“I’m afraid I don’t understand you, Mrs. Cool.”
“All you’ve got to say,” Bertha explained patiently, “is that you intended to fire her because of this indiscretion; that you had your mind made up; that the only reason you didn’t have it all over before Sellers and I got here was that you didn’t want to pick on her when she was crying and that you didn’t want to have a scene. So you decided to wait until after Sergeant Sellers and I had left and then tell her you didn’t need her any more. Once you testify to those facts, it’s absolutely clear that she wasn’t fired on account of anything I said. Do you get the point?”
“I believe I understand the legal point, yes.”
“Well, that’s all there is to it,” Bertha said. “But I keep bringing you up to it, and you keep pulling back on the lead rope like a frightened horse. For God’s sake, let’s not muff our signals on this thing.”
“But,” Belder said, “while I appreciate the legal point, Mrs. Cool, I’m afraid I can’t co-operate with you.”
“What do you mean now?”
“Simply that I hadn’t actually decided to discharge Miss Dearborne at that time. I made up my mind afterward.”
Bertha sighed. “All right, I can at least depend on you to testify that you’d had words with her over this—”
“Good heavens no, Mrs. Cool!”
“What?”
“Emphatically not. Then I’d be asked why I was rebuking her — and if it ever came out that I had taken her to task over something she had told my mother-in-law, then Mrs. Goldring would never forgive me. You know, claim I was trying to keep things from her. That, as Mabel’s mother— No, Mrs. Cool, I can’t help you at all. This is just between you and me. If you ever asked me in court, I’d even deny there had been any trouble at all. I’d have to.”
Bertha Cool lurched to her feet, glowered angrily at Everett Belder.
“Nuts!” she said, and stalked out of the office.
11
A Question of Malice
Roger P. Drumson, senior partner of Drumson, Holbret, and Drumson, finished reading the complaint, then looked up over his glasses at Bertha Cool. “As I understand it, Mrs. Cool, you were employed to find out who wrote these letters. You had reasonable grounds to believe the plaintiff wrote them?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. Very good! Now just what were these grounds?”
“I knew they had been written by a first-rate typist on a portable. I knew Imogene Dearborne had actually written a message to her employer on this same typewriter.”
“How did you know that?”
“By comparing the typewriting.”
“No, no. I mean, how did you know she had written it on that same typewriter?”
“She admitted she had.”
“In the presence of witnesses?”
“Yes.”
“Before you made this accusation?”
“Sure. I made certain of my grounds before I exploded my bombshell.”
Drumson beamed at Bertha. “Very, very clever, Mrs. Cool. Now, as I understand it, you were giving this information in the highest good faith to interested parties, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Splendid!”
Drumson returned to a perusal of the complaint, frowned, looked accusingly up at Bertha. “Did you call her a twerp, Mrs. Cool?”
“Yes.”
“That’s bad.”
“Why?”
“It implies malice.”
“What the hell’s that got to do with it?”
Drumson returned to a perusal of the complaint, frowned, “You see, Mrs. Cool, the law provides certain immunities to a person who acts in good faith and without malice, as a reasonable person might do. In other words, certain communications are known, in the eyes of the law, as privileged communications; but in order to take advantage of the privileged communication provisions of the law, a person must show that everything he said was said in good faith, and without malice.”
“Now, as I understand the situation, you are a private detective. You had been employed by Everett Belder, among other things, to ferret out the person who was responsible for writing certain letters. You had reasonable grounds to make you believe that this secretary was the person in question. It was a mistake, but an honest mistake which any person might have made.”
Bertha’s nod was eager.
“So,” Drumson went on, “your communication was privileged, provided it was made without malice, Mrs. Cool.”
“Well, it was. I didn’t even know the girl.”
“Then why did you call her a twerp?”
“It’s just an expression.”
Drumson shook his head in mild rebuke, and said, “Tut tut!”
“Then I had a right to act on that assumption,” Bertha said. “She can’t stick me. Is that right?”
“Well, now, Mrs. Cool, that also depends. Your assumption of her guilt must have been a reasonable assumption, predicated upon an investigation of all the evidence. I believe you stated that a certain Sally Brentner turned out to be the guilty party?”
“Yes.”
“How did you discover that?”
“The police discovered it,” Bertha admitted with reluctance. “How?”
“The second letter showed that the woman must have been able to see what was going on in Belder’s office. Police decided that she must have been in an office across the street looking through the window into Belder’s office. The police stood in Belder’s office, looked across the street, and found there were only one or two offices the person could possibly have used for such a purpose. They knew the time of day they wanted to cover. She’s been a patient in a dentist chair.”
Drumson frowned. “But why didn’t you do that, Mrs. Cool? It seems to me it was the most logical method of trapping the guilty person.”
Bertha said, “I thought I didn’t have to.”
“Why?”
“I thought I had all the evidence I needed.”
“Then you deliberately overlooked this bit of evidence?”
“Well, I don’t know that there was anything deliberate about.”
“In other words,” Drumson said, “it just hadn’t occurred to you at the time, is that it?”
“Well,” Bertha said, “it—” She hesitated.
“Come, come,” Drumson said, “you must tell your lawyer all the facts of the case, Mrs. Cool, or he cannot work to your best advantage.”
“Well,” Bertha blurted, “Sergeant Sellers kept wanting to go at it that way, but I told him there wasn’t any need to.”
Drumson’s voice held shocked incredulity. “My dear Mrs. Cool! Do you mean to say that the police suggested to you that this logical, this perfectly simple, this very feasible method of locating the person you wanted should be followed, and that you not only refused to conduct such an investigation, but dissuaded them from doing so, and then made this charge against this Imogene Dearborne?”
Bertha said, “It sounds like hell when you put it that way.”
“It’s the way the attorney for the other side will put it, Mrs. Cool.”
“Well, I guess that’s about right.”
“That’s bad, Mrs. Cool, very bad.”
“Why?”
“It means that you refused to make an investigation. It means that you had no reasonable grounds for making the accusation you did. That has a tendency to imply malice, and that, in turn, robs you of your privileged immunity.”
“Well, you’re making it sound as though you were the lawyer for the other side.”
Drumson smiled. “Just wait until you actually hear the lawyer on the other side. Now that expression of opprobrium— What was it? Let’s see... Oh, yes, a twirp — a twirp, Mrs. Cool. Why on earth did you call her that?”