Rex Stout - Death of a Dude

When I stopped the car between a couple of big firs and got out there was no one in sight, and around at the river side of the house, where there were chairs and tables on a carpet of needles, still no one; but when I crossed to the screen door and sang out, "Anybody home?" a voice told me to come in and I entered. The room was about half the size of the big room in Lily's cabin, and on a rug in the middle of it a woman with red hair was stretched out on her back with her head propped on a stack of cushions. As I approached she tossed a magazine aside, said, "I recognized your voice," and patted her mouth for a yawn.

I stopped a polite four paces short and said I hoped I hadn't disturbed a nap. She said no, she did her sleeping at night, and added, "Don't mind it, please, I'm too lazy to pull down my skirt. I hate pants." She patted a yawn. "If you didn't come to see me you're out of luck. They all left at dawn to ford the river and ride up the mountain to try to see some elk, and there's no telling when they'll get back. Are you still-uh, well-trying to get your friend out of jail?"

"Just for something to do. Shall I pull the skirt down?"

"Don't bother. If you came to see me I can't imagine what for, but here I am."

I smiled down at her to show I appreciated the chitchat. "Actually, Mrs Amory, I didn't come to see anyone. I only wanted to tell Bill that I'm leaving the car here to go for a look at Blue Grouse Ridge. If he comes before I do, tell him, will you?"

"Of course, but he won't." She brushed a strand of the red hair back from her temple. "That's where it happened, isn't it?"

I said yes and turned to go, but turned back to her voice. "I guess you know I'm the only one here that's rooting for you. They all think he- I forget his name-"

"Greve. Harvey Greve."

She nodded. "They all think he did it. I know an intelligent man when I see one, and I think you're one, and I bet you know what you're doing. Good luck."

I thanked her and went.

I knew Blue Grouse Ridge because it was the best place around for huckleberries, and Lily and I had been there often-sometimes for berries and sometimes for young blue grouse which, about ten weeks old and grubbed almost exclusively on berries, were as good eating as anything Fritz had ever served. Of course it was against the law to take them, so of course we didn't overdo it. We had gone to the ridge, for berries, not blue grouse, just two days before Brodell was killed, with Diana Kadany and Wade Worthy.

I could have got there cross-country from the Bar JR or the cabin, but it was twice as far and rough going part of the way. From Farnham's it was only a mile or so with no hard climbing. Beyond the barn and corrals there was a close stand of firs on a down slope with no windfalls, and thick soft duff underfoot, then a rocky stretch I had to zigzag through, and then a big field of bear grass up the slope of the ridge. The bear grass, dry and tough in August, slowed me down, trying to tangle my legs. When I was through it, fifty yards or so short of the crest, I turned left and went parallel with the ridge, looking for signs-trampling of feet or brush cleared, anything. I am no mountain tracker, but certainly there would be something that would show even a dude where enough men had come to pack out a two-legged carcass. But the first sign that placed it for me was one that could have been anywhere on earth, as good on Herald Square as on Blue Grass Ridge-blood. There was a blotch of it, or what had been left of it by the tongue of some animal, on the surface of a boulder, and a narrow ribbon of it down the boulder to the lower edge. At the upper edge of the boulder there was a big clump of berry bushes, so he had been standing there picking berries when the bullet came from behind.

Having seen the blood first, I then saw a lot of other signs which a native would probably have seen first: twigs and branches of bushes, including huckleberries, twisted and broken, rocks that had recently been moved, paintbrush trampled, and so on. Feet and hands had been busy all around, even up above the boulder, and that must have been in a search for the bullets. Having detected that, I turned to face downhill to consider the detail that I was most interested in, cover for the approach. There was nothing much within a hundred feet but berry bushes and boulders, with a scattering of paintbrush and other small stuff, but beyond there was higher growth and trees. It would have been a cinch for even a New York character like me to get within forty yards of the target, let alone a man who knew how to stalk deer and elk. But forty yards is too far to count on a hand gun, so it had been a rifle, and in the middle of a Montana summer nobody goes out with a rifle for anything with four legs, except maybe a coyote, and you don't climb Blue Grouse Ridge for a coyote.

I picked a handful of berries and went and sat on a rock. I may as well admit it, I had been ass enough to hope that a look at the scene would give me a notion of some kind that would open a crack. It hadn't and it wouldn't. This wasn't my world, and if in that jumble of outdoor stuff there was some hint of who had sneaked up on Philip Brodell and plugged him, it wasn't for me. Three hours wasted. When a chipmunk showed and darted into a clump, I picked up a pebble the size of a golf ball, and when he skipped out I threw it at him, and of course missed. And at the cabin some of my best friends were chipmunks. Pleased with nothing whatever, I headed downhill and made it back to Farnham's and the car without breaking a leg. There was no one around. It was a little after five-thirty when I arrived at the cabin, and supper was at six.

The rule was to go to supper as you were, but sweat had dried on me, so I went to my room and rinsed off and changed to a PSI shirt and brown woolen slacks. As I was brushing my hair there was a tap on the door of the little hall between Lily's room and mine and I went and opened it to her. She was still in the same green shirt and slacks, and when she saw I had changed she said, "Company coming?" and I told her where I had been, spotting the bloody boulder for her by saying it was about two hundred yards north of where she had once watched me pick a fool hen off a tree with one hand. Also I told her about my talks with Alma and Carol.

"I don't know about you," I said, "but I've bought it. I have filed her. Her hand on a Bible might not have sold me, but her hand on that saddle did."

Lily had puckered her lips. She unpuckered them and nodded. "All right, then that's settled. I wanted to try that saddle on Cat once just to see how it sat, and she wouldn't let me. You were right. If she had shot him she would have told you. But don't get the idea that you're a better judge of women than I am."

Not meaning that she had wanted to try the saddle on a bobcat or mountain lion. She had named her pinto mare Cat because of the way she had jumped a ditch the first day she rode her, three years ago.

We ate breakfast and lunch in the kitchen, on a table by the big window, and sometimes supper too, but usually the place for supper was the screened terrace on the creek side. It was more trouble because Lily brought no one but Mimi from New York and wouldn't have local help, and the table-waiting was done by us. That evening it was filets mignons, baked potatoes, spinach, and raspberry sherbet, and everything but the potatoes had come from the king-size walk-in deep freeze in the storeroom. The filets mignons had been shipped by express from Chicago, packed in dry ice. You might suppose that with all of the thousands of tons of beef on the hoof just across the creek, Lily's property, there was a better and cheaper way, but that had been tried and found wanting.