Rex Stout (20 page)

“Sure it’s all right.” Baker was looking, apparently, at the dazzle of the emeralds. “If you don’t mind—when you left Jackson’s office, did you see anything in the upstairs hall?”

“See anything?” She frowned.

“Did you see anybody?”

“In the hall? No.”

“Or on the stairs or the lower hall?”

“No.”

“As soon as you left the office, did you go right down the stairs and out to the street?”

“Naturally, I did.”

“You didn’t, for instance, go to that old bin against the wall to get a souvenir?”

She stared. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t know there was a bin. That hall
is so dark you have to feel for the stairs with your foot.”

“You didn’t know there was a bin there containing pieces of ore?”

“Good heavens, no. Is it worth prospecting?”

Bill Tuttle cackled. Baker shot him a glance of disapproval and went on, “I asked if you saw anyone in the hall because shortly after you left a man went up those stairs and when he got to the top he was hit on the head with a piece of that ore and knocked unconscious.”

She smiled. “I didn’t do it. Honest. Who got hit?”

“A man named Quinby Pellett. The Brand girls’ uncle. Do you know him?”

“No, I never—Oh, yes I do, too! Pellett the taxidermist?”

“That’s him.”

“Yes, I’ve met him. He looks as if he’d just eaten something sour and his hair needs washing. Since he knows how to handle animals’ hair so beautifully, you’d think he’d take better care of his own. Was he badly hurt?”

“Not much. He’s all right.” Baker glanced at the clock on the wall; he, too, felt that he would just as soon have a friend as an enemy, especially since his scene with Ollie Nevins. “Just another question or two, Mrs. Cowles, please. Was your argument with Jackson exclusively about the grubstaking business?”

“Yes. The time’s up, you know.”

“I know it is. You said that Jackson was telling you to keep your hands off of the grubstaking business, and especially he didn’t want you—and then you stopped and said that was confidential.”

She nodded. “That was also about the grubstaking business and it concerned a third person.”

“Who?”

“No.” She smiled. “It couldn’t possibly help you any.”

“All right, I’ll take your word for it, for the present anyhow.” Baker returned the smile. “Now you know I’m investigating a murder. The last two questions are out of stock and you probably know what they are before I ask them. Where were you Tuesday evening between nine and ten o’clock?”

She made a face at him. “The answer’s out of stock too. I was at the scene of the crime.”

He opened his eyes at her. “You were at Jackson’s office Tuesday evening?”

“No, not at his office, but at that address. Under the same roof. I was at The Haven and I won a thousand dollars.”

“Anyone with you?”

“Several people. We went over from the Fowler around … oh, a little after nine, and it was close to midnight when we left. If you want, I’ll send you a list of the names.” She got up, and Phelan and the sheriff bumped into each other on their way to manipulate the wrap for her. “No, thanks. I—thank you so much. I’m sorry, Mr. Baker, but you kept me waiting half an hour, you know.” She fastened the wrap at her throat, in readiness for the chill evening outside. “You said two last questions. Is there another?”

“The other out of stock,” said Baker, standing. “Have you any idea whatever of who killed Jackson, or why?”

“And the other answer also out of stock.” She smiled at him. “Not the slightest, and if I did have I wouldn’t tell you. Good night.”

Tuttle, beaten to the wrap, had made a flanking movement to the door and now opened it. She passed
through with a nod of thanks and he closed it. Then he returned to his chair and sat down, heaved a sigh, and told his companions in a tone of deep conviction:

“If that woman wanted to she would kill a man and eat the giblets for breakfast.”

Frank Phelan shook his head emphatically. “Surface tough,” he pronounced. “You just don’t understand the type, Bill. Look how she treats the boys out at Broken Circle. When Larry Rutherford broke his leg—”

“Shut up, please,” from Baker, stopped them. He was busy at the phone. In a moment the door opened, a man entered, and Baker said, “Send Miss Brand in.”

“She’s not here.”

“She hasn’t shown up?”

“No, sir. At ten o’clock I phoned to see if she had left, and her sister said she had been gone twenty minutes. Now it’s ten after, but she’s not here.”

Baker frowned. “Hell, it would take her only five minutes. Maybe she stopped on the way. Is Clint back yet? Send him in.”

