The 2nd Golden Age of Mystery and Crime MEGAPACK ™: Ruth Chessman

by Ruth Chessman

  Eric took out his notebook and Marble, reading upside down, followed as he wrote: “Why body in tree?”

  “It’s a question,” Marble said, and pondered. Why? “You couldn’t miss it stuck up there,” he said. “Maybe that’s why.”

  Larsen shook his head. “If that were all, it could have been placed on the table. We might have missed it, as a matter of fact. There’s no guarantee one of us was sure to look up and see it.”

  The pine-needle carpet eliminated all hopes of footprints. And there was nothing else, nothing but the body they had sought for so long—and strangely, the missing casting. By the ghastly trick of corpses, the clenched fists suddenly loosened, and the thimble shaped casting fell before their eyes from the right hand. And the hand—sickeningly burned and blistered!

  “Picked it up a bit too hot for comfort,” Marble commented. “Musta hoped to use it to defend himself. Well, a lotta good it done him.”

  Larsen picked up the casting with his professional looking tongs and the three men looked at it.

  “It don’t tell me nothing,” Marble admitted. “You want I should go up to the house and call in?”

  “Wait,” said Windsor. “That’d be just what he expects. Let’s keep it quiet. Let’s keep him in the anxious seat for a while. The whole squad, including a doctor, can come out to the grove direct and not a soul the wiser. We’ll wait ’till we get an autopsy before we decide whether to talk. Today’s Saturday. Naturally Curry expects us to recall him before the weekend is over. Well, let him stew in Turner’s Falls.” Windsor turned and looked dubiously at the corpse, sighed, and asked wryly, “Has he been dead since Christmas Eve, Marble?”

  “My guess would be more likely eight hours than eight months,” said Marble, confident by reason of all those years of sudden deaths, and when the Cumberton squad arrived, the doctor agreed. “That’s as close as I’d care to guess,” he said. “Give or take half an hour.”

  The picnic lunch had to be fed to the carp so that nobody would guess it hadn’t been consumed in the regular way. Even Marble had lost his appetite at his first sight of the specter at the feast. He himself drove the car up to the mill pond. He did his job pensively, watching the languid swimming of the fat fish. And all the time, the thought teased him, I’d thought he was in the carp pond.

  When Windsor called Hinds at the Turner Falls Hotel, “I put him to bed at midnight and joined him for breakfast here at eight.” said Hinds. “That’s six hours ago. Right in front of my eyes. No, he couldn’t of got away from me. I got up at five and looked into his room, courtesy of a skeleton key if you must know, and he was snoring away like an innocent lamb. If that guy has been anywhere but right here. I’ll turn in my badge.”

  “He’s pulled it off, then, said Windsor gloomily after he hung up. “It’s a four hour trip by train, and it’s no good trying to ring in a plane or any other magic. He’s got himself a nice tight little alibi.”

  “If Hinds gets onto their trail he stays there,” Marble agreed, “but just the same Curry done it. He wouldn’t be all this anxious to give himself an alibi for nothing. That’s like buying your ticket and not going in.”

  “Everybody here is accounted for too,” Windsor remarked, as if casually.

  Larsen cleared his throat. “How about Mrs. Gentry?” he asked diffidently.

  Windsor reddened, but he said, “I see your point, Eric, but I checked her along with the others. The Simmonses were seen around the farm, hard at work, and Faith was asleep. That was about six. Of course at four it’s a little hard—they were all asleep…”

  “Could Mrs. Gentry prove she was asleep?” Larsen asked.

  There was a brief, empty pause.

  “Well, there, you see,” said Larsen triumphantly. “I’ll bet nobody can prove whether she was asleep or not at that hour.”

  “You suggesting she done it?” Marble asked, since somebody had to. He was somberly amused at what he was sure was going to be the end of a beautiful friendship.

