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

He smiled. “I killed a cop. It was sort of accidental too, like this. By rights the judge should have given me life imprisonment, which would have made me eligible for parole in twelve years and eight months. But he had this thing about killing policemen and so he made it ninety-nine years instead. I served fifty and then, practically out of the blue, the warden called me in and said that I was a free man. It was all due to Mr. Fergusson, who was on the parole board and heard about my case. He gave me the job as his gardener.”

I was still a bit shocked. “And so this is how you repay your benefactor? By murdering him?”

“I feel bad about that,” he admitted, but then shrugged. “After I shot Fergusson, I panicked, dropped the gun, and ran out through the french windows right into Mr. Rudolph Fergusson.”

I now looked at Rudolph Fergusson. He appeared to be in his late thirties and was quite lean and gangling.

He spoke up. “We broke up the bridge game earlier than usual. I was taking the shortcut across the terrace to the east wing where my rooms are when I heard the shot and Pomfret came scooting out of the study. He ran into me and began babbling something about having just shot my uncle. So we went back there and, sure enough, it seems that he had.”

I turned back to Pomfret. “Back-pedaling a bit, how did you, a recently released convict, expect to get away with stealing from your employer? You would certainly be the first person suspected of the theft, regardless of the attempt to make it seem as though it had been the work of a burglar.”

Pomfret disagreed. “Put yourself into my benefactor’s shoes. Here you have just gone through a lot of trouble to get an oldtimer like me released after half a century in prison. You have even given me a job and room and board. Could you possibly imagine that I would be so unbelievably ungrateful as to turn on you and steal your goods? Of course not. You would even feel guilty for thinking such a thing. So you would decide that it must certainly have been a burglar.” He smiled about the room. “Well, officers, I’m ready to go.”

I took Ralph aside. “Ralph, there is more here than meets the eye.”

He shrugged. “It looks pretty cut and dried to me.”

“Ralph, how many of our murder cases are cut and dried?”

“About ninety-five percent.”

“Ralph, statistics don’t tell the whole story. I’d like to talk to the other people involved.”

We took Rudolph Fergusson into one corner of the large room.

“Mr. Fergusson,” I said, “was your uncle a wealthy man?”

The question was, of course, superfluous. The main building and its wings must have contained some thirty rooms and they were set in the middle of at least five acres of landscaped grounds.

“Well, yes,” Rudolph said. “I believe that the last time the subject of money came up, he mentioned that he was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen million.”

“And who are his heirs?”

“I’ve always been led to believe that my sister Henrietta and I would split ninety percent of his estate. Jason would get ten percent.”

“Jason?”

“Jason Quinlan. He’s my uncle’s lawyer and a personal friend of the family.”

“How old are you, Mr. Fergusson?”

“Thirty-nine.”

“How old was your uncle?”

“Fifty-six.”

“In good health?”

“Yes. Quite healthy.”

“Possibly he could have lived to be a hundred?”

“Possibly.”

“I suppose that you have money in your own right?”

“Not really. I am a third vice-president in one of my uncle’s firms and I live within my salary.”

I took Ralph aside again. “He was institutionalized.”

“Who? Fergusson?”

“No. I mean Pomfret. He spent fifty years in prison. Fifty years of his life were shaped behind walls. He was told when to get up, when to go to bed, what to wear, how to wear it, and when to wear it. He was told what to eat, where to eat it, and when to eat it.”

Ralph nodded. “It sounds familiar. Once you get a steady job, you know what time you have to get up, and what time you have to eat, and—”

“Ralph,” I said. “At first Pomfret undoubtedly spent many sleepless nights in prison desperately wishing that he could escape his confinement. But after twenty or thirty years I suspect the longing for the outside world became more a matter of form.”

“He didn’t really want to leave jail at all?”

“He thought he did, but when he was unexpectedly released he realized he was lost in the outside world. He had been in prison too long. He missed the security, the routine, the friends and camaraderie he had in prison.”

“Are you telling me that Pomfret killed Fergusson just because he wanted to be sent back? He wanted to be caught?”

“Well, perhaps the actual killing of Fergusson was an accident. The theft itself was meant to send him back. You will notice that Pomfret was not wearing gloves. Undoubtedly he intentionally left fingerprints all over the study. And since Fergusson would very likely call in the police — despite all that benefactor jazz — they would take fingerprints and make comparisons. And Pomfret would be sent back to prison where he really wants to be.”

“So why kill Fergusson?”