like to explain it. A man was coming Thursday with a bulldozer to work on a lot I’m clearing, but Monday night he told me he’d have to come Wednesday instead, and I had to dynamite a lot of stumps and rock before he came. I got at it by daylight yesterday and I thought I could finish in time to pick the corn, but I had some trouble and I had to leave the corn to that young man. I had showed him and I thought he knew. So I’ve got to apologize and I’ll see it don’t happen again. Of course I’m not expecting you to pay for it.”
Wolfe grunted. “I’ll pay for the eight ears we used. It was vexatious, Mr. McLeod.”
“I know it was.” He turned and aimed his gray-blue eyes, with their farmer’s squint, at me. “Since I’m here I’m going to ask you. What did that young man tell you about my daughter?”
I met his eyes. It was a matter not only of murder, but also of my personal jam that might land me in the jug any minute, and all I really knew of him was that he was Sue’s father and he knew how to pick corn. “Not a lot,” I said. “Where did you get the idea he told me anything about her?”
“From her. This morning. What he told her he told you. So I’m asking you, to get it straight.”
“Mr. McLeod,” Wolfe cut in. He nodded at the red leather chair. “Please sit down.”
“No need to sit. I just want to know what that young man said about my daughter.”
“She has told you what he said he said. She has also told Mr. Goodwin and me. We have spoken with her at length. She came shortly after eleven o’clock this morning to see Mr. Goodwin and stayed two hours.”
“My daughter Susan? Came here?”
“Yes.”
McLeod moved. In no hurry, he went to the red leather chair, sat, focused on Wolfe, and demanded, “What did she come for?”
Wolfe shook his head. “You have it wrong side up. That tone is for us, not you. We may or may not oblige you later; that will depend. The young man you permitted to pick my corn has been murdered, and because of false statements made by your daughter to the police Mr. Goodwin may be charged with murder. The danger is great and imminent. You say you spent yesterday dynamiting stumps and rocks. Until what hour?”
McLeod’s set jaw made his deep-tanned seamed face even squarer. “My daughter doesn’t make false statements,” he said. “What were they?”
“They were about Mr. Goodwin. Anyone will lie when the alternative is intolerable. She may have been impelled by a desperate need to save herself, but Mr. Goodwin and I do not believe she killed that man. Archie?”
I nodded. “Right. Now any odds you want to name.”
“And we’re going to learn who did kill him. Did you?”
“No. But I would have, if…” He let it hang.
“If what?”
“If I had known what he was saying about my daughter. I told them that, the police. I heard about it from them, and from my daughter, last night and this morning. He was a bad man, an evil man. You say you’re going to learn who killed him, but I hope you don’t. I told them that too. They asked me what you did, about yesterday, and I told them I was there in the lot working with the stumps until nearly dark and it made me late with the milking. I can tell you this, I don’t resent you thinking I might have killed him, because I might.”
“Who was helping you with the stumps?”
“Nobody, not in the afternoon. He was with me all morning after he did the chores, but then he had to pick the corn and then he had to go with it.”
“You have no other help?”
“No.”
“Other children? A wife?”
“My wife died ten years ago. We only had Susan. I told you, I don’t resent this, not a bit. I said I would have killed him if I’d known. I didn’t want her to come to New York, I knew something like this might happen-the kind of people she got to know and all the pictures of her. I’m an old-fashioned man and I’m a righteous man, only that word righteous may not mean for you what it means for me. You said you might oblige me later. What did my daughter come here for?”
“I don’t know.” Wolfe’s eyes were narrowed at him. “Ask her. Her avowed purpose is open to question. This is futile, Mr. McLeod, since you think a righteous man may wink at murder. I wanted-”
“I didn’t say that. I don’t wink at murder. But I don’t have to want whoever killed Kenneth Faber to get caught and suffer for it. Do I?”
“No. I wanted to see you. I wanted to ask you, for instance, if you know a man named Carl Heydt, but since-”
“I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him. I’ve heard his name from my daughter; he was the first one she worked for. What about him?”
“Nothing, since you don’t know him. Do you know Max Maslow?”
“No.”
“Peter Jay?”
“No. I’ve heard their names from my daughter. She tells me about people; she tries to tell me they’re not as bad as I think they are, only their ideas are different from mine. Now this has happened, and I knew it would, something like this. I don’t wink at murder and I don’t wink at anything sinful.”
