The Tragedy of Z (15 page)

Father and I sat in silence while he stared at the sky, his chiseled features oddly expressionless. I closed my own eyes and sighed, and wondered what his verdict would be. Had I overlooked something in my analysis? Would he ask me to outline the theory that was etched in my brain after so many acid baths of thought?

I opened my eyes. Mr. Lane was sitting up again.

“Aaron Dow,” he said in his rich effortless voice, “is an innocent man.”

“Whee!” I shouted. “Well, father, what do you think of your daughter now?”

“I never said he wasn't, darn you,” muttered father. “It's the way you arrived at it that bothers me.” He blinked twice at the sun, and then fixed his gaze on Mr. Lane. “How do you figure it out?”

“So you've come to the same conclusion,” murmured Mr. Lane. “You remind me of Samuel Johnson's definition of poetry. He said that the essence of poetry is invention—such invention as produces surprises. You're a most prodigious poem, Patience.”

“Sir,” I said severely, “that's the speech of a gallant.”

“If I were younger, my dear.… Now tell me how you came to decide that Aaron Dow is guiltless.”

I settled myself comfortably in the grass at his feet and plunged into my argument.

“On Senator Fawcett's right arm,” I began, “appeared two peculiar scratches: one a knife-wound a trifle above the wrist, the other—definitely not a knife-wound, according to the medical examiner, Dr. Bull—about four inches farther up the arm. Moreover, Dr. Bull said that both scratches had been made shortly before we found the body, and at the same approximate time. Since these statements coincided so nicely with the fact that a crime of violence had occurred not long before, I felt justified in assuming that the scratches had probably been made during the murder period.”

“Nicely put,” murmured the old gentleman. “Yes, you were justified. Now go on.”

“The thought fascinated me from the beginning. How could two
different
scratches—that is, two scratches made by distinctly different agencies—have nevertheless been produced
at the same time?
When you stop to think of it, it's a most unusual thing. I'm a very suspicious female, Mr. Lane, and I decided that this point must be settled at once.”

He was grinning broadly. “I shall make sure not to commit a murder, Patience, if you are within ten thousand miles of the scene. Shrewd, my dear! And what did you conclude?”

“Well, the knife-wound was easily explained. From the position of the body in the chair behind the desk, it was simple to reconstruct something of the crime itself. The murderer must have stood before his victim, in front of the desk or perhaps a little to one side. He picked up the paper-knife which lay on the desk and lunged at his victim. Now, what must have happened? The Senator must instinctively have
raised his right arm
to ward off the blow. And the knife glanced off his wrist, leaving the sharp scratch. This is the only picture I could evoke from the facts.”

“Photographic, my dear. Brava. What then? How about the other scratch?”

“I was coming to that. The other was
not
a knife-scratch, or at least had not been made by the same knife which left the sharp scratch on the Senator's wrist, because the scratch was—well, fuzzy, shreddy. And this second scratch had been left on the Senator's arm at the same time that the knife bit into his wrist. And it was, specifically, four inches farther up the right arm than the knife-wound.” I drew a deep breath. “It was caused, then, by some cutting but not razor-sharp edge some four inches
away from the blade in the murderer's hand.”

“Admirable.”

“In other words, we must now look for something
on the arm of the murderer
to account for the second scratch. Well, what could be so situated on the murderer's own arm, four inches away from the knife in his fist?”

The old gentleman nodded briskly. “Your conclusion, Patience?”

“A woman's bracelet,” I cried in triumph, “gemmed or filigreed, which scraped Fawcett's bare arm—he was in his shirt-sleeves, remember—while the knife was glancing off his wrist!”

Father grumbled beneath his breath, and Mr. Lane smiled. “Again shrewd, my dear, but restrictive. So a woman killed Senator Fawcett? Not necessarily. For there is something on a man's arm equivalent in position to a bracelet on a woman's arm when the arm is raised.…”

I stared stupidly. My first blunder? Furious thoughts boiled in my head. Then: “Oh, you mean a man's cufflink? Of course! I'd thought of that, but somehow felt intuitively that a woman's bracelet filled the bill better.”

