Omit Flowers

XI

I stood facing the door of the South Room, in the hall on the third floor, with my hand raised. Wolfe, positively refusing to do it himself, had left it to me. I knocked. A voice told me to come in, and I entered.

Phoebe tossed a magazine onto the table and left the chair. “You certainly took long enough. Where’s Mother?”

“That’s what I came to tell you.”

Her face changed and she took a step and demanded, “Where is she?”

“Don’t push. First I apologize. When you pulled that gag about the front door being open I thought you knew that one of you in the dining room had killed Whitten, and possibly even you had been involved in it, and you thought maybe Mr. Wolfe was getting warm and you wanted to fix an out. Now I know how it was. You couldn’t believe Pompa had done it, and you knew none of you had, so it was your mother. So it was her you wanted the out for. Therefore it seems to me I should apologize, and I do.”

“I don’t want your apology. Where is my mother?”

“She is either at Police Headquarters or the District Attorney’s office, depending on where they took her. I don’t know. She is, or soon will be, charged with murder. Mr. Wolfe did most of it of course, but I had a hand in it. For that I don’t apologize. You know damn well she’s a malicious and dangerous woman — look at her framing Pompa — and while I appreciate the fact that she’s your mother, she is not mine. So much for her. You are another matter. What do you want me to do? Anything?”

“No.”

She hadn’t batted an eyelash, nor turned pale, nor let a lip quiver, but the expression of her eyes was plenty.

“What I mean,” I told her, “I got you down here, and you’re here alone now, and I would like to do anything at all that will help. Phone somebody, drive you somewhere, get a taxi, send your things to you later—”

“No.”

“Okay. Fritz will let you out downstairs. I’ll be in the office typing, in case.”

That was the last chat I had with her for a long time, until day before yesterday, a month after her mother was sentenced by Judge Wilkinson. Day before yesterday, Tuesday afternoon, she phoned to say she had changed her mind about accepting my apology, and would I care to drive her up to Connecticut and eat dinner with her at AMBROSIA 26? Even if I hadn’t had another date I would have passed. An AMBROSIA may be perfectly okay as a source of income, but with the crowd and the noise it is no place to make any progress in human relations.