Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 44

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by Death of a Dude


  He stared at her.

  “I suppose,” she said, “that lawyers have as much right to bad habits as other people, but other people don’t have to like them.” She turned to me. “What about it, Archie? Is it any of his business whom I have or haven’t consulted?”

  “No,” I said, “but that’s not the point. From what he said, the question is actually being asked by Jessup, through him. It certainly is none of Jessup’s business, and they both have a hell of a nerve. I don’t know about Montana, but in New York if a prosecuting attorney asked the person who was paying the defense counsel who she had consulted, the Bar Association would like to know about it. Since you asked my opinion, if I were you I would tell both of them to go climb a tree.”

  She looked at one and then the other, and said, “Go climb a tree.”

  Dawson said to me, “You have completely misrepresented the situation, Mr. Goodwin.”

  I eyed him. “Look, Mr. Dawson. I don’t wonder that you fumbled it; as you said, it’s a little irregular. If you hadn’t been fussed you would probably have handled it fine. Obviously something has happened that made Jessup think someone has been persuaded to butt in on his case, and he suspects that Miss Rowan did the persuading, and he wants to know, and so do you. Also obviously the way to handle it would have been to tell her what has happened and ask her if she had a hand in it, and it wouldn’t hurt to say please. If you don’t want to do it that way I guess you’ll have to look around for a tree.”

  Dawson looked at the county attorney. Jessup said, “It would have to be understood that it’s strictly confidential.”

  Dawson nodded. Lily said, “If you mean we have to promise not to tell anybody, nothing doing. We wouldn’t broadcast it just for fun, but no promises.”

  Dawson turned to Jessup and asked, “Well, Tom?”

  Jessup said, “I’d like to confer,” rose, and said to Lily, “Will you excuse us briefly, Miss Rowan?”

  Lily nodded, and for the conference they walked over to the hardtop and behind it, and Lily asked me if I had a guess. I held up crossed fingers and said one would get her two that there was going to be some kind of a break, but as to what kind and how much, her guess was as good as mine. I no longer had to control my face to keep it from beaming.

  The conference didn’t take long. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Dawson had come back alone just to say he was sorry we had been bothered, but in a few minutes they both came and took their chairs, and Dawson said, “The decision was Mr. Jessup’s, not mine. I want to make it clear that I am here at all only because he thought it proper, and I agreed.” He focused on Lily. “If you won’t promise, Miss Rowan, you won’t, and I merely want to say that I join him in hoping that you and Mr. Goodwin will regard what he tells you as a confidence. If I told you, it would be hearsay, so he will.”

  In the last five days I had tried three times to get to Thomas R. Jessup for a private talk, and got stiff-armed. I’m not complaining, just reporting. There’s no law requiring a prosecuting attorney to talk it over with any and all friends of the defendant. It was Morley Haight, the sheriff, who had questioned me as a possible suspect or material witness. I had seen Jessup only from a distance and was appreciating the chance to size him up.

  He gave Lily a politician’s smile and said, “I’m sorry there was a misunderstanding, Miss Rowan. Mr. Goodwin said it wouldn’t hurt to say please, and I do say please. Please consider this a confidential communication. I confidently leave that to your discretion. Mr. Goodwin said we should tell you what happened, and I’m going to. It won’t take long. Early this morning I had a phone call from a state official in Helena—a high official. He asked me to come to his office at my earliest convenience and bring my files on the Harvey Greve case. I drove to Helena and was with him nearly three hours. He wanted a complete detailed report, and after I dictated it to his secretary he asked questions, many questions.”

