“Wait a minute—” Groener protested.
“Shut up,” the Lieutenant told him dispassionately. “As you closed the door you felt a terrific spasm of rage at the injustice of it. All of that rage was directed against your wife. You’d had feelings like that before, but never had a situation brought them so tormentingly home to you. For one thing you’d just been treated like a worm by the woman you were tied to in front of the woman you desired with a consuming physical passion. It was tearing you apart. You’d come to the end of your rope of hope. Five years had fully demonstrated that your wife would never stop drinking or mentally intimidating you.
“You thought of all the opportunities of happiness and pleasure you’d passed up without benefit to her, or yourself—or anybody. You suddenly saw how you could do it now without much risk to yourself, and how afterwards perhaps everything would be different for you. You could still take the other direction. What you had in mind was bad, but your wife had been asking for it. You knew you could no longer ever get free without it. It was a partly irrational but compulsive psychological barrier that nothing but your wife’s death could topple. The thought of what you were going to do filled you like black fire, so there was no room in your mind for anything else.”
“Really, Lieutenant, this—”
“Shut up. Your plan hung on knowing Mrs. Labelle was awake—that and knowing that she and Miss Graves were both on to your wife’s screaming trick, if that should come up. You started making coffee—and even more noise than you usually do—and then you took off your slippers and you walked back to the bedroom without making a sound. Or if you did make a few slight, creaking-floorboard sounds, you figured the wind-chimes would cover them up.
“Yes, Mr. Groener, you’re a man who normally makes a lot of noise walking, so your wife wouldn’t accuse you of sneaking around. So much noise, in fact, that it’s become a joke among your friends. But when you want to, or even just when your mind’s on something else, you walk very quietly. You did it earlier this evening right in front of me when you went in the bedroom. You disappeared that time without a sound.
“You found your wife asleep, still passed out from the drinks. You carefully moved back what light furniture and stuff there was between the bed and the wide-open window. You wanted a clear pathway and it didn’t occur to you that a drunk going from the bed to the window under her own power would have bumped and probably knocked over a half dozen things.”
The Lieutenant’s voice hardened. “You grabbed your wife—she got out one scream—and you picked her up—she weighed next to nothing—and you pitched her out the window. Then you stood there listening a minute. This was the hump, you thought. But nobody called or got up or did anything. So for a final artistic touch you put your wife’s bedtime drink and one of her burnt-out lipstick-stained cigarettes on the windowsill. You’ve got to watch out for artistic touches, Groener, because they’re generally wrong. Then you glided back to the kitchen, finished the coffee act, and came back noisy.”
The Lieutenant quit pacing and paused, but Groener just stared at him—incredulously, almost stupifiedly, but still steady as a rock. Zocky shot an apprehensive look at his superior.
“The important thing you overlooked,” the Lieutenant went on relentlessly, “was that I’d find out your wife was an acrophobe, and that her dread of heights was so great, sober or drunk, that she’d tie her arm to her chair when she was merely sitting near a big window or up on a theater balcony. To suggest that such a person would commit suicide by jumping is utterly implausible. To imply that she’d preface it by sitting or leaning on the window ledge having a last drink and smoke is absolutely unbelievable.”
The Lieutenant paused and narrowed his eyes before adding, “Moreover, Mr. Groener, quietly as you walked back to the bedroom, did you really suppose you accomplished that so silently that Mrs. Labelle’s sharp ears wouldn’t catch the sound of your footsteps?”
Groener roused himself with an obvious effort. “I… I… This is all quite absurd, Lieutenant. Mrs. Labelle…” He made the usual gesture with his left hand. “You can’t really believe that.”
He looked at his left hand. So did the detectives. It was shaking and as he continued to stare it began to shake more violently. The tendons stood out whitely as he stiffened it, but the shaking didn’t stop.
Groener’s tight-pressed lips lengthened in a grin but the corners of his mouth wouldn’t turn up. “This is embarrassing,” he said. “Must be embarrassing to you too. First time I’ve had the shakes in five years.”
But the shaking only became convulsive.
“All right,” he said, closing his eyes, “I did it.”
The shaking stopped.
After awhile he went on gently, “Just about as you’ve described it. I was insane to think I could ever get away with it. I suppose your doctor noticed that her neck had been broken before she fell. He probably deduced it from the tear in her scalp where I’d jerked her head back by the hair.”
“No,” the Lieutenant said, “but he will now. Zocky, would you get Cohan? Tell the ladies Mr. Groener’s coming with us to make a statement at the station. Tell them he doesn’t want to speak to either of them now. I imagine that’s the way you want it, Groener?” The other nodded.
After Zocky went off, Groener said, “Would you tell me one thing?”
“I’ll try to.”
“How did you know her hair looked like a silver fleece?”
The Lieutenant flushed. “Oh that—please excuse it. I was just blasting away at you. The words came.”
Zocky returned with the third detective. They opened the front door and started down the stairs. The Lieutenant told Cohan to go first with Groener.
Zocky said to the Lieutenant in a gruff whisper, “Hey, I gave you a right steer on that walking loud on purpose business, didn’t I?”
“Yes, Zocky, you did.”
“I don’t like this case, though,” the blond detective went on. “This Groener’s not a bad guy. Think of listening to those chimes night after night!”
“If they were all bad guys, our job would be easy.”
“Yeah. Say, I just realized we don’t know any of their first names—not Groener’s or either of the dames.”
“Cohan will have them,” the Lieutenant said. “But that’s a very important point about detective work you’ve just made, Zocky. Never know their first names.”
MYSTERIOUS DOINGS IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
The top half of the blade of grass growing in a railed plot beside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan said “Beetles! You’d think they were the Kings of the World, the way they carry on!”
The bottom half of the blade of grass replied, “Maybe they are. The distinguished writer of supernatural horror stories H. P. Lovecraft said in The Shadow Out of Time there would be a ‘hardy Coleopterous species immediately following mankind,’ to quote his exact words. Other experts say all insects, or spiders, or rats will inherit the Earth, but old H.P.L. said hardy coleopts.”
“Pedant!” the top half mocked. “ ‘Coleopterous species’!” Why not just say ‘beetles’ or just ‘bugs’? Means the same thing.”