Stephen Barr - Best of the best detective stories - 25th anniversary collection

Lieutenant Trant lit a cigarette. He was thinking hard and he discovered that he was beginning to relish this situation which, whatever it turned out to be, was no longer trite.

He sat down on the arm of a chair. All three of them were watching him as if he were a time bomb.

He glanced at Marna. “So that’s your story. Your husband was dead when you came home?”

“It’s true.”

Trant smiled. “You would hardly admit that it was a lie, Mrs. Hyde. Of course, with those gloves, there’d be no fingerprints on the gun. You picked a lucky time for your disagreement with milk.”

“Mama’s milk allergy is on the level,” barked Eddie. “Show him your hands, Marna.”

Marna peeled off her right glove. There was no doubt about the allergy. Her thumb, the tips of her second and first fingers and the whole middle of her palm were sprinkled with little white blisters. She turned the hand over. Her knuckles were split. She put the glove on again.

Lieutenant Trant looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hyde. I shouldn’t have doubted your word.” He eyed her almost with affection. “I might as well explain my presence. There’s no magic involved. I’m on the Big Pal sucker list. This morning I got what should have been the appeal. It wasn’t. I got George’s letter instead. I came to see what would happen here at five o’clock.”

The drinks were still on the tray. Eddie poured himself a shot of straight rye. Neither of the girls spoke.

“I thought,” continued Trant, “that I had received the letter by mistake. That, of course, was what I was supposed to think. Unhappily, I don’t think it any more.”

Marna said: “What do you think?”

Trant did not reply. “When you’re sending out appeals to people on an alphabetical list, the only way to do it without driving yourself crazy is to send them in alphabetical order.”

“That’s what I did.”

“Exactly. Yesterday you got up to the I’s. I took a look at your desk. Today you began with the J’s and K’s. My name’s Trant. Certainly you hadn’t got to the T’s yesterday. You couldn’t inadvertently have put George’s letter in an envelope for me by yesterday.”

Eddie asked: “Which means?”

“That the letter was sent to me by-mistake-on-purpose. Someone saw my name on the sucker list and knew my reputation as a sort of crackpot policeman. They knew if I received the letter I’d be intrigued enough to show up here at five.”

The two girls together asked: “But why?”

“Because they wanted me to come. The letter would have given me a preconceived idea of motive. I would have found George’s body and realized right away that he had attacked his wife and she had shot him in self-defense. I would have written George off as a victim of justifiable homicide. I might even have made a little speech to Mrs. Hyde about Valiant American Womanhood. Yes, it was a neat trap, a very neat trap.”

Eddie asked belligerently: “Are you suggesting that Marna...”

“I’m not suggesting that Mrs. Hyde did anything at all.” Trant looked at Eddie. “Do you have a key to this apartment?”

“Of course I don’t.”

“But you were hoping to marry Mrs. Hyde once she got the divorce?”

He flushed. “I was and I am.”

Trant turned to Marna. “I imagine your husband was quite rich.”

“He was very well off.”

“Seems to have been a kind of irresponsible character. Didn’t make the money himself, did he?”

“No. It’s a trust. When his parents died, they left it all to him in trust. He can’t touch the capital. Just the income.”

Lieutenant Trant was still watching Marna. “Lucky accident my arrival coincided with your sister-in-law’s, wasn’t it? If I’d come a minute earlier, you wouldn’t have let me in. If I’d arrived a minute later, you’d have told Joan about George and you would not have let anyone in either.”

Trant continued musingly: “I always rather suspect lucky accidents. They’re not always as accidental as they seem.”

He shifted his quiet attention to Joan Hyde. “You live here. Miss Hyde. Perhaps you saw Marna writing that letter to George yesterday. Perhaps you even offered to mail it.”

Joan Hyde looked back at him blankly.

“I suppose,” he went on in his soft, almost gentle voice, “you called George in Mama’s name and asked him to come a little before five. After you’d killed him, you went downstairs, saw Marna come home and waited for me. That was an ingenious device, assuming I was a beau of Mama’s. It gave you a chance to sell me once and for all on the manslaughter set-up. The violent George, the unchanged lock...”

Her dark eyes blazing, Joan snapped: “You’re mad.”

Lieutenant Trant looked disappointed. “Why do murderers always say: You’re mad? Do you suppose they pick it up in the movies?”

“You...”

“In any case, I’m afraid the movies have been your downfall. Miss Hyde. You got just a little too chatty about your French film. You told me you never dreamed at the beginning that Barrault wouldn’t get Arletty in the end. To be in doubt about the end of a movie at the beginning proves quite definitely that you saw the beginning first.”

He picked up the newspaper from the arm of the chair. “That French movie happens to be playing at only one Manhattan house. I notice here in the timetable that it begins at 1:20, 3:20 and 5:20. Since you saw the beginning before the end you could not possibly have seen the 3:20 show and arrived here just before five. If you went to the movie at all today, you went to the show which was over just before 3:20. That gave you plenty of time to eliminate George.” He paused. “That does horrid things to your alibi, doesn’t it?”

Joan Hyde seemed stunned. So did Eddie and Marna.

Eddie asked: “But why would Joan...?”

“Failing offspring, a trust fund reverts to the family.” Trant’s amiable gaze moved to Marna. “Am I right in assuming that Miss Hyde is the family?”

“Why, yes,” faltered Marna. “She’s the only other child. I suppose the trust goes to her.”

“Money.” Lieutenant Trant sighed. “Such an orthodox motive. Perhaps you’d give me the name of your husband’s lawyer. Just to check.”

He produced a pencil and a piece of paper. Marna took the pencil in her right hand and scribbled. Trant put the paper in his pocket. He was still watching Marna.

“When you discovered the corpse, you thought Eddie must have done it, didn’t you? Once you’d realized no court would convict you, you’d almost certainly have taken the rap for his sake. Yes, it was quite an expert little scheme for disposing of an alcoholic brother and living happily ever after on his trust fund.”

He moved to Joan Hyde. He always felt a slight pang when the time came to arrest an attractive and clever murderess.

She was still quite calm and her eyes were hard with anger. “You’ll never prove it. Never.”

Trant grinned. “You’ll be surprised at what I can prove when I put my mind to it. For example, we’ve hardly scratched that milk allergy, have we?”

He turned to Marna. “Would you take off your glove again?”

The girl obeyed. Trant drew Joan toward her sister-in-law.

“Your sister-in-law wrote down the lawyer’s name for me. See how the pressure of the pencil broke those little blisters? Blisters are very sensitive, Miss Hyde. I challenge even you to have fired a gun and kept your blisters intact.” He shrugged. “Mrs. Hyde couldn’t have fired the gun. Eddie, who didn’t have a key, couldn’t have got in. So... Like me to do some more proving?”

Eddie was gazing at Mama’s hand. He muttered: “For heaven’s sake, he’s proved it, Marna. It took him just ten minutes.”