“I think,” Mrs. Gentrie said, “it’s going to be better if you wait until we’re alone to go into this, Rebecca. You always make it a point to listen when the children are making dates on the telephone, and then you ask them questions. Junior’s getting to the age where he resents that. He isn’t a boy any more. He’s growing into real manhood.”
“Well, this creature has got him mixed up in a murder case,” Rebecca said with self-righteous approval, “and I’m trying to help Lieutenant Tragg, that’s all. It’s just as distasteful to me as it can be. I consider Junior just as much a part of me as though he were my own boy, but after all, when a young man starts gallivanting around — and now, the evidence of those fingerprints makes it just as plain as the nose on your face. He’s been sneaking over there at night...”
“Stop it!” Mrs. Gentrie commanded indignantly. “You don’t know that he’s been sneaking over there, and as far as that’s concerned, Opal Sunley doesn’t stay over there nights.”
“How do you know she doesn’t?”
“Well, she comes in and works by the day.”
“But she’s over there quite frequently at night.”
“Only when she has to work.”
Rebecca sniffed.
Lieutenant Tragg, who had been keenly observing the trend of the conversation and the facial expressions of the two women, interposed soothingly, “I’m sorry I gave the wrong impression, Mrs. Gentrie. All I’m interested in is finding out just how it happened your son left those fingerprints on the telephone.”
“You’re absolutely certain they’re his?”
“Absolutely.”
“Couldn’t he have been using that paint — well, later?”
Tragg raised his eyebrows. “You mean after the shot was fired?” he asked.
Mrs. Gentrie thought that over. “Well, no. I mean before — before his father started to paint.”
“I believe his father mixed up the paint from some he’d brought home from the hardware store.”
“I guess so,” Mrs. Gentrie said.
Hester came through from the kitchen, stood silently in the doorway.
“What is it, Hester?” Mrs. Gentrie asked.
“You want me to get some more preserves from the pantry shelves?”
“Yes...” Mrs. Gentrie looked at Lieutenant Tragg and said, “I wonder if you could pardon me for just a moment, Lieutenant. It seems as though I haven’t been able to keep abreast of my work all day, and...”
“Certainly,” Tragg interposed. “I can understand just how it is, Mrs. Gentrie. Go right ahead.”
Mrs. Gentrie said to Hester, “Clean out all of those ’39 and ’40 tins and jars over on the left side of the shelf, Hester. Bring them up and put them on the pantry shelves. We’ll start serving them until we’ve used them all up.”
Lieutenant Tragg said, “If you’re going down in the cellar, I’ll take a look around after you are finished.”
“Certainly,” Mrs. Gentrie said.
Hester opened the cellar door. The heavy, flat-footed pound of her springless steps sounded on the stairs.
Rebecca said, “Well, if you ask me, I think that can had a lot to do with what happened over there across the street. Don’t you think that message was intended for someone who...”
Mrs. Gentrie interrupted firmly, “Now, Rebecca, Lieutenant Tragg isn’t interested in your theories, and I certainly am not going to have you make any veiled insinuation that it was a code communication between Opal Sunley and Junior. Thought your crossword-puzzle club was having a meeting today.”
Rebecca sniffed. “I’m quite capable of arranging my own affairs, Florence. I don’t have to leave for an hour yet, and the way you’re trying to get rid of me only makes Lieutenant Tragg all the more suspicious of Junior. You know just as well as I do that these messages in the can may as well as not be the way they made their dates. They never dared to do it over the telephone. Land sakes, you’d have thought she was a married woman from the way Junior was acting! She might have...”
From the cellar came Hester’s voice, calling out without emotion, “Mrs. Gentrie, here’s another one.”
Mrs. Gentrie walked toward the cellar door, looking back over her shoulder, conscious of the fact she was leaving Rebecca and Lieutenant Tragg alone, conscious also that this might well be what Lieutenant Tragg wanted. It was certainly what Rebecca wanted.
“What is it, Hester?” she called.
“Another one.”
“Another what?”
“Another empty tin on the shelf,” she said.
Mrs. Gentrie turned to where Lieutenant Tragg was drawing up a chair close to Rebecca, preparatory to the intimacy of a low-voiced conversation.
Tragg looked up.
Mrs. Gentrie said, “Hester says there’s another empty tin on the shelf in the basement, Lieutenant.”
Tragg came up out of the chair and reached the cellar door with long, quick strides. He pushed past Mrs. Gentrie and took the cellar stairs two at a time.
“Where is it?” Tragg asked Hester.
“Here. I...”
“Good Lord, don’t touch it!” Tragg shouted.
There was the sound of an empty tin clattering to the cement floor.
“I didn’t mean for you to drop it.”
“You said not to touch it,” Hester said stolidly.
Tragg carefully picked up the tin, holding it in such a way that his fingers touched it only in one place. He placed it on the workbench and took from his pocket a small leather case across the top of which was a zipper, a case not much larger than a flexible spectacle case.
The two women who had dashed down the cellar stairs after him, watched him in silent fascination as he slid open the catch on the zipper, took out a camel’s-hair brush, and three small containers. Selecting one of the containers, he removed the top to disclose a fine powder. With the camel’s-hair brush he dusted the powder evenly over the surface of the can.
Carefully, Tragg examined the fingerprints which the powder brought to light.
“Let me see your hands,” he said to Hester, and when she had extended her hands for his inspection, he opened one of the other small tins to disclose a sticky black ink which he placed upon the tips of her fingers. He recorded her inked impressions on paper in his notebook.
“What’s the matter?” Hester asked sullenly. “I didn’t do nothing.”
Lieutenant Tragg had nothing of the bulldozing, arrogant manner of the detective who has graduated from pavement-pounding to the Homicide Squad. He was, instead, suavely courteous and never more so than when he was hot on the trail of a significant clue. “I’m sorry,” he said with a reassuring smile. “I thought you’d understand. I am trying to find the fingerprints of the person who placed the tin on the shelf. In order to do that, I have to eliminate your fingerprints.”
Mrs. Gentrie knew that Hester didn’t quite know what Tragg meant by eliminate, so she added by way of explanation, “He just wants to find out which fingerprints are yours, so he can rub them off, and get them out of the way, Hester.”
Hester said, “Oh.”
But Tragg didn’t rub off any of the fingerprints. He did, however, check them off one at a time, after comparing them, with the aid of a magnifying glass, with the prints Hester’s fingers had left on the paper. During the time he was doing this, he was exceedingly careful not to get any of his own fingerprints on the surface of the can.
“Where was that tin?” Rebecca asked.
Lieutenant Tragg seemed to feel it was unnecessary to answer the question. Rebecca turned to Hester. “Where did you find it, Hester?” she demanded.
Hester mutely pointed toward the shelf.
“Humph,” Rebecca said. “The exact place where that other can was!”