"I suppose you checked all the prints."
"Of course. Although it was hardly necessary. Larry admitted walking out to see his uncle about seven-thirty, while the rest of the family still slept. He even told us that they quarreled again. It wasn"t the first time. You see, the colonel didn"t want him to marry a poor girl like Dana." A tinge of bitterness came into Ader"s voice. As an honest cop, he was always one jump ahead of the finance company. "The old man said that n.o.body but a fool married except for money, that love was a typically modern delusion, confined largely to soft-headed teen-agers and the women who read confession magazines. It"s just as easy to fall for a rich girl as a poor one, he maintained. That"s how he got his own fortune-by marrying a wealthy widow, no beauty, needless to say. The h.e.l.l of it is, that gives the boy a better motive than money alone. The colonel was mad enough to cut him off for picking Dana. In that case, no med school."
"Sounds pretty bad. What about the weapon?"
"Well, since McCabe"s skull was crushed, we looked for some kind of club. It wasn"t near the body, so we figured Larry got rid of it. But blamed if we didn"t find it right in the house, at the back of his own closet. It"s Larry"s pet walking stick, an ebony one with a roughly rounded, heavy k.n.o.b for a handle. It had been carelessly wiped. There"s still some blood and hair on the thing. Now isn"t that a stupid way to commit murder?"
At that Dana leaped up, her eyes blazing. "He didn"t do it, that"s why! Don"t you see it"s too obvious, too easy?"
Ader grimaced.
"I"ve thought of that," he said, "and in a way I agree. Unless he hoped to make us think that way to believe he was framed, and very crudely at that. Larry is a bit hot-tempered, as I"ve said, but no fool. And only a prize idiot would leave a d.a.m.ning trail like this one. Talk about painting yourself into a corner. This bird put on a dozen coats."
I had been studying the diagram while Ader talked, and now I groaned. "It was sure to happen some day. I might have known."
"What"s that?" the lieutenant demanded.
"I"ll tell you. If Larry is innocent, you"ve got a real cla.s.sic here a locked room murder, basically. The tracks on the sand show plainly that n.o.body else came anywhere near the victim. Are you positive he was killed by a blow from that stick?"
"Not yet, although I"d bet on it. But there"s been no autopsy yet, and the stick hasn"t been tested by a pathologist. All we"ve done so far is check finger-prints and tracks. They"re all Larry"s and the colonel"s. The rest is up to you. But the man"s skull was dented badly, so if anything else killed him, the blow was superfluous, which makes no sense. However, the body"s at the morgue; I"ll have it brought here. You can have the stick any time, too."
"What about Doc Kurzin? Going to bypa.s.s him again?" Kurzin"s the coroner, an ancient incubus who missed his forte as a meat-cutter for some supermarket.
"I"ll have to, if we"re going to get anywhere. Your standing as an expert in this county gives me that right, officially."
"All right," I said, a little reluctantly, because to be honest, it seemed that the boy must be guilty. After all, most murders are not subtle; they are chock full of blunders. When a man is keyed up to the point of killing, he"s not likely to be a cool planner. "I"ll do the P.M. as soon as you get the body here to the hospital. Then, if you want to bring the stick later, I"ll see if the blood and hair are really the victim"s. Meanwhile, do the usual and make me one of your fine lists of suspects. You know, descriptions, character a.n.a.lysis the works. You"ve a knack for that."
"There are plenty of possibles," Ader said glumly. "Four other heirs in the house, and I don"t think the colonel ever won any popularity contests in the army or out of it."
"How many of the other suspects fly? Because, believe me, it"ll take wings or teleportation to explain how the old man got killed without the murderer leaving tracks on the sand."
"That"s why I can"t help thinking Larry did it. I don"t want to believe it, but the alternative, as you say, means a parachute jump, or something. And," he added in a bitter voice, "a similar jump in reverse-upwards."
"Larry is innocent," Dana said firmly to me. "If you remember that, you"ll find the explanation. You"re our only hope, so please try very h-hard."
