Some Buried Caesar

"By no means. I've eliminated no one." Wolfe sounded faintly exasperated, and I perceived that it was up to me to arrange with Pug-nose for more and colder beer. "Elimination, as such, is tommyrot. Innocence is a negative and can never be established; you can only establish guilt. The only way I can apodictically eliminate any individual from consideration as the possible murderer is to find out who did it. You can't be expected to see what I am accomplishing; if you could do that, you could do the job yourself. Let me give you a conjecture for you to try your hand on: for example, is Miss Rowan an accomplice? Did she join Mr. Goodwin last night and sit with him for an hour on the running board of my car, which he had steered into a tree, to distract him while the crime was being committed? Or if you would prefer another sort of problem…"

He stopped with a grimace and began preparations to arise. I got up too, and Osgood started across the room toward the door which had opened to admit his daughter, and with her an older woman in a dark blue dress with her hair piled on top of her head. Osgood made an effort to head off the latter, and protested, but she advanced toward us any- how. He submitted enough to introduce us:

"This is Mr. Nero Wolfe, Marcia. His assistant, Mr. Good- win. My wife. Now dear, there's no sense in this, it won't help any…"

While he remonstrated with her I took a polite look. The farmer's beautiful daughter who, according to one school of thought, was responsible for Tom Pratt's unlucky idea of making beefsteak out of Hickory Caesar Grindon, was still beautiful I suppose; it's hard for me to tell when they're around fifty, on account of my tendency to concentrate on details which can't be expected to last that long. Anyway, with her eyes red and swollen from crying and her skin blotchy, it wasn't fair to judge.

She told her husband, "No, Fred, really. I'll be all right. Nancy has told me what you've decided. I suppose you're right… you always are right… now you don't need to look like that… you're perfectly right to want to find out about it, but I don't want just to shut myself away… you know Clyde always said it wasn't a pie if I didn't have my finger in it…" her lip quivered "… and if it is to be discussed with Nancy I want to be here…"

"It's foolish, Marcia, there's no sense in it." Osgood had hold of her arm. "If you'll just-"