Rex Stout - Double for Death

Luke Wheer said with explosive approval, “That’s telling him, Mr. Fox!”

Vaughn Kester observed, his eyes merely frosty again, “You had me worried. If Mr. Thorpe were alive, he would feel that his judgment of men had once more been confirmed—”

“Get them out of here!” Derwin barked at the trooper. The trooper opened the door, and they about-faced and tramped out.

Fox unfolded his arms and stretched. “I apologize,” he said courteously. “I’ve been sitting too long. I have another suggestion to offer: I’ll swap a couple of ideas for a little information. Such as whether the shot was fired from outdoors, through those open windows, or from inside the house. I suspect the former. I couldn’t detect any smell in here. Also, the fact that Miss Grant, sitting on the side terrace, guessed that the shot came from the direction of the swimming pool, is quite understandable if the shot was fired outdoors, otherwise less so. Of course anyone who was in the house could have slipped out by the hall entrance, fired through the windows and slipped back in again. But if the shot was fired outdoors, how did the gun get in here on the floor? Thrown in, do you think? Pretty slick. It’s an extraordinarily fine problem, if it’s still open, and I suppose it is or you wouldn’t be fooling with me. How did Miss Grant’s scarf get in here? Did the murderer use it to cover his hand? I suspect so, since the examination we let you make apparently didn’t get any results. In that case, it was someone who had an opportunity to get it from the seat of the car where she left it. Does that eliminate anybody? I suppose not. And who has an alibi and who hasn’t? With the authority you have to drag them in—”

“Shut up!” said Derwin savagely. “You’re making a mistake not telling me about that check.”

“No. I’m not. Even if it were a mistake I’d have to make it, because a part of the job was the pledge of secrecy that went with it. What about the swap I suggested?”

“Swap? If you have any information regarding—”

“I didn’t say information, I said ideas. For export, to be balanced by imports. I’d like very much to examine Miss Grant’s scarf. Also to know whether it was the same gun as the one that fired the bullet that killed Arnold Sunday night. You must have sent it to a microscope. Information is what I want.”

“You won’t get it from me.”

“I’m sorry.” Fox stood up. “Are we through?”

“We are for now.”

“I suppose I’m to stick around?”

“No. I can get you if I want you. I don’t want you around this house. You talk too much.”

“The devil you say.” Fox frowned. “You can’t put a guest out, you know. I was invited here by the owner.”

“The owner is dead.”

“The previous owner is dead. The present one is alive. Property rights hate a vacuum as much as nature does. You say I talk too much. I hereby inform you that I am now going to have a private talk with Mrs. Pemberton.”

Derwin looked him in the eye. “You will leave this place within an hour. If it’s necessary to escort you, I’ll provide the escort.” He turned to the trooper. “Bring in Henry Jordan and ask Colonel Brissenden to step in here a moment.”

In the side hall between the library and the music room, two men in unpressed summer-weight suits with straw hats on the back of their heads were having a muttered conversation. Fox pushed past them to get at the door which was an exit to the side of the house which had the French windows, but all he saw out there was two state troopers and a bareheaded man in shirt sleeves going over the lawn and shrubbery inch by inch. Fox re-entered the house, approached a man standing on guard at the door of the music room and said, “If you please. Is Andrew Grant still in there with Colonel Brissenden?” The man nodded without speaking.

Fox detoured through another room to reach the hall which led to the terrace at the other side of the house, but found no one visible except a trooper seated in the hall, and on the terrace a Bascom uniformed guard trying to take something out of the eye of a muscular giant whom Fox recognized as Lem Corbett, a county detective. Fox went on by and took to the lawn. As he rounded the far corner of the house he heard voices and found their source when he reached the front terrace. It was a sufficiently curiously assorted quartet to cause him to send them a second glance, but he was going on without halting when one of them called:

“Fox! Come here a minute!”

He altered his course. The same voice, which was that of Harlan McElroy, the hollow-cheeked multiple director, resumed:

“This is Mr. Fuller, of Mr. Thorpe’s counsel. Tilden, this is Tecumseh Fox.”

Fox shook hands with the lawyer, who looked nondescript except for his bitter sensitive mouth and hard noncommittal eyes. Then he glanced at Nancy Grant and Jeffrey Thorpe and asked casually, “Having a conference?”

“Oh, no,” Fuller said, “I’m just getting a picture of what happened before I see the district attorney. This is a frightful business. Frightful. Miss Grant informs me that you are acting in her interest.”

“I’m not doing much in anyone’s interest, I’m afraid,” Fox admitted. “I was engaged by her for her uncle in connection with the murder of Arnold, Sunday night.” He looked at Jeffrey. “How did you get along with the colonel? No blows struck?”

Jeffrey grunted. “I behaved myself pretty well. He was sore at me to start with because I told him to go to hell the other day. He kept going over and over where I was, and why and why not, when I heard the shot fired that killed my father.”

“Where were you, by the way?”

“I was out behind the rose trellis, going over my past. I could see Miss Grant sitting on the terrace, but she couldn’t see me. When she darted off towards the swimming pool I started to run after her, but then someone in the house let out a yell and I turned and headed for that.”

Fox nodded. “I’ve heard a lot about that yell, but I don’t know yet who yelled it.”

“Vaughn did. Kester. He was the first one in there. The other thing the colonel kept harping on, they’ve learned from some kind friend that I had been trying to get a stake from my father and hadn’t been able—”

Fuller interposed, “I don’t think it’s necessary to go into that, Jeffrey—”

“Nuts. You mean in front of Fox? They took it down in shorthand, didn’t they?” He returned to Fox. “Mr. Fuller is a lawyer. He sends for Miss Grant to speak to her, and what he wants is to ask her to lie and say she saw me standing behind the rose trellis at the time the shot was fired, so I can’t be charged with murdering my father! That’s the kind of—”

Fuller started to sputter. McElroy put a restraining hand on him. “Take it easy, Clint, the boy’s upset.”

“Yes,” said Jeffrey truculently, “I’ll tell the world I’m upset!”

Nancy put in, in a thin voice, “He didn’t ask me to lie, Mr. Thorpe.”

“Of course I didn’t!” Fuller declared. “I merely wanted to establish definitely whether you had seen him or not.”

“Well, she didn’t,” said Jeffrey. “Are you my lawyer? That’s fine. I’ve got no alibi and the cops know I didn’t like my father, and I’ll inherit a pile from him, and I wanted money and he wouldn’t give it to me. Work on that.” He turned precipitately and tramped off across the terrace, unheeding Fuller’s call:

“Jeffrey! I want to ask—”

“Let him alone,” McElroy said. “He’s upset. We can find him when we’re through with Miss Grant and Fox.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to postpone me too,” said Fox. “I have to find Mrs. Pemberton and arrange not to get thrown off the place. Do you know where she is?”