"I should warn you of one thing," I told them. "I"m not an advocate, remember; I can"t take sides. What if the facts of my investigation-" I was going to say," put another nail in the boy"s coffin?" but had the good sense to hunt a different metaphor "make the case against Larry even worse? Maybe you should give the job to Kurzin at that. He"ll mess it up so that the jury might give the boy all the benefit of the doubt."
"You won"t hurt his chances. He didn"t do it, and that"s what the evidence is bound to show finally," Dana said, her voice still firm.
Ader shrugged in half humorous resignation.
"You heard her," he said. "I"m inclined to agree that there"s nothing to lose, really. The worst D.A. in the business couldn"t fail to get a conviction right now, with no further investigation." He led his niece gently towards the door. "I"ll have the body brought over immediately. And I"ll drop by myself with the stick later, unless I get tied up somewhere." He patted the girl"s shoulder sympathetically, and they left.
Watching Dana leave, chin up, I thought that if Larry was smart enough to pick her, he wasn"t likely to bungle a murder so badly. Then I thought my logic was getting worse than hers, so I went back to my roundworms.
The body arrived about ninety minutes later, and things being slack at Pasteur, I was able to get right to work. Beginning, as usual, with the head, I had to agree with Ader that the crushed skull certainly explained the man"s death. In addition, it was also true that the old boy was remarkably healthy otherwise, and could have reached a hundred. There were laborious tissue and toxicological tests possible, but I felt them to be counter-indicated. I had no doubt he was killed by a blow on the head. I was just finishing up these gross tests, when Ader came in with the walking stick.
He studiously avoided looking at the remains, even though everything was back in place. In another minute I was through, and covered the body with a sheet. Then Ader came closer.
"Well?" he demanded.
"He was killed by a clout on the head, all right. Let"s see that stick."
He gave it to me. There was a plastic bag over the heavy end of the stick; the stem was thin, tough ebony, thirty-eight inches long. There was little doubt that egg-shaped handle could account for the bone injury. Whether it had or not remained to be seen.
The blood test was fast and simple, a matter of typing the blood. The hair didn"t take long either, using a good comparison microscope. I shook my head ruefully at the results, and Ader"s face was bleak. He had his tail in a crack, so to speak. On the one hand, he had a dream of a case, with none of the usual rat-race of finding reluctant witnesses and other sorts of elusive evidence. On the other there was his niece, Dana, a favorite relation I inferred, about to lose her beloved to the gas chamber, or, if they were lucky, to a prison for thirty years or so. Either way, the lieutenant wasn"t going to be happy. Unless, of course, we found a new candidate for the big jump.
"I"m sorry," I said. "This is no help. McCabe was killed by this stick. I"ll stake my professional reputation on that and will have to so testify under oath."
"I wasn"t expecting anything else," he said listlessly. "For Dana"s sake, I was only hoping. Anyhow, here"s that complete run-down on the rest of the household. Read it over tomorrow, and maybe you"ll think of something. You"ve done it before on more hopeless cases."
"This one out-hopelesses all the others," I said. "And frankly, we don"t need suspects as much as we need "how was it done." One murder; one rather obvious killer what"s the point in additional names?"
"I don"t know," he said wearily. "But begin by a.s.suming Larry is innocent, and then figure out how somebody else might have done it."
"Very simple," I replied. "All I need is another month and fifty per cent more brains. But I"ll try, Master."
Ader left, looking desperately tired. He probably hadn"t slept much since the murder.
It was after eleven, but I didn"t feel p.o.o.ped at all, so I sat down with the family dossier. Ader is very good at this sort of thing, and I could easily visualize the members of Colonel McCabe"s household.
There were five in the family itself, exclusive of the dead man. They were Larry, the nephew, a boy of twenty-four; two sons, Harry, aged thirty-two, and Wallace, thirty-nine; the colonel"s brother, Wayne, fifty-seven; and a cousin, Gordon Wheeler, twenty-eight. As for servants, an elderly couple kept the place clean and did the gardening. A middle-aged woman did the cooking.
