Rex Stout - Double for Death

“No.”

“Didn’t the possibility occur to you that it was that gun that had killed your father?”

“Yes.”

“And that it might therefore be an important clue. So you were willing to hamper the investigation of your father’s murder?”

“No. I wasn’t hampering it. I knew you had the gun that had killed him, because I heard Colonel Brissenden say it was there on the floor, though I hadn’t seen it. If it was the gun I had left in my car and the murderer had got it from there it wouldn’t have helped you any to know that, because any one who was around could have got it. As a matter of fact, I would probably have told you about it if it hadn’t been that sap Brissenden that was questioning me. And I would have told even him, if he had had the brains to show me the gun and ask me if I had ever seen it. I was expecting he would—”

“He couldn’t, at that time. It was away being tested. We had to establish that that gun had fired the bullet — What is it, Colonel?”

“We ought to get him out of here! Take him to the courthouse!”

Inspector Damon caught Derwin’s eye and, barely perceptibly, shook his head. The district attorney hesitated a moment and then returned to Jeffrey:

“If you object to the audience, Mr. Thorpe—”

“Not at all,” Jeffrey declared. “I’m not going to your damned courthouse as long as I have any alternative.”

“Very well. After you learned from your sister that we had identified the gun as the property of Tecumseh Fox, why didn’t you come forward and tell us about it?”

“I was making up my mind to. I knew then I’d have to. She only told me a little before dinner started.”

“Oh.” Derwin sounded sceptical. “That made you decide to tell, did it?”

“Yes.”

“But you weren’t in any hurry. You had to have dinner first. A vital piece of information for the inquiry into the murder of your father, but any time this week would do.”

“I said I was making up my mind.” Jeffrey’s color had heightened. “I deny it was a vital piece of information. I didn’t say ‘any time this week.’ You can leave the sneers for the colonel.”

“I wasn’t sneering, Mr. Thorpe, I was commenting, I think not improperly, on your attitude — or rather, your actions. It seems to me reasonable to say that if they were not actuated by a sense of guilt, they displayed a remarkable apathy towards the object of our investigation. If you resent my remark, I resent your failure to impart information in your possession. It costs us, at the least, much valuable time. I should think Fox would also resent it, since he narrowly escaped arrest as a material witness. And speaking of the motivation of your actions, what did you borrow the gun for? What were you going to do with it?”

Jeffrey nodded gloomily. “Uh-huh. That’s where you’ve got me.”

“Why have I got you?”

“Because the only explanation I can give for borrowing the gun will sound loony. It was loony. I’ll have to drag Miss Grant in again. Do you remember that photograph of her you showed me yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“And later you showed it to my father and he didn’t deny it had been given to him?”

“Yes.”

“All right. When you showed it to him and he didn’t deny it was his, I wished in my heart he had been killed instead of that fellow at the bungalow. I wanted him dead. I wanted—”

“Jeffrey!” Fuller’s voice was sharply warning. “You don’t need to—”

“Let me alone,” said Jeffrey impatiently. “I’m all right. I wanted to kill him myself and by God, if I found — I would have. But last evening at Fox’s place I learned that that was bunk. My father had never even seen Miss Grant. So when I left there I was feeling exuberant. Call it that or call it loony. Anyhow I had a reaction and I was feeling better toward my father than I ever had in my life, and I was ashamed because I had wanted to kill him, and the reaction to that was that I wanted to protect him—”

“Tchah!” Brissenden snorted.

Jeffrey ignored it. “I knew the man in the bungalow had been killed by someone who wanted to kill my father. I thought he wouldn’t stop with one attempt and he might make another one any minute, even that very night. I felt like protecting him. When I saw him — Pavey — there on the porch with a gun as we went out, on an impulse I asked to borrow it. By the time I got home, I was already feeling silly, because I was so seldom where my father was that my chances of protecting him were practically non-existent. When I dressed this morning, I put the gun in my pocket, because I expected to drive over to Fox’s place during the morning and return it, and then Miss Grant and her uncle suddenly arrived and put that out of my mind.”

He looked at Nancy. “I hope you’ll forgive me for dragging you in so often.”

“You can’t help it,” she replied. “I dragged myself in by taking Uncle Andy to that bungalow.” She moved her eyes to the district attorney and spoke to him: “Anyway, this is all stupid. I didn’t interrupt before because I thought Mr. Thorpe would want to explain about the gun in any case. But he couldn’t possibly have killed his father, because at the moment the shot was fired he was on the other side of the house behind the rose trellis and I was looking straight at him.”

She might as well have lit the fuse of a giant firecracker and tossed it under their feet.

Miranda stared at her an instant and then jumped and threw her arms around her. Jeffrey goggled at her. Tecumseh Fox threw up his hands. Brissenden and Derwin were speechless. Inspector Damon gazed at her pessimistically.

“Nancy! You lovely Nancy!” Miranda cried, squeezing her.

Jeffrey said in a tone of solemn awe, “By God. But you weren’t. I didn’t kill my father and that will be all right somehow, but you know damn well you didn’t see me.”

Nancy nodded not at him but at Derwin. “Yes, I did. I was looking straight at him when I heard that shot.”

Brissenden started a bark, “You have stated... you have absolutely stated—”

“I know what I’ve stated.” Nancy’s tone was spirited. “I said I didn’t see him. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that all the time I was sitting on the terrace I knew he was there behind the trellis watching me. I did know it. I saw him. The reason I didn’t get up and go somewhere else was that I was tired and didn’t want to move, and it was cool there. I’m telling the truth about it now because — all this about the gun — I couldn’t very well let an innocent man be accused of murder — not even him—”

“Why did you run to the swimming pool?” Derwin demanded.

“Because I thought that was where the shot came from.”

“You have stated that you had been with Jeffrey Thorpe at the swimming pool and you thought he was still there.”

“I had been with him at the swimming pool. Or he had been with me. He followed me. I said I thought he was still there because I wasn’t admitting that I knew he was behind the rose trellis.”

“But if you knew he wasn’t at the pool, why did you think the shot came from there?”

“Because,” said Nancy patiently, “it sounded like it. I’m not an expert on acoustics, but no doubt—”

“I said all along to get him out of here,” Brissenden blurted savagely. “She would never have been able to play that trick if you hadn’t let him—”

“Shut up!” Derwin told him.

Another voice broke in. “May I make a request?” It was Tecumseh Fox. “You fellows are about played out. It’s getting on your nerves and I don’t blame you. Every fish you make a grab for slips right out of your hands. I’ve had it happen to me. Haven’t you, Inspector?”