Down on the sidewalk, I looked at my watch: 1:35. I walked three blocks to a place I knew about, called Mary Jane’s, where someone makes chicken pie the way my Aunt Anna used to make it in Chillicothe, Ohio, with fluffy little dumplings; and as I went through a dish of it I considered the situation. There was no point in wasting money ringing Wolfe, since he wasn’t concerned, and as for our client, there was no rush. I could call her after I reported to Wolfe. So, since I was already halfway there-well, a third of the way-why not take a look at Iron Mine Road? And maybe at the old iron mine if I could find it? If I kidnaped a man and wanted a place to keep him while I collected half a million bucks, I wouldn’t ask anything better than an abandoned iron mine. I paid for the chicken and a piece of rhubarb pie, walked to the lot where I had parked the Heron, ransomed it, and headed for Hawthorne Circle. There I took the Saw Mill River Parkway, and at its end, at Katonah, I took Route 35 east. It was a bright sunny day, and I fully appreciate things like forsythia and trees starting to bud and cows in pastures as long as I have a car that I can depend on to get me back to town. Just short of Connecticut I turned right onto Route 123, glancing at my speedometer. When I had gone a mile and a half I started looking for Iron Mine Road, and in another two-tenths there it was. After negotiating a mile of that road I wasn’t so sure that the Heron would get me back to town. I met five cars in the mile, and for one of them I had to climb a bank and for another I had to back up fifty yards. There was no problem about spotting the scene of the crime when I finally reached it. There were eight cars strung along, blocking the road completely, none of them official. A dozen women and three or four men were standing at the roadside, at the edge of the ditch, and two men at the other side of the road were having a loud argument about who had dented whose fender. I didn’t even bother to get out. To the north was thick woods, and to the south a steep rocky slope with a swamp at the bottom. I admit I was a little vague about what an abandoned iron mine should look like, but nothing in sight looked promising. I pushed the reverse button and started backing, with care, and eventually came to a spot with enough room to turn around. On the way to Route 123 I met three cars coming in.
Of the two decisions I made going back to town, I was aware of one of them at the time I made it, which was par. That one was to take my time, with half an eye on the landscape, to see how the country was making out with its spring chores, which was sensible, since I couldn’t get to 35th Street before four o’clock and Wolfe would be up in the plant rooms, where he hates to be interrupted, especially when there’s nothing stirring that he’s concerned about. I made that decision before I reached Route 35.
I don’t know when the other decision was made. I became aware of it when I found myself in the middle lane of the Thruway, hitting sixty-five. When I’m bound for New York from Westchester and my destination is on the West Side, I take the Saw Mill all the way; when my destination is on the East Side I leave it at Ardsley and get on the Thruway. And there I was on the Thruway, so obviously I was going somewhere on the East Side. Where? It took me nearly two seconds. I’ll be damned, I told myself, I’m headed for our client’s house to tell her I identified the body. Okay, that will save a dime, the cost of a phone call. And if her husband is there and they have any questions, I can answer them face to face, which is always more satisfactory. I rolled on, to the Major Deegan Expressway, the East River Drive, and the 96th Street exit.
It was ten minutes past four when, having found a space on 81st Street I could squeeze the Heron into, I entered the vestibule of the four-story stone mansion at 994 Fifth Avenue and pushed the button. The door was opened by a square-faced woman in uniform with a smudge on her cheek. I suppose the Tedder who had had the house built, Harold F.’s father, wouldn’t have dreamed of letting that door be opened by a female, so it was just as well he wasn’t around. She had a surprise for me, though she didn’t know it. When I gave my name and said I wanted to see Mrs Vail, she said Mrs Vail was expecting me, and made room for me to enter. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find once again that Wolfe thought he knew me as well as I thought I knew him, but I was. What had happened, of course, was that Mrs Vail had phoned to ask if I had identified the body, and he had told her that I would stop at her house on the way back from White Plains, though that hadn’t been mentioned by him or me. That was how well he thought he knew me. Some day he’ll overdo it. As I have said,
As the female door-opener took my coat, a tenor voice came from above, “Who is it, Elga?” and Elga answered it, “It’s Mr Goodwin, Mr Tedder,” and the tenor called, “Come on up, Mr Goodwin.” I went and mounted the marble stairs, white, wide, and winding, and at the top there was Noel Tedder. I’ve mentioned that I had seen him a few times, but I had never met him. From hearsay he was a twenty-three-year-old brat who had had a try at three colleges but couldn’t make it, who had been forced by his mother to stop climbing mountains because he had fallen off of one, and who had once landed a helicopter on second base at Yankee Stadium in the fifth inning of a ball game; but from my personal knowledge he was merely a broad-shouldered six-footer who didn’t care how he dressed when he went to the theater or the Flamingo and who talked too loud after two drinks. The tenor voice was one of those mistakes that get made when the hands are being dealt.
He took me down a wide hall to an open door and motioned me in. I crossed the sill and stopped, thinking for a second I had crashed a party, but then I saw that only five of the people in the room were alive, the rest were bronze or stone, and I remembered a picture I had seen years ago of Harold F. Tedder’s library. This was it. It was a big room, high-ceilinged, but it looked a little crowded with a dozen life-sized statues standing around here and there. If he liked company he sure had it. Mrs Vail’s voice came, “Over here, Mr Goodwin,” and I moved. The five live ones were in a group, more or less, at the far end, where there was a fireplace but no fire. As I approached, Mrs Vail said, “Well?”
“It was Dinah Utley,” I said.
“What-how-”
I glanced around. “I’m not intruding?”
“It’s all right,” Jimmy Vail said. He was standing with his back to the fireplace. “They know about it. My wife’s daughter, Margot Tedder. Her brother, Ralph Purcell. Her attorney, Andrew Frost.”
“They know about Nero Wolfe,” Mrs Vail said. “My children and my brother were asking questions, and we thought we had better tell them. Then when this-Dinah-and we’ll be asked where we were last night… I decided my lawyer ought to know about it and about Nero Wolfe. It was Dinah?”
“Yes.”
“She was run over by a car?” From Andrew Frost, the lawyer. He looked a little like the man of bronze who was standing behind his chair, Abraham Lincoln, but he had no beard and his hair was gray; and on his feet probably he wasn’t quite as tall. Presumably he had learned how Dinah had died by phoning White Plains, or from a broadcast.
“She was run over by
“Her own car?”
I faced Mrs Vail, who was sitting on a couch, slumped against cushions. “On behalf of Mr Wolfe,” I told her, “I owe you two pieces of information. One, I looked at the corpse and identified it as Dinah Utley. Two, I told the District Attorney that I saw her yesterday afternoon when she came to Mr Wolfe’s office in connection with a matter you had consulted him about. That’s all. I refused to tell him what the matter was or anything about it. That’s all I owe you, but if you want to know how and when and where Dinah died I’ll throw that in. Do you want it?”