  He turned on the politician’s smile again, for Lily, then for me, and back to her. “Now that was extraordinary. As far as I know, unprecedented, for the attor—for that state official to urgently summon a county attorney to Helena to report in detail on a case he is preparing. And a murder case. Of course I asked him what had caused such sudden and urgent interest, but I got no satisfaction. When I left his office I had absolutely no idea of the reason for it; I couldn’t even guess. I was twenty miles or more on my way back to Timberburg before it occurred to me that you might possibly have—er—intervened. You are concerned about Harvey Greve—properly, quite properly. You have retained Luther Dawson, an eminent member of the Montana bar, in his behalf. I know nothing of any political connections you may have, but a woman of your standing and wealth and background must be—must know many important people. So I turned around and drove back to Helena and went to see Mr. Dawson and described the situation to him. He said he knew nothing of any approach to the—to that official, and after some discussion he agreed that it would be reasonable to ask you about it, and he phoned you. I am not suggesting that you may have acted improperly, not at all. But if a high state official is going to—er—interfere with my handling of an important case, I have a right to know why, and naturally I want to know, and naturally Mr. Dawson does too, as counsel for the defense.” The smile again. “Of course if what I have said was confidential, anything you say will be confidential too.”

  If they had known Lily as well as I did they would have known that the little circular movement of the toe of her shoe meant that she was good and sore. Also one of her eyes, the left, was slightly narrower than the other, which was even worse. “You’re asking me,” she said, “if I have pulled some strings with someone in Helena.”

  “Well … I wouldn’t put it in those terms.”

  “I would and do. What I say isn’t confidential, Mr. Jessup. I am suggesting that you have acted improperly. You’re on the other side. Why should you ask me anything at all or expect me to tell you anything? If you’ll go and sit in the car, Mr. Dawson will come in a minute.”

  “I assure you, Miss Rowan—”

  “Damn it, do you want Mr. Goodwin to drag you?” She stood up, presumably to help me drag.

  Jessup looked at me, then at Dawson. Dawson shook his head. Jessup, not smiling, got up and went, dignified, in no hurry. When he was in the car, some twenty paces away, Lily turned to the counsel for the defense. “I don’t know if you’ve acted improperly or not, Mr. Dawson, and I don’t care. Even if it was proper I don’t like it, but I’ll relieve your mind so you can use it for representing your clients, including Harvey Greve. I have approached or consulted no one ‘other than local people,’ no one in Helena or anywhere else, and I have no idea why a state official is interested in the case. Have you, Archie?”

  “No.”

  “Then that’s settled. Let’s go get a drink.” She headed for the cabin door, and I followed.

  Inside, she went left, to the door to the long hall, but I stayed in the big room long enough to see Dawson join Jessup in the car and take the wheel. When the car had disappeared around a bend in the lane I proceeded to the hall and on to the kitchen. Lily was putting ice cubes in a pitcher, and Mimi was at the center table, slicing tomatoes brought by me from Vawter’s.

  “I’m trying to remember,” Lily said, “if I was ever as mad as I am now.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “More than once.” I got out my wallet and produced two singles and offered them. “You win, damn it.”

  “Win what?”

  Mimi’s round blue eyes, which fitted her round face, which fitted all her other roundness, darted a glance at the bills and returned to the tomatoes. We talked as freely in her presence as Wolfe and I did in Fritz’s. “I said,” I told Lily, “that one would get you two that there was going to be some kind of a break. Here’s the two. There will be no break.”

  “But I didn’t take the bet. How do you know? If a high state official is interested—”

  “Yeah, the Attorney General.” I stuck the bills in a po
cket and brought gin and vermouth from a shelf. “He almost said it once. Haven’t you guessed who that report was for?”

  “No.” She cocked her head at me. “So you have approached somebody.”

  “No, not me. But one will get you ten that I know who did. I’m a detective, I figure things. I mailed that letter Saturday. He got it yesterday morning, and when he went up to the orchids he was harder for Theodore to take than usual. His appetite was off at lunch. Actually I am not absolutely essential to his convenience and comfort and welfare, nobody is, but he comes close to thinking I am. My letter left it wide open when he could expect me back—a week, a month, two months, no telling—and he hates uncertainty.”

  “So he phoned the Attorney General of Montana and demanded a complete detailed report pronto.”

