Edwin’s face went very white. “Are the finger-prints on the gun mine?” he asked.
The Sergeant did not reply.
“I will say no more without the advice of a lawyer,” snapped Edwin.
TWENTY-TWO
As if in response to Edwin’s demand, the door opened to admit John Patrick. Before any one else could speak, Tom exclaimed, “There you are, Mr. Vaile. The police have a new theory, predicated on the question of my cousin’s whereabouts this afternoon, and he refuses to talk—quite rightly, I think—without the advice of counsel. I don’t need to say, how interested I am that this should all be cleared up with the least possible reflection on the family; I can trust you to take care of such matters.”
But John Patrick did not immediately reply to Tom. Instead, he turned to the Sergeant and inquired. “What’s this you are doing now?”
“I’ll tell you what I am doing. I am arresting Edwin for the murder of his brother.”
Tom turned on Lyttle. “Be careful, Sergeant, you can’t afford to make another mistake.”
Lyttle’s face was suffused with anger. “I have the grounds for this arrest, and Mr. Vaile can corroborate my statement. He showed me the reasons for believing this to be murder, not suicide, and when I found the finger-prints on the gun were not those of its owner, it didn’t take much imagination to see they belonged to the murderer. I was willing to give Edwin a chance to explain where he was this afternoon and what he was doing, but he couldn’t. He tried to tell me what I know is not true. I know he was not at the Crystal Palace all afternoon. Then what course is open to me, save to arrest him?”
Tom looked both angry and disgusted. “Bah, you haven’t any case to take before a jury and you know it. You say, Mr. Vaile has been helping you. I must have been misjudging him then when I asked him to advise Edwin. However, I should like to hear what he has to say, since I thought his work down here consisted of settling up the estate.”
I think if Tom had made such a remark to me I should have jumped up and hit him, so taut were my nerves. But my chief, sensing the strain around him, replied mildly enough, “No, Tom, I would not be willing to advise Edwin. My interest is merely that of any decent citizen—I want to see justice done. I have the honor of the Evans’ name at heart and I do think it is proper to inform you fully of the facts of the case and let you make your own judgment as to what is to be done.”
But the Sergeant demurred. “This is no time for discussion. I want to get my prisoner over to the county seat without giving him a chance to escape while you lawyers are talking it over.”
My chief gazed at Lyttle with mild disapproval. “You are making a mistake in acting so hastily. Mr. Thomas, as survivor of the family, cousin to both the deceased and accused, has the right to full information as regards the facts. I am not going to state any case against Edwin personally, if you like; I recognize such action to be the prerogative of the prosecuting attorney. I shall review the facts against a hypothetical murderer, merely showing how we know murder was committed and what proof we have against the person who did it. You surely can’t object to such a procedure, so long as it is for Tom’s benefit; I shall tell him everything the minute you leave anyway.”
Lyttle saw the point of this argument and yielded—although he did so with the worst possible grace. He looked around at all of us and then, dragging a pair of handcuffs from his pocket, he snapped one on Edwin’s wrist and one on his own. I was amazed at Edwin’s non-resistance, he was like a man in a stupor, all the fight gone out of him. He slouched despondently in a huge arm-chair, Lyttle perched beside him, the light streaming down on their set countenances from the tall standing lamp beside them.
This lamp was another of the sinister trophies so favored by the Evans’ family. A gift to Tom from one of the officers at a near-by Army post, it might have seemed at another time merely an odd curiosity in dubious taste, but now it took on an ill-omened entity of its own, lending extra grimness to a scene already grim enough. The lamp was a heavy thing, a base of solid brass from which rose the gleaming brass shell-case of a three-inch anti-aircraft shell. This tapered smoothly upward for almost three feet, where it held the highly polished steel shell itself, from which the high explosive had been carefully removed. Above this was the incongruous cluster of electric lights. The device, intended to deal death and destruction to the swift flying airplane, was now holding aloft glowing bulbs, which cast their light over the stunned countenance of a man accused of murder.
Tom paced the room restlessly until my chief and I found places at the desk, and then he went over and stood leaning against the fireplace, separated from his cousin by the tall lamp. He stooped occasionally to poke the fire into a fitful flaming, but for the most part he listened intently to what John Patrick had to say.
My chief began; “Let us recapitulate the events up to the time when Sergeant Lyttle decided that he had murder to deal with, not suicide. The first circumstance to alarm the police was Edwin’s return to Bayside unaccompanied by the man detailed to shadow him. When the plain-clothes man arrived and reported that he had lost his quarry after following him into the Crystal Palace at Belton, Trooper Brown became worried and decided to go up to the house to see, in the first place, that everything was all right, and to try to induce Edwin to give some explanation of how he had managed to shake off his follower.
“Then we come to the scene that met Brown’s eye as he stood outside the window of the gun-room. Let me describe it as if we had a photograph taken at the very instant the trooper got there. First, Brown, standing in f the shelter of the portico, looking through the window raised a few inches from the bottom. Inside, directly in his line of vision, Charles, seated in his big chair, his body limp and relaxed in death, a gaping hole in his forehead, a pistol beside the chair. There, standing off and regarding his brother, was Edwin, whose whereabouts for the past two hours were still a mystery to the police.
