Some Buried Caesar (21 page)

“Then the discovery awaits removal of more straw.”

“Yes. Which may have already happened, or may not occur until tomorrow.”

“But probably sooner. You came away to escape clamor?”

“To notify you. And to tell you about Bennett. And to save Nancy from being annoyed, by her father for the company she keeps, and by the cops for practically sitting on a corpse.”

“You were all seen by the man who removed the straw.”

“Sure, and by various others. Shall I go back now and discover him?”

Wolfe shook his head. “That wouldn’t help. Nor, probably, will there be a trail for the official pack, so there’s no hurry. I wouldn’t have guessed Bronson would be idiot enough to give him such a chance, but of course he had to meet him somewhere. But it is now all the more imperative—ah, thank goodness! Good afternoon, sir.”

Lew Bennett, still in his shirt sleeves, out of breath, stood beside him and curtly acknowledged the greeting. “You want to see me? Worst time you could have picked. The very worst.”

“So Mr. Goodwin has told me. I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. Be seated, sir. Have some coffee?”

“I’ll just stand. If I once sat down … what do you want?”

“Have you had lunch?”

“No.”

“Preposterous.” Wolfe shook his head at him. “In the midst of the most difficult and chaotic problems, I never missed a meal. A stomach too long empty thins the blood and disconcerts the brain.—Archie, order a portion of the fricassee.—For God’s sake, sir, sit down.”

I doubt if Wolfe influenced him much, it was the smell of food. I saw his nostrils quivering. He hesitated, and when I flagged a Methodist and told her to bring it with an extra dime’s worth of dumplings, which was an idea Wolfe had invented, he succumbed and dropped into a chair.

Wolfe said, “That’s better. Now. I’ve been hired by Mr. Osgood to solve a murder, and I need to know some things. You may think of my questions irrelevant or even asinine; if so you’ll be wrong. My only serious fault is lethargy, and I tolerate Mr. Goodwin, and even pay him, to help me circumvent it. 48 hours ago, Monday afternoon on Mr. Pratt’s terrace, you told him that there were a dozen members of your league waiting for you to get back, and that when they heard what you had to say there would be some action taken. You shouted that at him with conviction. What sort of action did you have in mind?”

Bennett was staring at him. “Not murder,” he said shortly. “What has that got—”

“Please.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “I’ve told
you I’m not an ass. I asked you a simple straightforward question. Can’t you simply answer it? I know you were shouting at Mr. Pratt in a rage. But what sort of action did you have in mind?”

“No sort.”

“Nothing whatever?”

“Nothing specific. I was furious. We all were. What he intended to do was the most damnable outrage and insult—”

“I know. Granting your viewpoint, I agree. But hadn’t ways and means of preventing it been discussed? For example, had anyone suggested the possibility of removing Hickory Caesar Grindon secretly and putting another bull in his place?”

Bennett started to speak, and stopped. His eyes looked wary. “No,” he said curtly.

Wolfe sighed. “All right. I wish you would understand that I’m investigating a murder, not a conspiracy to defraud. You should eat those dumplings hot. It might be better to let this wait until you’re through—”

“Go ahead. When I’m through I’m going.”

“Very well. I didn’t ask if some of you had substituted another bull or tried, I asked merely if it had been suggested in the heat of indignation. What I really want to know is, would such a plan have been feasible?”

“Feasible?” Bennett swallowed chicken. “It would have been a crime. Legally.”

“Of course. But—please give this consideration as a serious question—might it have worked?”

He considered, chewing bread and butter. “No. Monte McMillan was there.”

“If Mr. McMillan hadn’t been there, or had been a party to the scheme, might it have worked?”

“It might have.”

“It would have been possible to replace Caesar with another bull sufficiently resembling him so that the substitution would be undetected by anyone not thoroughly familiar with his appearance, without a close inspection?”

“It might have.”

“Yet Caesar was a national grand champion.” Wolfe shifted, grimacing, on the folding chair. “Didn’t he approach the unique?”

