Max Collins - Carnal Hours

“I found the shop where Lady Oakes purchased the screen,” I said, “and bought another. The painted design is different, but otherwise it’s identical.”

Len had a hand on it even now, studying the enigma of its wood-grain surface; the photo of the print was in his other hand. “I’ve taken samples from every nook and cranny of this damn thing…and every time, I come up with a print with a wood-whorled background.”

I nodded. “Not that pattern of circles in the background of their blowup of the print supposedly from the screen.”

“That pattern’s either flattened beads of moisture,” Keeler said, patting the Chinese screen as gently as an infant, “or a very different surface than this.”

“Their print is a forgery?” Gardner asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s a substitution.”

The writer stood with hands on hips like a rancher surveying his spread. “How so?”

I took the photo of the print from Len. “That’s Freddie’s right pinkie, all right,” I said. “A perfect specimen they lifted elsewhere. I spoke to Freddie yesterday about this….”

In his cell, Freddie had shrugged when I asked him if he’d handled anything during the interrogation.

“Well, I did pour Melchen a glass of water,” de Marigny had said. “From a glass pitcher….”

“Did he specifically ask you to pour it for him?”

“Yes,” de Marigny said, nodding forcefully, then he winced with thought. “Funny…. Right after I poured the water, the tall one…Barker…he was standing watching from a distance. He called over and asked, ‘Is everything all right?’ And Melchen called back, ‘Just dandy.’”

Now, a day later, Keeler was suggesting the circles in the print’s background might be flattened moisture drops….

“Do you realize what you’re saying?” Gardner asked us, dumbfounded. “That your client’s in the middle of a police frame-up, engineered by the Duke of Windsor’s handpicked sleuths?”

I shrugged. “It’s not news to me. I caught ’em coercing a witness a week or so ago.”

Disturbed, Gardner turned to Keeler. “Professor-have you given de Marigny a polygraph test yet?”

Keeler looked at me and smiled humorlessly, shook his head.

“The court has forbidden it,” I said. “Even for our purposes, let alone admitting it as evidence. They won’t permit us to use it on any other witnesses, either.”

Keeler grinned. “How I’d love to get ahold of Christie….”

“What a waste of your talents,” Gardner said almost sorrowfully.

I put a hand on the writer’s shoulder. “Len’s got plenty of other talents, as you’ve already seen. He did more burn tests on those remaining bedclothes scraps, and confirmed our conclusion that the killer stayed on the scene for around an hour.”

“And, I’m afraid, destroyed a valuable piece of furniture in the process,” Len said, chagrined. “I don’t know why Lady Diane hasn’t kicked me out already, let alone give me a room to stay in. Ah! Let me show you my latest discovery….”

He walked over to the table where not long ago cracked crab and caviar had been arrayed. Now-on its white cloth, which was dotted with strangely familiar scorched circles-there was an insecticide spray gun, and a glass jar of the sort you might put up preserves in, filled with clear liquid, its screw top off. There was also a box of kitchen matches, with a few burnt ones scattered.

“I’ve found something you’ve been looking for,” Len said smugly.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“This spray gun is similar to the one found in Sir Harry’s room.”

“I’d say identical,” I said.

“But the flit gun couldn’t have figured in the killing,” Gardner insisted. “After the prosecution suggested it might’ve been used to set Sir Harry on fire, Higgs himself established the spray gun was found half full of ‘Fly-Ded,’ exactly as the maid had left it.”

Keeler merely smiled as he lifted the spray gun and screwed loose the can of insecticide below, removing it, setting it on the table; then he hefted the glass jar, as if making a toast.

“Your hunch, Nate,” he said, “was that the flammable material spilled on the floor, not to mention Sir Harry, wasn’t a petroleum product, as has been assumed…but alcohol.”

“Right,” I said. “A gas fire would’ve scorched the ceiling to shit.”

“And left a stronger odor behind,” Gardner added.

“There are a lot of uses for alcohol in the tropics,” Keeler said casually, screwing the glass jar onto the bug sprayer, “besides drinking it, or rubbing it on yourself or a friend. It’s used for lamp fuel, for instance, cooking on boats, and for cleaning paint brushes…you’ll probably find a jar or bottle or can of the stuff in any toolshed, like the one by where that construction’s going on next door to Westbourne. Take those matches, Nate, and light one, and hold the flame to the end of this spritzer….”

He was pushing the plunger in and I held a burning match to the mist of alcohol and it caught, burning a dull blue.

“Watch this,” he said, grinning like a kid.

The harder he pumped the thing, the bigger, the longer, the blue flame; it was like a homemade acetylene torch!

“You can direct this anywhere you like,” he said, “as long as you keeping pumping.”

When he finally stopped pumping, tiny puddles of the still-burning alcohol fell from the nose of the thing and landed on the table and made circular scorches, the flames burning briefly, then winking out.

“I’ll be damned,” I said.

“There’s your blowtorch,” Keeler said, placing the spray gun on the table.

I took a look at it. The tip was a little blackened; I took out a handkerchief and wiped it off, clean. You’d never know it had been spitting fire moments before.

“Just screw the alcohol jar off,” Keeler said, “and screw the bug spray can back on, and you have a seemingly unused flit gun.”

I hefted the spray gun. “Weren’t you lucky that the threads of both were the same?”

“Maybe. But if they don’t fit, you can just hold on to the glass jar with one hand and work the plunger with the other. It’s a little awkward, but a child could do it.”

Gardner was watching with amazement.

“Erle,” I said, “not a word of this in your column, now….”

He nodded. Then he lifted a cautionary finger and said, “Keep this one in your pocket, too.”

Keeler looked at me and nodded. We’d tell Higgs, but Gardner was right: the more the prosecution got wrong about the details of the murder, the easier Higgs could land an appeal, if he ended up needing one. On the other hand, straightening out those details in this trial wouldn’t help de Marigny at all….

“I have to go, gentlemen,” I said. “Len, when Di and Nancy get back from Paradise Beach, tell them I should be back around seven-thirty. Erle, you want to take the launch over with me?”

“I wouldn’t mind staying and chatting with Professor Keeler awhile, Heller. You mind?”

“Not at all.”

Gardner turned to Keeler. “Is that okay with you, Professor?”

“As long as I get to ask some of the questions,” he said. “You see, I’m a big Perry Mason fan. Nate, where are you off to, anyway?”

I was already leaving. Over my shoulder, I said, “I need to drop by Colonel Lindop’s office before his shift ends at six. Even with the doubt you can cast on their fingerprint evidence, Len, I think we need Lindop’s statement about seeing Freddie questioned in the morning, not the afternoon….”

Within the hour I was on the second floor of the police station, where at the door of Lindop’s office, I found a native painter in cap and coveralls applying the finishing touches to the name major herbert pemberton on the pebbled glass.