Some Buried Caesar

Chapter 9

With Nancy still chauffeuring, we drove to the hotel for our luggage, and then had to leave town by way of the exposition grounds in order to give the orchids a look and another spraying. Shanks wasn’t around, and Wolfe made arrangements with a skinny woman who sat on an upturned box by a table full of dahlias, to keep an eye on our pots.

Driving into Crowfield that morning, Caroline Pratt had pointed out the Osgood demesne, the main entrance of which was only a mile from Pratt’s place. It was rolling farm land, a lot of it looking like pasture, with three or four wooded knolls. The stock barns and other outbuildings were in plain view, but the dwelling, which was all of half a mile from the highway, was out of sight among the trees until the private drive straightened out at the beginning of a wide expanse of lawn. It was a big old rambling white house, with an old-fashioned portico, with pillars, extending along the middle portion of the front. It looked as if it had probably once been George Washington’s headquarters, provided he ever got that far north.

There was an encounter before we got into the house. As we crossed the portico, a man approached from the other end, wiping his brow with his handkerchief and looking dusty and sweaty. Mr. Bronson had on a different shirt and tie from the day before, and another suit, but was no more appropriate to his surroundings than he had been when I first saw him on Pratt’s terrace. Osgood tossed a nod at him, then, seeing that he intended to speak, stopped and said, “Hullo.”

Bronson came up to us. I hadn’t noticed him much the day before, with my attention elsewhere, but I remarked now that he was around thirty, of good height and well-built, with a wide full mouth and a blunt nose and clever gray eyes. I didn’t like the eyes, as they took us in with a quick glance. He said deferentially, “I hope you won’t mind, Mr. Osgood. I’ve been over there.”

“Over where?” Osgood demanded.

“Pratt’s place. I walked across the fields. I knew I had offended you by disagreeing this morning with your ideas about the… accident. I wanted to look it over. I met young Pratt, but not his father, and that man McMillan -”

“What did you expect to accomplish by that?”

“Nothing, I suppose. I’m sorry if I’ve offended again. But I didn’t… I was discreet. I suppose I shouldn’t be here, I should have left this morning, but with this terrible… with Clyde dead, and I’m the only one of his New York friends here… it seemed…”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Osgood roughly. “Stay. I said so.”

“I know you did, but frankly… I feel very much de trop… I’ll leave now if you prefer it…”

“Excuse me.” It was Wolfe’s quiet murmur. “You had better stay, Mr. Bronson. Much better. We may need you.”

The clever eyes flickered at him. “Oh. If Nero Wolfe says stay…” He lifted his shoulders and let them down. “But I don’t need to stay here. I can go to a Crowfield hotel -”

“Nonsense.” Osgood scowled at him. “Stay here. You were Clyde’s guest, weren’t you? Stay here. But if you want to walk in the fields, there’s plenty of directions besides the one leading to Pratt’s.”

Abruptly he started off, and we followed, as Bronson again lifted his handkerchief to his sweaty brow.

A few minutes later we were seated in a large room with French windows, lined with books and furnished for comfort, and were being waited on by a lassie with a pug nose who had manners far superior to Bert’s but was way beneath him in speed and spirit as a drink-slinger. Nancy had disappeared but was understood to be on call. Osgood was scowling at a highball, Wolfe was gulping beer which, judging from his expression, was too warm, and I had plain water.

Wolfe was saying testily, “My own method is the only one available to me. I either use that or none at all. I may be only clearing away rubbish, but that’s my affair. The plain fact is, sir, that last night, in Mr. Goodwin’s presence, you behaved in an astonishing manner to him and Mr. Pratt. You were rude, arrogant and unreasonable. I need to know whether that was due to the emotional shock you had had, or to your belief that Mr. Pratt was somehow involved in the death of your son, or was merely your normal conduct.”

“I was under a strain, of course,” Osgood snapped. “I suppose I’m inclined to arrogance, if you want to call it that. I wouldn’t like to think I’m habitually rude, but I would be rude to Pratt on sight if the circumstances were such that I couldn’t ignore him. Last night I couldn’t ignore him. Call it normal conduct and forget it.”

“Why do you dislike and despise Mr. Pratt?”

“Damn it, I tell you that has nothing to do with it! It’s an old story. It had no bearing -”

“It wouldn’t account for a reciprocal hatred from Mr. Pratt that might have led him to murder?”

“No.” Osgood stirred impatiently and put down his highball. “No.”

“Can you suggest any other motive Mr. Pratt might have had for murdering your son? Make it plausible.”

“I can’t make it plausible or implausible. Pratt’s vindictive and tricky, and in his youth he had fits of violence. His father worked for my father as a stable-hand. In a fit of temper he might have murdered, yes.”

Wolfe shook his head. “That won’t do. The murder was carefully planned and executed. The plan may have been rapid and extempore, but it was cold and thorough. Besides, your son was not discovered in an effort to molest the bull, remember that. You insisted on that point yourself before you had my demonstration of it. What could have got Mr. Pratt into a murderous temper toward your son if he didn’t find him trying to molest the bull?”

“I don’t know. Nothing that I know of.”

“I ask the same question regarding Jimmy Pratt.”

“I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him.”

“Actually never seen him?”

