chair, didn’t have to turn his head. I looked at Wolfe, especially the left corner of his mouth, to see how bad it was.

  Plenty of things had happened. There had been three thunderstorms in a row Wednesday afternoon. Jill Cather, Orrie’s wife, had threatened to walk out on him because he didn’t get home until five in the morning Tuesday after taking a CAN female researcher to dinner and a show, though he explained that the meal and the tickets had been paid for by the client. The West Side Highway, northbound, had been closed for repairs all day Friday. Fred Durkin, tailing a CAN male employee Thursday evening, had lost him, and he hates to lose a tail; and on Friday, Elaine, his oldest daughter, had admitted she was smoking grass. Saul Panzer had spent two days and a night at Montauk Point trying to find a bomb maker, and drawn a blank. On Friday the Labor Department announced that the Consumer Price Index had gone up .3 of one percent in May. A busy week.