I smiled. She fixed her enormous, smoky grey eyes on me, and said: “You’re the only one who can help us. Everything adds up all wrong. Larry couldn’t have done it, and yet there’s nobody else who went out there.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Back off a few paragraphs, and start over again.”
“Larry’s her fiance,” Ader explained. “I’m holding him on a first degree murder charge.”
I must have looked surprised, because he reddened slightly, and snapped, “I had to, but she thinks he’s innocent. Why, I don’t know. I’ve told her about your work before, and now she expects you to perform a grade A miracle to order. In other words, Dana’s picked you to smash my nice open-and-shut case to little pieces.”
“Thanks a lot, both of you,” I said sardonically. “But I only do wonders on Wednesday and Friday; this is Tuesday, remember.”
“That’s all right; you can solve the whole case tomorrow,” the lieutenant said, giving his niece a rather sickly grin. It was a noble attempt to cheer her up, and of course a complete failure, as such things always are.
“Look,” he added, obviously on a hot spot, and not enjoying it, “I’ve got the boy cold; the evidence is overwhelming. You’ll see what I mean in a minute. But Dana here isn’t convinced, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t see Larry bludgeoning an old man to death for money, myself. He’s pretty hot-tempered, but gets over it fast. I don’t think he goes in for physical violence, anyhow. Still…” He broke off, and I could almost read his mind. When you’ve met enough murderers, one thing soon becomes as clear as distilled water: there’s simply no way to tell a potential killer in advance of the crime.
“Why are you so sure he didn’t do it?” I asked Dana.
Her round little chin rose stubbornly; I liked her for that. I hate the passive, blonde, doughy kind of girl.
“I know he couldn’t kill anybody,” she said, “especially an old man lying on the sand. He might punch another fellow his own age, if they were both on their feet, but that’s all. Do you think I could love a murderer, and be ready to marry him?”
I looked at Ader, and both our faces must have become wooden at the same time, because she gave a little cry of pure exasperation.
“Ooh! All you men know is evidence. I know Larry!”
The lieutenant is married, and so knows about women. Even so, this line of reasoning, being so feminine, made him wince. But the answer was about what I expected. So I merely remarked: “Suppose you give me the main facts, and then we’ll fight about who’s guilty.”
“Right.” Ader seemed relieved. He was always at his best with evidence rather than theories or emotions. I imagine that Dana, in cahoots with his very warm-hearted wife, Grace, had been needling him for hours. Not that he’s unsympathetic. I’ve known cops who wouldn’t mess with a case that was all sewed up to please their wives, children, or grandparents. He was doing it for a mere niece.
“First,” Ader said, “the victim is Colonel McCabe, a retired Army Officer, sixty-two years old. Yesterday morning, quite early, he went down to his private beach, as usual, accompanied by his dog. After a brief paddling in the shallows, he dozed on a blanket, and while he was dozing somebody came up to him, carrying a walking stick, and calmly smashed his skull with the heavy knob. It seems beyond a doubt that the killer must have been Larry Channing, the colonel’s nephew, a boy of twenty-four, who lives in the same house.”
“And the motive?”
“Money. McCabe had a bundle. Larry’s one of the minor heirs, but fifty thousand or so isn’t hard to take at his age.”
“Larry’s going to be a doctor,” Dana flared. “He wants to save lives. And he didn’t need the money. His uncle was going to see him through med school.”
“That’s true,” Ader said. “But a quick fortune might tempt even a potential doctor.”
“Not only potential ones,” I said a little enviously, thinking of the ocean cruiser I’d like to own some day. “But just how did you tag Larry as the murderer?”
“Because the young hot-head acted like a complete fool. He left enough evidence-you couldn’t call them ‘clues’; they’re much too obvious – to convict an archangel. Let me show you the sketch.”
Here Ader reached into his briefcase, and brought out a scale diagram which indicated the position of the body on the beach and the footprints made by the Colonel and those made by the murderer – to the body, and away from it.
“The sand was quite unmarked to begin with,” Ader said, “smoothed out by the tide the night before. We found the colonel’s prints, leading from the stairs across the sand to the water, and then back to where he lay down on his blanket. Then there are Larry’s tracks from the stairs to McCabe, and back. Nobody else’s there except the dog’s, which go all over, above and beneath the others. The beach is accessible only from the house and the sea; there’s no possible approach at the sides for they’re sheer rocky cliffs. That perfect privacy is what makes the property worth $200,000. Now, considering all that, what can any sensible person conclude? McCabe’s only visitor, as clearly shown by the tracks, was Larry Channing.”
“I suppose you checked all the prints.”
“Of course. Although it was hardly necessary. Larry admitted walking out to see his uncle about seven-thirty, while the rest of the family still slept. He even told us that they quarreled again. It wasn’t the first time. You see, the colonel didn’t want him to marry a poor girl like Dana.” A tinge of bitterness came into Ader’s voice. As an honest cop, he was always one jump ahead of the finance company. “The old man said that nobody but a fool married except for money, that love was a typically modern delusion, confined largely to soft-headed teen-agers and the women who read confession magazines. It’s just as easy to fall for a rich girl as a poor one, he maintained. That’s how he got his own fortune-by marrying a wealthy widow, no beauty, needless to say. The hell of it is, that gives the boy a better motive than money alone. The colonel was mad enough to cut him off for picking Dana. In that case, no med school.”
“Sounds pretty bad. What about the weapon?”
“Well, since McCabe’s skull was crushed, we looked for some kind of club. It wasn’t near the body, so we figured Larry got rid of it. But blamed if we didn’t find it right in the house, at the back of his own closet. It’s Larry’s pet walking stick, an ebony one with a roughly rounded, heavy knob for a handle. It had been carelessly wiped. There’s still some blood and hair on the thing. Now isn’t that a stupid way to commit murder?”
At that Dana leaped up, her eyes blazing. “He didn’t do it, that’s why! Don’t you see it’s too obvious, too easy?”
Ader grimaced.
“I’ve thought of that,” he said, “and in a way I agree. Unless he hoped to make us think that way – to believe he was framed, and very crudely at that. Larry is a bit hot-tempered, as I’ve said, but no fool. And only a prize idiot would leave a damning trail like this one. Talk about painting yourself into a corner. This bird put on a dozen coats.”
I had been studying the diagram while Ader talked, and now I groaned. “It was sure to happen some day. I might have known.”
“What’s that?” the lieutenant demanded.
“I’ll tell you. If Larry is innocent, you’ve got a real classic here – a locked room murder, basically. The tracks on the sand show plainly that nobody else came anywhere near the victim. Are you positive he was killed by a blow from that stick?”
“Not yet, although I’d bet on it. But there’s been no autopsy yet, and the stick hasn’t been tested by a pathologist. All we’ve done so far is check finger-prints and tracks. They’re all Larry’s and the colonel’s. The rest is up to you. But the man’s skull was dented badly, so if anything else killed him, the blow was superfluous, which makes no sense. However, the body’s at the morgue; I’ll have it brought here. You can have the stick any time, too.”