It might have been the execution.
Kroll, sitting by the doorway, glanced out into the corridor, at the end of which Fleming stood with his right thumb snagged into his belt just above his revolver.
Everybody maintained the same fidgeting silence.
Darryl Rand sat quietly behind the desk, his pale face resting upon his upraised hand. Before the desk Carlo Pugh fussed briefly with his tie and peeped out of the corner of his eye at Jan. She and Gail were sitting together, without looking at each other. On their right sprawled Greg Rand, his youthful features set in an elaborately unconcerned expression.
Jefferson Boynton said coldly and courteously, “We have asked you to assemble in this manner for a special purpose.
It is, in more ways than one, the showdown——”
Greg Rand rushed in. “You mean you’ve solved the case?”
“We have.” Boynton leaned back. There was a flicker of grim distaste in his eyes, like that of a man who was about to smash a huge spider. “I shall recapitulate briefly the essential points. They are circumstantial but quite conclusive. There is no apparent room for doubt.”
He paused for a moment and then went on deliberately. “The micrometric measurements of the fatal wounds of both Deb and Theresa Church show that they were made by the blade of a certain hunting knife which was found two hours ago in the attic of this house.
“The knife contained both dried and fresh bloodstains. The dried blood, upon chemical analysis, proved to be of the same type as the blood of Deb—that is, young Kirk. The fresh stains corresponded in type with the blood of Theresa Church.
“Also found at the time was a pair of corduroy trousers. The trousers contained dried but not fresh bloodstains. The dried stains belonged to the same blood group as Deb’s.
“In addition, the corduroys were markedly dusty, and they contained minute particles of a floor sweep compound. The dust spots on the left leg and seat of the trousers corresponded exactly with the markings in the dust under Darryl Rand’s bed; that is, a person wearing the trousers would inevitably have gotten them dusty in those places if he had assumed the position under the bed which the markings indicate. Moreover, the floor sweep compound is to be found nowhere in the room except, naturally enough, there under the bed, where sweeping would necessarily not be as thorough as elsewhere.
“This confirms Mr. Rand’s own impression that the killer was actually concealed there when Philip Cabot walked in. It likewise explains the peculiar behavior of the cat, who either saw the person hiding under the bed or smelled the distinctive odor of corduroy and associated it with someone whom he distrusted.
“All this, however, is merely preparatory to the main discovery. The important thing is that the knife itself contained a number of fingerprints. It has been determined that it would have been physically impossible for these fingerprints to have been made by anyone except the last person who grasped the handle as it would have had to be grasped in order to be used as a weapon.
“These fingerprints have now been positively identified. We have also identified the one fingerprint on the empty cigarette package that was thrown in Mr. Rand’s bedroom. It was made by the right forefinger of the person who used the knife.
“It’s hardly necessary to add that this is a case in itself.”
Boynton paused, but no one in the room said anything. Philip Cabot put a cigarette into his mouth but did not light it.
Boynton resumed. “As you know, the upper floors of this house were under close surveillance at the time of the second murder. There were just two ways by which anyone—except, possibly, a human fly—could have gone to the third floor.
“One would have been to go through the hall of the second story, turn into the corridor leading to Rand’s apartment, and ascend the third floor stairway. In that case the person would surely have been seen by Detective Fleming, stationed in the hall.
“The second method would have been to go up the fire-escape from either the ground floor or the second floor, and no one could have done this without being observed by McCann, except during the ten-minute interval when he was absent from his post.
“From the first we knew of two persons who did go to the third floor within the period when the murder occurred, and it appeared most likely that one or the other would have seen the killer.
“One of these, Miss Utley, told us that she saw nobody at all. The other, Mallie O’Dare, now says that she did see someone; and the individual in question, who was going at the time toward Theresa’s room, almost immediately disappeared. This indicates either an entrance into the maid’s room or a descent of the nearby staircase toward Rand’s apartment. The significance of either action is inescapable.
“The person whose name Mallie has given us is the same person whose fingerprints were on the knife.”
Boynton stopped, and there was an interval of stunned silence. At last Gail gave a low gasp, and Greg straightened up suddenly.
“Jeepers!” he muttered softly. “That is it, isn’t it?”
Jan leaned forward, her finger jabbing automatically at her glasses. “Mr. Boynton,” she said, “are you certain that the person Mallie saw was the one whose fingerprints were on the knife?”
“We are absolutely certain, Miss Utley. But why?”
The girl appeared to relax at once. She abruptly pulled off the glasses and sank back in the chair, her nearsighted eyes peering at Boynton in bleak relief.
“I thought that I might have been the one Mallie saw,” she explained. “When I came out of the attic, I did turn down those stairs to the second floor to get back on the fire-escape. I was trying to dodge McCann. I didn’t know that he had left his station.”
Boynton nodded. “That ten-minute lapse,” he said, “seemed at first a loophole. But in reality it’s a supplementary point against the killer. During the past two hours we have reenacted the murderer’s known actions several times, and the shortest period in which they could have been accomplished was sixteen minutes. It is safe to say that they could not have been done in ten.”
