The Nine Mile Walk

by Harry Kemelman

  Nicky’s eyebrows rose. “I should think you could guess that. We know that Bennett’s dissertation subject had something to do with the original manuscript. My guess would be that the book that you noticed on his desk, Lieutenant, was A History of Calligraphy—two ‘l’s,’ Lieutenant—a history of handwriting.” (The look of sudden recognition that lit up Delhanty’s face confirmed the guess.) “I fancy the other books were probably concerned with paper and the chemistry of ink—that sort of thing. In any case, I am quite certain that Bennett had discovered some proof—scientific proof, not internal criticism like Korngold’s which is always subject to different interpretations—but proof of handwriting styles and ink and paper that the Byington Papers were a forgery.”

  The telephone exploded into sound and when I lifted the instrument to my ear, I heard the excited, panicky voice of Sergeant Carter.

  “He just shot himself,” he cried. “Professor Hawthorne just shot himself here at the hotel!”

  I glanced at the two men in the room and saw that they had heard. Delhanty had risen and was reaching for his hat.

  “Stay there,” I said into the phone. “Lieutenant Delhanty will be there in a minute. What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Carter answered. “I went to the library but he had just gone. I caught him at the hotel here and I gave him Professor Welt’s message. He just nodded and went into the next room, and a couple of seconds later there was a shot.”

  “All right, stand by.” I cradled the phone.

  Delhanty was already at the door. “That’s it,” I said to him.

  “Guess so,” he muttered, and closed the door behind him.

  I turned to Nicky. “What message did you ask Carter to give him?”

  He smiled. “Oh, that? I merely suggested to the Sergeant that he ask Hawthorne to bring Bennett’s notes with him.”

  I nodded moodily. For a minute or two I was silent, staring at the desk in front of me. Then I looked up.

  “Look here, Nicky, did you expect that your request would have the effect it did?”

  He pursed his lips as if to take thought. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “I did not consider it beyond the bounds of possibility. However, my primary concern was my responsibility to poor Bennett. I thought that if there was any merit in his idea, I ought to expand his notes into a paper which I would publish in his name.” His little blue eyes glittered and his lips relaxed in a frosty smile. “Naturally, I wanted to begin as soon as possible.”

  End Play

  It was Friday, my regular evening for chess with Nicky, a custom begun when I had first joined the Law Faculty at the university and continued even after I had given up teaching to become County Attorney. I had just announced a mate in three more moves to win the rubber game of our usual three game match.

  Nicky’s bushy white eyebrows came together as he scrutinized the corner of the board where my attack was focused. Then he nodded briskly in admission of defeat.

  “You might have prevented it,” I offered, “if you had advanced the pawn.”

  “I suppose so,” he replied, his little blue eyes glittering with amusement, “but it would only have prolonged the game and the position was beginning to bore me.”

  I was on the point of retorting that he was most apt to be bored by the position when he was losing, when the doorbell rang and I rose to answer it. It seemed as if I was always being interrupted whenever I had a chance to answer Nicky in kind.

  My caller proved to be Colonel Edwards of Army Intelligence who was collaborating with me on the investigation of the death of Professor McNulty. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that we were both investigating the same case rather than that we were collaborating, for there had been an ill-concealed rivalry in our association from the beginning, and we had both gone our separate ways, each working on that phase of the problem that seemed to him most likely to bear fruit. True, we had agreed to meet in my office every morning and discuss our progress, but there was no doubt that each of us was as much concerned with being the first to solve the case as to bring it to a successful conclusion. Since I had had a conference with Colonel Edwards that morning and expected to have another the following morning, his appearance now gave me a vague feeling of uneasiness.

  He was a young man, little more than thirty, entirely too young in my opinion to sport eagles. He was short and stocky with something like a strut in his walk, not uncommon in men of that build, and not necessarily indicating conceit. He was a decent chap, I suppose, and probably good at his job, but I did not warm to him and had not from the beginning of our association some two days before. In part, this was due to his insistence, when we had first met, that he should have full charge of the investigation inasmuch as Professor McNulty had been engaged in research for the Army; in part, it was due to his insufferable arrogance. Although he was half a head shorter than I, he somehow contrived to look down his pudgy nose at me.