When it came to motive, they all had it, except for the servants, who were provided for whether the colonel lived or died. For the family, it was a matter of money. McCabe was worth well over a million, his late wife having been the childless widow of a rich manufacturer. The colonel"s will was no secret. The two sons were down for $200,000 each; the brother, $150,000; Larry, $50,000; and the cousin, $30,000, all tax free. After a few small annuities to the servants, anything Uncle Sam left would go to the local museum, provided they kept McCabe"s arms collection, all of it, on permanent display.
For the old man fancied himself a military expert of high order. But instead of refighting the Civil War, and the one in 1914, he preferred to correct the errors of earlier generals. In short, he intended to rewrite Oman"s "The Art of War in the Middle Ages".
One room of the house was devoted to a collection of medieval arms and armor. This was the responsibility of the cousin, Gordon, who catalogued the stuff, and kept it so polished and functional that McCabe could have left on a crusade at any moment, perfectly equipped with plate armor, sword, lance, dagger, and crossbow. Only a horse was lacking.
The late colonel was something of a bully at times, but not really a bad sort. There was no evidence that he interfered unduly with the members of his family, or that any of them had serious cause to hate him. It seemed to me, reading between Ader"s lines, that the only reasonable motive was money. For McCabe was possibly a bit stingy on handouts, although everybody had an allowance of sorts.
But, actually, motive wasn"t the basic problem here. My real job was just as I"d stated it to Ader: If Larry didn"t kill the colonel, how was it done? The "who" could wait, and would probably come from the method, I felt sure.
I took out the diagram and photos again. There"s a process called "brain-storming", very popular on Madison Avenue. It consists of throwing the rational mind out of gear, and letting its motor race. You give your wildest fancies free rein, hoping to find gold among the dross. I tried that, and came up with some weird notions. The craziest was a theory that the murderer wore shoes giving fake pawprints of a dog. The trouble with that was the obvious shallowness of the prints on the photos. The coach dog weighed perhaps sixty pounds, this weight distributed over four paws. A 160 pound man would leave suspiciously deep prints by comparison. Still, I meant to have Ader check on the actual depth of the prints. I was desperate, you see.
But that "solution" didn"t even convince its inventor, so I took another tack, and this one gave me a thrill of hope. What if the approach had been from the sea? According to Ader"s notes, all members of the family were waterskiers, and the like-why not skin divers, too? If the murderer came out of the water, with or without special equipment, killed the colonel, and returned the same way, would he have left tracks, or would the tide erase them? Here was a very tenable possibility.
I was tempted to ring Ader at once, but it was after twelve, and I remembered his weariness. Wednesday would be soon enough. So I went home to bed, and dreamed of a skin-diving coach dog that terrorized the bathers.
The next morning I phoned the lieutenant, and told him my two theories. The man walking like a dog, as I"d feared, was nonsense. The plaster casts this surprised even me, but Ader leaves nothing to chance-showed them far too shallow to have been made by a man.
The second solution, about approach from the sea, however, did excite him. The only question was whether such a feat was possible at the private beach. One way to settle that was to check with Sammy Ames, sports editor of the local paper, a buff on water games. Ader gave him a call, while I listened in, conference style. Ames was very emphatic. n.o.body unwilling to commit suicide would swim within five miles of that coast at this time of the year. The undercurrents made it physically impossible to survive there; not even an Olympic gold medalist could manage it.
That was bad enough, but a call to the Yacht Club brought further verification, plus the fact that some footprints would have been left, at least until the evening tide came in.
It was hard enough finding those two theories; now I had to come up with a third, and it had to be a better one. That made a visit to the house mandatory, so I asked the lieutenant to take me there.
The place was quite impressive: a big, roomy, two-story mansion, with stairs in the back leading down some sixty feet of rock to the private beach. That beach was bounded with those minor precipices on three sides, and the sea itself on the fourth.
I won"t waste time describing the family, since their physical qualities are not relevant. All the men were healthy, athletic types, strongly masculine. They seemed genuinely sorry for Larry, but certain he was guilty.
