by Rex Stout
“Many people say Mr Greve killed him. Not all. Some people say you killed him.”
“How many?”
“Maybe three, maybe four. You know Emmy?”
I said yes. Emmy was Emmett Lake, who rode herd at the Bar JR and was known to be one of Henrietta’s best customers. “Don’t tell me he says I did it.”
“No. He say a man at Mr Farnham’s.”
“I know he does, but he doesn’t say which one. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what you think.”
“Me think? Huh.”
I gave her a man-to-woman smile. “I bet you think plenty.”
“What you bet?”
“I couldn’t prove it. Look, Henrietta, as I said, you hear a lot of talk. He was here six weeks last year-the man who was killed. He told me he bought something from you.”
“One time. With Mr Farnham.”
“Did he say anything about anybody?”
“I forget.”
“But you don’t forget what people have said about him this week, since he was killed. That’s my most important question. I don’t expect you to name anybody, only what anyone has said about him.” I got a sawbuck from my wallet and kept it visible. “It might help me help Mr Greve. Tell me what you’ve heard about him.”
Her black eyes lowered to fix on the bill and raised again. “No,” she said.
And it stayed no, though I spent ten minutes trying to budge her. I returned the sawbuck to my wallet. It wouldn’t have done any good to double it or even make it a hundred; she wasn’t going to risk being asked questions in the court even if I swore on ten saddles that she wouldn’t have to. I left her and surveyed the field. Of the dozen or more people in view, I knew the names of all but three, but none of them was likely to spill any beans, and I went out and along to Woody’s.
The hall was even bigger than Vawter’s store outside, but inside it was partitioned into three sections, with the entrance at the middle section, which had shelves and counters with displays of cultural material, some of it for sale. There were phonograph records, paperbacks, reproductions of paintings and drawings, busts of great men, facsimiles of the Declaration of Independence, and a slew of miscellaneous items like the Bible in Armenian, most of them one-of-a-kind. Very few people ever bought anything there; Woody had told Lily that he took in about twenty dollars a week. His income came from the other two sections, where you had to pay to get in-the one at the left to see a movie and the one at the right to dance and mix, both Saturdays only.
When I entered, Woody was conversing with a quartet of dudes from some ranch upriver or downriver, three men and a woman, whom I had never seen before. I listened a while, looking at paperbacks, learning nothing. Woody claimed he never offered a book for sale unless he had read it, and I won’t call him a liar. His opinion of dudes in general was fully as low as that of most of his fellow Montanans, but he liked Lily so he accepted me, and he left the quartet to come and ask me if Miss Rowan was coming. I told him no, she was tired and going early to bed, and she had asked me to give him her regards.
He wasn’t as short as Alma Greve, but he too had to tilt his head back to me. His eyes were as black as Henrietta’s, and his mop of hair was as white as the top of Chair Mountain. “I bow to her,” he said. “I kiss her hand with deep respect. She is a doll. May I ask, have you made some progress?”
“No, Woody, I haven’t. Are you still with us?”
“I am. Forever and a day. If Mr Greve shot that man like a coward I am a bow-legged coyote. I have told you I had the pleasure of meeting him when he was two years old. I was sixteen. His mother bought four blankets from my father that day and two dozen handkerchiefs. You have made no progress?”
“Not a smell. Have you?”
He shook his head, slow, his lips pursed. “I must confess I haven’t. Of course during the week I don’t see many people. Tonight there will be much talk and I’ll keep my ears open, and with some I can ask questions. You will stay?”
I said sure, that I had already asked questions of everybody who might have answers, but I would listen to the talk. A pair of dudes had entered and were approaching to speak with the famous Woody, and I went back to the paperbacks, picked one entitled The Greek Way, by Edith Hamilton, which I had heard mentioned by both Lily and Nero Wolfe, and went to a bench with it.
