Rex Stout - Some Buried Caesar

Osgood got up and went to a table to push a button, and then came back and downed his highball, which must have been as warm as Wolfe's beer by that time, in three gulps. The pug-nosed lassie appeared and was instructed to ask Miss Osgood to join us. Osgood sat down again and said:

"I don't see what you're accomplishing, Wolfe. If you think by questioning me you've eliminated everybody at Pratt's-"

"By no means. I've eliminated no one." Wolfe sounded faintly exasperated, and I perceived that it was up to me to arrange with Pug-nose for more and colder beer. "Elimination, as such, is tommyrot. Innocence is a negative and can never be established; you can only establish guilt. The only way I can apodictically eliminate any individual from consideration as the possible murderer is to find out who did it. You can't be expected to see what I am accomplishing; if you could do that, you could do the job yourself. Let me give you a conjecture for you to try your hand on: for example, is Miss Rowan an accomplice? Did she join Mr. Goodwin last night and sit with him for an hour on the running board of my car, which he had steered into a tree, to distract him while the crime was being committed? Or if you would prefer another sort of problem…"

He stopped with a grimace and began preparations to arise. I got up too, and Osgood started across the room toward the door which had opened to admit his daughter, and with her an older woman in a dark blue dress with her hair piled on top of her head. Osgood made an effort to head off the latter, and protested, but she advanced toward us any- how. He submitted enough to introduce us:

"This is Mr. Nero Wolfe, Marcia. His assistant, Mr. Good- win. My wife. Now dear, there's no sense in this, it won't help any…"

While he remonstrated with her I took a polite look. The farmer's beautiful daughter who, according to one school of thought, was responsible for Tom Pratt's unlucky idea of making beefsteak out of Hickory Caesar Grindon, was still beautiful I suppose; it's hard for me to tell when they're around fifty, on account of my tendency to concentrate on details which can't be expected to last that long. Anyway, with her eyes red and swollen from crying and her skin blotchy, it wasn't fair to judge.

She told her husband, "No, Fred, really. I'll be all right. Nancy has told me what you've decided. I suppose you're right… you always are right… now you don't need to look like that… you're perfectly right to want to find out about it, but I don't want just to shut myself away… you know Clyde always said it wasn't a pie if I didn't have my finger in it…" her lip quivered "… and if it is to be discussed with Nancy I want to be here…"

"It's foolish, Marcia, there's no sense in it." Osgood had hold of her arm. "If you'll just-"

"Permit me." Wolfe was frowning, and made his tone crisp. "Neither of you will stay. I wish to speak with Miss Osgood alone.-Confound it, sir, I am working, and for you! However I may want to sympathize with grief, I can't afford to let it interfere with my job. The job you want done. If you want it done."

Osgood glared at him, but said to his wife, "Come, Marcia." I followed them three steps and halted him: "Excuse me. It would be to everyone's advantage if he had more beer, say three bottles, and make it colder."

10

NANCY, sitting in the chair Osgood had vacated, looked more adamant than the situation seemed to call for, considering that Wolfe's client was her father. You might have thought she was confronted by hostile forces. Of course her brother had just been killed and she couldn't be expected to beam with cheerful eagerness, but hei adffness as she sat looked not only tense but antagoiwtic, and her lips, which only 24 hours before had struck me -i:, being warm and trembly, now formed a thin rigid colorless line.

Wolfe leaned back and regarded her with half-closed eyes. "We'll be as brief as we can with this. Miss Osgood," he said, with honey in his mouth. "I thought we might reach our objective a little sooner with your father and mother absent."

She nodded, her head tilted forward once and back again, and said nothing. Wolfe resumed:

"We must manage to accompany your brother yesterday afternoon as continuously as possible from the time he left Mr. Pratt's terrace. Were you and Mr. Bronson and he riding in one car?"

Her voice was low and firm; "Yes."

"Tell me briefly your movements after leaving the terrace."

"We walked across the lawn and back to the car and got in and came-no, Clyde got out again because Mr. McMillan called to him and wanted to speak to him. Clyde went over to him and they talked a few minutes and then Clyde came back and we drove home."

"Did you hear his conversation with Mr. McMillan?"

"No."

"Was it apparently an altercation?"

"It didn't look like it."

Wolfe nodded. "Mr. McMillan left the terrace with the announced intention of advising your brother not to do any- thing foolish. He did it quietly then."

"They just talked a few minutes, that was all."

"So. You returned home, and Clyde had a talk with your father.".

"Did he?"

"Please, Miss Osgood." Wolfe wiggled a finger. "Discre- tion will only delay us. Your father has described the… unpleasant scene, he called it… he had with his son. Was that immediately after you got home?"

"Yes. Dad was waiting for us at the veranda steps."

"Infuriated by the phone call from Mr. Pratt. Were you present during the scene?"

"No. They went into the library… this room. I went upstairs to clean up… we had been at Crowfield nearly all day."

"When did you see your brother again?"

"At dinnertime."

"Who was at table?"

"Mother and I, and Mr. Bronson and Clyde. Dad had gone somewhere."

"What time was dinner over?"

"A little after eight. We eat early in the country, and we sort of rushed through it because it wasn't very gay. Mother was angry… Dad had told her about the bet Clyde had made with Monte Cris-with Mr. Pratt, and Clyde was glum-"

"You called Mr. Pratt Monte Cristo?"

"That was a slip of the tongue."

"Obviously. Don't be perturbed, it wasn't traitorous, your father has told me of Mr. Pratt's rancor. You called him Monte Cristo?"

"Yes, Clyde and I did, and…" Her lip started to quiver, and she controlled it. "We thought it was funny when we started it."

"It may have been so. Now for your movements after dinner, please."

"I went to mother's room with her and we talked a while, and then I went to my room. Later I came downstairs and sat on the veranda and listened to the katydids. I was there when Dad came home."

"And Clyde?"

"I don't know. I didn't see him after I went upstairs with mother after dinner."

She wasn't much good as a liar; she didn't know how to relax for it. Wolfe has taught me that one of the most im- portant requirements for successful lying is relaxed vocal cords and throat muscles; otherwise you are forced to put on extra pressure to push the lie through, and the result is that you talk faster and raise the pitch and the blood shows in your face. Nancy Osgood betrayed all of those signs. I moved my eyes for a glance at Wolfe, but he merely murmured a question: