Some Buried Caesar

by Rex Stout

  "No. I absolutely refused."

  "He was insistent?"

  "Very. We… there was a scene. Not violent, but damned unpleasant. Now…" Osgood set his jaw, and looked at space. He muttered with his teeth clamped, "Now he's dead. Good God, if I thought that $10,000 had anything to do-"

  "Please, sir. Please. Let's work. I call your attention to a coincidence which you have probably already noticed: the bet your son made yesterday afternoon with Mr. Pratt was for $10,000. That raises a question. Mr. Pratt declined to make a so-called gentleman's wager with your son unless it was un- derwritten by you. I understand that he telephoned you to explain the difficulty, and you guaranteed payment by your son if he lost. Is that correct?"

  "Yes."

  "Well." Wolfe frowned at his two empty bottles. "It seems a little inconsistent… first you refuse to advance $10,000 needed urgently by your son to keep him out of trouble, and then you casually agree on the telephone to underwrite a bet he makes for that precise sum."

  "There was nothing casual about it."

  "Did you have any particular reason to assume that your son would win the bet?"

  "How the hell could I? I didn't know what he was betting on."

  "You didn't know that he had wagered that Mr. Pratt would not barbecue Hickory Caesar Grindon this week?"

  "No. Not then. Not until my daughter told me afterwards… after Clyde was dead."

  "Didn't Mr. Pratt tell you on the phone?"

  "I didn't give him a chance. When I learned that Clyde had been to Tom Pratt's place and made a bet with him, and that Pratt had the insolence to ask me to stand good for my son-what do you think? Was I going to ask the dog for de- tails? I told him that any debt my son might ever owe him, for a bet or anything else, or for $10,000 or ten times that, would be instantly paid, and I hung up."

  "Didn't your son tell you what the bet was about when he got home a little later?"

  "No. There was another scene. Since you have… you might as well have all of it. When Clyde appeared I was furious, and I demanded… I was in a temper, and that roused his, and he started to walk out. I accused him of be- traying me. I accused him of arranging a fake bet with Pratt and getting Pratt to phone me, so that I would have to pay it, and then Pratt would hand him the money. Then he did walk out. As I said, I didn't find out until afterwards what the bet was about or how it was made. I left the house and got in a car and drove over the other side of Crowfield to the place of an old friend of mine. I didn't want to eat dinner at home. Clyde's friend, this Bronson, was here, and my daugh- ter and my wife… and my presence wouldn't make it a pleasant meal. It was already unpleasant enough. When I got back, after ten o'clock, there was no one around but my wife, and she was in her room crying. About half an hour later the phone call came from Pratt's-his nephew. I went. That was where I had to go to find my son dead."

  Wolfe sat looking at him, and after a moment sighed. "That's too bad," he said. "I mean it's too bad that you were away from home, and weren't on speaking terms with your son. I had hoped to learn from you what time he left the house, and under what circumstances, and what he may have said of his destination and purpose. You can't tell me that."

  "Yes, I can. My daughter and Bronson have told me-"

  "Pardon me. If you don't mind, I'd rather hear it from them. What time is it, Archie?"

  I told him, ten after five.

  "Thank you. – You realize, Mr. Osgood, that we're fishing in a big stream. This is your son's home, hundreds of people in this county know him, one or more of them may have hated or feared him enough to want him dead, and almost anyone could have got to the far end of the pasture without detection, despite the fact that my assistant had the pasture under surveillance. It was a dark night. But we'll extend our field only if we're compelled to; let's finish with those known to be present. Regarding motive, what about Mr. McMillan?"

  "None that I know of. I've known Monte McMillan all my life; his place is up at the north end of the county. Even if he had caught Clyde trying some fool trick with the bull – my God, Monte wouldn't murder him… and you say yourself-"

  "I know. Clyde wasn't caught doing that." Wolfe sighed. "That seems to cover it. Pratt, McMillan, the nephew, the niece. Miss Rowan… and on motive you offer no indict- ment. I suppose, since this place is at a distance of only a mile or so from Mr. Pratt's, which might fairly be called propinquity, we should include those who were here. What about Mr. Bronson?"