“Hell no. There’s plenty of good bulls, and quite a few great ones. The grand champion stuff is all right, and it’s valid, but sometimes the margin is mighty slim. Last year at Indianapolis, Caesar scored 96 and Portchester Compton 95. Another thing of course is their get. The records of their daughters and sons. Caesar had 51 A R daughters—”

“And 9 A R sons. I know. And that of course would not be visible to the eye. But still I am not satisfied. If another bull was to be substituted for Caesar by … well, let us say Clyde Osgood … it couldn’t be a near-champion, for the bull was destined to be butchered, and near-champions are valuable too. Would it be possible for an average bull, of comparatively low value, to have a fairly strong resemblance to a champion?”

“Might. At a distance of say a hundred yards. It would depend on who was looking.”

“How does a bull score points?”

Bennett swallowed dumplings. “The scale of points we judge on has 22 headings, with a total of 100 points
for perfection, which of course no bull ever got. Style and symmetry is 10 points. Head 6, horns 1, neck 3, withers 3, shoulders 2, chest 4, back 8, loin 3, hips 2, rump 6, thurls 2, barrel 10, and so on. The biggest number of points for any heading is 20 points for Secretions Indicating Color of Product. That’s judged by the pigment secretions of the skin, which should be a deep yellow inclining toward orange in color, especially discernible in the ear, at the end of the tailbone, around the eyes and nose, on the scrotum, and at the base of horns. Hoofs and horns should be yellow. There is a very close relationship between the color of the skin, the color of the internal fat, and the milk and butter. Now that heading alone is 20 points out of the 100, and you can only judge it by a close-up inspection. As far as value is concerned, a bull’s A R record is much more important than his show record. In the 1935 auctions, for instance, the price brought by A R bulls averaged over $2000. Bulls not yet A R but with A R dams averaged $533. Bulls not A R and without A R dams averaged $157. That same year Langwater Reveller sold for $10,000.”

Wolfe nodded. “I see. The subtleties rule, as usual. That seems to cover the questions of value and superficial appearance. The next point … I was astonished by what you told me on the telephone yesterday when I called you from Mr. Osgood’s house. I would have supposed that every purebred calf would receive an indelible mark at birth. But you said that the only ones that are marked—with a tattoo on the ear—are those of solid color, with no white.”

“That’s right.”

“So that if Caesar had been replaced by another
bull it couldn’t have been detected by the absence of any identifying mark.”

“No. Only by comparing his color pattern with your knowledge of Caesar’s color pattern or with the sketch on his Certificate of Registration.”

“Just so. You spoke of sketches or photographs. How are they procured?”

“They are made by the breeder, at birth, or at least before the calf is six months old. On the reverse of the Application for Registration are printed outlines of a cow, both sides and face. On them the breeder sketches in ink the color pattern of the calf, showing white, light fawn, dark fawn, red fawn, brown and brindle. The sketches, filed in our office at Fernborough, are the permanent record for identification throughout life. Copies of them appear on the certificate of registration. If you buy a bull and want to be sure you are getting the right one, you compare his color and markings with the sketches.”

“Then I did understand you on the telephone. It sounded a little haphazard.”

“It’s the universal method,” declared Bennett stiffly. “There has never been any difficulty.”

“No offense. If it works it works.” Wolfe sighed. “One more thing while you have your pie and coffee. This may require some reflection. Putting it as a hypothesis that Clyde Osgood actually undertook to replace Caesar with a substitute, how many bulls are there within, say, 50 miles of here, which might have been likely candidates? With a fair resemblance to Caesar, the closer the better, in general appearance and color pattern? Remember it mustn’t be another champion, worth thousands.”

Bennett objected, “But I’ve told you, it couldn’t have worked. No matter how close the resemblance was, Monte McMillan would have known. He would have known Hickory Caesar Grindon from any bull on earth.”

“I said as a hypothesis. Humor me and we’ll soon be through. How many such bulls within 50 miles?”

“That’s quite an order.” Bennett slowly munched a bite of pie, stirring his coffee, and considered. “Of course there’s one right here, up at the shed. A Willowdale bull, 3-year-old. He’ll never be in Caesar’s class, but superficially he’s a lot like him, color pattern and carriage and so on.”

“Are you sure the one in the shed is the Willowdale bull?”

Bennett looked startled for an instant, then relieved. “Yes, it’s Willowdale Zodiac all right. He was judged a while ago, and he’s way down in pigment.” He sipped some coffee. “There’s a bull over at Hawley’s, Orinoco, that might fill the bill, except his loin’s narrow, but you might or might not notice that from any distance, depending on how he was standing. Mrs. Linville has one, over the other side of Crowfield, that would do even better than Orinoco, but I’m not sure if he’s home. I understand she was sending him to Syracuse. Then of course another one would have been Hickory Buckingham Pell, Caesar’s double brother, but he’s dead.”

