Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 (39 page)

"I am."

"But I damn near walked in on 'em! And what I've just remembered is that she called him a silly boy. A silly boy or a foolish boy, one or the other. Bob Crandall was fifty-four years old. Would she have called
him
a silly boy?"

"Do you remember," asked Dr. Fell, "that she also called Captain Ashcroft a silly boy? It is a trick of speech in frequent use among women, who regard few of our sex as being anything more than infantile. Even I have heard it in my time."

"One other point, though! You've said Pa Maynard worked out a plan for murder without really intending to use it, but that Bob Crandall found bis notes and did mean business. What made him look for any notes to begin with? How'd he know there
was
a plan?"

"Though we have no direct evidence, justifiable conclusions lead us straight back to the story. Madge was so full of Maynard's mysterious 'calculations,' so puzzled and troubled by them, that she discussed the subject with anyone who would listen. Crandall saw her on Sunday night; no doubt she told him too. If Henry Maynard never understood Bob Crandall, we may be sure Bob Crandall understood Henry Maynard. From Madge's account, from his knowledge of all the circumstances, he saw the trend of Maynard's mind as I myself saw it later.

"For behold! On Friday, the 7th—just a week before the murder—he put in an official appearance. Maynard was absent in Richmond, leaving him for twenty-four hours a clear field both with Madge and with the Sheraton desk in the attic. All three
of them had lived at Go
liath, Connecticut, as Crandall still did. If he had heard of a secret repository, he now had the chance to look for it undisturbed

"There was the secret drawer, as usual behind a real drawer of the desk: eureka! There was a complete blueprint for homicide, to be adapted to his purpose and turned against its originator: hosanna!

"He did not remove the papers from the drawer; why should he? When Maynard discovered the papers were missing, Maynard might suspect what was up, and that must never happen. His good friend Bob Crandall could copy or memorize what was necessary.

"Well, following his arrival on Friday, the fireworks began Friday night. That scarecrow, so necessary to him, he stole from the garden and concealed under an upended watering-trough in one of the slave-cabins. He did not steal the scarecrow until a
l
most three-thirty in the morning; the earliest small hours, I suspect, he spent with Madge in her room.

"Once he
had
taken and hidden the scarecrow, Miss Bruce saw
him
creeping back into the house. He may or may not have worn a stocking-mask. She herself is not sure whether she saw one; none was found among his effects afterwards, though he may have had a mask and destroyed it In any case he had time to slip up undetected to his room, and to feign sleepiness—he did not need to feign irascibility—during the search for an imaginary burglar.

"There were no more alarms or excursions until the following Thursday night, the night before the murder, the night Bob Crandall set his death-trap. At one-thirty in the morning he was seen walking east along the beach, carrying the scarecrow over his shoulder; but he was seen only at a distance, by a witness who suspected nothing. The scarecrow you have debated; all other materials for the death-trap are here close at hand. Most have been under your eyes the whole time; the rest I have carefully described to you."

Alan intervened then.

"What did he want with the scarecrow? Was it . . . ?"

"It was just what you you
rself suggested: dressed in
Henry Maynard's clothes, a doll or dummy to represent Maynard himself. Let us see, now!"

As usual, Dr. Fell's pipe had gone out. Dropping it into his pocket, surging to his feet on the crutch-headed stick he, addressed Captain Ashcroft

"Sergeant Duckworth and Detective Kinsley, you said—?"

"They're ready now; they just signalled through an upstairs window. Shall I tell Kingsley to bring the other dummy down, and have Duckworth do the trick from inside?"

"Would you do that? Thank'ee. Will the rest of you (harrumph!) be good enough to come with me?"

While Captain Ashcroft went into the house, the others followed Dr. Fell round its south side to the front, and then in a northerly direction until they were standing on the grass beyond which stretched the front terrace.

Today its surface of crushed oyster-shell looked smooth and swept. The green-painted iron table and chair stood in their usual place, at the middle of the terrace but well towards its front To the right of the terrace rose the row of six poplar trees, twenty feet high.

Dr. Fell pointed.

"It has been remarked," he said, "that the row of trees —with particular reference to the end tree on the side towards the house—is directly in line with that flagstaff, the same height, which you see over on the left, almost against the wall of the house. Note once more that the flagstaff rises a couple of feet above the far window of a certain room on the bedroom floor.

"Whose bedroom? We could have told that long ago."

Dr. Fell looked at Alan.

"When Henry Maynard first received us in his study on the top floor, he took us through a billiard-room and into a lumber-room, so that-he could point out Fort Sumter through the window. It was the far window of the far room, the left-hand one as you stand inside looking out. He handed me a pair of field-glasses,
these
glasses," pursued^ Dr. Fell, taking the glasses from his immense side pocket, "and told me to look on a line over the flagstaff below.

"Whose bedroom, the end o
ne on the north side at the
front, was just below? Bob Crandall's, as we learned that night. The flagstaff, therefore, rises just outside the far window of that bedroom.

"Would it have been easy for the room's occupant to get at the flagstaff? It would. Each bedroom has two windows with an air-conditioner in one. But each bedroom at the front has its air-conditioner in the right-hand window facing outward. Bob Crandall had only to raise the left-hand window (those windows move without noise), and the flagstaff was well within reach."

Camilla, though she did not like any of this, stood her ground none the less.

"Yes," she said: "but within reach for
what?"

Dr. Fell handed the field-glasses to Alan.

