“In charge of it.”
“Oh! Congratulations! Maybe that’s even better.”
“What do you mean?”
“The first homicide we’ve had in town since that barroom brawl nine years ago, and there was no mystery in that one, just lots of gore. Maybe I need some big-city expertise on this one — it’s a nasty case, and kind of a crazy one.”
“Well, Art, if you need my help, I’ll be glad to give it.” I wasn’t sure I was so keen on this, but there I was.
“Thanks. Let’s go into my office. I’ll tell you about it there.”
When he had sat down at his desk and lit a cigar, he resumed. “Did I ever mention the Reardons to you, Ev?”
“Reardons?”
“Rich family. Live here in town. Old man owned the dye works a few miles off.”
“I don’t think you have. I presume they’re part of the town nobility—”
“Yup.”
“Look rather down on other people—”
“Right.”
“And now they’ve come a big cropper because they’ve got trouble — trouble that involves the police.”
“You know it. The trouble, to be exact, is murder. Old Julian Reardon was stabbed to death a couple of days ago. Julian was the owner of the dye works.”
“Got any idea who did it?”
“I’ve narrowed it down to three people. Julian left a will leaving all his estate — quite a sum — to be equally distributed among his three children.”
“You suspect them?”
“No, I don’t. Because they’re dead.”
“Oh. You think they were killed too?”
“No, no. They all died years ago, and the deaths were either the result of disease or accident. Point’s this: Julian had a clause in his will leaving the money that would go to each child to that child’s children, if the child predeceased him.”
“And there are three grandchildren?”
“One from each of the two sons and one daughter. Jack Reardon, Peggy Reardon, and Abby Freed. All in their early twenties. Three nicer young people you couldn’t meet. But from what I’ve found out, they could all use some spare cash about now. And nobody else with a motive was anywhere near the house when the old man was killed. And the crime looks like the work of a person Julian trusted: whoever killed him was allowed in, and had a cup of coffee with the victim before doing the dirty work. That points to one of the grandchildren — they were about the only people in town Julian could be said to trust.”
“And there are no clues?”
“Killer left no fingerprints, no suspect has an alibi. All we have is this.” Art took a Xerox copy out of his pocket with an abstracted air. “Julian was filling out a few forms when his murderer came to call. After he was stabbed, and presumably after the killer left, he managed to drag himself across the room to where he’d put down the forms, and before he died he picked up his pen and scrawled out—”
“A dying message!”
He looked a trifle displeased. “Yes. And here it is.” He gave me the copy. At the bottom of the sheet, printed crudely over a printed form, were two capital letters:
“Em ay,” I said. “In caps.”
“Which may or may not mean anything,” Chief Nye grunted. “From what we’ve seen of his papers, Julian always printed in block capitals.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “MA, eh? I suppose you’ve thought of the obvious connections.”
“I have. But maybe you can think of an interpretation that didn’t occur to me. Any suggestions?”
“Any of the suspects have a Master of Arts degree?”
“I don’t think any of ’em has cracked open a book since high school, Ev,” Art informed me.
“Any of ’em in Massachusetts lately? Or work for the phone company?”
“Phone company?” my friend asked, puzzled.
“Ma Bell?”
“Oh! No, they all work at local businesses — when they feel like working, which they don’t have to do. And they don’t travel.”
“Either female suspect have a baby lately?”
“No. And Julian’s mother,” he added, “died in ’47.”
“Thorough, aren’t you?” There was a pause. “This fancy stuff doesn’t ring true. If the old man wanted to name his killer, wouldn’t he just print the killer’s name?” I started to mutter. “Wait! What are their middle names?”
“Not that they ever use them, but Jack’s middle name is William, Peggy’s is Sharon, and Abby’s is Elizabeth.”
“Nothing there. I — hmm. Did the old man have any nicknames for them?”
“Not a formal old boy like Julian Reardon. They were about the only people he didn’t call ‘Mr.’ or ‘Miss,’ and them he called by their full names.”
“Too bad. Any of them have a hobby, or a habit, or something along those lines, beginning with MA?”
“Ev, I have gone through every word beginning with MA in the dictionary. There isn’t one that has a special relationship with any of the three suspects.”
“And yet he wrote MA...” I trailed off into muttering again. Suddenly a bomb went off inside my head — or perhaps it would be more correct to say a flare, illuminating everything in one bright flash. “Yes!” I said involuntarily.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, that’s it. That has to be it. Art, I know who killed Julian Reardon!”
Art looked at me skeptically. “Well?” he said.
“Your problem, Art,” I began pedantically, “was that you were too close to the people in the case to see things properly. I take it you knew old Reardon fairly well?”
“Fairly.”
“Well enough, at least, to call him and his grandchildren by their first names.”
“Look, Ev, I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I can assure you that I’m not letting personal feelings interfere with my role in a murder investigation.”
“That’s not my point. So close, in fact, that you call the three suspects by their nicknames.”
“Everybody does.”
“But Julian Reardon didn’t! That was a good point I made a minute ago about how Reardon wouldn’t indulge in fancy word games if he wanted to name his killer. He would just write down the killer’s name.
“So if Jack Reardon had done it, the old man would have written JA. If Abby Freed had, he would have written AB. Name or nickname, the message would start with the same letters.
“But — what about Peggy Reardon? If you wrote her nickname, you’d start with PE — but if you’d called her by her full name all her life, you would write down the first letters of her full name. And Peggy, as you know, is the diminutive of Margaret — MA.”
I leaned back in my chair and looked smugly at Art Nye. His mouth and eyes were slightly open.
“How the hell did I miss that?” he asked.
“By being too close to the target,” I answered.
The Final Report
by Russell Martin[15]
Russell Martin’s second first story is about a bureau chief in retirement who is just vegetating — until his successor needs help...
Old Pollard had finished with the supper dishes and was sitting down to watch Walter Cronkite when somebody buzzed his apartment from downstairs. He raised his white eyebrows when he heard the caller’s voice, but asked him to come up.
Two minutes later young Knowles was doffing his coat. Knowles, with his masculine good looks and Young-Man-Succeeding-in-Business manner. Knowles, the man Pollard thought of whenever he heard the word “brash.” Knowles, Pollard’s successor as chief of a certain secret government bureau — and in the older man’s opinion, an incompetent young twerp. And just now, Knowles, with his apparently inextinguishable optimism and brisk manner completely gone, twisting his hands, in a fit of nervousness.