The Nighttime is the Right Time

by Bill Crider

  "C'mon in," he said. His voice was deep and husky, as if he had a terrible cold, which he didn't. He sounded like that all the time.

  Bo and Janice walked past him, and he shut the door behind them. Bo helped Janice off with her coat, getting another good whiff of White Shoulders, and hung it in the hall closet. There was already a topcoat inside. The shoulders were slightly damp with rain. The coat looked expensive to Bo, but he wasn't really much of a judge.

  It was only a couple of steps from the hall to the library, which looked pretty much as it always had except for the two cops who were going over it as if looking for clues. The major crime scene investigation had already been done, and there was fingerprint powder on every smooth surface that Bo could see. One of the cops was poking through the drawers of the desk. The other was taking books off the shelves and thumbing through the pages.

  The library was a large room, about fifteen feet wide by twenty feet long, with most of the available wall space being taken up by the bookshelves. There was, however, a large stone fireplace on the wall at the right end of the room. Opposite the room's entrance there was a big oak desk, and behind the desk were French doors leading onto a stone patio and into the yard beyond. Bo noticed that one of the doors had a broken pane.

  "That's where it happened," Franklin said, waving a hand toward the library. "The body was right there by the desk."

  "You said he was shot, didn't you?" Janice asked.

  Franklin nodded.

  "What about the gun, then?"

  "She means the murder weapon," Bo said, trying to show Franklin that they knew the jargon.

  Franklin wasn't interested in jargon, however. He obviously had something else on his mind.

  "The gun's one of our problems," he said.

  "You said you couldn't find it," Janice prompted.

  "That's right. Listen, why don't you two come in the library with me for a minute?"

  Franklin moved away without waiting for an answer. Bo looked at Janice, who nodded, and the two of them followed the police lieutenant.

  Franklin stopped just inside the library. "Let's not get in anybody's way," he said.

  The two cops went about their business. The one looking through the books put the one he had been examining back on the shelf and took another one down. The other cop was finished with the desk drawers, and he moved to another part of the room and began examining books just as his partner was doing.

  Bo noticed the floor beside the desk. There was a large dark stain in the carpet.

  "Why did you want us to come in here?" Bo asked, trying not to look at the stain.

  "Because there are some other people being interviewed in the den," Franklin said. "I've already talked to them, but Simmons is going over things with them again."

  Simmons was a homicide detective. Bo and Janice had talked to him a few times when he dropped by Franklin's office while they were visiting.

  "We couldn't talk in here," Franklin went on, with a glance at the stain that Bo was trying to ignore. "The den was the best place."

  The den was in the wing of the house to the left of the library. The downstairs area of that wing also held the game room and a large storage room. The other wing was for the kitchen, the dining room, and the office where Ray took care of his business interests. Bedrooms were upstairs in both wings.

  "Why did you want us to come over here, anyway?" Janice asked. "Ray was our friend, but that's not why you called. Is it?"

  Franklin looked uncomfortable. "No," he admitted. "That's not why I called."

  Janice wasn't satisfied with that. "So why did you call, then?"

  "You know how these things are," Franklin said. "Real murder's not like it is in those books you write, or it's not supposed to be."

  Bo was getting interested. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, murder's usually something that's pretty straightforward. You have witnesses. You have clues. You have people who know things."

  "But not this time?"

  "Not this time. This time it is like one of your books."

  "Tell us about it," Janice said.

  III

  Franklin told them what he knew. The missing gun was the least of his problems. What he had was a locked-room crime.

  "Hank Rollins heard the shots," the lieutenant said. "He's sort of an all 'round handyman that Thompson used for all kinds of work around the place. In the summer he mows the yard, and he makes general repairs when they're needed. This morning he was out in the back, cutting some dead limbs out of the pecan trees when he heard what he thought were two pistol shots. They were muffled, as if they'd come from the house, so Rollins ran to the patio and looked in through the French doors.