The collection of medieval arms would have made the visit worthwhile in less harrowing circ.u.mstances. The walls were lined with daggers, battle-axes, bills, pikes, crossbows, and other ancient man-killers. There were several dummies in full suits of armor, beautifully burnished. Wheeler, the curator of this family museum, was obviously proud of the collection, and had become a trained specialist on medieval warfare through his research for the colonel. He enthusiastically demonstrated the correct use of several outlandish weapons, handling them with the a.s.surance of an expert.
But none of this was clearing up the mystery if there was one, and Larry didn"t happen to be our murderer.
Well, I was pretty discouraged at this point. Maybe John d.i.c.kson Carr can make up and solve these locked room puzzles on paper, but this was too much for me. I was ready to throw in the sponge, and go back to Larry as the killer.
But then I recalled other recent cases Ader and I had worked on. In those, a fresh appraisal of the evidence broke the impa.s.se. Besides, I liked Dana. And it makes a difference, when you have a personal interest in an investigation.
So back I went to the lab. The first thing I did was re-read my notes on the autopsy. They didn"t change a thing. The colonel"s skull had been fractured just above the right ear. I tried to visualize how the blow might have been struck. If the killer had stood to the right of, and just behind the old man, lying there with his feet towards the sea, and made a golf-like swing from right to left, with the k.n.o.bby end of the stick down, hands near the ferrule, that would account for the injury. Nothing unlikely there; no inconsistencies to take hold of.
Rather gloomily, I turned to the remaining evidence, the stick itself. I held it in the way I had pictured it, and tried to re-enact the fatal swing. Suddenly I felt a surge of hope. The blood and hair were in the wrong place! If the stick had been swung, like a golf-club, by a standing man, the side should be stained. In fact, that would be true no matter how the thing was manipulated as a bludgeon. But instead, the very top of the handle had the blood and hair. How was that possible?
Excited, I experimented again. The only way to hit a person with the top of the k.n.o.b would be to make a spear-like thrust forward with it. But that would be awkward and unlikely even if enough power was possible, something I doubted. Then a whole new prospect opened before me, one that suggested many significant modifications of our interpretation of the evidence. That stick hadn"t been used as a club at all. It must have been projected like a spear, k.n.o.b first. But how? Certainly n.o.body could actually throw the thing, like a lance, with sufficient force and accuracy to kill a man from how many feet? I checked the drawing again. The body was almost forty feet from the foot of the stairs, which is where the murderer would have had to stand in order to avoid tracking up the sand. Such a throw was utterly fantastic by sheer muscle power. The skull has thick bones, not easily fractured.
Then, looking at that long, slender body of the stick, I had an idea. I grabbed my lens and studied the metal ferrule. Sure enough, there were two shallow but definite grooves across the tip. They could have only one explanation; in them a taut string would not slip off the end of the ferrule. That meant a crossbow it seemed obvious, now. What could be simpler than placing the narrow ebony rod in the slot of a strung crossbow, k.n.o.b forward, and then, from a position on the stairs, aiming at the man lying there on the sand. The stick, propelled with all the force of a powerful metal leaf spring, would strike a terrific blow on the victim"s head.
I began to pace the floor feverishly. A perfect solution; one that explained everything. So that"s why there were no other tracks. The killer didn"t need to leave the stairs. What no mere arm could do, the crossbow made easy. Aiming one was no harder than pointing a rifle, and forty feet was a short range. Even so, the murderer must have practiced a bit to make sure. Perhaps he hadn"t hoped to convict Larry, but merely to confuse the issue.
All right, he shot the strange arrow, then leaving it by the body I cursed. Another good theory gone to pot. The stick had not remained by the corpse. How did the marksman recover it without leaving tracks?
I thought of a string, say a nylon fishline, tied to the missile. But another peek at the photos ruined that solution. There was no long, narrow trail in the soft sand to show where the stick was hauled back.
