Корнелл Вулрич: Murder at Mother’s Knee [= Something That Happened in Our House]

She came out again the first thing next morning. Kendall came forward to meet her as she neared the pool. He told her they’d finally gotten the car out a little after daybreak, with the help of a farm-tractor run in under the trees, plenty of stout ropes, and some grappling hooks. She could see the weird-looking sand-encrusted shape standing there on the bank, scarcely recognizable for what it was.

“Kenneth Johnson all right,” Kendall said quietly, “and still inside it when we got it up. But murdered before he was ever swallowed up in the sand. I have a confession from the two Masons. He gave Ed a hitch back along the road that night, like a fool. Mason got him to step in for a minute on some excuse or other, when they’d reached his place, so he’d have a chance to rifle his wallet. Johnson caught him in the act, and Mason and his accomplice of a father murdered him between them with a flatiron. Then they put him back in the car, drove him over here, and sent it in. No need to go any closer, it’s not a very pretty sight.”

On the way out he asked: “But what made you change your mind so suddenly? Only yesterday morning when I met you you were ready to—”

“I sat down on a stump not far from the pool, and afterwards I discovered axle-grease on my dress. It was so damp and moldy in there that the clot that had fallen from the car hadn’t dried out yet, the way it would have in the open. Why should a car be driven in there where there was no road?

“But the main thing. was still that famous composition of Johnny’s. I happened to reread that, immediately after the re-enactment they had staged for my particular benefit. Ed Mason’s hat, the second time, was lying in the exact same place and manner that Johnny had seen the other hat, Johnson’s, lying the first time. Both fell through the open scuttle-hole in the stove onto the ashes below. Is it probable that a hat, flung off somebody’s head in the course of a struggle, would land in the identical place twice? Hardly. Things like that just don’t happen. It had been deliberately placed there for me to see, to point up the similarity with what had happened before.”

That night, safely ensconced back in her old quarters in town, she was going over back-schoolwork when her landlady knocked on the door. “There’s a gentleman downstairs to see you. He says it’s not business, but social.”

Miss Prince smiled a little. “I think I know who it is. Tell him I’ll be right down as soon as I’ve finished grading these papers.”

She picked up Johnny Gaines’. She marked it A-plus, the highest possible mark she could give, without bothering for once about grammar, punctuation or spelling. Then she put on her hat, turned down the light, and went out.