“What do you suggest?” Keeler asked.
Gardner shrugged. “Let them try to convict your client for bludgeoning the deceased. If they get their guilty verdict, you’ll have this new evidence in your pocket, to help get you a new trial.”
Keeler was smiling, nodding. “That’s a Perry Mason stunt, all right-but I agree with you. I see no advantage in contradicting their ridiculous assertion that four holes in the toughest part of the skull, an inch apart, are stab wounds.”
“You’ve had a chance to go over the fingerprint evidence,” I said. “What do you think?”
Keeler smirked. “I think as a fingerprint expert, Captain Barker would make a swell traffic cop. Whole sections of the room were never checked for prints-that infamous Chinese screen was carried out into the hall by three cops before it was even dusted! God knows how many grimy paws clutched that thing before Barker got around to it a day later.”
“Not to mention those bloody handprints being washed off the wall,” I said, “because they seemed too small to be de Marigny’s-mustn’t have facts muddying up the case, after all.”
Keeler was shaking his head. “Unbelievable. Barker did dust some of the bloody fingerprints, you know-before they were dry, ruining ’em forever.” He looked toward Gardner. “And do you gentlemen of the press realize that these Miami geniuses didn’t even have any of the blood in the room analyzed, to see if it was Oakes’ type?”
Shaking his head in amazement, Gardner muttered, “It’s a goddamn botch.”
“No,” I said. “It’s a goddamn frame.”
Gardner gave me a doubtful look.
“Consider this,” Keeler said, eyes bright. “Barker was called in as a fingerprint expert, but all he brought with him was a small portable kit-and no fingerprint camera.”
A special camera was required for fingerprint shots, with a lens you held flush with the surface of the dusted print, almost touching.
“No fingerprint camera?” Gardner said. “Didn’t the local boys have one he could borrow?”
“No,” I said. “Of course, he could have got one from the RAF….”
“But he didn’t,” Keeler said ominously. “He just dusted the prints, lifted ’em and filed ’em away.”
“Destroying the sons of bitches,” Gardner said, wide-eyed.
Keeler shrugged. “In some cases, lifting ’em with Scotch tape might leave enough of the print behind to dust again and take a photograph…but Barker was out of Scotch tape, too.”
“What?” Gardner said.
“He used rubber,” I said. “And that does remove the print from its original surface-destroying it in the act of its supposed preservation.”
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter where Barker says it came from,” Keeler said, picking up the photo blowup of the fingerprint. “There’s not one chance in ten million this came from that screen-I’d swear to that on a stack of Bibles.”
“Just one Bible will do,” I said.
“How can you be so certain?” Gardner asked him.
Keeler stood. “See for yourself.”
He led us into the ballroom, where on the same parquet floor on which the Duke and Duchess had waltzed last weekend, a cream-color six-panel Chinese screen stood.
“But isn’t that…” Gardner began. “No, it can’t be-it isn’t scorched….”
“I found the shop where Lady Oakes purchased the screen,” I said, “and bought another. The painted design is different, but otherwise it’s identical.”
Len had a hand on it even now, studying the enigma of its wood-grain surface; the photo of the print was in his other hand. “I’ve taken samples from every nook and cranny of this damn thing…and every time, I come up with a print with a wood-whorled background.”
I nodded. “Not that pattern of circles in the background of their blowup of the print supposedly from the screen.”
“That pattern’s either flattened beads of moisture,” Keeler said, patting the Chinese screen as gently as an infant, “or a very different surface than this.”
“Their print is a forgery?” Gardner asked.
“No,” I said. “It’s a substitution.”
The writer stood with hands on hips like a rancher surveying his spread. “How so?”
I took the photo of the print from Len. “That’s Freddie’s right pinkie, all right,” I said. “A perfect specimen they lifted elsewhere. I spoke to Freddie yesterday about this….”
In his cell, Freddie had shrugged when I asked him if he’d handled anything during the interrogation.
“Well, I did pour Melchen a glass of water,” de Marigny had said. “From a glass pitcher….”
“Did he specifically ask you to pour it for him?”
“Yes,” de Marigny said, nodding forcefully, then he winced with thought. “Funny…. Right after I poured the water, the tall one…Barker…he was standing watching from a distance. He called over and asked, ‘Is everything all right?’ And Melchen called back, ‘Just dandy.’”
Now, a day later, Keeler was suggesting the circles in the print’s background might be flattened moisture drops….
“Do you realize what you’re saying?” Gardner asked us, dumbfounded. “That your client’s in the middle of a police frame-up, engineered by the Duke of Windsor’s handpicked sleuths?”
I shrugged. “It’s not news to me. I caught ’em coercing a witness a week or so ago.”
Disturbed, Gardner turned to Keeler. “Professor-have you given de Marigny a polygraph test yet?”
Keeler looked at me and smiled humorlessly, shook his head.
“The court has forbidden it,” I said. “Even for our purposes, let alone admitting it as evidence. They won’t permit us to use it on any other witnesses, either.”
Keeler grinned. “How I’d love to get ahold of Christie….”
“What a waste of your talents,” Gardner said almost sorrowfully.
I put a hand on the writer’s shoulder. “Len’s got plenty of other talents, as you’ve already seen. He did more burn tests on those remaining bedclothes scraps, and confirmed our conclusion that the killer stayed on the scene for around an hour.”
“And, I’m afraid, destroyed a valuable piece of furniture in the process,” Len said, chagrined. “I don’t know why Lady Diane hasn’t kicked me out already, let alone give me a room to stay in. Ah! Let me show you my latest discovery….”
He walked over to the table where not long ago cracked crab and caviar had been arrayed. Now-on its white cloth, which was dotted with strangely familiar scorched circles-there was an insecticide spray gun, and a glass jar of the sort you might put up preserves in, filled with clear liquid, its screw top off. There was also a box of kitchen matches, with a few burnt ones scattered.
“I’ve found something you’ve been looking for,” Len said smugly.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“This spray gun is similar to the one found in Sir Harry’s room.”
“I’d say identical,” I said.
“But the flit gun couldn’t have figured in the killing,” Gardner insisted. “After the prosecution suggested it might’ve been used to set Sir Harry on fire, Higgs himself established the spray gun was found half full of ‘Fly-Ded,’ exactly as the maid had left it.”
Keeler merely smiled as he lifted the spray gun and screwed loose the can of insecticide below, removing it, setting it on the table; then he hefted the glass jar, as if making a toast.
“Your hunch, Nate,” he said, “was that the flammable material spilled on the floor, not to mention Sir Harry, wasn’t a petroleum product, as has been assumed…but alcohol.”
“Right,” I said. “A gas fire would’ve scorched the ceiling to shit.”
“And left a stronger odor behind,” Gardner added.
“There are a lot of uses for alcohol in the tropics,” Keeler said casually, screwing the glass jar onto the bug sprayer, “besides drinking it, or rubbing it on yourself or a friend. It’s used for lamp fuel, for instance, cooking on boats, and for cleaning paint brushes…you’ll probably find a jar or bottle or can of the stuff in any toolshed, like the one by where that construction’s going on next door to Westbourne. Take those matches, Nate, and light one, and hold the flame to the end of this spritzer….”