The detective, when Faith finally saw him, inclined in costume toward the latter, but he wore sports clothes as though they were pleasantly comfortable, rather than as the badge of a caste. He was a thin young man, with sharpish features and very red hair. What you noticed most were his eyes—intensely green and alive with a restless curiosity. They made you feel that his work would never end until that curiosity had been satisfied.
He listened in silence to Faith’s story, not moving save to make an occasional note. He was attentive and curious, but Faith’s spirits sank as she saw the curiosity in the green eyes deaden to hopelessness. When she was through, he rose, lit a cigarette, and began pacing about the narrow inner office.
“I think better this way,” he apologized. “I hope you don’t mind. But what have I got to think about? The facts you’ve told me are better than a signed confession for any jury.”
“But Simon is innocent,” Faith insisted. “I know him, Mr. O’Breen. It isn’t possible that he could have done a thing like that.”
“I understand how you feel. But what have we got to go on besides your feelings? I’m not saying they’re wrong; I’m trying to show you how the police and the court would look at it.”
“But there wasn’t any reason for Simon to kill Mr. Harrison. He had a good job. He liked it. We were going to get married. Now he hasn’t any job or . . . or anything.”
“I know.” The detective continued to pace. “That’s the one point you’ve got— absence of motive. But they’ve convicted without motive before this. And rightly enough. Anything can be a motive. The most outrageous and fascinating French murder since Landru was committeci because the electric toaster didn’t work right that morning. But let’s look at motives. Mr. Harrison was a wealthy man; where does all that money go?”
“Simon helped draft his will. It all goes to libraries and foundations and things. A little to the servants, of course—”
“A little can turn the trick. But no near relatives?”
“His father’s still alive. He’s terribly old. But he’s so rich himself that it’d be silly to leave him anything.”
Fergus snapped his fingers. “Max Harrison! Of course. The superannuated robber-baron, to put it politely, who’s been due to die any time these past ten years. And leave a mere handful of millions. There’s a motive for you.”
“How so?”
“The murderer could profit from Stanley Harrison’s death, not directly if all his money goes to foundations, but indirectly from his father. Combination of two classic motives—profit and elimination. Who’s next in line for old man Harrison’s fortune?”
“I’m not sure. But I do know two people who are sort of second cousins or something. I think they’re the only living relatives. Agatha and Harrison Partridge.”
Fergus’ eyes were brightening again. “At least it’s a lead. Simon Ash had no motive and one Harrison Partridge had a honey. Which proves nothing, but gives you some place to start.”
“Only—” Faith protested. “Only Mr. Partridge couldn’t possibly have done it either.”
Fergus stopped pacing. “Look, madam. I am willing to grant the unassailable innocence of one suspect on a client’s word. Otherwise I’d never get clients. But if every individual who comes up is going to turn out to be someone in whose pureness of soul you have implicit faith and—”
“It isn’t that. Not just that. The murder was just after five o’clock, the butler says. And Mr. Partridge was with me then, and I live way across town from Mr. Harrison’s.”
“You’re sure of the time?”
“We heard the five-o’clock radio signal and he set his watch.” Her voice was troubled and she tried not to remember the awful minutes afterward.
“Did he make a point of it?”
“Well . . . we were talking and he stopped and held up his hand and we listened to the bong.”
“Hm-m-m.” This statement seemed to strike the detective especially. “Well, there’s still the sister. And anyway, the Partridges give me a point of departure, which is what I needed.”
Faith looked at him hopefiilly. “Then you’ll take the case?”
“I’ll take it. God knows why. I don’t want to raise your hopes, because if ever I saw an unpromising set-up it’s this. But I’ll take it. I think it’s because I can’t resist the pleasure of having a detective lieutenant shove a case into my lap.”
“Bracket, was it usual for that door to be locked when Mr. Harrison was in the library?”
