“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Smith.
“Let’s go up on the roof,” suggested the sheriff. “I’ll show you the rest of it, easier’n I can tell you.”
He got up from the piano bench and went toward the stairs, Mr. Smith following him like a very small tail on a very large comet. The sheriff talked back over his shoulder:
“So at midnight Perry turns in. The two ops search the place thoroughly, inside and out. There ain’t nobody around then. They’ll swear to that, and like I said, they’re good men.”
“And,” said Mr. Smith cheerfully, “if someone was already hiding on the premises at midnight, it couldn’t have been Walter Perry. You verified that he checked in at a hotel at midnight.”
“Yeah,” the sheriff rumbled. “Only, there wasn’t nobody around. Roberts and Krauss say they’ll turn in their licenses if there was. So they went up, this way, to the roof, because it was a moonlight night and that’s the best place to watch from.
Up here.”
They had climbed the ladder from the back second-floor hallway through the open skylight and now stood on the flat roof. Mr. Smith walked over to the parapet.
Sheriff Osburne waved a huge hand. “Lookit,” he said, “you can see all directions for almost a quarter of a mile, farther than that most ways. There was moonlight, not bright enough to read by, maybe, because the moon was low in the sky, but both the International men were on this roof from around midnight to half past two. And they swear nobody crossed any of those fields or came along the road.”
“They were both watching all that time?”
“Yeah,” the sheriff answered. “They were gonna take turns, and it was Krauss’s turn off first, but it was so nice up there on the roof, and he wasn’t sleepy, that he stuck around talking to Roberts instead of turning in. And while they weren’t watching all directions every second — well, it’d take anybody time to cross the area where they could’ve seen him.
They say it couldn’t have been done.”
“And at two-thirty?”
The sheriff frowned. “At two-thirty Krauss decided to go downstairs and take a nap. He was just going through the skylight there when the bell started to ring — the telephone bell, I mean. The phone’s downstairs, but there’s an extension upstairs and it rings both places.
“Krauss didn’t know whether to answer it or not. He knew out in the country here, there are different rings for different phones and he didn’t know whether it was Perry’s ring or not. He went back up on the roof to ask Roberts if he knew, and Roberts did know, and it was Perry’s ring on the phone, so Krauss went down and answered it.
“It wasn’t anything important; it was just a misunderstanding. Merkle, the horse guy, had told the all-night garage he’d phone to find out if the truck was ready; he meant when he woke up in the morning. But the garage-man misunderstood and thought he was to call when he’d finished working on the truck. And he didn’t know Merkle was staying in the village. He phoned out to the house to tell ‘em the truck was ready. He’s a kind of dumb guy, the one that works nights in the garage, I mean.”
Sheriff Osburne tilted his hat back still farther and then grabbed at it as a vagrant breeze almost removed it entirely.
He said, “Then Krauss got to wondering how come the phone hadn’t waked Perry, because it was right outside his bedroom door and he knew Perry was a light sleeper; Perry’d told him so. So he investigated and found Perry was dead.”
Mr. Smith nodded. He said, “Then, I suppose, they searched the place again?”
“Nope. They were smarter’n that. Good men, I told you.
Krauss went back up and told Roberts, and Roberts stayed on the roof, watching, figuring maybe the killer was still around and he could see him leaving, see? Krauss went downstairs, phoned me, and while I was getting around here with a couple of the boys, he searched the place again, Roberts watching all the time. He searched the house and the barns and everywhere, and then when we got here, we helped him and went all over it again. There wasn’t nobody here. See?”
Mr. Smith nodded again, gravely. He took off his gold-rimmed glasses and polished them, then walked around the low parapet, studying the landscape.
The sheriff followed him. He said, “Look, the moon was low in the northwest. That meant this house threw a shadow across to the barns. A guy could get that far, easy, but to and from the barns, he’d have to cross that big field as far as the clump of trees way down there at the edge of the road. He’d stick out like a sore thumb crossing that field.
“And outside of the barns, that there chunk of woods is the nearest possible cover he could’ve come from. It’d take him ten minutes to cross that field, and he couldn’ta done it.”
“I doubt,” observed Mr. Smith, “that any man would have been so foolish as to try. The moonlight works both ways. I mean, he could have seen the men on the roof, easily, unless they were hiding down behind the parapet. Were they?”
“Nope. They weren’t trying to trap anybody. They were just watching, most of the time sitting on the parapet, one facing each way, while they talked. Like you say, he could’ve seen them just as easy as they could’ve seen him.”
“Um-m-m,” said Mr. Smith. “But you haven’t told me why you’re holding Walter Perry. I presume he inherits — that would give him a motive. But, according to what you tell me about the ethics of Whistler and Company, a lot of other people could have motives.”
The sheriff nodded glumly. “Several dozen of ‘em.
Especially if we could believe that threatening letter.”
“And can’t you?”
“No, we can’t. Walter Perry wrote it and mailed it to his uncle. We traced the typewriter he used and the stationery.
And he admits writing it.”
“Dear me,” declared Mr. Smith earnestly. “Does he say why?”
“He does, but it’s screwy. Look, you want to see him anyway, so why don’t you get his story from him?”
“An excellent idea, Sheriff. And thank you very much.”
“It’s all right. I thought maybe thinking out loud would give me some idea how it was done, but it ain’t. Oh, well. Look, tell Mike at the jail I said you could talk to Walter. If Mike don’t take your word for it, have him phone me here. I’ll be around for a while.”
Near the open skylight, Mr. Henry Smith paused to take a last look at the surrounding country. He saw a tall, thin man wearing denim coveralls ride out into the field from the far side of the barn.
“Is that Merkle, the trainer?” he asked. “Yep,” said the sheriff. “He exercises those horses like they was his own kids.
A good guy, if you don’t criticize his horses — don’t try that.”
“I won’t,” said Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith took a last lingering look around, then went down the ladder and the stairs and got back into his car. He drove slowly and thoughtfully to the county seat.
Mike, at the jail, took Mr. Smith’s word that Sheriff Osburne had given permission for him to talk to Walter Perry.
Walter Perry was a slight, grave young man who wore horn-rimmed glasses with thick lenses. He smiled ruefully at Mr. Smith. He said, “It was about renewing my policy that you wanted to see me, wasn’t it? But you won’t want to now, of course, and I don’t blame you.”
Mr. Smith studied him a moment. He asked, “You didn’t… ah… kill your uncle, did you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then,” Mr. Smith told him, “just sign here.” He produced a form from his pocket and unscrewed the top of his fountain pen. The young man signed, and Mr. Smith folded the paper carefully and put it back in his pocket.