Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families by Rex Stout

you up, but I need orders. We’re minus a client. Mrs. Rackham. This is a quick guess, but it looks as if someone stabbed her with a knife and then stuck the knife in a dog. Anyhow, she’s dead. I’ve just—”
    “What is this?” It was almost a bellow. “Flummery?”
    “No, sir. I’ve just come from where she’s lying in the woods. Leeds and I found her. The dog’s dead too, here on a bench. I don’t—”
    “Archie!”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “This is insupportable, under the circumstances.”
    “Yes, sir, all of that.”
    “Is Mr. Rackham out of it?”
    “Not as far as I know. I told you we just found her.”
    “Where are you?”
    “At Leeds’ place, alone. I’m here guarding the knife in the dog. Leeds went to Birchvale to get a doctor and the cops and maybe to kill somebody. I can’t help it. I’ve got all the time in the world. How much do you want?”
    “Anything that might help.”
    “Okay, but in case I get interrupted here’s a question first. On two counts, because I’m here working for you and because I helped find the body, they’re going to be damn curious. How much do I spill? There’s no one on this line unless the operator’s listening in.”
    A grunt and a pause. “On what I know now, everything about Mrs. Rackham’s talk with me and thepurpose of your trip there. About Mrs. Rackham and Mr. Leeds and what you have seen and heard there, everything. But you will of course confine yourself strictly to that.”
    “Nothing about sausage?”
    “Absolutely nothing. The question is idiotic.”
    “Yeah, I just asked. Okay. Well, I got here and met dogs and people. Leeds’ place is on a corner of Mrs. Rackham’s property, and we walked through the woods for dinner at Birchvale. There were eight of us at dinner….”
    I’m fairly good with a billiard cue, and only Saul Panzer can beat me at tailing a man or woman in New York, but what I am best at is reporting a complicated event to Nero Wolfe. With, I figured, a probable maximum of ten minutes for it, I covered all the essentials in eight, leaving him two for questions. He had some, of course. But I think he had the picture well enough to sleep on when I saw the light of a car through the window, told him good-by, and hung up. I stepped from the living room into the little hall, opened the outside door, and was standing on the stone slab as a car with STATE POLICE painted on it came down the narrow drive and stopped. Two uniformed public servants piled out and made for me. I only hoped neither of them was my pet Westchester hate, Lieutenant Con Noonan, and had my hope granted. They were both rank-and-file.
    One of them spoke. “Your name Goodwin?”
    I conceded it. Dogs had started to bark.
    “After finding a dead body you went off and came here to rest your feet?”
    “I didn’t find the body. A dog did. As for my feet, do you mind stepping inside?”
    I held the door open, and they crossed the threshold.With a thumb I called their attention to Nobby, on the bench.
    “That’s another dog. It had just crawled here to die, there on the doorstep. It struck me that Mrs. Rackham might have been killed with that knife before it was used on the dog, and that you guys would be interested in the knife as is, before somebody took it to slice bread with, for instance. So when Leeds went to the house to phone I came here. I have no corns.”
    One of them had stepped to the bench to look down at Nobby. He asked, “Have you touched the knife?”
    “No.”
    “Was Leeds here with you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did he touch the knife?”
    “I don’t think so. If he did I didn’t see him.”
    The cop turned to his colleague. “We won’t move it, not now. You’d better stick here. Right?”
    “Right.”
    “You’ll be getting word. Come along, Goodwin.”
    He marched to the door and opened it and let me pass through first. Outdoors he crossed to his car, got in behind the wheel, and told me, “Hop in.”
    I stood. “Where to?”
    “Where