Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe - Second Confession

by The Second Confession (lit)

  No one joined him, and after a moment he looked around apologetically and spoke to James U. Sperling.

  “I hope you don't think I'm taking this lightly. This is a very regrettable affair. Very.” “It certainly is,” Sperling agreed Archer nodded, puckering his mouth. “Very regrettable. There's no reason why I shouldn't be entirely frank with you, Mr Sperling—and in Mr Wolfe's presence, since you have retained him in your interest. It is not the policy of my office to go out of its way to make trouble for men of your standing. That's only common sense. We have considered your suggestion that Rony was killed elsewhere, in a road accident, and the body brought here and concealed on your property, but we can't—that is, it couldn't have happened that way. He got off the train at Chappaqua at nine twenty-three, and the taxi driver brought him to the entrance to your grounds and saw him start walking up the driveway. Not only that, there is clear evidence that he was killed, run over by a car, on your drive at a point about thirty feet this side of the bridge crossing the brook.

  That evidence is still being accumulated, but there is already enough to leave no room for doubt. Do you want me to send for a man to give you the details?” “No,” Sperling said.

  “You're welcome to them at any time. The evidence indicates that the car was going east, away from the house, toward the entrance, but that is not conclusive. Inspection of the cars belonging here has not been completed. It is possible that it was some other car—any car—which came in from the road, but you will understand why that theory is the least acceptable. It seems improbable, but we haven't rejected it, and frankly, we see no reason for rejecting it unless we have to.” Archer puckered his lips again, evidently considering words that were ready to come, and decided to let diem through.

  “My office cannot afford to be off-hand about sudden and violent death, even if it wanted to. In this case we have to answer not only to our own consciences, and to the people of this county whose servants we are, but also to—may I say, to other interests. There have already been inquiries from New York City authorities, and an offer of co-operation. They mean it well and we welcome it, but I mention it to show that the interest in Rony's death is not confined to my jurisdiction, and that of course increases my responsibility. I hope—do I make my meaning clear?” “Perfectly,” Sperling assented “Then you will see that nothing can be casually overlooked—not that it should be or would be, in any event. Anyhow, it can't be. As you know, we have questioned everyone here fairly rigorously—including all of your domestic staff—and we have got not the slightest clue to what happened. No one knows anything about it at all, with the single exception of your younger daughter, who admits—I should say states—that she asked Rony to come here on that train and meet her at a certain spot on this property. No one—” Wolfe grunted. “Miss Sperling didn't ask him to come on that train. She asked him to come. It was his convenience that determined the train.” “My mistake,” Archer conceded. “Anyhow, it was her summons that brought him. He came on that train. It was on time. He got into the taxi at once, and the driving time from the railroad station to the entrance to these grounds is six or seven minutes, therefore he arrived at half-past nine—perhaps a minute or so later. He may have headed straight for the place of his rendezvous, or he may have loitered on the drive—we don't know.” Archer fingered among the papers before him, looked at one, and sat up again.

  “If he loitered, your daughter may have been at the place of rendezvous at the time he was killed. She intended to get there at nine-thirty but was delayed by a conversation with her sister and was a little late—she thinks about ten minutes, possibly fifteen. Her sister, who saw her leave the house, corroborates that. If Rony loitered—” “Isn't this rather elaborate?” Sperling put in.

  Archer nodded. “These things usually are. If Rony loitered on the drive, and if your daughter was at the place of rendezvous at the time he was killed, why didn't she hear the car that killed him? She says she heard no car. That has been thoroughly tested. It is slightly downhill along the drive clear to the entrance. From the place of rendezvous, beyond that thicket, the sound of a car going down the drive is extremely faint. Even with a car going up the drive you have to listen for it, and last night there was some wind from the northeast. So Rony might have been killed while your daughter was there waiting for him, and she might have heard nothing.” “Then damn it, why so much talk about it?” Archer was patient. “Because that's all there is to talk about. Except for your daughter's statement, nothing whatever has been contributed by anyone. No one saw or heard anything. Mr Goodwin's contribution is entirely negative. He left here at ten minutes to ten—” Archer looked at me. “I understand that time is definite?” “Yes, sir. When I get in the car I have a habit of checking the dash clock with my wrist watch. It was nine-fifty.” Archer returned to Sperling. “He left at nine-fifty to drive to Chappaqua to make a phone call, and noticed nothing along the drive. He returned thirty or thirty-five minutes later, and again noticed nothing—so his contribution is entirely negative. By the way, your daughter didn't hear his car either—or doesn't remember hearing it.

