I snapped at her. “What did you drive down here for?”
She pulled out of it and appealed to Wolfe. “Do I have to tell you?”
“No,” he said curtly.
Naturally that settled it. She proceeded to tell. She looked as if she would rather eat soap, but she didn’t stammer any.
“They were in their room and I was going by. But I didn’t just happen to overhear it; I stopped and listened deliberately. She hit him or he hit her, I don’t know which — with them you don’t know who is doing the hitting unless you see it. But she was doing the talking. She told him that she saw Goodwin—” Gwenn looked at me. “That was you.”
“My name’s Goodwin,” I admitted.
“She said she saw Goodwin finding a stone by the brook and she tried to get it and throw it in the water, but Goodwin knocked her down. She said Goodwin had the stone and would take it to Nero Wolfe, and she wanted to know what Paul was going to do, and he said he wasn’t going to do anything. She said she didn’t care what happened to him but she wasn’t going to have her reputation ruined if she could help it, and then he hit her, or maybe she hit him. I thought one of them was coming to the door and I ran down the hall.”
“When did this happen?” Wolfe growled.
“Just before dinner. Dad had just come home, and I was going to tell him about it, but I decided not to because I knew he must have got Webster to sign that statement, and he’s so stubborn — I knew what he would say. But I couldn’t just not do anything. I knew it was my fault Louis got killed, and after what you told us about him it didn’t matter about him but it did about me. I guess that sounds selfish, but I’ve decided that from now on I’m going to be perfectly honest. I’m going to be honest to everyone about everything. I’m going to quit being a fake. Take the way I acted the day you came. I should have just phoned Louis and told him I didn’t want to see him any more, that would have been the honest thing and that was what I really wanted to do; but no, I didn’t do that, I had to phone him to come and meet me so I could tell him face to face — and what happened? I honestly believe I was hoping that someone would listen in on one of the extensions so they would know how fine and noble I was! I knew Connie did that all the time, and maybe others did too. Anyhow someone did, and you know what happened. It was just as if I had phoned him to come and get killed!”
She stopped for breath. Wolfe suggested, “You may be taking too much credit, Miss Sperling.”