101 Mystery Stories

86 The Terrarium Principle Bill Pronzini

Andrea Parker was on the back porch, working on her latest project — the planting of seeds in a bottle terrarium — when she heard Jerry’s car in the driveway. She took off her gloves, brushed flecks of potting soil off her gardening shirt, and went into the kitchen to meet him as he opened the garage door.

There was a preoccupied scowl on Jerry’s face. He looked rumpled, the way Columbo used to look on television. Which was unusual; her husband may have been a police lieutenant attached to the Homicide Division, but he definitely was not the Peter Falk type.

He brushed his lips over hers — not much of a kiss, Andrea thought — and said, “I could use a drink.” He went straight to the refrigerator and began tugging out one of the ice trays.

“Rough day?” she asked him.

“You can say that again. Except that the operative word is frustrating. One of the most frustrating days I’ve ever spent.”

“Why?”

“Because a man named Harding committed murder in a locked room this morning and I can’t prove it. That’s why.”

“Want to talk about it?”

He made a face. But he said, “I might as well. It’s going to be on my mind all evening anyway. You can help me brood.”

Andrea took the ice tray away from him, shooed him into the living room, and made drinks for both of them. When she brought them in, Jerry was sitting on the couch with his legs crossed, elbow resting on one knee and chin cupped in his palm. He really did look like Columbo tonight. All he needed, she thought, was a trench coat and a cigar.

She handed him his drink and sat down beside him. “So why can’t you prove this man Harding committed murder? You did say it happened in a locked room, didn’t you?”

“Well, more or less locked. And I can’t prove it because we can’t find the gun. Without it we just don’t have a case.”

“What exactly happened?”

“It’s a pretty simple story, except for the missing gun. The classic kind of simple, I mean. Harding’s uncle, Philip Granger, has — or had — a house out in Roehampton Estates; wealthy guy, made a lot of money in oil stocks over the years. Harding, on the other hand, is your typical black-sheep nephew — drinks too much, can’t hold down a job, has a penchant for fast women and slow horses.

“This morning Harding went out to his uncle’s house to see him. The housekeeper let him in. According to her, Harding seemed upset about something, angry. Granger’s lawyer, Martin Sampson, happened to be there at the time, preparing some papers for Granger to sign, and he confirms the housekeeper’s impression that Harding was upset.

“So Harding went into his uncle’s study and either he or Granger locked the door. Fifteen minutes later both Sampson and the housekeeper heard a gunshot. They were sure it came from the study; they both ran straight for that door. But the door was locked, as I said. They pounded and shouted, and inside Harding yelled back that somebody had shot his uncle. Only he didn’t open the door right away. It took him eight and one-half minutes by Sampson’s watch to get around to it.”

“Eight and a half minutes?” Andrea said. “What did he say he was doing all that time?”

“Looking out the window, first of all, for some sign of a phantom killer. Harding’s claim is that window was open and Granger was shot through the window from outside; he says Sampson and the housekeeper must have been mistaken about where the shot came from. The rest of the time he was supposedly ministering to his uncle and didn’t stop to open the door until the old man had died.”

“But you think he spent that time hiding the gun somewhere in the room?”

“I know that’s what he was doing,” Jerry said. “His story is implausible and he’d had arguments with his uncle before, always over money and sometimes to the point of violence. He’s guilty as sin — I’m sure of it!”

“Couldn’t he have just thrown the gun out the window?”

“No. We searched the grounds; we’d have found the gun if it had been out there.”

“Well, maybe he climbed out the window, took it away somewhere, and hid it.”

“No chance,” Jerry said. “Remember the rain we had last night? There’s a flower bed outside the study window and the ground there was muddy from the rain; nobody could have walked through it without leaving footprints. And it’s too wide to jump over from the window sill. No, the gun is in that room. He managed to hide it somewhere during those eight and one-half minutes. His uncle’s stereo unit was playing, fairly loud, and if he made any noise the music covered it — Sampson and the housekeeper didn’t hear anything unusual.”

“Didn’t one of them go outdoors to look in through the study window?”

“Sampson did, yes. But Harding had drawn the drapes. In case the phantom killer came back, he said.”

“What’s the study like?” Andrea asked.

“Big room with a heavy masculine motif: hunting prints, a stag’s head, a wall full of books, overstuffed leather furniture, a walk-in fireplace—”

“I guess you looked up the fireplace chimney,” Andrea said.

He gave her a wry smile. “First thing. Nothing but soot.”

“What else was in the room?”

“A desk that we went over from top to bottom. And model airplanes, a clipper ship-in-a-bottle, a miniature train layout — all kinds of model stuff scattered around.”

“Oh?”

“Evidently Granger built models in his spare time, as a hobby. There was also a small workbench along one wall.”

“I see.”

“The only other thing in there was the stereo unit — radio, record player, tape deck. I thought Harding might have hidden the gun inside one of the speakers, but no soap.”

Andrea was sitting very still, pondering. So still that Jerry frowned at her and then said, “What’s the matter?”

“I just had an idea. Tell me, was there any strong glue on the workbench?”

“Glue?”

“Yes. The kind where you only need a few drops to make a bond and it dries instantly.”

“I guess there was, sure. Why?”

“How about a glass cutter?”

“I suppose so. Andrea, what are you getting at?”

“I think I know what Harding was doing for those eight and a half minutes,” she said. “And I think I know just where he hid the gun.”

Jerry sat up straight. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious. Come on, I want to show you something.” She led him out through the kitchen, onto the rear porch. “See that terrarium?”

“What about it?”

“Well, it’s a big glass jar with a small opening at one end, right? Like a bottle. There’s nothing in it now except soil seeds, but pretty soon there’ll be flowers and plants growing inside and people who don’t know anything about terrariums will look at it and say, ‘Now how in the world did you get those plants through that little opening?’ It doesn’t occur to them that you didn’t put plants in there; you put seeds and they grew into plants.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with Harding—”

“But there’s also a way to build a bottle terrarium using fullgrown plants,” she went on, “that almost never occurs to anybody. All you have to do is slice off the bottom of the container with a glass cutter; then, when you’ve finished making your garden arrangement inside, you just glue the bottom back on. That’s what some professional florists do. You can also heat the glass afterward, to smooth out the line so nobody can tell it’s been cut, but that isn’t really necessary. Hardly anyone looks that close.”

A light was beginning to dawn in Jerry’s eyes. “Like we didn’t look close enough at a certain item in Granger’s study.”

“The ship-in-a-bottle,” Andrea said, nodding. “I’ll bet you that’s where Harding put the gun — inside the ship that’s inside the bottle.”

“No bet,” Jerry said. “If you’re right, I’ll buy you the fanciest steak dinner in town.”

He hurried inside, no longer looking like Columbo, and telephoned police headquarters. When he was through talking he told Andrea that they would have word within an hour. And they did — exactly fifty-six minutes had passed when the telephone rang. Jerry took it, listened, then grinned.

“You were right,” he said when he’d hung up. “The bottom of the bottle had been cut and glued back, the ship inside had been hollowed out, and the missing gun was inside the ship. We overlooked it because we automatically assumed nobody could put a gun through a bottle neck that small. It never occurred to us that Harding didn’t have to put it through the neck to get it inside.”

Andrea smiled. “The terrarium principle,” she said.

“I guess that’s a pretty good name for it. Come on, get your coat; we’ll go have that steak dinner right now.”

“With champagne, maybe?”

“Sweetheart,” he said, “with a whole magnum.”