Some Buried Caesar (17 page)

His familiar grunt came: “Hello, Archie.”

“Hello. Hell all haywire. They already had the fire started and it’s like an inferno. What can I do?”

“Confound it. Nothing. Return.”

“Nothing at all I can do here?”

“No. Come and help me admire stupidity.”

I hung up and turned to Lily: “Listen, bauble. What good would it do if you told anyone that I came here to take a picture of the bull?”

“None whatever.” She smiled and ran the tips of her fingers down my arm. “Trust me, Escamillo.”

A
n hour later, after eight o’clock, Wolfe and I sat in the room that had been assigned to him upstairs, eating off of trays, which he hated to do except at breakfast. But he wasn’t complaining. He never talked business at meals, and was glad to escape from his client. Osgood had explained that his wife wouldn’t appear, and his daughter would remain with her, and that perhaps it would be as well to forego service in the dining room altogether, and Wolfe had politely assented. His room was commodious and comfortable. It was a little chintzy, but one of its chairs was adequate for his bulk, and the bed would have held two of him. It might have been supposed that the kitchen would be sharing in the general household derangement, but the covered dishes of broiled lamb chops with stuffed tomatoes were hot and tasty, the salad was way below Fritz’s standard but edible, and the squash pie was towards the top.

Osgood’s collision with Waddell and Captain Barrow had been brief, for it had ended by the time I got back. The captain was collecting fingerprints from everyone who had been at Pratt’s place the night before,
without disclosing how dire his intent might be, and since Wolfe had already obliged I figured I might as well. After he had got my ten specimens collected and marked and put away in his little case, he had announced that he was ready for a call on the foreman of the stock barns, and at Wolfe’s suggestion Osgood and McMillan had accompanied him, and Pratt had departed for home, which left Wolfe and me alone with District Attorney Waddell.

Waddell was glad to cooperate, he said, with Fred Osgood’s representative. More than willing. He had pursued, and intended to pursue, the investigation without fear or favor. No one had a supported alibi except Lily Rowan and me. They had left the dinner table before 9 o’clock. Wolfe had gone upstairs to read. Pratt had gone to his desk in the room next to the living room to look over some business papers. McMillan had been shown to a room upstairs by Bert, and had lain down with his shoes off for a nap until 1 o’clock, at which time he was to relieve me on guard duty. He had slept lightly and the sound of the shots had awakened him. Caroline had sat on the terrace for a while and had then gone to the living room and looked at magazines. Jimmy had been on the terrace with his sister, and when she left he had remained there, and sat and smoked. He had heard our voices, Lily’s and mine, as we had followed the pasture fence on our tour, especially as we encountered the briar patch, but remembered no other sounds above the noise of the crickets and katydids. Bert had helped with the dinner dishes until 10 o’clock and had then sat in the kitchen and listened to the radio, with his ear glued to it because it had to be kept pianissimo. Dave Smalley—Waddell knew all about his having
been fired by Clyde Osgood—Dave, on parting from me at a quarter to 9, had gone to his room in a wing of the garage building, shaved himself, and retired. Wolfe demanded, “Shaved?” in incredulity, and got the explanation Dave had given, that he always shaved at bedtime because he was too hungry to do it before breakfast, and after breakfast there was no time.

So far as that went, Waddell conceded, anyone could have done it. When you went on and asked why anyone would have done it, that was different. There was no one there with anything like a decent known motive to murder Clyde Osgood unless you wanted to make an exception of Dave Smalley, but Dave was harmless and always had been. Say someone had caught Clyde sneaking in there after the bull. If it had been Pratt, he would have simply ordered him off. If it had been Jimmy, he would have socked him. If it had been McMillan, he would have picked him up and thrown him over the fence. If it had been Dave, he would have yelled for help. If it had been Goodwin, who was guarding the bull, of course he didn’t know.…

“I’ve explained,” said Wolfe patiently, “that the murder was planned. Did you examine the bull?”

“I looked at him, and so did Sam Lake and the police. There was one splotch on his face and a little caked on his horns, but not much, he had rubbed most of that off. A bull likes to keep his horns clean.”

“What about the grass around the hose and the pick handle?”

“We sent the pick to Albany for laboratory inspection. There were a few, kind of clots, we found in the
grass, and we sent them too. We won’t know until tomorrow.”

