Whistle Past the Graveyard [= Give the Girl a Gun]

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Because he wasn’t your partner,” I said. “He was your employer. Only nobody knew that but you and Lloyd. You killed him because it was the only way you could get control of the Huntsafe patent.”

Madeline was staring at Amhurst as though he were some kind of monster. “I don’t understand any of this,” she almost whispered.

“Then I’ll explain it,” I told her. “I got on the track when I got to thinking over the various facts I had gleaned about your brother’s character. He was very closemouthed about his affairs, for instance. Until after he was dead, no one but Barney Amhurst even knew he was working on the Huntsafe. Also he was a sharp businessman. I recall your remarking he always had an ironclad contract for everything, and it was always in his favor. Ostensibly Lloyd and Barney were partners, but it occurred to me Lloyd had a lot of inherited money, while Barney didn’t. Lloyd could afford to experiment along even for years without income, but I wondered how Amhurst could. That got me to wondering if perhaps they weren’t partners at all, but Lloyd had been paying Barney a salary as an assistant. Today in going through Lloyd’s files, I learned he had been. His last two years’ tax records showed he had been paying three thousand seven hundred and seventy dollars in salary a year. That works out to seventy-two dollars and fifty cents a week.”

Madeline said, “He was paying that to Barney, and I didn’t even know it?”

“You told me yourself he never discussed his business matters. Knowing Lloyd’s character, I guessed that if he was paying Barney a salary, he would have an unbreakable contract with Barney giving himself full rights to anything developed through their joint efforts. I think it was that contract that got Ford killed. I think he found it when he was helping you sort over Lloyd’s papers, realized it meant Amhurst had no legal right to the Huntsafe at all, and used it to blackmail a ten-per-cent interest from Amhurst.”

“Where is this so-called contract then?” Amhurst demanded.

His voice was condescending, but I noticed sweat beaded his upper lip.

I shrugged. “Destroyed, probably. That’s what you searched Daniel Cumberland’s apartment for after you killed him. You must have gone there straight from taking Madeline home in a taxi that night. How you knew the contract was at Cumberland’s instead of at Ford’s place, I don’t know, but it‘s a relatively unimportant point. Why’d you have to kill them both? Had they raised the ante beyond a ten-per-cent interest and made you realize they would bleed you white for the rest of your life?”

Warren Day broke in. “Listen, Moon, are you accusing Amhurst himself of killing Ford and Cumberland? Or only of hiring young Thomaso to do it?”

“He only used Thomaso for odd chores,” I said. “Amhurst did the actual killing.”

“How? By black magic? I’ll swallow Cumberland, but how about Ford? He didn’t have time to get the gun over to Henry’s flat.”

“He didn’t have to, Inspector. The whole thing was an optical illusion. Only an inventor would devise such an elaborate Rube Goldberg way to kill anyone. It would have been much simpler to have pushed Ford under a bus at some crowded intersection. Of course this way he could frame Thomas Henry for the killing. And he wanted to do that because he’s nuts about Madeline.”

“How did he do it?” Day shouted at me.

“Take it easy,” I said. “I’m getting to it. The gun in Henry’s workshop was planted before the crime. You’ll recall it was identified as the murder weapon not by ballistic examination of the bullet, but by microscopic examination of the ejected casing. Apparently Amhurst knew a soft-nosed bullet almost certainly would be too battered to make comparison tests possible. So before he started out that evening, he must have laid the scene. I guess that this is what happened. He fired the gun initialed ‘T.H.’ somewhere. Maybe at some isolated spot along the river. He saved the ejected casing to drop on the lawn outside his workroom window so that it would look as though the gun had been fired there. Then he let himself into Henry’s flat by means of a skeleton key, planted the gun and swiped one of Henry’s pipes to drop near the shell.”

“How about the broken window?” Amhurst asked in a controlled voice. “How did I fake that?”

“I’d guess it was broken in advance,” I told him. “And the pieces carefully collected in an otherwise empty waste can. When you had us all gathered in here as witnesses, you took Ford into your workroom and left the door only an inch ajar so we could hear you but couldn’t see you. Then, pretending to give Ford instructions, you started to say something in a loud voice about his taking one of the Huntsafes and coming back out here. At the same time you picked up the waste can, dumped the glass on the floor beneath the window so that it would sound as though it had just been broken from outside, then turned and shot Ford.”

“What did I do with the gun?” Amhurst asked in the same controlled voice. “I was searched, remember, and so was the workroom.”

“During the thirty seconds or so while I was getting up nerve enough to push open the door, you put it in the empty case of the Huntsafe transmitter you had in your hand.”

“It wasn’t empty. I showed it to the inspector later.”

“That stumped me for a long time,” I admitted. “But I think I’ve figured out how you did it. You had the works of the transmitter concealed in the bathroom. When you tore in there, supposedly to be sick, you simply took the gun out of the transmitter case and put the works back in. The murder gun was hidden in the bathroom all the time, but no one thought to search it.”

“When you said this was a Rube Goldberg plot, you hit it,” Amhurst said derisively. “But the plot’s all in your head.”

Even Warren Day was looking a little dubious about my theory. I brought forth some more arguments to clinch it.

“There isn’t a single factor that doesn’t point straight at Amhurst, Inspector. For instance, when I made my first progress report over the phone to Miss Strong, Amhurst was at her apartment. As a matter of fact, he answered the phone. No one else knew I was making any progress, but that evening I found young Thomaso waiting at my apartment when I got home. Amhurst was also present when I reported to Madeline that I had learned it wasn’t Walter Ford who had that gun initialed T.H. That threw him into a blind panic, for that same evening he had Thomaso kidnap Fausta. Even the fact that Thomas Henry’s phone was used to make those checkup calls points to Amhurst. We know the killer must have had a skeleton key to get into Henry’s flat in order to plant the gun, and all Amhurst had to do was walk across two intervening lawns. I’ll admit it’s an incredible murder plot, but Amhurst here is a rather incredible guy. All through this thing he’s shown a mixture of brilliant planning and impracticality. Both fit his character exactly. Especially the impracticality. He committed three murders to get his hands on an invention, then bargained away all but thirty-per-cent interest in it because he hasn’t an ounce of business sense. What more do you want?”

“Maybe he wants some proof,” Amhurst said.

Despite his controlled voice, now not only Amhurst’s upper lip, but his forehead and even his cheeks were covered with sweat. He began mopping at his face with a handkerchief.

Hannegan picked that moment to arrive with Mrs. Jennifer Ford. Mrs. Ford apparently had been at the gin again, for she was noticeably uncertain in her movements.

The moment she walked in, Eddie Johnson took one look at her and announced in a positive voice, “That’s the lady who hired me to run those errands, Inspector.”

Mrs. Ford turned pale. She stared at Eddie as though he were the ghost of her dead husband. Then she said in a rapid but alcoholically thick voice, “All I did was steal two of Walter’s guns, have one of them initialed and give them both to Barney. I didn’t have anything to do with Walter’s death.”

“Why’d you steal the guns for him?” Warren Day barked at her.

“Barney said... Well, Walter wasn’t paying me my alimony, and Barney said...”

When her voice trailed off to nothing, I finished for her. “Barney said you could inherit a ten-per-cent interest in the Huntsafe if you helped him, didn’t he?”

She looked at me wide-eyed, and Barney Amhurst said in a low voice, “You stupid alcoholic! If you’d kept your mouth shut, they couldn’t have proved a thing. Now you’ve talked us both into the gas chamber!”

His face was now drenched with sweat, but he made no attempt to mop it dry.

The woman began to whimper.