Some Buried Caesar (12 page)

“You mean—” Frederick Osgood stopped with his jaw clamped. His clenched fists, resting on his hams, showed white knuckles. He went on, harshly, “My son … was killed like that … dug at with a pick?”

Waddell was looking decomposed. He tried to bluster. “If all this is true—you knew it last night, didn’t you? Why the hell didn’t you spill it when the sheriff was there? When the cops were there on the spot?”

“I represented no interest last night, sir.”

“What about the interest of justice? You’re a citizen, aren’t you? Did you ever hear of withholding evidence—”

“Nonsense. I didn’t withhold the bull’s face or the pick. You must know you’re being silly. My cerebral processes, and the conclusions they lead me to, belong to me.”

“You say the pick handle was wet and there was no dirt sticking to the metal. Couldn’t it have been washed for some legitimate reason? Did you inquire about that?”

“I made no inquiries of anybody. At eleven o’clock at night the pick handle was wet. If you regard it as a rational project to find a legitimate nocturnal pick-washer, go ahead. The time might be better spent, if you need confirmation, in looking for blood residue in the grass around the hose nozzle and examining the pick handle with a microscope. It is hard to remove all vestige of blood from a piece of wood. Those steps are of course obvious, and others as well.”

“You’re telling me.” The District Attorney sent a glance, half a glare, at Osgood, and away again, back at Wolfe. “Now look here, don’t get me wrong … you neither, Fred Osgood. I’m the prosecutor for this county and I know my duty and I intend to do it and I try to do it. If there’s been a crime I don’t want to back off from it and neither does Sam Lake, but I’m not going to raise a stink just for the hell of it and you can’t blame me for that. The people who elected me wouldn’t want it and nobody ought to want it. And the way it looks to me—in spite of no blood on the bull and whether I find a legitimate nocturnal pick-washer or not—it still strikes me as cuckoo. Did he climb into the pasture carrying the pick—where the bull was—and
then Clyde Osgood climbed in after him and obligingly stood there while he swung the pick? Or was Clyde already in the pasture, and he climbed in with the pick and let him have it? Can you imagine aiming anything as clumsy and heavy as a pick at a man in the dark, and him still being there when it landed? And wouldn’t the blood spurt all over you too? Who is he and where did he go to, covered with blood?”

Osgood snarled, “I told you, Wolfe. Listen to the damn fool.—Look here, Carter Waddell! Now I’ll tell you something—”

“Please, gentlemen!” Wolfe had a palm up. “We’re wasting a lot of time.” He regarded the District Attorney and said patiently, “You’re going about it wrong. You should stop squirming and struggling. Finding yourself confronted by an unpleasant fact … you’re like a woman who conceals a stain on a table cover by putting an ash tray over it. Ineffectual, because someone is sure to move the ash tray. The fact is that Clyde Osgood was murdered by someone with that pick, and unhappily your function is to establish the fact and reveal its mechanism; you can’t obliterate it merely by inventing unlikely corollaries.”

“I didn’t invent anything, I only—”

“Pardon me. You assumed the fictions that Clyde climbed the fence into the pasture and obligingly stood in the dark and permitted himself to be fatally pierced by a clumsy pick. I admit that the first is unlikely and the second next to incredible. Those considerations occurred to me last night on the spot. As I said, by the time I reached the house I had satisfied myself as to how the crime was committed, and I am still satisfied. I don’t believe Clyde Osgood climbed the fence. He was first rendered unconscious, probably
by a blow on the head. He was then dragged or carried to the fence, and pushed under it or lifted over it, and further dragged or carried ten or fifteen yards into the pasture, and left lying on his side. The murderer then stood behind him with the pick and swung it powerfully in the natural and ordinary manner, only instead of piercing and tearing the ground it pierced and tore his victim. The wound would perfectly resemble the goring of a bull. The blood-spurt would of course soil the pick, but not the man who wielded it. He got the tie-rope from where it was hanging on the fence and tossed it on the ground near the body, to make it appear that Clyde had entered the pasture with it; then he took the pick to the convenient hose nozzle, washed it off, returned it where he had got it, and went—” Wolfe shrugged “—went somewhere.”

“The bull,” Waddell said. “Did the bull just stand and look on and wait for the murderer to leave, and then push the body around so as to have bloody horns? Even a rustic sheriff might have noticed it if he had had no blood on him at all.”

