The Case of the Crooked Candle

Chapter 17

Back in Mason’s office, Paul Drake, speaking with his characteristic drawl, said, “I have to hand it to you, Perry. You certainly do pull rabbits out of the hat. You’ve got the D.A. running around in circles, and the newspapers will give your clients all the best of it when they report this afternoon’s session of Court.”

“I haven’t gotten any rabbits out of any hats yet,” Mason said, starting to pace the floor, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest, his head slightly tilted forward so that his eyes seemed to be staring holes in the carpet. “Hang it, Paul. I’m almost in the clear, but I’m afraid I can’t go the rest of the way. — I’m glad Judge Newark got the point about the candle and the tides.”

“Strange that candle business had never occurred to me,” Drake said.

“The explanation’s simple,” Mason pointed out. “Nearly all murder cases are committed on land. Police detectives get accustomed to thinking in terms of cases on land, and they simply overlook the elemental factors that would automatically enter into the calculations of a yachtsman. Ask a yachtsman about any problem in connection with the ocean, or with navigation, and almost his first thought is about the tide. On the other hand, Lieutenant Tragg and the boys from Homicide probably never think about the tide — unless they happen to be fishermen.”

“But,” Della Street said, “I can’t understand how this candle can tie in with...”

“With what?” Mason asked.

“With that bloody footprint on the stair tread, or I guess they call it a companionway, using yachting terms, don’t they?”

“A companionway is right,” Mason said. “And that bloody footprint is the thing that bothers me.”

“Carol Burbank made it?”

“She must have. She says she did, and the blood was found on her shoe.”

“And there’s something wrong with it?” Drake asked.

“The thing that’s wrong with it,” Mason said, “is that if her story is correct she must have left that bloody footprint before the man was murdered.”

“But she couldn’t have done that, Perry.”

“Did you notice the position of that bloody footprint?”

Drake slid around in the big, overstuffed leather chair, said, “Let me take a look at that photograph again, Perry.”

Mason opened the drawer in his desk and handed Drake a photograph that showed the print of the bloody foot on the tread of the companionway.

“Well, what’s wrong with it?” Drake asked after he’d studied it for some time.

“It wasn’t made under the conditions mentioned.”

“Why?”

Mason said, “We’ll get back to the question of tides again. What’s the location of that footprint?”

“Right slap bang in the middle of the tread,” Drake said.

“Exactly. Now suppose that at the time she went out there the yacht was heeled way over. She’d have stepped in a pool of blood — then what would have happened? She’d have started up those stairs or, as they call it in yachting terms, companionway. What would have happened? Ever try to climb a slanting stairway?”

“No,” Drake said. “Why should I?”

Mason walked over to the closet, took out a stepladder, tilted it very carefully until he was holding it at a certain angle.

“All right,” he said, “this is just about the angle of the candle. Now suppose you were going to climb up there. What would you do, Paul?”

Drake said, “If I had to climb up that, I wouldn’t.”

“Yes you would,” Mason told him. “You’d climb up, but what would you do?”

Drake shook his head. “I don’t get you.”

Della Street walked over to the stepladder, raised her skirts slightly so the men could see the position of her feet clearly. “There’s only one way to do it, Paul. You wouldn’t put your feet in the center of the treads at all. You’d put them over in the corner, over against the edge of the ladder on the low side.”

“Exactly,” Mason said.

Drake whistled. “Then you don’t think...”

“I know,” Mason said, “that bloody footprint must have been made when the yacht was on a relatively even keel.”

“Well, that’s all right, Perry. She says she went out there as soon as she got the news. The location of that footprint corroborates her story. The yacht didn’t start tilting until around nine o’clock. And Cameron tells about the dinghy being taken out...”

“Okay,” Mason interrupted, “all that checks. The only trouble with it is that the man wasn’t dead then.”

“Sure he was. Reconstruct what happened and it all checks. Burbank went out to the yacht with Milfield, had a fight, knocked him over so that the guy’s head was cracked on the brass threshold and...”

“Or,” Mason interrupted, “hit him, knocked him over, cast his rowboat adrift and then came ashore. Someone else rowed out to the yacht, killed Milfield and left. That’s what I’ve got to establish if I’m going to get Burbank and Carol out of this mess. And it’s what must have happened.”

