Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Smoking Chimney

Lassen turned to Duryea. The look which he flashed him was filled with significance.

Duryea swung around, elevating one knee to the cushion of the seat so that he could see Gramps to better advantage. “By George,” he said, “you may have something there!”

“You’re ring-ding-tootin’ I’ve got somethin’ there,” Gramps said, “an’ remember that at that time the shades were all drawn. When the body was discovered, the shades were all up an’ the light was burnin’.”

“The murderer could have waited until Sonders and True drove off, then lit the lamp and raised the curtains.”

“Nope,” Gramps said. “The lamp shows that it was lit right around three o’clock. That lamp ain’t doin’ any lyin’... I tell you the murderer made two trips to that cabin... Now, take a look at that suicide note. The printin’ on it was cut from a newspaper that didn’t get to Petrie until after nine o’clock in the evenin’. That suicide note took a little thought to work out — an’ a little time... Not much thought an’ not too much time, but some.”

“What are you getting at?” Lassen asked.

“That there suicide note was planted when the murderer made the second trip to the cabin. An’ somethin’ happened to frighten the murderer, so that he never stayed long enough to make the lamp burn right, an’ keep the chimney from smokin’... That was right about three o’clock in the mornin’. Now I’ll tell you what that somethin’ was. It was that girl, Eva Raymond, came out to try an’ use a little soft soap on Pressman an’ put in a good word for her boyfriend — with maybe a couple of good words for herself. She came up on the porch, saw the body, screamed, and ran pell-mell. That’s when she dropped her compact... It had to be that way. An’ the murderer had to be in there, right at that time.”

Duryea said in a crisp, businesslike tone: “All right, Gramps, let’s quit stalling. Where’s Eva Raymond?”

“She’s in that cabin,” Gramps said sheepishly. “I was sorta makin’ a little test.”

Duryea said: “Take the handcuffs off of him, Borden. All right, Pete, let’s get going... It’s a crackpot theory, but it might hold water.”

“Crackpot nothin’,” Gramps sputtered. “It’s logic, cold, hard, remorseless logic. You can’t get away from it in a hundred years, not in a million years... And I tell you somethin’ else. The only way you’ve got of makin’ that murderer betray himself is through this Eva Raymond. He ain’t sure but what she saw him through the open window. That’s the thing that’s scaring him stiff. He’s got his tracks all covered except for that one thing.”

“It would have simplified matters a lot if Eva Raymond had told me the truth,” Duryea said dryly.

Gramps rushed to her rescue. “Now you can’t be too hard on that little girl,” he said. “She’s had to make her own way in the world ever since—”

It was Milred’s bell-like laughter that interrupted him. “Remember what I told you,” she said to her husband. “In dealing with a male Wiggins, cherchez la femme .”

Thirty minutes later, when Gramps had produced Eva Raymond and made additional explanations, when the feeling that he had been restored to the good graces of the officers had given him additional self-confidence, he said: “Now then, the murder was committed with Pressman’s gun. That means either one of two things: that it was a premeditated job and someone got hold of Pressman’s gun so as to make it look like suicide; or that the person that killed him didn’t intend to kill him. But something came up, and there was an argument, and Pressman’s gun was lying where it could be reached... Now, the way I figure it, if it had been premeditated right from the start, the murderer would have had that suicide note all worked out, and wouldn’t have had to get it from a newspaper that didn’t arrive in Petrie until four hours after the murder... Now that there suicide note is significant. I’ve read a lot of true detective stories. Every time a man makes a note by cutting words out of a newspaper, it’s because he don’t want his handwriting to be recognized. It’s a stunt they use for kidnap notes and things of that sort... Ain’t that right, Sheriff?”

“That’s right,” Lassen agreed, smiling tolerantly and winking at Duryea.

“Well,” Gramps went on, almost quivering with eagerness, “that’s the way it was here. The person who fixed up that suicide note was trying to keep from having to use his own handwriting. Now if Pressman had been writing that suicide note, naturally he wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble. So the minute you see a suicide note made from pieces cut from a paper, you realize it’s just a red herring... Ain’t that right?”

“That’s right,” Duryea said, flashing a glance at Milred. “Even in our humble and amateurish way, Gramps, we recognized that as soon as we saw the suicide note.”

“All right,” Gramps went on, ignoring the sarcasm. “If that suicide note wasn’t intended to deceive anybody into makin’ ’em think it was suicide, then what was the object of leavin’ it?”

“I’ll bite,” Duryea smiled. “What was it, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”

“I’ll tell you what it was,” Gramps said. “It was because the murderer was tryin’ to make people think he was dumb, that he was so dumb he’d think the authorities would take the thing as a suicide; but mostly he was tryin’ to make the authorities think he didn’t know who Pressman was .”

“How do you get that?” Lassen asked.

“Because he intimated in the note that Pressman was committin’ suicide because he didn’t have enough money an’ had a lot of financial worries... Now, right away the authorities could be expected to say to themselves: ‘This murderer ain’t very bright. He wanted us to think this was a suicide. He wanted us to think the man had killed himself over financial worries. Therefore, he certainly didn’t know the man was anything other than an obscure chicken rancher.’ You get me?”

Milred said suddenly: “Go ahead, Gramps. I think you’re doing swell.”

“You’re doggoned right I’m doin’ swell,” Gramps said, “because I’m stickin’ to cold, hard logic. Now then, you folks just come up here on the porch, an’ I’ll show you something. You might sort of s’pose that we’re Everett True an’ Hugh Sonders comin’ to call on Pressman... Now, then, I’ll take the front door an’ be Sonders, an’ you folks go around to the back door just the way Everett True did, an’ when you hear me start knockin’ and poundin’ on the door, why, you start knockin’ an’ poundin’ on the door, an’ I’ll show you something about the way the murderer gave himself away. Eva, you go with the officers.”

Duryea said good-naturedly: “All right, folks, come on, let’s go. Gramps has done so well so far, it seems a shame to deprive him of an opportunity to pull some more rabbits out of the hat.”

“You just go right around to the back door now,” Gramps said. “Come on. Let’s get started.”

The little group filed around towards the back of the house. Borden, splitting away from the others, said: “I’ll just take a look around the yard and be seeing you soon as I know the coast’s clear.”

“The old man has something on the ball,” Duryea said.

“Something!” the sheriff exclaimed. “He’s making a safe hit every time the ball comes over the plate!”

Duryea said: “All right, here’s the porch. We go up and knock.”

The little group filed up on the back porch.

“Go ahead and start knockin’,” Gramps called from the front of the house.