7
Rush Medford, the district attorney, stepped out from his private office to the entrance room to receive George Quinlan.
“Hello, George. I asked you to come up here because I wanted to talk with you — confidentially.”
Quinlan glanced significantly at the unlocked door of the reception office, then at the closed door of Medford’s private office. Medford, towering his voice, went on hastily, “I have a man waiting in there, George. I want you to meet him. I want you to give him every bit of help you can. His name’s Walworth — Martin Walworth. Ever hear of him?”
Quinlan shook his head.
“Famous all over the state as a criminologist. He...”
“Oh, yes! I’ve heard of him. I place him now.”
The district attorney said confidentially, “I’m calling him in, George, at the suggestion of some very, very influential citizens. They feel that there’s a soft spot in the County administration. You know, old Bill prides himself on paying more attention to people’s reactions than to material evidence. Some whimsical eccentricity on his part that’s going to get us all into trouble one of these days. You know how it is when word gets around that the crowd in the courthouse has been in office too long. There’s always a tendency to make a clean sweep. And that takes in all of us.”
“What do you expect Walworth to do?” Quinlan asked.
The district attorney smiled. “I expect him to solve this mystery very quickly and very competently, demonstrating to the voters of this county the fact that the old hit-or-miss methods of investigating a crime are as obsolete as the horse and buggy. The modern criminologist uses scientific equipment and streamlined efficiency.”
“You mean you’re going to use him to show the sheriff up?”
“I mean I’m going to use him to solve the mystery.”
“The sheriff won’t like that,” Quinlan said.
“Of course he won’t like it. But there’s a murder to be solved, and the county has some rights I certainly trust that you have no objections.”
“No,” Quinlan said, “I haven’t any objections.”
“Come on in,” Medford invited and opened the door of his private office.
Martin Walworth was a short-bodied, heavy-featured man with bushy eyebrows and huge spectacles. His round black pupils were pin-points of perpetual scrutiny in the center of pale, steady eyes. He didn’t get up or shake hands when the district attorney performed the introduction.
“No weapon was found?” Walworth asked after a few preliminaries.
“No weapon,” Quinlan admitted.
“The autopsy seems to have been handled in rather a careless manner,” Walworth said. “However, I’m hopeful of getting a fairly good description of the murder weapon by an investigation which I shall make personally. There were no fingerprints whatever on the cigarette case?”
“None whatever.”
The criminologist’s eyes were stern with accusation. “Do I understand that the sheriff picked it up?”
“He said he picked it up.”
“But there were no fingerprints?”
“None.”
“Not latents that were smudged, but...”
“No. There were none.”
Walworth grunted. “Then someone wiped it,” he said, “wiped it clean — after the sheriff picked it up.”
“Looked as though it might have been wiped with something like a chamois skin, polished as smooth and slick as a whistle,” Quinlan admitted.
“After the sheriff picked it up.”
Quinlan nodded. “I guess it has to be that way.”
“But you didn’t say so,” the district attorney accused, “not until after Walworth pointed it out.”
“I didn’t volunteer any suggestions. The fact speaks for itself,” Quinlan said.
Walworth grunted. “And there were no tracks in the soft soil?”
“No tracks.”
“That, manifestly, is impossible.”
“You can see the photographs and...”
“Photographs, bah! They are taken with a synchronized flash. That makes the picture flat as a pancake. The lighting should have been scientifically controlled.”
Quinlan said nothing.
“Obviously,” Walworth went on, “the fact in itself is impossible. Therefore someone is lying. It may be this Beckett.”
“It may be,” Quinlan admitted.
The district attorney interposed hastily, “Here in the country where a good many people know each other and... well, you have to be a little careful, you know, Mr. Walworth... Political considerations as well as a person’s integrity...”
“I understand,” Walworth said. “Is there any other evidence?”
Quinlan told him about the car which had driven into the field after the tractor had made its last trip out.
Walworth digested that information with the profound expression of a deep thinker. “This piece that was gouged out of the right front tire,” he said, “you said you used a piece of paper to get the outline of that?”
“Yes.”
“Where is that paper?”
Almost involuntarily, Quinlan’s hand dropped to his pocket. Then he remembered. The triangular piece of paper had been in the pocket of the wet suit he had taken off to have sent to the cleaner. Because the paper had no weight, no bulk, he had overlooked it. To confess his negligence in this was unthinkable. He tried to keep his voice casual.
“I have it at home.”
Walworth’s comment was short and to the point.
“Get it,” he said, and then added disgustedly, “what a slipshod way of identifying a tire!”
Quinlan parked his car in front of his house and, because he intended to start back for the courthouse almost at once, left the door open.
He walked across the sidewalk, turned to the right on the smaller walk which skirted the house and went around to the back porch.
He entered quietly and climbed the stairs to his room. He wondered if his wife had made a careful search of his pockets in preparing the wet suit for the cleaners. If she hadn’t, could he get hold of the suit before the bit of paper had been ruined?
Quinlan’s pulse gave an involuntary reaction to the relief he felt as he looked at the place on the top of his dresser which was reserved for his personal trinkets. Every minute since his talk with the criminologist had been a thought-tortured nightmare of apprehension that the piece of paper might have been irrevocably lost. But there it was, lying on the dresser, a mud-soiled triangular slip of paper, silent tribute to the thorough-going loyalty of a steadfast helpmeet.
Quinlan picked up the paper, turned and walked quietly back down the stairs.
From the living room, he heard Beryl’s clear voice, remarkable for its low-pitched carrying power, saying into the telephone, “Rate Clerk, will you please give me the long distance rate to San Rodolpho — after seven o’clock at night, please?... Thank you very much.”
Quinlan left the house by the back door. He noticed that his daughter’s car was parked in front of the garage, a ramshackle, juvenile thing she had picked up herself a couple of years or so ago.
She should sell that car, the undersheriff thought speculatively, looking at it without quite seeing it, a whoopee that was getting on its last legs, a jalopy that would start going to pieces pretty fast but which was worth money now. When new cars came...