by Rex Stout
Chapter 4
At one-fifteen P.M. Clark Hobart, District Attorney of Westchester County, narrowed his eyes at me and said, “You’re dry behind the ears, Goodwin. You know what you’re letting yourself in for.”
We were in his office at the Court House, a big corner room with four windows. He was seated at his desk, every inch an elected servant of the people, with a strong jaw, a keen eye, and big ears that stuck out. My chair was at an end of the desk. In two chairs in front of it were Captain Saunders of the State Police and a man I had had contacts with before, Ben Dykes, head of the county detectives. Dykes had fattened some in the two years since I had last seen him; what had been a crease was now a gully, giving him two chins, and when he sat his belly lapped over his belt. But the word was that he was still a fairly smart cop.
I met Hobart’s eyes, straight but not belligerent. “I’d like to be sure,” I said, “that you’ve got it right. They reported to you before I was brought in. I don’t suppose they twisted it deliberately, I know Ben Dykes wouldn’t, but let’s avoid any misunderstanding. I looked at the corpse and identified it as Dinah Utley. Captain Saunders asked me how well I had known her, and I said I had met her only once, yesterday afternoon, but my identification was positive. Dykes asked where I had met her yesterday afternoon, and I said at Nero Wolfe’s office. He asked what she was there for, and I said Mrs Jimmy Vail had told her to come, at Mr Wolfe’s request, so he could ask her some questions in connection with a confidential matter which Mrs Vail had hired him to investigate. He asked me what the confidential matter was, and I-”
“And you refused to tell him.”
I nodded. “That’s the point. My refusal was qualified. I said I was under instructions from Mr Wolfe. If he would tell me where the body had been found, and how and when and where she had died, with details, I would report to Mr Wolfe, and if a crime had been committed he would decide whether it was reasonable to suppose that the crime was in any way connected with the matter Mrs Vail had consulted him about. I hadn’t quite finished when Captain Saunders broke in and said Dinah Utley had been murdered and I damned well would tell him then and there exactly what she had said to Mr Wolfe and what he had said to her. I said I damned well wouldn’t, and he said he had heard how tough I thought I was and he would take me where we wouldn’t be disturbed and find out. Evidently he’s the salt-of-the-earth type. Ben Dykes, who is just a cop, no hero, insisted on bringing me to you. If what I’m letting myself in for is being turned over to Captain Saunders, that would suit me fine. I have been thinking of going to a psychiatrist to find out how tough I am, and that would save me the trouble.”
“I’ll be glad to do you that favour,” Saunders said. He moved his lips the minimum required to get the words out. Someone had probably told him that that showed you had power in reserve, and he had practiced it before a mirror.
“You’re not being turned over,” Hobart said. “I’m the chief law officer of this county. A crime has been committed. Dinah Utley was murdered. She was with you not many hours before she died, and as far as we know now, you were the last person to see her alive. Captain Saunders was fully justified in asking for the details of that interview. So am I.”
I shook my head. “He didn’t ask, he demanded. As for the crime, where and when? If a car ran over her this-”
“How do you know a car ran over her?” Saunders snapped.
I ignored him. “If a car ran over her this morning here on Main Street, and people who saw the driver say he was a dwarf with whiskers and one eye, I doubt if Mr Wolfe will think his talk with her yesterday was relevant. Having seen the body, I assume that either a car ran over her or she was hit several times with a sledgehammer, though there are other possibilities.” I turned a hand over. “What the hell, Mr Hobart. You know Mr Wolfe knows the rules.”
He nodded. “And I know how he abuses them-and you too. Dinah Utley wasn’t killed here on Main Street. Her body was found at ten o’clock this morning by two boys who should have been in school. It was in a ditch by a roadside, where it-”
“What road?”
“Iron Mine Road. Presumably it once led to an iron mine, but now it leads nowhere. It’s narrow and rough, and it comes to a dead end about two miles from Route One Twenty-three. The body-”
“Where does it leave Route One Twenty-three?”
Saunders growled, in his throat, not parting his lips. He got ignored again.
