Read Online She Died a Lady by John Dickson Carr - Free Book Online Page B

Major Selden. He’ll convince you.’
    ‘Oh, my eye!’ muttered H.M. ‘Oh, lord love a duck!’
    Craft turned round to me. He was apologetic but determined. His good eye smiled while the other remained lifeless.
    ‘Now, Doctor, we’ve already had your testimony.’
    ‘You have. But this is the most fantastic –’
    ‘Yes,’ admitted Craft; ‘that’s just the trouble. Now let’s see.’
    He leafed back through his notebook.
    ‘At nine o’clock on Saturday night, fixed by the news on the radio, Mrs Wainright ran out of the house. Mr Sullivan followed her. Mrs Wainright, or somebody, left a note on the kitchen table saying she was going to do herself in. Am I correct there?’
    ‘Yes, that’s right.’
    Craft, I knew, was speaking to H.M. rather than to me.
    ‘Two sets of footprints, one of Mrs Wainright’s and one of Mr Sullivan’s, lead out to the edge of the cliff. There’s absolutely no fake or trickery – we establish this – about those prints.
    ‘But,’ said Craft, ‘between nine o’clock and nine-thirty, somebody shot both the victims. The shooting was done at body-range. The murderer must have been standing in front of them, close enough to touch them. And yet there are no footprints anywhere else, except Dr Croxley’s.
    ‘At half-past nine Dr Croxley got alarmed and went out to see what had happened to them. He saw the tracks leading to the cliff-edge. He went out there, looked over, and came back to the bungalow.’ Here Craft grew heavily whimsical. ‘I don’t suppose you shot those two yourself, did you, Doctor?’
    ‘Great Scott, no!’
    Craft smiled in that un-funny way of his.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ he advised. ‘I’ve been a good many years in this district. I can’t think of anybody less likely to do murder than Luke Croxley.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    ‘But there’s good evidence to show you didn’t do it,’ Craft went on, ‘even if we were mugs enough to suspect you.’ He turned to H.M. ‘Dr Croxley hasn’t been a police-surgeon for nothing. He remembered to keep away from those footprints and not mess them up.’
    ‘I was just wonderin’ about that, son.’
    ‘In fact, he stayed a good six feet away all the distance out. Those tracks run, all of them, in straight parallel lines. He couldn’t very well have stood six feet away from the nearest victim, facing the same direction and never even turning sideways, while he shot ’em both at body-range. No: his testimony’s all right. We’ll accept it.’
    This time I put even more acid into my thanks.
    Craft ignored it. ‘But you see where that puts us, Sir Henry. I won’t ask you to come and look at the bodies, because they were pretty badly smashed up by the fall and by knocking along the coast all this time …’
    ‘They weren’t,’ I said, ‘unrecognizable?’
    Craft grinned: a sickly sort of grin, as even he seemed to realize.
    ‘Oh, no. No funny business about that . They’re the bodies of Mrs Wainright and Mr Sullivan, all right. All the same you ought to be glad you didn’t have to do the post-mortem.’
    (Rita, Rita, Rita!)
    ‘But as I was saying to Sir Henry, I’m going to have a packet of trouble on my hands with this case. I want to try my hand at it. And if there’s any advice you could give me, I’d appreciate it a very great deal.
    ‘You see how it stands. Two persons were shot as they stood on the very edge of a cliff. The murderer couldn’t have climbed up or down that cliff. Presumably he couldn’t fly. Yet he approached them and got away without leaving a footprint on that whole expanse of soil. If we hadn’t found the weapon later, it would have been a perfect crime passing as a double suicide. It may be a perfect crime even yet. I’d be interested to hear what you think about it.’

SEVEN
    H.M.’s cigar had gone out. He blinked at it in a displeased way, and turned the stump round in his fingers.
    ‘Y’know,’ he observed. ‘I once told Masters –’
    ‘Chief Inspector