Cabot asked, “What does that prove?”
“It proves that the killer did not go down the fire-escape at that time. On the contrary, having already attacked Mr. Rand, the slayer was still in Theresa’s room when you and Kroll passed. After you went by, the murderer emerged, went into the attic, concealed the knife under the floor board, and remained in hiding until the opportunity arose to escape.
“It’s true that Kroll made a hasty search of the attic, but he admits that the killer could have been hiding, for instance, in one of those big boxes. The killer could have been—and was—until the very moment when it was possible to take advantage of the growing confusion and get back downstairs.
“What makes this a point of corroborative evidence is the fact that one person was conspicuously missing at the time——”
Jan stirred. “More than one, surely, was missing,” she said. “I was missing——“ The hand holding the glasses was slightly unsteady. “I remained in the library, alone, for some time. I was trying to think this thing out.”
Boynton did not reply. He was not looking directly at her, but at the wall over her shoulder. The curious distaste was growing in his eyes.
“And the motive?” he said. “The motive was something that has poisoned the air of this house from the beginning. All of you were aware of it in one way or another, and it poisoned you. It always does, I thinly when one lives in the same house with it. It was hate.”
Boynton stopped for a moment and then resumed. “And who had this motive? It was the person who did steal the note. It was the person who was seen going up the fire-escape. It was the person who was observed by Theresa Church last night when she ran up the stairs after shooting Rand. It was the person who was missing when the killer was in hiding. It was the person whose name Mallie O’Dare has given us. It was the person whose fingerprints were found upon the knife.”
Jan Utley had stumbled to her feet and was stari
ng toward Boynton with blank, groping eyes.
His voice was harsh. “I don’t have to say it. You’ve told us.”
She stood there almost helplessly, trying with frantic, unsteady fingers to get the glasses back over her befogged eyes.
Gail suddenly gave an odd little moan that was like a name, “Jan——“ and started up. But before she could take a step toward her sister Boynton’s voice rang out again.
“It’s complete. But there is one piece of direct evidence that is being withheld. I call upon you now, Mr. Rand, to give us that evidence.”
Darryl Rand was looking, not at Jan, but at Gail, and it seemed for the long moment which followed that there was a whole life’s hunger in his gaze. Then a slight shiver seemed to pass through him, and suddenly he put his face into his hands.
There was silence.
Jefferson Boynton said slowly, “It doesn’t matter.”
The glasses fell from Jan’s fingers and cracked against the floor.
For a few seconds no one moved. Then Cabot stooped quickly for the spectacles and put them into her fumbling hand. One of the lenses was shattered.
He said gently, “I’m sorry, Jan.”
Kroll was on his feet, taking a paper from his pocket. He spoke formally. “Miss Utley, I have a warrant for your arrest.” His other hand was moving indecisively toward the handcuffs in his pocket.
Philip Cabot spoke in a quiet voice. “Keep them, Kroll. You’ll need them for somebody else.”
Boynton sprang up. “What do you mean, Phil?”
“I mean,” said Cabot, “that the killer is in this room. And it’s not Jan Utley.”
There was a pause. Then Boynton’s eyes grew hard, hostile. “You’ll have a sweet time proving that.”
“I intend to prove it—now.”
“I’ve obtained convictions,” rapped Boynton, “on far less grounds than this. The evidence here is overwhelming.”
Cabot said, “And it’s faked. It’s manufactured. It’s as false as hell.”
Boynton shrugged his great shoulders. “All right. Suppose you begin by telling us how those fingerprints on the knife could have been faked.”
Cabot sat down. “No,” he said after a moment. “I shall begin where you left off, Jeff. With the atmosphere in this house.”
Boynton’s gaze was glowering. “I suppose you’ll say that’s faked?”
“In a sense—yes. But there’s nothing strange about that.” Cabot paused. “A powerful imagination, working in a thousand subtle ways, can produce such a false atmosphere and can make everybody within its radius respond to it. It’s simply the ultimate form of the lie.
“In this case the situation was well developed before I ever walked into the house. Everybody here was in the grip of that false atmosphere, responding to the dominant emotion of the imagination which had created it.
“You thought, Jeff, that this emotion was hate. But that was the creation. That was the illusion. That was the appearance.
“The real thing was an emotion that always wears a mask. It wears them even before mirrors and calls itself hate or jealousy or self-interest. It was the most secret emotion in the world and the most contagious. It was the one that in some form or another most often leads men to kill. It was fear.”
He stopped, and Boynton said, “A fear of what?”
Cabot went on. “Let’s go back. The fundamental question, as always, is motive. Did that motive lie in the murder of Deb or in the murder of Rand?
“If the ultimate objective was the murder of Rand, as we were led to assume, the possessor of the suicide note would have had to kill somebody else—such as Deb—as an indispensable preliminary. He could then have killed Rand in apparent safety, knowing that the note would be interpreted as a confession of the preceding murder, which in turn would be the motive of the suicide.
