Murder in Stained Glass. Armstrong Margaret

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      “Did you hear?” she whispered. “Mr. Merritt says the bones really are human bones! Isn’t that dreadful!”

      Mr. Merritt was reading aloud from a paper, Dr. Greely’s report. Mr. Merritt’s expression was decorous, but you felt an underlying satisfaction as he finished:

      “No doubt about it, I’m afraid. We got a murder on our hands. Doctor says the bones is human. Microscope told him that. But he can’t tell whether they’s a man’s bones or a woman’s, with so little to go on, no flesh or skin or hair, you know.”

      Phyllis shuddered, walked over to a window and stood looking out.

      “That fire must of been awful hot,” Mr. Merritt went on. “Burn a person, clothes and all, and not leave so much’s a scrap of shoe leather!”

      “And it must have burned for some time,” I said. “You’d think the neighbors would have noticed the smoke and—and the smell.”

      “Too far off from any other house, I guess. And it was night. No one would have seen anything.”

      “Unless someone happened to be up. Who lives nearest? Have they got a baby?”

      “Mrs. Podsnap is nearest,” Mrs. Flack put in, “and she’s got a six-weeks-old baby cries most all night. You want I should call her up? Telephone’s upstairs, ain’t it, Mr. Leo?”

      He nodded. Mrs. Flack went up and returned in a moment, triumphant.

      “Now what do you think of that!” she panted. “Mrs. Podsnap she says she looked out her window Saturday night just before sun-up—she was heating the young one’s bottle and he was yelling fit to beat the band—and she saw smoke coming up behind the trees, and she thought the glass shop might be afire and she was just going to call her husband—he sleeps pretty sound—but the milk boiled over, and she never gave the smoke another thought till the baby had his breakfast, and then she looked again and the smoke was most gone and anyway she saw now it was coming from the chimly, and she forgot all about it till I asked her had she noticed anything.”

      “That’s fine, Mrs. Flack. That’s very helpful,” Mr. Merritt beamed. “We’re getting on, getting on fine. Any more suggestions, Miss Trumbull?”

      “Suppose we try to reconstruct the crime,” I said. “How do you think the man was killed, Mr. Merritt?”

      “Why—why, he was shoved in and burned up, I guess. No; that couldn’t be. The furnace door ain’t wide enough.”

      We all stared at the furnace.

      “It is not,” I agreed. “So the man must have been killed, shot, in all probability, and then—cut up.”

      “Cut up?” Mr. Merritt gulped. “You mean cut up with a knife, like a butcher would?”

      “Or with an axe,” Mrs. Flack put in gloatingly.

      “Look!” Clarence pointed with a trembling hand. “My axe—laying there just as handy!”

      “My Lord!” Mr. Merritt groaned. “Then maybe the poor fellow got chopped to bits right here in this cellar! But that would have made an awful mess.”

      “Blood is easily washed away if there is plenty of water,” I said. “There’s a stand-pipe over there in the corner—used for washing cars, I suppose, when this place was a garage—and the floor slopes down to that drain near the door. The murderer could have flushed the floor clean in five minutes.”

      “Wouldn’t everything have got pretty wet?”

      “It did get wet,” I said. “Last evening when I was sitting on that pile of boards and excelsior I noticed it was damp.”

      I crossed the floor, and pulled out a tuft of excelsior. “It still is,” I said.

      “Well, well!” Mr. Merritt said admiringly. “You certainly got a good headpiece, Miss Trumbull. But you said just now you thought the victim was shot. What makes you think so?”

      “Because of the hole in that windowpane.” I pointed. “To me it looks as if it had been made by a bullet. What about it, Clarence? Was that window all right on Saturday?”

      “It sure was,” Clarence said. “Not a crack in it, or I’d of noticed it. But a gun would make a noise, Miss Trumbull. Someone would of heard the shot.”

      “Not if he fired when a train was going by.”

      “That’s so!” Mr. Merritt rubbed his hands together, smiling broadly. “We’re getting on. Getting on so fast there’ll be nothing left for those Banbury fellows to do when they get here.”

      “When do you expect them?” I asked.

      “Any minute now. I called ’em up this morning soon’s I got Doctor’s report. They acted quite excited. Said they’d be right over. They know Ullathorne is a pretty big bug. District attorney, he’s sending a man and the sheriff is coming, says his appendix will have to wait; and a detective, feller named Skinner. Fine sleuth, I’m told. And a photographer and a fingerprint expert, and a reporter from the Banbury Star, and I don’t know who all. Oh, and the coroner is sending a representative, and the coroner he told me be sure not to move the body, to leave it lay just exactly and precisely as we found it. I had to laugh.” He looked at his watch. “Eight-thirty. They’d ought to be here.”

      “Here they come now!” Phyllis cried. “Three cars full!” And she opened the door.

      At once the place was full of men. Experts. Some of them were sophisticated persons, well dressed, with hard-boiled professional faces, and carrying tripods, brief cases and various strange-looking instruments; others, obviously “country,” of the farmer and small-shopkeeper class. But they were all condescending in manner; civil enough, but like most experts, too intent on proving other people in the wrong to be really efficient.

      It struck me that the teamwork was not very good. The sheriff and the lawyer from the district attorney’s office were evidently not in sympathy, except in one particular: they both distrusted the detective, Mr. Skinner, and when the question of leadership came up the argument was as bitter and prolonged as if they had been dowager duchesses discussing who should go in first to dinner.

      In the end the sheriff gave way. Gleason, the lawyer, took the lead, and kept it.

      He put on a good show. The air fairly reeked with efficiency. Poor Mr. Merritt’s claim to the center of the stage didn’t last a minute. Still giving information, he was waved aside and told to sit down on the pile of boards at the back of the room. One by one our little group joined him there. We sat waiting in a meek row, uneasy as a class that doesn’t know its lesson.

      The investigators strolled about the room. Sam Beers pointed out the chief objects of interest: the kiln, the ashes, the bullet hole in the window. Some chairs and a table were brought down from the workroom. Sam Beers placed the box containing the “remains”—such a suitable term under the circumstances—upon the table. The reporters perched themselves on the stairs. The stenographers opened their notebooks. Gleason seated himself, beckoned to Sam. They conferred. The sheriff joined in. There was a good deal of talk about the doctor. His absence was explained: he was busy elsewhere bringing СКАЧАТЬ