I sat down at my desk and told her, “Mr. Wolfe will be engaged until eleven o’clock.” I glanced at my wrist. “He’ll be down in forty minutes.”
She nodded. “I know. I’ll wait.”
She didn’t look exactly bedraggled, nor would I say pathetic, but there was certainly nothing of the man-eater about her. She seemed older than she had on Tuesday. Anyone could have told at a glance that she was having trouble, but whether it was bereavement or bankruptcy was indicated neither by her clothes nor her expression. She merely made you feel like going up to her, maybe putting your hand on her shoulder or patting her on the arm, and asking, “Anything I can do?” It occurred to me that if she had been old enough to be my mother there would have been no question about how I felt, but she positively was not. If I had wanted to pass the time by deciding what I might want her for when she stopped being in trouble, it would not have been for a mother.
Of course, since at that time I still had the case solved, and all I needed was evidence, there were about a dozen things I would have liked to ask her, but it seemed advisable to wait and let Wolfe do it. I reached that conclusion while I was sitting with my back to her, entering plant germination records, and that reminded me of a minor point I hadn’t covered. I went to the kitchen and asked Fritz if he had told Wolfe who had come to see him, and Fritz said he hadn’t, he had left that to me. So I returned to the office, buzzed the plant rooms, got Wolfe, and told him, “Returned from mission. I gave them to Cramer himself, and he says he’ll get the other one. Mrs. Poor is down here waiting to see you.”
“Confound that woman. Send her away.”
“But she—”
“No. I know what she wants. I studied her. She wants to know what I’m doing to earn that money. Tell her to go home and read that receipt.”
The line died. I swung my chair around and told Martha, “Mr. Wolfe says for you to go home and read the receipt.”
She stared. “What?”
“He thinks you came to complain because he isn’t earning the money your husband paid him, and the idea of having to earn money offends him. It always has.”
“But— that’s ridiculous. Isn’t it?”
“Certainly it is.” I fought back the impulse to step over and pat her on the shoulder. “But my advice is to humor him, much as I enjoy having you here. Nobody alive can handle him but me. If he came down and found you here he would turn around and walk out. If you have anything special to say, tell me and I’ll tell him. He’ll listen to me because he has to, or fire me, and he can’t fire me because then he would never do any work at all and would eventually starve to death.”
“I shouldn’t think—” She stopped and stood up. She took a step toward the door, then turned and said, “I shouldn’t think a cold-blooded murder is something to joke about.”
I had to fight back the impulse again. “I’m not joking,” I declared. “Plain facts. What did you want to say to him?”
“I just wanted to talk with him. He hasn’t come to see me. Neither have you.” She tried to smile, but all she accomplished was to start her lip quivering. She stopped it. “You haven’t even phoned me. I don’t know what’s happening. The police asked me about two of my hairs being in that box of cigars, and I suppose they have told Mr. Wolfe about it, and I don’t even know what he thinks or what he told the police...”
I grinned at her. “That’s easy. He made a speech to the jury, demonstrating that those hairs in the box were evidence that you did not kill your husband.” I went to her and put a hand on her arm, like a brother. “Listen, lady. Isn’t the funeral this afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, go and have the funeral, that’s enough for you for one day. Leave the rest to me. I mean, if anything occurs that it would help you to know about, I’ll see that you know. Right?” She didn’t pull anything corny like grasping my hand with hers firm and warm or gazing at me with moist eyes filled with trust. She did meet my eyes, but only long enough to say, “Thank you, Mr. Goodwin,” and turned to go. I went to the front door and let her out.
After Wolfe came down the relations between us were nothing to brag about. Apparently he had nothing to offer, and I was too sore to start in on him. I had brought him Helen and Joe, and except for having fun with that capsule like a kid with a firecracker, he hadn’t bothered to disturb one cell of his celebrated brain. Martha had come on her own, and he wouldn’t even see her. As for Blaney, I had to admit I couldn’t blame him much on that, but the fact remained that he had walked out without doing a lick of work.
He passed the time until lunch going through catalogues, and at two-thirty P.M., with a veal cutlet and half a bushel of Fritz’s best mixed salad stowed in the hold, he returned to the office and resumed with catalogues. That got interrupted before long, but not by me. The bell rang, and I went to the front and it was Saul Panzer. I took him to the office.
Wolfe greeted him and then told me, “Archie. Go up and help Theodore with the pollen lists.”
There was nothing new about it, but that didn’t make me like it any better. When the day finally comes that I tie Wolfe to a stake and shoot him, one of the fundamental reasons will be his theory that the less I know the more I can help, or to put it another way, that everything inside my head shows on my face. It only makes it worse that he doesn’t really believe it. He merely can’t stand it to have anybody keep up with him at any time on any track. I am being fair about it. I admit that even under ideal circumstances it wouldn’t happen very often, but it would ruin a good meal for him if it ever happened at all.
I did my best with Theodore and the pollen lists, not wanting to take it out on them. The conference with Saul seemed to be comprehensive, since a full hour passed before the house phone in the potting room buzzed. Theodore answered it, and told me that I was wanted downstairs.
When I got there Saul was gone. I had a withering remark prepared, thinking to open up with it, but had to save it for some other time. Wolfe was seated behind his desk, leaning back with his eyes closed, and his lips were moving, pushing out and then in again, out and in...
So I sat down and kept my mouth shut. The brain had actually got on the job, and I knew better than to make remarks, withering or not, during the performance of miracles. The first result, which came in ten or twelve minutes after I entered, did not however seem to be very miraculous. He opened his eyes halfway, grunted, and muttered, “Archie. Yesterday you showed me an article in a paper about a man’s body found in an orchard near White Plains, but I didn’t look at it. Now I want it.”
“Yes, sir. There was more this morning—”
“Have they identified the body?”
“No, sir. The head was smashed—”
“Get it.”
I obeyed. Newspapers were kept in the office for three days. I opened it to the page and handed it to him. He would read a newspaper only one way, holding it out wide open, no folding, with his arms stretched. I had never tried to get him to do it more intelligently because it was the only strenuous exercise he ever got and was therefore good for him. He finished the Thursday piece and asked for Friday’s, and finished that.
Then he told me, “Get the district attorney of Westchester County. What’s his name? Fraser.”
“Right.” I got busy with the phone. I had no trouble getting the office, but then they gave me the usual line about Mr. Fraser being in conference and I had to put on pressure. Finally the elected person said hello.
Wolfe took it. “How do you do, Mr. Fraser. Nero Wolfe. I have something to give you. That body found in an orchard Wednesday evening with the head crushed — has it been identified?”