Rex Stout (12 page)

Len muttered, “I’ll answer questions. But quit reminding me that I said I’d strangle Storrs. I know damn well I said it, but I didn’t do it. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know everything.” Sherwood looked around again, surveying each face. “I wish all of you would realize one thing. If the murderer is among you, I’m not expecting anything from him—or her. But for the rest of you, you ought to understand that if I knew for certain what each one of you was thinking and doing yesterday afternoon between 3:30 and 6:15, that would tell me who the guilty one was. I say 6:15, because from that time on you were all together at the tennis court, until Miss Bonner left. I say 3:30, because at that hour Storrs was seen by the butler, walking from this house, and a few minutes later he was seen by the assistant gardener. If we accept Chisholm’s story as he tells it, we know that Storrs was alive at 4:40, and we substitute that for the 3:30. That would mean that Storrs was killed during the 95 minutes between 4:40 and 6:15. All right; what led up to it? What were the actions and thoughts of all of you who were innocent during that period?”

Sherwood suddenly shot out a hand and pointed at the face of Steven Zimmerman. “Take you! You appeared at the tennis court at 5:45. What had you been doing during the preceding hour? You say, walking in the woods, and I can’t disprove it. But what were you doing yesterday morning in Storrs’ private office? You weren’t walking in the woods then, were you? You have refused to tell me. If you’re a murderer I wouldn’t expect you to tell me, though I might suppose you would furnish some explanation instead of a flat refusal. If you are innocent, can you really justify your silence—to me, to yourself, to society—to God? I am the prosecuting attorney of this county; I represent the law; but I also represent P. L. Storrs and his dependence on the law to defend his life and to avenge his death. Can any of you say”—Sherwood circled with his outstretched hand, his pointing finger—“can any one of you, except the one who
killed him, say that Storrs deserved to have his murderer shielded from the law?” The attorney paused.

He leaned back in his chair. “Well. Any one of you who lies or evades or withholds information regarding what happened here yesterday, or elsewhere as a preliminary to yesterday, you are shielding the guilt of a murderer, whether that is your intention or not. I hope I make that clear?” He surveyed the circle again, meeting each pair of eyes, none refusing him, then abruptly returned to Chisholm: “You say you’ll answer questions. You told me that yesterday afternoon you were mad at Storrs and also at everyone else. What about?”

Len grimaced. “Different reasons. You want me to go down the list? It’s an empty haul, but you can have it. I was sore at Storrs because he had got me bounced. I was sore at my boss because he hadn’t given me two weeks’ pay. I was sore at Miss Raffray because she had let Storrs bully her into ditching Miss Bonner, and also because she was using me to badger Foltz and she thought I was too dumb to know it. I was sore at Foltz because he was jackass enough to let her work it, and anyway, he and I aren’t compatible, he thinks life is beautiful and I’m a pessimist. I was sore at Miss Bonner because she had stayed in New York. I was sore at myself because I had come out here without Miss Bonner, since the only reason I have anything to do with these people is because they are her friends.” Len looked around belligerently. “If it helps you any to know it, I would have been sore at the rest of this bunch too if I had happened to think of them.”

Sherwood nodded. “You said your anger was universal. It sounds like it. Why were you thinking of taking a train to New York, since Miss Bonner was coming at six o’clock?”

“I didn’t know she was coming. She had said she wasn’t.”

“When she arrived, did she say why she had changed her mind?”

Len’s eyes flickered. “She’s right there, ask her.”

Dol’s voice came: “Don’t be silly, Len, tell him.”

“Okay. She said P. L. Storrs had phoned her an invitation.”

“Did she say Storrs had come to her office?”

“Not that I remember, no. I didn’t have my notebook. I wasn’t a newspaper man any more.”

“No. You had been fired. You said you were sore at yourself because you had come out here without Miss Bonner. Are you an old friend of hers?”

“Fairly old.” Len looked across to where Dol sat close to Sylvia, Sylvia’s hand in hers, and blinked at the sun which was in the window behind them. He squinted at the attorney: “I am in love with Miss Bonner. I am trying to persuade her that she is in love with me.” He paused, and finished with a growl, “She is the only woman I have ever cared for. Ask me that question again next year, and I’ll answer it the same way.”

