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.
5
m ost of the people who enter that office for the first time have something eating them, but even so they often notice one or more of the objects in view—the fourteen-by-twenty-six Keraghan rug or the three-foot globe or the floral display in the vase on Wolfe’s desk. Mrs. Peter J. Odell didn’t. When I escorted her to the office, her eyes fixed on Wolfe and stayed there as she crossed the rug and stopped just short of his desk. Of course he stayed put in his chair, as usual.
“Charlotte Haber is my secretary,” she said. “I have brought her because I may need her.” She went to the red leather chair, sat, and put her handbag on the little stand at her elbow. Meanwhile I had moved up one of the yellow chairs for the secretary. From the look Miss Haber had given me at the door, and the one she was now giving Wolfe, it was a good guess that she would rather have been somewhere else. The crease in her narrow forehead made it even narrower, and the way she was puckering her mouth, which was too small anyway, made it almost invisible.
“I have asked three men about you,” Mrs. Odell told Wolfe. “You’re highhanded and opinionated, and you charge high fees, but you’re dependable.”
Wolfe grunted. “You should have inquired further. Competence?”
“Oh, apparently you’re smart enough. I’ll decide that myself. Your man told me that you said the police are neglecting the most important question, why did my husband go to Browning’s room and open that drawer? I want to know why that is so important.” She got her bag and opened it and took out a checkfold. “How much for telling me that?”
He shook his head. “I discuss details only with clients and you haven’t hired me. But since Mr. Goodwin has presumed to quote me to you—without my prior knowledge—I’ll make an exception. On trial for murder, a man may be convicted without proof of motive. Establishment of motive of course helps with a jury, but it is not requisite. But in an investigation of a murder, motive is of first importance. The question was first asked in an ancient language many centuries ago: Cui bono? To try to learn who put that bomb in that drawer without knowing whom it was intended for is close to hopeless, and to learn whom it was intended for it is essential to know why
Lisa Hollett, A. D. Justice, Sommer Stein, Jared Lawson, Fotos By T