May shook her head. “Not much, since he had to. Prescott himself furnished the hint for that. We asked him last night if Miss Karn knew about the will, and he said yes. He said that the day after it was drawn Miss Karn saw the will and read it through. She went to Prescott’s office — the appointment was made by Noel, and Noel instructed Prescott to show her the will.”
“I see,” Wolfe murmured.
“So that answers your question.” A faint, almost imperceptible tinge of color appeared in the college president’s cheeks. “I don’t pretend to know anything about sex and what it does to people. There is very little else about men and women that I don’t understand fairly well, but I confess that sex is beyond me. It missed me, or perhaps I dodged it. I have my college, my achievement, my career, I have myself. It is only by a rational process, not by any emotional comprehension, that it becomes intelligible to me that my brother descended to such trickery. He wished to keep his word to me and to fulfill his obligations to others. But he had to have Miss Karn, and he could keep her only by showing her that if he died she would get her — reward. I admit that I am incapable of understanding why he had to have Miss Karn specifically, with so fierce a necessity, but there are thousands of experts, from Shakespeare to Faith Baldwin, to back me up.”
Wolfe nodded. “We won’t quarrel about that. It’s a neat theory you’ve built up. Is it yours exclusively?”
“I contrived it. My sisters incline to it. Mr. Prescott weakly contends that Noel was above such a trick, but I think he secretly agrees with me. I suspect he knows as little about sex as I do. He has never married.”
“Are you here as a representative of the group who hired me to negotiate with Miss Karn?”
“Yes. That is, my sisters — not my sister-in-law, Daisy. She won’t talk sense. The fact is, they’re in such a state about the — development regarding my brother’s death — that the will doesn’t matter to them. It does to me. My brother is dead. We have buried him. He desired and intended that in the unhappy event of his death, my college should benefit. I am going to see to it that his intention is fulfilled. With my sisters’ acquiescence — we want you to postpone the negotiations with Miss Karn—”
“I have offered to let her keep two hundred thousand dollars, the remainder to be divided by Mrs. Hawthorne and the rest of you.”
May gawked at him. “You don’t mean she accepted that offer?”
“No. But she may — tomorrow, any time. She’s scared.”