“About two miles from where Route One Twenty-three leaves Route Thirty-five,” Hobart said. “South of Ridgefield, not far from the state line. The body had been rolled into the ditch after death. The car that had run over her was there, about a hundred feet away up the road, headed into an opening to the woods. The registration for the car was in it, with the name Dinah Utley and the address Nine Ninety-four Fifth Avenue, New York twenty-eight. Also in it was her handbag, containing the usual items, some of them bearing her name. It has been established that it was that car that ran over her. Anything else?”
“When did she die?”
“Oh, of course. The limits are nine o’clock last evening and three o’clock this morning.”
“Were there traces of another car?”
“Yes. One and possibly two, but on grass. The road’s gravelly, and the grass is thick up to the gravel.”
“Anyone who saw Dinah Utley or her car last night, or another car?”
“Not so far. The nearest house is nearly half a mile away, east, toward Route One Twenty-three, and that stretch of road is seldom traveled.”
“Have you got any kind of a lead?”
“Yes. You. When a woman is murdered a few hours after she goes to see a private detective it’s a fair assumption that the two events were connected and what she said to the detective is material. Were you present when she talked with Wolfe?”
“Yes. It’s also a fair assumption that the detective is the best judge as to whether the two events were connected or not. As I said, Dinah Utley didn’t come to see Mr Wolfe on her own hook; she came because Mrs Vail told her to, to give him some information about something Mrs Vail wanted done.” I got up. “Okay, you’ve told me what I can read in the paper in a couple of hours. I’ll report to Mr Wolfe and give you a ring.”
“That’s what you think.” Saunders was on his feet. “Mr Hobart, you know how important time is on a thing like this. You realize that if you let him go in twenty minutes he’ll be out of your jurisdiction. You realize that he has information that if we get it now it might make all the difference.”
I grinned at him. “Can you do twenty pushups? I can.”
Ben Dykes told Hobart, “I’d like to ask him something,” and Hobart told him to go ahead. Dykes turned to me. “There was an ad in the Gazette yesterday headed ‘To Mr Knapp’ with Nero Wolfe’s name at the bottom. Did that have anything to do with why Mrs Vail told Dinah Utley to go to see Wolfe?”
The word that Dykes was still a fairly smart cop seemed to be based on facts. The grin I gave him was not the one I had given Saunders. “Sorry,” I said, “but I’m under orders from the man I work for.” I went to the District Attorney. “You know the score, Mr Hobart. It would be stretching a point even to hold me for questioning as it stands now, and since I wouldn’t answer the questions, and since Mr Wolfe wouldn’t talk on the phone or let anyone in the house until he gets my report, I suppose we’ll have to let Captain Saunders go without. But of course it’s your murder.”
He had his head tilted back to frown at me. “You know the penalty,” he said, “for obstructing justice.” When I said, “Yes, sir,” politely, he abruptly doubled his fists, bounced up out of his chair, and yelled, “Get the hell out of here!” As I turned to obey, Ben Dykes shook his head at me. I passed close enough to Saunders for him to stick out a foot and trip me, but he didn’t.
Down on the sidewalk, I looked at my watch: 1:35. I walked three blocks to a place I knew about, called Mary Jane’s, where someone makes chicken pie the way my Aunt Anna used to make it in
Chillicothe, Ohio, with fluffy little dumplings; and as I went through a dish of it I considered the situation. There was no point in wasting money ringing Wolfe, since he wasn’t concerned, and as for our client, there was no rush. I could call her after I reported to Wolfe. So, since I was already halfway there-well, a third of the way-why not take a look at Iron Mine Road? And maybe at the old iron mine if I could find it? If I kidnaped a man and wanted a place to keep him while I collected half a million bucks, I wouldn’t ask anything better than an abandoned iron mine. I paid for the chicken and a piece of rhubarb pie, walked to the lot where I had parked the Heron, ransomed it, and headed for Hawthorne Circle. There I took the Saw Mill River Parkway, and at its end, at Katonah, I took Route 35 east. It was a bright sunny day, and I fully appreciate things like forsythia and trees starting to bud and cows in pastures as long as I have a car that I can depend on to get me back to town. Just short of Connecticut I turned right onto Route 123, glancing at my speedometer. When I had gone a mile and a half I started looking for Iron Mine Road, and in another two-tenths there it was. After negotiating a mile of that road I wasn’t so sure that the Heron would get me back to town. I met five cars in the mile, and for one of them I had to climb a bank and for another I had to back up fifty yards. There was no problem about spotting the scene of the crime when I finally reached it. There were eight cars strung along, blocking the road completely, none of them official. A dozen women and three or four men were standing at the roadside, at the edge of the ditch, and two men at the other side of the road were having a loud argument about who had dented whose fender. I didn’t even bother to get out. To the north was thick woods, and to the south a steep rocky slope with a swamp at the bottom. I admit I was a little vague about what an abandoned iron mine should look like, but nothing in sight looked promising. I pushed the reverse button and started backing, with care, and eventually came to a spot with enough room to turn around. On the way to Route 123 I met three cars coming in.