  But Larsen looked scandalized. “Of course not!” he said indignantly. “I’m just showing you how he tried to rig it.” He really had no idea Windsor had taken him seriously, Marble saw. Larsen didn’t even stop for Windsor’s sigh of relief but went on earnestly, “He’s mad at her now, see. If he can’t have her himself, he’d just as soon have her dead. So he sets up this beautiful frame all around her, and figures to pay her back, meanwhile clinching the lab for himself by producing the body, and getting himself off the hook at the same time.”

  Windsor was quite equable, now that his lady was no longer a suspect. “It would look perfectly reasonable, too,” he granted, “that is, supposing we can accept the fact that Faith had the strength to strangle to death and carry a man weighing—how much would you guess, Marble?”

  “A hundred eighty, eighty five,” Marble ventured accurately.

  “Not to mention hoisting him up on those branches,” Windsor said. “And the pine needle floor could have been agin her as well as for her—since there could be no prints, it could have been her doing as well as not. She has an extra motive now, too. I mean, up to now it didn’t mean much to her if he was dead or alive; but suppose she—ah—wanted to be free to marry…”

  “Exactly,” said Eric hastily.

  “All we have to do is sit tight now and pretend we didn’t find Peter Gentry,” said Marble. “Curry will give himself away.”

  “You don’t really believe that?” asked Larsen. “That man hasn’t got blood in his veins. He mightn’t like not knowing, but he won’t turn a hair. You wait.”

  “But how did he do it?” Windsor asked, suddenly. “Where’s Gentry been until now?”

  “That there,” said Marble solemnly, “is the key to the puzzle. Find where he’s been hiding, and you’ll get the answer to everything.”

  * * * *

  A careful check proved that nothing odd or unusual had happened at Greenlands during the crucial early morning. “Except that Nancy Simmons, that’s the farmer’s wife, she reported someone had swiped fifteen turkeys more or less—out of the locker.”

  “When?” Larsen asked.

  “She doesn’t know,” Marble answered. “They were from that new locker she just opened. They mighta been stolen any time between yesterday and last Christmas. The locker wasn’t empty—there were plenty left. Likely someone pinched one at a time, as it was needed.” Larsen produced his little book and made a note about the turkeys.

  “Peter Gentry probably had his bellyful of turkeys before he died,” said Marble callously.

  Larsen slapped his book shut. “We don’t really know,” he said coolly.

  The three of them went over the contorts of the dead man’s pockets, and found the usual absence of information. Aside from his wallet and keys, there was nothing. Windsor shook his head. “What was the man doing for eight months?” he asked.

  “Eating turkeys,” said Marble.

  On the way back to headquarters they stopped for a moment at the laboratory, where Larsen picked up the first casting, the one marked B-113. Marble yawned. “What a case,” he said. “A Johnny-come-lately of a murder, eight months too late, and nothing to go on except we know the murderer and can’t prove it.”

  “I wouldn’t say there’s nothing,” said Larsen cautiously. “I mean, I have these things.”

  “What things?” Marble demanded.

  “Well, the second casting, for instance. And why was the body stuck in the tree? And who pinched the turkeys?”

  In spite of a monumental lack of interest on Marble’s part, and even polite indifference on Windsor’s, Larsen turned both castings over to the chemist for analysis.

  “What do you suppose the chemist found out?” he demanded later.

  “What?” asked Windsor and Marble in unison.

  “They’re exactly the same alloy, right down to the last hundredth of one percent. The chemist says they must have been poured from the same melt.”

  “You and your details,” said Marble.
“Curry told us that to begin with.”

  Larsen nodded. “I think I pulled a boner on that one,” he admitted. “If a thing comes from a metallurgist, why have a chemist analyze it? Why not a metallurgist?”

  “Big deal,” said Marble.

  While Larsen was busy squiring his castings around from chemist to metallurgist, Hinds was performing the same service for Curry. Their man returned to Greenlands on Sunday afternoon.

  “He couldn’t hold out,” Windsor said with bitter satisfaction as the green convertible drove into the yard. “Check his gas gauge and so forth to make sure it fits in right with the readings we took Friday night when he parked it at the station.” But of course everyone knew Curry wouldn’t make a foolish mistake like that. The car had not been moved since he parked it.

