The Second Confesion

When you got out and went to him he was dead. You were rattled, and you had an urgent confidential phone call to make. You didn't want to leave his body there in the middle of the drive, so you dragged it across the grass to a bush. You drove to Chappaqua, made the phone call, and drove back here. You entered the house, intending to phone a report of the accident, and were met by Miss Sperling, who was concerned about the absence of her sister. You went out with her to look for the sister, and you found her. Naturally you didn't want to tell her, abruptly and brutally, of Rony's death. Within a short time you went to the house and told Wolfe about it, and he told Sperling, and Sperling notified the police. You were understandably reluctant to admit that it was your car that had killed him, and you could not bring yourself to do so until the course of the investigation showed you that it was unavoidable. Then, to me, to the highest law officer of the county, you stated the facts-all of them.” Archer stretched another inch forward. “If those facts are set down in a statement, and you sign it, what will happen? You can't even be charged with leaving the scene of an accident, because you didn't-you're here and haven't left here. I'm the District Attorney. It will be up to me to decide if any charge shall be lodged against you, and if so what charge. What do you think I'll decide? Considering all the circumstances, which you're as familiar with as I am,” what would any man of sense decide? Whom have you injured, except one man by an unavoidable accident?” Archer turned to the table, found a pad of paper, got a pen from his pocket, and offered them to me. “Here. Write it down and sign it, and let's get it over with. You'll never regret it, Goodwin, you have my word for that.” I smiled at him. “Now I am sorry, Mr Archer, I really am.” “Don't be sorry! Just write it down and sign it.” I shook my head. “I guess you'll have to get the warrant, but you'd better count ten. I'm glad you weren't peddling a vacuum cleaner or you'd have sold me. But I won't buy signing such a statement. If all it had to have in it was what you said-hitting him and dragging him off the road, and going on to make the phone call, and coming back and helping Miss Sperling hunt her sister, and getting the cops notified but not mentioning the fact that it was me that ran over him-if that was all there was to it I might possibly oblige you, in spite of the fact that it wouldn't be true, just to save trouble all around. But one detail that you didn't include would be too much for me.” “What? What are you talking about?” “The car. I'm in the detective business. I'm supposed to know things. I'm certainly supposed to know that if you run over a man and squash him the way Rony was squashed, the car will have so much evidence on it that a blindfolded Boy Scout could get enough to cinch it. Yet I drove the car back here and parked it, and played innocent all night and all morning, so Ben Dykes could walk in on us at noon and announce aha, it was Nero Wolfe's car! That I will not buy. It would get me a horse laugh from the Battery to Spuyten Duyvil. I would never live it down. And speaking of a warrant, I don't think any judge or jury would buy it either.” “We could make it-” “You couldn't make it anything but what it is. I'll tell you another thing. I don't believe Ben Dykes has bought it, and I doubt very much if you have. Ben may not like me much, I don't know, but he knows damn well I'm not a sap. He went after me as well as he could because you told him to and you're the boss.