Dr. Poggioli: Criminologist (The Lost Classics Book 14)

by T. S. Stribling

  He paused, thinking, then started off with a new breath:

  “Howsomever, this murder ain’t anything so complicated as all that. Slewfoot shot old man Jake Sanderson twict because the old man wouldn’t advance him any money on his wages. That is, either Slewfoot or Finn Labby, a white man, shot him. They was both workin’ for the old man an’ both of ’em was in the store here when he was killed. Two shots were far’d an’ the jury has jest about decided the nigger far’d both of ’em.”

  The psychologist stood pondering this statement of the case.

  “You knew both of these cow herders?”

  “Shore—worked with ’em before I got app’inted deputy sher’ff.”

  “Was the negro the sort of fellow who wanted to give orders, or was it his habit to wait and do what he was told?”

  “He waited, of course, an’ done what he was told—he was a nigger.”

  “Mm-m! Then if that was his mental habit, don’t you think it reasonable to assume that he followed the lead of the white man in this as in everything else? Isn’t it probable?”

  The deputy frowned and twisted his mouth in a fashion that showed he was thinking.

  “Now, by George, that’s a p’int,” he decided slowly, “an’ a very plain one, too. I believe the jury ort to hear that.”

  “It’s slight,” disclaimed the originator.

  “Big or little, I say it’s so. Slewfoot was a triflin’ nigger an’, if for onct in his life, that’s a p’int in his favor, I say the jury ort to know it. Jest you keep this crowd back, mister, for half a minute, an’ I’ll step in an’ tell ’em.”

  He lifted his voice and called to the villagers in front of the door:

  “Hey, you folks, this man’s my deputy while I’m inside. Don’t nobody come past him!”

  With that he went inside to the jury at the back end of the store. The psychologist could see him talking and gesticulating, and presently he came back with a smile of satisfaction on his brown face.

  “Well, they had to swaller it.” He nodded. “They were fixin’ to return their verdict that old Jake was shot by Slewfoot, but now they’ve changed it to either Slewfoot or Finn Labby.”

  “I believe you said Mr. Sanderson was shot twice,” observed the psychologist. “No, jest onct.”

  “You will excuse me, but your original statement was twice,” insisted Poggioli.

  “No; I said they shot at him twict—an’ they did—but the first shot missed him. They jest hit old man Jake one time.”

  “Mm-m,” murmured the psychologist. “And where did the other bullet strike?”

  “In the wall.”

  “Were both bullets fired out of the same gun?”

  “I don’t know—how could you tell?”

  “Cut them out and compare them; if they’re the same caliber, with the same rifle marks on them, then one man shot both bullets and you can excuse the other man.”

  “Shore, shore, that’s a fact, an’ it runs right alongside ol’ man Munro’s argument, too.”

  “Who’s Munro?”

  “The man who owns this store.”

  “What’s his argument?”

  “Why-y—er—derned if I know. He’s got a clippin’ out of a paper tellin’ how this thing ort to be done. He’s tryin’ to git the boys to dig out the balls, an’ Doctor Livermore is cuttin’ the ball out of the body, but the jury figgers since the bullet in the wall didn’t hit nobody, it don’t make no diff’runce. I see now it does an’ I believe I’ll step back an’ tell the boys what you say about it.”

  This was carried out and Poggioli was again placed in the deputy’s stead at the door. The old negro woman edged up to him and said in a shaky voice—

  “See dah, Mas’ Poggioli, you ’bout to git my Slewfoot out o’ dis trouble wid one word.”

  “If the bullet in the corpse is different from the bullet in the wall, your son will be in worse trouble than ever,” cautioned the psychologist.

  “Why?” asked the old woman, mystified.

  “Because that will show both men shot at Mr. Sanderson.”

  At this the old crone puckered up her brows and began a low praying that the two bullets would be alike when they were cut out.

  Poggioli listened to this for a few moments and finally said—

  “Aunt Rose, there is no use praying for the bullets to be something when they are cut out, because whatever they are, they are that now; and while the Lord might conceivably change a future condition, I should think it would be beyond even His power to change what has already happened.”