At 9:19 a man in a pink shirt, working Levi’s, cowboy boots, and a yellow neck rag, arrived, opened the door at the right, and set up his equipment, supplied by Woody, just outside the door-a till and a box of door checks on a little table. The gun at his belt was for looks only; Woody always checked it to make sure it wasn’t loaded. At 9:24 the musicians came-having met at Vawter’s probably, at Henrietta’s possibly-dressed fully as properly as the doorman, with a violin, an accordion, and a sax. Local talent. The piano, which Lily said was as good as hers, was on the platform inside. At 9:28 the first patrons showed, and at 9:33 the door at the left opened and the movie audience poured out, most of them across to the other door; and the fun started. The next four hours was what brought people of all ages from Timberburg, and both natives and dudes from as far away as Flat Bank. When the rush at the door had let up a little I paid my two bucks and went in. The band was playing “Horsey, Keep Your Tail Up,” and fifty couples were already on the floor, twisting and hopping. One of them was Woody and Flora Eaton, a big-boned widow out of luck who did the laundry and housework at the Bar JR. Many a dudine had tried to snare Woody for that first dance, but he always picked a native.
I said this is a sample, and I mustn’t drag it out. In those four hours at the hall I heard much and saw much, but left around one-thirty no wiser.
I heard a girl in a cherry-coloured shirt call across to Sam Peacock, one of the two wranglers at Farnham’s, who came late, “Get a haircut, Sam, you look awful,” and his reply, “I ain’t so bad now. You should have seen me when I was a yearling, they had to tie my mother up before she’d let me suck.”
I saw Johnny Vawter and Woody bounce a couple of boiled dudes who were trying to take the accordion away from the musician. The hooch that had inspired them had been brought by them, which was customary. At the bar in a corner the only items available were fizz-water, ice, paper cups, soft stuff, and aspirin.
I heard more beats and off-beats, and saw more steps and off-steps, than I had heard and seen at all the New York spots I was acquainted with.
I heard a middle-aged woman with ample apples yell at a man about the same age, “Like hell they’re milk-fake!” and saw her slap him hard enough to bend him.
I heard a dude in a dinner jacket tell a woman in a dress nearly to her ankles, “A sheet-snapper is not a prostitute. It’s a girl or a woman who makes beds.” I heard Gil Haight say to another kid, “Of course she’s not here. She’s got a baby to look after.” I saw about eight dozen people, all kinds and sizes, look the other way, or stop talking, or give me the fish-eye, when I came near.
So back at the cabin, in bed under two blankets for the cold of the night, there was nothing for my mind to work on and it turned me loose for sleep.
That’s the sample, but before skipping to Wednesday evening I must report an incident that occurred at the cabin late Tuesday afternoon. I had just got back from somewhere and was with Lily on what we called the morning terrace, the other one being the creek terrace, when a car came up the lane-a Dodge Coronet hardtop I had seen before-with two men in the front seat, and Lily said, “There they are. I was just going to tell you, Dawson phoned they wanted to see me. He didn’t say why.”
The car was there, at the edge of the lodgepoles, and Luther Dawson and Thomas R. Jessup were getting out. Seeing those two, I was so impressed that I didn’t remember my manners and leave my chair until they were nearly to us. The defence counsel and the county attorney coming together to see the owner of the ranch Harvey Greve ran had to mean that something had busted wide open, and when I did get up I had to control my face to keep it from beaming. Their faces were not beaming as they exc
hanged greetings with us and took the chairs I moved up for them, but of course the county attorney’s wouldn’t be if something had happened that was messing up a murder case for him. Lily said their throats were probably dry and dusty after their drive and asked what they would like to drink, but they declined with thanks.
“It may strike you as a little irregular, our coming together,” Dawson said, “but Mr Jessup wanted to ask you something and we agreed that it would be more in order for me to do the asking, in his presence.” Lily nodded. “Of course. Law and order.” Dawson looked at Jessup. They were both Montana-born-and-bred, but one looked it and the other didn’t. Dawson, around sixty, in a striped blue-and-green shirt with rolled-up sleeves, no tie, and khaki pants, was big and brawny and leathery, while the county attorney, some twenty years younger, was slim and trim in a dark gray suit, white shirt, and maroon tie. Dawson looked at me, opened his mouth, shut it again, and looked at Lily. “Of course you’re not my client,” he said. “Mr Greve is my client. But you paid my retainer and have said you will meet the costs of his defence. So I’ll just ask you, have you consulted-er, approached-anyone else about the case?”
