Nero Wolfe (45): Please Pass the Guilt by Stout Rex

Author:Stout, Rex [Stout, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime, Detective, Detective Series, Murder, Mystery, Novel
ISBN: 9780307756107
Google: uWHPJhP9mgkC
Amazon: 0553124587
Barnesnoble: 0553124587
Goodreads: 1094131
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1973-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

since Wolfe’s nine-to-eleven session in the plant rooms doesn’t apply on Sundays, he was in the office when the help came at ten o’clock. That was about the most useless two hours we ever spent with them. Wolfe’s idea was to have them talk about everyone they had seen, in the slim hope of our getting at least a glimmer of some kind of a hint.

No. Nothing.

If you are inclined to quit because I seem to be getting nowhere, no wonder. I’m sorry, but in these reports I don’t put in stunts to jazz it up, I just report. Of course I can leave things out, and I do. I’ll skip that two-hour Sunday conference, except for one little item. Orrie said that Dennis Copes didn’t have a secretary, and the girl in the stenographer pool who often took stuff for him was a stuck-up bitch, and he added, “Of course Archie would have had her holding hands.” He can’t quite ditch the idea that he should have my job. I admit there is one little detail of detective work that he can do better than I can, but he doesn’t know what it is so I won’t name it. They were told to go back in the morning and try some more. The theory was that somebody there must know something, which seemed reasonable.

The only thing that happened that day worth reporting was that Lily Rowan and I, at Shea Stadium, watched the Mets take the Cardinals, 7 to 3.

At ten o’clock Monday morning I sent a messenger to the CAN building with a white cardboard box addressed to Miss Helen Lugos. The box contained a cluster of Broughtonia sanguinea. They had been picked by Wolfe, who won’t let even me cut his orchids, but the card in the box had my name. At 11:30 I decided that she must have opened it, phoned, and got a female who said that Miss Lugos was engaged and did I wish to leave a message. When you get up to vice-president, especially one who will soon be president because the other candidate was murdered, even secretaries are often hard to get. I decided that she might not have seen the box yet and postponed it to after lunch.

It was after four o’clock and Wolfe was up in the plant rooms when I finally got her. She said right off, “Thank you for the beautiful flowers.” Neither warm nor cool, just polite.

“You’re welcome. I suggested them, Mr. Wolfe picked them, and we both packed them. It’s a bribe. Mr. Wolfe thinks I understand women better than he does and wants me to have a talk with you. I don’t think this office is the best place for it because that’s too much like telling you to come to a—oh, the District Attorney’s office. I can come to your place, or we can meet anywhere you say, or we can share a meal in the little pink room at Rusterman’s. Perhaps dinner this evening? Women are supposed to like pink rooms, as of course you know.

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