  “No, but he phoned somebody.” The ingredients were in and I started stirring. “There are a lot of people who are grateful for something he did, even after paying the bill, and a few of them are the kind who might phone a governor or even a president, let alone an attorney general. He phoned one of them, maybe more than one, and he phoned Helena. It wasn’t any great favor to ask, just a report. The gist of it will probably be that the evidence against Harvey is all wool, from Montana sheep and two yards wide. If by phone he may have it already, and his appetite for dinner will be even worse.” I looked at my wrist. “He’s at the table now. It’s seven-thirty-two in New York.”

  I put the glass rod down, picked up the pitcher, and poured. As she picked up her glass she said, “I admit that’s good guessing, but you’re not sure. Anyway I’m not. There could be a break.” She raised the glass high. “To Harvey.”

  “One will get you ten. To Harvey.”

  If she had taken my ten-to-one offer, whether I had made a bad bet or not would have depended on whether what happened twenty-six hours later, around eight o’clock Wednesday evening, should be regarded as a break, and that would have depended on who did the regarding. I had spent the day scouting around making useless motions, trying to find a stone with something under it, and it was getting me down. At the supper table I had certainly contributed nothing to help to make it a jolly meal, and when the coffee was finished I had said I had a letter to write and gone to my room. I did want to write something, but not a letter. I was going to do something desperate, something I had never done before: write down every damned fact I had collected in ten days, at least every fact that could conceivably mean anything, and try to find connections or contradictions that would point somewhere. I was at the table by an open window, with a pad and a supply of pencils, considering where to start, when I heard a car coming up the lane. I couldn’t see it because my room was on the creek side. The others were closer than I was, and the fact that I jumped up instantly and scooted to the big room showed what shape I was in. Pitiful. Diana was at the piano and Lily was at the screen door looking out, and I joined her. The car was there, a taxi from Timberburg. It would soon be dusk, and there was light enough to see the man at the wheel stick his head out of the window and call, “Is this Lily Rowan’s place?”

  I opened the door and stepped out and said yes, and the rear door of the taxi opened and a man climbed out, backwards. His big broad behind was Nero Wolfe’s, and when he straightened up and turned around, so was his big broad front. Lily, at my elbow, said, “The mountain comes to Mohammed,” and we crossed the terrace to meet him.

  Chapter 4

  Wolfe never shakes hands with a woman, and rarely with a man, but out in God’s country people loosen up more, and when his hand left mine he actually offered it to Lily as he said, “My apologies. I should have telephoned. You probably resent unexpected callers, as I do, but I dislike the telephone and I have used it too much these two days. I’ll not disturb you. I had to see Mr. Goodwin.”

  “I make allowances,” Lily said, “for callers who have come two thousand miles. Your luggage is in the car?”

  “It is in Timberburg. Near there. At a place called Shafer Creek Motel.” To me: “I have a suggestion. That man is foolhardy and his vehicle may collapse at any moment. If one is available here, I’ll send him off and you can drive me back after we have conferred.”

  I turned to Lily. “As you know, he thinks all machinery acts on whim. If you won’t need the car—”

  “This is silly,” she said. To Wolfe: “Of course you’ll sleep here. There’s a room with a bed. After a day in airplanes and cars, you must be about to collapse. Archie will tell the man to go and bring your luggage, and I’ll show you your room. It has a bath. Have you had dinner?”

  “Miss Rowan. I will not impose—”

  “Now listen. You’re used to having people at your mercy; now you’re at mine. My car will not be available. Have you had dinner?”

  “I have eaten, yes. There will be a bill to pay at the place.”

  I said I’d see to it and went and talked with the hackie. He didn’t like the idea of another round trip, but agreed that that would be better than sticking there until his fare was ready to return when I said it might be long after midnight, and I gave him money for the motel bill. When he had turned around and rolled down the lane I entered the cabin by the door to the long hall, kept going, found the last door standing open, and entered. Wolfe was sitting in a chair by the open window with his chin down and his eyes closed. Lily had switched the light on. I stopped three paces in and looked at him. He was probably, at that moment, the only man in Monroe County wearing a vest, which of course was the same dark blue as the jacket and trousers. He had changed at the motel; the cuffs and collar of the yellow shirt were smooth and clean. The blue four-in-hand was a little darker than the suit, and so was the homburg there on the table. There was barely enough room for his hips between the arms of the wicker chair.