“I doubt if I’ll be asking you questions next year. I hope not. Since you were sore at everybody, why did you come out here without Miss Bonner?”

“I’ve told you that. Miss Raffray suggested that I come and wheedle Storrs. I wanted my job back.”

“It was not your declared intention to wheedle. Was it? Your declared intention—”

“Hold it.” Len had a palm up at him. “I told you to quit reminding me that I threatened to strangle Storrs. And I’m also telling you, the longer you spend fooling with me, the colder you get. I’ve let you go on only because I lied to you last night and I thought I ought to make it up to you.”

Sherwood’s reply was forestalled by Brissenden. The colonel leaned across the table toward the attorney and demanded, “Let me have him a while. I’d like to try something.”

The reply to that was also interrupted. There was a knock at the door and a trooper entered—the one with a flat nose to whom, the evening before, Dol had demonstrated the significance of the wire spiraled around the tree. At a nod from Sherwood he advanced, and placed on the table, diplomatically between the attorney and his own superior officer, an astonishing array of loot. It was a flat market basket filled with gloves, all colors, all materials, men’s and women’s. Brissenden glared at it and muttered, “What the devil!” The trooper told him:

“There they are, sir. Those at this end are from the servants’ rooms. The others all belong to members of the
family, except two pairs—they’re all tagged—we found in the closet of the front hall, which the butler and the maid can’t identify. None of them was used to pull that wire; there’s some riding gloves with marks, but not the kind the wire made. The boys are finishing upstairs—there’s a few things, bags and chests, the butler couldn’t unlock. What’ll I do, let ’em go?”

Brissenden grunted bitterly, “Mr. Sherwood is in charge.” The attorney said, “No, I think …” He fingered gingerly at the display. “If you’ve examined all these—perhaps the colonel would like to go over them—they might as well be returned.” He raised his head to Mrs. Storrs. “Would you be willing, madam, to unlock the bags and chests and remain to lock them again? Or your daughter perhaps? I think it is our duty to make this search as thorough as possible.”

Mrs. Storrs sat unmoving. She declared, “It is useless. I warned you—the proof of fools—I will do it, but it is useless. I have heard all this foolishness. Do you think to entrap Siva with a pair of gloves? What are paltry facts to his wisdom, when he creates facts? What are the hands of a watch or the eyes of a foolish youth? I know the cycle has been closed!”

Sherwood nodded impatiently. “All right, Mrs. Storrs. You leave it to us. We are aware that the cycle could have been closed after 4:40 as well as before, even fools like us. If you will just go with the sergeant and unlock those things … and Quill! Has de Roode come, that fellow from Foltz’s place?—Good. Send him in, and then I want to see that assistant gardener.—Yes.” He looked at Len. “Colonel Brissenden would like to speak with you—will you go to that next room with him?”

Len lifted his shoulders and dropped them. “He’ll only bark at me, and I’ll bark back.”

“Will you go?”

“Sure. I’ll control myself.”

Sherwood turned again. “I’d like to see you, Mr. Zimmerman, in about half an hour. Please stay within call, and I’ll send for you.” Another turn: “You may go to your home, Mr. Foltz, if you wish, but no further, please, for the present. I would like to talk with you later.—The rest of
you will please remain on these grounds, I don’t know how long—oh, and Quill! Tell those reporters I’ve changed my mind and get them off the place and keep them off. They can wait at my office.—If you don’t mind, Mrs. Storrs?”

Dol Bonner hadn’t slept much, and she had a headache. In the friendly sunny September morning she walked along the path skirting the top of the east slope, thinking that outdoors she might breathe the headache away. The evening before, she had eaten nothing; this morning she had been starved and had breakfasted on two enormous peaches from the Birchhaven orchard, cereal, finnan haddie, rolls and coffee. While at the coffee she had been summoned to the card room by Sherwood, without a chance to step to the terrace to look at the sun. Now she walked in it, but it only glared at her and made her head ache worse.