Lily’s eyes widened a little. “Of course I have.”
“Who?”
“Well��� Archie Goodwin. Mrs Harvey Greve. Melvin Fox. Woodrow Stepanian. Peter Ingalls. Emmett Lake. Mimi Deffand. Mort-”
“Excuse me for interrupting. My question should have been more specific. Have you consulted anyone other than local people? Anyone in Helena?”
If she had been any ordinary woman I would have horned in, but with Lily I didn’t think it was necessary. It wasn’t. “Really, Mr Dawson,” she said, “how old are you? How many hostile witnesses would you say you have cross-examined?”
He stared at her.
“I suppose,” she said, “that lawyers have as much right to bad habits as other people, but other people don’t have to like them.” She turned to me. “What about it, Archie? Is it any of his business whom I have or haven’t consulted?”
“No,” I said, “but that’s not the point. From what he said, the question is actually being asked by Jessup, through him. It certainly is none of Jessup’s business, and they both have a hell of a nerve. I don’t know about Montana, but in New York if a prosecuting attorney asked the person who was paying the defence counsel who she had consulted, the Bar Association would like to know about it. Since you asked my opinion, if I were you I would tell both of them to go climb a tree.”
She looked at one and then the other, and said, “Go climb a tree.”
Dawson said to me, “You have completely misrepresented the situation, Mr Goodwin.”
I eyed him. “Look, Mr Dawson. I don’t wonder that you fumbled it; as you said, it’s a little irregular. If you hadn’t been fussed you would probably have handled it fine. Obviously something has happened that made Jessup think someone has been persuaded to butt in on his case, and he suspects that Miss Rowan did the persuading, and he wants to know, and so do you. Also obviously the way to handle it would have been to tell her what has happened and ask her if she had a hand in it, and it wouldn’t hurt to say please. If you don’t want to do it that way I guess you’ll have to look around for a tree.”
Dawson looked at the county attorney. Jessup said, “It would have to be understood that it’s strictly confidential.”
Dawson nodded. Lily said, “If you mean we have to promise not to tell anybody, nothing doing. We wouldn’t broadcast it just for fun, but no promises.”
Dawson turned to Jessup and asked, “Well, Tom?”
Jessup said, “I’d like to confer,” rose, and said to Lily, “Will you excuse us briefly, Miss Rowan?”
Lily nodded, and for the conference they walked over to the hardtop and behind it, and Lily asked me if I had a guess. I held up crossed fingers and said one would get her two that there was going to be some kind of a break, but as to what kind and how much, her guess was as good as mine. I no longer had to control my face to keep it from beaming.
The conference didn’t take long. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Dawson had come back alone just to say he was sorry we had been bothered, but in a few minutes they both came and took their chairs, and Dawson said, “The decision was Mr Jessup’s, not mine. I want to make it clear that I am here at all only because he thought it proper, and I agreed.” He focused on Lily. “If you won’t promise, Miss Rowan, you won’t, and I merely want to say that I join him in hoping that you and Mr Goodwin will regard what he tells you as a confidence. If I told you, it would be hearsay, so he will.”
In the last five days I had tried three times to get to Thomas R. Jessup for a private talk, and got stiff-armed. I’m not complaining, just reporting. There’s no law requiring a prosecuting attorney to talk it over with any and all friends of the defendant. It was Morley Haight, the sheriff, who had questioned me as a possible suspect or material witness. I had seen Jessup only from a distance and was appreciating the chance to size him up.
He gave Lily a politician’s smile and said, “I’m sorry there was a misunderstanding, Miss Rowan. Mr Goodwin said it wouldn’t hurt to say please, and I do say please. Please consider this a confidential communication. I confidently leave that to your discretion. Mr Goodwin said we should tell you what happened, and I’m going to. It won’t take long. Early this morning I had a phone call from a state official in Helena-a high official. He asked me to come to his office at my earliest convenience and bring my files on the Harvey Greve case. I drove to Helena and was with him nearly three hours. He wanted a complete detailed report, and after I dictated it to his secretary he asked questions, many questions.”
