Please Pass the Guilt

4

The first problem was how to get to her, and the second one was what to say when I did. “Her” was of course Madeline Odell, the widow. She was almost certainly in the clear on the bomb, she had the best reason for wanting the bomber to be caught and nailed, and she had the biggest stack. It was those two problems trying to take over that had caused me to make three big mistakes and several small ones at the poker game, and cost me money. They did not keep me from getting a good eight hours’ sleep, nothing ever does, and they didn’t affect my appetite at breakfast, but I skipped things in the Times that I usually cover, and I guess I was short with Fritz. In the office I actually forgot to put fresh water in the vase on Wolfe’s desk.

I still hadn’t decided at lunchtime. Of course any one of a dozen dodges would have got me to her; no one is inaccessible if you put your mind on it; but then what? If possible the approach should lead naturally to the proposition. After lunch I went for a walk with a couple of unnecessary errands for an excuse, and didn’t get back until after four o’clock, so Wolfe was up in the plant rooms and I had the office to myself. I swung the typewriter around and rolled paper in and gave it a try.

I read it over twice and made five improvements: I took out “strictly” and “professional,” changed “poor” to “inferior,” “crucial” to “important,” and “priority” to “attention.” I read it again, changed “an important case like” to “such a vital case as,” typed it on a letterhead with two carbons, signed it, and addressed an envelope to a number on East Sixty-third Street. I went to the kitchen to tell Fritz I was going out for air, and walked to the post office on Eighth Avenue.

Since it was a Friday afternoon in June, it was possible, even probable, that she wouldn’t get it until Monday, and nothing would interfere with my weekend pleasures at Shea Stadium, but a little after eleven o’clock Saturday morning, when Wolfe was dictating a long letter to an orchid collector in Malaysia, the phone rang and I swiveled and took it.

“Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

A businesslike female voice: “This is Mrs. Peter Odell’s secretary. She has received your letter and wishes to speak to Mr. Wolfe.”

Of course I had known that might happen, with Wolfe right there. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but Mr. Wolfe isn’t available and won’t be until Monday. Anyway I made it clear that the letter was personal.”

She covered the transmitter and I heard nothing. In a couple of minutes she was back: “Mr. Goodwin?”

“Here.”

“Mrs. Odell wishes to see you. Will you be here promptly at three o’clock?”

One of my basic opinions is that people who take things for granted should be helped to a better understanding of democracy, and at three o’clock it would be about the fourth inning, but I hadn’t been asked to write that letter. “Yes,” I said, “I’ll be there,” and hung up, and swiveled.

“Someone using your name in vain,” I told Wolfe. “People should read letters at least three times.” I looked at my notebook. “The last I have is ‘in spite of all the crosses hybridizers have tried.’”

It took another full page of the notebook.

My intention had been to get to Shea Stadium a little after one and enjoy a couple of hot dogs and a pint of milk while watching batting practice. Instead, I got to Sam’s diner on Tenth Avenue a little after one and enjoyed rye bread and baked beans, two items that never appear at Wolfe’s table, and then walked the nearly two miles from West Thirty-fifth Street to East Sixty-third. The people you see on midtown sidewalks Saturday afternoons are completely different from other days.

It was a five-story, forty-foot-wide stone mansion, between Fifth and Madison, and I was stopped at the entrance to the vestibule by a broad-shouldered husky with a Lathrop Protective Service badge on his buttoned-up jacket. Apparently after more than two weeks, pests — for instance, journalists — were still a problem, or Mrs. Odell thought they were. He said grimly, “Well, sir?”

I pronounced my name and said I was expected, and produced evidence of my identity from my card case. He entered the vestibule and pushed the button, and the door was opened by a woman in a neat gray uniform with a skirt that reached a good four inches below her knees who accepted my name without evidence. She crossed the marble floor to an intercom on a marble table and told it Mr. Goodwin was there, and in a couple of minutes there was the sound of an elevator about one-tenth as noisy as Wolfe’s. A door at the far end of the large entrance hall slid open, and a woman stuck her head out and invited me to join her. We went up past two doors and stopped at the third, and she led me down the hall to an open door at the front and stood aside for me to enter.