  The old woman nodded.

  “Yes, suh, yes, suh, Mas’ Poggioli!” She then went on mumbling, “Oh, Lawd, let dem bullets be jes’ alike an’ save po’ Slewfoot!”

  Her prayer was interrupted by a white woman attempting to enter the door. When the psychologist explained that no one was allowed inside, she said she wanted to do some trading.

  At this a heavy old man with a square cut face came forward and called to the psychologist to let her in, that his trade had to go on, inquest or no inquest. The woman bought a package of soda and handed the old man a dollar bill. The storekeeper started to his cash drawer, but paused halfway, turned and came to the door.

  “Any of you fellows got change for a dollar?” he inquired.

  There was a general thrusting of hands into pockets. One of the onlookers produced a handful of small change and counted out the dollar.

  The psychologist watched this incident without much attention when the old man looked at him and asked—

  “Air you the stranger who told Sawyer to have them bullets cut out?” The scientist said that he was.

  “Well, by gum, I’m glad there’s one man o’ sense in this crowd. I been dingdinging at them boys all mornin’ to cut out them bullets. Suppose you come on back here with me an’ tell ’em yourself, why it ort to be done.”

  Poggioli nodded.

  “Certainly, that suits me; I’ve been wanting to go in, but—”

  He was following the storekeeper to the rear of the building when the deputy called out.

  “Hey, there, mister, you cain’t come back here. I deputized you as guard.”

  “Aw, thunder an’ nation!” exclaimed the storekeeper. “This man’s got good ideas. Let him come back, Sawyer, an’ it’ll save you prancin’ up an’ down the store ever’ two minutes.”

  “That’s with the jury, it ain’t with me,” disclaimed the deputy. “Oh, all right, let him come on,” called the foreman of the jury.

  When Poggioli reached the rear of the store, the spokesman of the jurors asked just what he meant about the bullets being alike, and what did it mean if they were alike.

  This was interrupted by old man Munro, the storekeeper, saying:

  “Why, he means jest exactly what I was tellin’ you boys. I got a clippin’ that explains it. They call it—lemme see—they call it ballistics, don’t they, mister?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Well, the clippin’ is right over here in my desk. I cut it out of a Sunday paper six months ago. I’ll show it to you.”

  He shuffled to a tall desk near the back door and returned to the psychologist with a yellowed clipping.

  Poggioli glanced at it out of courtesy to the old man, but he was really attentive to the scene before him. The dead man lay on the floor quite close to the counter. Over him stooped the village doctor probing for the bullet.

  Some of the jurymen were talking among themselves—

  “Curious thing for a cowhand to shoot his boss over a little money—”

  The foreman asked the storekeeper—

  “You say they was quarrelin’ amongst theirse’ves when you left them in here for a minute, Mr. Munro?”

  “Yeh, Finn an’ Slewfoot was both devilin’ old man Jake for some money, an’

  he kep’ puttin’ ’em off, sayin’ he didn’t have any.”

  “An’ fin’ly they shot him?” questioned a juror.

  “That I don�
�t know. I reckon they did. Jest then ol’ man Ike Newton drove up with a truckload of oranges. I went out to count the crates an’ while I was outside countin’, I heard two booms in the store. They was so muffled I wasn’t shore they was shots, an’ me not expectin’ anything like that either; so I finished my tally. When I went back in the store there was ol’ man Jake down on the floor, openin’ an’ shuttin’ his mouth, an’ his two cowhands was gone. I run for Doc

  Livermore here, but when we got back, ol’ Jake was dead.”

  The physician glanced around, nodded at this and resumed his work.

  “So it’s a question of which of the two hired men shot him?” queried the psychologist of the foreman.

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Were you jurymen acquainted with these two cowhands?”

  “Oh, yes, we’re all cattlemen. Finn an’ Slewfoot have worked for every man on this jury at one time or another.”