  "I don't know him. He came with Clyde and was intro- duced as a friend."

  "An old friend?"

  "I don't know."

  "You never saw him or heard of him before?"

  "No."

  "What about the people employed here? There must be quite a few. Anyone with a grudge against your son?"

  "No. Absolutely not. For three years he more or less super- vised things here for me, and he was competent and had their respect, and they all liked him. Except-" Osgood stopped abruptly, and was silent, suspended, with his mouth open. Then he said, "Good God, I've just remembered… but no, that's ridiculous…"

  "What is?"

  "Oh… a man who used to work here. Two years ago one of our best cows lost her calf and Clyde blamed this man and fired him. The man has done a lot of talking ever since, denying it was his fault, and making some wild threats I've been told about. The reason I think of it now… he's over at Pratt's place. Pratt hired him last spring. His name is Dave Smalley."

  "Was he there last night?"

  "I presume so. You can find out."

  I put in an oar: "Sure he was. You remember Dave, don't you? How he resented your using that rock as a waiting room?"

  Wolfe surveyed me. "Do you mean the idiot who waved the gun and jumped down from the fence?"

  "Yep. That was Dave."

  "Pfui." Wolfe almost spat. "It won't do, Mr. Osgood. You remarked, correctly, that the murderer had brains and nerve and luck. Dave is innocent."

  "He's done a lot of talking."

  "Thank God I didn't have to listen to it." Wolfe stirred in the big comfortable chair. "We must get on. I offer an observation or two before seeing your daughter. First, I must warn you of the practical certainty that the official theory will be that your son did enter the pasture to molest the bull, in spite of my demonstration to Mr. Waddell. They will learn that Clyde bet Mr. Pratt that he would not barbecue Hickory Caesar Grfndon this week. They will argue that all Clyde had to do to win the bet was to force a postponement of the feast for five days, and he might have tried that. They will be fascinated by the qualification this week. It is true that there is something highly significant in the way the terms of the bet were stated, but they'll miss that."

  "What's significant about it? It was a damned silly-"

  "No. Permit me. I doubt if it was silly. I'll point it out to you when I'm ready to interpret it. Second, whatever line Mr. Waddell takes should have our respectful attention. If he offends, don't in your arrogance send him to limbo, for we can use his facts. Many of them. We shall want, for in- stance, to know what the various persons at Mr. Pratt's house were doing last night between 9 o'clock and 10:30. I don't know, because at 9 o'clock I felt like being alone and went up to my room to read. We shall want to know what the doctor says about the probable time of your son's death. The presumption is that it was not more than, say 15 minutes, before Mr. Goodwin arrived on the spot, but the doctor may be helpful. We shall want to know whether my conclusions have been supported by such details as the discovery of blood residue in the grass by the hose nozzle, and on the pick handle, et cetera. Third, I'd like to repeat a question which you evaded a while ago. Why do you hate Mr. Pratt?"

  "I didn't evade it. I merely said it has no bearing on this." 'Tell me anyway. Of course I'm impertinent, but I'll have to decide if I'm also irrelevant."-

  Osgood shrugged. "It's no secret. This whole end of the state knows it, I don't hate him, I only feel contempt for him. As I told you, his father was one of my father's stablehands. As a boy
Tom was wild, and aggressive, but he had ambition, iЈ you want to call it that. He courted a young woman in the neighborhood and persuaded her to agree to marry him. I came home from college, and she and I were mutually at- tracted, and I married her. Tom went to New York and never made an appearance around here. Apparently he was nursing a grievance all the time, for about eight years ago he began to make a nuisance of himself. He had made a lot of money, and he used some of it and all his ingenuity con- cocting schemes to pester and injure me. Then two years ago he bought that land next to mine, and built on it, and that made it worse."

  "Have you tried retaliation?"

  "If I ever tried retaliation it would be with a horsewhip. I ignore him."

  "Not a democratic weapon, the whip. Yesterday afternoon your son accused him of projecting the barbecue as an offense to you. The idea seemed to be that it would humiliate you and make you ridiculous if a bull better than your best bull was cooked and eaten. It struck me as farfetched. Mr. Pratt maintained that the barbecue was to advertise his busi- ness."