The butler’s manner was imperfect; he could not decide whether a hired detective was a gentleman or a servant. “No,” he said, politely enough but without a “sir.”
“No, it was most unusual.”
“Did you notice if it was locked earlier?”
“It was not. I showed a visitor in shortly before the . . . before this dreadful thing happened.”
“A visitor?” Fergus’ eyes glinted. Fie began to have visions of all the elaborate possibilities of locking doors from the outside so that they seem locked on the inside. “And when was this?”
“Just on five o’clock, I thought. But the gentleman called here today to offer his sympathy, and he remarked, when I mentioned the subject, that he believed it to have been earlier.”
“And who was this gentleman?”
“Mr. Harrison Partridge.”
Hell, thought Fergus. There goes another possibility. It must have been much earlier if he was at Faith Preston’s by five. And you can’t tamper with radio time signals as you might with a clock. However— “Notice anything odd about Mr. Partridge? Anything in his manner?”
“Yesterday? No, I did not. He was carrying some curious contraption—I hardly noticed what. I imagine it was some recent invention of his which he wished to show to Mr. Harrison.”
“He’s an inventor, this Partridge? But you said yesterday. Anything odd about him today?”
“I don’t know. It’s difficult to describe. But there was something about him as though he had changed—grown, perhaps.”
“Grown up?”
“No. Just grown.”
“Now, Mr. Ash, this man you claim you saw—”
“Claim! Damn it, O’Breen, don’t you believe me either?”
“Easy does it. The main thing for you is that Miss Preston believes you, and I’d say that’s a lot. Now this man you saw, if that makes you any happier in this jail, did he remind you of anyone?”
“I don’t know. It’s bothered me. I didn’t get a good look, but there was something familiar—”
“You say he had some sort of machine beside him?”
Simon Ash was suddenly excited. “You’ve got it. That’s it.”
“That’s what?”
“Who it was. Or who I thought it was. Mr. Partridge. He’s some sort of a cousin of Mr. Harrison’s. Screwball inventor.”
“Miss Preston, I’ll have to ask you more questions. Too many signposts keep pointing one way, and even if that way’s a blind alley I’ve got to go up it. When Mr. Partridge called on you yesterday afternoon, what did he do to you?”
“Do to me?” Faith’s voice wavered. “What on earth do you mean?”
“It was obvious from your manner earlier that there was something about that scene you wanted to forget.”
“He— Oh, no, I can’t. Must I tell you, Mr. O’Breen?”
“Simon Ash says the jail is not bad after what he’s heard of jails, but still—”
“All right, I’ll tell you. But it was strange. I . . . I suppose I’ve known for a long time that Mr. Partridge was—well, you might say in love with me. But he’s so much older than I am and he’s very quiet and never said anything about it and—well, there it was, and I never gave it much thought one way or another. But yesterday— It was as though . . . as though he were possessed. All at once it seemed to burst out and there he was making love to me. Frightfully, horribly, I couldn’t stand it. I ran away. That’s all there was to it. But it was terrible.”
�
��You pitched me a honey this time, Andy.”
Lieutenant Jackson grinned. “Thought you’d appreciate it, Fergus.”
“But look: What have you got against Ash but the physical set-up of a locked room? The oldest cliche in murderous fiction, and not unheard of in fact.”
“Show me how to unlock this one and your Mr. Ash is a free man.”
“Set that aside for the moment. But look at my suspect, whom we will call, for the sake of novelty, X. X is a mild-mannered, inoffensive man who stands to gain several million by Harrison’s death. He shows up at the library just before the murder. He’s a crackpot inventor, and he has one of his gadgets with him. He shows an alibiconscious awareness of time. He tries to get the butler to think he called earlier. He calls a witness’s attention ostentatiously to a radio time signal. And most important of all, psychologically, he changes. He stops being mild-mannered and inoffensive. He goes on the make for a girl with physical violence. The butler describes him as a different man; he’s grown.”