“They’ll report human blood, and then what? Will you still waste time blathering about Clyde approaching the bull with a meal of anthrax, and the bull, after consuming it, becoming resentful and goring him?”

“If they report human blood that will add weight to your theory, of course. I said I’d cooperate, Wolfe, I didn’t agree to lap up your sarcasm.”

“Pfui.” Wolfe shrugged. “Don’t think I don’t understand your position, sir. You are fairly sure there has been a murder, but you want to leave a path open to a public pretense that there was none, in case you fail to solve it. You have made no progress whatever toward a solution and see no prospect of any, and you would abandon the attempt now and announce it as accidental death as a result of malicious trespass, but for me. You know I am employed by Mr. Osgood, who may be obstructed but not ignored, and you further know that I have the knack of arranging, when I do make a fool of myself, that no one shall know it but me.”

“You make …” Waddell sputtered with anger. “You accuse me of obstructing justice? I’m the law officer of this county—”

“Bah! Swallow it, sir! You know perfectly well Clyde Osgood was murdered, and you descend to that gibberish about him poisoning that bull!” Wolfe halted abruptly, and sighed. “But there, I beg your pardon. I have forfeited the right to reproach even gibberish. I had this case like that, complete—” he showed a clenched fist “—and I let it go.” The fist popped open.

“You don’t mean you know the mur—”

“I mean I was lazy and conceited. You may quote
that. Forget my dispraise, it was beside the point; you do your best. So do I. That’s the devil of it: my best wasn’t good enough this afternoon. But it will be. Drop all notion of filing it as an accident, Mr. Waddell; you may as well close that path, for you won’t be allowed to return by it …”

Soon after that McMillan and Captain Barrow had returned, and they had all left, after Wolfe had arranged for McMillan to pay us a visit at 9 o’clock that evening.

During dinner Wolfe wasn’t talkative, and I made no special effort at conversation because he didn’t deserve it. If he wanted to be charitable enough to concede Waddell a right to live, I wouldn’t have objected to that, but he might have kept within bounds. Decorum is decorum. If he wanted to admit he had made a boob of himself and prattle about forfeiting rights, that was okay, but the person to admit it too wasn’t a half-witted crime buzzard from the upstate sticks, but me. That’s what a confidential assistant is for. The only thing that restrained me from letting my indignation burst into speech was the fact that I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

McMillan was punctual. It was 9 on the dot, and we were sipping coffee, when a maid came to say he was below. I went down and told him that Wolfe calculated there might be more privacy if he didn’t object to coming upstairs, and he said certainly not. On the upper landing we ran into Nancy and he stopped for a couple of words with her, having, as he had observed the day before, known the Osgood youngsters since they were babies.

Wolfe greeted him. He sat down and declined coffee.
Wolfe looked at him and sighed. I sipped coffee and watched them over the rim of the cup.

Wolfe said, “You look tired.”

The stockman nodded. “I’m about all in. I guess I’m getting old. Scores of times I’ve stayed up all night with a cow dropping a calf … but of course this wasn’t exactly the same as a cow dropping a calf.”

“No. Its antithesis. Death instead of birth. It was obliging of you to come over here; I dislike expeditions at night. In my capacity as an investigator for your friend Mr. Osgood, may I ask you some questions?”

“That’s what I came for.”

“Good. Then first, you left Mr. Pratt’s terrace yesterday afternoon with the announced intention of telling Clyde not to do anything foolish. Miss Osgood has told me that you called Clyde from the car and conversed with him a few minutes. What was said?”

“Just that. I knew Clyde had a streak of recklessness in him—not bad, he wasn’t a bad boy, just a little reckless sometimes—and after what he had said to Pratt I thought he might need a little quieting down. I sort of made a joke of it and told him I hoped he wasn’t going to try to pull any Halloween stunt. He said he was going to win his bet with Pratt. I told him there was no way he could do it and the sensible thing was to let me go and arrange with Pratt to call the bet off. He refused, and I asked him how he expected to win it, and of course he wouldn’t tell me. That was all there was to it. I couldn’t get anything out of him, and he went and got in his car.”

“Without giving you the slightest hint of his intentions.”

“Right.”

Wolfe grimaced. “I hoped you would be able to tell me a little more than that.”

“I can’t tell you more than what happened.”

