If Death Ever Slept

“Certainly he hasn’t.” It was Wyman. He was looking, not at Wolfe, but at his father. But he said “he,” not “you,” though he was looking at him. “And now it’s a little too much. Now it may not be just taking a gun, it may be killing two men with it. Of course he has no proof. He hates her, that’s all. He wants to smear her. He made passes at her, he kept it up for a year, and she wouldn’t let him touch her, and so he hates her. That’s all there is to it.”

Wolfe made a face. “Mrs. Jarrell. You heard what your husband said?”

Susan nodded, just perceptibly. “Yes, I heard.”

“Is it true?”

“Yes. I don’t want-” She closed her mouth and opened it again. “Yes, it’s true.”

Wolfe’s head jerked left. “Mr. Jarrell. Did you make improper advances to your son’s wife?”

“No!”

Wyman looked straight at his father and said distinctly, “You’re a liar.”

“Oh, my God,” Trella said. “This is fine. This is wonderful.”

If I know any man who doesn’t need feeling sorry for it’s Nero Wolfe, but I came close to it then. After all the trouble he had taken to get them there to help him out of his predicament, they had turned his office into a laundromat for washing dirty linen.

He turned and snapped at me, “Archie, draw a check to Mr. Jarrell for ten thousand dollars.” As I got up and went to the safe for the checkbook he snapped at them, “Then it’s hopeless. I was afraid it would be, but it was worth trying. I admit I made the effort chiefly for the sake of my own self-esteem, but also I felt that you deserved this last chance, at least some of you. Now you’re all in for it, and one of you is doomed. Mr. Jarrell, you don’t want me anymore, and heaven knows I don’t want you. Some of Mr. Goodwin’s things are up there in the room he occupied, and he’ll send or go for them. The check, Archie?”

I gave it to him, he signed it, and I went to hand it to Jarrell. I had to go to the far side of the red leather chair to keep from being bumped by Wolfe, who was on his way out and who needs plenty of room whether at rest or in motion. Jarrell was saying something, but Wolfe ignored it and kept going.

They left in a bunch, not a lively bunch. I accompanied them to the hall, and opened the door, but no one paid any attention to me except Lois, who offered a hand and frowned at me-not a hostile frown, but the kind you use instead of a smile when you are out of smiles for reasons beyond your control. I frowned back to show that there was no hard feeling as far as she was concerned.