Plot It Yourself

Five or six of them spoke at once. Tabb didn’t tap on the glass. Wolfe showed them a palm. “If you please. I merely stated a fact. You appointed a committee for a specific purpose. Pursuant to that purpose, the committee hired me to investigate. It provided me with the record-various documents and other material. Studying it, I formed a conclusion that should have been reached long ago: that the three first claims of plagiarism had all been instigated by a single person. I procured more material, books written by the claimants, and formed a second conclusion: that none of the three claimants had been the instigator. That changed completely the character of the investigation. It widened its scope so greatly that I told the committee it was no longer my kind of job. It was a member of the committee who suggested a plan to beguile one of the claimants, Simon Jacobs, into turning informer. At the request of the committee, reluctantly, I agreed to carry out the plan, which by its nature had to be imparted to various people. Forty-seven persons knew of it within a few hours. As a direct result of the plan Simon Jacobs was killed before Mr Goodwin got to him; and as a further direct result, because the man we were after feared that a similar plan would be tried on Jane Ogilvy or Kenneth Rennert, they too were killed.”

Wolfe’s head went left and right again. “I repeat that the conclusions I formed should have been reached long ago, if a competent investigation had been made. The evidence on which they were based had been at hand, all of it, for more than a year. Because of those conclusions, formed in my pursuit of the stated purpose of the committee, and because of a plan of procedure approved by your committee and suggested by one of its members, Mr Oshin, three people were killed. You are now considering whether or not to scuttle. That might be prudent; certainly it would not be gallant; some might think it less than honourable. I submit it to your judgment. Mr Harvey. Do you challenge any of my facts?”

“Your facts are straight enough,” Harvey conceded, “but you left one out. You told us yourself that you failed to function properly. You admitted that but for your default Jacobs would still be alive. Are we responsible for your blunder?”