“Well, Agnes just didn’t know what to make out of all this. She was really worried about the boy by now, so worried that she thought of taking him to a doctor or a child psychologist to find out what was wrong. But she isn’t a very decisive person. She put off calling the doctor, and then yesterday morning it was too late. Yesterday morning the murder happened.”
I could see the gleam of interest in Mom’s eye. A certain perverse something in my nature made me pause, sigh, chew my food, and generally encourage the atmosphere of suspense.
Finally, to my immense satisfaction, Mom spoke up. “All right, all right, not so much geschrei and get to the point!”
“Yesterday morning,” I went on, “right from the start Kenneth acted funny. He had breakfast as usual with his mother and his Uncle Nelson. Only Kenneth, who was ordinarily a big eater at breakfast, wouldn’t touch a bit of food — not even a glass of water.
“After breakfast he went off to play. He had a favorite spot for his games, a small canvas canopy set up on the roof of the house. This was Kenneth’s ‘clubhouse’ — but until Nelson’s arrival, he didn’t have any other ‘club member’ to go with it. So now, after breakfast, he went up to the roof with his Uncle Nelson. Only Kenneth didn’t go up with his usual energy and high spirits. He climbed the stairs to the roof in a slow trudging way, glancing back over his shoulder, and with a sort of determined look on his face. His mother saw him on the way and wondered about it, but she was busy on the phone at that moment, so she put it out of her mind.
“Two hours later she heard the yell. A long agonized yell. The whole household heard it, and even though it was hard to tell exactly where it came from, everybody instinctively made for the roof. When they got there they found Kenneth standing by the ledge — a narrow stone ledge as high as his chin — looking down at the backyard four stories below. He was looking at his Uncle Nelson. Apparently Nelson had fallen from the roof, and his body was lying on the concrete below. They all rushed downstairs to help him, of course, and they found that he was still alive. Only for a few more seconds, though. During those few seconds, in his last painful breath, he kept repeating the same words. ‘Kenny, why? Why, Kenny, why?’ Then he died.
“Only one more thing to tell you, Mom. When the Homicide Squad arrived, we made a search of that roof. Underneath the canvas canopy, Kenneth’s ‘clubhouse,’ we found — you guessed it, Mom — all those things Kenneth had stolen from the house. His father’s uniforms, his lather’s opera cape, his father’s insignia, even his father’s Silver Star, which that kid had managed to sneak out of his mother’s dresser for the second time!”
My voice came to a stop on a rising note. Frankly, I was pleased with myself. Very dramatically presented, I told myself. Now let Mom make sense out of this one!
“And the little boy?” Mom said, in a low voice.
“He went into a kind of shock,” I said. “He grabbed hold of his mother and sobbed wildly for the rest of the day. But he won’t say what happened up there on the roof. He just stares ahead when anybody asks him. The doctor says he’ll get over the shock in a week or so. But after that his memory of the incident may be gone.”
“And your opinion, Davie?” Mom said. “According to you and the police, what did happen on the roof?”
“It’s not according to us, Mom. It’s according to the facts. There are lots of different possibilities — we’ve considered them all — but only one of them seems to fit all the facts.”
“So let’s hear your possibilities.”
“One possibility is that Nelson committed suicide. But this doesn’t make sense. He was upset over being sick and leaving the Air Force, of course. But Agnes says he was just beginning to get over his illness, and to reconcile himself to civilian life. If he was going to kill himself because of his illness, why did he wait so long to do it? And what makes even less sense, why did he kill himself in the presence of his five-year-old nephew? People don’t usually want witnesses to their suicides.”
“Absolutely, I agree. Next possibility?”
“That Nelson’s death was an accident. He was running, looking the wrong way, or something, and he tripped and fell over the ledge. But this is very unlikely. The ledge of the roof reached well above Nelson’s waist. It’s hard to imagine any sort of purely accidental force that would tumble him over so high a ledge.”
“A good point. I’m applauding.”
“Well, there’s the possibility — after all, we have to consider everything — that Nelson tried to push his little nephew Kenneth off the ledge, that Kenneth kicked and struggled and knocked Nelson over instead. But this doesn’t fit the facts, either. When Agnes got to the roof, Kenneth was neat as a pin — no sign at all of a struggle, nor any sign of physical exertion. Which leaves us with only one other possibility.”
“And this is?”
“I mentioned it already, Mom. We hate to believe it. We’re fighting against believing it. But the facts leave us no alternative. That little five-year-old kid must be mentally unbalanced. It’s happened before, you know. Our official psychiatrist says he’s come across dozens of cases of childhood psychosis, split personality, melancholia, and so on. So that’s what it must be in this case. The death of his father, his lonely life, his dependence on his mother, the sudden arrival of his uncle to disrupt his routine — all this must have upset his feeling of security. It must have preyed on the kid’s mind, and finally something snapped.
“The kid’s crazy behavior before the murder tells us very clearly what was going on in his mind. By some peculiar twist — really not so peculiar — his uncle suddenly appeared to him as the rival of his dead father. His uncle was trying to take his father’s place, and he, little Kenneth, had to prevent this for his father’s sake. He had to get rid of this intruding uncle, remove the cause of his unhappiness, see to it that he and his father had his mother to themselves again.
“He didn’t act the way an adult would, of course. It was just instinctive — the way a child steals or lies or kicks his nurse. But he did change his attitude toward his uncle. He pretended to feel affection for him. He pretended to worship him like a hero. Then, when he had completely gained his uncle’s trust, he got ready for the big moment. Which brings us to the most interesting psychological phenomenon. Little Kenneth was now going to do his father’s work, and so, with typical childish logic, he proceeded to steal his father’s things. His father’s uniforms, his father’s opera cape, his father’s medal — he took them all, slept on them or hid them away, in order to give himself his father’s courage, his father’s strength. By the time yesterday morning arrived, that poor kid had pushed himself into a real father fixation. In his own subconscious mind, he actually was his father.
“That’s why he went up to the roof yesterday morning looking so determined. He had made up his mind what he was going to do. Once up there, he played with his uncle innocently for a while — the craftiness of little kids is really amazing, Mom! Finally, under some pretext, he persuaded his uncle to lean over the ledge!. Remember that Nelson, even though he was a grown man, was weak and underweight and sick. Kenneth simply had to run up behind him, grab Nelson, lift, and then give him a push — the hardest push he could manage. Nelson toppled and screamed, and Kenneth went into shock.
“That’s the story, Mom. And you can see another thing about it — it’s the only theory that accounts for Nelson’s last words. ‘Why, Kenny, why?’ Stunned, bewildered — even in his death throes, he just couldn’t understand what had come over his little nephew.”