“You come on at six, don’t you?”
“Yes sir.”
“About what time was it when you walked past here the first time?”
“Ten-after at the most, sir.”
“That places it for us then,” I told Holmes and Jordan. “It wasn’t dark enough for lights much before six. And they were turned on, of course, before it happened, while he was still alive. Between six and six-ten.”
This needed confirmation, of course. Nothing’s ever certain. The lights could have been lit long after he was killed, by a sneak-thief stealing in, or the murderer himself, but it was a very slim possibility. The examiner confirmed it as soon as he got there. “About four hours.” he said, which carried it back to six — and then the office where this Trinker worked reconfirmed it, if you want to call it that. I had Jordan call the office-manager at his home; Trinker had left there about ten to five. He couldn’t have gotten out here in much under thirty minutes, even by bus.
He hadn’t been killed right away after he got in. There were four cigarette butts discarded around the living-room — another twenty minutes even if he’d smoked one after another. The soap upstairs in the bathroom was still moist and the ironed folding-lines in a Turkish towel had been erased by recent use. He’d evidently taken a bath and changed after he came home. So the time was figured about right.
I sent Holmes out to Mapledale to bring back Trinker’s wife. “You don’t know what about, until I talk to her,” I warned him through the screen door. I like fresh material to work on.
I asked the cop whether there’d been lights in any of the other houses when he went by the first time, or just this one.
“Most of them were lit up. I guess they were all home having their suppers,” he said. “The next one beyond is vacant, though.”
I said, “Well then I wonder how it is nobody seems to have heard the shot?”
He said, “Well they were getting coal in down one of these long chutes further down the street, and you know what a racket that makes tumbling down.”
“What company?” I asked him. “If the murderer left by the front door while they were delivering it there’s a chance that truckdriver and his helper got a look at him.”
“I didn’t notice, Captain Endicott,” he said.
“You want to watch those things,” I rebuked mildly. “You want to be a detective some day, don’t you?” But it was easy enough to find out, there were only three companies in town.
“That’s you,” I said to Jordan. “Find out which of them delivered a load to this street late today. Get hold of the men that made the delivery, and if they noticed anybody at all come out of here, or even go by on the street, bring them down.”
The cameramen took all the pictures worth taking, and then went down to Headquarters to develop. The body was taken out, and I asked for as quick a report on the bullet as Ballistics could give me. Then I was left alone in the house, with the cop cooling his heels by the door while I worked.
The front room, where he had been dropped, was entirely undisturbed. The struggle had taken place in the kitchen behind it. The rear door of that was locked on the inside, so the murderer had left by the front and those coalheavers might just come in very handy. It had been no slight struggle either, by the looks of it. The chairs and the table were over on their sides, and dishes and things were smashed wholesale all over the floor. Scattered remnants of food showed he’d been sitting down to a meal by himself when his caller arrive. There were also two highball glasses, one drained, one almost untouched. They hadn’t been destroyed because both had been set down out of the way on a low shelf.
The signs of struggle in one room, the lack of them in the other, told me it had been a woman right away, even a rookie could have figured that out.
Instead of trying to run away from the assailant, he had gone after her, from one room into the next. The bullet hole had been in the front, not the back of his head.
There’d been a complete absence of any bruises or welts on his face. If it had been a man there would have been at least a mark or two showing on him.
Confirmation quickly followed. Even my unaided eye could make out a smudge of red on the rim of the undrained glass.
I went upstairs and looked the rooms over more thoroughly than we had the first time. There was plenty of stuff such as letters, memoranda, and belongings, to fill in his background.
He and his wife had been married four years the previous June. Her picture gave me the impression of an honest, straightforward woman who wouldn’t try to hide anything. It was smiling a little sadly, like she was making the best of a bad bargain. A bank book showed that they hadn’t put away much money. I jotted a reminder down in my notebook to find out what salary he’d been paid.
I went downstairs again. The cop had been sitting down resting his legs but straightened up again when he heard me coming. I was sure of that because I used to do the same thing myself when I was a beat-pounder.
“Spooky after they’re gone, isn’t it?” I muttered. “Still gets me, and I’ve been on about a hundred of them by now.”
He said, “Yes sir, Captain Endicott.” But he didn’t sound very definite about it.
The phone rang just as I got down to the bottom step, and I went to it alertly, but it wasn’t a private call. It was for me. Jordan, to tell me he had the two coal-heavers down at Headquarters.
“All right, keep them there,” I said, “I’ll be down shortly, I’m just winding up here.”
I went back into the kitchen again and scuffed the china-fragments around aimlessly. And then I kicked aside some dishes and uncovered a heel.
Looking at it reminded me of how Jenny’s had come off too; it only showed how insecure the average feminine heel was. It was a wonder they didn’t hurt themselves more often than they did.
The screen-door opened and Holmes came in with Mrs. Trinker just then, so I put it into my pocket for the time being and went out to talk to her.
“What’s happened?” she said in a sort of helpless, pleading voice. The harness-bull by the door loomed bigger than either Holmes or myself to her, the way a uniform usually does to a layman. “What’s this officer doing here? Has Paul done something?”
She was a nice wholesome-looking blonde, of the housewife type. Her voice was the nicest thing about her. Soft and soothing, the kind that, is seldom raised in anger. She was well-dressed and quite nice looking.
“I had to leave my sister sick in bed,” she said.
I hated this part of it that was coming next. “Sit down, won’t you?” I flicked my eyes at the staircase, and Holmes ran up it unnoticed to the bathroom to try to find a sedative in case she needed it. He knew what I meant by past experience.
“But where is he? This other man wouldn’t tell me anything coming down.”
I said, “Your husband’s been shot.”
“Bad?” She got white, not all in one flash, but slowly.
“He’s gone,” I said.
I don’t need to go into it after that. I could tell in about five minutes that I wouldn’t be able to question her any that night. A matron came up to take charge of her as soon as she was able to walk, and took her to a hotel in her custody. There was no need to lock the poor woman up in a cell for the night.
A new cop came up on special duty to keep an eye on the premises from outside, and I started to put the lights out and lock up, to go down to the house and work on what we had. We were about through up here for all present purposes. I was the last one in the place. Holmes had gone out to the car and was chewing the rag with the cop, while he waited for me.
The living-room switch was just inside the front door, and as I crossed toward it, my current cigar butt, which had grown too small to handle adequately, slipped out of my lips and dropped to the floor. I stooped down to get it, naturally, not wanting a fire to start after we’d left the place, and with my line of vision way down low like that, parallel to the floor, I saw this object under the sofa.