Here is a certified check, made out to your name, for the figure I mentioned.” He leaned forward and slid an envelope across the desk toward Wolfe.
“I admire your resourcefulness, sir, but I must decline your offer,” Wolfe replied, eyeing the envelope without interest. “I prefer to work with a single client, and as you know, I already have one.”
Wilma Race took over. “As Claude mentioned, when our members learned that you were working to discover the cause of Charles’s death, they, like we, were heartened, and all of us felt that PROBE should bear a portion of the cost.” If I had seen a more earnest face than her pleasantly round one recently, I couldn’t recall it.
“Incredible,” Wolfe murmured, his eyes wide. “Did they all electronically transfer money to New York?”
“Oh no,” McClellan put in. “We’ve gotten only a few checks and money orders so far, those by mail and mostly from the New York and Philadelphia and Boston posses, plus the one in Princeton, New Jersey. But we have the verbal commitments, which, considering our members, is the same as cash. And Claude here made up the difference out of his own pocket so that we could present you a check today.”
“I know that the members are good for it,” Pemberton said, nodding. “It will all come in, every last cent.”
“Madam. Gentlemen,” Wolfe said as his gaze moved over the trio, “I appreciate your confidence. However, I reiterate that I can serve but one master at a time. Your organization and Mr. Vinson have identical aims: To learn whether Mr. Childress was murdered, and if so, to have the perpetrator exposed. Assuming I find answers to both, you will have achieved those ends, and with no financial outlay on your part.”
“True,” Wilma Race conceded eagerly, “but we — PROBE, that is — desire to buy into the resolution of the case, indeed, to play an integral role. If Charles Childress was the victim of foul play, as we all believe he was, and if you identify his murderer, as we all believe you will, we want to feel that we have been a part of it. Call it pride, or hubris, or whatever you want to, but it is very important to those of us who have enjoyed the Barnstable stories that we be involved.”
“There is something else,” Daniel McClellan said. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but hell, why not?” He shrugged his pink shoulders and pressed his lips together. “We’ve all read about how you gather all the suspects right here in this office when you are about to finger a killer, and we were hoping—”
“Dan! That’s really out of line!” Pemberton admonished, sounding remarkably like my high school chemistry teacher, Orrin Fitzmorris, when he bawled out someone who was talking or, worse — sleeping — during one of his interminable lectures.
“What is it you were hoping, Mr. McClellan?” Wolfe demanded. He thinks nothing of cutting someone off in mid-sentence, but he does not tolerate it in others.
I felt sorry for the young guy, who hunched his shoulders in embarrassment and looked like he wanted to withdraw like a turtle into the shell that was his bulky sweater. He glanced at Pemberton, then at Wilma Race, and finally at Wolfe, swallowing. “We were hoping that as a co-client with Horace Vinson, we could have someone from PROBE be in the room — this room — when you... well, name the murderer. Assuming there is one, of course.”
Wolfe scowled. “Sir, this is not a theater, nor does it magically transmogrify into one on those occasions to which you refer. Your suggestion is impractical at best, absurd at worst.”
“Mr. Wolfe,” a flustered Pemberton interjected, “if I may take the liberty of amending what Dan said, PROBE’s primary interest is not in having someone attend one of your denouements, although I confess that we discussed the possibility with some relish. Rather, we want, as Wilma said, to buy into the investigation, thus showing the depth of our support for your efforts.”
“I acknowledge that support,” Wolfe said. “It is not necessary to affirm it with mammon. However, I have some questions, the answers to which might prove illuminating.”
“Ask anything,” Pemberton replied, spreading his long arms with a flourish.
Wolfe drained the beer in his glass and poured from the second bottle Fritz had brought in, watching the foam dissipate and the bubbles rise. “Do you know of anyone within your sodality, either in its New York chapter or elsewhere, who had reason — and desire — to dispatch Mr. Childress?”
Claude Pemberton looked at Wilma Race and then at McClellan, relaying Wolfe’s query with his facial expression. Both responded with a shake of the head, as did Pemberton himself. “No, I can’t imagine anyone from PROBE doing this, although of course most of the members we know are in the local posse,” he answered. “But Mr. Childress was very popular with our members. He spoke about his writing twice at New York meetings and each time, he answered questions for almost an hour.”
“And very graciously, too,” Wilma added, her pretty hands dancing once more. “The first time we invited him, it was with some trepidation, because we had heard that he could be, well, difficult. But Mr. Wolfe, that was not the case at all. He was engaging and humorous.”
Wolfe frowned. “On either appearance, did Mr. Childress mention receiving angry letters or calls from readers?”
“I don’t recall,” she answered. “Do you, Claude, or Dan?”
McClellan shook his head, and Pemberton leaned back in the red leather chair, wrinkling his brow, presumably in deep thought. “Oh, he did mention a couple of notes that he’d gotten from readers who had minor bones to pick over details in his books. I got the impression that kind of thing mildly irked him, but it was passed over quite briefly.”
“You said Mr. Childress answered numerous questions posed by your members,” Wolfe continued. “What was the nature of the queries?”
“Oh, they were pretty much what you’d expect,” Pemberton replied promptly. “Things like ‘Where do you get your plots?’ and ‘How hard has it been to recreate the Sawyer characters?’ and ‘When do you do your writing?’ ”
“Did you find any of his responses either surprising or unexpected?”
“I didn’t think so,” Pemberton said, and his PROBE colleagues nodded their agreement. I could tell that Wolfe was losing interest in the proceedings, and I wondered how he would terminate them. I didn’t have long to wait.
He levered himself upright, dipping his head slightly to each of our guests. “I must excuse myself because of a previous engagement,” he told them. “Mr. Goodwin will want to know how to reach you in the event that I have further questions. Good day.” He moved around his desk and marched out of the office.
Following his directive, I wrote down the names and addresses of the threesome and also returned the check to Claude Pemberton, who was reluctant to accept it. “Take the thing,” I urged. “If you don’t, Mr. Wolfe will tear it up, and that will rile him, given his distaste for physical exertion of any kind. Besides, Horace Vinson can afford the exorbitant fees we charge.”
“But our members already have pledged the money,” he protested.
“So? Send it back, or set up a fund for a Christmas party, or a newsletter.”
“We already have a national newsletter, financed by dues,” Pemberton grumbled, but he gave up, sliding the envelope with the check into the breast pocket of his gray herringbone sportcoat. I saw the PROBE trio to the front door, thanking them for their time, which I thought was unusually gracious of me, given it was they who requested the parley.
After locking the door behind them, I went to the kitchen, where I found Wolfe watching Fritz prepare dinner from the wooden chair with arms near the window that had been constructed to his specifications. He threw a glower my way.