Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 44

by Death of a Dude

“Sure. Then Brodell came again this summer, on Monday, July twenty-second. Three days later—”

  “I interrupt. You’re on leave without pay, but permit me. About three o’clock Thursday afternoon he went up a hill alone to pick berries. When he didn’t return, even for the evening meal, there was concern, and when dark approached a search was begun. His favorite area for berries was known. Around nine-thirty his body was found by a man named Samuel Peacock on a boulder near the top of the hill. He had been shot twice, in the shoulder and in the neck. No bullets were found, but the wounds indicated a high-powered gun. The medical evidence was that he had died between three and six o’clock. The first limit was of course established, since he had been seen alive by four people around three o’clock; the second limit is probably correct. Do you challenge any of that?”

  “No.” I took a sip of milk. “That must have been quite a phone call. I hope he didn’t call collect.”

  “He didn’t. I asked many questions. You don’t dispute the motive for Mr. Greve?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then to opportunity. He has no alibi for that afternoon from one o’clock on. He says he was on horseback looking for stray cattle, but he was alone. The horse could have taken him within about a mile of where the body was found. Challenge?”

  “No.”

  “Then to means. Three guns of the kind indicated were available to him, two in his house and one in the sleeping quarters of men employed at the ranch. Challenge?”

  “None you would buy, or a jury. His wife and daughter say the guns were there in the house, and Mel Fox says his was where it belonged, in his room. All right, they would, and Mel was out on a horse too.”

  “Then to particulars. The only other people with any discernible motive, the same motive as his, have alibis that have been checked and verified. I wasn’t given their names, but—”

  “Harvey’s wife and daughter and a kid named Gilbert Haight. The wife and daughter, okay. The kid is on my list. His father is the county sheriff. He wanted to marry the daughter and says he still does—the kid, not the sheriff.”

  “Indeed.” His brow was up. “You challenge his alibi?”

  “I’ve worked some on it. The big trouble is I’m a dude. A dude out here is in about the same fix as a hippie in a Sunday school. Communication problems. You would see if you stayed, especially dressed like that, with that vest and hat. Any more particulars?”

  “Yes. The day after Mr. Brodell arrived Mr. Greve said in the hearing of two men, ‘A varmint with that thick a hide isn’t fit to live.’ Also—”

  “He said ain’t, not isn’t. I heard him. You could stand the ‘varmint,’ but the ‘ain’t’ was too much for you.”

  “The meaning was intact. Also, on Friday afternoon, the day after Brodell was killed, he drove to Timberburg and bought a bottle of champagne, which was unprecedented, and that evening he and his wife and daughter drank it. Also—”

  “That was a phone call. Knowing how Harvey felt about Brodell, I was surprised he didn’t buy two bottles, or a case and throw a party.” I drank milk.

  “And the next day, Saturday, when Brodell’s father, who had come from St. Louis for the body, went to see Mr. Greve, he assaulted him.”

  “He clipped him and gave him a shiner. That was regrettable, no matter what the father had said to ask for it, since he’s too old to be poked, but everybody knows that it’s not a good idea to pull Harvey’s nose or loosen his cinch. Also?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “It’s probably enough for a jury, and that’s the nut. That covers the phone call?”

  “Sufficiently.”

  “Then it’s my turn. In that letter I offered you fifty to one, and I still do. I know Harvey Greve and so does Miss Rowan. I haven’t got one measly scrap of evidence for him, and none against anyone else, but I know him. Did the Attorney General mention that the first bullet that hit Brodell, in the shoulder, came from behind him?”

  “No.” He had opened the second bottle and poured.

  “Well, it did. He was standing on a boulder, facing uphill, picking huckleberries, and X sneaked from downhill to easy range. The first bullet turned him around, so he was facing X when the second bullet got him in the neck and killed him. All right, that settles it. X was not Harvey Greve. I’ll believe that Harvey Greve shot a man in the back, no warning, when I see you cut up a dill pickle, put maple syrup on it, and eat it with a spoon. And even if I could believe he shot a man in the back I wouldn’t believe he shot Brodell. Everybody knows there’s no better shot around. If he shot at a man’s back he wouldn’t hit his shoulder. And the second shot, in the neck? Nuts.”