“But, as Carlo Pugh remarked, it worked both ways. If the paramount purpose was the death of Deb himself, the possessor of the note would have had a murderer made to order. He would merely have had to employ the note in a convincing way, and an apparent attempted suicide would have done just as well as the actual death of Rand.
“That being so, it is reasonable to assume that Rand is still alive because the murderer wasn’t really trying to kill him.”
Boynton threw up his hands. “But, Phil, why on God’s earth should the murderer have gambled upon the mere chance of convicting Rand when he could have killed him and almost certainly closed the case?”
Cabot said, “Why, indeed? The answer, Jeff, is that he didn’t intend to convict Rand, any more than he intended to kill him. His real plot, throughout, was much more subtle and involved.”
Kroll muttered suddenly, “I thought somebody was being very foxy.”
Cabot resumed. “Let’s revert to the original situation. Jan stole the note from Rand. Theresa, almost indubitably, saw her do it, and Carlo says that he deduced on the following day that the note had been stolen by a mysterious unknown. Actually, I think, the deduction was largely hocus-pocus; Carlo probably knew simply from his observations through the door crack that it was Jan.”
Carlo broke in with a sort of quavering indignation, “Cabot, I clearly outlined to you the process of ratiocination——“ He broke off abruptly, squirming uncomfortably as he glanced at Kroll.
The Captain’s beady eyes were fixed upon him with a burning intentness.
Cabot continued. “At least two other persons, then—and probably three—knew what was going on in the house that night. If we assume that one of these did steal the note from Jan, as she claims, we can see immediately in what a strong position he would have found himself.
“The strength of it lay in the fact that the slayer had two lines of defense. He could build up a preliminary and flimsy case against Rand—flimsy because the motive itself was flimsy—and when that fell through he would have another against Jan.
“He provided from the first for both contingencies. He foresaw that Jan might even be forced to admit stealing the note, and he knew that he could clinch the case against her by planting the other delayed clues—the trousers and the knife.
“It’s true that the fingerprints on the knife were Jan’s, and nobody could afterward have used the knife as a weapon. But there’s a very simple alternative explanation. Are you sure, Jeff, that it hasn’t occurred to you?”
Boynton said doggedly, “I am sure.”
“For the actual murder,” explained Cabot, “the killer merely used another knife with a blade like Jan’s. He then smeared blood upon the blade of hers, the handle of which contained her fingerprints. It was ingenious and even more conclusive than the trousers—the use of which was, of course, suggested to him by the fact that she was wearing them when she stole the note. In both cases he was making it quite certain that science would eventually catch the criminal.”
Cabot stopped, looking across the room for a moment before he went on. “If the killer’s ultimate purpose, then, was neither to kill Rand nor to convict him, but to use him only as the middle man, so to speak, it was clearly Jan whom he intended all along to convict, and it was just as clearly Deb whom he intended all along to kill. The real motive, after all, lay in the death of young Kirk.
“But who had that motive? Obviously it was someone who knew who Deb was and why he was here. And why was Deb here? The natural answer, the inescapable answer is that he was here for precisely the same reason that his stepmother was. It follows that Theresa, plainly, was the one he had been coming to see. And I think it’s equally evident that Deb was the ‘reporter’ who had made inquiries at the rooming house about Martin Kirk’s death.
“The picture, then, shapes up like this:
“Theresa was in the house to explore the possibility that her husband had been defrauded and killed.
“Deb, obviously working in alliance with her, was simultaneously looking into it from that other angle—the rooming house.
“He was coming here late that night to meet Theresa sec
retly when he was struck by Rand’s car.
“Upon awakening in the hospital and learning of Rand’s interest, he saw the opportunity for a clever pretense at amnesia which could get him into the house with his stepmother and the person whom they suspected of murder.
“After achieving this, he played his game throughout and he played it well. He played it with me; he played it with Rand; he played it with everyone except Theresa, whom he met late at night in secret conferences. These were arranged during the day by notes which she slipped to him, telling him when to unlock his door.
“It was these notes, needless to say, which Theresa had to get out of his room after his death. She had to get them and destroy them, for they would have disclosed her identity. And it was a fragment of one of them which I found in her bathroom.
“Finally, to make the picture complete, it was evident from Deb’s actions, such as locking his door, that he was really afraid. He was afraid because he was convinced that his father had been murdered; that the murderer was here; and that the killer knew who he was and suspected what he was up to. He could see his danger.
“And the murderer could see his.”
Cabot paused, and Boynton said, “The murderer?”
Cabot nodded. “That was the point, Jeff. That was the point of everything. There was a murderer in this house before Deb was killed—the murderer of Deb’s father and Theresa’s husband.”
Boynton said slowly, “Kirk? The verdict was suicide.”
“That verdict was based solely upon the absence of any visible indication of murder and upon the landlady’s interpretation of Kirk’s disclosure that he wouldn’t be there another week. The truth of that came out in Carlo Pugh’s chance remark that Kirk at the time was planning to move.
“Kirk was defrauded and he was murdered, and we should have seen it from the start. That story that he gave all his money away to a pacifist organization and lived in poverty is ridiculous.
The Whistling Legs Page 20