Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 45 (3 page)

“No.” He forked peas. “Almost certainly not. Of course the hitch is that they don’t know who the bomb was intended for.” He put the peas where he wanted them. “Probably no one does but the guy who planted it. It’s reasonable to suppose it was meant for Browning, but after all it was Odell who got it. A fact is a fact. Did Browning plant it
for
Odell? He did have a motive.”

“Good enough?”

“Apparently. Of course you know that Abbott is retiring the last of August and the board of directors was going to decide on his successor at a meeting scheduled for five o’clock that afternoon, and it would be either Browning or Odell. Odell certainly didn’t plant the bomb for Browning and then open the drawer himself, but did Browning plant it and somehow get Odell to open it?”

I sipped claret. “Of course your best men are on it, or have been. What do they think?”

“They’ve quit thinking. All they have is guesses. Landry’s guess is that Mrs. Browning put the bomb there for Helen Lugos, her husband’s secretary, knowing, or thinking she knew, that Helen checked the bourbon supply every morning.”

“Did she? Check the bourbon supply every morning?”

“I don’t know and I doubt if Cramer does. Helen isn’t speaking to reporters and it is said that she isn’t wasting any words with the law. Also I don’t know for sure that Helen and Browning were bedding, but Landry thinks he does. Ask Inspector Cramer, he may know. Another guess, Gahagan’s, is that Odell was setting the bomb for Browning and fumbled it. He has been trying for a week to trace where and how Odell got the bomb. Perlman’s guess is that Abbott did it because he thought they were going to pick Browning for the new president and he was for Odell. He has three theories on why Odell went to Browning’s room and opened the drawer, none of them much good. Damiano’s guess is that Helen Lugos did it, to get Browning, but he is no better than Perlman on why Odell horned in.”

“Why would Helen want to get Browning?”

“Sex.”

“That’s not responsive.”

“Certainly it’s responsive. When sex comes in by the window, logic leaves by the door. When two people collaborate sexually, either one is capable of doing anything and nobody can be sure he knows why he did it. I think Damiano’s guess is based on something a man named Meer, Kenneth Meer, told him. Meer is Browning’s chief of staff. Damiano got him talking the day after it happened—they had been choir boys together at St. Andrew’s—and Meer said that anyone who wanted to know how it happened should concentrate on Helen Lugos. Of course Damiano kept at him then, but Meer backed off. And as I said, Helen isn’t doing any talking.”

“Has Damiano told Inspector Cramer what Meer said?”

“Of course not. He didn’t even tell us until a couple of days ago. He was hoping to earn a medal.”

“Does anybody guess that Meer did it?”

“No one at the
Gazette
does. Naturally he has been considered, everybody has, but even for a wild guess you’ve got to have a motive. Meer certainly wouldn’t have wanted to get Browning; if Browning is made president, Meer will be right up near the top. And how could he have got Odell to go to Browning’s room and open that drawer? Of course guesses are a dime a dozen. If the bomb was intended for Browning, there are at least a dozen possible candidates. For instance, Madeline Odell, now the widow Odell. She had been expecting her husband to be the CAN president ever since she married him, twenty years ago, and it looked as if Browning was going to get it instead. Or Theodore Falk, the Wall Street Falk, old friend of the Odells and a member of the CAN board of directors. Of course he didn’t do it himself, but millionaires don’t have to do things themselves. Or Sylvia Venner. You know?”

I nodded. “‘The Big Town.’”

“Right. She had that program for two years and Browning bounced her. Now she does chores, and she hates Browning’s guts. I could name more. Of course if the bomb was intended for Odell, there are candidates for that too, but for them there’s the problem of getting Odell to enter that room and open that drawer.”

I swallowed my last bite of Chateaubriand and pushed the button for Pierre. “You said Odell’s wife had been expecting him to be president ever since she married him. Had she been doing anything about it?”

“Plenty. She inherited a big block of CAN stock from her father, Carl Hartig, along with a lot of oil wells and miscellaneous items, and she’s been on the board of directors for ten years. She would probably have given half of her seventy or eighty million to have Browning removed from competition, but if she had known that bomb was in that drawer she would have made damn sure that her husband wouldn’t go near that room that day. That’s why she’s not
my
guess—or anybody else’s as far as I know.”

“Seventy or eighty
million
?”

“At least that. She’s really loaded.”

“Huh. What kind of sauce do you want on your soufflé? Brandy ginger or mocha rum?”

“Mocha rum sounds better.”

Pierre had come and was removing empty dishes. I told him what we would have and waited until he was gone to resume with Lon. You never know. Abbott or Browning or Madeline Odell might be one of Pierre’s pet customers.

When, at a quarter to eight, out on the sidewalk, we decided to walk the eleven blocks to Saul Panzer’s instead of scouting for a taxi, I had collected around a hundred more facts and guesses, but it would be a waste of paper and ink to list them for you since none of them was any help to my program. Also I will not report on the course of events at the poker table, except to say that having a complicated operation on my mind was no help to my wallet. I lost sixty-eight bucks.

4

t
he 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.

Dear Mrs. Odell: This is on Nero Wolfe’s letterhead because I work for him and am writing it in his office, but it is strictly personal, from me, and Mr. Wolfe doesn’t know I am writing you. I do so because I am an experienced professional detective and it hurts me to see or read about poor detective work, especially in an important case like the murder of your husband. Mr. Wolfe and I have of course followed the published accounts of the investigation, and yesterday he remarked to me that apparently the most crucial fact was being ignored, or at least not getting the priority it deserved, and I agreed with him. Such a criticism from him to the police or the District Attorney would probably have no effect, but it occurred to me this morning that it might have some effect if it came from you. If you wish to reach me the address and telephone number are above.

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.”