Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Crooked Candle

Mason opened the drawer in his desk and handed Drake a photograph that showed the print of the bloody foot on the tread of the companionway.

“Well, what’s wrong with it?” Drake asked after he’d studied it for some time.

“It wasn’t made under the conditions mentioned.”

“Why?”

Mason said, “We’ll get back to the question of tides again. What’s the location of that footprint?”

“Right slap bang in the middle of the tread,” Drake said.

“Exactly. Now suppose that at the time she went out there the yacht was heeled way over. She’d have stepped in a pool of blood — then what would have happened? She’d have started up those stairs or, as they call it in yachting terms, companionway. What would have happened? Ever try to climb a slanting stairway?”

“No,” Drake said. “Why should I?”

Mason walked over to the closet, took out a stepladder, tilted it very carefully until he was holding it at a certain angle.

“All right,” he said, “this is just about the angle of the candle. Now suppose you were going to climb up there. What would you do, Paul?”

Drake said, “If I had to climb up that, I wouldn’t.”

“Yes you would,” Mason told him. “You’d climb up, but what would you do?”

Drake shook his head. “I don’t get you.”

Della Street walked over to the stepladder, raised her skirts slightly so the men could see the position of her feet clearly. “There’s only one way to do it, Paul. You wouldn’t put your feet in the center of the treads at all. You’d put them over in the corner, over against the edge of the ladder on the low side.”

“Exactly,” Mason said.

Drake whistled. “Then you don’t think...”

“I know,” Mason said, “that bloody footprint must have been made when the yacht was on a relatively even keel.”

“Well, that’s all right, Perry. She says she went out there as soon as she got the news. The location of that footprint corroborates her story. The yacht didn’t start tilting until around nine o’clock. And Cameron tells about the dinghy being taken out...”

“Okay,” Mason interrupted, “all that checks. The only trouble with it is that the man wasn’t dead then.”

“Sure he was. Reconstruct what happened and it all checks. Burbank went out to the yacht with Milfield, had a fight, knocked him over so that the guy’s head was cracked on the brass threshold and...”

“Or,” Mason interrupted, “hit him, knocked him over, cast his rowboat adrift and then came ashore. Someone else rowed out to the yacht, killed Milfield and left. That’s what I’ve got to establish if I’m going to get Burbank and Carol out of this mess. And it’s what must have happened.”

“Well,” Drake said dubiously, “it would be a swell out for you — if you could prove it, Perry. But how can you prove it? There would then have been just two men on the yacht, Milfield and the murderer. Milfield can’t talk, and the murderer won’t.”

Mason said, “Perhaps the murderer will talk. Perhaps he has. And the yacht will talk. All you need to do is to take into consideration the state of the tides, as any yachtsman would do, and you find the story of the prosecution and the story that has been told by the various people simply don’t check.”

“What does check?” Della Street asked.

Mason resumed his pacing the floor. “This chap, Burwell,” he said abruptly, “he seems to be a naive lad in the throes of a first illicit love affair — but notice that he isn’t as naive as he pretends. He says he was coming down here on the Lark, Friday night. Was he? Do you notice that he says Daphne Milfield told him of her husband’s death before Lieutenant Tragg could possibly have told her? Before I visited her. Do you notice how closely the mysterious person who was so interested in the nocturnal habits of sharks resembles this chap, Burwell?

“Let’s suppose Roger Burbank hit Milfield and knocked him over. He left in a rage. Carol returns and finds the man lying with his head resting on that brass-covered threshold. She thinks her father must have killed him. Her father thinks so too. But suppose her father didn’t kill him? Then we must look to the yacht itself and to the evidence of circumstances to tell us what happened and who did kill Milfield. It’s simply a matter of trying to get things to check. The elements of the case are so simple that a child can grasp them, but when you put them together, they simply don’t fit. Let’s look at it from this angle. High tide was at five-forty-one p. m. Take the testimony of the witness, Cameron. Here, I’ll make you a schedule.”

Mason, took a pad of legal foolscap from the desk, picked up a pencil and tabulated certain figures.

Then he passed the schedule across to Paul Drake, and Della Street came to look over his shoulder.

The schedule read —

Friday night...............................................................high tide 5:41 p. m.

Low tide..................................................................three minutes past midnight, making it 12:03 Saturday morning.

Next high tide............................................................6:26 a. m. Saturday morning.

Therefore, boat was aground — so it couldn’t have been moved Friday night 8:00 p. m.

Started tilting.............................................................9:00 p.m.

Had tilted way over.....................................................10:30 p.m.

Would, therefore, start tilting back...................................2:00 a.m.

Nearly erect, but still aground.........................................3:00 a.m.

Floating again............................................................4:00 a.m.

Aground again............................................................8:45 a.m. Saturday morning.

Started tilting............................................................9:45 a.m. Saturday morning.

Tilted way over.........................................................11:15 a.m. — at time police arrive.

Drake studied the schedule and nodded. “That seems simple enough,” he said.

“All right,” Mason announced, taking the pad of legal foolscap once more, “here we have a crude diagram of the interior of the cabin and the position of the body. I’ll make two positions. Position number one which shows where the body lay when the head struck against the threshold. And position number two, where the body was found.

“Now bear this in mind, Paul: The tilting of the yacht would roll the body down to position number two. But when the next high tide came along, the body would never roll hack to position number one. All that would happen would be that the yacht, when it floated on the next high tide, would float on an even keel. But because of the position of the anchors and the direction of the tidal currents, when the yacht started to tilt again, it would tilt over to the right side, leaving the starboard side down and the port side up. Therefore, once the body arrived at position number two, it would remain there until it was moved by some human agency. Here, take a look at the sketch and it will show you what I mean.”

Mason handed Drake the sketched diagram.

“Well,” Drake said, “there doesn’t seem to me to be any great conflict in all of this, Perry.”

Mason said, “All right, now let’s start checking the testimony and the physical facts of the case with this schedule. The autopsy surgeon says that there were no wounds on the body from which there would have been any bleeding save that gash in the back of the head which was immediately over the fractured portion of the skull and which we may, therefore, refer to as the fatal wound. Now then, there is blood on the threshold at position number one — rather a considerable amount of blood. Here. I’ll sketch that in the diagram. There is also some blood near the head of the body in position number two, leaving two distinct pools of blood in the carpet with no connection between them save a few isolated drops of blood which would have been deposited when the body rolled. Now that is to be expected because the body would lie in position number one until the tilting of the yacht caused it to start rolling. But once it had started rolling, the tilt would have been sufficiently pronounced to have made it roll over and over without stopping, until it fetched up against the right side of the cabin. Here, let’s check it on the diagram.”