The talk with Clint was brief. Amy Jackson had refused not only to give him the wallet, but even to show it to him. She seemed, he said, to be either peeved or scared, or maybe both. Baker sent for others from the anteroom, got reports, and gave orders. The microscope stated that the cartridges in the gun, including the one that had been fired, were of a different make from those Delia Brand had purchased at MacGregor’s. A man with a swollen jaw reported that an attempted finesse to get a sample fingerprint of Lem Sammis had ended disastrously. Luke arrived with the information that no one could tell whether the missing paper was in Jackson’s office or not, because Judge Hamilton refused to give a court order to open the safe
and Judge Merriam could not be located; they had got a magnificent crop of fingerprints and would appreciate a suggestion what to do with them.

At a quarter to eleven Baker went to the anteroom and scowled around. “Miss Brand not here yet?”

“Not a hide or hair of her.”

“It’s been over an hour since she left home.” The county attorney heaved a weary sigh. “Phone the house again and let me talk to whoever’s there.”

T
he Brand girls, their Uncle Quin, and Tyler Dillon ate ham and cheese sandwiches, raspberries and cookies, and coffee, at the breakfast nook in the Brand kitchen. The recital to Delia of the details of the discovery of the cartridges, by Clara and Ty, and of the saga of the stolen bag, by Pellett, was punctuated by frequent interruptions. Reporters were repulsed at the threshold by Ty Dillon. Friends and acquaintances calling with congratulations on their tongues and hungry curiosity in their eyes were told by one or the other of the men, also at the threshold, that Clara and Delia were exhausted and required seclusion and rest. Inquiries on the telephone got the same polite answer, except the call from the county attorney’s office requesting the presence of Pellett at eight o’clock and Clara at ten. There was some discussion as to whether Clara should decline the invitation, but she insisted that she would prefer to go and get it over with.

A little before eight Pellett departed. The trio had another round of coffee, and when the cups were empty Clara dragged herself up and began to collect the dishes.

Ty arose, took them from her, and declared, “You
girls are both dead on your feet. Del, you go up and go to bed, and Clara, you go in front and lie down for an hour. I’ll clean this up and I’ll call you in time to go down to the courthouse if you’re still set on it.”

He got opposition from both of them. The upshot was that Clara capitulated and was sent off to the couch in the front room, and Delia and Ty together tackled the dishes. For some minutes the only sounds in the kitchen were the clatter of cups and saucers and plates in the sink, the faucet being turned on and off, the opening and closing of cupboard doors. Delia, her shoulders sagging almost as much as her uncle’s, washed the things mechanically, anything but
con brio
; Ty moved briskly about, bringing them, wiping them, putting them away. Suddenly he burst forth: “Wiper, a wiper, a dandy dish wiper, I’ll mowa da lawn and washa da diper!”

Delia glanced at him and made a feeble effort to produce a smile. He abandoned rhyme and offered further information in prose: “A lawn is clipped greensward surrounding a happy and prosperous home. Diper is a poetic term for diaper, the last word in chic for babies. Babies are what make a home happy and keep it from being prosperous. A home is the abode of a man and woman who are, let us hope, married to each other. What makes this testimony relevant, competent and material is the fact that you and I are going to marry each other.”

“My lord, Ty. Please don’t. Not now.”

He picked up a plate and started the towel around it. “I won’t, Del,” he assured her. “I mean I won’t press it to a conclusion now. As soon as we get the dishes done I’m going to leave you to the seclusion that I’ve told a hundred people is what you need. But there’s
one statement that I’ve got to get off my chest before I leave.”

He put the plate away and got another. “You told Harvey Anson today that you wouldn’t have him for a lawyer because he had thought you shot Jackson, and not only that, he thought you shot him for intimate personal reasons. You should know, and you have a right to know, that you’re going to have for a husband a man who thought the same things—now wait a minute. I’m going on wiping dishes because I want to keep this casual and even flippant. I’m not going to submit a brief on it. I’ll only say that under the circumstances as given any man alive who wasn’t a brainless boob would have thought the same thing. You know the circumstances as well as I do. I thought you had shot Jackson, and since I couldn’t suppose you were flighty enough to kill a man because he had fired your sister from her job, and there was no other apparent motive, the rest was inevitable. What I thought has no importance or significance, not any more. What is important, to me anyhow, is how it made me feel.”