  Curry went for a walk shortly after he returned. Larsen and Marble, following discreetly, had the empty triumph of watching the bewilderment grow on his face as he stood stock still in the grove, staring up at the unburdened branches overhead. But it gave them no advantage, because when they burst upon him he gave a very authentic smile and said, “I’m sorry I missed the picnic.”

  When they reported this to Windsor, he ran a nervous hand through his hair. “Let’s try quitting. I’ll leave a man here as a token of interest, but we won’t show up for a while. Marble, you report at Greenlands every day, just in case—you’re perfect for the job, an experienced cop, and you must manage to look bored. If he questions you, tell him you think we’re going to—say we’re going to drain the carp pond. That’ll amuse him, put him off his guard maybe.”

  He didn’t sound very hopeful.

  Marble liked Greenlands, and enjoyed sitting about under shade trees the whole of every morning. Curry passed him on his way to work with only a lift of his eyebrows by way of greeting. At lunch time of the third day, with the aroma of fresh steamed corn reaching him, Marble bestirred himself. He was on his way to the Gentry dining room when a car bearing Larsen and Windsor appeared. There was something encouraging about the jaunty way the car was brought to a stop an inch from Marble’s paunch, and he liked the way both men sprang agilely from the car.

  “Get this,” Windsor said, speaking rapidly and looking nervously at his watch. “The metallurgist just reported, and we came out as soon as we could make it. The two castings were exactly the same in chemical content but had received different heat treatment.”

  “No kidding,” said Marble blankly.

  “No, seriously,” said Windsor impatiently. “The crystalline structure of metals is very revealing, it seems. Instead of showing crystalline formations called austenite and martensite, the second casting was completely martensite. Extraordinary, isn’t it?” After a look at Marble’s face, he added hastily, “We’re waiting now for a call from that pathologist at the Institute, Dr. Pragermann. The call will come here, and we don’t want Curry in the house until after it comes through.”

  “Oh,” said Marble, latching on desperately to something he could understand. “You want me to keep him out of the house.”

  “Exactly,” said Windsor gleefully. “Keep him busy ’till you hear from me. You see it all now, of course.”

  “No,” said Marble.

  “It was the turkeys he put in the pond, the way I figure it,” Windsor said, herding Marble into the police car. “You see how it all ties up?”

  “In knots,” said Marble bitterly. Windsor, he could see, was so excited that he had no idea he wasn’t making sense. Larsen, though, was just plain gloating.

  “Me and my little details,” said Larsen unkindly. “They all tie in together. Remember them?”

  Marble roared off without an answer. Turkeys and castings, he thought savagely, and me always the last to know.

  Curry was in the doorway when Marble reached the lab.

  “I got a favor to ask you,” Marble said.

  Curry, looking resigned, reminded him, “It’s lunch time.”

  “I told them to hold lunch for you,” he said. “I gotta go over this place for dust.”

  He took out a packet of small envelopes Larsen had introduced into the kit now carried by all Cumberton Inspectors. Like in the movies, Marble thought, scooping up some dust from a corner and dribbling it solemnly into an envelope. “Now I gotta label this here,” he said, and did so. He licked the flap, sealed the envelope, and said, “Please initial this as witness, if you don’t mind.”

  Curry obeyed with alacrity, looking immensely amused. Marble could have continued the farce for longer than was necessary. It was only twenty minutes when the call came.

  “Bring him in,” said Windsor tersely.

  After that, it was all over but the booking. “Martin Curry,” said Windsor, “I arrest you for the murder on Christmas Eve last year of Peter Gentry.”

  In spite of his own confusion, Marble, watching the play of expressions on Curry’s face, felt a momentary arrow of sympathy for the man. To have felt so safe for so long, and with no warning to have the security snatched away.

  “You—you’re insane,” said Curry, but it was a weak attempt. He couldn’t say more. If he said, for instance, “He was only killed a few days ago,” it would be admitting he knew the body had been found, and how could he have known unless he placed it there?