  “I saw a light in your study as I was passing,” he explained.

  I nodded.

  “I thought I’d like to go over certain points with you and get the benefit of your experience,” he continued.

  That was his usual style and it annoyed me because I was never quite sure whether this seeming deference was his idea of politeness or whether it was downright impudence, said with tongue in cheek. In any case, I did not take it at face value.

  I nodded again and led him into the study where Nicky was putting the chessmen back in the box. After I had introduced the two men and we were all seated again, Edwards asked, “Have you uncovered anything important since this morning?”

  It flitted across my mind that it was customary for the visiting team to go to bat first, but to have said so would have been to bring our antagonism out into the open.

  “Well, we caught Trowbridge,” I said. “We found him in Boston and brought him back.”

  “That was quick work,” he said patronizingly, “but I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  I should have answered that with a shrug of the shoulders, but I felt that I had a strong case, so I said quietly, “He quarreled with McNulty some few hours before he was shot. McNulty had flunked him in his physics course because he had not had his experiments for the semester done in time. He came to see him to explain that he had been handicapped because he had sprained his wrist and so had been unable to write. McNulty was upset and out of sorts that day. Never a very amiable man, he was downright nasty during the interview. I got that from his secretary who was sitting right outside the door of his office and heard most of it. She reported that McNulty had said point-blank that he thought Trowbridge was exaggerating his injury, and even suggested that the young man had managed to get a medical discharge from the Army by the same trick. Parenthetically, I might say, I checked the young man’s Army record and found it excellent. He did not get his discharge until after he had been wounded in action twice. Naturally, Trowbridge did not take McNulty’s sneer in silence. There was quite a row and the young man was heard by the secretary to say, ‘You deserve to be shot.’” I paused impressively.

  “Very well,” I went on, “we know that Trowbridge took the eight-ten train to Boston. He had to pass McNulty’s house on his way to the station and that was no later than eight-five. According to Professor Albrecht, McNulty was shot at a minute or two after eight.” I paused again to give added weight to the highly suggestive significance of the time elements. Then I said in quiet triumph, “Under the circumstances, I would say that Trowbridge was a logical suspect.” I counted off the points on my fingers. “He quarreled with him and threatened him—that’s motive; he had been in the Army and had fought overseas and so was likely to have a German Luger as a war trophy—that’s weapon; he was near the house at the time—that’s opportunity; and finally, he ran off to Boston—that’s indication of guilt.”

  “But you don’t shoot a professor because he flunks you in a course,” Edwards objected.

  “No, you don’t ordinarily,” I
admitted. “But values change. Trowbridge had fought overseas. I fancy he saw a lot of killing and came to have a much lower opinion of the sanctity of human life. Besides, flunking this course meant dropping out of college. He claims, as a matter of fact, that he came up to Boston to see about the chances of transferring to one of the colleges there. A nervous sensitive young man could easily convince himself that his whole future had been ruined.”

  Edwards nodded slowly as if to grant me the point. “You questioned him?” he asked.

  “I did. I didn’t get a confession, if that’s what you’re thinking. But I did get something. Knowing that he must have passed McNulty’s house around eight-five, I told him that he had been seen there. It was just a shot in the dark, of course, and yet not too improbable. The Albany train pulls in around then and there are always two or three passengers who get off here. Going toward town, they’d be likely to pass him on his way to the station.”

  Edwards nodded again.

  “It worked,” I went on. “He got very red and finally admitted that he had stopped opposite McNulty’s house. He said that he stood there for a few minutes debating whether to see him again and try to get him to change his mind. And then he heard the Albany train pulling in and knowing that the Boston train left soon after, he hurried off. I’m holding him as a material witness. I’ll question him again tomorrow after he has spent a night in jail. Maybe I’ll get some more out of him then.”