  "Thompson was lying on the floor," Franklin said. "There was no one else in the room. Rollins couldn't get in because the French doors were locked. He broke out one of the door panes and came inside. When he got in, he could hear someone banging on the front door knocker. He looked down and Thompson, figured he needed help, and went to the door. There was a guy named Walton standing there."

  "Jeffery Walton?" Janice asked.

  Franklin nodded. "That's right. You know him?"

  Bo had heard the name. "Ray's business manager. Ray's talked about him to us. We've never met him."

  "Well, he was the guy at the door. He and Rollins went back to the library, and the daughter was there by that time, standing by the body and screaming. Walton took her out of the room, and Rollins called us."

  "They didn't see the gun?" Janice asked.

  "They didn't see anything," Franklin said. "So they say. But there were some other people here."

  "Who?" Bo wanted to know.

  "Thompson's kids."

  "Dolly and Jimmy," Janice said. "Them, we've met."

  "They're the ones. The girl was upstairs in what she calls her 'sewing room.'"

  "Sewing's her hobby," Janice said. "She's very good."

  Franklin didn't look as if he cared a thing about Dolly's sewing skills. "Yeah. Anyway, the room's right by her bedroom, and she was making a dress or something, running a little Singer machine. She says she heard the shots, but they were muffled, like someone hitting a nail with a hammer. She didn't know what they were. She left the sewing room to check, and then she heard the glass break. She got downstairs just about the time Rollins was letting Walton in the front door."

  "Did anyone hear the door knocker before the shots?" Janice asked.

  "That's an interesting question," Franklin said. "And the answer is no, and as far as anyone know, there was no one in the house except Thompson."

  "What about Jimmy?" Bo asked.

  "He didn't the door knocker or the shots, he says. Says he was in the garage, working on his car."

  The garage was separate from the house, just in back. There was a door that led from the kitchen to a short covered walk that went to the garage.

  "He likes that car, all right," Bo said. "It's a '55 Chevy Bel-Air with a V-8 engine and--"

  "I don't care about the damn car," Franklin said. "Don't you see what we've got here?"

  "I do," Janice said. "It's like something from one of our books. A man was murdered in this room, by someone that no one knows was in the house. The victim had a door behind him and a door in front of him, but it seems that the killer didn't go out either of them. He didn't go out the back door, or Jimmy would've seen him from the garage. And he didn't go upstairs to the bedrooms on Dolly's side, because she didn't see him there."

  "What about the den?" Bo asked. "Aren't there French doors in there, too?"

  "Bolted," Franklin said. "On the inside."

  "Then the killer's still in the house," Bo said.

  "He's not in the house," Franklin told him. "You can bet on that. We've searched."

  Bo looked over at the fireplace. There hadn't been a fire in it in a long time; Ray thought the smoke wasn't good for his books. There seemed to Bo to be an excess of soot on the hearth, however, as if someone had disturbed the interior of
the chimney. Bo had no idea how big the chimney was, but it was certainly possible that someone could have climbed up it. Chimney sweeps did it in seventeenth-century London, though of course they were mostly small children.

  Of course Dr. Gideon Fell, one of John Dickson Carr's famous fictional detectives, didn't approve of chimneys as a means of escape in locked-room murders, but maybe Thompson's killer didn't know that.

  "If the killer's not in the house, and if no one saw him making his escape, where does that leave you?" Janice asked Franklin.

  "I don't know," he said. "That's why I called you two. Most murders are really pretty simple. There's not any puzzle to figure out. You just look for motive, means, and opportunity, and when you've got all that sorted out, you can find your killer."

  "Speaking of motives, you have a couple of people here who have one," Bo said. Janice glared at him, but he went on. "Let's face it. We liked Ray, but Dolly and Jimmy didn't get along with their father."

  "The kids," Franklin said. "We know about that, too."

  It was an old and familiar story. The mother dies when the children are young, and the father tries to compensate by being overly strict, possibly a bit dictatorial.

