The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (24 page)

“Sheer waste of time an’ tissue. On the face of it, this Gerald Park never had a chance o’ doing anything to his uncle, even if he wanted to. There never was a case in it . . .”

“I don’t know . . . I feel . . .” Paul Toft muttered, and at that ominous “Kill,” we swung on him – and gaped. He had not uncoiled his lank limbs, but his left hand was churning away at a soft piece of india-rubber, that unmistakable sign that his queer mind had sensed crime.

“But – but you
can’t
feel,” Grimes protested. “Everything’s against foul play. There’s no hint of wound or bruise on the body, for instance, an’ there couldn’t be. Gerald never went within fifteen feet of his uncle. An’ that taxi-driver, who was watching him all the time, saw nothing suspicious.”

“Yes, that taxi-odd,” Paul Toft’s great domed forehead frowned. “Less than ten minutes’ walk from the station – yet this youngster, though he’s financially on the rocks, took a taxi . . . Queer extravagance, eh?”

“No! Just the sort o’ fool thing his sort does,” Grimes was curtly brushing the suggestion away, when I found myself blurting with that strange impulse that is so often helpful to Toft’s curious gift:

“That driver made a very useful witness, though. Only one who could, with those trees screening the carriage-way. That might be a reason for taking a taxi . . . And doesn’t he seem to have made the most of it? I mean leaving the front door open and so forth.”

“That’s been explained,” Grimes began, but Toft flashed at me the smile that always tells I have given him a lead, and nodded.

“Ah, Doctor, you always touch the point . . . You’re right. There’s a certain overemphasis . . . His strange keeping away from his uncle, for instance . . . He let the taxi-driver and Mrs Ferris do everything while he stood afar off. Seems a bit over-done-pointed . . .”

“Yes,” I agreed, “as though he was definitely trying to create the impression that he could not possibly have had anything to do with his uncle’s death.”

“What – you mean you think he
had
?” Grimes cried.

“I feel – yes, I feel that murder was done here,” Paul Toft said with his most dreamy conviction.

We stared at him. When Paul Toft talked like that we no longer scoffed, he’d proved those extraordinary “feelings” of his too often. But even I could not feel quite convinced. If ever there was a case when the whole mass of the evidence made murder seem quite impossible, this was it. In fact, Grimes all but bellowed:

“How in the name o’ Job
did
he do it then? Look, the old man was in this chair, by the fireplace. Gerald stood in the door there, fifteen feet away. He was under observation all the time. He simply couldn’t ha’ done a thing, or raised a hand without the taxi-man knowing all about it. How then? Did he mesmerise the old chap to death-or what?”

Even Toft had no answer to that. On the face of it, it was quite impossible for Gerald Park to have struck his uncle down. Unless, as I said: “He shot him from the doorway.”

Directly I spoke I knew I’d said a foolish thing. Though Toft looked at me sharply, Grimes let go a savage bark. “Funny how we’ve all overlooked the loud report of a pistol. A darn loud report, get me, seeing it was fired inside the house. I wonder why the taxi-driver forgot to mention hearing a little thing like that . . . aye, an’ seeing Gerald using his pistol.”

I wanted to kick myself for blurting without thinking. Not only would it have been impossible for the taxi-man to miss such pistol play, Mrs Ferris must have heard the report too. Crestfallen, then, I was surprised when Toft unlimbered his reedy limbs, and, ignoring Grimes’ “What the devil – ?” crossed to the door to call the taxi-man into the room again.

But even the suggestion of hope that brought proved vain. The taxi-man was as contemptuous of the pistol idea as Grimes.

“A pistol?
Not
a chance,” he said emphatically. “I tell you I had my eyes on Gerald all the time . . . Expecting fireworks when his uncle saw him, you see. He couldn’t ha’ used a pistol without my seeing-let alone me hearing.”

“That’s sure-you heard nothing?” Grimes insisted.

“Not a thing-an’ I know what pistols sound like, too.”

“He might have been using one with a silencer,” I put in. “You say he called out loudly to his uncle . . .”

“He did, sir. But that made no manner o’ difference. I mean, I’m ready to swear there wasn’t even the ghost of another noise.”