  He was frowning. He drank and put the glass down. “Archie. Your emotions are blocking your mental processes. If it is generally known that he is a good shot, making it appear that X wasn’t would be a serviceable subterfuge.”

  “Not for Harvey. He hasn’t got that kind of mind. Subterfuge is not only not in his vocabulary, it’s not in his nature. But that’s just talk. The point is that he would not sneak up on a man and shoot him in the back. Not a chance. Hell, make it a hundred to one.”

  The wrinkles of the frown were deeper. “This must be flummery. Certainly it isn’t candor. Basing a firm conclusion of a man’s guilt or innocence—not merely a conjecture—solely on your knowledge of his character? That’s tommyrot and you know it. Pfui.”

  I gave him a wide grin. “Good. Now I’ve got you cold. You were right, your brain isn’t functioning properly. Less than three years ago you formed a firm conclusion on Orrie Cather’s guilt or innocence solely on Saul Panzer’s knowledge of his character. You also consulted Fred and me, but we were on the fence. Saul decided it.* It’s too bad I don’t rate as high as Saul. And I have backing. Miss Rowan’s conclusion is as firm as mine, but I admit she’s a woman. There’s a plane that leaves Helena at eleven in the morning. If I find I can’t make it back in time to vote on November fifth I’ll send for an absentee ballot.”

  The frown was gone, but his lips had tightened to a thin straight line. He poured the rest of the second bottle, watched the bead go down, picked up the glass and drank. When his lips had been licked, they didn’t tighten again. He twisted his head around for a look at the open window, put his hands on the chair arms to pry his seventh of a ton up, turned to the window, pulled it shut, sat down again, and asked, “Is there an electric blanket?”

  “Probably. I’ll ask Miss Rowan. When I went to bed at two o’clock Sunday morning it was thirty-six above. I’ll make a concession. I’ll drive you to Helena. To catch that plane we’ll have to leave by seven o’clock, and I’d better phone if you want to be sure of a seat.”

  He took in air through his nose, all he had room for, say half a bushel, and let it out through his mouth. That wasn’t enough, and he did it again. He looked at the bed, then at the dresser, then at the door to the bathroom, and then at me. “Who slept in this room last night?”

  “Nobody. It’s a spare.”

  “Bring Miss Rowan and—No, you’re on leave. Will you please ask Miss Rowan if it will be convenient for her to join us?”

  “Glad to.” I went. As I passed the door of Wade’s room the sound of his typewriter, not the Underwood, came through. In the big room Diana, with a magazine, and Lily, with a book, were on chairs near the fireplace, where six-foot logs were burning as usual of evenings. I told Lily her new guest wanted to know if it would be convenient for her to join us, and she put the book down and got up and came. On the way down the hall she asked no questions, which was like her and therefore no surprise. She knew from experience that if I knew something she should know, I had a tongue.

  I was supposing that he was going to ask her something about Harvey’s character, but he didn’t. When she crossed to him and asked if she could do something he tilted his head back and said, “You’ll oblige me if you sit. I don’t like to talk up to people, or down. I prefer eyes at a level.”

  I moved the third chair up
for her, and as she sat she spoke. “If I had known in advance you were coming I would have had a vase of orchids in the room.”

  He grunted. “I’m not in a humor for orchids. I’m in a predicament, Miss Rowan. I am indeed at your mercy. It is necessary for me to be in this immediate neighborhood, in easy touch with Mr. Goodwin, and I don’t know how long. That place near Timberburg is not a sty, it’s moderately clean, but it would be an ordeal, and it’s at a distance. A self-invited guest is an abomination, but there is no alternative for me. May I occupy this room?”

  “Of course.” She was controlling a smile. “Archie has quoted you as saying once that a guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality. I know too much about you to expect you to be a jewel, but neither will you be an abomination. You could have just told Archie to come and tell me you were going to stay, instead of getting me in and asking me. You did it very nicely. I know how you feel about guests and hosts; I have dined at your house. Before you go to bed, tell me if you want anything.”

  “I presumed to ask Mr. Goodwin if there is an electric blanket.”