He shook his head. “Dangerous, Patience. Never do that. Go strictly by the logical possibilities.… So we have now reached the point where we know the culprit to be either man or woman.” He smiled faintly. “Perhaps it's merely a case of incomplete comprehension. Pope said that all discord is harmony not understood. Who knows? But go on, Patience; you fascinate me.”

“Now, whether a man or a woman wielded that knife, Mr. Lane, and caused the two scratches, one thing is certain: the murderer used his
left
hand in slashing at Senator Fawcett.”

“How do you know that, my dear?”

“By simple logic. The knife-wound was on the Senator's right wrist, and the cufflink scratch four inches farther up his arm: which is to say that the cufflink scratch was to the
left
of the knife-wound. Clear so far? Now, had the murdeser wielded the knife with his right hand, the cufflink scratch would have appeared to the right of the knife-wound, as the most elementary test will show. In other words, knife in right hand invariably means cufflink scratch to the right; knife in left hand means cufflink scratch to the left. But what is the fact? The fact is that the cufflink scratch appears to the left of the knife-wound, and therefore I conclude that the murderer used his left hand in delivering the blow. Unless he stood on his head, and of course that's silly.”

“Inspector,” said the old gentleman gently, “you should be proud of your issue. Eternally incredible,” he murmured, smiling at me, “that a woman should be capable of such crystalline reasoning. Patience, you're a—a jewel. Proceed.”

“You agree so far, Mr. Lane?”

“I'm prostrate before the adamantine inevitability of your logic,” he chuckled. “So far, perfect. But be careful, my dear; you've neglected to bring out a very significant point.”

“I have not,” I retorted. “Oh, dear! I mean I
have
neglected to bring it out, but only because I haven't come to it.… Aaron Dow, on his commitment to Algonquin Prison twelve years or so ago, was a right-handed man—a fact brought out, with these others, by Warden Magnus's story. Is that what you had in mind?”

“It was. I'm curious to see what you make of it.”

“This. Two years after he came to Algonquin he suffered an accident which paralyzed his right arm. Whereupon he learned to use his left hand exclusively. In a word, for ten years he has been left-handed.”

Father sat up. “Now we're gettin' it,” he said excitedly. “This is where I'm shaky, Mr. Lane.”

“I rather think I know what's troubling you,” said the old gentleman. “Go on, Patience.”

“To me,” I said stoutly, “it's very clear. I maintain—although I admit I've no authority except common sense and observation to substantiate my opinion—that dextrality and sinistrality (are those the words?) operate equally on the legs as well as the arms.”

“Talk American,” growled father. “Where the devil'd you pick
that
up?”

“Father! What I mean is that a person who is naturally right-handed is also naturally right-footed; and that, in the same way, left-handedness means left-footedness. I know I'm right-handed, and I always make my right foot do most of the work; and I've noticed it in others, too. Now, am I making a fair assumption there, Mr. Lane?”

“I'm scarcely an authority on such subjects, Patience. But so far I believe medical opinion would bear you out. What next?”

“Well, if you grant that, my next contention is that, if a right-handed man loses the use of his favored member and has to learn to use his left hand, as Aaron Dow did for ten years, then subconsciously he will begin to make his left foot do most of the pedal work as well, despite the fact his legs remain unimpaired. There's where father is doubtful. But it does seem logical, doesn't it?”

He frowned. “I'm afraid you can't always apply logic to physiologic facts, Patience.” My heart fell; if this point were destroyed, the entire body of my argument collapsed. “But”—and I grew hopeful again—“there's another fact from your story which is immensely helpful. And that is that Aaron Dow's right eye was destroyed at the same time his right arm became paralyzed.”

“How does that fix things?” said father, puzzled.

