Excursion train due to leave . . . 8:05
Mrs. Garr leaves station . . . 8:07
Mrs. Garr seen by Mr. Grant . . . 8:25
Mrs. Garr waits in storage room . . . 8:27 to 9:10
Mr. Waller goes to cellar kitchen . . . 9:08
Mrs. Garr confronts him . . . 9:10
Murder . . . 9:12
Mr. Waller searches kitchen, puts dog and two cats back in . . . 9:13 to 10:00
Mrs. Dacres returns, sees one cat still out . . . 10:00
Waller returns cat to kitchen . . . 10:55
W. throws key in cellar window . . . 11:00
Waller attacks Mrs. Dacres . . . 11:02
“It’s lovely, and very logical, I’m sure,” I said. “But it doesn’t prove anything.”
“Pooey to you, always yelping about proof.”
“You can’t electrocute Mr. Waller for making away with a suicide note.”
“Bigger crimes have been committed in the name of justice.”
“I wish Lieutenant Strom would call up. Anyway, what was Waller hunting for in that basement kitchen?”
“Maybe Mrs. Garr didn’t destroy that note as she said. How did he know she burned it? Maybe she was holding it over him.”
“But why would he want it?”
“Maybe Mrs. Garr was threatening to make it public.”
“But what could she do with it after all these years? And anyway, it would be more dangerous to her than to him. Of course, maybe he thought that if she didn’t have it, he could force her to pay that two-thousand-dollar note—”
“Exactly, my friend.”
“Anyway, I wish we’d get that call.”
The doorbell rang then; we stopped talking to listen. The man on duty in the hall answered.
The voice in the hall was Lieutenant Strom’s. I ran for my doors.
“Has he confessed? Do you know now for sure?”
Lieutenant Strom looked inexpressibly tired; he flopped into my big chair as if starch had left his muscles forever.
“He’s sitting as tight as a wood tick,” he said disgustedly. “I can’t get another thing out of him.”
“What does that mean? Does that mean he isn’t guilty?”
“Hell, I don’t know.”
I made coffee and sandwiches; the lieutenant revived somewhat on those, but he was still thoroughly out of sorts.
“If he did it he’s doing a damn good job of holding out.”
“I take it few hold out on you?” asked Hodge.
“Damn few,” replied the lieutenant arrogantly. “I get ’em.”
He told us, then, about other cases he’d handled. One about a man who’d been picked up by a roadside, riddled by bullets. About how he’d gone out himself and picked up hitchhikers: one, two, three. And how he’d turned on the fourth with, “How much dough you pick off that guy whose car you stole after you shot him?” And the boy had screamed with telltale fear.
One triumphant case followed another in his recital; past success poured confidence into him as he talked.
“I tell you frankly, I’m good at getting confessions. I know I’m good. I’m not too good, though. I don’t make ’em confess crimes they didn’t do. If this Waller croaked Mrs. Garr and tried to croak you, Mrs. Dacres, he’s good. The trouble is, I’ve got to get a confession or else. I haven’t enough evidence to pin the thing on him—or on anyone else.”
“Good motives for Waller, though,” Hodge said. “Mrs. Garr refusing to pay that note and threatening to turn them out. And I understand he admits Mrs. Dacres told him she knew he’d been on the force. One thing awfully dangerous for him to have come out.”
“God, don’t think I haven’t been over that ground. As far as Waller is concerned, there isn’t any ground I haven’t been over.”
“If you tip back any farther in that chair,” I told Hodge, “you’re going to have to put in a new buffet door for Mrs. Garr’s estate. You know what I think we should do? Take our minds off Mr. Waller for a minute, go back to the facts of the murder, and see what else we see.”
“So what?” Hodge.
“No, wait a minute. Not a bad idea.” The lieutenant. “Where would you begin?”
“Begin where you began with those hitchhikers. How did you know it was the fourth one? Something that came out when you talked, probably.”
“Okay, lady. Who would you say it was, forgetting Waller but taking into consideration everything else we know up to now?”
“I can’t help it,” I said. “When I begin to ask myself who killed Mrs. Garr, I forget the Rose Liberry business. After all, we haven’t one single thing to prove that old case is actually concerned in the death. Nothing that counts, except that Mrs. Garr was a principal figure in both. I go right back to where I started. Who benefited by the death? The Hallorans.”
The lieutenant and Hodge groaned in unison.
“Now look here,” the lieutenant instructed me. “Does an alibi mean anything to you? The Hallorans aren’t bright enough to fake alibis like theirs. They couldn’t have made that pass at you Monday night.”
“What proof have you that was the same person who killed Mrs. Garr?”
They groaned again.
“Didn’t we have that all argued out once?”
“Yes, but there’s nothing has as many holes as an argument.”
“Well, I’ll be cremated and eat my own ashes before I’ll start again that far back. You, Kistler, is your idea as bright as hers?”
“Not unlikely.”
“Shoot it.”
“Dark horse. The same dark horse I’ve quietly ridden from the beginning. Buffingham.”
“Aw, a guy with a name like that couldn’t commit murder.”
“He didn’t do it with his name. Name didn’t keep his son from robbing banks and doing a little shooting.”
“Reasons—any new ones?”
“Just the old ones. Plus my feeling when I have the whole household in one room, which has happened on divers occasions lately, Lieutenant. I look about me and say to myself, ‘Who done it?’ And my forefinger practically lifts of itself to point out Buffingham.”
“Hm.”
“Desperate for money, too.”
“A couple of Cs wouldn’t do his boy any good.”
“He looks grief-stricken, too,” I put in.
“Mrs. Sorry-for-the-Underdog speaks up from her corner. She’s sorriest of all when the underdog chloroforms her.”
“It was ether. A dry cleaner.”
“Well, you never heard of anyone being ethered,