“Well,” Drake said dubiously, “it would be a swell out for you — if you could prove it, Perry. But how can you prove it? There would then have been just two men on the yacht, Milfield and the murderer. Milfield can’t talk, and the murderer won’t.”

Mason said, “Perhaps the murderer will talk. Perhaps he has. And the yacht will talk. All you need to do is to take into consideration the state of the tides, as any yachtsman would do, and you find the story of the prosecution and the story that has been told by the various people simply don’t check.”

“What does check?” Della Street asked.

Mason resumed his pacing the floor. “This chap, Burwell,” he said abruptly, “he seems to be a naive lad in the throes of a first illicit love affair — but notice that he isn’t as naive as he pretends. He says he was coming down here on the Lark, Friday night. Was he? Do you notice that he says Daphne Milfield told him of her husband’s death before Lieutenant Tragg could possibly have told her? Before I visited her. Do you notice how closely the mysterious person who was so interested in the nocturnal habits of sharks resembles this chap, Burwell?

“Let’s suppose Roger Burbank hit Milfield and knocked him over. He left in a rage. Carol returns and finds the man lying with his head resting on that brass-covered threshold. She thinks her father must have killed him. Her father thinks so too. But suppose her father didn’t kill him? Then we must look to the yacht itself and to the evidence of circumstances to tell us what happened and who did kill Milfield. It’s simply a matter of trying to get things to check. The elements of the case are so simple that a child can grasp them, but when you put them together, they simply don’t fit. Let’s look at it from this angle. High tide was at five-forty-one p. m. Take the testimony of the witness, Cameron. Here, I’ll make you a schedule.”

Mason, took a pad of legal foolscap from the desk, picked up a pencil and tabulated certain figures.

Then he passed the schedule across to Paul Drake, and Della Street came to look over his shoulder.

The schedule read —

Drake studied the schedule and nodded. “That seems simple enough,” he said.

“All right,” Mason announced, taking the pad of legal foolscap once more, “here we have a crude diagram of the interior of the cabin and the position of the body. I’ll make two positions. Position number one which shows where the body lay when the head struck against the threshold. And position number two, where the body was found.

“Now bear this in mind, Paul: The tilting of the yacht would roll the body down to position number two. But when the next high tide came along, the body would never roll hack to position number one. All that would happen would be that the yacht, when it floated on the next high tide, would float on an even keel. But because of the position of the anchors and the direction of the tidal currents, when the yacht started to tilt again, it would tilt over to the right side, leaving the starboard side down and the port side up. Therefore, once the body arrived at position number two, it would remain there until it was moved by some human agency. Here, take a look at the sketch and it will show you what I mean.”

Mason handed Drake the sketched diagram.

“Well,” Drake said, “there doesn’t seem to me to be any great conflict in all of this, Perry.”

Mason said, “All right, now let’s start checking the testimony and the physical facts of the case with this schedule. The autopsy surgeon says that there were no wounds on the body from which there would have been any bleeding save that gash in the back of the head which was immediately over the fractured portion of the skull and which we may, therefore, refer to as the fatal wound. Now then, there is blood on the threshold at position number one — rather a considerable amount of blood. Here. I’ll sketch that in the diagram. There is also some blood near the head of the body in position number two, leaving two distinct pools of blood in the carpet with no connection between them save a few isolated drops of blood which would have been deposited when the body rolled. Now that is to be expected because the body would lie in position number one until the tilting of the yacht caused it to start rolling. But once it had started rolling, the tilt would have been sufficiently pronounced to have made it roll over and over without stopping, until it fetched up against the right side of the cabin. Here, let’s check it on the diagram.”

Mason put the diagram down on the arm of the chair so all three of them could see it.

Drake studied the diagram silently for several seconds and said, “Well, what’s wrong with all that, Perry? That’s just the way a body would act. It would lie in one position until the tilt became enough to move it and then when that happened, the body once in motion would roll over and over until it banged up against the low side of the cabin in the position in which it was found.”

“Very good,” Mason said. “Now notice that the boat started to tilt at nine o‘clock Friday night. It hadn’t assumed its position of maximum tilt till about ten-thirty p. m. Friday night. Now the candle is tilted at about seventeen degrees, which indicates that at the time it was burning, the yacht had tilted over about half way. Therefore, we might strike some sort of an average — depending on certain factors which we can’t anticipate at the present time. But I would be inclined to say that we’d find that intermediate period when the yacht had tilted at about seventeen degrees to be rather shortly after nine o’clock — say around nine-twenty and probably not after nine-thirty, and certainly not after nine-forty.