He turned on the politician’s smile again, for Lily, then for me, and back to her. “Now that was extraordinary. As far as I know, unprecedented, for the attor-for that state official to urgently summon a county attorney to Helena to report in detail on a case he is preparing. And a murder case. Of course I asked him what had caused such sudden and urgent interest, but I got no satisfaction. When I left his office I had absolutely no idea of the reason for it; I couldn’t even guess. I was twenty miles or more on my way back to Timberburg before it occurred to me that you might possibly have-er-intervened. You are concerned about Harvey Greve-properly, quite properly. You have retained Luther Dawson, an eminent member of the Montana bar, in his behalf. I know nothing of any political connections you may have, but a woman of your standing and wealth and background must be-must know many important people. So I turned around and drove back to Helena and went to see Mr Dawson and described the situation to him. He said he knew nothing of any approach to the-to that official, and after some discussion he agreed that it would be reasonable to ask you about it, and he phoned you. I am not suggesting that you may have acted improperly, not at all. But if a high state official is going to-er-interfere with my handling of an important case, I have a right to know why, and naturally I want to know, and naturally Mr Dawson does too, as counsel for the defence.” The smile again. “Of course if what I have said was confidential, anything you say will be confidential too.”
If they had known Lily as well as I did they would have known that the little circular movement of the toe of her shoe meant that she was good and sore. Also one of her eyes, the left, was slightly narrower than the other, which was even worse. “You’re asking me,” she said, “if I have pulled some strings with someone in Helena.”
“Well��� I wouldn’t put it in those terms.”
“I would and do. What I say isn’t confidential, Mr Jessup. I am suggesting that you have acted improperly. You’re on the other side. Why should you ask me anything at all or expect me to tell you anything? If you’ll go and sit in the car, Mr Dawson will come in a minute.”
“I assure you, Miss Rowan-”
“Damn it, do you want Mr Goodwin to drag you?” She stood up, presumably to help me drag.
Jessup looked at me, then at Dawson. Dawson shook his head. Jessup, not smiling, got up and went, d
ignified, in no hurry. When he was in the car, some twenty paces away, Lily turned to the counsel for the defence. “I don’t know if you’ve acted improperly or not, Mr Dawson, and I don’t care. Even if it was proper I don’t like it, but I’ll relieve your mind so you can use it for representing your clients, including Harvey Greve. I have approached or consulted no one ‘other than local people,’ no one in Helena or anywhere else, and I have no idea why a state official is interested in the case. Have you, Archie?”
“No.”
“Then that’s settled. Let’s go get a drink.” She headed for the cabin door, and I followed.
Inside, she went left, to the door to the long hall, but I stayed in the big room long enough to see Dawson join Jessup in the car and take the wheel. When the car had disappeared around a bend in the lane I proceeded to the hall and on to the kitchen. Lily was putting ice cubes in a pitcher, and Mimi was at the centre table, slicing tomatoes brought by me from Vawter’s.
“I’m trying to remember,” Lily said, “if I was ever as mad as I am now.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “More than once.” I got out my wallet and produced two singles and offered them. “You win, damn it.”
“Win what?”
Mimi’s round blue eyes, which fitted her round face, which fitted all her other roundnesses, darted a glance at the bills and returned to the tomatoes. We talked as freely in her presence as Wolfe and I did in Fritz’s. “I said,” I told Lily, “that one would get you two that there was going to be some kind of a break. Here’s the two. There will be no break.”
“But I didn’t take the bet. How do you know? If a high state official is interested-”
“Yeah, the Attorney General.” I stuck the bills in a pocket and brought gin and vermouth from a shelf. “He almost said it once. Haven’t you guessed who that report was for?”
“No.” She cocked her head at me. “So you have approached somebody.”
“No, not me. But one will get you ten that I know who did. I’m a detective, I figure things. I mailed that letter Saturday. He got it yesterday morning, and when he went up to the orchids he was harder for Theodore to take than usual. His appetite was off at lunch. Actually I am not absolutely essential to his convenience and comfort and welfare, nobody is, but he comes close to thinking I am. My letter left it wide open when he could expect me back-a week, a month, two months, no telling-and he hates uncertainty.”