But I knew there must be some explanation; the rest fitted too well. I examined the stick again, starting at the ferrule. In the middle of the polished stem, I found some indentations. They were not deep, but then the wood is very hard. I measured them, and noticed their s.p.a.cing. There were no others like them; obviously, Larry took good care of his prize possession. It was baffling, especially because I felt that I was getting close.
Then, seeing the photo again, it came to me. The sort of thing I should have spotted immediately. But any theory needs testing, so I called Ader, and asked him to meet me at the beach. He was to get, on the Q.T., one of the non-suspects, say the housekeeper, to bring Gustavus Adolphus, the coach dog. I wanted somebody the animal knew, and would obey. Since she fed him, that was no problem. He knew and obeyed her.
At the beach, I showed Ader the marks on the stick, and explained the crossbow theory.
"Those marks have been made by teeth," I told him. The Dalmatian was racing about, happy to be out on the beach again for a romp along the sh.o.r.e. At our request the housekeeper, a little bewildered but willing, stood on the stairs and flung the ebony stick end over end towards the water. "Fetch, Gustavus!" she shrilled, and barking joyously, the spotted dog raced out, seized it with his mouth, and carried it to the woman.
I grinned at the lieutenant.
"That completes the story. When the old man was dead, and the killer stood where she is now, all he had to do was shout "Fetch!" and the dog retrieved the murder weapon. A wordless accomplice. Neat. No footprints on the sand."
"He was sure a lot of help to the poor colonel," Ader snapped, giving the clumsy hound an indignant glare. "Instead of chewing up the murderer, he helps the guy get away with it. Or almost."
"Don"t blame the dog," I said. "You can"t expect these so called lower animals to understand murder. That takes the higher intelligence; the same that invented it. But Wheeler must be our man; as you saw, he"s an expert on all those medieval weapons. Now that I think of it, he didn"t demonstrate or even discuss the crossbow. That"s pretty significant."
"I"ve no doubt that"s the way it happened," Ader said. "Now to prove it to a jury."
"That won"t be easy," I said. "Except for the grooves for the bow-string, and the teeth marks on the stick, there isn"t any evidence to impress laymen. I can"t prove the stick was actually fired. Maybe we haven"t helped Larry very much, even now."
"Don"t you believe it," was the grim reply. "I know just how to break Wheeler down. The oldest trick in the game. He"ll get an anonymous phone call tonight. Somebody will describe the main points of the murder, claiming to be an eye-witness, and demanding a pay-off. If Wheeler"s guilty, and I"ve no doubt about that, he"ll want to meet that Mr X very badly, either to bribe or kill him. We"ll have him cold, with witnesses. But first, we"ll have to see that the housekeeper doesn"t spill the beans. Luckily, Gustavus Adolphus can"t talk."
"Don"t say that. If he could talk, our job would have been a lot easier."
Well, as Ader promised, the trap worked. I can see why. A murderer is full of fears generally, and the worst of them is an eyewitness to the crime.
Dana says that she and Larry will name their first boy after me. I suggested Gustavus Adolphus instead. Although he was an accomplice, he finally testified for the defense, making our case solid.
Benning"s School for Boys Richard A. Lupoff Although Richard Lupoff (b. 1935) is most closely a.s.sociated with the field of science fiction, in which he is an acknowledged expert on the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, his overall output shows that he is a writer who refuses to stay tied down. He has produced a bewildering a.s.sortment of fiction from oriental fantasies (Sword of the Demon, 1978), to steampunk (Into the Aether, 1974), to horror (Lovecraft"s Book, 1988) and, of course, to mystery, with The Comic Book Killer (1988) and others. In my previous locked-room anthology, I included d.i.c.k"s story "The Second Drug", featuring detectives Chase and Delacroix. That story, along with several others featuring the two sleuths, may now be found in his forthcoming collection, Quintet. The following includes another of d.i.c.k"s detectives, Nick Train, and takes as its setting a place very familiar to the author, as it"s where he undertook his army training back in 1954.
