“Then I can say that Lieutenant Winters has sufficient evidence on hand to justify his dramatic arrest of the chief suspect?”
“That’s right.” Winters sounded very happy about the whole thing. I contributed to his happiness by indicating that as a reward for giving me the news first, I would see that he was liberally rewarded with space and applause in the Globe. He assured me that no other journalist had been informed as yet: a number of newspaper people had collected at the police station but so far he had made no statement; I was getting the news first, for which I thanked him although the Globe is an afternoon paper and would, if the morning papers were sufficiently alert, be scooped. Still, I had the whole story.
“By the way, what are you building your case on?” This seemed like a fair question; one which would doubtless be evaded.
It was. “I can’t say yet. There’s enough circumstantial evidence, though, to make the story. Just say the police have the affair in hand.”
“Is Mrs. Pomeroy at the station?”
“Yes. She’s talking to her husband; they’re waiting for their lawyer to arrive.”
“Is she pale but dry-eyed?”
“I haven’t looked.”
“Who, by the way, is the lawyer?”
“The new Senator … the Governor. He just got in from Talisman City.”
“Is he going to handle the case?” I was surprised. Senators did not, as far as I knew, handle criminal cases.
“No, he’s going to direct the legal operations, though. We’re not worried.” And on a note of confidence, our interview closed.
Now all that was left was to write the story. I picked up a pad of paper with the legend “U.S. Senate” across the top and then, with a pencil, I began to sketch out my story for the Globe. I had a lot to record. The story Mrs. Rhodes had told me about the childhood of Camilla Pomeroy; a description of the relations between the Senator and the accused; a perfervid account of the arrest and Pomeroy, pale but dry-eyed, being led away by the police, protesting his innocence.
As I took notes, however, I was aware that the case was not solved. I am not sure now, when I look back on these events, why I should have doubted that the most likely man to do the murder had done the murder. I am not one of those devious-minded souls who feel that the most obvious culprit is never the one who did the dirty work. My respect for human ingenuity is not that great. In most cases involving violence, the guilty party is also the most obvious one … the professional writers of mystery novels to the contrary. But Pomeroy just did not strike me as the murdering type.
Halfway through my notetaking, I stopped and looked about the room, brilliantly lit and empty. The fire burned cozily; from far away I could hear the wind. The phrase “a paper chase” kept going through my head. Someone in the house knew who the murderer was, or suspected. Someone had tried to give me a lead about some papers, about Rufus Hollister. The someone, I was fairly certain, was Mrs. Rhodes, a woman far less simple and direct than she appeared to be … a frightened woman, too. Yet the note didn’t imply that Rufus was the murderer, only that he held the key to the murder, perhaps without knowing it. Papers. I frowned, but even this solemn expression did not help me much. Every time I tried to unravel the puzzle, my mind would become completely unfocused and frivolous, all sorts of irrelevancies floating about in it. There was really nothing to go on, no real facts, no clues other than the letter, only my intuition which is, according to my friends, somewhat below-average and my knowledge of the characters involved which was slight, to say the least.
Yet Rufus had been up to some skulduggery with the Senator. He had, I was almost certain, made a raid on the study in the hopes of finding papers there, documents so hidden that not even the police would have been able to find them. Since it was generally known that Winters had removed all the files from the study only someone intimately connected with the Senator’s affairs would have known where to find papers hidden so well the police had not seen them. Who knew his affairs the best? Hollister and Mrs. Rhodes and, of the suspects at least, that was all. Hollister wanted something; Hollister knew where to find it; Hollister had taken a big chance and, probably, got what he wanted and cleared himself.
Cleared himself of what?
I decided to embark upon the chase. I stuffed my notes into my pocket. I wouldn’t have to telephone my story in to the Globe until dawn. By which time I might have some real news.
I went upstairs to Rufus Hollister’s room. The blanket still hung at the end of the corridor although the door behind it had been repaired and bolted shut, no longer requiring the presence of a plain-clothes man.
I knocked on Hollister’s door, very softly. There was no answer. Not wanting to disturb the other sleepers, I turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Hollister was seated at his desk, apparently hard at work.
I shut the door softly behind me; then, since he had made no move, I walked over to his desk and said, “I wonder if …” But the sight of blood stopped me.
Great quantities of blood covered his face, his shirt, the desk in front of him; only the typewriter was relatively clear of it.
He was dead, of course, shot through the right temple. The gun, a tiny pearl-handled affair, lay on the floor beside his right hand; it gleamed dully in the lamplight.
My first impulse was to run as far as I could from this room. My second impulse was to shout for the plain-clothes man out front. My third impulse, and the one which I followed, was to make a search of the room.
I was surprised at my own calm as I touched his hand to see if rigor mortis had set in: it had not. He was only recently dead. I looked at my watch to check on the time: one-nineteen. I looked at his watch, recalling how watches were supposed to stop magically when the wearer died … this watch was ticking merrily: about five minutes fast, too.
I don’t know why it took me so long to notice the confession which was still in the typewriter.
“I killed Senator Rhodes on Wednesday the 13th by placing a package of explosive in his fireplace shortly after we returned from the Senate Office Building Tuesday afternoon. Rather than see an innocent man be condemned for my crime, I herewith make this confession. As to my reason for killing the Senator, I prefer not to say, since a complete confession would implicate others. I will say though that we were involved in an illegal business operation which failed. Because of the coming election, the Senator saw fit to make me the victim of that failure … which would have involved a jail sentence for me and the ruin of my reputation. Rather than suffer this, I took the occasion of Pomeroy’s visit to Washington to kill the Senator, throwing guilt on Pomeroy. Unfortunately I was not able to discover the documents pertaining to our business venture. They are either in the hands of the police or shortly will be. I have no choice but to take this way out, since I prefer dying to a jail sentence and the ruin of my career. I feel no remorse, however. I killed in self-defense. Rufus Hollister.” The name was typewritten but not signed; as though immediately after typing this confession he had shot himself, without even pulling the paper out of the typewriter.
Well, this was more than I had bargained for. The paper chase had led me to a corpse, and to the answer.
Methodically, I searched the room. As far as I could tell there was nothing else to add or subtract from what had happened. The case, it would seem, was closed. With a handkerchief I carefully wiped any prints I might have made on the watch and wrist of the corpse (I had touched nothing else); then I went downstairs and telephoned Lieutenant Winters. It was now one-thirty-six, the anniversary of the Senator’s death.