“Was that her bread at breakfast?”
“Yes. Salt-rising. You ate four slices.”
“It’s quite edible.” He went to the car and climbed in. Woody came and I thanked him and paid for the calls, waved to the Vawters, who were still out front, of course wondering who that was with me, got in behind the wheel and started the engine, and eased the car over the rough spot onto the start of the blacktop.
We had gone three or four miles when Wolfe said, “You’re hitting bumps deliberately.”
“I am not. It’s the road. Try driving it without hitting bumps. Also this is not your Heron with its special springs.” Bump. “Would it hurt to discuss what you’re going to say to Jessup?”
“Yes. Jouncing along like this? I’ll decide what to say, and how to say it, after I see him.”
If you want to visit Whedon’s Graveyard you have to know exactly where it is. There’s no sign and no lane to turn into, though there probably was one when Whedon was on his wheat caper. Now, just beyond a certain patch of aspen at the edge of the blacktop, and just before a culvert over a cut, you leave the road and turn right onto dry grass — dry in August — circle around the foot of a slope, follow the rim of a gulch for a couple of hundred yards, and there it is. There is no visible reason for you to be glad you came. What was presumably once a house with a roof is now a pile of jackstraws for Paul Bunyan to play with if he happens by — old logs and boards sticking up and out at crazy angles, and others scattered around. Also, if you enjoy looking at bare white bones, well weathered, there are some here and there, where visitors have probably tossed them after taking a look. Johnny Vawter says some of them are Whedon’s, but he admits he isn’t a bone expert, and I have never checked his claim that an undertaker in Timberburg agrees with him.
I had seen Jessup’s car, a dark blue Ford sedan, and it wasn’t there. Except what I have described, nothing and nobody was there. I turned the car around to head back, killed the engine, and said, “A suggestion. If he’s in the back seat you’ll have to twist around to face him. If you move to the back and he gets in with me he’ll have to do the twisting.”
“I have never,” he said, “had an important conversation sitting in an automobile.”
“Certainly you have. Once with Miss Rowan, once with me, and a couple of others. Your memory’s doing fine. You said once that a signal function of the memory is discarding what we want to forget. And where else would you like to sit? This graveyard has no tombstones.”
He opened the door, slid out backwards, opened the rear door, and climbed in. I skewed around to face him and said, “Much better. Some day you’ll realize what a help I am.”
“Pfui. Why am I here, two thousand miles from my house?”
“To see justice done. To right a wrong. Now about Jessup. For sizing him up it may help to know that he was born in Montana, is forty-one years old, and is happily married with three children. University of Montana, which is at Missoula. In my report I didn’t mention that Luther Dawson says Jessup would rather be a judge than a governor, he was fourth in his class at law school, and he — and here he comes.”
Since we were headed out we didn’t have to twist our necks to see the Ford leave the slope and bounce along the gulch rim. Twenty yards off it stopped, then came on again and nosed in alongside. I had thought it likely that he would have someone with him, not to be outnumbered, but he was alone. He got out, nodded to me, came to the rear door, said to Wolfe, “I’m Tom Jessup,” and offered a hand through the open window. For a second I thought Wolfe was going to revert to normal on me, but he said, “I’m Nero Wolfe,” and put out a hand to permit bodily contact. Jessup said he guessed our car was roomier than his, and we agreed, and he went around to the other side. I leaned across to open the front door, and he took the hint and got in.
He turned to me. “I came to see what Mr. Wolfe has to say, but first I’d like to just mention a point. You said the other day that you didn’t know why a state official was interested in the case, and now it’s evident that — well, that wasn’t true. You did know.”
“Now listen,” I said. “Instead of calling me a liar, why not ask me? I didn’t know that Mr. Wolfe had made a move until I saw him get out of a taxi yesterday evening. As evidence that that isn’t a lie, if I had known he was coming I would have gone to Timberburg to get him, or even to Helena. Not that it matters now, since you’re assuming that it was for him that the Attorney General wanted that report.”
“Not assuming. I know it was.” He slued around, putting a knee on the seat, to face the rear. “Mr. Wolfe, I’m an officer of the law. I have been told by a superior officer of the law that you have come to invest — er, to inquire into the Harvey Greve case, and he requested me — I’ll call it ‘requested’ — to extend to you every possible courtesy. I try to—”
“Didn’t he say ‘cooperate’?”
“He may have. I try to show courtesy, in my official capacity as well as personally, to any and all of my fellow citizens, but my primary obligation is to the people of this county who chose me to serve them. I’ll be frank with you. This is the first time I have received such a request from the Attorney General. I don’t want to refuse it or ignore it unless I have to. I ask you to be frank with me. I want you to tell me what kind of pressure you brought to bear on Mr. Veale to persuade him to take that action.”
Wolfe nodded. “Naturally you would like to know, and there are many officers of the law who wouldn’t have bothered to ask. Did Mr. Veale mention any names?”
“Only yours — and Mr. Goodwin’s.”
“Then I can’t fully match your frankness. ‘Pressure’ is probably too strong a word. I have no connections in Montana — political or professional or personal — none whatever; but a man I know in New York has. A man who is well disposed to me. Since Mr. Veale didn’t name him, I can’t, but I know him to be a man of probity and punctilio. I assume he merely asked a favor of Mr. Veale. I am sure he would bring no pressure to bear that you would consider shabby or corrupt — but of course that leaves open the question of the worth of my assurance. Of me. You don’t know me.”
“I knew your name. Most people do, even out here. I phoned two men in New York, one a district attorney, and was told, in effect, that your word is good but that anyone dealing with you should be sure he knows what your word is.”
A corner of Wolfe’s mouth raised a little — with him, a smile. “That could have been said of the Delphian oracle. Tell me how you would like my assurance phrased.”
“You won’t give me his name? Off the record?”
“It would be on my record. If Mr. Veale didn’t, I can’t.” Wolfe cocked his head. “A question, Mr. Jessup. Why don’t you ask what kind of cooperation I expect? It’s conceivable that you would have granted it even without a request from Mr. Veale.”
“All right, tell me what you expect.”
Wolfe closed his eyes and in a moment opened them. “I expect to be enabled to make an inquiry without intolerable hindrance. Mr. Goodwin has been trying to for ten days and has been completely frustrated. He has had neither a fulcrum or a lever. No one will tell him anything. He has had no standing — not only no official standing, not even the standing of an empowered agent of Mr. Greve, because the attorney who has been hired by Miss Rowan believes that Mr. Greve killed that man, as you do.”