“Well… seen him perhaps. I don’t know him.”

“Did Clyde know him?”

“I believe they were acquainted. They met in New York.”

“Do you know of any motive Jimmy Pratt might have had for killing your son?”

“No.”

“I ask the same question regarding Caroline Pratt.”

“The same answer. They too met in New York, but the acquaintance was slight.”

“Excuse me, boss,” I put in. “Do I release cats in public?”

“Certainly.” Wolfe shot me a glance. “We’re talking of Mr. Osgood’s son, who is dead.”

“Okay. Clyde and Caroline Pratt were engaged to be married, but the clutch slipped.”

“Indeed,” Wolfe murmured. Osgood glared at me and said, “Ridiculous. Who the devil told you that?”

I disregarded him and told Wolfe, “Guaranteed. They were engaged for quite a while, only apparently Clyde didn’t want his father to know that he had been hooked by a female Pratt who was also an athlete. Then Clyde saw something else and made a dive for it, and the Osgood-Pratt axis got multiple fracture. The something else was the young lady who was outdoors with me last night, named Lily Rowan. Later… we’re up to last spring now… she skidded again and Clyde fell off. Since then he has been hanging around New York trying to get back on. One guess is that he came up here because he knew she would be here, but that’s not in the guarantee. I haven’t had a chance -”

Osgood was boiling. “This is insufferable! Preposterous gossip! If this is your idea -”

I growled at Wolfe, “Ask him why he wants to wring Lily Rowan’s neck.”

“Mr. Osgood, please.” Wolfe keyed it up. “I warned you that a murder investigation is of necessity intrusive and impertinent. Either bear it or abandon it. If you resent the vulgarity of Mr. Goodwin’s jargon I don’t blame you, but nothing can be done about it. If you resent his disclosure of facts, nothing can be done about that either except to drop the inquiry. We have to know things. What about your son’s engagement to marry Miss Pratt?”

“I never heard of it. He never mentioned it. Neither did my daughter, and she would have known of it; she and Clyde were very close to each other. I don’t believe it.”

“You may, I think, now. My assistant is careful about facts. What about the entanglement with Miss Rowan?”

“That… yes.” As badly as Osgood’s head needed a rest, it was a struggle for him to remove the ducal coronet. “You understand this is absolutely confidential.”

“I doubt it. I suspect that at least a hundred people in New York know more about it than you do. But what do you know?”

“I know that about a year ago my son became infatuated with the woman. He wanted to marry her. She’s wealthy, or her father is. She’s a sex maniac. She wouldn’t marry him. If she had she would have ruined him, but she did that anyway, or she was doing it. She got tired of him, but her claws were in him so deep he couldn’t get them out, and there was no way of persuading him to act like a man. He wouldn’t come home; he stayed in New York because she was there. He wasted a lot of my money and I cut off his income entirely, but that didn’t help. I don’t know what he has been living on the past four months, but I suspect my daughter has been helping him, though I decreased her allowance and forbade it. I went to New York in May and went to see the Rowan woman, and humiliated myself, but it did no good. She’s a damned strumpet.”

“Not by definition. A strumpet takes money. However… I see, at this point, no incentive for Miss Rowan to murder him. Miss Pratt… it might be. She was jilted, and she is muscular. Mortification could simmer in a woman’s breast a long time, though she doesn’t look it. When did your son arrive here from New York?”

“Sunday evening. My daughter and his friend Bronson rode up with him.”

“Had you expected him?”

“Yes. He phoned from New York Saturday night.”

“Was Miss Rowan already at Mr. Pratt’s place?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know she was there until your man told me last night, when I went over there.”

“Was she, Archie?”

I shook my head. “No sale. I was working on another case at lunch.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m only clearing away rubbish, and I doubt if it amounts to more than that.” Back at Osgood: “Why did your son come after so long an absence? What did he say?”

“He came -” Osgood stopped. Then he went on, “They came to be here for the exposition.”

“Why did he come, really?”

Osgood glared and said, “Damn it.”

“I know, Mr. Osgood. We don’t usually hang our linen on the line till it has been washed, but you’ve hired me to sort it out. Why did your son come to see you? To get money?”

“How did you know that?”

“I didn’t. But men so often need money; and you had stopped your son’s income. Was his need general or specific?”

“Specific as to the sum. He wanted $10,000.”

“Oh.” Wolfe’s brows went up a trifle. “What for?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. He said he would be in trouble if he didn’t get it.” Osgood looked as if it hurt where the coronet had been. “I may as well… he had used up a lot of money during his affair with that woman. I found out in May that he had taken to gambling, and that was one reason I cut him off. When he asked for $10,000 I suspected it was for a gambling debt, but he denied it and said it was something more urgent. He wouldn’t tell me what.”

“Did you let him have it?”

“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 underwritten 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 details? 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 betraying 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 daughter 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 indictment. 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 introduced 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 supervised 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 Grindon 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 instance, 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 stable hands. As a boy Tom was wild, and aggressive, but he had ambition, if 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 attracted, 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 concocting 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 business.”

“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 mistake 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 anyhow. He submitted enough to introduce us:

“This is Mr. Nero Wolfe, Marcia. His assistant, Mr. Goodwin. 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.”