She was proceeding on the assumption that she was a detective. She had in fact come to Birchhaven in that role, hired by P. L. Storrs, and even if she had been more strongly inclined to abandon it than she was, her obstinacy would probably have prevented her. She was aware of the picturesque incongruity of an attractive young woman—for her self-assurance had not been so mortally injured that she denied an obvious mirrored fact—undertaking such a career, but since the first week in the office of Bonner & Raffray it had not been prominent in her thoughts. She was a pretty good realist, and it was obvious that she must either seriously endeavor to establish herself in the profession she had chosen, or be prepared to admit to herself that she was a phony. The latter, for Dol Bonner, was not likely. So she had attacked earnestly and energetically the problems
that had been presented to her for solution, even the messy affair of Lili Lombard and Harold Ives Beaton.

Now here she was, up to her neck in a murder case. Not her case, but she was in it.

Strolling along the path, passing a large and luxuriant clump of cotoneaster, her eye was arrested by an impression of something dead brown in color, a color not appropriate to live twigs and green leaves—the color, for instance, of brown leather. She stepped off the path and pushed the cotoneaster branches aside to get a look, and saw that the object was an abandoned bird’s nest. She became aware that so simple an incident had made her pulse jump up, and she sneered delicately at herself. So! Without really being conscious of it, she was looking for a pair of gloves, was she?
That
was a likely enterprise, among all these acres, even for the throng of troopers and detectives on the job, let alone for one woman. Not that she disapproved the effort from a professional standpoint; it was clearly worth trying, no matter how hopeless it seemed.

She decided to see what the nook and the tree looked like in broad daylight, and headed down the slope. But, arriving there, she did not actually enter the nook; first, because a trooper was standing at the entrance, by the low-hanging dogwood branches, chewing gum and obviously a Cerberus; and second, because her attention was caught elsewhere. Voices came from the direction of the fish pool and men were moving around there. She approached, ventured further and stood where the water-line had been, and no one gave her any notice, because they were engrossed in their task and the curious sight it afforded. The pool had been completely drained, to the bottom, and thousands of fish, mostly blue-gill and perch, were flopping frantically about, while men with rakes worked their way through the muck and mire, sweating, grunting, calling sarcastic encouragement back and forth. On the opposite bank stood a grayhaired man in faded blue overalls, looking distressed and indignant as he puffed spasmodically at his pipe—Watrous, the Birchhaven head gardener.

Dol went away, back up the slope, reflecting that it had occurred to someone besides her that it would have been
simple for the murderer to stick a stone into each glove and toss them into the pool. But my Lord, what a job! Also, the outdoor housekeeping at Birchhaven was impeccable, and there really were no small stones lying around loose, and if you have just hanged a man and want to get somewhere else quickly you haven’t time to hunt around much—unless you have provided yourself with stones or weights beforehand, which didn’t seem likely.

Passing the elaborate and extensive rose garden, she saw that two men with dark suits and black derbies were in there, armed with spades, crouching and darting around, presumably looking for evidence of recently overturned soil. She went on to the stable, told a man there good morning, and received his permission to pat the horses, one of which she had several times bestrode. From the loft above came gruff voices and grunts and the sound of men forking hay and—she listened—apparently pawing at it. She muttered, “Needle in a haystack,” and sought the sunshine again. Retracing her steps, she turned aside through the gap in the yew hedge to the vegetable garden, and walked along the central path of turf. She thought she saw evidence of a search here too—celery tiles crooked, watermelon vines trampled, pepper plants and eggplants rudely bent—but there was no one around. She continued to the far border, where there were low brick-walled compartments for compost heaps, and stood looking at the conglomerate mass ready for decay on the heap most recently begun: corn husks, spoiled tomatoes, cabbage leaves and roots, celery tops, carrot tops, a little pile of watermelon meat, faint pink and unripe.…

She thought, “So recently living and growing, and now no good for anything until it rots.…” She put her hands to her temples and pressed; apparently the sun wasn’t going to help her head any. She went back to the house.

In the reception hall, Sergeant Quill appeared from somewhere and put himself in her path: “Oh, Miss Bonner, I’ve been looking for you. The back of your car’s locked. If you don’t mind …”

“What?” Dol’s brain slowed up when her head ached. “Oh, of course. The key’s in the dashboard compartment.”

“I know it is. I saw it there, but it would be better if you’d come along.”