“Brown tells me that when he ran into the room his only thought was that Edwin had killed his brother. But, as soon as he got near the body, two things that made him change his mind. The first was the powder burn on Charles’ face. Now you all know that while a shot may be fired fairly close to an object and not leave a clear and distinct burn, especially if some of the newer kinds of smokeless powder are used, yet if the mark is there, it is proof positive that the shot was fired very close to the object so marked. Therefore, when Brown saw the distinct powder burns around the hole in the forehead, he was surely justified, you would say, in changing his original opinion.
“I said, also, he made another observation which went far to verify the suicide theory. From beneath the dead man’s coat protruded the butt of a pistol carried in a shoulder holster, proving the victim had been armed at the time of his death. Yet, no attempt had been made to withdraw the gun from the holster, and let me say right here that such was my interest in this point, that I later withdrew the pistol myself to see if there was a possibility that the gun had been withdrawn and then replaced after the death of its owner. In that case, naturally, the hand replacing it would have been the murderer’s and he must necessarily have left fingerprints, or else have rubbed off the prints previously made. Suffice to say, I found nothing to confirm any of these suppositions. So now we have come to the point where Brown locked up the gun-room and went to the lodge to await the arrival of his superior officer.
“Lyttle brought news which again seemed to confirm the theory of self-destruction, for he could tell of the motive for the act. Then, when he saw the frontier gun, the only forty-five in the house not previously test-fired, he evolved an interesting theory—namely, that Charles had used that very gun to kill his uncle and, in using it again to kill himself, he was making sure the police would not overlook it this time. He wanted no doubt to exist on the significance of his act, or on the subject of his guilt.”
My chief paused to take a long breath and not a soul in the room stirred. So far, we had been listening to facts we were already pretty
much aware of; but we were waiting for the revelations we knew were to come, revelations we dreaded, we were afraid to hear, much more afraid to miss.
He continued: “Now, I must admit this theory interested me, for it had possibilities. But it received a violent setback when the gun was tested and it was proved not to be the weapon which killed Cyrus. But we did get something from the gun—or at least the Sergeant did—a perfect set of finger-prints that matched up with Edwin’s.”
“You don’t really know all that; you haven’t had time in the bare five hours since Charles’ death to make all these tests,” observed Tom.
John Patrick answered with a slight smile: “You are not giving the police credit for their ability. Lyttle sent for a finger-print expert at the very beginning and the comparison of his findings was not difficult. The Sergeant has on his personal file photographic copies of all our prints—yes, even I was so honored—and it was merely a matter of using the telephone to check those found here with the ones on the file. As for the ballistic test, well, I simply looked down the barrel of the remodeled frontier gun and counted the lands. The number of lands in the old-time guns is entirely different from those in the modern weapons, and I had already determined, when I saw the enlarged picture of the other bullet, that it was fired by a modern Colt automatic. In passing, I refer you to the opinion of your own expert, Tom; he said the same thing. And the frontier pistol, as you know, is not an automatic.”
Tom nodded thoughtfully, but it was plain to see that he was not satisfied. “All right, but look here—everything else you have said goes to prove that no one on earth could have approached Charles and fired point-blank at him when he was armed. Good Lord, Vaile, you have been living here in the house with us all; I ask you, has Charles’ temper been such that at any time within the past month he would permit even his own brother to approach him, weapon in hand—and certainly you can’t pretend that Edwin hid that big pistol on his person—at any rate, do you think any one could come near Charles and shoot him without his making an attempt to get his own gun? You, yourself, admitted that the gun could not have been tampered with after the death of the owner, and I’ll go farther than that and tell you right now, one of the best reasons for believing it was suicide is the position of the body. Nobody had touched it or moved it in any way when I first saw it.”
Lyttle broke in, “How do you explain those fingerprints, then? And will you all remember that you said this was to be an hypothetical discussion? It seems to me, you are using names right often for your hypothesis.”
Tom snapped back quickly, “Yes, I can explain those finger-prints in a way any jury will believe. By your own showing, Edwin was in the room unobserved for some few seconds. Remember, it was his brother who lay there before him. What more natural than for him to pick up the gun? If he were the murderer, he never would have touched it, he would have seized the opportunity to wipe off the prints—not to put them there. It wasn’t murder, Lyttle, and you can’t prove it Was. It was suicide and suicide for good reasons.”
John Patrick paid no attention to this interchange. He preserved an Olympian calm, the cold detachment of justice, in curious contrast to the tense, strained atmosphere manifested in this midnight conference of fearful import. We were all keyed up out of our normal selves by apprehensive expectation of what we were about to hear; he, knowing the worst, was impervious to the pervading dread gripping the rest of us.
He went on inexorably: “No, Tom, of course Charles didn’t permit any one to approach him closely. He didn’t even see the man who killed him, for the latter stood safely outside the window, raised, remember, from the bottom. And, also, recall how easy the killer had made it for himself. Did you ever see Charles sit in any chair in the gun-room, other than the one he was in when we found the body? All the murderer had to do was to make an appointment with Charles to meet him in the gun-room, and then he went to that window where the ground, protected by the portico, was hard and dry, capable of retaining no footprints—and from there he shot his victim.”