"You try first," he suggested. "Begin with the top of the flagstaff, the littl
e pulley over which a rope runs
when they raise a flag. Look slowly across from there to the top of the nearest tree. Do you see anything, anything at all, stretching between the pulley of the flagstaff and the top of the tree?"

Alan lifted the glasses and focussed them.

"Nothing there!" he reported pre
sently. "I can't see anything at
all."

"No, you see nothing. You would see nothing even if it were only a few feet away. Something does in fact stretch there: a length of the strongest Monofilament fishing-line. Will someone else have a look now? You, Mr. Beale?"

"No, thanks, Grand Goblin!" Yancey backed away. "I'll take your word for it and Alan's
too. I
don't want the damn glasses!"

"And I don't want them either!" said Camilla. "Alan, please give them back to Dr. Fell. That's enough, surely? And yet I do begin to get a glimmer of understanding."

"If you looked closely at the top of the tree itself," Dr. Fell took the glasses, "you would discern other details. The few branches and little foliage at the top of any poplar have been cleared away except for a short wooden projection to form a crotch. In that crotch lies balanced a short length of iron weight such as may be found amid the litter of any junk-yard. At the beginning of this affair Captain Ashcroft remarked that the injury might have been inflicted with that kind of weapon. And so it was.

'The murderer, then, set his trap on Thursday night. In the cellar he had several spools of fishing-line, from heavy to light. With a short length of this he wove a tiny net to enclose the iron weight and hold it. Having measured out the full length of slack he needed for a line from the flagstaff to the tree, he first tied one end to the net round the weight. He dropped the weight from the window, ran the other end of the line over the pulley, and tied it to the flagstaff.

"Having done one other thing, as will soon be evident, he was now ready to leave the house and prepare the tree. The man who could climb as he did had no trouble with that poplar. The weight on its line went up with him, to be balanced in a crotch he either found there already or hewed out with the tools at his disposal.

"When all preparations were finished, did he fetch the scarecrow from the slave-cabin for a rehearsal? Evidently, though we can't be sure. But, speaking of a rehearsal . . ."

Dr. Fell gestured towards the house. The far window of what had been Bob Crandall's room was now open, and Sergeant Duckworth leaned out. Behind him loomed the bulk of Captain Ashcroft. Now Dr. Fell indicated the portico of Maynard Hall. Out of the front door came a grizzled middle-aged man, Detective Kingsley, carrying
..
.

"Yes!" said Dr. Fell. "Another suit of Maynard's clothes, another dummy carefully prepared. In order to demonstrate—" He had started in a rush; then, seeing Camilla's face, he che
cked himself, reddened, and har
rumphed. "This time, Miss Bruce, I fear the old duffer has gone too far. Hang it all, need you watch this? Hadn't you better go into the house?"

Still Camilla stood her ground.

"I won't go into the house," she told him. "But do we really need to have any demonstration, especially one with the dummy?"

'To show how it worked—"

"I can see how it worked. One twitch at that line from the window . . ."

"I see it too!" said Yancey. "With one twitch of the line, at an angle that could
be calculated, the iron weight
whistled down and conked the head of anybody in that chair. Hitting the head arrested its motion; it swung over gently against the flagstaff, to hang a few feet above-ground. And Crandall could haul it up again, eh?"

"He could haul it up still better," Dr. Fell pointed out, "if towards the other end of his line, a few feet out from the tree, he had attached another, still lighter line to the first one, controlling it yet not interfering with the arc of the missile. I told you he had done one other thing; that was it."

Dr. Fell had grown radiant with relief.

"Miss Bruce is right; a demonstration would be superfluous. Ashcroft and I rehearsed it several times. It works without a hitch, but even the mimicry is not pretty; once we smote the head clean off the dummy. If Madge Maynard should look out of the window . . ."

Here he swung towards the house and bellowed.

"There's no need to s
how 'em; they understand! Kings
ley, take the dummy back in again. Sergeant Duckworth, lower that window and go away. Captain Ashcroft, aroint ye; vanish; get lost.

"But here," he went on to his companions, "we must mention Mrs. Huret, who almost saw the murder committed without ever once suspecting Crandall. How serious she was in making eyes at the Sage of Goliath we may never know; she has refused to answer questions since they released her from hospital.

"And yet we know what happened. Before dusk on the evening it was done, Crandall went up to his room. Mrs. Huret followed. She looked through the keyhole, as he must have been fully aware she might. She could not have got in; despite his words to us, he would have taken the precaution of locking the door.

"He was pacing from one side of the room to the other, pretending to study a book on chess. She could not see him, as she herself testified, when he went to the left-hand side of the room: the side with the window opening on the flagstaff, the side from which his thunderbolt could be launched. He had become maniacally determined, with the supreme daring murderers show at such times. And so he let the thunderbolt fall.

"No 'impossible' murder (need
I repeat?) was ever in
tended by anybody. Observe! If on a dry day like this I myself walk out on the oyster-shell surface—so—even my weight leaves no discernible footprints. In these parts ghost-guns of thunder are often heard without any rain. And the weather for Friday (remember?) had promised to be fine. When our frantic murderer set his deathtrap the previous night, he could not have anticipated the brief, violent thundershower which soaked the ground. But by that time he had gone too far to retreat.

"If you will follow me again to the back garden," continued Dr. Fell, moving away with the other three trailing after him, "I will do my best to conclude the story.