  Ray Thompson had wanted Jimmy, the eldest, to make his own way in the world, while Jimmy had become more than a little resentful when he did not receive the help he expected. Jimmy had managed well enough, however. He worked his way through college and law school, and he was now living at home while studying for the bar exam. His one luxury was the '55 Chevy that Ray had recently bought him. Ray had told Bo and Janice that he was getting older and that it was time he started loosening the purse strings.

  Dolly was twenty, five years younger than her brother, and not nearly so resentful, though it was no real secret that she felt a bit ridiculous wearing homemade clothes while most of the girls from other families she knew were wearing fashion originals.

  "She's been known to comment that she wouldn't mind getting her hands on her inheritance," Franklin said.

  "How could you possibly know that?" Janice asked.

  Franklin smiled as much as it was possible for him to do so. "You don't think I move in the right social circles?"

  "She just wondered who told you," Bo said, though he could guess. It had to have been either Jimmy Thompson or Jeffery Walton. "What do you know about Hank Rollins?"

  "Glad you asked," Franklin said. "There's no police file on him, not even a parking ticket. He's worked for Thompson for years, mowing the yard, painting, things like that. And he's done odd jobs for a lot of people in the neighborhood. There's never been a complaint."

  "Sometimes it's the one you least suspect," Bo said.

  "Could be," Franklin said. "Maybe he thought there was some money in the desk. But then why would he answer the front door?"

  "What about Walton?" Bo asked.

  "Well, now," Franklin said. "He doesn't have a record, either. But he and Thompson haven't exactly been getting along lately, and Walton came here with some bad news."

  "What bad news?" Janice asked.

  "It seems that nearly all Thompson's investments have gone south on him. Walton was going to tell him that he was practically broke."

  "That might give Ray a motive for murder," Janice said. "If he blamed Walton. But it wouldn't give Walton a reason for killing Ray."

  "I'm just telling you what I know," Franklin said. "Maybe none of them did it. Maybe Thompson was killed by the Invisible Man, who just walked out the front door without being seen."

  "I didn't notice Claude Rains walking the streets on the way over here," Bo said.

  "I didn't ask you here to make jokes," Franklin said. "I thought maybe you'd have some ideas."

  "We do," Janice said, surprising Bo, who had no ideas at all. "Can we talk to everyone?"

  "Together?" Franklin asked.

  "No. One at a time."

  "Sure. I'll arrange it. In the den be OK?"

  "The kitchen," Janice said. "I want to talk to Bo in there first, alone."

  "You two go ahead," Franklin said. "I'll get things set up."

  Janice thanked him and started for the kitchen. Bo watched her go. She turned back. "Are you coming?"

  "I guess so," Bo said, still wondering what she knew that he didn't.

  IV

  As soon as they got into the kitchen, Bo lit up a Camel. He looked around for an ashtray, but there wasn't one. He tossed the match in the sink.

  "That's a disgusting thing to do," Janice said. "I suppose you're going to put your ashes there, too."

  "That's right," Bo said. "It may be disgusting, but it's safer than flicking them in the trash can. Don't worry. I'll wash out the sink when I'm done."

  Janice started out of the kitchen. "I'm sure you will."

  "Hey, where're you going?"

  "To look at something. You just smoke your cigarette. I'll be right back."

  Bo inhaled deeply and let the smoke trickle out through his nose. Fills your lungs with tiny little vitamins, he thought. He looked around the kitchen. Ray had a housekeeper, but maybe today was her day off. She kept the place excessively clean, in Bo's opinion. The countertops sparkled, and the porcelain sink was so white that it hurt his eyes to look at it. All of which led him to wonder again about the chimney and all that soot.

  He was thinking about that when Janice came back into the room.

  She looked pointedly at the cigarette. "Aren't you finished yet?"

