Rex Stout - The Second Confesion

“Not anything, Dad, really. I guess I mentioned Louis-but nothing about X and all that tosh.” “You should have had more sense.” Sperling looked at Wolfe. “Shall I get her?” Wolfe shook his head. “By no means. We'll have to risk it. That was all? None of you has reported that conversation?” They said no again.

“Very well. The police will ask questions. They will be especially interested in my presence here-and Mr Goodwin's. I shall tell them that Mr Sperling suspected that Mr Rony, who was courting his daughter, was a Communist, and that-” “No!” Sperling objected. “You will not! That's-” “Nonsense.” Wolfe was disgusted. “If they check in New York at all, and they surely will, they'll learn that you hired Mr Bascom, and what for, and then what? No; that much they must have. I shall tell them of your suspicion, and that you engaged me to confirm it or remove it. You were merely taking a natural and proper precaution. I had no sooner started on the job, by sending Mr Goodwin up here and putting three men to work, than an assault was made on my plant rooms in the middle of the night and great damage was done. I thought it probable that Mr Rony and his comrades were responsible for the outrage; that they feared I would be able to expose and discredit him, and were trying to intimidate me.

“So today-yesterday now-I came here to discuss the matter with Mr Sperling. He gathered the family for it because it was a family affair, and we assembled in the library. He then learned that what I was after was reimbursement; I wanted him to pay for the damage to my plant rooms. The whole time was devoted to an argument between Mr Sperling and me on that point alone. No one else said anything whatever-at least nothing memorable. You stayed because you were there and there was no good reason to get up and go. That was all.” Wolfe's eyes moved to take them in. “Well? ' “It'll do,” Sperling agreed.

Madeline was concentrating hard. She had a question. “What did you stay here all evening for?” “A good question, Miss Sperling, but my conduct can be left to me. I refused to leave here without the money or a firm commitment on it.” “What about Gwenn's phoning Louis to come up here?” Wolfe looked at Gwenn. “What did you tell him?” “This is awful,” Gwenn whispered. She was gazing at Wolfe as if she couldn't believe he was there. She repeated aloud, “This is awful!” Wolfe nodded. “No one will contradict you on that. Do you remember what you said to him?” “Of course I do. I just told him I had to see him, and he said he had some appointments and the first train he could make was the one that leaves Grand Central at eight-twenty. It gets to Chappaqua at nine twenty-three.” “You told him nothing of what had happened?” “No,-I didn't intend to, I was just going to tell him I had decided to call it off.” “Then that's what you'll tell the police.” Wolfe returned to Madeline. “You have an orderly mind, Miss Sperling, and you want to get this all neatly arranged. It can't be done that way; there's too much of it. The one vital point, for all of you, is that the conversation in the library consisted exclusively of our argument about paying for the damage to my plant rooms. Except for that, you will all adhere strictly to fact. If you try anything else you're sunk. You probably are anyway, if a strong suspicion is aroused that one of you deliberately murdered Mr Rony, and if one of the questioners happens to be a first-rate man, but that's unlikely and we'll have to chance it.” “I've always been a very poor liar,” Mrs Sperling said forlornly.

“Damn it,” Sperling said, not offensively. “Go up and go to bed!” “An excellent idea,” Wolfe assented. “Do that, madam.” He turned to Sperling.

“Now, if you will-” The Chairman of the Board went to the telephone.

CHAPTER Ten

At eleven o'clock the next morning, Tuesday, Cleveland Archer, District Attorney of Westchester County, said to James U. Sperling, “This is a very regrettable affair. Very.” It would probably have been not Archer himself, but one of his assistants, sitting there talking like that, but for the extent of Stony Acres, the number of rooms in the house, and the size of Sperling's tax bill. That was only natural. Wolfe and I had a couple of previous contacts with Cleveland Archer, most recently when we had gone to the Pitcairn place near Katonah to get a replacement for Theodore when his mother was sick. Archer was a little plump and had a round red face, and he could tell a voter from a tourist at ten miles, but he wasn't a bad guy.

“Very regrettable,” he said.

None of the occupants of the house had been kept up all night, not even me, who had found the body. The State cops had arrived first, followed soon by a pair of county dicks from White Plains, and, after some rounds of questions without being too rude, they had told everyone to go to bed-that is, everyone but me. I was singled out not only because I had found the body, which was just a good excuse, but because the man who singled me would have liked to do unto me as I would have liked to do unto him. He was Lieutenant Con Noonan of the State Police, and he would never forget how I had helped Wolfe make a monkey of him in the Pitcairn affair. Add to that the fact that he was fitted out at birth for a career as a guard at a slave-labour camp and somehow got delivered to the wrong country, and you can imagine his attitude When he came and saw Wolfe and me there. He was bitterly disappointed when he learned that Wolfe was on Sperling's pay roll and therefore he would have to pretend he knew how to be polite. He was big and tall and in love with his uniform, and he thought he was handsome. At two o clock one of the county boys, who was really in charge, because the body had not been found on a public highway, told me to go to bed.

I slept five hours, got up and dressed, went downstairs, and had breakfast with Sperling, Jimmy, and Paul Emerson. Emerson looked as sour as ever, but claimed he felt wonderful because of an unusual experience. He said he couldn't remember when he had had a good night's sleep, on account of insomnia, but that last night he had gone off the minute his head hit the pillow, and he had slept like a log. Apparently, he concluded, what he needed was the stimulant of a homicide at bedtime, but he didn't see how he could manage that often enough to help much. Jimmy tried half-heartedly to help along with a bum joke, Sperling wasn't interested, and I was busy eating in order to get through and take Wolfe's breakfast tray up to him.

From the bedroom I phoned Fritz and learned that Andy and the others were back at work on the roof and everything was under control. I told him I couldn't say when we'd be home, and I told Saul to stay on call but to go out for air if he wanted some. I figured that he and Ruth were in the clear, since with Rony gone no one could identify the bandits but me. I also told Saul of the fatal accident that had happened to a friend of the Sperling family, and he felt as Archer did later, that it was very regrettable.

When Wolfe had cleaned the tray I took it back downstairs and had a look around.

Madeline was having strawberries and toast and coffee on the west terrace, with a jacket over her shoulders on account of the morning breeze. She didn't look as if homicides stimulated her the way they did Paul Emerson, to sounder sleep. I had wondered how her eyes would be, wide open or half shut, when her mind was too occupied to keep them to a programme, and the answer seemed to be wide open, even though the lids were heavy and the corners not too clear.