  Sperling was frowning. “I still would like to know why all the concentration on my daughter.” “I don't concentrate on her,” Archer objected. “Circumstances do.” “What circumstances?” “She was a close friend of Rony's. She says that she was not engaged to marry him, but she—uh, saw a great deal of him. Her association with him had been the subject of—uh, much family discussion. It was that that led to your engaging the services of Nero Wolfe, and he doesn't concern himself with trivialities. It was that that brought him up here yesterday, and his—” “It was not. He wanted me to pay for the damage to his plant rooms.” “But because he thought it was connected with your employment of him. His aversion to leaving his place for anything at all is well known. There was a long family conference—” “Not a conference. He did all the talking. He insisted that I must pay the damage.” Archer nodded. “You all agree on that. By the way, how did it come out? Are you paying?” “Is that relevant?” Wolfe inquired.

  “Perhaps not,” Archer conceded. “Only, since you have been engaged to investigate this other matter—I'll withdraw the question if it's impertinent.” “Not at all,” Sperling declared. “I'm paying the damage, but not because I'm obliged to. There's no evidence that it had any connection with me or my affairs.” “Then it's none of my business,” Archer further conceded. “But the fact remains that something happened yesterday to cause your daughter to decide to summon Rony and tell him she was through with him. She says that it was simply that the trouble her friendship with him was causing was at last too much for her, and she made up her mind to end it. That may well be. I can't even say that I'm sceptical about it. But it is extremely unfortunate, extremely, that she reached that decision the very day that Rony was to die a violent death, under circumstances which no one can explain and for which no one can be held accountable.” Archer leaned forward and spoke from his heart. “Listen, Mr Sperling. You know quite well I don't want to make trouble for you. But I have a duty and a responsibility, and, besides that, I'm not functioning in a vacuum. Far from it!

  I can't say how many people know about the situation here regarding your daughter and Rony, but certainly some do. There are three guests here in the house right now, and one of them is a prominent broadcaster. Whatever I do or don't do, people are going to believe that that situation and Rony's death are connected, and therefore if I tried to ignore it, I would be hooted out of the county. I've got to go to the limit on this homicide, and I'm going to. I've got to find out who killed Rony and why. If it was an accident no one will be better pleased than me, but I've got to know who was responsible. It's going to be unpleasant—” Archer stopped because the door had swung open. Our heads turned to see the intruder. It was Ben Dykes, the head of the county detectives, and behind him was the specimen who had been born in the wrong country, Lieutenant Con Noonan of the State Police. I didn't like the look on Noonan's face, but then
I never do.

  “Yes, Ben?” Archer demanded impatiently. No wonder he was irritated, having been interrupted in the middle of his big speech.

  “Something you ought to know,” Dykes said, approaching.

  “What is it?” “Maybe you'd rather have it privately.” “Why? We have nothing to conceal from Mr Sperling, and Wolfe's working for him.

  What is it?” Dykes shrugged. “They've finished on the cars and got the one that killed him.

  It's the one they did last, the one that's parked out back. Nero Wolfe's.” “No question about it!” Noonan crowed.

  CHAPTER Eleven

  I had a funny mixed feeling. I was surprised, I was even flabbergasted, that is true. But it is also true that the surprise was cancelled out by its exact opposite; that I had been expecting this all along. They say that the conscious mind is the upper tenth and everything else is down below. I don't know how they got their percentages, but if they're correct I suppose nine-tenths of me had been doing the expecting, and it broke through into the upper layer when Ben Dykes put it into words.

  Wolfe darted a glance at me. I lifted my brows and shook my head. He nodded and lifted his glass for the last of his beer.

  “That makes it different,” said Sperling, not grief-stricken. “That seems to settle it.” “Look, Mr Archer,” Lieutenant Noonan offered. “It's only a hit-and-run now, and you're a busy man and so is Dykes. This Goodwin thinks he's tough. Why don't I just take him down to the barracks?” Archer, skipping him, asked Dykes, “How good is it? Enough to bank on?” “Plenty,” Dykes declared. “It all has to go to the laboratory, but there's blood on theUnder side of the fender, and a button with a piece of his jacket wedged between the axle and the spring, and other things. It's good all right.” Archer looked at me. “Well?” I smiled at him. “I couldn't put it any better than you did, Mr Archer. My contribution is entirely negative. If that car killed Rony I was somewhere else at the time. I wish I could be more help, but that's the best I can do.” “I'll take him to the barracks,” Noonan offered again.