It was a big room, the whole width of the house, and my sweeping glance saw desks, working chairs and easy chairs, two couches, oil paintings, filing cabinets, a color television — and my glance stopped there because a ball game was on, Ralph Kiner was talking, and his audience was a woman propped against a bank of cushions on an oversized couch. Even if it hadn’t been her house I would have recognized her from her pictures in the Times and Gazette: a face bulged in the middle by wide cheek bones, and a wide full-lipped mouth. Her loose, pale blue dress or robe or sack was zippered shut in front, top to bottom. I crossed over to her and asked politely, “What’s the score?”

Her brown eyes darted to me and back to the game. “Mets two, Pirates four, last of the fourth. Sit down.”

I went to a chair not far from the couch that faced the TV set. Ed Kranepool was at bat. He went to three and two and then grounded out, ending the inning, and a commercial started yapping. As I looked around for the secretary and saw she wasn’t there, the sound quit and I turned back to Mrs. Odell. Remote control; she had pushed a button.

“I’ll leave the picture on,” she said. She sized me up head to foot, taking her time. My pants were pressed. “That was a poor excuse for a letter you sent me. ‘The most important fact,’ you said, but you didn’t say what it is.”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

The commercial had finished and a Pirate was coming to bat. She left the sound off but sent her eyes back to the game, so I sent mine, too. “I work for Nero Wolfe,” I told the Pirate as he swung and missed. “He makes a living solving problems for people, and part of what they pay him pays my salary. It would be pretty dumb for me to tell people for free what he has said about their problems. I wrote that letter only because I hate to see a case bobbled.”

“Oh, come off it.” Her eyes darted to me and back to the game. “You invited me to reach you and wouldn’t put him on when I phoned. How much do you want?”

“You might try a million. No one has ever bid high enough to make it tough for me. But I did invite you to reach me, didn’t I? Do you know what I suspect? I’ll bet that at the back of my mind, down in the subconscious, there was a sneaking idea that after two weeks and three days of the cops and the DA getting nowhere, you might want to discuss it with Nero Wolfe. Do you know anything about him?”

“Personally and definitely, no. I know his reputation, certainly.”

One Pirate had watched a third strike go by and another one had popped up to the infield. Now a third one lofted a major-league blooper out to left center and both Cleon Jones and Tommy Agee were on the gallop. It would fall in... but it didn’t. Jones stretched an arm and one-handed it, and kept it. A good inning for Koosman. As the picture of the commercial started, I turned to the couch. “To be honest,” I said, “I may as well admit that that letter was dumb. How could you needle the police or the District Attorney about neglecting the most important fact if I didn’t tell you what it is? I apologize, and I not only apologize, I pay a forfeit. The most important fact is that your husband entered that room and opened that drawer, and the most important question is, why? Unless and until they have the answer to that the ten best investigators in the world couldn’t possibly solve the case. Tell Inspector Cramer that, but don’t mention Nero Wolfe. The sound of that name riles him.” I stood up. “I realize that it’s possible that you know why he entered the room and opened the drawer, and you have told the DA and he’s saving it, but from the published accounts I doubt it, and so does Mr. Wolfe. Thank you for letting me see Cleon Jones make that catch.”

I turned and was going, but she raised her voice. “Damn it, sit down!”

I did so, and as I sat Jerry Grote lined a double to the right-field corner. Bud Harrelson beat out a bunt and Grote moved to third, and Mrs. Odell pushed the button and the sound came on. More action and two Mets crossed the plate. When Ed Charles made the third out the score was tied, and as the commercial started she pushed the button, looked at me, and said, “Call Wolfe and tell him I want to see him. Now.” She aimed a finger. “The phone on that desk. How long will it take him?”

“Too long. Forever. You certainly don’t know him ‘definitely.’ He leaves his house only for personal errands no one else can do, never on business. I suppose you’d rather not discuss it on the phone, so you’ll have to go to him. The address is on the letterhead. Six o’clock would be a good time, he’ll be available then, and the game will be—”

“My god, what a nerve,” she said. “You think I would?”

“No, I think you wouldn’t. But you said you want to see him, and I—”

“All right, all right. Forget it.” She pushed the button. Bob Murphy had replaced Ralph Kiner and he talks louder. She had to raise her voice: “Miss Haber will take you down. She’s in the hall.”