  “Then of these two men which was the more irritable and high tempered?” Another juror answered—

  “Why, Finn Labby. He was always flyin’ off the handle.” The psychologist nodded.

  “Taking this case on its face value, then, gentlemen, isn’t it probable that the higher tempered man of this pair shot Mr. Sanderson? Isn’t it reasonable that the waspish Finn Labby shot him and the easy going negro did not?”

  The foreman of the jury hesitated for several moments.

  “That sounds pretty good, mister,” he said at last, “but if you must know—we think Slewfoot done it.”

  “Slewfoot!” ejaculated Poggioli, astonished and puzzled. “Yes, sir, we jest about know that Slewfoot done it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was jest the kind of nigger you described—easy goin’ an’ biddable.” The psychologist stood silent for several moments. Finally he said: “Gentlemen, either my sense of logic is bad or my viewpoint doesn’t agree with yours. I produce a reason which seems to me to clear my client; you gentlemen use the very same reason to condemn him. If we have no common ground of understanding, I think I had better withdraw.” And he made a slight bow and turned to the door.

  The old negro woman fell into a visible trembling and began praying aloud for God to cause the white man to stay and talk for Slewfoot. The foreman turned to the old negress.

  “Don’t be so noisy, auntie.” He then glanced at another juror and said, “S’pose we tell him?”

  The juror addressed blinked his eyes.

  “Well, all right—but there ain’t a bit o’ tellin’ what that man’ll figger out from it.”

  The foreman turned to the deputy sheriff. “Mr. Sawyer, tell him.”

  At this the deputy beckoned Poggioli to follow him. He led the way to the back door and when the two were out of earshot, Sawyer nodded sidewise at the jury and said in a low tone—

  “Them fellers think Slewfoot was put up to shoot ol’ man Jake.”

  “Put up to it!”

  “Why, shore; you know, pickin’ a quarrel about money was jest one way to start trouble.”

  Mr. Poggioli was suddenly enlightened.

  “Oh, yes, that’s why Slewfoot would have to be—biddable?”

  “Why, of course,” agreed the deputy. “An’ it’s dollars to doughnuts that one o’ them jurymen theirse’ves paid Slewfoot to kill ol’ man Jake. Shoo! We jest know one of us done it—but we don’t know which one; an’, really, we don’t want to know which one.”

  The psychologist stood staring at the foreman, moved by a sense of ghoulish humor.

  “Do you mean to say that just any member of that jury had sufficient cause of animosity toward Mr. Sanderson to murder him?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean to say, an’ it’s what I am sayin’.”

  “What did Sanderson do to infuriate everybody?”

  “Why, ever’ man on that jury is a cattleman, an’ ol’ man Jake was what we call a ‘open range man.’ If any of us fellers fenced up our pastures, he’d cut our wires an’ let his own cattle range on our lands. He’s treated dang near ever’ man in La Belle like that from Doc Livermore an’ ol’ man Munro clear up to the Yankees that come in with the boom an’ thought they could run things down here like they done up North, but ol’ man Jake showed ’em they couldn’t do it. No fences, that was his motto, an’ he stuck by it till somebody paid a nigger to kill him.”

  Poggioli grunted as the oddness of the investigation dawned on him. He stood looking out the back door. It gave on an expanse of creeping palmettos. The bayonet shaped leaves bristled as high as a man’s chest. Then he observed some tracks in the sand under the door. The prints were of hobnailed shoes and larger shoes with broken soles. The toes of these tracks were pressed deep in the ground while the heels scarcely touched the sand.

  Poggioli called the deputy’s attention to them.

  “Have any of the jurymen come out the back door since the inquest began?” he inquired.

  “Why, no-o, I don’t reckon they have,” said Sawyer. “One of ’em had to go across the street to the garage.”

  “M-m! Has the crowd out in front there been milling around this end of the store?”

  “No; these scrub palmettos ain’t a comfortable place to mill in. What are you askin’ about that for?”

  “I was just wondering if those tracks there were made by Slewfoot and Labby?”