“Please, Ty. You don’t have to submit a brief. I suppose under the circumstances—”

“Excuse me. It’ll soon be over. The dishes, too. I was damn close to a maniac. I wanted to go and pull the jail down with my hands to get you out. I would have done anything, absolutely anything, to get you out. I was in a state that I wouldn’t have thought possible. Driving here yesterday morning, coming to see Clara, I asked myself why? In view of Jackson, you know? Chastity and purity? I only realized then what the situation was and must have been before, though I hadn’t known it. I had told you I loved you and wanted you to marry me, but that was milk and water stuff. To go on living meant to have you—hell, I don’t know how
to say it, and anyway, I said I would stay casual. Only I’m yours. For keeps. Statement of relevant fact.” He picked up the last plate. “Of course that’s only the introduction, but I had to get it off my chest after what you said to Anson today. When the time comes I’ll go on from there. Shall I hang this towel back on the rack or what?”

She nodded. “Put it there to dry.” She was cleaning the sink.

He propped himself against the table and watched her. As she was wringing out the dishrag he asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve come to any conclusion about me? The last two days? Did you think about me at all?”

She didn’t reply till after she had washed her hands and dried them. Then she looked up at him and said, “I thought about everything in the world. About the past and present and future, and my father and mother, and death and life and the things people have done, and things people have said, what they have said to me and where the truth was, and how hard it is to tell whether you’re doing what you really want to do. I thought of being locked up forever, and of losing my life, of being executed for murder, and of being set free and what I would do. It wasn’t all profound and it wasn’t all even thinking. I dramatized that, the being set free. You were in it. You put your arms around me and kissed me and I cried. I mean when I dramatized I cried—I didn’t actually cry once. Then when the sheriff took me into that room and they were letting me go I told you to kiss me on the cheek and you didn’t do it.”

He growled, “The room was full of people.”

“It isn’t now.”

“What—” He gulped. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Nothing. Only you’ve accused me of faking scenes so often, you might help me act one of them out.”

“If I kiss you, you’ll know it.”

“Remember you put your arms around me, too.”

He did so. Whether in quality the kiss she got was up to the one she had imagined in her cell she alone could tell, but in duration there was surely no question about it. It lasted long enough to wipe a dozen plates if there had been more to wipe. Finally she stirred and he released her.

“Now you go home,” she said.

He took a breath, and another. “I’m not going home.”

“Yes, you are—”

“I mean I’m going somewhere else. I’m going to see old man Escott.” He made a movement. “Could I—?”

“No, Ty. Please. One was all I dramatized.”

“I’ll phone you in the morning and ask if I can come to see you. Remember you’ve fired your lawyer.”

“I don’t need a lawyer any more.”

“You need
this
lawyer. Good night, Del.”

“Good night, Ty.”

They went on tiptoe through the hall because a glance into the front room had shown them Clara on the couch with her eyes closed and breathing deeply. After he had gone Delia went in there quietly and turned out one of the lamps, the one close to the couch. Then she sat on the edge of a chair and gazed at her sleeping sister. It looked wonderful, that deep peaceful sleep. When she herself had slept again like that, and her head was clear and her nerves calmed a little, was she going to be angry at Ty for having thought that of her? She considered it unlikely and that was queer. The things he had said—they were a jumble in her head now—would she be able to remember all of them
tomorrow and the way he had looked? What he had said about chastity and purity, now, she would never have believed—

She lifted her head. Damn. Someone on the porch. Apparently, from the sound, several someones. The doorbell clanged and Clara stirred, opened her eyes, and struggled up. “That darned doorbell,” Delia said savagely. “I’ll see who it is.”

“I guess I must have gone to sleep.” Clara was upright. “For heaven’s sake don’t let them in.”

But that, Delia found, was too large an order. Switching on the porch light, she saw through the glass that the bell ringer was one from whom no Cody threshold was barred if he displayed a desire to cross it. So she opened the door, and Mr. and Mrs. Lemuel Sammis entered.