“Of course not. But I had that much, which is nothing, from Mr. Waddell, as you told it to him. He is the district attorney. I represent your friend Mr. Osgood. I had rather counted on your willingness to disclose things to me which you might choose to withhold from him.”

McMillan frowned. “Maybe you’d better say that again. It sounds to me as if you meant I’m lying about it.”

“I do. —Now please!” Wolfe showed a palm. “Don’t let’s be childish about the depravity of lying. Victor Hugo wrote a whole book to prove that a lie can be sublime. I strongly suspect you’re lying, and I’d like to explain why. Briefly, because Clyde Osgood wasn’t an imbecile. I suppose you have heard from Mr. Waddell of my theory that Clyde didn’t climb into the pasture, but was put there. I still incline to that, but whether he voluntarily entered the pasture or not, he certainly went voluntarily from his home to Pratt’s place. What for?”

He paused to empty his coffee cup. McMillan, still frowning, sat and looked at him.

Wolfe resumed, “I risk the assumption that he wasn’t merely out for a stroll. He had a purpose, to do something or see somebody. I counted Dave out. Miss Rowan was with Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Waddell tells me that the others, including you, profess complete ignorance of Clyde’s presence on the premises. I find it next to impossible to believe that; the reason being, as I said, that Clyde was not an imbecile; for if he didn’t go there to see someone I must assume that his object
was some sort of design, singlehanded, against the bull, and that’s preposterous. What design? Remove the bull from the pasture, lead him away and keep him hid somewhere until the week was up? Feed him anthrax to kill him and render him inedible? Glue wings on him and ride him, a bovine Pegasus, to the moon? The last surmise is no more unlikely than the first two.”

“You’re not arguing with me,” McMillan said drily. “If I set out to try to prove anything I wouldn’t know where to start. But about my lying—”

“I’m coming to it.” Wolfe pushed at his tray, with a glance at me, and I got up and moved it out of his way. He went on, “Frankly, I am not now dealing with the murder. I haven’t got that far. I must first find a reasonable hypothesis to account for Clyde’s going there … or rather, let me go back still further and put it this way: I must find a reasonable hypothesis for his evident expectation of winning that bet. Didn’t he tell you he expected to win the bet?”

“Yes.”

“And he wouldn’t tell you how?”

“No.”

“Well.” Wolfe compressed his lips. “That’s what I can’t believe. I can’t believe that, because he could expect to win the bet only with your assistance.”

McMillan stared, with his heavy brows down. “Now,” he said finally, “I don’t think you want to start talking like that. Not to me. I don’t believe so.”

“Oh yes I do,” Wolfe assured him. “It’s my one form of prowess. I do talk. But I mean no offense, I’m speaking only of Clyde’s expectations. I must account for his expecting to win that bet before I can approach the murder at all. I have considered, thoroughly,
all the possible schemes, as well as the impossible, he might have had in mind, and there is one which appears neat, not too atrocious, and practicable though perhaps difficult. I have said he couldn’t have expected simply to remove the bull from the pasture, because he couldn’t have hid him from the resulting search. But why couldn’t he remove Caesar and put another bull in his place?”

The stockman snorted. “A good grade Holstein maybe.”

“No. Humor me, sir. Take my question as serious and answer it. Why couldn’t he?”

“Because he couldn’t.”

“But why not? There were, I don’t know how many, Guernsey bulls at the exposition, only seventeen miles away, and cattle trucks there to haul them in. There were some much closer, here at his father’s place, within leading distance. Might not one of them, though vastly inferior to the champion Caesar in the finer qualities which I don’t know about, resemble him sufficiently in size and coloring to pass as a substitute? A substitute for only one day, since the butcher was to come on Wednesday? Who would have known the difference?”

McMillan snorted again. “I would.”

“Granted. You could have mistaken no other bull for your Caesar. But everyone else might easily have been fooled. At the very least there was an excellent sporting chance of it. It is obvious at what point such a scheme might have entered Clyde’s mind. Yesterday afternoon he was sitting on the pasture fence, looking at Hickory Caesar Grindon through his binoculars. It occurred to him that there was a bull of similar general appearance, size and markings, either in
his father’s herd or among the collection at the exposition, which he had just come from; and that accidental reflection blossomed into an idea. Chased away from the pasture, he went to the house and made the wager with Mr. Pratt. Followed from the terrace to his car by you, he called you aside and made a proposal.”