  And besides there was Windsor, his smooth voice continuing relentlessly, “You had those turkeys out of the locker and in your car when you came to the laboratory on Christmas Eve. It had not yet started to snow. You took them down to the carp pond, knocked a hole in the ice, possibly where a bush covered it, and stuffed the birds under. Then you went on to the lab. The timing must have been split-second close. The Simmonses must have driven up just as you finished the job, and it was sheer good luck that they didn’t see you at the pond. Possibly you had already finished, or possibly the trees hid you—even in winter, with the trees bare, they must make a real screen. And the snow—you must have thought even nature was on your side. You escaped betrayal by the snow only by minutes, and instead it becomes the first witness for your defense.”

  Curry ran his tongue over dry lips. He did not speak.

  Windsor continued. “As soon as the Simmonses left you strangled Gentry. When he snatched up a red-hot casting to defend himself, you didn’t even bother to pry open his hand to get it. You simply put the body in your car and when you got back to the farmhouse, took it to the freezer and put it into the locker you had got ready by taking out the fifteen turkeys. And now we know why he was found wearing a heavy winter suit in the heat of August—he’d been dead since December. Did Carstairs bother to look in each locker when he searched the farmhouse? I suspect not, but it would have made no difference. All he’d have seen was the top layer of turkeys, since enough birds remained to completely cover him. And there he stayed, hidden safely away, until the time came for him to be discovered. Funny you should have forgotten the story the second casting could tell. I learned only today, but you must have known because it’s basic metallurgy, that freezing a freshly cast steel would have changed its crystalline structure so that any metallurgist could tell what had happened with one look under a microscope.”

  At that Curry winced, and a groan escaped him.

  “The casting told us the whole story, of course. If Gentry held a casting whose crystalline structure showed it had been frozen, then he must have been frozen too. So that brings us to the last question. Why was now the time to produce the body? Probably because Nancy announced she was going to start using the turkeys in that locker? Or was the hot spell, the time of year when you could be sure the body would defrost evenly—especially if you propped it up in a tree where the warm air could circulate freely.”

  The sudden pallor on Curry’s face had spread to his lips. His whole face was bloodless now. He’d had a series of shocks. First he had not been informed that the body was found. Next, he himself had been unable to find the body. Now he had been arrested for the murder with so precise a tale as to stagger him hopelessly. There was nobody, Marble
conceded grudgingly, nobody on earth like Windsor for telling the story like there was only the one version, and why argue?

  Curry wavered a little, but in the end he made a full confession, confirming everything. Baker and Hinds took him to Cumberton.

  “I feel kinda lightheaded,” said Marble. “It happened so quick.”

  “Lucky we are that he confessed, boys,” Windsor said. Dr. Pragermann said nobody could prove that the body had been frozen at all when he called me here. Pathologically there is no difference between new-killed and new-thawed. It seems you have to figure on twenty-four hours to defrost the body. Curry dragged Gentry out of the locker at four on Friday morning.”

  “Now wait a minute,” said Larsen suddenly, and whipped out his little book. “Figure twenty-four hours for the body to defrost, that brings it to four on Saturday morning. Now, if you figure that you count the time of death as the time of complete defrosting, that brings it right out on the nose. Completely defrosted at four Saturday morning, and found at noon, why we’d say he was dead eight hours.” He gave a disparaging little laugh. “It’s just a detail I wanted to clear up.”

  “According to Dr. Pragermann, you can’t tell a corpse that’s freshly dead eight hours from one that is eight hours from the point of complete defrosting,” Windsor said. “That is, if the corpse was frozen immediately after death, as Gentry was.”

  “We’d still have the castings for evidence, even if we didn’t have his confession,” Larsen said, with a natural stubbornness, since the castings were his babies.

  “Ha!” said Marble, smarting under the memory of austenite and martensite. “I got a picture of you selling them castings to a jury. But you’d ’a’ had the motive left, anyway. Mrs. Gentry, I mean. Juries love motives like that.”

  Windsor smiled, as at a personal compliment, and said, “Well, this proves that your strict attention to details pays off, Eric.”

  Larsen grinned bashfully. Oh, sure, thought Marble. It’s all Larsen, Larsen.