“But the powder burns, man, you forget them!” Tom was shouting in his excitement.
For answer, John Patrick opened his hand and showed us, lying there on his palm, a small round disc of paper. He said simply, “I found this on the body, under the coat. The minute I saw the thing, about a quarter of an inch in diameter, I knew it for what it was, the wad from a blank cartridge.
“This told me the true story. The murderer, as I said, stood outside the window, fired the fatal shot, and then he walked inside and fired again at the dead body. His second shot was a blank and the wad dropped down where he could not get it. But that’s where the powder burns came from—and we drew the erroneous conclusion from them that the killer intended for us to draw.”
I interrupted this time, for I think I shall always be interested in the problem of acoustics. “Did nobody hear those shots? Was a silencer used again?”
John Patrick turned to me. “Bob, a silencer is a clumsy thing, used far less often than you would believe. It can never be used, as Sergeant Lyttle explained, without leaving its trace. Now there was no sign of one attached to the frontier gun which certainly killed Charles and, therefore, probably fired the blank. I never like a theory which postulates such a clumsy appurtenance, and certainly in this case it was not necessary, for the limits of sound around the Bayside estate were very well defined at the time of Cyrus’ death. You can’t hear anything from the house down at the gates unless the day is exceptionally clear or the noise exceptionally loud. The men patrolling the borders were out of earshot, and even if they did happen to hear something they could not get back in time to investigate. James might have heard the first shot, provided he was awake and listening for it. Even so, I think it doubtful he could have heard the second shot fired inside the house, when you recall the number of trees through which the sound waves must travel to reach him.
“No, we will leave out the silencer. After the shooting, the man who did it did not linger long, as evidenced by his failure to close the window or find the wad. I don’t believe he dared disturb the body for any extended search, since this tiny disc of paper might well have gone unheeded forever.”
John Patrick paused for the briefest fraction of a second, but when he resumed his talking, his voice was different. He was no longer the kindly old lawyer-detective, exposing a difficult case to interested listeners; he was the power of the law, inexorably damning the forces of evil. And he was speaking now to only one of us—but, on my life, I could not tell which one.
“When I found the wad from the blank, I was looking for some such clue. You see, I knew even then that it had to be murder—for I knew why it was necessary that Charles should die.”
My chief’s voice stressed the somber word and a shiver ran down my spine. He went on, “You all remember the searches to which Bayside has been subjected of late; and I think every one of you, down deep in his mind,was convinced of the reason for the mysterious activity. Some one, somewhere had something the killer wanted, something he needed to make himself safe forever from suspicion and conviction.”
The room was tense and still, the silence broken only by the crackle of the fire in the grate. I had an uncanny sense of a shadowy presence among us, something reaching out from beyond the grave to exact vengeance for the evil done in this house.
The inexorable voice persisted: “Charles Evans had in his possession the one thing that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt who killed his uncle. But Charles intended to keep this piece of evidence, he did not want to turn it over to the law. In short, he intended to make the guilty man pay blackmail. And there, in those few words, is the tragedy of the latest death. Charles, had he done the right thing, the upright thing, would be alive today. He should have known he could not pit his wits against a remorseless killer, he could not enmesh such a man in the never-ending chain of blackmail. And so it proved. The man temporized with him and persuaded him that some day he would give him all the money he wanted—and
then the searching started. Charles, who must have realized then some of the dangers of the path upon which he had set his feet, became alarmed but did not deviate from his plan. I knew, while all this was going on, it would end in tragedy, unless the criminal should find what he wanted. I feared lest Charles had hidden the article or passed it over to some innocent person to take care of for him—I never dreamed him fool enough to retain it in his possession. Yet his ruse, foolish as it was, succeeded. The murderer was never able to find it. But, because he failed, Charles had to die. The actual killing might not have taken place so soon, but it was already planned, I am sure. Then came the telephone call to force the murderer’s hand. He dared not let Charles go up to the District Attorney’s office, knowing all he knew. So Charles’ death, already on the cards, was brought about at once.”
We all sat tense and motionless like frozen automatons waiting to hear where John Patrick had found the object which had so successfully eluded the killer’s comprehensive search.
“I have told you, I withdrew Charles’ gun from the holster. I did more—I withdrew the clip and extracted the cartridges. Never in my life will I quite understand why I did it.” My chief’s voice vibrated with a curiously deep note in it. “The clip was full, but something attracted my attention to the last cartridge down. I scanned it closely and turned it over in my hand—the mark of a firing-pin was plainly discernible in the brass of the primer. A misfire? I did not think so, for who would place it so carefully in a pistol he fully intended to use, should the need arise? I pried the bullet loose; it was not a hard task, for it was not the original tenant of that cartridge-case. The original bullet is in the District Attorney’s office; it was once removed from the body of Cyrus Evans.”
Murder at Bayside Page 25
