Wolfe ignored her. “This will go faster,” he told Archer, “if you let me do it.”
“The perfect mountebank!” Emerson sneered.
Sperling and Archer spoke together. A growl from the side made their heads turn. It was Sergeant Stebbins, raising his voice from his seat near the door. He got all eyes.
“If you take my advice,” he told them, “you’ll let him tell it. I’m from the New York Police, and this is New York. I’ve heard him before. If you pester him he’ll string it out just to show you.”
“I have no desire to string it out,” Wolfe said crossly. His eyes went from left to right and back. “This shouldn’t take long if you’ll let me get on. I wanted you all here because of what I said to you up there in my bedroom eight days ago, the evening Mr. Rony was killed. I thereby assumed an obligation, and I want you to know that I have fulfilled it.”
He took the audience in again. “First I’ll tell you why I assumed that Mr. Rony was killed not accidentally but deliberately. While it was credible that the driver of the car might not have seen him until too late, it was hard to believe that Mr. Rony had not been aware of the car’s approach, even in the twilight, and even if the noise of the brook had covered the noise of the car, which could not have been going fast. Nor was there any mark on the front of the car. If it had hit him when he was upright there would probably, though not certainly, have been a mark or marks.”
“You said all this before,” Archer cut in impatiently.
“Yes, sir. The repetition will take less time if you don’t interrupt. Another point, better than either of those, why was the body dragged more than fifty feet to be concealed behind a shrub? If it had been an accident, and the driver decided not to disclose his part in it, what would he have done? Drag the body off the road, yes, but surely not fifty feet to find a hiding place.”
“You said that before too,” Ben Dykes objected. “And I said the same argument would apply just as well to a murderer.”
“Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “but you were wrong. The murderer had a sound reason for moving the body where it couldn’t be seen from the drive if someone happened to pass.”