  “Oh, shore, they’re bound to be. That busted shoe is a nigger track, an’ you know no nigger ain’t been around here since ol’ man Jake was killed. Yes, I noticed ’em there when I closed the door on the jury, an’ I thought about layin’ boards over ’em to preserve ’em for the criminal trial, then I thought ag’in, ‘Now they’s no use in that. If you jest almost see one man shoot another ’n with your own eyes, you don’t have to go aroun’ identifyin’ his tracks.’”

  Poggioli nodded slowly and grunted again. “Yes—I see.”

  The footprints visualized for the psychologist the two cowhands tiptoeing silently away from the store into the palmettos. But there was something about the picture in contradiction to the deputy’s theory of the crime. The scientist was thinking about this as he turned and went back to the jury.

  When he stood before the group again he saw one of the men with a chisel, about to cut the bullet out of the wall.

  Suddenly the position of the corpse impressed itself on Poggioli. It lay quite near the counter, directly across from the bullet hole. A possible defense struck him and he called out to the chiseler:

  “Wait just a moment. Give me half a second before you dig out that bullet.” He drew a match from his pocket, walked across and thrust it into the hole. “Gentlemen,” he said to the group, “this match stick is pointing in the direction from which the bullet came; straight across the dead man. But Mr. Sanderson is lying almost against the counter. The murderer, therefore, stood just behind the counter to fire that shot; do you agree to this?”

  The jury assented, after a moment, by grunting and nodding.

  “Very well; now you men know negroes. You have hired them, worked with them, been with them all your lives. Now I ask you as a group, did any man here ever see a negro behind any counter in any store in La Belle?”

  “I—I never did,” drawled the foreman, looking around among the others. “Neither did I,” put in two or three more.

  “None of you ever did. Negroes don’t walk behind white men’s counters. They have been accused of stealing too many times when they were innocent for them to take a chance of being seen behind a white man’s counter. Besides, there was no reason for Slewfoot to go behind the counter to shoot Mr. Sanderson. There was every reason for him not to go. Behind the counter he would have attracted the old man’s attention. And when it came to the actual shooting, he could have shot just as easily from in front of the counter. No, Slewfoot would never have walked behind the counter.

  “With Finn Labby the conditions are exactly reversed. He was white. He had the white man’s privilege to walk around for a bite of cheese. There’
s the cheese hoop. Once behind him, Finn could have shot his employer in the back of the head—where he was shot. This murder could have been a murder for anger, because Finn was high tempered. This view of the crime, gentlemen, removes suspicion from any other man in Hendry County, and I recommend it to your discretion. Return your verdict that Jake Sanderson was shot and killed by Finn Labby. It will be a widely acceptable solution to this crime. I thank you for your attention.”

  This speech created quite a stir among the jury. They glanced at one another with relief in their faces. The old negro woman began clapping her hands and praising the Lord and had to be hushed by the deputy. Then the officer came around to the psychologist.

  “There’s a lot to what you brought out, Mr. Poggioli,” he said admiringly. “Of course a nigger wouldn’t walk behind old man Munro’s counter, an’ of course Finn Labby would.

  “Besides that, you send all these boys home with a clear conscience for each other. That was quite a stroke of yours.”

  “Thanks,” said Poggioli.

  The jurymen were standing up now, turning around and around after the manner of men who wish to retire for consultation, but who have no retiring place selected.

  “Suppose me an’ Mr. Poggioli an’ Mr. Munro go out front an’ leave you men in this end of the store to ballot on this thing,” suggested the deputy.

  The foreman agreed.

  “An’ you go along with ’em, Aunt Rose,” he directed, “while we free your boy from this murder charge.”

  “Gemmen, I thanks you all. Oh, Lawd, I thanks you!”

  “Yes, yes, that’s all right—just go along with Mr. Sawyer.”

  Sawyer, the deputy, was beside the psychologist and was still in a congratulatory mood.

  “By George, I would never have believed you could get a Florida jury to free a nigger of a murder charge jest by stickin’ a match in a bullet hole.” The scientist pulled at his chin.