The neat agility with which the sheriff swung to one side was matched only by the smoothly timed precision with which his left hand blocked Farnham’s blow. His right came up in a smashing impact to the jaw.
“Well, now,” the sheriff said, tugging handcuffs from his belt, “I thought maybe he’d lose his head.”
To the little group gathered in the front room of John Farnham’s house, Martin Walworth displayed his findings.
“These trousers,” he said, “have numerous hairs from a bay horse worked into the cloth. It’s very evident that this horse was being ridden bareback. I’ll want real tests, but I would say from the texture of the hairs that it was a horse from fifteen to twenty years old.”
“Tut, tut,” the sheriff said reproachfully. “He told Beckett it was twelve.”
“And,” Walworth went on, “on the coat of the same suit there are not only hairs from the same horse, but on the right coat sleeve near the cuff are unmistakable stains of human blood. An examination will show whether this blood is of the same type as that of the young woman who was killed. The subject refuses to take a lie-detector test.”
“Well, now,” the sheriff said in his slow drawl, “having gone that far, I guess we might as well go a little farther and sort of look around and see if we can’t find the purse that he took from that girl. He probably wanted to get rid of it somewhere, and — well, you know, I wouldn’t be too surprised if he might have buried it out in the back yard. Just suppose we sort of take a look around there.”
The search of the back yard proved fruitless. But the sheriff worked with painstaking patience. He went over every inch of the ground, then searched the house.
Eventually they found what they wanted in a closet in the basement. Behind some preserves was a purse containing the driving license of Elizabeth Dow, whose address was San Rodolpho. And in that purse was a folded paper. On that paper were two photographs and ten fingerprints. One of the photographs was of John Farnham’s profile; one was full-face. The sheriff read the paper and grinned.
“Now, Higbee was a smooth one,” he said. “When John Farnham came to this County and started in being a real-estate agent, a professional reformer, and a political crusader, the rest of us just took him as a pain in the neck, but old Marvin Higbee evidently got some detectives and spent a little money finding out where Farnham came from. Maybe he got some fingerprints from letting Farnham’s hand get pressed against a glass window some time. But you see what he got — this little dodger says: WANTED FOR EMBEZZLEMENT.
“No wonder Farnham quit agitating for an investigation of that school-construction job. Higbee had this and he let Farnham know he had it. You can consider how Farnham felt when Higbee died, the fruitless searches he must have made — and then the feeling of security — until he knew someone else was searching. Well there’s your motive, men.”
The district attorney stretched out his hand. “I’ll take charge of that,” he said.
“Well, now,” the sheriff drawled, “it seems to me that I’m still the sheriff of this here County. I uncovered the evidence and if you don’t mind, boys, I think the sheriff’s office is going to take charge of it. And if anybody else thinks different, why, the line forms on the right, and you can put your coats on that old chair over there until we get done with the argument. I’m kinda old, but I’m still spry.”
No one said anything.
The sheriff took the purse and paper into his custody. “And now,” he said to Martin Walworth, “you’ve really educated me, sir. You have, for a fact. It seems that evidence should be fixed up so it can’t be substituted, and since you’ve been called in as a criminologist by the district attorney to help clean up this crime, and since the bill is going to be passed on to the taxpayers, whom I happen to represent, you might just as well sign your name on the margin of this here piece of paper so there won’t be any chance of its being substituted or any smart lawyers raising any question as to whether or not it’s the same piece of paper we found hidden in the house here. Thank you, sir. Thank you kindly.”
Old Bill Eldon seemed tired as he settled down in his favorite easy chair.
“You’re home early,” his wife said.
“Yep. Got all finished up down at the courthouse.”
“Thought you were working on that murder case,” Doris said.
“I was.”
Her eyes snapped with interest. “You mean you’ve got it solved?”
“That’s right.”
“Who did it?”
“John Farnham.”
“John Farnham!” Doris almost screamed. “How’d you know it was John Farnham?”
“It had to be John,” the sheriff said wearily.
“What clues pointed to him?”
“No clues,” the sheriff said, “just human nature.”
His wife asked, “What was it, Bill? Are you too tired to tell us?”
“No,” the sheriff said, “I’m not too tired. But I just got sort of sick of the case. You see, Elizabeth Dow was murdered when she got to snooping around and found an old paper that Marvin Higbee had left in the house. Well, that old paper had been there for a long time and nobody had bothered about it, but the minute the Dow girl. started looking, somebody sat up and took notice.
“Well, naturally, you’d sort of figure that it was because Elizabeth Dow went there that the murderer became alarmed and felt he had to do something, so the question was, who knew she went there? Well, it seems that Roy Jasper knew it, but he didn’t tell anyone, and it seems her automobile was parked out in front when Sam Beckett and John Farnham drove up. Sam Beckett was only interested in buying the place, but John Farnham was in the real-estate business and he was trying to get Beckett to buy it. Well, that’s all there was to it. As soon as I heard that, I knew what must have happened.”
“What?” his wife asked.
“Why,” the sheriff said, “anybody that knows anything about real-estate people knows that when a place is for sale and a realtor who has it listed comes up and finds a car parked and somebody apparently looking over the place, he does just one thing — takes the license number of the car and looks it up to see who was interested. It’s a habit that real-estate people have.
“So when John Farnham looked up the license number and found the name Elizabeth Dow, he immediately put two and two together, because he knew that Elvira Dow had nursed Higbee in his last illness. So Farnham closed the deal with Sam Beckett and then beat it down to San Rodolpho to see Elizabeth Dow. But he met her coming back — only, of course, she didn’t recognize him.
“So John tagged along behind her car to see where she was going. When it turned out to be the Higbee place again, John followed her in, got a carving knife out of the drawer in the sideboard, and — oh, shucks! There wasn’t anything to it soon as you got to figuring Farnham would naturally note the license number of any car parked at the place.”
“And that’s the way you solved the case?” Doris asked.
“That’s about it.”
Doris sniffed, “And to think the taxpayers hand you money for that! Why, everyone knows how real-estate people jot down car numbers!”
The sheriff chuckled. “This here consulting criminologist didn’t know it. If he did he didn’t think of it — not until after I pointed it out to him.”
He Was Always a Nice Boy
by John D. MacDonald[3]
A commentary on our times? Judge for yourself...