Rex Stout - The Second Confession

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 the 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 had 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 damages.”

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 skeptical 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 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.

I had a funny mixed feeling. I was surprised, I was even flabbergasted, that is true. But it is also that the surprise was canceled 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 the under 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.”