“But why would Dykes want to kill Bowman, and how would he go about it?”
“As to why, obviously to get control of Bowman’s manuscript. It’s expected to make a lot of money—”
“You mean he’ll publish it as his own work?”
“Oh, hardly. He couldn’t, and it would do him little good if he did since Bowman’s name on the cover is what will sell it. But as matters stand now, no one knows how much of it has actually been done. He can easily claim that no more than half is finished. He will complete it and and thus become a co-author rather than a mere research assistant. His name will be on the cover with Bowman’s. He will receive half the royalties. And the boost to his academic prestige will be enormous.”
“I’ll grant you that.”
“As to how he did it,” Nicky went on, “that presents no difficulties. He and Bowman were on High Street—perhaps on their way to meet young Bowman. At the top of the hill they stopped to rest and Dykes could have called Johnny over to look at the excavation. And when Bowman leaned over the edge …” He shrugged his shoulders.
“You mean he thought of it just like that, on the spur of the moment?” asked Scalise.
“Oh, he’s a quick thinker, is our Professor Dykes. You’ve only to play chess with him to realize that. One glance at the board and he makes his move. But I’m inclined to believe that he had been thinking of this for some time. I fancy his wife sensed something—I find it suggestive that she went to visit her folks without him and still has not returned. One thing I’m sure of: Bowman never would have asked him to remain and work on the book while his wife went on vacation alone. Gentleman Johnny was a gentleman.” He cocked a speculative eye on the ceiling. “I wonder what Dykes would have managed if young Bowman hadn’t come—”
“Young Bowman? What did he have to do with it?” asked Scalise quickly.
“His coming forced Dykes’ hand, of course. Once they went over the manuscript with Johnny’s son, Dykes would have been estopped from claiming any major share in its authorship.”
“Well, it’s an interesting case you’ve made out, Professor,” said Scalise grudgingly, “but I don’t see that it does us much good. You’d never get a jury to convict on that kind of evidence. Dykes has only to deny everything, and with Lesser dead, there’s no way of proving it.”
“You’re forgetting the picture Lesser took,” said Nicky.
As if on cue, there was a knock on the door. “Got the pictures for you, Captain,” the clerk said.
The film had rolled up into a tight cylinder from the drying process, and we crowded around Scalise as he weighted one end down with a ruler and unrolled it slowly, studying each frame as he did so. Not till the end of the strip did Nicky point triumphantly and exclaim, “There it is.”
The Captain and I stared at the frame and then looked at each other, unbelieving. It was indeed a picture of two men—but so foreshortened that at first sight they looked more like short cylindrical stumps surmounted by round buttons which were their heads.
I began to laugh, quite uncontrollably, and Scalise joined me.
“And what do you find so amusing?” Nicky asked icily.
I pointed at the picture. “He bluffed him. The scoundrel bluffed him. There’s nothing there that can be used as evidence. There’s no way of proving that those are pictures of Dykes and Bowman. It could be any two people.”
“Maybe we can bluff Dykes, too,” Scalise suggested hopefully. “We don’t have to show him the picture—just tell him we’ve got it and encourage him to confess.”
“There is no need to bluff Dykes,” said Nicky coldly. “The picture is valid evidence. Why do you suppose Lesser took it in the first place? Certainly not because he wanted a snapshot of his friend. That he could have taken any time. He didn’t have to wait until he was clinging to a ladder thirty feet or more above ground. No, he looked down and saw two men leaning forward against the wind with only the tops of their heads showing, so that at first glance they looked like a couple of toadstools. And that was the kind of subject he enjoyed shooting—the coup d’oeil It was only when he thought about it afterwards that it occurred to him that the picture would show one figure with a derby hat framed against the astrakhan coat collar and that had to be Bowman, and the other showed a white streak bisecting his black head of hair, and that could be none other than Dykes. And what is more, the snow on the ground showed that it was taken the day before Christmas—our first snowfall of the winter.”
Scalise nodded slowly. He looked at me and said, “It adds up.”
“All right,” I said, “what do we do now?”
Nicky rose. He favored us with his frosty little smile, a pursing of the lips as though he had bit into a sour lemon. “I suggest that the good Captain might call Professor Dykes and tell him to come down to Police Headquarters to claim his camera.”