  “Certainly.” She rose. “What else?”

  “At the moment, nothing. Sit down—if you please. Mr. Goodwin is going to tell me what he has done and we’re going to discuss what’s to be done now. I’ll ask questions, and you may know the answers to some of them better than he does. Will you remain?”

  “Yes. I would like to.”

  “Very well. My first question deals with you. It must, if I am to be a guest in your house. How and where did you spend the afternoon of Thursday, July twenty-fifth?”

  I don’t want to give the impression that I am trying to sell the idea that Lily Rowan, in all respects and circumstances and 365 days in the year, is a perfect female biped. Anyone who tried to sell me that idea would have an argument. But there aren’t many women who wouldn’t have wasted time and words, one way or another, in reacting to that question, and she didn’t react at all, she merely answered it.

  “Most of it fishing,” she said, “in the Fishtail River. In midsummer trout are scarce in the creek and to fill a creel you have to go to the river. Around one o’clock that day Archie and I were sitting at the edge of Cutthroat Pool eating a picnic lunch. We had left our horses at the end of the trail.” She turned to me. “How far were we from Blue Grouse Ridge?”

  “Oh, ten or twelve miles.”

  Back to Wolfe. “Blue Grouse Ridge is where Philip Brodell was killed. After lunch we caught fish and took a dip in the river, which a polar bear would love, and watched beavers repairing a dam in a creek, and Archie threw a rock at a bear—black, not polar—who jumped into a pool to swim across when he had a cutthroat on. It was nearly dark when we got home, and Diana—she’s a guest—said that Bill Farnham had phoned to ask if Philip Brodell was here.”

  “What’s a cutthroat?”

  “A trout with a red mark under the jaw. If I had a cap, that would be a feather in it, using a word you didn’t know.”

  “There are thousands of words I don’t know.” He turned to me. “I concede that you may reasonably object that that was unnecessary. If you had not conclusively eliminated Miss Rowan, you would not have remained as her guest. I’ve had a long hard day and I’m tired, and my wits are slow. I haven’t even asked you if you shot that man. Did you?”

  “No. I was wondering why you didn’t ask.”

  “I’m tired. But go ahead. If I find I can’t keep up with you I’ll say so. Report.”

  “I’ll have to know what for,” I said. “You said you don’t know how long you’ll stay. If you intend just to check our conclusion on Harvey and wish us luck, there’s no point in—”

  “How can I check your conclusion? I can only accept it or reject it. Very well, I accept it. The length of my stay depends on how long it will take us to establish his innocence.”

  “‘Us’?”

  “Yes.”

  I raised a brow. “I don’t know. You mean well and I deeply appreciate it, but there are a couple of snags. One, we have never worked together like this. We’re equals, fellow guests of Miss Rowan. You wouldn’t be paying me to run errands and follow instructions and bring anybody you wanted to see, and I would be free to balk if I thought—”

  “Nonsense. I’m reasonable and so are you.”

  “Not always, especially you. I have known you to assume—but there’s no use in going into that now. It might work. We can give it a try. Second, you’d be in the same fix as me, only worse. Nobody would tell you anything. I’ve been here before, as you know, but men who have pitched horseshoes and played pinochle and chased coyotes with me, and women who have danced with me, clam up when I want to discuss murder. I’ve had ten days of that, and you’re not only a dude, you’re a complete stranger and a freak that wears a vest. Even if you asked me to go and bring A or B or C, and I brought him, you would know as much when he left as when he came. He might tell you how old he is. I doubt if—”

  “Archie. If your conclusion about Mr. Greve is sound, and I have accepted it, someone knows something that will demonstrate it. Will my presence make it harder for you?”

  “No.”

  “Very well. Miss Rowan has said I may occupy this room. I would appreciate a full report.”

  “It would take all night. We’d better go to bed and—”

  “I can’t go to bed until my luggage comes.”

  “Okay. More beer?”