  I asked, “Have a nice trip?”

  He said, “There’s a brook out there,” and opened his eyes.

  “Berry Creek. If we had known you were coming there could have been trout for breakfast. Are you staying long?”

  “Pfui.”

  There were two other chairs in the room and I went to one of them and sat. “That’s my mount’s name. Miss Rowan named her mare Cat because she moves like one, and I named my horse, mine when I’m here, Pfui, because he’s a little tricky. The natives pronounce it Fee. If you’re going to do some mountain riding I recommend a palomino named Spotty, because with your bulk—”

  “Shut up.”

  I didn’t intend to, but I did, because Lily entered with a tray, and I got up to take it. On it were two glasses, a bottle of beer, an opener, a pitcher of milk, and paper napkins. “I saw to towels,” she said. “I brought only one bottle of beer because I suppose he likes it cold. Do you need anything?”

  “If we do I’ll get it. We may need you, so don’t wander off.”

  She said she wouldn’t, and left. I put the tray on a table that Wolfe could reach, and he picked up the bottle, inspected the label—Mountain Brewery, Butte—took the opener and used it, and poured.

  “It isn’t bad,” I said. “There’s another brand that I think they put copper in.”

  He held the glass until the bead was down just right, took a sip, made a face, took a healthy swig, and licked foam from his lips. “I would prefer,” he said, “to go to bed. I doubt if my brain will function properly, but I’ll try. I received your letter.”

  “I suspected you had when I saw you get out of the car.”

  “It came Monday, day before yesterday. It didn’t adequately describe the situation. I needed to know more about it, and I telephoned three men. The third one, Mr. Oliver McFarland—you remember him.”

  “Certainly.”

  “He was able and willing to oblige me. He has extensive banking and mining interests in this area. At his instigation I received, late yesterday afternoon, a telephone call from the Montana Attorney General. If the facts are as he reported them, you might as well return with me in the morning.”

  I nodded. “I expected this too when I saw
you get out of the car. This is going to take a while, and there’s a bigger and better chair in another room. If you’ll vacate that one I’ll take it and make a trade. I’m as uncomfortable looking at you as you are in it.”

  He started to stand, but his hips caught between the arms and lifted the chair. He pushed it down and was free and up, and I took the chair and went, out, the length of the hall, and into the big room. Lily was there with Diana and Wade Worthy over by the fireplace, probably telling them that another guest had arrived. Seeing me, she said, “I should have suggested that. The one over there?”

  It was the one I would have picked, over by the bookshelves. I moved it, put the one I had brought in its place, picked up the bigger one, which had a seat pad covered with what had once been the hide on a deer’s belly, upturned it to put it on top of my head, and went back to the room. In that short time the beer bottle had been emptied, and after depositing the chair I went to the kitchen and brought another one; and I poured a glass of milk and went to my chair with it. Wolfe looked better, and of course felt better, in the roomier seat.

  “I’ll give you just the skeleton,” I said, “and the flesh and skin can be added as required. If I’m more outspoken than usual it’s probably because I’m on leave of absence without pay. First, I do not think you came to haul me back. You know me almost as well as I know you. I wrote you that one will get you fifty that Harvey’s clean, and you know I don’t give those odds unless I’m dead sure. I think you came to get my facts and then hurry it up by telling me what to do. I suppose you know, from the Attorney General, that Harvey’s daughter had a baby this spring, and she told Harvey and Carol, his wife, that the father was Philip Brodell, a dude who was here last summer at a nearby ranch, and before long everybody knew it.”

  “Yes. Those are facts?”

 

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