  Colonel Edwards shook his head slowly. “I doubt if you’ll get any more out of him,” he said. “Trowbridge didn’t shoot him. McNulty shot himself. It was suicide.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “But we discarded the idea of suicide at the very beginning,” I pointed out. “Why, it was you yourself who—”

  “I was mistaken,” he said coldly, annoyed that I should have mentioned it.

  “But our original objections hold good,” I pointed out. “Someone rang the doorbell and McNulty went to answer it. Professor Albrecht testified to that.”

  “Ah, but he didn’t. We thought he did. What Albrecht actually said was that McNulty excused himself in the middle of their chess game with some remark about there being someone at the door. Here, let’s go over the whole business and you’ll see how we made our mistake. Professor Albrecht’s story was that he was playing chess with McNulty. I take it that’s a common thing with them.”

  “That’s right,” I said, “they play every Wednesday night, just as Nicky and I do every Friday evening. They dine together at the University Club and then go on to McNulty’s place.”

  “Well, they didn’t this Wednesday,” said Edwards. “Albrecht was detained by some work in the lab and went on out to McNulty’s house afterwards. In any case, they were playing chess. You recall the arrangement of furniture in McNulty’s study? Here, let me show you.” He opened the briefcase he had brought with him and drew out a photograph of the study. It showed a book-lined room with an opening in the form of an arch leading to a corridor. The chess table had been set up near the middle of the room, just to the right of the arch. The photograph had evidently been taken from just below the chess table so that it clearly showed the chess game in progress, the captured men, black and white, lying intermixed on one side of the board.

  He pointed to a chair that was drawn up to the chess table.

  “This is where Albrecht was sitting,” Edwards explained, “facing the arch which is the entrance from the corridor. The vestibule and the front door beyond is down the corridor to the left—that is, Albrecht’s left from where he was sitting.

  “Now, his story was that in the middle of the game McNulty went to answer the door. Albrecht heard what he later decided was a pistol shot, but which at the time he thought was a car backfiring outside. That’s reasonable because the evidence shows that the gun was pressed tightly against McNulty’s body. That would muffle the sound, like firing into a pillow. In any case, Albrecht waited a couple of minutes and then called out. Receiving no answer, he went out to investigate and found his friend lying on the floor of the vestibule, shot through the heart, the still warm gun in his hand.” He addressed himself to me. “Is that the way Albrecht told it? Did I leave out anything?”

  I shook my head, wondering what was coming.

  He smiled with great satisfaction. “Naturally, on the basis of that story we immediately ruled out suicide. We assumed that the man who rang the doorbell had shot him, and then thinking that McNulty was alone, had put the gun in his hand to make it look like suicide. If the doorbell rang, it had to be murder and could not be suicide. That’s logical,” he insisted firmly as though still annoyed that I had attributed the discarding of the suicide theory to him. “Even if the man who rang the doorbell had been a total stranger inquiring the way to the railroad station, say, it still could not have been suicide because it would have happened almost before the stranger could shut the door behind him and he would immediately have opened it again to see what the trouble was. It would have meant that McNulty had a loaded gun in his pocket all the time that he was playing chess with Albrecht. It would have meant—”

  “All right,” I interrupted, “the suicide theory was untenable. What made you change your mind?”

  He showed some annoyance at my interruption, but suppressed it immediately. “The doorbell,” he said solemnly. “There was something about Albrecht’s story that didn’t quite click. I took him over it several times. And then it came to me that at no time did he say that he had heard the doorbell—only that McNulty had excused himself with some remark about someone at the door. When I asked him point-blank if he had heard the bell, he became confused and finally admitted that he hadn’t. He tried to explain it by saying that he was absorbed in the game, but it’s a loud bell and if it had rung, I was sure he would have heard it. And since he didn’t hear it, that meant it hadn’t rung.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, if there were no third person at the door, the suicide theory had to be considered again.”