“I couldn’t say. It was dark. A bull may or may not attack in the dark. But I suggest (1) the murderer, knowing how to handle a bull in the dark, before performing with the pick, approached the bull, snapped the tie-rope onto the nose ring, and led him to the fence and tied him. Later, before releasing him, he smeared blood on his horns. Or (2), after the pick had been used the murderer enticed the bull to the spot and left him there, knowing that the smell of blood would lead him to investigate. Or (3), the murderer acted when the bull was in another part of the pasture and made no effort to manufacture the evidence of bloody horns, thinking that in the excitement and
with the weight of other circumstances as arranged, it wouldn’t matter. It was his good luck that Mr. Goodwin happened to arrive while the bull was satisfying his curiosity … and his bad luck that I happened to arrive at all.”

Waddell sat frowning, his mouth screwed up. After a moment he blurted, “Fingerprints on the pick handle.”

Wolfe shook his head. “A handkerchief or a tuft of grass, to carry it after washing it. I doubt if the murderer was an idiot.”

Waddell frowned some more. “Your idea about tying the bull to the fence and smearing blood on his horns. That would be getting pretty familiar with a bull, even in the dark. I don’t suppose anyone could have done it except Monte McMillan … he was Monte’s bull, or he had been. Maybe you’re ready to explain why Monte McMillan would want to kill Clyde Osgood?”

“Good heavens, no. There are at least two other alternatives. Mr. McMillan may be capable of murder, I don’t know, and he was certainly resolved to protect the bull from molestation—but don’t get things confused. Remember that the murder was no part of an effort to guard the bull; Clyde was knocked unconscious not in the pasture, but somewhere else.”

“That’s your guess.”

“It’s my opinion. I am careful with my opinions, sir; they are my bread and butter and the main source of my self-esteem.”

Waddell sat with his mouth screwed up. Suddenly Osgood barked at him ferociously:

“Well, what about it?”

Waddell nodded at him, and then unscrewed his
mouth to mutter, “Of course.” He got up and kicked his chair back, stuck his hands in his pockets, stood and gazed at Wolfe a minute, and then backed up and sat down again. “Goddam it,” he said in a pained voice. “Of course. We’ve got to get on it as quick and hard as we can. Jesus, what a mess. At Tom Pratt’s place. Clyde Osgood. Your son, Fred. And you know the kind of material I have to work with—for instance Sam Lake—on a thing like this … I’ll have to pull them away from the exposition … I’ll go out and see Pratt myself, now …”

He jerked himself forward and reached for the telephone.

Osgood said to Wolfe, bitterly, “You see the prospect.”

Wolfe nodded, and sighed. “It’s an extraordinarily difficult situation, Mr. Osgood.”

“I know damn well it is. I may have missed the significance of the bull’s face, but I’m not a fool. The devil had brains and nerve and luck. I have two things to say to you. First, I apologize again for the way I tackled you this afternoon. I didn’t know you had really earned your reputation, so many people haven’t, but I see now you have. Second, you can see for yourself that you’ll have to do this. You’ll have to go on with it.”

Wolfe shook his head. “I expect to leave for New York Thursday morning. Day after tomorrow.”

“But my God, man! This is what you do, isn’t it? Isn’t this your job? What’s the difference whether you work at it in New York or here?”

“Enormous; the difference, I mean. In New York I have my home, my office in it, my cook, my accustomed surroundings—”

“Do you mean …” Osgood was up, spluttering. “Do you mean to say you have the gall to plead your personal comfort, your petty convenience, to a man in the position I’m in?”

“I do.” Wolfe was serene. “I’m not responsible for the position you’re in. Mr. Goodwin will tell you: I have a deep aversion to leaving my home or remaining long away from it. Another thing, you might not think me so petty if you could see and hear and smell the hotel room in which I shall have to sleep tonight and tomorrow night … and heaven knows how many more nights if I accepted your commission.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Everything imaginable.”

“Then leave it. Come to my house. It’s only sixteen miles out, and you can have a car until yours is repaired, and your man here can drive it …”

“I don’t know.” Wolfe looked doubtful. “Of course, if I undertake it I shall need immediately a good deal of information from you and your daughter, and your own home would be a good place for that …”

I stood up with my heels together and saluted him, and he glared at me. Naturally he knew I was on to him. Machiavelli was a simple little shepherd lad by comparison. Not that I disapproved by any means, for the chances were that I would get a fairly good bed myself, but it was one more proof that under no circumstances could you ever really trust him.

W
ith Nancy still chauffering, 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.”