Gramps started to answer that question, then suddenly thought better of it and kept quiet.
“I’m afraid your little story won’t hold water,” Duryea observed.
That brought a torrent of speech from the old man. “Now you listen to me,” he said. “You’ve certainly overlooked all the important clues in this case... The first one is the time element.”
“Go ahead,” Duryea said. “Get it out of your system, but remember that anything you say can be used against you.”
“First rattle out of the box,” Gramps said. “You’ve got a regular clock, an’ you don’t pay any attention to it. That oil lamp uses up just so much oil every hour. I know somethin’ about oil lamps. Pressman knew somethin’ about oil lamps, because he’d lived out in a little cabin when he was a poor prospector. Now then,” Gramps said, suddenly turning to Pete Lassen, “what makes a lamp smoke?”
“I don’t know,” Lassen admitted.
“It smokes because it’s turned up too high,” Gramps said. “If the wick is trimmed even, about the only thing that’ll make a lamp smoke is bein’ turned up too high.”
“I suppose so,” the sheriff agreed.
“Now then,” Gramps went on, “you light an oil lamp an’ there’s some oil in the wick. The minute the match touches the wick, the lamp starts burnin,” but as it gets hotter an’ starts drawin’ more oil up through the wick, the lamp will begin to burn more brightly. A person that knows anythin’ about oil lamps turns the wick way down when he lights ’em. Then after four or five minutes, he’ll adjust the flame... You get me?
“Let’s suppose that it was dark when the murder was committed. Pressman was there in the house. When it got dark, he’d have lit the lamp. He would have known how to light a lamp, an’ he’d have had the wick down low, an’ it would have gradually come up to just about the right height. He knew oil lamps.
“Therefore, we have to figure that it was the murderer who lit the lamp. Now if it had been dark when the murder was committed, the lamp would already have been lit... Figure that one out.”
“Then the murderer must have lit the lamp in broad daylight,” Duryea said, smiling. “Your own reasoning is getting you all mixed up, Gramps.”
Gramps shook his head. “Nope. Not unless the lamp had been filled durin’ the night. When the body was discovered, the level of the kerosene in the lamp indicated it had been burnin’ just about so long. The amount of kerosene used up by a lamp is a pretty good clock. I figure that lamp was lit about six hours before I first saw it — an’ I saw it about the time the sheriff got there — around nine o’clock.”
“Then the murder couldn’t have been committed then — that would have been at three in the morning,” Duryea objected.
“Yep,” Gramps said, “that’s right. The autopsy surgeon says that murder was committed between four o’clock an’ eleven o’clock on the twenty-fourth. Just because a light was burnin’ everyone thinks the murder was committed after dark... I’m tellin’ you that burnin’ lamp didn’t have anythin’ to do with the murder. The murderer made two trips to the cabin.”
“Then when was the murder committed?” Duryea asked, interested now in spite of himself.
“The murder was committed a little before five o’clock on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth,” Gramps said, his voice fairly crackling with positive assurance.
“It couldn’t have been. The evidence shows that Pressman was alive at that—”
“What evidence?” Gramps shrilled. “How does anyone know it was Pressman that was in that house? Sonders says he saw somebody pullin’ the curtains down the minute the car turned into the driveway. Both Sonders an’ True say they heard someone walkin’ around inside the house. Both of them admit the man in there wouldn’t say a word. Both of them say that there was somethin’ ominous about the way he come to the door — made ’em think that he had a gun an’ was figurin’ on shootin’... All right, just because they hear somebody movin’ around in the cabin an’ know Pressman’s in the cabin, they jump at the conclusion that it was Pressman they heard movin’ around... I’ll tell you somethin’ about the man that was movin’ around inside that cabin. That person was the murderer, an’ Ralph G. Pressman was lyin’ dead on the floor at that very moment.”
Lassen turned to Duryea. The look which he flashed him was filled with significance.
Duryea swung around, elevating one knee to the cushion of the seat so that he could see Gramps to better advantage. “By George,” he said, “you may have something there!”
“You’re ring-ding-tootin’ I’ve got somethin’ there,” Gramps said, “an’ remember that at that time the shades were all drawn. When the body was discovered, the shades were all up an’ the light was burnin’.”
“The murderer could have waited until Sonders and True drove off, then lit the lamp and raised the curtains.”
“Nope,” Gramps said. “The lamp shows that it was lit right around three o’clock. That lamp ain’t doin’ any lyin’... I tell you the murderer made two trips to that cabin... Now, take a look at that suicide note. The printin’ on it was cut from a newspaper that didn’t get to Petrie until after nine o’clock in the evenin’. That suicide note took a little thought to work out — an’ a little time... Not much thought an’ not too much time, but some.”
“What are you getting at?” Lassen asked.
“That there suicide note was planted when the murderer made the second trip to the cabin. An’ somethin’ happened to frighten the murderer, so that he never stayed long enough to make the lamp burn right, an’ keep the chimney from smokin’... That was right about three o’clock in the mornin’. Now I’ll tell you what that somethin’ was. It was that girl, Eva Raymond, came out to try an’ use a little soft soap on Pressman an’ put in a good word for her boyfriend — with maybe a couple of good words for herself. She came up on the porch, saw the body, screamed, and ran pell-mell. That’s when she dropped her compact... It had to be that way. An’ the murderer had to be in there, right at that time.”
Duryea said in a crisp, businesslike tone: “All right, Gramps, let’s quit stalling. Where’s Eva Raymond?”
“She’s in that cabin,” Gramps said sheepishly. “I was sorta makin’ a little test.”
Duryea said: “Take the handcuffs off of him, Borden. All right, Pete, let’s get going... It’s a crackpot theory, but it might hold water.”
“Crackpot nothin’,” Gramps sputtered. “It’s logic, cold, hard, remorseless logic. You can’t get away from it in a hundred years, not in a million years... And I tell you somethin’ else. The only way you’ve got of makin’ that murderer betray himself is through this Eva Raymond. He ain’t sure but what she saw him through the open window. That’s the thing that’s scaring him stiff. He’s got his tracks all covered except for that one thing.”
“It would have simplified matters a lot if Eva Raymond had told me the truth,” Duryea said dryly.
Gramps rushed to her rescue. “Now you can’t be too hard on that little girl,” he said. “She’s had to make her own way in the world ever since—”
It was Milred’s bell-like laughter that interrupted him. “Remember what I told you,” she said to her husband. “In dealing with a male Wiggins, cherchez la femme.”
Chapter 29
Thirty minutes later, when Gramps had produced Eva Raymond and made additional explanations, when the feeling that he had been restored to the good graces of the officers had given him additional self-confidence, he said: “Now then, the murder was committed with Pressman’s gun. That means either one of two things: that it was a premeditated job and someone got hold of Pressman’s gun so as to make it look like suicide; or that the person that killed him didn’t intend to kill him. But something came up, and there was an argument, and Pressman’s gun was lying where it could be reached... Now, the way I figure it, if it had been premeditated right from the start, the murderer would have had that suicide note all worked out, and wouldn’t have had to get it from a newspaper that didn’t arrive in Petrie until four hours after the murder... Now that there suicide note is significant. I’ve read a lot of true detective stories. Every time a man makes a note by cutting words out of a newspaper, it’s because he don’t want his handwriting to be recognized. It’s a stunt they use for kidnap notes and things of that sort... Ain’t that right, Sheriff?”