George Endicott called for order. When it grew quiet and everyone was seated, he took the floor. He held a drink in his hands, which he looked at as he spoke. “This is a rather strange affair,” he said, “but Grace and I wanted you all to come because, on top of crushing misfortune, we have many things to celebrate. We have a conductor for our festival; you all know now who he is. Our tickets are already almost sold out. The orchestra is in rehearsal. Mr. Kaufmann conducted the session yesterday and he tells me that our concerts are going to be of very high quality. So I want to announce that I am asking Mr. Kaufmann if he will favor us by appearing as conductor on at least one of our programs.”
There was a little ripple of applause. Kaufmann colored and recovered himself. “I’d be proud to,” he replied.
“Next, we have been looking around for a suitable name for our outdoor theater. In recognition of the fact that it was one man’s energy, ability, and enthusiasm that made it possible, the trustees voted this afternoon to name it the Mantoli Bowl.”
Everyone looked at Duena; she put her face in her hands and said nothing.
“I’m sure Duena will consent to dedicate it for us on opening night,” Endicott went on. “Now we come to the third matter, the way in which our police force, augmented by the abilities of a most unusual man, found and arrested the person responsible for the disaster that overtook us. I don’t know how this piece of work was done; I wish somebody would tell me. That is, if this is the proper time and place.”
“I’d like to know, too,” Frank Schubert seconded.
“Chief Gillespie?” Endicott invited.
In a moment of rare clarity, Gillespie saw there was only one thing he could do. He couldn’t tell the story because he didn’t know it. To confess ignorance at this stage of the game was unthinkable. And he realized fully that if he passed the credit to the place where it belonged, his own standing would grow as a result.
“Mr. Wood and Virgil made up the team who tracked him down,” he said, keeping his voice moderated. “I suggest you ask them about it.”
That, Gillespie thought, should square him with Sam for some time to come.
George Endicott looked at Sam. “Mr. Wood?” he said.
“Ask Virgil,” Sam replied with genuine humility. “He did it.”
“Mr. Tibbs.” Endicott looked over to where the quiet Negro sat by himself. “You have the floor. I understand you are leaving us later tonight. Please don’t go without telling us the rest.”
Tibbs looked at Gillespie. “Go ahead, Virgil,” the chief said.
“This is extremely embarrassing,” Tibbs said. He looked as if he meant it.
“There’s no need to be that modest,” Endicott encouraged him. “I know your reputation on the Coast. A successful investigation is nothing new to you.”
“It isn’t that,” Tibbs replied, “it’s the fact that I can’t conceal any longer how badly I bungled this one. It was only a stroke of pure luck that saved the day and I can’t take any credit for it.”
“Suppose you let us judge,” Jennings invited.
Virgil took a deep breath. “In any murder investigation, one of the first things to do is to establish the motive for the crime if it is at all possible. When you find out who might benefit from the death of the victim, you have at least a point from which to start. This is assuming that there is no clear-cut solution which is relatively easy to track down.
“When Chief Gillespie arranged for me to stay here and assigned me to this case, I learned certain things from the physical evidence at hand and then went to work to establish the motive. Now I’m afraid I’m going to shock you all and Mr. Kaufmann especially. I doubt if he will ever forgive me. You see, for several days I thought he was guilty and I worked hard to prove it.”
Tibbs looked up at the young conductor, whose face was a study. Sam Wood looked at him, too, and decided he couldn’t tell what the man was thinking. But Sam was not surprised; he himself had been thinking about Eric Kaufmann, though he couldn’t exactly say why.
“You see,” Tibbs continued, “Mr. Kaufmann had an immediate and powerful motive: Maestro Mantoli’s tragic passing placed him in direct line to take over the music festival and both the fame and financial rewards that would result. Many men have killed for less than that. I might add that he disproved this motive completely by his energetic and successful work to secure a replacement conductor of established reputation on short notice.
“At that point Mr. Kaufmann was a suspect and no more. Then, on my first visit here, he happened to remark in my presence that Maestro Mantoli had been ‘struck down.’ The papers were not yet out, and having supposedly come directly here from out of town, he would have had no way to have known that Maestro Mantoli had been literally struck down. He might have been shot, or poisoned, or any number of things. So I interpreted his remark as indicating guilty knowledge and he at once became my number-one candidate for investigation. What I failed to do was to recognize that ‘struck down’ is a fairly common figure of speech and not necessarily a literal one.”
“Is this too much for you?” Grace Endicott asked Duena, who was beside her. Duena shook her head without taking her eyes off Tibbs.
“Then came the matter of the cherry pie,” Virgil continued. “When I checked up on Mr. Kaufmann’s whereabouts on the fatal night, I learned that he had arrived in Atlanta at a time that could not be definitely established. And he had remarked to the elevator operator in the hotel where he was stopping that he had eaten a late dinner and questioned the wisdom of cherry pie at that hour. This sounded like a manufactured alibi to me for several reasons. One of them was that there was no proof that he had stopped to eat a full meal, but by claiming to have done so, he automatically added an hour to the time he was presumably in the city. Cherry pie at three in the morning, or something around that hour, is definitely unusual, I didn’t believe he would have done it. Lastly, his mentioning it so obviously to the elevator man suggested to me he was doing so deliberately so that the man would recall the conversation later if asked. Mr. Kaufmann had no way of knowing that the night man at the hotel would not be able to be reasonably exact about the time of his arrival. By now I was convinced I knew my man, and I went after him with a vengeance.”
“The way you put it, I can’t blame you a bit,” Kaufmann said. “I happen to be inordinately fond of cherry pie, but there is no way you could know that.”
“You’re extremely generous, sir,” Virgil said to him.
“Go on, please,” Duena asked.
“To continue confessing my sins,” Virgil picked up again, “as soon as I was fixed on Mr. Kaufmann, I promptly failed to notice what was going on about me.”
“The devil you did,” Sam Wood interrupted. “You noticed how much dust there was on my car and made a considerable point of it.”
Bill Gillespie would not be outdone. “You noticed that Harvey Oberst was left-handed,” he added.
“Yes, but the important things I missed completely,” Tibbs said. “While I was chasing Mr. Kaufmann, everything that actually concerned the case was taking place in a totally different direction. I kept trying to pin Mr. Kaufmann down and made a fatal mistake. I tried to make the evidence fit the suspect instead of the other way around. That sort of thing is inexcusable.”
“Go on with the story,” Grace Endicott invited.
“I’ll finish my confession by saying that I went after the murder weapon and eventually it was delivered to me.” Tibbs took another deep breath and then plunged into the statement he felt he had to make. “It was discovered at the edge of the concert bowl, and while it did not point directly, it suggested Mr. Kaufmann again. I had, I thought, considerable evidence, but none of it would jell enough to hold water for five minutes in a court of law. The more I looked, the less I could find to aid my case because Mr. Kaufmann was, of course, entirely innocent.