“Your engine was still running though,” Toft put in.

“Maybe,” the man shrugged. “But that wouldn’t make any difference. We get so used to it we hear other sounds agin it – and I’d have heard even a silencer. . . . An’ then, as I say, I was watching him close. He didn’t make the motions like shooting. Just stood still an’ stiff all the time.”

“How can you be so sure?” I objected. “Can you remember exactly how he stood?”

“Well, I can then,” the man snapped. “He stood practically half out o’ that sitting-room door all the time. His hand was holding it open by the knob all the time . . . the nearest hand that’d be, the left. His right hand was in his pocket. His arm never lifted or moved or anything-no, not even up to when I shoved him aside to go in to his uncle.”

“But that means his right hand was hidden from you by his body,” I fill muttered. “I’ve heard of people shooting from their pockets . . .”

Grimes cut in: “You say Gerald took off his coat to put under his uncle’s head – were you able to see if there was a pistol in its pocket, or anywhere on him?”

“There wasn’t, sir,” the taxi-man declared. “I’m certain of that. I’ll tell you why: I noticed how ragged the lining of that coat was, thinking what a come-down it was for a chap like him. It was so ragged that I couldn’t ha’ missed seeing a pistol poking out or bulging. Another thing. It was me he handed the coat to before Mrs Ferris told him to get a cushion-an’ from the weight o’ that coat, there couldn’t have been a pistol in it.”

That seemed conclusive enough, yet Paul Toft muttered: “Odd bit of by-play, that coat business . . . as though it were part of a thought-up alibi . . .”

We did not pay much attention to him. The pistol theory was destroyed, especially as the taxi-man went on:

“An’ it’s all stuff, anyhow. As if I didn’t know what bullets do to people . . . I saw plenty enough in the War. An’ there was no sign o’ wound on poor old Mr Stanley.”

That clinched the matter, as it were, but it also reminded me that it was about time I took a look at the dead man. The body had been taken into the sitting-room behind the one we were in, and as I examined it the thought of foul play receded farther and farther from my mind. There was simply no sign of wound or violence. I pointed this out to Paul Toft, who stood brooding over me as I worked.

“Eh? Nothing there, Doctor?” he muttered, coming out of his medium’s trance . . . “Nothing that would show, no . . . I feel that’s it . . . Something that was sure
not
to show . . . How?” He examined the body. “Hair, maybe . . . Hair still thick and black . . .”

“It couldn’t hide a bullet wound,” I said.

“No . . . no, not a bullet wound, but . . . How would he have stood as Gerald came into the door? Left front to Gerald, eh . . . ? Shave the head on the left side, please, Doctor . . .”

I did this, not with much hope, but rather because I was always peculiarly under the spell of this strange, lank man’s strange powers. The more of the surface of the skull I uncovered the more pessimistic I became-until Toft’s bony finger prodded forward and he muttered:

“What do you make of that, Doctor?”

It was a tiny puncture in the skin well above the left ear, a little red speck so small that it might have been anything from a flea-bite to the prick of a needle-point. I said as much.

“Needle-point!” he breathed. “Ah, we’re getting warmer.”

“How?” barked Grimes, who had joined us after a routine search of the house. “You suggesting that Gerald jabbed a poisoned needle into the old fellow? Just when did he manage that-never having been near him?”

“A dart might have done it”; I had taken fire at Toft’s suggestion. “A poisoned dart.”

“Fine!” Inspector Grimes jeered. “An’ Gerald being a rackety one was no doubt a first-class darter from practice in pubs. Only you’re forgetting the taxi-man swears he never took his hand from his pocket. Also. . . .”

“An air-pistol fires darts,” I said excitedly. “And, by Jove, an air-pistol makes next to no noise, not enough to be heard above the sound of a taxi-engine, I’ll bet.”

“Fine, Doctor,” Toft smiled at me, but the Inspector went on grimly:

“As I was about to finish-
also
even air-pistol darts aren’t invisible to the naked eye. They’re quite solid bits of metal, with a point and a lead butt an’ tufts o’ silk to steady ’em. How is it the taxi-man missed such a dart sticking in the old man’s head? Remember Gerald never went near enough to pull it out.”

