“How old?”
“Right around twenty-three.”
“What’s her first name?”
“Claire.”
“Where does she live?”
Bertha said angrily, “I’m not a card index. Get me up in the middle of the night to come and bring you back from your philandering and expect me to give you the address of every client that ever came to the office.”
I didn’t say anything, and Bertha fought it out for a while in silence, then she went on, as though there had been no digression on her part, “With a babe like that, who knew I had a young, brainy partner to handle the case, the normal reaction would have been for her to have gone to him to make the business arrangements, but this chick did nothing of the sort. She said she had unlimited confidence in my ability, that she knew all about our reputation, and she pulled out a cheque-book. She seemed only sort of half-interested — Now, when you come right down to it, that’s funny on the face of it.”
“It’s a little screwy on the face of it, even if you don’t come down to anything,” I said. “Specifically, how much did the girl tell you about her family?”
Bertha said, “Look, Donald, that’s where you and I differ. You always want to go into all the insignificant details that don’t make a bit of difference in the case.”
“In other words,” I said, “she didn’t really tell you anything about her aunt.”