“Now we start putting things together, bearing in mind the statement of the autopsy surgeon that the period of bleeding did not, in his opinion, cover more than half an hour.

“The body was lying with the head against the threshold of the forward cabin, or within an inch or two of that threshold in what we have referred to in the diagram as position number one, and then it rolled over to position number two, and if the bleeding didn’t continue for over half an hour, and if we find blood pools at both position number one and position number two, then we are forced to the conclusion that the murder took place somewhere around nine-fifteen Friday night after the boat bad started to tilt.”

Drake nodded and said, “That’s corroborated by the candle.”

“Exactly,” Mason said. “The condition of the candle indicates that it burned for about twenty minutes, sometime between nine o’clock p.m. and nine-forty p. m. Probably the candle was lit about nine-twenty and extinguished about nine-forty.”

“It was dark before that,” Drake said.

“Now you’re getting to some of the puzzling features of the case,” Mason said. “Either Milfield must have been sitting in the cabin in the dark, or there’s another possibility which seems to be much more feasible. That is, that there was an old stub of a candle in the position where the candle was found. Milfield lit that when it got dark, and that candle burnt itself out, whereupon Milfield pried it loose from the board to which it had been stuck, and tossed it overboard. He thereupon lit a fresh candle and...”

“By George,” Drake said excitedly, “that’s it. Perry! That ties the whole thing together. That makes everything check. Milfield had just lit this fresh candle when the murderer came aboard. It must have been within five or ten minutes of the time he lit the candle.”

“Exactly,” Mason said. “That fixes the time of crime with almost a mathematical certainty, doesn’t it, Paul?”

Drake nodded.

“But,” Mason said, “Roger Burbank had his altercation with Milfield at around six o‘clock in the evening. Carol Burbank drove down to the yacht club as soon as she heard about it. She reached the yacht sometime after seven o’clock and before eight o’clock. The yacht was still on an even keel. She found the body lying in position number one. That’s her solemn statement to me.”

Drake said, “By George, Perry, you’re absolutely right. The girl’s lying. She’s lying like a trooper about the time element. It simply couldn’t have been the way she described it.”

“That’s right,” Mason said. “Everything checks. Carol Burbank is lying. She must have boarded the yacht sometime after nine o’clock. Bear in mind that either the murderer lit the candle, or she lit the candle. There is always the possibility that the candle was lit after the murder had been committed, and the murderer had departed.”

“Not very likely in view of the fact that the old candle had been removed,” Drake said.

“Not very likely,” Mason admitted, “but it’s a possibility.”

Drake said, “You’ve got me sold, Perry. Carol Burbank is lying.”

“Now wait a minute,” Mason said. “We come to the one thing which substantiates Carol’s story.”

“What’s that?”

“The location of the bloody footprint. The footprint is right in the middle of the tread of the companionway. That indicates the yacht was on an even keel when the bloody footprint was made. Now how do you account for that, Mr. Detective?”

Drake scratched his head and said, “Damn it, Perry, I don’t. It just doesn’t fit into the picture at all.”

“There you are” Mason said. “That bloody footprint indicates Carol is telling the truth. On the other hand, the evidence of the candle indicates she’s lying. The evidence of the bloodstain indicates she’s lying. According to the theory of the tides, the murder simply couldn’t have been committed before nine o’clock.

“And always remember that whenever you’re dealing with a murder case, you must take into consideration certain facts. The murderer will always lie. And certain witnesses will sometimes lie. Therefore, you have to take into consideration the fact that the story anyone tells, either on or off the stand, may be false.”

“Wouldn’t it be possible that this footprint could have been framed?” Della Street asked.

“Now,” Mason said, “you’re getting to the thought that’s in the back of my mind. Suppose a girl who knew something about tides, who’s smart enough to think fast in an emergency, realized that, for some reason or other, she wanted it to appear the murder had been committed at a time considerably earlier than had actually been the case. The yacht was tilted at the time she was aboard, but she realized that if she left a bloody footprint in the exact center of the tread of the companionway, it would indicate the yacht was on an even keel.”

“By George!” Drake exclaimed. “Now you’ve got something! And Carol is a fast-thinking little number.”