Of the two decisions I made going back to town, I was aware of one of them at the time I made it, which was par. That one was to take my time, with half an eye on the landscape, to see how the country was making out with its spring chores, which was sensible, since I couldn’t get to 35th Street before four o’clock and Wolfe would be up in the plant rooms, where he hates to be interrupted, especially when there’s nothing stirring that he’s concerned about. I made that decision before I reached Route 35.
I don’t know when the other decision was made. I became aware of it when I found myself in the middle lane of the Thruway, hitting sixty-five. When I’m bound for New York from Westchester and my destination is on the West Side, I take the Saw Mill all the way; when my destination is on the East Side I leave it at Ardsley and get on the Thruway. And there I was on the Thruway, so obviously I was going somewhere on the East Side. Where? It took me nearly two seconds. I’ll be damned, I told myself, I’m headed for our client’s house to tell her I identified the body. Okay, that will save a dime, the cost of a phone call. And if her husband is there and they have any questions, I can answer them face to face, which is always more satisfactory. I rolled on, to the Major Deegan Expressway, the East River Drive, and the 96th Street exit.
It was ten minutes past four when, having found a space on 81st Street I could squeeze the Heron into, I entered the vestibule of the four-story stone mansion at 994 Fifth Avenue and pushed the button. The door was opened by a square-faced woman in uniform with a smudge on her cheek. I suppose the Tedder who had had the house built, Harold F.’s father, wouldn’t have dreamed of letting that door be opened by a female, so it was just as well he wasn’t around. She had a surprise for me, though she didn’t know it. When I gave my name and said I wanted to see Mrs Vail, she said Mrs Vail was expecting me, and made room for me to enter. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find once again that Wolfe thought he knew me as well as I thought I knew him, but I was. What had happened, of course, was that Mrs Vail had phoned to ask if I had identified the body, and he had told her that I would stop at her house on the way back from White Plains, though that hadn’t been mentioned by him or me. That was how well he thought he knew me. Some day he’ll overdo it. As I have said, I hadn’t known I was going to stop at her house until I found myself on the Thruway.
As the female door-opener took my coat, a tenor voice came from above, “Who is it, Elga?” and Elga answered it, “It’s Mr Goodwin, Mr Tedder,” and the tenor called, “Come on up, Mr Goodwin.” I went and mounted the marble stairs, white, wide, and winding, and at the top there was Noel Tedder. I’ve mentioned that I had seen him a few times, but I had never met him. From hearsay he was a twenty-three-year-old brat who had had a try at three colleges but couldn’t make it, who had been forced by his mother to stop climbing mountains because he had fallen off of one, and who had once landed a helicopter on second base at Yankee Stadium in the fifth inning of a ball game; but from my personal knowledge he was merely a broad-shouldered six-footer who didn’t care how he dressed when he went to the theater or the Flamingo and who talked too loud after two drinks. The tenor voice was one of those mistakes that get made when the hands are being dealt.
