Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 (23 page)

Captain Ashcroft just stopped himself from raving.

"The murderer," he answered, "had a use for that scarecrow. God knows what use, but he had one. He stole it on the first Friday night you were all here. He hid it, maybe in one of these cabins. If he upended the horse-trough over it, he could have hid it in this cabin; and I could have looked in without seein' anything at all.

"By late last night he'd finished with it. He hoped he could destroy it so thoroughly that anybody who looked at this scrapheap would think any remains were old trash

burned long ago. So he poured kerosene over the scarecrow and touched a match to it
But
—
"
Captain Ashcroft wheeled on Yancey Beale. "When you ran out here, son, was it still burning?"

Yancey nodded in some excitement.

"It was still burning, though not with anything like
a
roar. I beat out the flames with a dead tree-branch, and hadn't any trouble killing 'em. I think I see the drift of this.. Cloth like the cloth of Mr. Maynard's suit won't burn as easily as somebody expected; maybe he used too little kerosene. But what was his game, whoever he was? What in hell's name did he
want
with the scarecrow?"

"Maybe this; maybe that" Captain Ashcroft's eye ran round the group. "Still! It's just possible we've all started to wake up a little and can use our heads instead of behaving like a bunch of sleep-walkers. Yes, Mr. Grantham? What's on
your
mind?"

Alan stood transfixed. What hitherto had been only
a
cloudy idea was beginning to take definite form and shape.

"Captain Ashcroft," he asked, "you didn't question Madge this morning, did you?"

"I couldn't; the doctor wouldn't allow it. It'll be all right this afternoon, Dr. Wickfield thinks. Anyway," the other said heavily, his eye turning towards Dr. Fell, "I can't ask the
real
questions until we get some information we may be lucky enough to get this afternoon too. Any questions
you
wanted to ask her, Mr. Grantham?"

"Just one. Before she went to bed the night before last, Thursday night, Madge looked out of her window and saw our mysterious man walking east along the beach, carrying 'something like a sack' over his right shoulder. Could that something like a sack have been the missing scarecrow?"

Captain Ashcroft uttered an exclamation.

"It could have been! Damn me, I'm beginning to think it was! But I feel like Yancey Beale there. What was the murderer's game? What did he
want
with the damn scarecrow?"

"He wanted it for a rehearsal." "A what?"

"We've just been reminded,"
said Alan, "that the scare
crow wore
a
suit of Henry Maynard's clothes. It was therefore the same height and build, though far from the same weight, as the prospective victim. Madge was frightened when she saw the prowler on the beach; she closed the curtains immediately, she told us. If she had looked
a
little longer, she might have seen the whole rehearsal with
a
doll or dummy representing Henry Maynard." Alan broke off for a moment.

"I may be wildly wrong, of course," he continued. "It struck me last night, as I told Camilla, that there was one strong indication of how the crime may have been committed. I didn't carry it further at the time; it would have looked as though I meant to accuse somebody, which wasn't the case at all. And so, until you see it for yourself —which you'll soon do; it's easy enough—I'd better not carry it further now."

"You think so, do you?" Captain Ashcroft enquired with a kind of ferocious affability. "You'd better not 'carry it further,' eh? Is that what you're givin' me?"

"Well . . ."

"This is no Emily Post Book of Etiquette," raved Captain Ashcroft, doing a little dance beside the remains of the bonfire. "This is
murder
, son, in case it hadn't oc
curred to you. Never mind how an idea 'looks,' for God's sake! We can't be as finicky as that; we can't afford to be gentlemen. If you know or suspect anything, no matter how wild it seems, it's your duty as a responsible citizen to spit it out and leave the interpretation to me. All right! Will you tell me what's on your mind, or do I have to get tough after all? Since there's no way to explain what die murderer did—!"

"There
is
a way," retorted Alan, now convinced he must be on the right track. "Let's go to the front terrace again, and I'll try to show you."

Back he went, through the arch in the hedge and through the luxuriant garden beyond. Camilla, in her fleecy tan sweater and brown skirt, fell into step beside him. The cool, poised, haughty Camilla this morning was a different person from the pliant one of late last night

"Really, Alan!" she said in a low voice, and glanced back over her shoulder at the other three following. "This is hardly like you."

"What is hardly like me?"

"Trying to play the great detective! It's quite unwarranted and a little silly, don't you think?"

"I'm not trying to play the great detective. Anyway, last night you didn't think it was silly."

Camilla shivered, like one putting away a distasteful memory.

"I didn't think at all," she told him. "I made a dreadful fool of myself last night! Or I—I almost did!"

"Why? Because you behaved like a human being for once?"

"Here it is again, Alan; you see?" "See what?"

"You can't come near me, you can't say ten words, without beginning to sneer and trying to provoke a quarrel. But I won't quarrel with you; I'm above quarreling. Since you seem determined to stage some demonstration or other, please go ahead and do it. When you make a fool of yourself, as you undoubtedly will, don't say I didn't warn you."

So the infernal woman was in another mood, was she?

Never mind! He couldn't let her disturb him; he couldn't let her put him off. All five of them had come round the south wing to the front of the house. Dr. Fell, with the baffled gesture of one in despair, leaned on his stick and blinked at the ground. Captain Ashcroft, followed by Alan and Yancey, strode across the sanded drive and across the northern sweep of lawn to the edge of the white-surfaced terrace, with its single line of footprints leading to green-painted table and chair.