  He said no. I shifted in my chair and crossed my legs. “This will be the longest row of goose eyes I have ever reported. I have spent ten days on it, and as I said, I haven’t got a scrap of evidence pointing to anyone. There are plenty of possibles. Two of them are your fellow guests, very handy for grilling: Miss Diana Kadany, a New York actress so far off Broadway but hoping to make it on, and Mr. Wade Worthy, a writer, of a book he’s going to produce about Miss Rowan’s father. They both qualify on means. In a cupboard in the storeroom, which is down the hall, there’s a gun that would have done fine—a Mawdsley Special double-decker. Either of them would have trouble hitting a barn with it, let alone a barn door, as they proved a couple of weeks ago when Diana and I took on Worthy and Miss Rowan for a target tournament, but that fits in, since X was a lousy shot. So there’s two possibles, right here. Morley Haight, the sheriff, didn’t check the gun, with Miss Rowan’s permission, until Friday afternoon. It was clean, but there had been plenty of time to see to that.”

  “His motive? Or hers?”

  “I’ll come to it. On opportunity they also qualify. Mimi Deffand, who will cook your breakfast unless you would rather do it yourself, had the day off, with Miss Rowan and me picnicking at the river, and she spent it in Timberburg. I haven’t pumped my fellow guests, but it appears from conversation that Diana picnicked too, up the creek at what we call the second pool, and got back around six o’clock, so Worthy was here alone. Beautiful. No alibi for either of them, and they would be hot if there was the slightest smell of motive. Neither of them had ever seen Brodell, they say. I saw him a few times last year—he and Farnham came for supper once, and we went there—and he liked shows and had been to New York, I don’t know how often. I thought of writing Saul to ask him to see if he could dig up a contact between Brodell and either of them, but you know what a job that is—at five Cs a week, which is what it would cost Miss Rowan.”

  “That wouldn’t break me,” Lily said, “but I simply can’t believe they were lying when they said they had never seen him or heard of him. That was the day after he came, when I told them the father of Alma’s baby was back.”

  “I missed a chance,” I said, “of seeing them with him, but I didn’t know he would be dead in about twenty hours. Farnham invited Miss Rowan and her guests to supper Wednesday, and she and Diana went, but Worthy and I didn’t. I have no ironbound rule against eating a meal with a man who has seduced a girl, but Brodell wasn’t on my list of pets anyhow, so I skipped it and won eighty cents at gin rummy with Worthy, who was off his feed and wanted to go to bed earl
y.”

  I flipped a hand. “They’re good samples of the possibles. At the Farnham place there are a cook and houseworker, two wranglers, four dudes, and Farnham himself. At the Bar JR there are Flora Eaton, who does laundry and house chores, Mel Fox, in charge now with Harvey gone, and two cowboys. Carol and Alma, the wife and daughter, are crossed off—not just their mutual alibi, I’ll tell you why when we’re on details. That’s fifteen possibles who were within walking distance, and add the adult population of Monroe County. Anyone could have driven here, and about two miles beyond where you turned off on the lane to this cabin he could have left the car and climbed the ridge. Farnham says that last year Brodell was in Timberburg three or four times, and I spent three days there digging up contacts.”

  “He took a box of huckleberries to the girl who sells tickets at the movie theater,” Lily said.

  Wolfe grunted. “Was it a mania? Did he come here from St. Louis only to pick huckleberries?”

  I said no, he also rode horses and fished. “Much of my three days in Timberburg was spent on Gilbert Haight—on people who know him. Besides the Greves, he’s the only one with any visible known motive. His alibi could be a phony, but to crack it you’d have to prove that at least three people are liars, and you couldn’t expect any help from the county men, since his father is the sheriff. One of the aspects of the situation is Sheriff Haight’s personal slants on it. It suits him fine to have Harvey on the hook for murder, because Harvey was pretty active against him when he ran for sheriff. The county attorney, Thomas R. Jessup, is not so keen on it because Harvey helped some to get him elected, but he can’t stall even if he wants to because he’s stuck with the evidence Haight has collected. Haight would love it if Jessup got a black eye, and vice versa, and it would be nice to find a way to take advantage of that, but I haven’t come up with one. I can’t even get to Jessup, probably because he thinks the case against Harvey is so strong that he has to go along.”

  Wolfe nodded. “The Attorney General told me that the county attorney is a man of ability and integrity and good judgment.”