“I feel . . . it fell out,” Toft said, but I could not support him there. From the nature of the wound it would have remained sticking into the head.

“The doctor doesn’t think so,” Grimes said, reading my face. “Also, say it did fall out, it would have dropped close to the body. It’s a plain dark brown carpet in that room. Would the taxi-man, Mrs Ferris, and the other doctor have missed seeing it as they worked on the body? It’s a thousand to one against. There was no sign of it in the room then – no sign of it now. I’ve been over that room with a hand-brush. I’ll show you.”

He called out, and the local sergeant brought in a dust-pan with the sweepings of the sitting-room. There was little more than a litter of fluff and scraps, tiny bits of coal, fragments of paper, a couple of wireless screws, a thin, capped pencil, also the little red cylinder of indiarubber that belonged to it though it had been trodden out, one or two buttons, the half of what looked like the elastic button strap of a pair of braces . . . stuff like that, but no sign of anything like a dart.

“You’re going to say Gerald might have picked his dart up,” Grimes said. “Well, I don’t think he could have, not before it was seen. What’s more, I don’t think he’d risk his neck on anything so conspicuous . . . And then, there’s the pistol? What became of that? There’s no sign of it anywhere about or on Gerald . . . No, it won’t wash. You’re only making a case out o’ moonbeams, Toft.”

It seemed so. I stood dejected. Paul Toft said in his dreamy calm:

“There’s no getting over that.” He touched the tiny puncture on the skull. “That’s how he died . . . I feel that. And he was deliberately wounded under the hair so that we’d miss it.”

“Oh, heck!” wailed Grimes; “an’ I’ve just been telling you that all the facts say no!”

“Of course they would. The whole thing was carefully, brilliantly schemed to make facts say no,” the reedy man mused on. “From the careful employment of that taxi-driver as a witness, to the firing of an all but silent air-pistol from the pocket . . . a helpfully ragged pocket, remember . . . And you’ll probably find that Gerald Park is a first-rate marksman.”

“I probably will,” the Inspector said bitterly. “That won’t be so hard as to find how he managed to make a dart and a pistol vanish into thin air under the noses of witnesses. Just crank up a really good
feeling
to explain that, my lad.”

Toft only blinked and looked at me, and in trying to think of a way out I did remember something.

“Just precisely
when
did Gerald offer his empty coat to his uncle?” I asked.

“Didn’t you hear Mrs Ferris say it was after she came into the sitting-room,” Grimes said sourly.

“After he’d fetched the brandy,” Toft put in swiftly. “Yes, that’s the loophole, Doctor. He was out of sight of witnesses, at least while he was in the dining-room getting the brandy.”

“An’ a fat lot that’s going to help,” Grimes said as we went into the dining-room. It was, indeed, sparsely furnished; just a gate-table, six stiff chairs, and a side-board with two cupboards, one of which was the cellarette.

“I’ve even searched behind the pictures; there’s nothing here,” Grimes began, and added as Toft walked straight towards a French window in the rear, that opened on to the garden. “An’ that’s no good, either. It’s been locked all winter, an’ the key’s not in it.”

“That’s what makes it queer,” Paul Toft said. “The key’s usually left in this sort of window from year’s end to year’s end. Did someone want to create the impression that nobody could have got out through this window to-day?” He stood still, staring at the lock with his queer other – worldly gaze. Then he muttered:

“Hum! Someone locking this window, snatching out the key, moving on the run to the room across the hall . . . where would he hide the key?” His eyes twinkled at me. “How’s this for real pukka police deduction, Doctor? There’s a hall stand full of umbrellas on the way. . . . Wouldn’t he toss the key into them in passing?”

I went to the hall stand. The third bulgy umbrella I upended and shook, shot a key to the hall floor. It fitted the French window.

We stepped through it on to a small redtiled veranda overlooking the garden. This was without railing, but it had an inclined glass roof supported by pillars to keep off the rain. We stood and looked at half an acre of neat garden.

“You think he might have nipped out here and chucked his pistol into one of them bushes, or hidden it in one of the flowerbeds?” Grimes asked in a voice not so assured as it had been. “A mug’s trick. He’d ha’ known bushes and flower-beds are the first things
we
think of.”