  Again he was ignored. Archer turned to Wolfe. “You own the car, don't you? Have you got anything to say?” “Only that I don't know how to drive, and that if Mr Goodwin is taken to a barracks, as this puppy suggests, I shall go with him.” The DA came back to me. “Why don't you come clean with it? We can wind it up in ten minutes and get out of here.” Tm sorry,” I said courteously. “If I tried to fake it at a minute's notice I might bitch it up and you'd catch me in a lie.” “You won't tell us how it happened?” “No, I won't. I can't.” Archer stood up and spoke to Sperling. “Is there another room I can take him to?

  I have to be in court at two o'clock and I'd like to finish this if possible.” “You can stay here,” Sperling said, leaving his chair, eager to co-operate. He looked at Wolfe. “I see you've finished your beer. If you'll come—” Wolfe put his hands on the chair arms, got himself erect, took three steps, and was facing Archer. “As you say, I own a car. If Mr Goodwin is taken away without first notifying me, and without a warrant, this affair will be even more regrettable than it is now. I don't blame you for wanting to talk with him; you don't know him as well as I do; but I owe it to you to say that you will be wasting valuable time.” He marched to the door, with Sperling at his heels, and was gone.

  Dykes asked, “Will you want me?” “I might,” Archer said. “Sit down/ Dykes moved to the chair Wolfe had vacated, sat, took out a notebook and pencil, inspected the pencil point, and settled back. Meanwhile Noonan walked across and deposited himself in the chair Sperling had used. He hadn't been invited and he hadn't asked if he was wanted. Naturally I was pleased, since if he had acted otherwise I would have had to take the trouble to change my opinion of him.

  Archer, his lips puckered, was giving me a good look. He spoke. “I don't understand you, Goodwin. I don't know why you don't see that your position is impossible.” That's easy,” I told him. “For exactly the same reason that you don't.” “That I don't see it's impossible? But I do.” “Like hell you do. If you did you'd be on your way by now, leaving me to Ben Dykes or one of your assistants. You've got a busy schedule ahead of you, but here you still are. May I make a statement?” “By all means. That's just what I want you to do.” “Fine.” I clasped my hands behind my head. “There's no use going over what I did and when. I've already told it three times and it's on the record. But with this news, that it was Mr Wolfe's car that killed him, you don't have to bother any more with what anybody was doing, even me, at eight o'clock or nine or ten. You know exactly when he was killed. It couldn't have been before nine-thirty, because that's when he got out of the cab at the entrance. It couldn't have been after nine-fifty, because that's when I got in the car to drive to Chappaqua.

  Actually it's even narrower, say between nine thirty-two and nine forty-six—only fourteen minutes. During that time I was up in the bedroom with Mr Wolfe. Where were the others? Because of course it's all in the family now, since our car was used. Someone here did it, and during that fourteen minutes. You'll want to know where the key to the ignition was. In the car. I don't remove it when I'm parking on the private grounds of a friend or a client. I did remove it, however, when I got back from Chappaqua, since it might be there all night. I didn't know how long it would take Sperling to decide to let go of forty grand.

  You will also want to know if the engine was warm when I got in and started it.

  I don't know. It starts like a dream, warm or cold. Also it was June. Also, if all it had done was roll down the drive and kill Rony, and turn around at the entrance and come back again, and there wasn't time for much more than that, it wouldn't have got warmed up to speak of.” I considered a moment. “That's the crop.” “You can eat that timetable,” Noonan said in his normal voice, which you ought to hear. “Try again, bud. He wasn't killed in that fourteen minutes. He was killed at nine fifty-two, when you went down the drive on your way to Chappaqua.

  Do your statement over.” I turned my head to get his eyes. “Oh, you here?” Archer said to Dykes, “Ask him some questions, Ben.” I had known Ben Dykes sort of off and on for quite a while, and as far as I knew he was neither friend nor enemy. Most of the enforcers of the law, both in and out of uniform, in the suburban districts, have got an inferiority complex about New York detectives, either public or private, but Dykes was an exception. He had been a Westchester dick for more than twenty years, and all he cared about was doing his work well enough to hang on to his job, steering clear of mudholes, and staying as honest as he could.

  He kept after me, with Archer cutting in a few times, for over an hour. In the middle of it a colleague brought sandwiches and coffee in to us, and we went ahead between bites. Dykes did as well as he could, and he was an old hand at it, but even if he had been one of the best, which he wasn't, there was only one direction he could get at me from, and from there he always found me looking straight at him. He was committed to one simple concrete fact: that going down the drive on my way to Chappaqua I had killed Rony, and I matched it with the simple concrete fact that I hadn't. That didn't allow much leeway for a fancy grilling, and the only thing that prolonged it to over an hour was their earnest desire to wrap it up quick and cart it away from Stony Acres.

  Archer looked at his wrist watch for the tenth time. A glance at mine showed me 1.20.

  “The only thing to do,” he said, “is get a warrant. Ben, you'd better phone—no, one of the men can ride down with me and bring it back.” “I'll go,” Noonan offered.

  “We've plenty of men,” Dykes said pointedly, “since it looks like we're through here.” Archer had got up. “You leave us no other course, Goodwin,” he told me. “If you try to leave the county before the warrant conies you'll be stopped.” “I've got his car key,” Dykes said.

  “This is so damned unnecessary!” Archer complained, exasperated. He sat down again and leaned forward at me. “For God's sake, haven't I made it plain enough?

  There's no possibility of jeopardy for a ma
jor crime, and very little of any jeopardy at all. It was night. You didn't see him until you were on top of him.

  When you got out and went to him he was dead. You were rattled, and you had an urgent confidential phone call to make. You didn't want to leave his body there in the middle of the drive, so you dragged it across the grass to a bush. You drove to Chappaqua, made the phone call, and drove back here. You entered the house, intending to phone a report of the accident, and were met by Miss Sperling, who was concerned about the absence of her sister. You went out with her to look for the sister, and you found her. Naturally you didn't want to tell her, abruptly and brutally, of Rony's death. Within a short time you went to the house and told Wolfe about it, and he told Sperling, and Sperling notified the police. You were understandably reluctant to admit that it was your car that had killed him, and you could not bring yourself to do so until the course of the investigation showed you that it was unavoidable. Then, to me, to the highest law officer of the county, you stated the facts—all of them.” Archer stretched another inch forward. “If those facts are set down in a statement, and you sign it, what will happen? You can't even be charged with leaving the scene of an accident, because you didn't—you're here and haven't left here. I'm the District Attorney. It will be up to me to decide if any charge shall be lodged against you, and if so what charge. What do you think I'll decide? Considering all the circumstances, which you're as familiar with as I am,” what would any man of sense decide? Whom have you injured, except one man by an unavoidable accident?” Archer turned to the table, found a pad of paper, got a pen from his pocket, and offered them to me. “Here. Write it down and sign it, and let's get it over with. You'll never regret it, Goodwin, you have my word for that.” I smiled at him. “Now I am sorry, Mr Archer, I really am.” “Don't be sorry! Just write it down and sign it.” I shook my head. “I guess you'll have to get the warrant, but you'd better count ten. I'm glad you weren't peddling a vacuum cleaner or you'd have sold me. But I won't buy signing such a statement. If all it had to have in it was what you said—hitting him and dragging him off the road, and going on to make the phone call, and coming back and helping Miss Sperling hunt her sister, and getting the cops notified but not mentioning the fact that it was me that ran over him—if that was all there was to it I might possibly oblige you, in spite of the fact that it wouldn't be true, just to save trouble all around. But one detail that you didn't include would be too much for me.” “What? What are you talking about?” “The car. I'm in the detective business. I'm supposed to know things. I'm certainly supposed to know that if you run over a man and squash him the way Rony was squashed, the car will have so much evidence on it that a blindfolded Boy Scout could get enough to cinch it. Yet I drove the car back here and parked it, and played innocent all night and all morning, so Ben Dykes could walk in on us at noon and announce aha, it was Nero Wolfe's car! That I will not buy. It would get me a horse laugh from the Battery to Spuyten Duyvil. I would never live it down. And speaking of a warrant, I don't think any judge or jury would buy it either.” “We could make it—” “You couldn't make it anything but what it is. I'll tell you another thing. I don't believe Ben Dykes has bought it, and I doubt very much if you have. Ben may not like me much, I don't know, but he knows damn well I'm not a sap. He went after me as well as he could because you told him to and you're the boss.