  "I don't care a damn. What's the difference?"

  "None, I suppose. But the fact remains that the bull is a central character in our problem, and it would be a mis- take to lose sight of him. So is Mr. Pratt, of course. You reject the possibility that his festering grievance might have impelled him to murder."

  "Yes. That's fantastic. He's not insane… at least I don't think he is."

  "Well." Wolfe sighed. "Will you send for your daughter?"

  Osgood scowled. "She's with her mother. Do you insist on speaking to her? I know you're supposed to be competent, but it seems to me the people to ask questions of are at Pratt's, not here."

  "It's my competence you're hiring, sir. Your daughter comes next. Mr. Waddell is at Pratt's, where he belongs, since he has authority." Wolfe wiggled a finger. "If you please."

  Osgood got up and went to a table to push a button, and then came back and downed his highball, which must have been as warm as Wolfe's beer by that time, in three gulps. The pug-nosed lassie appeared and was instructed to ask Miss Osgood to join us. Osgood sat down again and said:

  "I don't see what you're accomplishing, Wolfe. If you think by questioning me you've eliminated everybody at Pratt's-"

  "By no means. I've eliminated no one." Wolfe sounded faintly exasperated, and I perceived that it was up to me to arrange with Pug-nose for more and colder beer. "Elimination, as such, is tommyrot. Innocence is a negative and can never be established; you can only establish guilt. The only way I can apodictically eliminate any individual from consideration as the possible murderer is to find out who did it. You can't be expected to see what I am accomplishing; if you could do that, you could do the job yourself. Let me give you a conjecture for you to try your hand on: for example, is Miss Rowan an accomplice? Did she join Mr. Goodwin last night and sit with him for an hour on the running board of my car, which he had steered into a tree, to distract him while the crime was being committed? Or if you would prefer another sort of problem…"

  He stopped with a grimace and began preparations to arise. I got up too, and Osgood started across the room toward the door which had opened to admit his daughter, and with her an older woman in a dark blue dress with her hair piled on top of her head. Osgood made an effort to head off the latter, and protested, but she advanced toward us any- how. He submitted enough to introduce us:

  "This is Mr. Nero Wolfe, Marcia. His assistant, Mr. Good- win. My wife. Now dear, there's no sense in this, it won't help any…"

  While he remonstrated with her I took a polite look. The farmer's beautiful daughter who, according to one school of thought, was responsible for Tom Pratt's unlucky idea of making beefsteak out of Hickory Caesar Grindon, was still beautiful I suppose; it's hard for me to tell when they're around fifty, on account of my tendency to concentrate on details which can't be expected to last that long. Anyway, with her eyes red and swollen from crying and her skin blotchy, it wasn't fair to judge.

  She told her husband, "No, Fred, really. I'll be all right. Nancy has told me what you've decided. I suppose you're right… you always are right… now you don't need to look like that… you're perfectly right to want to find out about it, but I don't want just to shut myself away… you know Clyde always said it wasn't a pie if I didn't have my finger in it…" her lip quivered "… and if it is to be discussed with Nancy I want to be here…"

  "It's foolish, Marcia, there's no sense in it." Osgood had hold of her arm. "If you'll just-"

  "Permit me." Wolfe was frowning, and made his tone crisp. "Neither of you will stay. I wish to speak with Miss Osgood alone.-Confound it, sir, I am working, and for you! However I may want to sympathize with grief, I can't afford to let it interfere with my job. The job you want done. If you want it done."

  Osgood glared at him, but said to his wife, "Come, Marcia." I followed them three steps and halted him: "Excuse me. It would be to everyone's advantage if he had more beer, say three bottles, and make it colder."

  10

  NANCY, sitting in the chair Osgood had vacated, looked more adamant than the situation seemed to call for, considering that Wolfe's client was her father. You might have thought she was confronted by hostile forces. Of course her brother had just been killed and she couldn't be expected to beam with cheerful eagerness, but hei adffness as she sat looked not only tense but antagoiwtic, and her lips, which only 24 hours before had struck me -i:, being warm and trembly, now formed a thin rigid colorless line.