“When did he die?”

“About a month ago. Anthrax. With most of the rest of McMillan’s herd.”

“Yes. That was a catastrophe. Was Buckingham also a champion?”

“Hell no. He and Caesar were both sired by old Hickory Gabriel, a grand and beautiful bull, but no matter how good a sire may be he can’t be expected to hit the combination every time. Buckingham was good to look at, but his pigment secretion was bad and his daughters were inferior. He hadn’t been shown since 1936, when he scored a 68 at Jamestown.”

“In any case, he was dead. What about the Osgood herd? Any candidates there?”

Bennett slowly shook his head. “Hardly. There’s a promising junior sire, Thistleleaf Lucifer, that might be figured in, but he’s nearer brindle than red fawn. However, you might miss it if you had no reason to suspect it, and if you didn’t have Caesar’s pattern well in mind.”

“What is Lucifer’s value?”

“That’s hard to say. At an auction, it all depends …”

“But a rough guess?”

“Oh, between $500 and $800.”

“I see. A mere fraction of $45,000.”

Bennett snorted. “No bull ever lived that was worth $45,000. McMillan didn’t get that for Caesar as a proper and reasonable price for him. It was only a bribe Pratt offered to pull him in on a shameful and discreditable stunt. One or two of the fellows are inclined to excuse McMillan, saying that losing 80% of his herd with anthrax was a terrible blow and he was desperate and it was a lot of money, but I say nothing in God’s world could excuse a thing like that and most of them agree with me. I’d rather commit suicide than let myself—hey, George, over here! I was just coming. What’s up?”

One of the men I had noticed in the judging enclosure,
a big broad-shouldered guy with a tooth gone in front, approached us, bumping the backs of chairs as he came.

“Can’t they get along without me for 10 minutes?” Bennett demanded. “What’s wrong now?”

“Nothin’s wrong at the lot,” the man said. “But we can’t lead from the shed and back, on account of the crowd. There’s a million people around there. Somebody found a dead man under a straw pile in the Holstein shed with a pitchfork through him. Murdered.”

“Good God!” Bennett jumped up. “Who?”

“Don’t know. You can’t find out anything. You ought to see the mob …”

That was all I heard, because they were on their way out. A Methodist started after Bennett, but I intercepted her and told her I would pay for the meal. She said 90 cents, and I relinquished a dollar bill and sat down again across from Wolfe.

“The natural thing,” I said, “would be for me to trot over there and poke around.”

Wolfe shook his head. “It’s after 3 o’clock, and we have business of our own. Let’s attend to it.”

He got himself erect and turned to give the folding chair a dirty look, and we departed. Outside it was simpler to navigate than formerly, because instead of moving crisscross and every other way the crowd was mostly moving fast in a straight line, toward the end of the grounds where the cattle sheds were, in the opposite direction from the one we took. They looked excited and purposeful, as if they had just had news of some prey that might be pounced on for dinner. By keeping on one edge we avoided jostling.

Charles E. Shanks wasn’t anywhere in sight
around the orchid display, but Raymond Plehn, who was showing Laeliocattleyas and Odontoglossums, was there. It was the first we had seen of him, though of course we had looked over his entry, which wasn’t in competition with ours. The building, with its enormous expanse of tables and benches exhibiting everything from angel food cake to stalks of corn 14 feet high, seemed to have about as many afternoon visitors as usual, who either hadn’t heard the news from the Holstein shed or were contrary enough to be more interested in flowers and vegetables than in corpses.

Wolfe exchanged amenities with Plehn and then he and I got busy. One of our 18 plants had got temperamental and showed signs of wilt, so I stuck it under the bench and covered it with newspaper. We went over the others thoroughly, straightening leaves that needed it, re-staking a few, and removing half a dozen blossoms whose sepals had started to brown at the tips.

“On the whole, they look perky,” I told Wolfe.

“Dry,” he grunted, inspecting a leaf. “Thank heaven, no red spider yet.—Ah. Good afternoon, Mr. Shanks.”