It was not until we were back in my office that the thought occurred to me. “Nicky,” I exclaimed, “there’s something terribly wrong about our line of reasoning. We started out to inquire into Lesser’s death. And then we got sidetracked into thinking about Johnny Bowman. But what about Lesser? Was his death an accident, one of those rare coincidences that occasionally do happen? Or was it murder? And if it was murder, it couldn’t have been Dykes, because he was with us at the time. And if it wasn’t Dykes, then it must have been someone else. And if it was someone else, then our reasoning on Dykes is wrong.”
“Oh, Lesser was murdered all right, and it was Dykes who did it. I know how it was done, but I can’t prove it, not that it makes any difference, since the penalty for two deaths is no greater than for one. It was indicated in that same remarkable conversation.”
At my look of complete confusion, he adopted the tone he uses to address one of his slower students. “You remember after the price of the antenna was settled, Dykes asked if the fee included installation. And when Lesser agreed—”
“Dykes said he wanted it right above the dormer in back,” I said testily. “I remember that.”
Nicky chuckled. “It was like a chess game between those two, a chess game between two masters. You know, chess players of our caliber,” he went on, “we’re only too happy when we don’t make any mistakes and don’t fall into the more obvious traps. Theoretically, since everything is visible on the board, one ought to be able to counter every attack, however devious. But players like us, we can’t help concentrating on what appears to be the main line of attack. We see the whole board, to be sure, but we concentrate only on the portion that appears to be threatened. But players of the caliber of Dykes and Lesser, they approach the game in a different spirit. The correct response to the position on the board is automatic with them. They play the man, concentrating on his psychological weaknesses.
“Oh, they were a precious pair of rascals. Lesser opened with a brilliant gambit. He not only made his blackmail proposition, but made it publicly under the very nose of the County Attorney.”
“I suppose that’s what you meant by his peculiar sense of humor.”
“Precisely. Naturally he was elated—at his success, at his bravado, at his panache. When Dykes asked if the price of the antenna included installation, he interpreted it as an attempt to salvage something, however small, out of a bad bargain, like a chess player who tries to take a pawn or two when he finds he’s going to lose his queen. He could afford to be generous, so he agreed. But Dykes had something else in mind. Oh, it was a magnificent counter! You remember how when I played with him, his attack on my king turned out to be a diversion so that he could capture my queen, like a stage magician who focuses your attention on one hand while he does something else with the other.
“He worked the same trick on Lesser. To locate the antenna above that particular dormer called for setting the foot of the ladder right in front of the bulkhead doors. And when we got out into the yard, he focused Lesser’s attention on the roof and the top of the ladder, but it was the foot of the ladder and positioning it right in front of th
e bulkhead doors that really concerned him. And those doors, you will recall, were so light that a child could lift them.”
“You mean that if anyone were to raise the bulkhead door it would upset the ladder?”
Nicky’s little eyes were shining as he nodded.
“But dammit, that would mean that someone would have to be in the cellar. And it couldn’t be Dykes because he was with us at the time.”
“Naturally. He saw to that. We were his alibi.”
I snapped my fingers. “His wife. She’s been hiding out in the cellar all along and …” My voice trailed off at his look of derisive scorn. “I guess not. But,” I protested, “Dykes didn’t know he was going to have to kill Lesser until a couple of days ago.”
“Precisely. Nevertheless there was a resident in the cellar, bigger and stronger than any child. A big brute of a dog. Dykes arranged to be with us as we walked up High Street. At the top of the hill, we stopped, and Dykes saw that Lesser was on the ladder. We walked on, but Dykes stopped to tie his shoe, and—”
“And what?”
“And blew his damn whistle.”
About the Author
Harry Kemelman (1908–1996) was best known for his popular rabbinical mystery series featuring the amateur sleuth Rabbi David Small. Kemelman wrote twelve novels in the series, the first of which, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. This book was also adapted as an NBC made-for-TV movie, and the Rabbi Small Mysteries were the inspiration for the NBC television show Lanigan’s Rabbi. Kemelman’s novels garnered praise for their unique combination of mystery and Judaism, and with Rabbi Small, the author created a protagonist who played a part-time detective with wit and charm. Kemelman also wrote a series of short stories about Nicky Welt, a college professor who used logic to solve crimes, which were published in a collection entitled The Nine Mile Walk.
Aside from being an award-winning novelist, Kemelman, originally from Boston, was also an English professor.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1967 by Harry Kemelman
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1615-5
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Nine Mile Walk Page 15