Mason said almost musingly, “I can’t afford to make any fumbles. I’ve got to hit the bull’s-eye with my first and only shot. The autopsy surgeon says the bleeding — that is the extensive bleeding — occupied a period of probably not over thirty minutes. There are just two big pools of blood, one in position number one, and the other in the position in which the body was found. That indicates a murder right around nine-twenty. The position of the candle indicates a murder right around nine-twenty. That bloody footprint is the one thing that doesn’t fit into the picture. Now, I’ve got to know why it doesn’t fit into the picture, when it was made, how it was made, and why it was made.”

“Is there a possibility,” Della asked, “that the footprint could have been made the next morning after the boat returned to an even keel?”

“That,” Mason said, “is the solution that I keep flirting with. It’s the only thing that could possibly account for all the facts as I see them now.”

“The question is, would the blood remain moist that long?” Drake asked.

“I think it would,” Mason said, “particularly where the blood had soaked into a carpet. Remember that this carpet on the floor of the cabin is very thick and very heavy. It fits into position and is held there by a series of snaps.

“By examining the circumstantial evidence, we have three clocks fixing the time of the murder with mathematical precision. The first and most important clock is the ebbing and flowing of the tide. The second clock is the candle, at an angle of approximately seventeen degrees from the perpendicular, yet with the wax running down smoothly on both sides, indicating that the candle was approximately erect at the time it was burning.”

“What’s the third clock?” Drake asked.

“The time during which the wound would bleed, probably not more than half an hour. That is, bleeding to the extent that it would leave blood spots the size found in the carpet. Now then, there’s only one way you can synchronize all three of those clocks so that they all point to one time as the time of murder, and the minute you do that, that bloody footprint becomes absolutely out of place.”

“Then,” Drake said, “the footprint was faked. This business of pulling her gloves out of her purse and letting the parcel checking ticket drop to the floor — that’s it, Perry, that’s bound to be it. The whole thing is some sort of a frame-up.”

“On whom?” Mason asked.

“On... Gosh, I don’t know, Perry. It seems to be on ourselves more than anyone else.”

Mason nodded somewhat glumly. “I’ve covered all of that in my mind, Paul. The footprint is the one thing that doesn’t fit in. It’s the thing that’s out of alignment with everything. Therefore, we must consider the possibility that the footprint was fabricated deliberately, and as you point out, that business of checking the package containing the shoes and subsequently letting the check flutter to the floor, may have been just what it seems. But on the other hand it is more apt to have been part of a deliberately planned campaign to get those shoes into the hands of the police under such circumstances that the evidence of the bloodstained shoe would seem to be even more sinister.”

Mason took a tide schedule from his pocket and said, “Well, Paul, tonight we’re going to make an experiment.”

“Just what are your plans?” Drake asked.

“Tonight,” Mason said, “high tide is at nine-forty-two p.m. Low tide will be at two-fifty-four a.m. tomorrow morning. According to the schedule we worked out, the boat should be aground about eleven o‘clock tonight. It should start tilting at twelve o’clock. It should have tilted away over by one-thirty. Somewhere around half an hour after midnight is the period I want to study, from then until one-forty-five.”

“Where’s the boat now?” Drake asked.

“As the representative of the owners of the boat,” Mason said, “I’ve been able to get it released from police custody, and it’s in my care. I’ve instructed Cameron at the yacht club to see that the boat is towed out to exactly the position it occupied the night of the murder, and anchored there. Shortly before midnight, we’re going down there and study the action of the tide.”

Drake’s face showed dismay.

“What’s the matter?” Mason asked.

Drake said, “You would have to pick the night when I’m nursing a sore throat, and having aches and pains in every joint.”

“You’re getting the flu?” Mason asked.

“I think I’m headed that way,” Drake admitted, “but I haven’t any fever. I’m just feeling uncomfortable. I wanted to go to a Turkish bath, but if you...”

“Forget it,” Mason interrupted. “There’s not a darn thing you can do. I’m just going to study what happens on that boat, and be in a position to advance a theory to the Court tomorrow morning.”

“The judge is certainly interested in that candle business,” Drake said.

Mason nodded, “If I can work out a theory that will hold water, I can blow that case out of court tomorrow morning. And if I can’t, I’m licked.”

Della Street said quietly, “I’m going with you. Chief.”

“Nonsense,” Mason interrupted. “I just want to go down there and see what happens, and...”

“And I’m going with you,” she interrupted.

“All right,” Mason said with a grin. “Come along.”