Ричард Деминг - Whistle Past the Graveyard [= Give the Girl a Gun]

“Leave me out of it,” Friday said in a ponderous voice.

“You let yourself in,” I told him. “I doubt that we can make an accessory charge stick, but you know and I know that you’ve been aware of who Ford’s killer was all along.”

The ex-racketeer emitted a snort. “Why would I conceal a thing like that?”

“Because you knew the motive for the killing. You didn’t care a hoot about either Ford or the killer, but you did care about your forty per cent interest in the Huntsafe. And you knew the moment the motive came out your agreement with Barney Amhurst wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on. Because Amhurst didn’t have any legal right to make such an agreement.”

“Wait a minute,” Amhurst interrupted. “What are you talking about?”

“About you,” I said. “You’ve been trading off percentage interest in the Huntsafe right and left without owning a nickel’s worth of what you were trading. The whole thing belongs to Madeline Strong.”

Madeline looked from Barney to me with a wondering expression on her face. “What do you mean, Mr. Moon?”

I said, “Let’s start at the beginning, back with your brother’s death. I’ve had three versions of that shooting. From Amhurst, Tom Henry and Bubbles. But I haven’t heard yours. Want to tell it?”

She looked puzzled. “What has Lloyd’s death got to do with Walter’s?”

“A lot, if my theory is correct. Tell me, after you discovered Lloyd was dead, what happened?”

“We walked into town and reported it. The state police went after the body.”

“All three of you walked into town?”

“No. Just Tom and I. Barney stayed with Lloyd’s body.”

“I thought it would have been that way,” I said. “That gave him plenty of time to remove something from it.”

When Amhurst opened his mouth to demand what I meant by that, I cut him off by saying, “Amhurst claims he thought he heard another rifle crack at the same time you fired, Madeline. Do you recall any such thing?”

The girl shook her head slowly. “There wasn’t any other sound. I distinctly remember everything that happened. I” don’t think I’ll ever forget. It was so quiet when I fired, I even recall I could hear Barney’s watch ticking.”

I felt a little thrill run along my spine. “His watch?” I asked. “You’re sure it was his watch?”

“Of course. What else?”

“The Huntsafe,” I said. “You heard the ticking of the Huntsafe receiver strapped to Barney’s wrist.”

The girl looked at me incredulously. Amhurst emitted a derisive snort.

“But the Huntsafe wasn’t finished until a month ago,” Madeline said.

“It was finished back at the time of your hunting trip,” I corrected her. “Amhurst just announced its perfection a month ago. He and your brother were giving it a field test under actual hunting conditions when Lloyd was killed. That’s why Lloyd was in the line of fire. He deliberately got himself where he wasn’t supposed to be in order to demonstrate how the Huntsafe could prevent accidental shootings. Only Barney, instead of avoiding shooting in that direction, deliberately used the gadget in order to locate Lloyd in the underbrush and kill him. With the needle pointing straight at Lloyd, Amhurst undoubtedly could spot where he was lurking and get an accurate bead on him.”

Barney Amhurst said, “This is the worst nonsense I ever heard. Why, in heaven’s name, would I want to kill my own partner?”

“Because he wasn’t your partner,” I said. “He was your employer. Only nobody knew that but you and Lloyd. You killed him because it was the only way you could get control of the Huntsafe patent.”

Madeline was staring at Amhurst as though he were some kind of monster. “I don’t understand any of this,” she almost whispered.

“Then I’ll explain it,” I told her. “I got on the track when I got to thinking over the various facts I had gleaned about your brother’s character. He was very closemouthed about his affairs, for instance. Until after he was dead, no one but Barney Amhurst even knew he was working on the Huntsafe. Also he was a sharp businessman. I recall your remarking he always had an ironclad contract for everything, and it was always in his favor. Ostensibly Lloyd and Barney were partners, but it occurred to me Lloyd had a lot of inherited money, while Barney didn’t. Lloyd could afford to experiment along even for years without income, but I wondered how Amhurst could. That got me to wondering if perhaps they weren’t partners at all, but Lloyd had been paying Barney a salary as an assistant. Today in going through Lloyd’s files, I learned he had been. His last two years’ tax records showed he had been paying three thousand seven hundred and seventy dollars in salary a year. That works out to seventy-two dollars and fifty cents a week.”

Madeline said, “He was paying that to Barney, and I didn’t even know it?”

“You told me yourself he never discussed his business matters. Knowing Lloyd’s character, I guessed that if he was paying Barney a salary, he would have an unbreakable contract with Barney giving himself full rights to anything developed through their joint efforts. I think it was that contract that got Ford killed. I think he found it when he was helping you sort over Lloyd’s papers, realized it meant Amhurst had no legal right to the Huntsafe at all, and used it to blackmail a ten-per-cent interest from Amhurst.”

“Where is this so-called contract then?” Amhurst demanded.

His voice was condescending, but I noticed sweat beaded his upper lip.

I shrugged. “Destroyed, probably. That’s what you searched Daniel Cumberland’s apartment for after you killed him. You must have gone there straight from taking Madeline home in a taxi that night. How you knew the contract was at Cumberland’s instead of at Ford’s place, I don’t know, but it‘s a relatively unimportant point. Why’d you have to kill them both? Had they raised the ante beyond a ten-per-cent interest and made you realize they would bleed you white for the rest of your life?”

Warren Day broke in. “Listen, Moon, are you accusing Amhurst himself of killing Ford and Cumberland? Or only of hiring young Thomaso to do it?”

“He only used Thomaso for odd chores,” I said. “Amhurst did the actual killing.”

“How? By black magic? I’ll swallow Cumberland, but how about Ford? He didn’t have time to get the gun over to Henry’s flat.”

“He didn’t have to, Inspector. The whole thing was an optical illusion. Only an inventor would devise such an elaborate Rube Goldberg way to kill anyone. It would have been much simpler to have pushed Ford under a bus at some crowded intersection. Of course this way he could frame Thomas Henry for the killing. And he wanted to do that because he’s nuts about Madeline.”

“How did he do it?” Day shouted at me.

“Take it easy,” I said. “I’m getting to it. The gun in Henry’s workshop was planted before the crime. You’ll recall it was identified as the murder weapon not by ballistic examination of the bullet, but by microscopic examination of the ejected casing. Apparently Amhurst knew a soft-nosed bullet almost certainly would be too battered to make comparison tests possible. So before he started out that evening, he must have laid the scene. I guess that this is what happened. He fired the gun initialed ‘T.H.’ somewhere. Maybe at some isolated spot along the river. He saved the ejected casing to drop on the lawn outside his workroom window so that it would look as though the gun had been fired there. Then he let himself into Henry’s flat by means of a skeleton key, planted the gun and swiped one of Henry’s pipes to drop near the shell.”