Parnell Hall - The Wrong Gun

“That’s not so surprising,” Steve said. “The man spent the whole case gearing every theory to the fact Timberlaine was guilty. He’s had just this morning to adjust to the idea he might be innocent. It’s like every notion he had was pulled out from under him. If you consider that, he’s doing fine.”

“And when you consider how fast the evidence jumped around,” Tracy said. “‘Keep your eye on the gun.’ Boy, was that ever prophetic.”

“Why’d you give it to him?” Taylor said. He jerked his thumb. “The press, I mean. Like you said, you could have pulled this off without telling him at all.”

“Which wouldn’t have been fair. If the guy’s decent enough to play ball, he should have a chance to play ball. There’s a bottom line here. Vaulding didn’t want to win if it meant convicting an innocent man.”

“Of course not,” Tracy said.

“There’s no ‘of course not’ about it. Some do. Vaulding deserves credit for not being one of them. And if this case gets him reelected, hey, it’s nice to know we got a friend in this county.”

Mark Taylor set down his glass. “Can we go now?”

Tracy held up her hand. “In a minute. Let’s finish the postmortem.”

“What more is there to say?”

“There’s a lot more to say. Look, Steve, I heard what you said to Vaulding. And I’m sure a lot of it’s true. What I want to know is, how in hell did you figure it out?”

“Oh, that was easy,” Steve said.

Tracy exhaled. She snatched off her glasses, folded them up, put her hands on her hips. “I knew you were going to say that,” she said. “Now, then, you infuriating man, at the risk of being strangled, would you tell me what you mean by that?”

“Well, I should think it’s obvious,” Steve said. “Considering the fact this all started with Timberlaine inviting us out to his mansion for the weekend, then the whole bit with the switching gun and the people changing rooms and the body on the floor of the gun room-all the elements of your basic mystery novel-well, considering all that, and considering who Martin Kessington was, the solution was obvious.”

Tracy frowned. “What do you mean?”

Steve grinned, ducked his head and moved well out of Tracy’s reach before answering.

“The butler did it.”