  He broke off suddenly. He blushed a little. “You know,” he said in great earnestness, “I haven’t been completely frank with you. I’m afraid I misled you into thinking that I came down here solely to investigate McNulty’s death. The fact of the matter is that I arrived in the morning and made an appointment by phone to meet him at his home at half-past eight that night. You see, the research project on which McNulty and Albrecht have been working hasn’t been going too well. There were strange mishaps occurring all too frequently. Delicate apparatus that would take weeks and months to replace was damaged. Reports had been late coming in and frequently contained errors. Army Ordinance which was sponsoring the project asked us to check on the work and I was sent down to make the preliminary investigation.

  “Having in mind now the possibility of suicide, I asked Albrecht about sabotage on the project. That broke it. He admitted that he had been suspicious of McNulty for some time and had conducted a little investigation of his own. Though he was certain that McNulty was guilty, he had hesitated to accuse him openly. But he had hinted. All through the game he had hinted that he knew what McNulty had been up to. I gathered that he couched his hints in the terms of the game. I don’t play chess, but I imagine that he said something like, ‘You will be in great danger if you continue on this line’—that kind of thing. After a while, McNulty got the idea and became very upset. Albrecht said he murmured over and over again, ‘What shall I do?’ Then Albrecht made a move and said, ‘Resign!’—which I understand is the regular chess term for ‘give up.’” Edwards spread his hands as though presenting us with the case all nicely gift-wrapped. “It was then that McNulty muttered something about there being someone at the door and got up from the table.”

  “Albrecht saw him shoot himself?” I demanded.

  “All but. He saw McNulty go through the arch. Instead of going to the left to the vestibule, he went to the right, and that’s where his bedroom is. I submit that he went to get his gun. Then he came back and walked past the arch to the vestibule.”
<
br />   “Why didn’t he wait until after Albrecht left?” I asked.

  “I suppose because he knew that I would be along presently.”

  There was little doubt in my mind that Edwards had arrived at the correct solution. But I hated to admit it. It was no longer a question of beating Edwards to the finish. I was thinking of McNulty now. He was not a friend, but I had played chess with him at the University Club a number of times. I had not cared too much for the man, but I did not like to think of him taking his own life, especially since it implied that he had been guilty of treason. I suppose my uneasiness and my doubts were patent in the very vehemence with which I tried to conceal them. “And that’s your case?” I demanded scornfully. “Why, a freshman law student could pick it to pieces! It’s as full of holes as a sieve.”

  He reddened, a little taken aback at the belligerence in my tone.

  “Such as?” he asked.

  “Such as the gun? Have you traced it to him? Such as why did Albrecht lie in the first place? Such as the choice of the vestibule? Why should a man with a house full of rooms choose to shoot himself in the vestibule?”

  “Albrecht lied because McNulty was his friend,” Edwards replied. “He could no longer affect the research project—why should he make him out a suicide and a traitor if he could avoid it? Besides, I guess he felt a little guilty about McNulty’s taking his own life. Remember? He called on him to resign. I imagine he must have been pretty upset to find that his friend took his advice so thoroughly.”

  “And the gun?”

  Edwards shrugged his shoulders. “You yourself pointed out that the gun was a war trophy. The country is flooded with them and very few of them have been registered. A former student might have given it to him. As a matter of fact, Albrecht admitted that McNulty had mentioned something of the sort some months back. No, the gun didn’t bother me. I found the business of the vestibule a lot harder to understand—until I made a thorough check of the house. It appears that since the death of his wife some years ago, McNulty has practically closed up all the upper part of the house and part of the lower. So although there are six rooms in the house, he actually occupies what amounts to a small apartment on the first floor consisting of the study which was formerly the dining room, a bedroom, and the kitchen. He couldn’t shoot himself in the study since Albrecht was there and would stop him. The kitchen leads off the study and I suppose he would not want to pass Albrecht if he could help it. That leaves only the bedroom, which I would consider the most likely place were it not for one thing: there’s a large portrait of his wife hanging there. It was taken full view so that the eyes seem to follow you no matter from what angle you look at it. It occurred to me that it was that which deterred him. He wouldn’t want to shoot himself under the very eyes of his wife, as it were. That’s only a guess, of course,” he added with something of a smirk which implied that in his opinion it was a pretty good guess.