“You’re forgetting one thing, Sheriff,” Jake purred. “The Kilburn family fortune would pass to me and my fellow mail-order men on the day of our wedding. There was nothing Cornell could do to stop that. I don’t suppose they told you this, either, but Cornell threatened to disinherit these three ladies if they went through with the marriage.”
“No, they didn’t tell me.” Sheriff Maitland looked around the room.
“Well, he did,” Jake continued. “But that was nothing but an idle threat. He couldn’t complete the process in less than two days. So you see, there was no reason for any of us to kill him to get control of the fortune. We stood to get control of it tomorrow, no matter what he did. We didn’t have to kill him.”
“That only makes your motive to kill him for the house even stronger,” Sheriff Maitland pointed out. “What do you have to say to that?”
“I didn’t have to kill him for the house, either,” Jake shot back. “I just told you that we discussed sending him away after the wedding. We all agreed on that except Violet, and after our conversation at supper last night, I think she would come around very soon, too. So that’s not a motive, either.”
Sheriff Maitland shrugged. “I guess not. Well, Violet just told us how she found the old man’s body, and the rest of these folks were just giving me their statements about where they were and what they were doing at the time of the murder. So far, Mick and Iris are the only ones who have any alibi at all, although not a very solid one, because they were together. A doubting man could pull that to pieces on account of their attachment to each other. So what about you two? Do either of you have an alibi?”
“I’m afraid not,” Jake replied. “I’m afraid we can’t provide each other with alibis.”
“So where were you,” the sheriff asked. “Just for the official record?”
“I was walking alone outside,” Jake replied.
A chill slithered up Iris’s spine. He was lying. She knew it as well as she knew her own name.
“And I was alone up in my room,” Rose put in. “I came downstairs when I heard the shots, and I ran into Iris on the stairs, like she said.”
Iris scrutinized her younger sister as she made this statement. Rose blinked her big doe eyes as innocently as ever. Even Iris, who knew Rose as better than anyone else—except maybe Violet—couldn’t tell whether she was telling the truth or not. Could the sheriff tell? Did he know about people like Rose?
In her heart of hearts, Iris hoped he did, and that he had some way of detecting whether Rose was lying. The most maddening thing about Rose was not being able to tell anything about her hidden motives or thoughts.
The sheriff didn’t seem to take any notice of anything other than the words coming out of their mouths. He didn’t seem the least disturbed by Jake, even when he was obviously telling a lie. “That’s what I thought. Now, then.” He stood up. “I’ll just have a look in the library, and we’ll take it from there. If you’ll show me the way, Miss Kilburn…..” He turned to Violet.
“Yes, of course,” Violet replied. “Follow me.” She led him to the library. The others trailed after them.
Violet opened the door, but on the threshold, she stopped. Sheriff Maitland went the rest of the way into the room by himself. “He’s behind the desk,” Violet told him.
He went around the desk and pulled back the clean white sheet covering Cornell. He stooped over the body, murmuring to himself. He poked it in a few different places and examined the bullet wounds. Then he heaved the body up and inspected the back of the head, where the fatal bullet exited. The sheriff grunted approvingly, and then he stood up.
He surveyed the room and gauged the layout and direction of the body. Iris watched him, along with the others, from the doorway. He didn’t write anything down, or measure anything, or any of the other things she thought he might need to do to investigate a murder.
Afterward, he just sort of poked around the room, looking at knick-knacks on the shelves and peering out the window. He didn’t take much notice of anything. In fact, he appeared to be enjoying himself to no end.
Finally, he smiled toward the doorway. “We can go back to the parlor now.”
Violet voiced all their concerns. “But aren’t you going to investigate?”
“That’s what I’m doing,” he told her.
“But aren’t you going to take evidence from the murder scene?” she cried. “Aren’t you going to do anything at all to find out who killed him?”
Sheriff Maitland cocked his head on one side. “What do you think I’m doing out here? I’m not here having a picnic. What would you like me to do that I’m not doing?”
“I don’t know,” Violet exclaimed. “You could find out which direction the bullets were coming from, or what caliber the bullets were, or where the murderer was standing when he fired.”
“I just did all that,” the sheriff told her.
“What?” Violet gaped at him. “How?”
“Well, look at this room, Miss.” He turned around again, so he faced it from the same direction as the people watching him. “What do you see?”
“There’s a dead man lying behind that desk,” Violet snapped. “That’s what I see.”
“Right,” the sheriff confirmed. “Well, he was obviously standing behind his desk when he was shot. That means there was only three places the killer could have been standing. He could have been in front of the desk, or on either side of it. Right?”
Violet nodded. The others stared in fascination.
“The bullets that killed him were .38 caliber,” Sheriff Maitland declared.
“How can you tell that?” Violet asked.
“Because one of them is stuck into his ribs, and you can see the end of it through the hole. That’s how I can tell.” The sheriff turned back toward the room. “We’ll get to the weapon later. But if you looked at the body as closely as I did—and I don’t imagine you did—you would see that the bullet that killed him went right through his head and out the back of it. That means the killer was standing directly in front of him when he fired the shots.”
“But that doesn’t tell you where he was standing,” Violet pointed out.
“I was just getting to that,” Sheriff Maitland shot back. “The killer couldn’t have been standing in front of the desk or the bullet that killed Cornell would have hit that bookshelf behind him. It would have embedded itself in the books or the wall behind the desk, and it didn’t do that. So we can rule out the front of the desk. And the killer couldn’t have been standing over there, on that side of the desk, or the bullet would have shattered that window.”
Violet pulled her head down into her shoulders. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”
“Most people don’t,” the sheriff told her. “That’s why it’s my job to think of it. So the killer was here, standing with his back to the window, and the room would have been dark, otherwise you wouldn’t have seen the flash from the corner of the fence over there.”
“But how could the killer see Cornell well enough to hit him?” Violet asked. “If it was dark, he should have missed him.”
“Maybe the moonlight was bright enough to see him,” the sheriff suggested. “I don’t know. Now, do you mind if we go back to the parlor now? We have a few more things to discuss before I leave.”