“No, thank you.” She breathed long and deep. “I don’t take alcohol, even as medicine, though all my children do. Their father permitted it. I apologized for my son calling your associate, Mr. Goodwin, a lousy punk. Do you wish an apology from him?”
“Certainly not. He wouldn’t mean it.”
“I suppose not. Do you share Mr. Goodwin’s opinions?”
“Often. Not always, heaven knows.”
“He told Dr. Cutler that Virgil Pompa did not kill my husband, that he is innocent. Do you believe that too?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Wolfe regarded her. “It seems to me,” he suggested, “that you’re going a long way round, and it’s an hour past midnight, you need rest and quiet, and I have myself a great many questions to ask — all of you. What you most urgently want to know is whether I intend to tell the police about the assault that was made on you, and if not, what do I intend. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t only a matter of intention,” Daniel Bahr said like a lecturer. “It may well be asked, by what right do you—”
“Dan, what did I tell you?” came at him from his mother-in-law.