He took me down a wide hall to an open door and motioned me in. I crossed the sill and stopped, thinking for a second I had crashed a party, but then I saw that only five of the people in the room were alive, the rest were bronze or stone, and I remembered a picture I had seen years ago of Harold F. Tedder’s library. This was it. It was a big room, high-ceilinged, but it looked a little crowded with a dozen life-sized statues standing around here and there. If he liked company he sure had it. Mrs Vail’s voice came, “Over here, Mr Goodwin,” and I moved. The five live ones were in a group, more or less, at the far end, where there was a fireplace but no fire. As I approached, Mrs Vail said, “Well?”
“It was Dinah Utley,” I said.
“What-how-”
I glanced around. “I’m not intruding?”
“It’s all right,” Jimmy Vail said. He was standing with his back to the fireplace. “They know about it. My wife’s daughter, Margot Tedder. Her brother, Ralph Purcell. Her attorney, Andrew Frost.”
“They know about Nero Wolfe,” Mrs Vail said. “My children and my brother were asking questions, and we thought we had better tell them. Then when this-Dinah-and we’ll be asked where we were last night… I decided my lawyer ought to know about it and about Nero Wolfe. It was Dinah?”
“Yes.”
“She was run over by a car?” From Andrew Frost, the lawyer. He looked a little like the man of bronze who was standing behind his chair, Abraham Lincoln, but he had no beard and his hair was gray; and on his feet probably he wasn’t quite as tall. Presumably he had learned how Dinah had died by phoning White Plains, or from a broadcast.
“She was run over by her car,” I said.
“Her own car?”
I faced Mrs Vail, who was sitting on a couch, slumped against cushions. “On behalf of Mr Wolfe,” I told her, “I owe you two pieces of information. One, I looked at the corpse and identified it as Dinah Utley. Two, I told the District Attorney that I saw her yesterday afternoon when she came to Mr Wolfe’s office in connection with a matter you had consulted him about. That’s all. I refused to tell him what the matter was or anything about it. That’s all I owe you, but if you want to know how and when and where Dinah died I’ll throw that in. Do you want it?”
“Yes. First when.”
“Between nine o’clock last evening and three o’clock this morning. That may be narrowed down later. It was murder, because her own car ran across her chest and was there, nosed into a roadside opening, when the body was found. There was a bruise on the side of her head; she was probably hit with something and knocked out before the car was run over her. Then the-”
I stopped because she had made a sound, call it a moan, and shut her eyes. “Do you have to be utterly brutal?” Margot Tedder asked. The daughter, a couple of years younger than her brother Noel, was at the ot
her end of the couch. From hearsay, she was a pain in the neck who kept her chin up so she could look down her nose; from my personal knowledge, she was a nice slender specimen with real possibilities if she would round out a little and watch the corners of her mouth, and, seeing her walk or dance, you might have thought her hips were in a cast.
“I didn’t do it,” I told her. “I’m just telling it.”
“You haven’t said where,” Jimmy Vail said. “Where was it?”
Mrs Vail’s eyes had opened, and I preferred to tell her, since she was the client. “Iron Mine Road. That’s a narrow rocky lane off of Route One Twenty-three. Route One Twenty-three goes into Route Thirty-five seven miles east of Katonah, not far from the state line.”
Her eyes had widened. “My God,” she said, staring at me. “They killed her.” She turned to Andrew Frost. “The kidnapers. They killed her.” Back to me. “Then you were right, what Mr Wolfe said about suspecting her. That’s where-”
“Wait a minute, Althea,” Frost commanded her. “I must speak with you privately. This is dangerous business, extremely dangerous. You should have told me Monday when you got that note. As your counselor, I instruct you to say nothing more to anyone until you have talked with me. And I don’t- Where are you going?”
She had left the couch and was heading for the door. She said over her shoulder, “I’ll be back,” and kept going, on out. Jimmy moved. He went halfway to the door, stopped and stood, his back to us, and then came back to the fireplace. Ralph Purcell, Mrs Vail’s brother, said something to Frost and got no response. I had never seen Purcell and knew next to nothing of him, either hearsay or personal knowledge. Around fifty, take a couple of years either way, with not much hair left and a face as round as his sister’s, he had a habit I had noticed: when someone started to say something he looked at someone else. If he was after an effect he got it; it made you want to say something to him and see if you could keep his eye.