Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

“Something’s wrong with all of it,” Earl said. “Nora and Reggie, those two are trying to protect each other. Each thinks the other did it. Now, to me that means that neither of ’em did it. If neither of them killed Harry, who did?”

And then all charges against Nora were dropped. And that was a shock, too, for it meant that now Reggie was surely suspect. He’d left Nora at the farm, taking the gun and cartridges. He was in a rage against Harry, seeing the condition that Nora was in, and upset by what she’d told him. Had the horse arrived back while he was there, or even before, Reggie could have deduced that Harry was not too far away, making his way home on foot. And on the vacant lot Reggie, carrying the loaded gun, had found him. Speculation had Reggie guilty of the crime. Moreover, Inspector Hardman’s findings appeared to bolster that.

What Inspector Hardman had found was that Nora had indeed been on the hotel parking lot, but without the gun, and that she had not gone home by way of Meadow Lane that runs parallel to Main Street. Her first story had been that she had gone to the parking lot by the river path, returning the same way. It was on that path that the inspector found Nora’s footprints in damp soil where, beneath thickly leafed trees, they had not been washed away by the rain; impressions showing clearly Nora’s shoeprints going both ways. Further, there were handprints where she had fallen.

Had Nora been carrying a gun, those handprints, so the detective thought, would not have been so clearly defined, fingers outstretched. Moreover, the gun had not been cleaned by Reggie or anyone and, although showing evidence of having been recently fired, it carried no trace whatsoever of the mud or soil where Nora had stumbled. Then, too, the spot where she had tripped gave proof that the fall had been on her return, the handprints pointing plainly the direction she’d been going. Nora, the inspector said, had not gone up Meadow Lane to meet and kill Harry as he entered the vacant lot from Main Street. She had returned home by the river path as she had said in her first story.

Then, overnight, came further incriminating evidence against Reggie. The two spent cartridges from Nora’s shotgun were found in his rain slicker pocket. “Hidden away in a mountain shack,” the newspaper had it; a cabin that Reggie had built on the mountain for his needs when tending sheep in that area. Simultaneously, in his farmhouse, the detectives discovered a bloodstained jacket. Things could not have looked blacker for Reggie.

All of this was followed by yet another confusing aspect. Through Doc Entwistle, who had had to report it, Inspector Hardman discovered that Reggie had been shot in the right arm. Shotgun pellets embedded there had caused an infection. So, who had shot Reggie? “I suppose I was careless with the gun,” he said. On the same day that the sergeant found the spent cartridges in Reggie’s pocket, Inspector Hardman found two further spent cartridges in Meadow Lane, these latter being totally unexplainable, for they did not fit Nora’s gun. A close check proved that Harry’s face had been full of Number 6 shot from the latter two cartridges found in Meadow Lane, not the Number 5 shot in the ones fitting Nora’s gun. The shot in Reggie’s right arm was definitely from Nora’s gun.

Inspector Hardman, sitting across from Reggie and Nora in the Fitzmaurice farm kitchen, looked grim. “I want the truth and I want it now,” he said. “If neither of you killed Bagley, are you protecting someone? I shall get the truth, of course, and if either of you is withholding evidence it could go hard for you.”

Reggie, right arm in a sling, told the story for both himself and Nora. “I got into the Fitzmaurice farmyard that stormy Friday night with my gallon can for gas,” Reggie began. “There was a yard light on, but no lights were on in the house. I was afraid I’d have to rouse someone out of bed, and then I saw that the kitchen door was partly open. I pushed on the door and had stepped forward to enter, was about to shout, when a blast of shot hit me, getting the doorjamb mostly. I yelled, ‘What the hell’s going on!’

“And then there was Nora, flinging the gun down and screaming. But she could only weep and hold onto me. When I switched on the kitchen light I saw the state the room was in: things overthrown, dishes smashed. And Nora’s little white dog lay dead on the floor. Nora was sopping wet and mudstained.

“After a while, although Nora was still hysterical, she was telling me: ‘I thought you were Harry. I was waiting for him. I was going to kill him for what he did tonight to little Persha, and to my horse that Charlie gave me.’ That’s what she was crying. And had it been Harry she wouldn’t have killed him. She’d have missed him just as she missed me. I know she didn’t kill Harry because there she was at home waiting for him. And when I left I took the gun with me. I said I wanted to buy the gun. Right enough I needed one for the rabbits, like I said.