Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 32 - Plot It Yourself by Rex Stout

Author:Rex Stout [Stout, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76818-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-07-19T04:00:00+00:00

11

At a quarter to ten Thursday morning I braked the Heron sedan to a stop in front of 78 Haddon Place, Riverdale. Perhaps that wasn’t “as early as may be,” but I didn’t want to tackle her before she had had breakfast, and besides, I hadn’t been able to get the photograph until Lon got to the Gazette office at nine o’clock. As I was soon to learn, it didn’t matter anyway, since she had already been dead about twelve hours.

If it had been a nice sunny morning I might have gone around to the side for a look at the terrace where I had found her before, but it was cloudy and cool, so I went up the walk to the entrance and pushed the button. The door was opened by a DAR type, a tall, upright female with a strong chin, in a gray dress with black buttons. Unquestionably the mother under whose devotion Jane had once been suffocating and probably still was.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” I said. “My name is Archie Goodwin. Are you Mrs. Ogilvy?”

“I am.”

“I would like to see your daughter, Miss Jane Ogilvy.”

“Does she know you?”

“We have met. She may not recognize the name.”

“She is in the cloister.”

Good Lord, I thought, she has taken the veil. “Cloister?” I said.

“Yes. She may not be up yet. Go around the house to the left and from the terrace take the path through the shrubbery.” She backstepped and was closing the door.

I followed directions. I had a feeling that I might have known she had a cloister—a cloister felt though not perceived. Rounding the house to the terrace, which was deserted, I took a graveled path which disappeared into bushes that gave it a roof. After winding among the bushes for some distance it left them and straightened out to pass between two big maples to the door of a small building—one story, gray stone, sloping roof, a curtained window on each side of the door. I proceeded and used the knocker, a big bronze flower with a red agate in the center. When nothing happened I knocked again, waited twenty seconds, turned the knob, found the door wasn’t locked, opened it a couple of inches, and called through the crack, “Miss Ogilvy!” No response. I swung the door open and stepped in.

It was a fine well-furnished cloister and probably contained many objects that were worth a look, but my attention centered immediately on its tenant. She was on her back on the floor in front of an oversized couch, dressed in a blue garment that I would call a smock but she probably had called something else. One of her legs was bent a little, but the other one was out straight. Crossing to her, I stooped to get her hand and found that the arm was completely stiff. I got a foot, which was covered by a sock but no shoe; the leg was stiff too. She had been dead a minimum of six hours, and almost certainly more.

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