I got up and went. I hadn’t the slightest idea, as I was escorted to the elevator and down, and to the entrance, by Miss Haber, and as I walked to Madison Avenue and turned downtown, headed for a bar where I knew there was a TV, whether or not I had wasted a letterhead and a postage stamp and most of an afternoon. On a bet I would have taken either end. But after all, she had said she wanted to see him, and if I know women one-tenth as well as Wolfe pretends to think I do, she was strongly inclined to get what she wanted. By the time the game ended, which the Mets won 7 to 5, I would no longer have taken either end. Two to one I had hooked her. That was how it looked as I used my key on the door of the old brownstone a little before six o’clock.

Of course I couldn’t leave the house that evening. When I’m not there Fritz usually answers the phone, but sometimes Wolfe does, and she might call any minute. She might. She didn’t. It was also possible that she would tell either Cramer or the DA about it and he would call. He didn’t. When I went to bed around midnight the odds were no longer two to one. But there was still an off chance, and when I went to the office after breakfast Sunday morning, I rang Lily Rowan and told her I was stuck for the day and would send the tickets for the ball game by messenger, and I hoped she could find someone who could yell at the umpire as loud as I did. And then, about eight minutes after the messenger had come and taken the tickets, the phone rang, and it was Mrs. Odell in person, not the secretary. She said she wanted to speak with Wolfe and I said no, that he didn’t even know I had written her and seen her.

“My god,” she said, “you might think he’s the President. I want to see him. Bring him.”

“I can’t and he wouldn’t. Honestly, Mrs. Odell, I wish he would. It would do him good to get out more, but not a chance. If there was a way of scoring pigheadedness it would be interesting to match him with you. I think he’d win.”

“Of course I’m pigheaded. I always have been.”

“I’m perfectly willing to make it ‘strong-minded’ if you prefer.”

Silence. It lasted so long that I thought she had quit without bothering to hang up. Then she said, “I’ll be there at six o’clock.”

“Today? Sunday?”

“Yes.” She hung up.

I took a deep breath and enjoyed it. So far so good, but the highest hurdle was still ahead. The Sunday household routine was different. Theodore didn’t come on Sunday and Wolfe’s morning with the orchids could be anything from twenty minutes to four hours. Also Fritz might leave for the day right after breakfast, or he might not. That day not, he had said. The question was when to spring it. Going up to the plant rooms with it was of course out of the question; I wasn’t welcome there even for a real emergency. I decided not to decide until he came down and I saw what his mood was like.

When he showed, a little after eleven, he had the Sunday Times under one arm and a fourteen-inch raceme of Peristeria elata in the other hand, and his “Good morning” was a greeting, not just a growl. So when the flowers were in the vase and his bulk was satisfactorily arranged in the made-to-order chair he wouldn’t swap for its weight in uranium, I spoke.

“Before you get started on the Review of the Week, I have an item you won’t like. A woman is coming to see you at six o’clock today. Mrs. Peter J. Odell, whose husband opened a desk drawer and died. I had to ignore the rule on consulting you before making an appointment.”

He was glaring at me. “I was here. I was available.”

“Sure, but it was an emergency.” I opened a drawer of my desk and took out a paper. “This is a carbon of a letter I sent her Friday afternoon.” I rose, handed it to him, and returned to my chair. “She phoned yesterday morning, or her secretary did, and I went to see her yesterday afternoon, at her house on Sixty-third Street. She asked me to phone you to come, which of course wasn’t discussable. I told her the only place she could see you was your office. She phoned this morning, an hour ago, and said she would be here at six o’clock.

He had read the letter. He read it again, with his lips pressed tight. He dropped it on his desk and looked at me. Not a glare or a scowl, just a hard, straight look. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “It would be insufferable, as you well know.”

I nodded. “Of course that’s the reaction I expected. But she’ll be here at six. The emergency I referred to is in the safe. Your checkbook. You have of course noticed that since May first I have been giving you a memo of the condition every week instead of twice a month. Of the hundred and fifty-eight days this year you have worked about ten and I have worked less than twenty, not counting office chores. I happened—”

“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.