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.Then he turned to his horse, swatted its rump, and sent it off to graze on a few patches of grass that grew near the edge of the yard.“We’ll talk in the barn,” he said.“I’ve got work to do, and I can’t ignore it for the sake of”—he took heavy steps away from us through the sea of manure—“ghost stories.”Kreizler and I followed, much relieved at the apparent success of the bribe.Concern returned, however, when Dury spun round at the barn door.“Just a minute,” he said.“You say this man’s a doctor? What’s his interest?”“I make a study of criminal behavior, Mr.Dury,” Laszlo answered smoothly, “as well as of police methods.Mr.Moore has asked me to provide expert advice for his article.”Dury accepted that, though it seemed that he didn’t much like Kreizler’s accent.“You’re German,” he said.“Or maybe Swiss.”“My father was German,” Kreizler answered.“But I was raised in this country.”Dury seemed ill satisfied by Kreizler’s explanation, and silently walked on into the barn.Inside that creaky structure the stench of manure grew stronger, softened only by the sweet aroma of hay, a store of which was visible in the loft above us.The bare plank walls of the building had once been whitewashed, but most of the paint had fallen away to reveal roughly grained wood.A chicken coop was visible through one four-foot doorway, the gurgles and clucks of its occupants floating out toward us.Harnesses, scythes, shovels, picks, mauls, and buckets were everywhere, hanging from the walls and the low roof or lying on the earthen floor.Dury went directly over to a very old manure spreader, the axle of which was propped up on a pile of rocks.Taking up a mallet and slamming away at the wheel that faced us, our host eventually forced it from its mount.Dury then hissed in disgust and began to fuss with the end of the axle.“All right,” he said, grabbing a bucket of heavy grease and never looking our way.“Ask your questions.”Kreizler nodded to me, indicating that it might be best if I took the lead in the questioning.“We’ve read the newspaper accounts that appeared at the time,” I said.“I wonder if you might tell us—”“Newspaper accounts!” Dury grunted.“I suppose you’ve also read, then, that the fools suspected me for a time.”“We’ve read that there was gossip,” I answered.“But the police said that they never—”“Believed it? Not much, they didn’t.Only enough to send two of their men all the way over here to harass my wife and myself for three days!”“You’re married, Mr.Dury?” Kreizler asked quietly.For just a second or two, Dury eyed Laszlo, again resentfully.“I am.Nineteen years, not that it’s any business of yours.”“Children?” Kreizler asked, in the same cautious tone.“No,” came the hard answer.“We—that is, my wife—I—no.We have no children.”“But I take it,” I said, “that your wife was able to attest to your being here when the—the terrible incident occurred?”“That didn’t mean much to those idiots,” Dury answered.“A wife’s testimony counts for little or nothing in a court of law.I had to ask a neighbor of mine, a man who lives nearly ten miles away, to come and verify that we were pulling a stump together on the very day my parents were murdered.”“Do you know why the police should have been so hard to convince?” Kreizler asked.Dury slammed his mallet down on the ground.“I’m sure you read about that, too.Doctor.It was no secret.There’d been bad blood between my parents and myself for many years.”I held a hand up to Kreizler.“Yes, we saw some mention of such,” I said, trying to coax more details out of Dury.“But the police accounts were very vague and confused, and it was difficult to draw any conclusions.Which seems remarkable, given that the question was vital to the investigation.Maybe you could make it a little clearer for us?”Lifting the manure spreader’s wheel onto a workbench, Dury began to pound at it again.“My parents were hard people, Mr.Moore.They had to be, to make the trip to this country and survive the life they chose for themselves [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]