“It alters matters considerably, Inspector. Some years ago I had occasion to consult an authority on the subject. You remember the Brinker case, in which the question of left-handedness and right-handedness was so important?” Father nodded. “Well, the authority I consulted told me that the theory of dextrality and sinistrality which was most widely accepted by the medical profession is the ocular theory. The ocular theory holds that in infancy all voluntary movements, if I remember correctly what he said, depend upon vision. He said, too, that the nerve-impulses connected with sight, hands, feet, speech, writing, all originate in the same brain area—I forget the exact term.

“Now, vision is binocular, but each eye is a unit in itself, and the images of each eye reach the consciousness entirely separate and distinct. One of your eyes acts as a ‘sight,' much as the sight of a gun functions. The eye used for sighting determines whether the individual is left-handed or right-handed. If the sighting eye is incapacitated, the sighting faculty passes over to the other eye.”

“I see what you're driving at,” I said slowly. “In other words, according to the ocular theory a right-handed person sights with his right eye; and if he loses his right eye and has to use his left eye exclusively, the sighting faculty passes over and affects the individual physiologically in such a manner that he becomes left-handed?”

“Roughly, yes. Of course, as I understand it, other factors like habit enter. But Dow certainly has used his left eye exclusively for ten years, and likewise his left arm. In that case, I feel sure he would have been compelled by habit and the nerve-alteration to become left-footed as well.”

“Whew!” I said. “I've the luck of odd numbers! Got the right answer from the wrong fact.… Now, you see, if it's true that in these past ten years Aaron Dow has been left-footed as well as left-handed, then we have a remarkable contradiction in the evidence.”

“Well, you've just shown,” said Mr. Lane encouragingly, “that the murderer must have used his left hand; so that matches exactly with Dow. What's the point?”

I lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. “I'll tackle it from another angle. You remember I mentioned in my story that there was a footprint in the ashes of the grate—the print of a right foot. From the other facts we know that someone burned something and then stamped out the flame, which accounts for the right footprint. Now stamping—and I'll tear the hair out of anyone who denies
this!
—stamping is purely an involuntary action.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“If you want to stamp upon something, you'll stamp with the foot you use most. Oh, I'll admit that sometimes out of pure convenience of position you might stamp on something with your left foot even if you're normally right-footed, but that wasn't the case with the person who stamped on the ashes in the grate. Because we found, as I told you, the impression of a left toeprint on the rug before the spot in the fireplace where the burning had taken place. Which means that the murderer was in a position to use either foot without inconvenience. In this case he would certainly stamp with the foot he uses most. But what foot did he stamp with?
With his right!
Then he's right-footed, and consequently right-handed!”

Father grunted something unintelligible. The old gentleman sighed and said: “And all this leads you to what contradiction?”

“To this: Whoever wielded the knife used his left hand. Whoever stamped on the ashes was right-handed. In other words, it would seem that two people are involved; a left-handed person who committed the murder, and a right-handed person who burned the sheet of paper and stamped on it.”

“And what's wrong with that, my dear?” asked the old man gently. “Two people were involved, as you say. What of it?”

I stared. “You don't mean that?”

He chuckled. “Mean what?”

“You're joking, of course! Let me go on. How does this conclusion affect Aaron Dow? Well, no matter how Dow was involved, he was certainly not the man who burned the paper and stamped on it. Because he would have stamped with his left foot, as we've established, and we know it was stamped on by a right foot.

“Very well. Now, when was the sheet burned in point of time? The writing-tablet on the desk was a fresh one—there were only two sheets missing. Senator Fawcett's fatal wounds had spurted blood over the desk at which he sat; for there was a large bloodstain in a right-angular shape on the desk-blotter, the right-angle being formed by one corner of the pad as it lay on the blotter. Now, the top sheet of the pad, as we found it, was blank—had no blood on it. But how is this possible? If that top sheet were the one which lay on the desk at the time the Senator was murdered, it would certainly be covered with blood, because the blotter on which the pad lay was bloodstained. Then the clean sheet we found had not been the top one when blood gushed from the Senator's wounds. In other words, there must have been another sheet on top which
did
become covered with blood, and the bloody sheet must have been ripped off the pad, leaving the clean sheet underneath as we found it.”