by Rex Stout
“I wouldn’t ask for any better.” I was on my feet. “All right, you’re out, we cross you off, and it’s a job. Tell Harvey I hope I’m as good as he thinks I am. I’ll need to be.” I pointed. “The tobacco is for Mel and the fly swatters are for Pete. I won’t wait until they come in because I want to take a look at something. You heard what I said to Alma?”
“Most of it.”
“She was here with you that afternoon? All of it?”
“I’ve told you, yes.”
“And Gil Haight wasn’t here?”
“I’ve told you, no.”
I started out, turned, and said, “Still on the saddle.”
“It’s still yes and no,” she said.
Chapter 3
If the way I spent the next three hours seems not very brilliant, I haven’t made it clear enough how tough the situation was. I went to have a look at the scene of the crime.
The road from Lame Horse to the turnoffs to the Bar JR Ranch and Lily’s cabin doesn’t stop there. It keeps going for three more miles and stops for good at the Fishtail River, and there, on the right, is Bill Farnham’s dude ranch. It’s small compared with some, and deluxe compared with almost any-not counting Lily’s cabin. Farnham’s limit is six dudes at a time, and a few days before Brodell was killed a guy from Spokane had broken an arm and gone home, so now there were only four-Dr and Mrs Amory and the pair from Denver. There was no Mrs Farnham, and for help there was a female cook, a girl who did the house chores, and two wranglers named Bert Magee and Sam Peacock. There were no dude cabins and only one building of any size, a combo of log and frame with ells in the middle and at the ends, taking about half an acre. The barn and corrals were away from the river, beyond a stand of jack pine.
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 set
tled. 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.
At table on the terrace Lily always sat facing the creek, which was only a dozen steps from the terrace edge, with Wade Worthy on her left and me on her right and Diana Kadany across from her. As she picked up her knife Diana said, “I had an awful thought today. Utterly awful.”
Of course that was a cue. It was Wade Worthy who obliged her by taking it. I hadn’t fully decided about Wade. His full-cheeked face, with a broad nose and a square chin, had an assortment of grins, and they were hard to sort out. The friendly grin looked friendly, but with it he might say something sour, and with the grin that looked sarcastic he might say something nice. The one he gave Diana now was neither of those, just polite. With it he said, “You’re not a good judge of your own thoughts, no one is. Tell us and we’ll vote on it.”
“If I wasn’t going to tell you,” Diana said, “I wouldn’t have mentioned it.” She forked a bite of meat to her mouth and started to chew. She often did that; she might get a part in a play with an eating scene, and mixing chewing and talking needed practice. An actor can practice anywhere any time with anybody, and most of them do. “It was this,” she said. “If that man hadn’t been murdered, Archie wouldn’t be here. He would have left three days ago. So the murderer did us a favour. You won’t have to vote on that. That’s an awful thought.”
“We’ll thank him when we know who he is,” Lily said.
Diana swallowed daintily and took a bite of potato. “It’s no joke, Lily. It was an awful thought, but it gave me an idea for a play. Someone could write a play about a woman who does awful things-you know, she lies, she steals, she cheats, she takes other women’s husbands, she might even murder somebody. But the play would show that every time she hurts someone it helps a lot of other people. She makes some people suffer awful agonies, but she gives ten times as many people some kind of benefit. She does lots more good than she does harm. I haven’t decided what the last scene would be, that would be up to whoever writes the play, but it could be a wonderful scene, utterly wonderful. Any actress would love it. I know I would.”
The bite of potato was gone and another bite of meat was being chewed. She was really pretty good at it, but she had the advantage of a very attractive face. A girl with a good face has to be really messy to make you want to look somewhere else when she talks while she eats. Diana looked at Worthy and said, “You’re a writer, Wade. Why couldn’t you do it?”
He shook his head. “Not that kind of writer. Suggest it to Albee or Tennessee Williams. As for the murderer doing us a favour, it wasn’t much of one. We’ve seen darned little of Archie this week.” He looked at me, the friendly grin. “How’s it going?”
“Fine.” I swallowed food. “All I need now is a confession. Diana was there picking berries on the best and biggest bush, and he came and pushed her away and she shot him. Luckily-”
“What with?” Diana demanded.
“Don’t interrupt. Luckily Wade came along with a gun, out after gophers, and he shot him first but only in the shoulder, and you asked him to let you try and he handed you the gun.”
Wade pointed his knife at me. “We’re not going to confess. You’ll have to prove it.”
“Okay. Do you know about personal congenital radiation?”
“No.”
“That the personal congenital radiation of no two people is the same, like finger-prints?”
“It sounds reasonable.”
