Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

Kehoe cut himself another slice of lamb, the knife grating on the bone of the roast. “What Lefner is trying to say,” he began, “is that real police cases aren’t like the shows on TV. On the crime shows everything’s neatly wrapped up at the finish. But in real-life criminal cases there are a lot of loose ends-”

“Ez the police,” interrupted Joshua, “oi merely want yez to explain how that one footprint got up by the body, when the foot that made it wuz fifty yards away, caught tight in a bear trap. Is that too much fer a tax-payin’, law-abidin’ citizen to ask?”

Lefner was taken with a sudden fit of coughing. “Josh, we’ve got to be getting back to town,” he said finally, getting control of himself. “Now we’re going to have to wake Tip, and when we do, I don’t want to hear anything more about that footprint. The boy’s been through enough for one day.”

“Then ye wouldn’t be interested in me theory.”

Kehoe and Lefner looked at one another and then both stared at Joshua. “What theory?” asked Kehoe.

“About the footprint, uv course. But if you two detective gintlemen are too busy, why…”

Lefner, red-faced, began rising from his chair. Kehoe restrained him. “Just a minute, Vern. How long will this take, Josh?”

“P’rhaps thirty minutes. Oi’m sure Tip’ll sleep that much longer. He drank almost ez much ez oi did from that bottle, an’ he ain’t had near the practice.”

“Okay!” Lefner pounded the table. “Okay, Josh. We’ll hear you out. But it had better make sense. And after this, no more talk about that blasted footprint. Agreed?”

“Yer charmin’ manner puts me completely in yer power,” Joshua said. “Agreed.”

The Indian stood up and dug a hand deep into a trousers pocket. Then he held the hand over the table and allowed three scraps of grimy paper to fall lightly in front of Lefner. “Oi’d ask yez to look at these,” he said. “Meanwhile oi’ll be outside, lookin’ about a bit.”

As Joshua left the room, Lefner took one of the bits of paper and passed another to Kehoe. “Looks like an IOU,” Lefner said. “From Tip Spearing to Joshua. Seven dollars and eighteen cents.”

“Mine’s the same,” Kehoe said. “But the amount’s different. A dollar and a quarter.”

“Less than a week old, both of them. The third’s for five dollars even. Josh probably got ’em in one of those poker games they hold at the hotel. Everybody in town knows Tip gives IOU’s. But he always makes good on them.”

“But what’s this got to do with the footprint?” Kehoe asked. “I still don’t see-”

He was interrupted by the thump of something being deposited on the back porch. Then the outside door burst open, and amid a blast of frigid air, Joshua entered, smiling broadly at the two.

“We saw the IOU’s, Josh,” Lefner said. “What’s the matter, don’t you think Tip will make good, now that his father’s dead?”

“Oi’ll disregard yer remark ez unworthy uv ye,” Joshua said, grinning expansively. “Fer while yez two were sittin’ here stuffin’ yerselves, oi’ve been solvin’ the murder of Karl Spearing.”

“Murder!” Lefner’s face turned a beet-red. “Josh, I’ve heard enough already. Nothing’s been said at all about Karl Spearing’s being murdered.”

“Yes there has. Oi just said it meself. Now if ye’ll calm down a bit, oi’ll elucidate fer ye.”

Lefner turned to Kehoe, shaking his head.

“Ye see, Vernon,” Joshua began, “there wuz somethin’ about Karl Spearing lyin’ there in the snow that disturbed me from the first. In addition to the footprint, oi mean. A couple of things, in fact. In the first place, while the snow around the body itself wuz drenched with blood, there wuz none to speak uv back at the trap. What oi mean to say is, the leg wuz covered with it, but none at all on the snow. Even if Karl had wrapped his tourniquet to the tightest, seems ez if there’d be a drop or two, don’t it?”

Kehoe was seeing the Indian through new eyes. “You know, you’re right,” he said. “But that’s still not conclusive, Josh.”

“P’rhaps not. But try this. Karl Spearing had a sheath knife to do his cuttin’ with. The blade wuz mebbe six inches long. Oh, t’was sharp enough, and he could hev performed the amputation with it. But only if he’d cut off his leg at the knee where the joints come together. But no. The bones wuz sheared through cleanly, a few inches below the joint. An’ ye just can’t cut a bone like that with a knife without doin’ a good bit o’ hagglin’ at it. Ye kin experiment on the lamb roast right now, if ye’d like.”

Both Kehoe and Lefner let their confusion show in their faces. Their preconceived notions were trickling out of their minds like sand through an hourglass.

“Karl Spearing’s leg,” Joshua went on, “wuz cut off with the one weapon an outdoorsman might carry that could slice through bone with a single cut – a finely-honed ax.”

“Wait a minute,” protested Lefner. “Karl Spearing didn’t have an ax with him.”

“Ah.” Joshua held up a finger triumphantly. “So finally yer comin’ around to me way o’ thinkin’, eh? Ye’ll admit, then, the presence uv a second party?”

“Well… yeah, I suppose so,” Lefner said. “But I still don’t see how the other person got there. I mean, there were no tracks around except Karl’s.”

“But there wuz other tracks, don’t ye see? Don’t forget the trail Tip Spearing, Mr Kehoe an’ me made when we went to view the body.”

“Why, sure we did,” Kehoe said. “But neither of us killed-” He stopped abruptly.

“Yer beginnin’ to see what oi’m drivin’ at, ain’t ye?” Joshua said, smiling.

Kehoe jerked a thumb in the direction of the livingroom. “Are you saying you think Tip killed his own father and then retraced his trail back to where we were?”

“Somethin’ like that. O’ course the killin’ wuz probably done a day or so ago. But ez long ez Tip walked in the tracks he’d first made, there’d be just the single trail. When Tip located us in the woods an’ took us to the body, we figured the tracks had been made when he discovered his father. But they could just ez easy uv been put there a day or two before, when the killin’ wuz done.”

“Josh,” Lefner said, “I don’t care when the trail to the body was made. I still can’t see that Tip’s guilty of murder. I mean, what motive did he have?”

“Karl Spearing owns this house and a good deal uv the land around here. A man uv considerable means. An’ yet Tip, his own son, wasn’t allowed to have enough pocket money even to play a few hands uv penny-ante poker. He had to use IOU’s an’ then account to his father for every cent he lost. A most degradin’ situation fer Tip. Might it be that he went searchin’ fer his father to ask fer money to pay his debts? Tempers flared, an’ there wuz a fight, with Karl comin’ out the loser. Oi tried to point out this possible motive by presentin’ yez with them IOU’s uv mine, but I suspect ye wuz hard put to divine their true meanin’.”

“So you think Tip killed his father, eh?” asked Lefner. “Well what about the foot in the trap? And that footprint by the body?”

“All right, let’s sum up the whole operation. At some time yesterday-or p’rhaps the day before, I dunno, what with the body bein’ froze the way it wuz-Tip is out in the woods, carryin’ an ax. He sees his father on the game trail an’ decides to ask fer money. There’s an argument, ez I said, an’ a brief struggle. Tip loses his temper an’ swings the ax, takin’ off Karl’s leg. Karl falls to the ground, fast bleedin’ to death, right at the spot where we seen his body. Out there in the woods, who wuz to hear his cries of pain?