Jackson drew a note pad toward him. “Your X sounds worth questioning, to say the least. But this reticence isn’t like you, Fergus. Why all this innuendo? Why aren’t you telling me to get out of here and arrest him?”
Fergus was not quite his cocky self. “Because, you see, that alibi I mentioned— well, it’s good. I can’t crack it. It’s perfect.”
Lieutenant Jackson shoved the pad away. “Run away and play,” he said wearily.
“It couldn’t be phony at the other end?” Fergus urged. “Some gadget planted to produce those screams at five o’clock to give a fake time for the murder?”
Jackson shook his head. “Harrison finished tea around four-thirty. Stomach analysis shows the food had been digested just about a half-hour. No, he died at five o’clock, all right.”
“X’s alibi’s perfect, then,” Fergus repeated. “Unless . . . unless—” His green eyes blinked with amazed realization. “Oh, my dear God—” he said softly.
Mr. Partridge was finding life pleasant to lead. Of course this was only a transitional stage. At present he was merely the—what was the transitional stage between cocoon and fully developed insect? Larva? Imago? Pupa? Outside of his own electro-inventive field, Mr. Partridge was not a well-informed man. That must be remedied. But let the metaphor go. Say simply that he was now in the transition between the meek worm that had been Mr. Partridge and the Great Harrison Partridge who would emerge triumphant when Great-uncle Max died and Faith forgot that poor foolish doomed young man.
Even Agatha he could tolerate more easily in this pleasant state, although he had nonetheless established permanent living quarters in his workroom. She had felt her own pleasure at the prospect of being an heiress, but had expressed it most properly by buying sumptuous mourning for Cousin Stanley—the most expensive clothes that she had bought in the past decade. And her hard edges were possibly softening a little—or was that the pleasing haze, almost like that of drunkenness, which now tended to soften all hard edges for Mr. Partridge’s delighted eyes?
It was in the midst of some such reverie as this that Mr. Partridge, lolling idly in his workshop with an unaccustomed tray of whisky, ice and siphon beside him, casually overheard the radio announce the result of the fourth race at Hialeah and noted abstractedly that a horse named Karabali had paid forty-eight dollars and sixty cents on a two-dollar ticket. He had almost forgotten the only half-registered fact when the phone rang.
He answered, and a grudging voice said, “You can sure pick ’em. That’s damned near five grand you made on Karabali.”
Mr. Partridge fumbled with vocal noises.
The voice went on, “What shall I do with it? Want to pick it up tonight or—”
Mr. Partridge had been making incredibly rapid mental calculations. “Leave it in my account for the moment,” he said firmly. “Oh, and—I’m afraid I’ve mislaid your telephone number.”
“Trinity 2897. Got any more hunches now?”
“Not at the moment. I’ll let you know.”
Mr. Partridge replaced the receiver and poured himself a stiff drink. When he had downed it, he went to the machine and traveled two hours back. He returned to the telephone, dialed TR 2897, and said, “I wish to place a bet on the fourth race at Hialeah. ”
The same voice said, “And who’re you?”
“Partridge. Harrison Partridge.”
“Look, brother. I don’t take bets by phone unless I see some cash first, see?”
Mr. Partridge hastily recalculated. As a result the next half hour was as packed with action as the final moments of his great plan. He learned about accounts, he ascertained the bookmaker’s address, he hurried to his bank and drew out an impressive five hundred dollars which he could ill spare, and he opened his account and placed a two-hundred-dollar bet which excited nothing but a badly concealed derision.
Then he took a long walk and mused over the problem. He recalled happening on a story once in some magazine which proved that you could not use knowledge from the future of the outcome of races to make your fortune, because by interfering with your bet you would change the odds and alter the future. But he was not plucking from the future; he was going back into the past. The odds he had heard were already affected by what he had done. From his subjective point of view, he learned the result of his actions before he performed them. But in the objective physical temporospatial world, he performed those actions quite normally and correctly before their results.
