The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories

I picked up my toast again. The phone rang and Maggie got up to answer it. She caught it on the kitchen extension, which was a wall phone above the counter next to the stove. I was facing that way.

After saying hello, she cupped a palm over the mouthpiece, assumed a martyred expression and said in a low voice. “Grace Fenwick.”

Grace was one of Maggie’s more long-winded friends. I finished my toast to the accompaniment of only occasional monosyllabic comments by Maggie and the steady drone of Grace’s high-pitched voice coming from the phone.

I drained my coffee cup and was just getting ready to get up for more when Maggie gestured me to remain seated, picked up the pot from the stove and carried it over to the table to fill my cup.

“How’d you get away from old gabby so fast?” I inquired.

Maggie placed a finger to her lips and tossed her head in the direction of the phone. Looking that way, I saw that she had not hung it up, but had merely laid it down on the counter.

In a low voice Maggie said, “She’ll never know I’m gone. She never stops talking long enough for an answer. But she might hear you when you talk so loud.”

She went back to the phone. I gazed at her for a time, then left my second cup of coffee untouched, went into the bedroom and put on my necktie and suit coat.

Maggie was still listening to the telephone when I gave her a kiss on the free ear and whispered into it, “You haven’t lost your grip after all, doll. You solved it.” I continued on out.

On my way down to Carondelet I did a considerable amount of thinking. I knew I had a solved case, but proving it was going to be a problem.

I had the advantage that Addison Turnbell hadn’t seemed very bright. Actually he had been more lucky than clever, because his murder scheme had been pretty harebrained. It had contained so many possible pitfalls that its working could be ascribed to nothing less than improbable luck. His mother-in-law could have asked a question that required an answer; his apartment-mate could have returned before he got back; Emma Crowder could have arrived thirty seconds earlier and have seen him leaving by the back gate.

Anyone stupid enough to devise such a murder plan might be stupid enough to fall for a bluff, I decided.

It wasn’t quite nine a.m. when I rang the apartment bell. Addison Turnbell himself answered the door. He was in pajamas and a robe, but apparently had been up for a time, because his hair was combed and he looked freshly shaved. He greeted me without enthusiasm, but without surprise either, and invited me in.

“Where’s your friend?” I inquired as he closed the door behind me.

“Still sleeping. He went out on the town last night after you left us. Have a seat?”

“No, thanks. Mr. Turnbell, you are under arrest for investigation, suspicion of homicide.” I took out the little card and read him his constitutional rights.

When I finished, he gazed at me with his mouth open for some time before finally saying in a high voice. “You’re arresting me for what?”

“For murdering your wife,” I explained. “I think it must have been a spur-of-the-moment thing instead of something you elaborately planned, because the situation that developed was too accidental. All of a sudden you found yourself on the phone with a woman who talked so interminably that she probably wouldn’t miss you if you left her talking to herself even for as long as fifteen minutes. Your apartment-mate was off to the store, so he wouldn’t know you had left the apartment. And your wife was due home in a very few minutes. I imagine you still have a key to the house. You got there just before your wife did, hurriedly upended a couple of drawers in an attempt to make it look like a burglary, stabbed her as she walked in, wiped off your prints and took off for here again. By walking fast you probably made the round trip in no more than ten minutes.”

“You’re crazy,” he said huskily, licking his lips. “You’ll never prove it.”

“Oh, but I have proved it. Not by your mother-in-law, because she still thinks she was talking to you all the time, instead of to herself. Your wife’s neighbor across the alley happened to be trying out a brand-new Polaroid camera from his back porch just as you came out the back door, and he noted the time was exactly five thirty-two p.m. I have the print right here.”

As I reached for my breast pocket, he broke for the kitchen, presumably meaning to flee by the back door. I don’t know where he thought he was going in pajamas, a robe and slippers, but it became an academic question when he tripped over a kitchen chair and sprawled flat on his stomach.

I put a knee on his back and cuffed his wrists behind him before I helped him to his feet.