The D.A. Calls It Murder

Chapter XX

Sylvia Martin stared at Selby with wide open eyes.

“You aren’t bluffing, Doug?” she asked.

“No,” he told her.

“Then give it to me,” she said, looking at her wristwatch, “and hit the high-spots. I’ve got to get this story licked into shape. Give me the barest outline. Tell me how you doped it out, and tell me how you know Dr. Perry’s guilty.”

“Let’s go back to what we know,” he told her. “We know that Larrabie had business here. It was business other than raising the five thousand dollars.”

“How do we know that wasn’t his business?”

“Because he didn’t leave here after he had the five thousand dollars in his possession.”

“I see.”

“We know that he wrote someone here in Madison City, that this someone telephoned him and made arrangements for him to come to Madison City, with the utmost secrecy. That was the person with whom Larrabie was doing business, and it’s reasonable to suppose that business was connected in some way with the Perry Estate, because Larrabie’s brief case contained documents relating to two independent pieces of business; one was the Perry Estate and the other was the scenario.

“Remember, I warned you that all people had problems, that we mustn’t make the mistake of feeling that all of these problems must be related merely because the people happened to be under the same hotel roof. As a matter of fact, the five thousand dollars, Brower’s trouble, whatever it may have been, and Shirley Arden’s relationship with Larrabie, were all entirely independent of the business which actually brought Larrabie here.

“We should have known that if we had stopped to think, because he came here instead of going to Hollywood. Any business with the actress would naturally have taken him to Hollywood, where he’d have supposed it would have been more convenient for her to have joined him, since he knew nothing of her connections here, and we know his business with her related to getting five thousand dollars, yet he stayed on here after that business had been completed.

“Now the man to whom Larrabie wrote his letter and with whom he had his business must have been friendly to Larrabie — that is, someone whom Larrabie was aiding. He’d hardly have followed instructions so implicitly from someone hostile to him.”

“Go on,” she said.

“There’s a remarkable coincidence which has escaped everyone’s attention,” he said, “and probably furnishes the key to the entire situation, and that is that the initials of both claimants to the money in the Perry Estate are the same. Therefore, if Larrabie had written a letter addressed simply to ‘H. F. Perry’ at Madison City, that letter might have been delivered either to Herbert F. Perry, or to Dr. H. Franklin Perry. And, if the letter contained evidence relating to the marriage of the two descendants, and had fallen into the possession of Dr. Perry, naturally Dr. Perry would have realized his only hope to beat Herbert Perry’s claim was to suppress this evidence. Now, remember that in the newspaper clippings which Larrabie had in his brief case, the claimant to the estate was described simply as ‘H. F. Perry.’

“Of course, I can’t prove right how that Dr. Perry telephoned Larrabie, found out that Larrabie hadn’t let anyone know of the particular thing that he knew, therefore instructed Larrabie to come here and register under an assumed name; but I can surmise that.

“I can’t prove Dr. Perry was closeted in conference with Larrabie, that he managed to give Larrabie a lethal dose of morphine either in a drink, in some article of food, or perhaps persuaded him to take a tablet as a cure for a headache, claiming it was merely aspirin; but I can surmise that.”

“But you can’t convict him on surmises,” she pointed out, her eyes worried.

He grinned at her and said, “I can further surmise that there’s one possibility in the Perry case the lawyers overlooked. While it’s a matter of law that marriage has to be solemnized with certain formalities, it is also the law that where two people appear before a regularly ordained minister of the Gospel, state they have been living together, and ask to be married, the minister has authority under those circumstances to make a note of such marriage on the church records in order to make the marriage completely legal.

“If that happened, it would explain everything in the case. And, if Larrabie was a good photographer, which he was, he would have been very apt to have photographed that portion of the church records before leaving Riverbank. And, if Dr. Perry had killed him and then started thinking things over and read in the newspapers about the camera having been found in Larrabie’s suitcase, he would have been certain to appreciate his danger in case those films were developed.

“So Dr. Perry decided he had to get possession of that camera. He had only one way of getting access to the place where Perkins kept the camera, and that was to poison the dog, because he knew Perkins would bring the dog to him for treatment; that then he would have a chance to go back to look the place over for poison. But he also knew he wouldn’t have time to take the films from Larrabie’s camera; but, if he played things right, he could switch cameras. So he purchased an identical camera and made plans for the substitution. In order to do that, he needed some exposed films in the camera, because he’d learned that some of the films in Larrabie’s camera had been exposed.

“So he poisoned the dog and then, under the guise of looking for poison, returned to Perkins’s place. Unfortunately for him, Perkins had called me and I was, therefore, present. But, offsetting that bit of particular bad fortune, he had the good fortune to find the camera where he could make a quick substitution. In order to do this, he needed to divert our attention. And he did this very successfully by dropping additional poison along the wall on the far side of the room. While we were all looking for poison, Perry had a chance to switch cameras. He thought, then, that he was in the clear, until he realized that I was going to check the numbers on the camera. Then he realized he needed to make a second switch. So I played into his hand by giving him a chance to come to my office and, when he had arrived, leaving him alone with the substituted camera. So far I can’t prove anything. But, knowing the guilty person, I can start tracing telephone calls, looking on the church records at Riverbend for a record of that marriage. I think I can build up a pretty respectable case. And I can absolutely prove the substitution of those cameras, because he was the only one who had an opportunity to make this last switch, and I think the sheriff will find the camera we want in his possession.

“If we can reconstruct what must have happened, Perry lured Larrabie into a trap, insured keeping the facts exclusively within Larrabie’s knowledge by impressing upon him the necessity for secrecy. He had an evening conference in Larrabie’s room, gave the trusting minister a dose of morphia, probably claiming it was an aspirin. After the poison took effect, he calmly and methodically planted a box of sedatives and wrote the letter which he left in the typewriter which would make the death seem entirely natural. He’d previously opened the door of room three nineteen with a passkey, and he had only to barricade the door of three twenty-one, unbolt the connecting door to three nineteen, bolt it on the inside and leave through three nineteen, locking the door behind him. If I hadn’t happened to notice the bolt wasn’t in position on the minister’s side of the door, the assumption would have been that no one could possibly have left the room. And that letter pointed to a natural death so cunningly that in the ordinary course of things the clews would have been pretty cold before an investigation was started.

“Perry overlooked just one thing, which was that when Larrabie registered under an assumed name, he hadn’t taken a fictitious name, which Perry would naturally have expected, but had taken the name of an actual person.

“The little minister probably hated to be a party to any deception. Perry had instructed him to take a fictitious name. So Larrabie salved his conscience by borrowing the name of his colleague, Charles Brower, rather than taking a purely-fictitious name. If the name had been purely fictitious, we’d have tried to notify a Mrs. Charles Brower at Millbank, Nevada, of her husband’s death. Finding there was no such person, we’d have been baffled when it came to an identification of the corpse, but could reasonably have been expected to take the view death had been a natural one, induced by an overdose of sleeping medicine.”

She studied him thoughtfully for a moment and said, “If that’s right, you’ve done a perfectly swell piece of detective work. If it isn’t right, we’re both of us...”

She broke off as the door opened and Sheriff Brandon pushed Dr. Perry into the room.

“Get the camera?” Selby asked.

“Yes.”

“Take his fingerprints,” Selby said, “and check them with the fingerprints on the space-bar of that typewriter.”