Rex Stout - Death of a Dude

"I missed a chance," I said, "of seeing them with him, but I didn't know he would be dead in about twenty hours. Farnham invited Miss Rowan and her guests to supper Wednesday, and she and Diana went, but Worthy and I didn't. I have no ironbound rule against eating a meal with a man who has seduced a girl, but Brodell wasn't on my list of pets anyhow, so I skipped it and won eighty cents at gin rummy with Worthy, who was off his feed and wanted to go to bed early."

I flipped a hand. "They're good samples of the possibles. At the Farnham place there are a cook and houseworker, two wranglers, four dudes, and Farnham himself. At the Bar JR there are Flora Eaton, who does laundry and house chores, Mel Fox, in charge now with Harvey gone, and two cowboys. Carol and Alma, the wife and daughter, are crossed off-not just their mutual alibi, I'll tell you why when we're on details. That's fifteen possibles who were within walking distance, and add the adult population of Monroe County. Anyone could have driven here, and about two miles beyond where you turned off on the lane to this cabin he could have left the car and climbed the ridge. Farnham says that last year Brodell was in Timberburg three or four times, and I spent three days there digging up contacts."

"He took a box of huckleberries to the girl who sells tickets at the movie theater," Lily said.

Wolfe grunted. "Was it a mania? Did he come here from St. Louis only to pick huckleberries?"

I said no, he also rode horses and fished. "Much of my three days in Timberburg was spent on Gilbert Haight-on people who know him. Besides the Greves, he's the only one with any visible known motive. His alibi could be a phony, but to crack it you'd have to prove that at least three people are liars, and you couldn't expect any help from the county men, since his father is the sheriff. One of the aspects of the situation is Sheriff Haight's personal slants on it. It suits him fine to have Harvey on the hook for murder, because Harvey was pretty active against him when he ran for sheriff. The county attorney, Thomas R. Jessup, is not so keen on it because Harvey helped some to get him elected, but he can't stall even if he wants to because he's stuck with the evidence Haight has collected. Haight would love it if Jessup got a black eye, and vice versa, and it would be nice to find a way to take advantage of that, but I haven't come up with one. I can't even get to Jessup, probably because he thinks the case against Harvey is so strong that he has to go along."

Wolfe nodded. "The Attorney General told me that the county attorney is a man of ability and integrity and good judgment."

"Which may be true, in spite of something he did yesterday. He came here yesterday afternoon with the defence counsel, the lawyer Miss Rowan has hired, to ask her some questions. He wanted to know-they wanted to know-if Miss Rowan had-"

I stopped because I heard a car out front. Lily rose, but I said I would go, and when I did she came along, down the hall and on out to the terrace. It was the taxi, and the hackie had opened the rear door and was lifting out a big tan leather suitcase which hadn't been out of the basement storeroom in the brownstone on West 35th Street for six years. The new guest's luggage had come.

Chapter 5

At a quarter past three the next afternoon. Thursday, Nero Wolfe and I were sitting on rocks, facing each other. We had been there more than three hours. The top of his rock, about chair-height from the ground, was level and flat and fairly smooth, and had plenty of room for his rump. Mine was more rugged, level enough but far from smooth, but I had eased it by standing from time to time. To Wolfe's right there was a tangle of brush, to his rear and left there were trees, mostly jack pine, and to his front, at a distance of some ten yards, Berry Creek was skimming and skittering over its rocky bottom toward the cabin, which was about half a mile away.

The night before, after leaving him in his room, Lily and I had agreed that he shouldn't be pampered. He was in rough country and would have to rough it. If he wanted any of the frills to which he was accustomed, such as breakfast on a tray in his room, he would load it in the kitchen and carry it in himself. He would make his bed or not make it, as he chose, as we all did. I had gone back to his room, found him already under the electric blanket, and told him the household routine, and he had grunted and turned over.

The breakfast hour was nine o'clock, and usually we all made it unless there was something special on the program-except Diana, who often slept late. That morning she was right on time, probably because there was a new man to practice on. Of course Mimi knew Wolfe's reputation on food, and I gave her a grin when I saw her putting paprika on the scrambled eggs, and again when I saw that she had nearly doubled the amount of bacon and bread slices for toast. Also instead of three kinds of jam on the table there were six. As Wade Worthy sat he said, "A reputation like yours has advantages, Mr Wolfe. Such abundance!"

"Don't mind him," Diana said. She patted Wolfe's sleeve with two fingertips. "He's just jealous. I would love to butter a toast for you."

Wolfe declined the offer but didn't scowl at her. A guest is a jewel. Mimi brought another platter of eggs, and they had paprika too.

After breakfast Wolfe and I had gone to his room and I helped him unpack. I admit that smacked of pampering, but I was curious. And as I had suspected when I had helped the hackie with the luggage, he had prepared for an extended stay when he left home; there was another suit-the brown worsted with little green specks-another pair of shoes, five shirts, ten pairs of socks, and so forth, including four books, one of which he may have brought along for possible reference. It was Man's Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State. By Peter Farb. He may have supposed that a Blackfoot or Chippewa might be a suspect and he wanted to know how, their minds work.

When everything was unpacked and in place in drawers and the closet, I had made a suggestion. "If it's to be a full report, it will take hours, and you're used to a larger room. Mine is twice the size of this, or there's the big room, or the terrace. You would probably-"

"No," he said.

"No? No report?"

"Not here. Last evening I was constantly aware that we might be overheard, outside through the window or inside through the door or wall. Our discussions of problems have always been in a soundproofed room, secure, no unwanted interruptions. Whereas here-there are three women on the premises, and one of them is a congenital pest. Confound it, can't we go somewhere?"

"If you mean somewhere under a roof, no. Outdoors, almost anywhere. I know dozens of nice spots for a picnic. The storeroom shelves aren't as full as they were a month ago, but there's sturgeon, ham, dried beef, four kinds of cheese-we can take our pick. There's half a roast turkey in the kitchen refrigerator. The temperature of the creek is perfect for beer."

"How far?"

"Anywhere from a hundred yards to a hundred miles. If we take horses…"

He glared at me and asked where the storeroom was.

It was nearly eleven o'clock when we hit the trail because he spent a good twenty minutes looking over the storeroom shelves and cupboards, and anyway I had to go and tell Lily and change my shoes and pack the knapsack with the grub. When we left, by the morning terrace, Diana, there in a chair, looked up at Wolfe and put on a pout and said she would have loved to come along, and he didn't actually growl at her.