Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

Roberts made a wry grin. “Just a word of warning,” he said. “Although Lucille Winkler died last month of a stroke at the age of eighty, her older sister Agnes – an invalid in a wheelchair – is still alive, in a nursing home. So no rash accusations, okay? The laws concerning slander and defamation of character apply here just as well as anywhere else.”

“Paul,” said Mr Strang ingenuously. “We merely intend to examine the evidence and see where it leads.”

“Oh, sure, Mr Strang. Just like you always do.” A loud guffaw from the rear, and Roberts turned back to the class. “I’ll just start things off by saying that at the time Simon Winkler came to call on his aunts, he was in the process of trying to take their house away from them by some kind of sharp legal ploy. The two old women hated his guts. They made no bones during the entire investigation about how much they despised their nephew. So Simon Winkler’s visit to his aunts was hardly a social call.”

He motioned to the priest. “Now I’d like to introduce the man who was actually present in the house at the time of Simon Winkler’s death. Want to step up here, Father Penn, please?”

Father Raymond Penn came to the front of the classroom, where he used a finger to hook the white collar tab out of his shirt and undo the top button. To most of the boys the young priest seemed like a “right buy”; many of the girls found him adorable. He jammed his hands into his pants pockets and looked out at the class as if puzzled and bewildered by the human condition.

“By the time Lucille Winkler got in touch with me, Simon had already phoned her several times,” he began. “Lucille had put him off with one excuse or another, but when it became clear that eventually she’d have to see him about who really owned the house, she set a date and asked me to be there. She wanted a witness present, you see.

“When I arrived at the Winkler house that afternoon, the weather was about as wet as it could be. Rain had been pouring down for the past few days and nights, and the weatherman had predicted more of the same. I banged the knocker on the front door and heard Lucille fumbling with the lock, but by the time it opened, my hat was just a mass of soaked cloth.

“Lucille took my hat and raincoat to dry them off at the stove in the kitchen. Since she also had to tend to Agnes in the wheelchair, she left me alone in the living room for quite some time.”

He shrugged. “Matter of fact, I read three chapters in a book on fishing that was on the coffee table. I was just deciding whether I’d spent my next vacation catching bass in Canada or fishing for blue marlin off Mexico when she came back, wheeling Agnes in front of her. Gone about half an hour, I’d say.”

Roberts looked significantly at Mr Strang. Puckishly the teacher wiggled his fingers.

“We chatted for a while,” Penn went on. “Mostly about the weather. Lucille prattled on a lot about spending most of the previous dry week dragging the lawn sprinklers around that big back yard of theirs, and now here they had so much water it was like living under a faucet.

“Finally Agnes looked out the window. ‘I think Simon has arrived, Lucille,’ she said. ‘We must have some tea.’

“Outside, Simon Winkler was getting out of a cab. From what I could see, he was about fifty or fifty-five years old.”

“Fifty-four,” interrupted Roberts.

The priest nodded. “But then I glanced back and noticed Lucille,” he went on. “She was giving her sister the oddest look. Then she said, ‘I’ll put the water on.’ She went out to the kitchen, but she was only gone for a minute or so.”

Penn took a deep breath, and his eyes grew wide. “Now we come to the part the newspapers called weird. Me, I say it’s downright eerie. You see, just as Lucille came back, there was a loud knocking at the front door, and Simon Winkler was shouting through it for someone to hurry and open up. ‘Soaked to the skin!’ I heard him yell. I felt sorry for him because I’d been through the same thing just an hour before. Lucille was fumbling with the bolt – she had arthritis in both hands – and I was wishing there were a window in the door so I could at least make a sign to him that we were opening the door as fast as we could, when” – the priest’s voice grew low and sonorous – “when there was the sound of a dull thump from outside. That was followed by another sound – like something heavy sliding down the length of the door.”

The students looked at him in rapt silence. This was what they had been waiting for.

“Seconds later we got the door open. And the rain poured in on us, because something was propping open the outer storm door.” Penn pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.

“The thing holding open the storm door,” he continued, “was the body of Simon Winkler. He was lying on the front stoop with blood gushing from his head. There were some gardening implements on the stoop – a bushel basket and some other things – and the blood had stained them all red, even in the rain. I was numb. Didn’t know what to think or do. Finally I felt for a pulse. There was none. Winkler was dead.”

A pencil falling to the floor sounded like a cannon shot in the classroom.

“Well,” said Penn, “I tried to get the women back into the house. But they just stood in the doorway, staring at the body. Finally I told Lucille to go inside and call the police. Agnes and I remained in the doorway looking down at the body. The rain was coming in, but it seemed almost obscene just to leave the body there without anyone – I mean-”

He swallowed loudly, mopped at his face with the handkerchief, and sagged into a chair.

“What hit him?” asked Richie Cornish.

Roberts got to his feet. “That’s what we’d like to know too, young fella,” he said. “It was at this point the police entered the case. The first patrol car that pulled up found Father Penn and Agnes Winkler looking down at the body at the doorway. A sheet was put around the body and the sheet immediately soaked through with rain and blood.”

Roberts drew out a report form from the file folder he was holding and consulted it, speaking in a low voice: “I arrived on the scene at four thirty-five pm. We ran a grease pencil outline of the body on the stoop and then had the body taken to the morgue. By that time the door was closed again, but before knocking I looked around a little. There, on one side of the stoop, was a bushel basket with a handful of weeds in it, and a metal sprinkling can lying on its side. On the other side of the stoop was a shiny new pair of grass shears and a little trowel. And that was all.”

The detective’s expression was grim, and he stared almost belligerently at the class. “Each of those things weighed a pound or two at most,” he snapped. “Sure, some of ’em could give a man a headache or even knock him out if he was hit with enough force. And the grass shears would have made a perfect stabbing weapon, except that Winkler wasn’t stabbed. His skull was crushed like an eggshell. And dammit – excuse me, Mr Strang – there just was nothing around heavy enough to do it. We checked the stoop and walk for loose cement or to see whether a part of the wrought-iron railing might have been pulled away. Nothing.”

He spread his hands. “There you have it. Oh, sure, we went inside and questioned Lucille, Agnes, and Father Penn. And we got the same story you heard just now. I even had the house searched. Neat as a pin, everything in its place. And absolutely no indication that someone besides the two women might have been living there, or hiding there, who could have done it.

“And now,” he said, “let’s take a look at the scene of the crime.” The detective nodded at two boys at the rear of the room. One lowered the window shades and the other pressed the switch of a slide projector. A shaft of light lanced across the room, and on the screen at the front appeared a picture of an incredibly ugly house surrounded by what seemed to be acres of badly kept lawns and gardens.