Fine; only both Latham and Eldridge were tall, wiry, dark-haired men. At a distance, it would be easy to mistake one for the other, unquestionably. Henry, who knew both men, could not tell which man it was, if it was either of them. And he refused even to make a guess.
In any case, after the killer had gone, Henry ran across the field between the lane and the house. He rushed inside. Garnet was sprawled on the living-room floor, on her back. There was blood all over her. She was dead.
There was a phone there, but the wire had been cut at the point where it emerged from the house. So Henry Turner, who had been fishing down at the river a mile below the Eldridge place, dropped his fishing rod and his creel, and took off out of the house and across the fields to the neighbouring farm where he worked as a hired hand. From there he called the sheriff.
And, as Henry had stammered to us when we got out there, that was all he knew about it, which was not quite enough.
At the murder scene, the sheriff and his deputies, and myself, found nothing much to do us any good. The weapon was lying in a mud puddle near the front steps — a .22 pistol, wiped clean of prints. There were thousands just like it in the county, and no way to find out who owned it, short of a miracle. But no miracle occurred.
There were plenty of footprints in the muddy yard and in the nearby grove of trees. But the rain-sodden ground was too soft for clear prints. We found a place around a bend in the lane beyond the trees where a car had been parked, but the tyre tracks were only meaningless depressions in the gooey mud.
Back at the house, we found nothing of any positive value. There were plenty of fingerprints all over the place, of course. Garnet’s, Eldridge’s, a few of Latham’s — but he had been there two or three times during the week he had been back in the county. Even Eldridge grudingly admitted that.
So there we were. We had prime suspects, even a more or less eyewitness. And we had nothing. Unless...
“That’s how it stands, boys,” Carson was saying. He leaned back in his swivel chair and sighed. “Neither one of you has an alibi worth a hoot, so why don’t one of you just up and confess? Put an end to all this. How do you expect to live with it, knowin’ you killed that harmless woman, shot her down in cold blood, and her no more’n thirty years old? Lordy, I wouldn’t want that on my...”
“Stop it,” Frank Latham said angrily. “Eldridge killed her. it’s plain as the nose on your ugly face.”
Sweat was pouring down Eldridge’s face in torrents. He said through clenched teeth, “Latham, I’m going to get you. You may weasel out of this mess, but from now on you better keep a close watch over your shoulder. One of these days...”
The two men stared at each other in rage just short of the exploding point. I hoped Ed Carson had his gun handy.
He slapped his hand down sharply on the desk top. “Stop that kind of talk.” Relaxing a little, he smiled toward Henry Turner. “Anyway, if the killer would just let go and confess, young Henry there could go home.”
Turner managed a weak laugh. “Sure would like that.”
Since the murder, Turner had been at the jail, bunking in one of the cells. We felt, and he had agreed, it would be a lot safer for him there, than out on a lonely farm where he would be fair game for the killer, if the killer should get worried about Henry’s testimony.
The sheriff raised his arms, yawned widely. “It’s sure hot. Be a good day to be down yonder on the river bank, fishin’ and drinkin’ ice-cold beer. Eh, Henry?”
“Yes, sir.”
“By the way, how’d you do Monday?” Carson asked.
“Oh, who cares?” Latham rapped out. “If you’re going to sit here babbling about fishing...”
“Stay put, Frank,” the sheriff said calmly. “Hate to have to bend the barrel of my gun over your head.”
Latham subsided, muttering. Eldridge snickered.
Carson went back to Henry Turner. “How’d you do?”
The farmhand scratched his blond head puzzledly. “Why, I didn’t catch nothin’ at all, Sheriff. Too gusty and all. And the rain was...”
“Sho’. Fact, it wasn’t at all a day to go fishin’, now was it?” Carson said idly. He yawned again.
“Reckon not,” Turner said. “I just didn’t have nothin’ else to do.”
My muscles were slowly tensing.
“Uh huh,” the sheriff was saying. “Besides, it was right good that you did go. Gave you a chance to see the killer runnin’ out of the Eldridge house. Too bad you wasn’t just a little closer, so’s you could tell for sure which of these fellers it was.”
Turner was shuffling his feet restlessly. “Now, I done told you all, over and over, I couldn’t see who...”
“No, you sure couldn’t, Henry,” I said suddenly. He jumped, swung his head toward me. I went on, “Because there wasn’t anyone there, was there?”
“Wha... what?”
This was the moment we’d been waiting for, after giving him lots of time to relax, to get used to the idea that he was perfectly safe and free of suspicion.
Now the sheriff dropped his casual air. He leaned forward over his desk, and shouted, “Why did you kill her, Henry? Why? You been havin’ an affair with her — that it?”
Turner’s face turned a muddy yellow under the sunburn. He shook his head violently, started to get up, but I threw my arm across his chest, holding him in the chair. He stammered, “I didn’t! I... I...”
“Yes, you... you,” I snarled into his face. “You took your little pop-gun over there that afternoon when you knew she’d be alone, and you shot her, and shot her, and she fell down with blood spurting — and you stood over her and shot her again!”
“Come on, Henry,” the sheriff yelled. “Give it up. You hung yourself when you gave us that cock-and-bull story about goin’ fishing. A country boy like you, tryin’ to make us think you’d be dumb enough to go fishin’ on a day like Monday was. Lordy boy.”
Henry slumped down in the chair. “No, no. Listen, it was—” His eyes went desperately from the stunned Latham to the equally stunned Eldridge. “—It was him, Levi Eldridge. I seen him.”
“The hell you did,” I cried. I grasped his beefy shoulder, shook him roughly. “You said you ran into that house and saw Mrs. Eldridge dead. You — what did you do then?”
“I dropped my fishin’ stuff like I told you. I run to the phone, but it was dead.”
Carson growled, “How’d you know it was dead?”
“Huh? Why, I tried it, but I couldn’t get no answer. He, Eldridge, had cut the line, so Garnet couldn’t have no chance of callin’ for help.”
“Oh, you called her Garnet, did you?” I said, shaking him again. “Knew her pretty well, didn’t you?”
He said through chattering teeth, “Why... why, sure I knew her. ’Course. Ever’body knew her.”
“But not as well as you,” I said. “You tried to phone, that your lying story?”
“Sure I did, but...”
The sheriff said, “Ah.” He sat back in his chair. “If you picked up that phone, Henry, how come you didn’t leave fingerprints on it? There were lots of other prints but none of yours. Henry. Not one of yours.”
“You didn’t pick it up, because you knew it was dead,” I said. “Because you cut the wire outside the house, just before you went in and murdered...”
“Alright, alright — stop!” Turner suddenly screamed. “I did it. I killed her. I didn’t want to — I loved her. She told me she was through with me, wasn’t goin’ to see me no more. We used to meet down at an old cabin, by the river, almost every day.”