Brett Halliday - Michael Shaynes' 50th case

One decent break was all he needed. One major case which he could solve triumphantly and single-handedly by application of the rules of Scientific Crime Investigation as set forth in his books on the subject might well bring him nation-wide prominence and a personal invitation from J. Edgar Hoover to appear in Washington forthwith.

After eight months of patient waiting, Leroy Smith’s big chance had finally come to him. Here he was, in charge of a big important murder case. Well, practically in charge. There was no doubt in his own mind that the solution of the crime was strictly up to him.

Hadn’t Chief Jenson said so this morning when he dispatched him to the Blake house to conduct a thorough and Scientific Investigation at the Scene of the Crime?

“I reckon it’s up to you, Leroy. Fingerprints and all like that. Mighty glad I got a smart young man like you to take charge else I’d have to call in the State Police and have them traipsing all over and stealing the credit. Might be some footprints under that big front window you could get one of them there things of. I reckon that’s where he got into the house, all the other ground-floor doors and windows being locked.”

“A moulage, Chief,” Smith had supplied eagerly. “Sure, I’ve got the material for taking impressions. I’ll stop by Mom’s to borrow a double boiler for heating it. And I’ll get her vacuum cleaner to help gather up clues. Might be stuff on the floor inside the window fell out of his cuffs when he crawled in. Distinctive grains of sand that’ll show a special region he came from, cigarette ashes that can be analyzed.”

“Sure,” said Ollie Jenson vaguely. “You go right to it, Leroy. We’ll pick the son-of-a-bitch up, don’t you worry, and might be your evidence will clinch the case against him.”

Unfortunately, the entire area beneath the front window had a thick layer of gravel over a hard surface that couldn’t possibly take a footprint, and a careful dusting of the interior and exterior of window and sill with his specially prepared fingerprint powders and an ostrich feather duster brought no discernible fingerprints to light. Neither did the living room floor inside the window provide anything that looked faintly like a clue although he went over it carefully with his mother’s vacuum sweeper equipped with a special filter attachment of methacrylate plastic using a 22-cm Whatman No. 1 filter which he had ordered personally from a specialty company in Berkeley, California, when he first joined the Force and had kept in readiness ever since for just such an emergency as this.

There was one possible clue in the otherwise immaculate living room which Leroy observed, although he was inclined to discount the importance of it. This was the presence of two highball glasses sitting side by side on the low coffee table in front of the settee against the right-hand wall. Both glasses held a small residue of faintly amber-colored liquid which Leroy intended to test for alcoholic contents later on in his own laboratory at home, and he had carefully dusted both glasses for fingerprints and lifted several clean ones with scotch tape from each glass which were clearly from two different persons when examined under a magnifying glass. Those taken from one glass were clearly identifiable as the victim’s by comparison with other prints of Ellie’s which Leroy had lifted from articles on her dressing table and in the kitchen, while those from the second glass were surely from some person who had sat in the living room with her the previous night having a friendly nightcap.

The reason Leroy didn’t have too much hope that eventual identification of the second set of prints would lead to the criminal was his disinclination to believe that Mrs. Blake could possibly have sat down in the living room to have a drink with the man who was later to strangle her upstairs in her own bed.

Ellie Blake had been a real nice, quiet, home-loving wife and mother, who might take a social drink now and then with a friend who dropped in after supper, but she certainly wasn’t the type to have a drink with a strange hitch-hiker who had murder on his mind.

As soon as news of her death spread through town, Leroy was positive in his own mind that whoever had that nightcap with her prior to her murder would come forward and report it to the police, and it was probably silly to save the fingerprints on the glass, but he had them carefully preserved nonetheless.

Other than those two highball glasses sitting companionably side by side in the living room Leroy Smith had not discovered a single clue of seeming significance in the entire empty and silent house of death.

There were only two doors leading into the house. The rear door into the kitchen was securely bolted on the inside. The front door, which automatically locked when it was pulled shut and required a Yale key to unlock it, showed no sign of having been forced. Dusting for fingerprints on both inside and outside knobs (going on the theory that the murderer might have simply walked out the front door and pulled it shut behind him) had brought negative results. There were fragmentary prints and blurs on both knobs, but nothing conclusive.

So far as Leroy Smith could ascertain, there was nothing out of place, nothing to indicate that murder had been committed, although he had examined the entire premises minutely and in accord with all the rules on Examination Of The Scene Of The Crime as set forth by the criminological experts who had authored all the volumes in his private library.

The kitchen was neat and shining and spic-and-span, just as any good housewife would leave it after the evening meal was done and the child had been bedded down for the night. The dining-room was immaculate, and there were only those two empty glasses in the living room to give their mute evidence of an after-supper visitor.

Upstairs, there were two bedrooms and a large bathroom between them, with a door entering into it from each bedroom. At the head of the stairs, which led up from the entrance hallway leading between kitchen and living room, you turned to the right to enter the master bedroom that had been occupied by Marvin and Ellie Blake. Directly on the left from the stair landing was a door leading into the only bathroom which was bolted on the inside. As previously noted, the bathroom could also be entered by doors from either the master bedroom or Sissy’s room, which was beyond the bathroom from the head of the stairs.

So far as Leroy Smith had been able to discover, there were no significant indications or clues in the upper part of the house. To be perfectly honest, he had only opened the door of Sissy’s room and glanced inside hastily before closing it. What could even a Scientific Crime Investigator hope to discover in the bedroom of a six-year-old who had tenderly been tucked into bed the preceding night by her loving mother and slept until early morning when Sissy had wakened a little before six o’clock (according to her own story babbled tearfully to Aunt Minerva Wilsson) and gone through the bathroom to open the door into the master bedroom to discover the twisted, nude, cold, dead body of her beloved mamma stretched out on top of the double bed without a stitch of clothing or bedcovers on her?

Horrified, and not at all really understanding why her “Mommy” did not respond to her, the little girl had run out into the hallway and down the stairs into the living room where she had dialed the Wilsson telephone number because it was the one most familiar to her. “Aunt Minerva” and “Uncle Harry” were the two adult persons in Sunray whom she knew best and trusted most, and felt the closest to in the entire town.

No. One couldn’t expect to find any clues in Sissy’s bedroom. Leroy had contented himself with swiftly glancing inside, wincing and gritting his teeth as he let his imagination take hold and he visualized the little girl awaking that morning happily with the early morning sunlight streaming in the window, thinking to herself that this was the day her Daddy would be coming back from the convention in Miami and certainly bringing a present for his “best girl” (Sissy) with him, and slipping out of her bed in her cute, little nightgown and going through the bathroom to open the door into her mother’s room (probably hurrying because of the slight chill in the air) and gleefully and happily planning to slip into bed with her warm and sleeping “Mommy” (while Daddy was away and Mommy was all alone) and maybe even doing just that.