Plot It Yourself

“It’s you I want to talk to. I’ve been wanting to ever since the first time we came and I thought you knew. If I had talked to you then I wouldn’t have had to-to do what I did. But I didn’t think you would say I didn’t make any mistakes. I shouldn’t have told Alice about you. You told us when you started, I mean when you started today, that she gave it away that she knew about our hiring you when Mr Goodwin told her he had an offer from a newspaper, and so your attention was focused on her. But I had made the worst mistake with her before that, when she claimed my book was plagiarized from a story she wrote. Of course I know that was poetic justice. I know I deserved it. But after so many years, when I actually had a book published, and the first printing sold out, and then three more printings, and it was actually third on the best-seller list, and then my publisher got that letter from Alice, I lost my head. That was an awful mistake. I should have told her I wouldn’t pay her anything, not a cent. I should have dared her to try to make me. But I was so scared I gave in to her. Wasn’t that a mistake?”

Wolfe grunted. “If so, not an egregious one. She had the upper hand-especially after the manuscript of her story was found in a file in your publisher’s office.”

“But that was part of the mistake, my putting it there. She made me. She said if I didn’t she would tell everything-about the claim against Ellen Sturdevant, and of course that would bring it out about the others. And she told me-”

“My God.” Reuben Imhof groaned. He had gripped her arm. “Amy, look at me. Damn it, look at me! You put that manuscript in that file?”

“You’re hurting my arm,” she said.

“Look at me! You did that?”

“I’m talking to Mr Wolfe.”

“Incredible.” He groaned again. He let go of her arm. “Absolutely incredible.”

Wolfe asked, “You were saying, Miss Wynn?”