  Bo was only about halfway down the Camel, but he stuck it under the tap and turned on the water. The cigarette fizzed and went out. He dropped it in the sink.

  "I'll get it," he said. "I promise."

  "You'd better. Now, what do you think about all this."

  "It's obvious," Bo said. "The chimney. Did you notice all the soot on the hearth? I think someone killed Ray and escaped up the chimney. That's the only way it could've been done."

  "Assuming someone could actually do climb up the chimney," Janice said, "which I doubt, where did he go after that?"

  "The roof," Bo said.

  "And then?"

  "Down a drainpipe maybe. There're two of them right be the front door."

  "Wouldn't he have been seen?"

  "Maybe there's a drainpipe in the back," Bo said, getting into the spirit of it. "Here's how I'd plot it. The killer comes in, argues with Ray for some reason or another. Then something gets Ray really upset and he goes for that pistol he keeps in his desk--"

  Bo broke off and looked at Janice. "The pistol! Ray showed it to us one night. It's in the middle drawer of the desk! I've got to tell Franklin."

  He started for the doorway, but Janice stopped him. "The pistol's not there. I looked."

  "So that's where you went. Did you tell anyone?"

  Janice shook her head. The ponytail jiggled. "I mentioned it to Lt. Franklin."

  "Good. What did he say?"

  "He said they'd look for it."

  "All right. Anyway, it all fits. Ray goes for the pistol. They struggle, and the killer takes the gun away from him. Ray charges, the killer fires. Ray drops, and the killer is horrified by what he's done. How can he escape? His eyes dart around the room. Suddenly, he hears the knocking on the front door! He sees Rollins coming toward the patio from the back yard! Maybe he even hears Dolly coming down the stairs!"

  Bo was half-crouched in the middle of the kitchen now, his palms held outward at shoulder level. He was taking the part of the killer, and his head swiveled from right to left as he searched desperately for an exit.

  "Where can he go? There's no way out! But then he sees the chimney! Can he get inside?"

  Bo glided across the kitchen toward the Chambers range. He opened the oven door and looked inside.

  "It looks awfully small, but he has to try! It's his only chance!"

  "You're not really going to try to get in there, are you?" Janice asked, as Bo stuck his head inside the oven.

  Bo pulled his head back and grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. I guess I got a littl
e carried away. But you see how it would work, don't you?"

  "Maybe," Janice said, but she didn't look convinced.

  "Just think of it," Bo told her. "Close your eyes and imagine it. He scrabbles up the chimney and comes out on the roof, covered in black soot. The wind is howling around him--"

  "The wind is a little gusty," Janice said, "but it isn't howlin'."

  "Hey," Bo said, "we're working on a story here. Give me a little poetic license."

  "All right," Janice said. "Go on. 'The wind is howlin' around him--'"

  "Right. It's dark, and the moon is hiding behind the thick clouds--"

  "Dark? It's overcast, but it's not dark."

  "It is in the story, all right?"

  "Fine. It's your story."

  "Damn right. Do you want to hear the rest of it?"

  "Of course. But why don't we talk to people first? They might give you some ideas."

  Bo could see the sense in that, though he hated to stop when he was going so well. Nevertheless, he said, "You're right. Are you ready?"

  "I think so. Would you like to talk to Dolly first?"

  "Why not? You want me to have Franklin send her in?"

  "Go ahead."

  IV

  Dolly was tall and slender, with black hair, black eyes, and pale skin. Her eyes were red now, as if she had been crying. She was sitting at the sturdy oak kitchen table across from Janice. Bo was sitting at the end, in the only chair with arms.

  Dolly explained that after hearing the shots, though she didn't know at the time what they were, she thought she had better see if something had happened in the lower part of the house.

  "It was such an unusual noise," she said. "And when I got downstairs, there was Father, lying on the rug."

  Her voice broke, and she looked down at the table top. Janice reached across the table to take her hand. "Let's not talk about that part. Tell me about what you heard before the shots."