Rex Stout - Immune to Murder

I had my own personal program and had cleared it with our host the evening before. Ever since I caught my first little shiner at the age of seven in an Ohio creek, at sight of wild water I have always had twin feelings: that there must be fish in it, and that they needed to be taught a lesson. Admitting that the Crooked River was privately stocked, the fish didn’t know it and were just as cocky as if they had never been near a hatchery. So I had arranged matters with Bragan. The five anglers were due back at the lodge at eleven-thirty, leaving the whole three miles vacant. Wolfe didn’t intend to join them at the lunch table anyhow, and certainly I wouldn’t be missed. I would have two hours for it, and Bragan told me, though not very cordially, to help myself to tackle and waders from the cabinets and drawers.

After breakfast I offered to go and help in the kitchen, chopping herbs and mushrooms and doing other chores, but Wolfe said I would only be in the way, so I went to the cabinets and started poking around. That was quite a collection, considering that five men had already helped themselves, presumably to the best. I finally ended up with a Walton Special three-piece rod, a Poughqueag reel with a seven-taper Maxim line, tapered leaders, a fly box with two dozen assorted flies, a 14-inch willow creel, an aluminum-frame net, and Wethersill waders. Assaying at around four hundred bucks on the hoof, I went to the kitchen and got three roast-beef sandwiches and a pair of chocolate bars and stowed them in the creel.

Not bothering to take off the waders, I moseyed outdoors for a look at the sky and a feel of the wind. It was a fine day, maybe too fine for good fishing, with a few white clouds floating high above the pines, not enough to discourage the sun, and a baby breeze sliding in from the southwest. The river curved around the lodge in almost a full semicircle, with the lodge’s main veranda, about the size of a tennis court, facing the big bulge of the curve. I found myself faced with a problem in etiquette. Toward one end of the veranda, ten yards to my left, was seated Adria Kelefy, reading a magazine. Toward the other end, ten yards to my right, was seated Sally Leeson, her chin propped on her fist, gazing across the veranda rail at nature. Neither had paid me any visible or audible attention. The problem was, should I wish them good morning, and if so, which one first, the ambassador’s wife or the Assistant Secretary of State’s wife?

I passed. If they wanted a snubbing contest, okay. But I thought they might as well realize the kind of man they were snubbing, so I acted. There were no trees between the veranda and the river, which wasn’t a river at all, merely a creek. From the assortment on the veranda I took an aluminum chair with a canvas seat and high back, carried it down the steps and across the clearing, put it on a level spot ten feet from the creek’s edge, got a Gray Hackle from my fly book and put it on the leader, sat in the chair, leaning back to rest my head comfortably, whipped a little line out, dropped the fly onto the ripples, let it float twenty feet downstream, whipped it back gently, and put it out again.

If you ask whether I expected a hit in that unlikely piece of riffle, the answer is yes. I figured that a guy who went to that much trouble to put on an act for the wives of two big men who had snubbed him deserved some co-operation from a mature male trout, and if he deserved it why shouldn’t he get it? I might have, too, if Junior hadn’t come along and spoiled it. About the twentieth cast my eyes caught a tiny flash and my fingers felt the take, and there I was with Junior on. I gave him the air immediately, hoping he would flop off, but he had it good. If it had been Daddy I could have tired him out, swung him in to me, and taken him off the hook with a dry hand, since he would soon be on the menu, but that little cuss had to be put back with a wet hand. So I had to leave the chair, to dip a hand in the creek before I touched him, which ruined the act.

As I put him back where he belonged, having taught him a lesson, I was considering my position. To return to the chair and carry on as if nothing had happened was out of the question. That damn minnow had made a monkey of me. I might back up in the clearing and do some serious practice casting — but then the sound of steps came, and a voice. “I didn’t know you could fish like that from a chair! Where is it?” She said “feesh.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Kelefy. I put it back. Too small.”

“Oh!” She had reached me. “Let me.” She put out a hand. “I’m going to catch one.” She looked fully as portable in the strong daylight as she had at night, and the dark eyes just as sleepy. When a woman has eyes like that, a man with any scientific instinct at all wants to find out what it takes to light them up. But a glance at my wrist told me I would be shoving off in eighteen minutes, not time enough to get acquainted and start on research, especially with Sally Leeson sitting there on the veranda gazing, apparently now at us.

I shook my head. “It would be fun to see you catch a fish,” I told her, “but I can’t give you this rod because it isn’t mine. Mr. Bragan lent it to me, and I’m sure he’ll lend you one. I’m sorry. To show you how sorry I am, would you care to know one thing I thought as I looked at you last evening at the dinner table?”

“I want to catch a fish. I never saw a fish caught before.” She actually reached to close her fingers on the rod.

I held on. “Mr. Bragan will be here any minute.”

“If you give it to me I’ll let you tell me what you thought last evening.”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure I remember it anyhow. Skip it.”

No spark in the eyes. But her hand left the rod and her voice changed a little, person to person. “Of course you remember. What was it?”

“Let’s see, how did it go? Oh yes. That big green thing in the ring on your husband’s left hand — is it an emerald?”

“Certainly.”

“I thought it might be. So I was thinking your husband should display his assets more effectively. With those two assets, the emerald and you, he should have combined them. The best way would be an earring on your right ear, with nothing on the left ear. I had a notion to suggest it to him.”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t like it. I like pearls.” She reached again for a hold on the rod. “Now I’ll catch a fish.”

It looked as if we were headed for a tussle, with a good chance of breaking the Walton Special, but an arrival broke it up. James Arthur Ferris, his lanky length fully accoutered, stepped into the clearing and approached, speaking. “Good morning, Mrs. Kelefy! A glorious day, glorious!”

Snubbed again. But I understood; I had beaten him 100 to 46 at the billiard table.

“I want to catch a fish,” Mrs. Kelefy told him, “and this man won’t give me his rod. I’ll take yours.”

“Of course,” he gushed. “With great pleasure. I have a Blue Dun on, but if you’d rather try something else—”

I was on my way.

The general run of the creek — all right, river, then — was to the north, but of course it did a lot of twisting and dodging, as shown on a big wall map at the lodge. The three miles of private water were divided into five equal stretches for solo fishing, with the boundaries of the stretches marked by numbered stakes. Two of the stretches were to the south from the lodge, upstream, and the other three to the north, downstream. As arranged the evening before, for that day Spiros Papps and Ambassador Kelefy had the two to the south, and Ferris, Leeson, and Bragan the three to the north.

I am not a dry-fly man, and am no big thrill with a wet fly, so the idea was to start at the upper end and fish downstream, and I headed south on the trail, which, according to the map, more or less ignored the twists of the river and was fairly straight. Less than fifty paces from the lodge I met Spiros Papps, who greeted me with no apparent malice or guile and lifted the lid of his creel to show me seven beauties averaging well over ten inches. A quarter of a mile farther on here came Ambassador Kelefy, who was going to be a little late getting back but nevertheless also had to show me. He had eight, and was pleased to hear that he was one up on Papps.