“It’s not only reasonable, it’s scientific. It’s a wonder any detective ever detected anything without modern science. I went to Blue Grouse Ridge today with a new Geiger counter, eight cents off the regular price, and it gave me Diana and you. You had both been there. All I need now-”
“Certainly we were there,” Diana said with her mouth full. “You and Lily took us there! Three or four times!”
“Prove it,” Lily said. “I don’t remember.”
“Lily! You do! You must!”
One of the difficulties about Diana was that you were never absolutely sure whether she was playing dumb or was dumb.
By the time we got to sherbet and coffee the evening had been discussed and settled. Evenings could be pinochle, reading books or magazines or newspapers, television, conversation, or private concerns in our rooms, or sometimes, especially Saturdays, contacts with natives. For that evening Wade suggested pinochle, but I said it would have to be three-handed because I was going to Lame Horse. They considered going along and decided not to, and after doing my share of table-clearing I went out and started the car.
Now I have a problem. If I report fully what I did the next four days and nights, from eight p.m. Saturday to eight p.m. Wednesday, you will meet dozens of people and be better acquainted with Monroe County, Montana, but you will not have gained an inch on the man or woman who shot Philip Brodell, because I didn’t; and you may get fed up, as I almost did. I’ll settle for one sample if you will, and the sample might as well be that Saturday evening.
Since most of the Saturday-night crowd at Lame Horse came in cars and it was only twenty-four miles to Timberburg, you might suppose they would go on to the county seat, where there was a movie house with plush seats and a bowling alley and other chances to frolic, but no. Just the opposite; Saturday night quite a few people who lived in Timberburg, as many as a hundred or more, came to Lame Horse. The attraction was a big old ramshackle frame building next to Vawter’s General Store which had a sign twenty feet long at the edge of the roof, reading:
WOODROW STEPANIAN HALL OF
CULTURE
That was the hall, usually called Woody’s. Woody, now in his sixties, had built it some thirty years ago with money left him by his father, who had peddled anything you care to name all over that part of the state even before it was a state. All of Woody’s young years had been spent in a traveling department store. At birth he had been named Theodore, for Roosevelt, but when he was ten years old his father had changed it to Woodrow, for Wilson. In 1942 Woody had considered changing it to Franklin, for another Roosevelt, but had decided there would be too many complications, including changing the sign.
First on the Saturday-night program at the hall was a movie, which started at eight o’clock and which I didn’t really need, so after parking the car down the road I went to Vawter’s. Inside the high-ceilinged room a hundred feet long and nearly as wide, it was obvious why I wouldn’t have had to go to Timberburg except for mailing the letter and consulting Who’s Who. A complete inventory would take several pages, so I mention only a few items such as frying pans, ten-gallon hats, five-gallon coffee pots, fishing tackle, magazines and paperbacks, guns and ammunition, groceries of all kinds, ponchos, spurs and saddles, cigars and cigarettes and tobacco, nuts and candies, hunting knives and kitchen knives, cowboy boots and rubber waders, men’s wear and women’s wear, a tableload of Levi’s, picture postcards, ballpoint pens, three shelves of drugs���
A
dozen or so customers were scattered around, and Mort Vawter, his wife, Mabel, and his son Johnny were busy with them. I hadn’t come to buy, or even to talk, but to listen, and after a look around I decided that the best prospect was a leather-skinned woman with stringy black hair who was inspecting a display of shoes on a counter. She was Henrietta, a halfbreed bootlegger who lived down the road, and she knew everybody. I moseyed over and said, “Hi, Henrietta. I bet you don’t remember me.”
She moved her head a little sideways to give her black eyes a slant at me, as cautious people often do. “What you bet?”
“Oh, a buck.”
“Huh. Miss Rowan’s man. Mr Archie Goodwin.” She put a hand out palm up. “One buck.”
“Huh yourself. You may not mean what you could mean, so I’ll skip it.” I had my wallet out. “It’s a pleasant surprise seeing you here.” I handed her a bill. “I would have thought you’d be busy with customers Saturday evening.”
She turned the bill over to see the other side. “Trick?” She grunted and spread her fingers, and the bill fluttered to the floor. “New trick.”
“No trick.” I picked up the finif and offered it. “One buck of this is the bet. The rest is for your time answering a couple of questions I want to ask.”
“I don’t like questions.”
“Not about you. As you know, my friend Harvey Greve is in trouble.”
She grunted. “Bad trouble.”
“Very bad. You may also know I’m trying to help him.”
“Everybody knows.”
“Yeah. And everybody seems to think I can’t, because he killed that man. You see a lot of people and hear a lot of talk. Do they all think that?”
She pointed at the bill in my hand. “I answer and you pay? Four dollars?”
“I pay first. Take it and then answer.”
She took it, looked at both sides again, poked it in a pocket in her skirt, and said, “I don’t go to the court.”
“Of course not. This is just a friendly talk.”
