Might as Well Be Dead

“That’s not true! It’s not true!”

“You know damn well it’s true.”

Her head went down, forward, and her hands came up to cover her face. Wolfe glowered at me. From that room he has walked out on a lot of different people, but when a woman goes to pieces he doesn’t walk out, he runs. I shook my head at him. I didn’t think Selma Molloy was going to slip the bit.

She didn’t. When she finally raised her head her eyes met mine and she said calmly, “Listen, Mr. Goodwin. Didn’t I help all I could yesterday and didn’t I come today? You know I did. But how can I claim any rights as Mike Molloy’s widow when for two years I bitterly regretted I was his wife? Don’t you see it’s impossible? Isn’t there some other way? Can’t I ask for someone else to be administrator and he can have rights?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “That’s a legal question.”

“Get Mr. Parker,” Wolfe snapped.

I turned and pulled the phone to me and dialed. Since Nathaniel Parker had answered some ten thousand legal questions for us over the years I didn’t have to look up the number. While I was getting him Saul Panzer asked Wolfe if he should leave, and was told to wait until there was some place for him to leave for. When I had Parker, Wolfe took his phone.

I had to admire his performance. He would have liked to tell Parker that we were being obstructed by a perverse and capricious female, but with her sitting there that would have been inadvisable, so he merely said that for reasons of her own the widow refused to assert her claims, and put the legal problem. From there on his part was mostly grunts.

When he hung up he turned to the female. “Mr. Parker says it’s complicated, and since it’s urgent he wants to ask you some questions. He will be here in twenty minutes. He says it will expedite matters if you will decide whom you would like to suggest as administrator. Have you anyone in mind?”

“Why-no.” She frowned. She looked at me, and back at him. “Could it be Mr. Goodwin?”

“My dear madam.” Wolfe was exasperated. “Use your faculties. You met Mr. Goodwin yesterday for the first time, in his capacity as a private investigator. It would be highly inappropriate, and the court would find it so. It should be someone you know well, and trust. What about the man who closed the office and took the cartons to your apartment? Thomas Irwin.”