Private Nicholas Train was sitting on his bunk polishing his combat boots, wondering if he hadn"t made a mistake when he pa.s.sed up the chance for an exemption. They considered cops essential, the Selective Service Board did, and he could have filed papers and stayed out of the draft, stayed safely at home. Pounding a beat in Brooklyn wasn"t exactly cherry duty, but it beat the h.e.l.l out of getting shot at by the krauts or the nips and maybe coming home with some pieces missing, or maybe in a box.
But, what the h.e.l.l, he hadn"t liked Hitler from the start, and when his Chinese girlfriend asked him to take her to Mott Street for roast duck lo mein and he"d got an earful from her about what was going on in China he decided that the nips were no better than the n.a.z.is.
Pearl Harbor was the last straw. He was ready to sign up the next morning but there would have been n.o.body to take care of his mother so he kept pounding his beat, mooning around the house when he was off duty, and taking his Chinese girlfriend to Mott Street whenever she asked him to.
Then, almost a year after Pearl Harbor, Mom died. The day after the funeral Train had dressed in civvies, put in his papers at the precinct and signed up for the United States Army.
And here he was halfway through Basic, sitting on his bed polishing his boots. Somebody had brought a portable radio into the barracks and they were playing Christmas music. A couple of guys were writing letters home. There was a lazy poker game going on, the cards smacking down and coins rattling on a foot locker. And Private Aaron Hirsch was sitting on his bunk crying.
"What"s the matter with you, Jewboy?" That was Private Joseph Francis Xavier Schulte, former altar boy, former star fullback of St Aloysius"s Academy, designated barracks anti-Semite. "You got no right to cry at Christmas carols, you Christ-killer."
Hirsch jumped up. His face turned the same color as his crinkled red hair. "Shut the h.e.l.l up, Saint. What I do is my business."
"Oh, listen to the little kike. Ain"t you tough, Hirsch? You want some of what I gave that Jewboy halfback from Maimonides? I put that b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the hospital, in case you don"t remember."
"Cut it out!"
Ah, the voice of authority. The soldier standing in the doorway wore two chevrons on his winter OD"s. His olive drab uniform was neatly pressed. In it he looked like a military fashion plate compared to the trainees in their baggy fatigues. He wore a bra.s.sard around one sleeve, designating him as the corporal of the guard.
"Hey, Pops!" He pointed a finger at Train. "Grab your piece and report to the company office. Captain Coughlin wants to see you."
"Me?"
"Yeah, you."
"Captain Coffin?"
"Very funny. Don"t let him hear you call him that."
"What"s he want me for?" This had to be something serious. If it wasn"t, Corporal Bowden would have handled it himself, or at most Sergeant Dillard. The company first sergeant was as close to G.o.d as they ever saw, most days. Officers were some kind of exotic creatures who kept to themselves and spoke to the GIs only through sergeants and corporals.
"Christ, Pops, how the h.e.l.l do I know?" Bowden took a few steps and clicked the portable radio into silence. "Hey, it"s Sat.u.r.day morning. You guys get a few hours off to polish your gear and get your letters written. What"s this?"
He picked up the playing cards and the cash that was laid out on a foot locker between two cots. "You guys know there"s no gambling allowed in the barracks. And it"s payday. How do you have any mazuma left to play for? Now I have to confiscate this evidence." He stuffed the cards in one pocket and the money in another. "I don"t know, I don"t know, how are we ever going to make soldiers out of you sad sacks?"
Nick Train had shoved his feet into his boots and tucked his fatigue jacket into his trousers. "Coughlin really wants to see me, Bowden?"
"No, I"m just trying to ruin your Sat.u.r.day. Of course he wants to see you."
"No idea why?"
"Nope."
Train smoothed out the blankets on his bunk, took his Garrand rifle down from the rack near the barracks door and headed out into the wintry Georgia air. For a December morning the day wasn"t too cold, certainly no colder than Train was used to in Brooklyn. The sky was clear and sparkling and the sun was a brilliant disk. There were a few patches of snow still on the ground. The last snowfall had been three days ago. Train held his rifle at port arms and quick-timed across the company area toward the office.