wanted a witness present, you see.
“When I arrived at the Winkler house that afternoon, the weather was about as wet as it could be. Rain had been pouring down for the past few days and nights, and the weatherman had predicted more of the same. I banged the knocker on the front door and heard Lucille fumbling with the lock, but by the time it opened, my hat was just a mass of soaked cloth.
“Lucille took my hat and raincoat to dry them off at the stove in the kitchen. Since she also had to tend to Agnes in the wheelchair, she left me alone in the living room for quite some time.”
He shrugged. “Matter of fact, I read three chapters in a book on fishing that was on the coffee table. I was just deciding whether I’d spent my next vacation catching bass in Canada or fishing for blue marlin off Mexico when she came back, wheeling Agnes in front of her. Gone about half an hour, I’d say.”
Roberts looked significantly at Mr Strang. Puckishly the teacher wiggled his fingers.
“We chatted for a while,” Penn went on. “Mostly about the weather. Lucille prattled on a lot about spending most of the previous dry week dragging the lawn sprinklers around that big back yard of theirs, and now here they had so much water it was like living under a faucet.
“Finally Agnes looked out the window. ‘I think Simon has arrived, Lucille,’ she said. ‘We must have some tea.’
“Outside, Simon Winkler was getting out of a cab. From what I could see, he was about fifty or fifty-five years old.”
“Fifty-four,” interrupted Roberts.
The priest nodded. “But then I glanced back and noticed Lucille,” he went on. “She was giving her sister the oddest look. Then she said, ‘I’ll put the water on.’ She went out to the kitchen, but she was only gone for a minute or so.”
Penn took a deep breath, and his eyes grew wide. “Now we come to the part the newspapers called weird. Me, I say it’s downright eerie. You see, just as Lucille came back, there was a loud knocking at the front door, and Simon Winkler was shouting through it for someone to hurry and open up. ‘Soaked to the skin!’ I heard him yell. I felt sorry for him because I’d been through the same thing just an hour before. Lucille was fumbling with the bolt – she had arthritis in both hands – and I was wishing there were a window in the door so I could at least make a sign to him that we were opening the door as fast as we could, when” – the priest’s voice grew low and sonorous – “when there was the sound of a dull thump from outside. That was followed by another sound – like something heavy sliding down the length of the door.”
The students looked at him in rapt silence. This was what they had been waiting for.
“Seconds later we got the door open. And the rain poured in on us, because something was propping open the outer storm door.” Penn pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.
“The thing holding open the storm door,” he continued, “was the body of Simon Winkler. He was lying on the front stoop with blood gushing from his head. There were some gardening implements on the stoop – a bushel basket and some other things – and the blood had stained them all red, even in the rain. I was numb. Didn’t know what to think or do. Finally I felt for a pulse. There was none. Winkler was dead.”
A pencil falling to the floor sounded like a cannon shot in the classroom.
“Well,” said Penn, “I tried to get the women back into the house. But they just stood in the doorway, staring at the body. Finally I told Lucille to go inside and call the police. Agnes and I remained in the doorway looking down at the body. The rain was coming in, but it seemed almost obscene just to leave the body there without anyone – I mean-”
He swallowed loudly, mopped at his face with the handkerchief, and sagged into a chair.
“What hit him?” asked Richie Cornish.
Roberts got to his feet. “That’s what we’d like to know too, young fella,” he said. “It was at this point the police entered the case. The first patrol car that pulled up found Father Penn and Agnes Winkler looking down at the body at the doorway. A sheet was put around the body and the sheet immediately soaked through with rain and blood.”
Roberts drew out a report form from the file folder he was holding and consulted it, speaking in a low voice: “I arrived on the scene at four thirty-five pm. We ran a grease pencil outline of the body on the stoop and then had the body taken to the morgue. By that time the door was closed again, but before knocking I looked around a little. There, on one side of the stoop, was a bushel basket with a handful of weeds in it, and a metal sprinkling can lying on its side. On the other side of the stoop was a shiny new pair of grass shears and a little trowel. And that was all.”
The detective’s expression was grim, and he stared almost belligerently at the class. “Each of those things weighed a pound or two at most,” he snapped. “Sure, some of ’em could give a man a headache or even knock him out if he was hit with enough force. And the grass shears would have made a perfect stabbing weapon, except that Winkler wasn’t stabbed. His skull was crushed like an eggshell. And dammit – excuse me, Mr Strang – there just was nothing around heavy enough to do it. We checked the stoop and walk for loose cement or to see whether a part of the wrought-iron railing might have been pulled away. Nothing.”
He spread his hands. “There you have it. Oh, sure, we went inside and questioned Lucille, Agnes, and Father Penn. And we got the same story you heard just now. I even had the house searched. Neat as a pin, everything in its place. And absolutely no indication that someone besides the two women might have been living there, or hiding there, who could have done it.
“And now,” he said, “let’s take a look at the scene of the crime.” The detective nodded at two boys at the rear of the room. One lowered the window shades and the other pressed the switch of a slide projector. A shaft of light lanced across the room, and on the screen at the front appeared a picture of an incredibly ugly house surrounded by what seemed to be acres of badly kept lawns and gardens.
“The Winkler house. It’s off by itself on a private lane. Hipped roof, with three gables evenly spaced out along its upper section, well back from the eaves. Front door in the center, with a window on either side of it. Two more windows on the second floor. No fancy woodwork. Just a completely functional house.”
“Looks like a big old barn,” commented a student.
“It should,” Roberts replied. “When Andrew Winkler -Lucille and Agnes’ grandfather – had the house built, he used the plans of a barn. Andrew was as rich as Midas, but he was too cheap to hire an architect. In fact, the records show that he pulled some kind of financial gimmick so he didn’t have to pay the builder more than half of what the job was worth.”
Somewhere a student chuckled.
“When Andrew died,” Roberts continued, “his son Jacob got the house. He added those three gables. According to the stories, Jake was something of a character. He showed his patriotism by flying a huge American flag he hung from that big pole sticking out from the centre gable there, and at the same time increased the family fortune by robbing the government blind back in Roosevelt’s day.”
“Oh?” said a boy brightly. “Was that Franklin D.?”
“No,” replied Roberts. “Teddy. Anyway, Jacob Winkler had three children. Lucille and Agnes, and then much later, a boy who later became Simon’s father. When Jacob died, he left the house and grounds to the two women.”
He paused. “Are you getting all this straight?”
“Yeah, we’re right with you,” said Jerry Lockley. “But enough of this history jazz. Let’s get back to the good stuff.”
“Just a little more background. It seems that about a year ago Simon Winkler discovered a flaw in his aunts’ title to the house and property. By that time the women had gone through nearly all their money. They lost a bundle in the stock market crash of ‘29. The house was about all they had left. But Simon saw an opportunity to get the house for himself, leaving Lucille and Agnes with nothing. A cruel, heartless attitude, of course, but in my business we come across that sort of thing all the time. Anyway, he wrote to his aunts