"Now, then!" declared Captain Ashcroft, hitching his shoulders like a prize-fighter getting out of a bathrobe on entering the ring. "Now, then, young fellow! Here we are, but where are we?"

"The problem, I take it," said Alan, "is how the murderer could have approached his victim without leaving any trace?"

"Well, yes." The other spoke with powerful restraint. "You might say that's a kind of a problem and not be too far out.
Holy, jumpin' Judas Iscariot!
Look there!"

"I'm looking."

"Nobody on earth could
have come at poor Henry
from in front, up over hundreds of yards of unmarked sand down on that beach. There's a grass verge to the left, towards the house. There's a grass verge to the right, towards those six poplar trees in a line. There's a grass verge to the south, where we're standing now. Do you see the distances?

"An Olympic-games athlete in good condition," continued Captain Ashcroft,
"might
have taken off in a
running
broad-jump from one of those three sides. He
might
have landed somewhere near where Henry was sitting. But, even if he could have swung a weapon while he flew through the air, he had to land somewhere; and he didn't land at all. Bar ghosts, bar space-walkers and the likes of all that, just where the hell does it leave us?"

"Nowhere at all," Alan admitted, "if we assume the murderer had to be standing beside his victim. But suppose there are no marks because he never went near Mr. Maynard and didn't need to go near him."

"How's that again?"

"Shall I show you?"

"I'd be right grateful if you would. I'm ravin' and I know it. But, before they send the wagon and cart one cop to the bug-house for the rest of his natural life, you just tell me
anything
that makes a single grain o' sense!"

Remaining on the grass, Alan moved off to the right, eastwards, and then forwards to the first of the six close-set poplar trees standing sentinel along the beach-front Next, turning his face west towards the house, he began to edge back and still farther back, putting more distance between himself and the chair where Henry Maynard had sat.

"They're not very high, as poplars go," he pointed out "Say twenty feet or a bit more. About the same height as that flagstaff there, which rises two or three feet above the sills of the windows on the bedroom floor. And the row of poplars is in line with the flagstaff. I can't get quite the position I want. The trees prevent me from going a little farther north, and therefore
..."

"Yes?" bawled Captain Ashcroft. "Therefore what?"

"The trees prevent me," Alan said, "from being in a direct sideways line from somebody we'll imagine to be sitting in that chair with his right profile towards me. But

I
can almost manage the place
I
want
I
draw still farther back from the imaginary victim . . . this position will do . . ."

"It'll do for what? You've drawn back one hell of
a
distance, haven't you? How far is it?"

"Call it sixty feet six inches," replied Alan, "or the distance between pitcher's box and home plate. One other point I seem to remember Dr. Fell saying that Commodore Luke Maynard, a hundred years ago, had trouble with the sight of his right eye. Did Henry Maynard have any trouble with
his
eyesight, Captain?"

"No, not with the sight of either eye! Never wore glasses in his life; never needed to. Henry was proud of that. He was always bringing it up; he'd talk you to death about it if you gave him a chance."

"Well, the point doesn't really matter. Imagine it's yesterday evening, and getting dark. The victim's sitting there looking out across the harbor; he doesn't see me, and there's no reason why he should. You've said, Captain, Mr. Maynard never knew what hit him. You've wondered how the murderer could seem to get close without alarming him. This may be the answer."

Alan could feel Camilla's eye; he could feel all their eyes. But he was committed; he had to go through with it

"Finally, imagine I'm the murderer. In my right hand I've got a regulation baseball, and I cut loose with a blazing fast one. A baseball weighs only five ounces, but it can be a lethal weapon. It can kill, it
has
killed, with no outward damage to the victim's head except a degree of bleeding from the nose. In actual fact I've been a catcher, not a pitcher, though I think that with practice even
I
could throw to kill. All the same! Whether this makes sense or whether it doesn't, do you see why I haven't been anxious to tell you?"

"Yes, I
see!" exclaimed Yancey Beale; who was hopping from one foot to the other. "You thought we'd all jump up and accuse Rip Hillboro, who's got a fast one like Bob Feller in the heyday of the Cleveland Indians. And Rip wouldn't do that; he may be a pain in the neck, but he wouldn't do it. That's not the point. You know he wouldn't; I know he wouldn't; does the Prophet Elijah know it too?"

A slight roar could be heard through Captain Ash-croft's voice.

"The Prophet Elijah," he said, "would like to boot somebody's stern from here to Goose Creek and back! Not
you,
Mr. Grantham. It's a clever idea; it's mighty neat and clever. The trouble is, it just won't work. If the murderer fired a baseball at Henry's head, how'd he get the ball back afterwards?"

"Yes, there's that," Yancey agreed. "He couldn't have tied a string to it and pulled it back, could he? No! The best pitcher alive can't throw straight if anything interferes with the ball's flight. And he couldn't have hoped a free ball, without strings or anything else, would dent the old boy's skull and then bounce off into grass. No, the distance is too great; that's impossible too."

"Satisfied, Alan?" asked Camilla. She surveyed the others. "Mr. Maynard," she added suddenly, "was alive yesterday. All of you knew him; two of you were fairly close friends. And yet you're talking about him as though he meant no more than the scarecrow that may or may not have been used for a rehearsal. Isn't it rather horrible?"

Captain Ashcroft looked at her. "If this upsets you, ma'am, you can always go indoors."