Skulldoggery

20

“Senorita Fogarty,” said Hester, “did not die from eating cyanide peanuts. She died of a broken heart. She merely went off, in a manner of speaking, to join Grandfather.”

Back in Flo’s apartment, she had maintained heretofore an aloof and rather arrogant silence that Uncle Homer privately considered insufferable. After the completion of the midnight mission in the garden house, the return trip had taken a considerable while, due to the insistence of Lester that the party detour by way of Pearl’s for the purpose of having her join it. It was her right, he said, to participate in the family triumph. The delay in their return had not been so much the result of the additional distance covered as the difficulty experienced in convincing Pearl that it was not some kind of trick. But she was finally convinced and persuaded to come along, and she had brought, moreover, a bottle of gin that did much to allay the valid fears of Uncle Homer that the gathering would soon go dry.

“How do you know?” Uncle Homer now said.

“I know,” said Hester, “because the evidence, though circumstantial, is conclusive.”

“Well, no one will deny that you have been clever and effective in this matter from first to last,” Uncle Homer said, “but I don’t see how you can simply say that Senorita Fogarty died of a broken heart. If you ask me, circumstantial evidence or not, it’s an unwarranted assumption.”

“I am not surprised to hear you say so, for you have demonstrated time and again that you can’t recognize a piece of evidence when you see it. Your contributions have consisted entirely of threatening to do old Brewster in, and even that, in the end, was left to someone else.”

“Oh, some on, Hester,” Lester said. “Tell us the evidence.”

“Yes, darling,” said Flo. “Do tell us. You’ve been so smug about everything that I was determined not to ask you, but I’m simply dying to know.”

“The evidence was perfectly clear to anyone with the brains to understand it,” Hester said. “It is not only highly probable that Senorita grieved herself to death, as Mrs. Crump feared she would, but it is possible to fix the approximate time of her death.”

“That’s just too much,” said Uncle Homer. “Hester, you’re just showing off.”

“Not at all. We know that Senorita was alive the morning Mrs. Crump went to market, because Mrs. Crump bought the oatmeal for her diet. It is indicated, then, that she died while Mrs. Crump was out, or soon after her return, because that very afternoon Crump went out to buy the stud.”

“Well, that makes no sense whatever,” Junior said. “Why the hell should old Crump buy a stud if Senorita was dead?”

“Because,” said Hester, “Crump did not buy a stud. Lester, with his usual talent at being wrong about practically everything, merely assumed from seeing a cage that a stud was in it. Crump bought a replacement for Senorita Fogarty.”

“Oh! Oh, by God!” Uncle Homer, rising from his chair, sputtered as if he were fused and lighted and about to explode. “I see it now. I see the whole monstrous plot. The damned old scoundrel was out to deprive us interminably of our inheritance.”

“I see it, too,” said Junior. “That must be why I never saw the stud in the back yard.”

“Yes,” said Hester. “It is also why I never saw him in the park. It is impossible to see what doesn’t exist.”

“Do Chihuahuas all look alike?” Flo said. “I mean, couldn’t you have told the difference?”

“Please don’t be ridiculous, Mother. Can you describe Senorita Fogarty this minute?”

“Certainly not. I never really looked at the revolting little beast.”

“Well, there you are.”

Just then there was a loud rapping at the door that had, somehow, an official sound.

“Who can that be at this hour?” said Flo.

“If I am not mistaken,” Hester said, “it is Bones reporting according to instructions.”

“Bones here?” said Lester. “Why?”

“You will know shortly, Lester, let him in.”

Lester opened the door, and Bones entered. He did not, however, enter very far. He stopped after a step, watching the happy family group warily, and seemed prepared to make his report and his departure promptly.

“Well, Bones?” said Hester.

“It’s all over,” said Bones. “Crump is in custody.”

“I should certainly think so,” Uncle Homer said. “The old devil is guilty of the most flagrant fraud.”

“What he is guilty of,” said Bones, “is murder.”

“Murder! Is there no limit to the man’s depravity? Whose murder?”

“The murder of old Brewster, that’s whose,” Hester said. “Anyone with half a brain would have know that he was the culprit. It was only necessary, first, to be aware of the fraud. Old Brewster kept a sharp eye on things, you’ll have to say that for him, and he was soon onto Crump’s deception. Once he was convinced, he called Crump to account and Crump, determined to retain the advantages of Grandfather’s house and money, knocked him in the head with something.”

“What I don’t see,” said Flo, “is why he had to do it in Brewster’s apartment the same day that I went there to dinner in the evening.”

“So you did go,” said Bones. “I thought you did.”

“Never mind that,” Hester said. “It is now unimportant. Mother, it is my guess that old Brewster had gone home to make proper preparations for the dinner, and called Crump to come there in order to settle the issue and have the good news for you when you arrived. It would have put you in an amiable mood and susceptible to what Brewster apparently had in mind.”

“You’re probably right,” Flo said. “He was surprisingly lively and full of tricks.”

Hester, duly honored at every turn, was in quite an expansive frame of mind. It even expanded sufficiently to include Bones.

“Lieutenant Bones,” she said, “I must say that you have done a good job, once you were shown how. Will you join us in a gin sling or something?”

“No. No, thank you. Having done my duty, I’ll just run along. Crump’s confession is being taken down, and I still have a report to write.”

He back up to the door, reaching behind him for the knob, and disappeared in reverse. There was something definitive in the door’s closing.

“I was tempted,” said Hester, “to tell him about Mrs. Crump, but it would have done no particular good. One murder is sufficient to be guilty of, and another would simply be surplus.”

“What about Mrs. Crump?” said Uncle Homer. “What are you implying?”

“I was as explicit as possible, Uncle Homer. Can’t anyone understand anything? Why do you think Crump was against an autopsy? Mrs. Crump did not die of cyanide in her oatmeal cookie, as we originally thought, but it is certain, if she were dug up and examined, that she would be found full of rat poison or weed-killer or something else handy to Crump’s hand.”

“Oh, cut it out, Hester,” Lester said. “You shouldn’t go finding murder victims all over the place. It’s simply your imagination.”

“Is it? Perhaps I am in a better position to judge that than you are. Just because you were a failure with Mrs. Crump, Lester, you shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that everyone else has been a failure, too.”

“Are you trying to say,” said Uncle Homer, “that Crump deliberately eliminated Mrs. Crump to make room for you?”

“I will only say that I may have gone a bit too far. Crump was ambitious, and it gave him delusions of grandeur.”

“Well,” said Flo, “if Hester says it, I believe it. Thanks to her, everything has come out well, even though I sometimes thought it wouldn’t.”

“As for me, I was never in doubt,” Hester said. “It all come from remaining hopeful in a just cause.”