A careful search of the scene had produced little helpful information. The weapon used was a field stone formed of native granite, rounded by the action of the water in the creek over centuries. It had been picked up from the edge of the creek, leaving a bowl-shaped depression. It had evidently been hurled at the decedent, struck him a glancing blow, and had rolled to rest against the willow roots. There were bits of tissue and hair along with blood on a small portion of the stone which, in its curvature, was a rough match to the concave fracture of the skull of the decedent. The stone weighed 73.6 pounds.
Before I was asked to enter the case as a consultant, Henderson had been located in Sarasota, Florida, a resident student at a small liberal arts college. He was able to prove to cooperating law enforcement officers in Florida that on the afternoon of the tenth he had been at a local marine biological research laboratory assisting in a demonstration of the effects of water pollution on small marine organisms, a demonstration at which both city and county officials were in attendance.
In the transcribed statement sent north by the Florida officials, Henderson freely admitted to a close and intimate relationship with Elizabeth Norris Ames which had begun at the cabin at the Turner farm and had ended three months later in Arizona. He stated under oath that he had not seen her nor communicated with her during the intervening twenty-two months.
At the time I was brought in, it was Lieutenant Sierma’s theory that Mrs. Warcroft had seen a dangerous drifter who resembled Henderson just enough so that she believed it was he. It was in that place where she had first met Henderson, which made the incorrect identification more plausible. Sierma had gone to the spot where she had said she stood, and he had had one of his men walk up the hill at that same time of the afternoon. Sierma said that there was enough glare to make positive identification unlikely.
By the time I entered the case, Mrs. Warcroft was back in Philadelphia, under a doctor’s care.
After reading through all the statements again, I felt that Mike Henderson might be able to explain to me why she would wish to go to the same place for her honeymoon where she had apparently had a summer affair with him. As a criminologist and psychologist, I am always most interested in acts for which I can find little rational explanation.
I was at last able to reach the Henderson boy by telephone. I was pleased to find he was not the least bit guarded. He was very articulate, very concerned about Norrie, admitting a residual fondness for her. I asked him if he would mind writing up the history of Mike and Norrie and airmailing it to me. He said he would be glad to.
I was unprepared for both the length of it and the exceptional frankness of that personal document. There was, however, no flavor of lasciviousness about it. It was a story of two children trying to grow up, aware of their own handicaps. After reading it, I was able to think of Norrie as a person instead of the anonymous, tragic young widow.
Mike Henderson’s document gave me my suspect, of course. Mrs. Turner was elderly, but she was both spry and robust. And she had not mentioned in her statement that the same girl had stayed in the cabin two years before the tragedy. Again I had an act — this time of omission — which seemed senseless.
I went back to the Turner farm and I interviewed them informally and separately, the man first. I do not believe in all the trappings of formal interrogation. Conversation on an informal level is easier. And if something significant is discovered, they will always repeat it later for the record.
Ralph Turner had not been in the company of his wife when he had made his statement, and he had mentioned Mrs. Warcroft’s staying in the cabin two years before as Miss Ames.
He made a good impression in person, a stocky man with a weathered face, thick white hair, youthful blue eyes, a quiet voice and quiet manner. Yet when I asked him about the time the girl had first rented the cabin he became evasive, and he was not very deft at the game. He said he had been busy around the place and had seen little of her. I asked him if he was aware of the fact she had entertained a guest in the cabin for about ten days. He coughed and tugged at his collar and said that he had happened to see that she had a friend with her, a boy. No, he hadn’t mentioned it to his wife. It had probably slipped his mind. It didn’t seem important.
I then began to realize what was probably bothering him. Mike’s detailed story told about how, once her fear of exposing herself had been overcome, once she had become “used to her body,” Mike’s phrase, and could take pride in the pleasure capacities of her body, they would splash and play in the midday pool, sun themselves, and then have lunch, and then a long siesta of naps and love and talk. Probably Ralph Turner had seen them naked in the pool and had watched from some hiding place. It would weigh on his conscience to have stayed and watched. And perhaps he had not told his wife because he knew exactly what she would do. And there would be no chance to watch the young girl again. Mr. Turner was ashamed of himself.
So next I asked him if, after his wife had caught the young pair in flagrante and ordered the girl to leave, he had then let her know that he had seen the boy.
He stared at me, mouth sagging, and then leaned back in his chair and sighed. Then he nodded to himself. He asked me if the boy had told me about being seen by his wife, and confessed that this was the first he had heard of it. He said he knew that for some reason his wife was upset when the girl had come back as a bride, and now he knew why.
I tried to get him to discuss his wife in a critical way, but his sense of loyalty to her would not permit it. Next, of course, I talked to her before they had a chance to talk to each other.
Mabel Turner was a more difficult problem. She said that she wondered at the time if Mrs. Warcroft was the same girl who had stayed with them two years ago, a girl named Norrie Ames. Now, of course, she knew it was the same girl. But at the time people were asking questions she hadn’t thought to bring it up. She had thought that if it really was Miss Ames, then certainly the girl would have mentioned it.
I asked if she had stayed the full month, and Mrs. Turner said that the girl had left before her month was up.
Time for shock treatment. I let silence build, and then I shrugged and smiled and said, “She probably left because she didn’t like to have you prowling around the cabin, peering in the windows at her.”
She came to her feet, yelling, her face and neck puffed and red. It was a lie, a filthy lie. She had happened to look in the window once and she had seen what she had seen, and she had ordered that dirty little whore off the property at once. She would not and could not dirty her mouth by ever describing what she had seen that slut doing to some young hippie boy she had found and brought back to the cabin to use for her own sick hungers and evil pleasure. It was a long and loud performance, and when she ran down I asked her quite gently why, then, had she let such a vicious girl back onto the property.
She sat down and shook her head and explained that two years ago she had lied to her husband. She had told him the girl had left of her own free will. She had not wanted to upset him. How could she know the girl would be so callous and shameless as to come back to the very same place on her honeymoon? She recognized her immediately, of course, but what could she do about it?
I suggested that she could have quietly asked Norrie to enjoy the rest of her honeymoon elsewhere.
A flicker in her eyes. A slight smugness. She said she wouldn’t lower herself that much. She had decided to totally ignore the whole thing, to not even make any neighborly gesture. She had decided that the month would end and they would leave, and that would be the last of it.