Mr. Partridge stopped dead on the sidewalk and a strolling couple ran headlong into him. He scarcely noticed the collision. He had had a dreadful thought. The sole acknowledged motive for his murder of Cousin Stanley had been to secure money for his researches. Now he learned that his machine, even in its present imperfect form, could provide him with untold money.
He had never needed to murder at all.
“My dearest Maureen,” Fergus announced at the breakfast table, “I have discovered the world’s first successful time machine.”
His sister showed no signs of being impressed. “Have some more tomato juice,” she suggested. “Want some tabasco in it? I didn’t know that the delusions could survive into the hangover.”
“But, Macushla,” Fergus protested, “you’ve just listened to an announcement that no woman on earth has ever heard before.”
“Fergus O’Breen, Mad Scientist.” Maureen shook her head. “It isn’t a role I’d cast you for. Sorry.”
“If you’d listen before you crack wise, I said ‘discovered.’ Not ‘invented.’ It’s the damnedest thing that’s ever happened to me in business. It hit me in a flash while I was talking to Andy. It’s the perfect and only possible solution to a case. And who will ever believe me? Do you wonder that I went out and saturated myself last night?” Maureen frowned. “You mean this?”
“It’s the McCoy. Listen.” And he briefly outlined the case. “Now what sticks out like a sore thumb is this: Harrison Partridge establishing an alibi. The radio time signal, the talk with the butler— I’ll even lay odds that the murderer himself gave those screams so there’d be no question as to time of death. Then you rub up against the fact that the alibi, like the horrendous dream of the young girl from Peru, is perfectly true.
“But what does an alibi mean? It’s my own nomination for the most misused word in the language. It’s come to mean a disproof, an excuse. But strictly it means nothing but elsewhere. You know the classic gag: ‘I wasn’t there, this isn’t the woman, and, anyway, she gave in.’ Well, of those three redundant excuses, only the first is an alibi, an elsewhere statement. Now Partridge’s claim of being elsewhere is true enough. And even if we could remove him from elsewhere and put him literally on the spot, he could say: ‘I couldn’t have left the room after the murder; the doors were all locked on the inside.’ Sure he couldn’t—not at that time. And his excuse is not an elsewhere, but an elsewhen.”
Maureen refilled his coffee cup and her own. “Hush up a minute and let me think it over.” At last she n
odded slowly. “And he’s an eccentric inventor and when the butler saw him he was carrying one of his gadgets.”
“Which he still had when Simon Ash saw him vanish. He committed the murder, locked the doors, went back in time, walked out through them in their unlocked past, and went off to hear the five-o’clock radio bong at Faith Preston’s.”
“But you can’t try to sell the police on that. Not even Andy.”
“I know. Damn it, I know.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to see Mr. Harrison Partridge. And I’m going to ask for an encore.”
“Quite an establishment you’ve got here,” Fergus observed to the plump bald little inventor.
Mr. Partridge smiled courteously. “I amuse myself with my small experiments,” he admitted.
“I’m afraid I’m not much aware of the wonders of modern science. I’m looking forward to the more spectacular marvels, spaceships for instance, or time machines. But that wasn’t what I came to talk about. Miss Preston tells me you’re a friend of hers. I’m sure you’re in sympathy with this attempt of hers to free young Ash.”
“Oh, naturally. Most naturally. Anything that I can do to be of assistance—”
“It’s just the most routine sort of question, but I’m groping for a lead. Now, aside from Ash and the butler, you seem to have been the last person to see Harrison alive. Could you tell me anything about him? How was he?”
“Perfectly normal, so far as I could observe. We talked about a new item which I had unearthed for his bibliography, and he expressed some small dissatisfaction with Ash’s cataloging of late. I believe they had had words on the matter earlier.”
“Bracket says you had one of your inventions with you?”
The Compleat Boucher Page 11