  Wolfe leaned back and regarded her with half-closed eyes. "We'll be as brief as we can with this. Miss Osgood," he said, with honey in his mouth. "I thought we might reach our objective a little sooner with your father and mother absent."

  She nodded, her head tilted forward once and back again, and said nothing. Wolfe resumed:

  "We must manage to accompany your brother yesterday afternoon as continuously as possible from the time he left Mr. Pratt's terrace. Were you and Mr. Bronson and he riding in one car?"

  Her voice was low and firm; "Yes."

  "Tell me briefly your movements after leaving the terrace."

  "We walked across the lawn and back to the car and got in and came-no, Clyde got out again because Mr. McMillan called to him and wanted to speak to him. Clyde went over to him and they talked a few minutes and then Clyde came back and we drove home."

  "Did you hear his conversation with Mr. McMillan?"

  "No."

  "Was it apparently an altercation?"

  "It didn't look like it."

  Wolfe nodded. "Mr. McMillan left the terrace with the announced intention of advising your brother not to do any- thing foolish. He did it quietly then."

  "They just talked a few minutes, that was all."

  "So. You returned home, and Clyde had a talk with your father.".

  "Did he?"

  "Please, Miss Osgood." Wolfe wiggled a finger. "Discre- tion will only delay us. Your father has described the… unpleasant scene, he called it… he had with his son. Was that immediately after you got home?"

  "Yes. Dad was waiting for us at the veranda steps."

  "Infuriated by the phone call from Mr. Pratt. Were you present during the scene?"

  "No. They went into the library… this room. I went upstairs to clean up… we had been at Crowfield nearly all day."

  "When did you see your brother again?"

  "At dinnertime."

  "Who was at table?"

  "Mother and I, and Mr. Bronson and Clyde. Dad had gone somewhere."

  "What time was dinner over?"

  "A little after eight. We eat early in the country, and we sort of rushed through it because it wasn't very gay. Mother was angry… Dad had told her about the bet Clyde had made with Monte Cris-with Mr. Pratt, and Clyde was glum-"

  "You called Mr. Pratt Monte Cristo?"

  "That was a slip of the tongue."

  "Obviously. Don't be perturbed, it wasn't traitorous, your father has told me of Mr. Pratt's rancor. You called him Monte
Cristo?"

  "Yes, Clyde and I did, and…" Her lip started to quiver, and she controlled it. "We thought it was funny when we started it."

  "It may have been so. Now for your movements after dinner, please."

  "I went to mother's room with her and we talked a while, and then I went to my room. Later I came downstairs and sat on the veranda and listened to the katydids. I was there when Dad came home."

  "And Clyde?"

  "I don't know. I didn't see him after I went upstairs with mother after dinner."

  She wasn't much good as a liar; she didn't know how to relax for it. Wolfe has taught me that one of the most im- portant requirements for successful lying is relaxed vocal cords and throat muscles; otherwise you are forced to put on extra pressure to push the lie through, and the result is that you talk faster and raise the pitch and the blood shows in your face. Nancy Osgood betrayed all of those signs. I moved my eyes for a glance at Wolfe, but he merely murmured a question:

  "So you don't know when your brother left the house? Left here to go to Pratt's?"

  "No." She stirred a little, and was still again, and re- peated, "No."

  "That's a pity. Didn't he tell you or your mother that he was going to Pratt's?"

  "So far as I know, he told no one."

  There was an interruption, a knock at the door. I went to it and took from Pug-nose a tray with three bottles of beer, felt one and approved of the temperature, and taxied them across to Wolfe. He, opening and pouring, asked Nancy if she would have, and she declined with thanks. He drank, put down the empty glass, and wiped his lips with his hand- kerchief.

  "Now Miss Osgood," he said in a new tone." "I have more questions to ask of you, but this next is probably the most material of all. When did your brother tell you how and why he expected to win his bet with Mr. Pratt?"

  She stared a second and said, "He didn't tell me at all. What makes you think he did?" It sounded straight to me.

  "I thought it likely. Your father says that you and your brother were very close to each other."

  "We were."

  "But he told you nothing of that wager?"