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

Dick Flinders pounced on the qualification. “Where does ‘hardly any’ come in, prof?”

Craigie, seeing friends arriving, drew the policeman into a corner of the draughtboard-tiled foyer where a telephone box carpentered in the early 1900’s cast a pool of gloom for confidential talk.

“There were no injuries inconsistent with a fall — just the one massive injury, in fact. But there was one worrying little abrasion.”

The pathologist clenched his right hand and tapped the edge of it with a bony left forefinger. “Just there, below the fourth, smallest finger. A cut inflicted immediately prior to death.”

“Defense wound?”

Craigie pursed his lips. “No, no. Just the one minor nick. Some domestic mishap. Rather supporting the presumption of a woman who was tired and careless, accident prone, to use jargon. Except that it was in an odd position: as if she used the side of her hand like a hammer. Not on bone or tissue, and not in a conventional punch, else the knuckles would have been the affected area. D’you follow?”

Dick Flinders tried to visualize that small, cryptic cut. “A karate chop, edge of her hand?”

Professor Craigie was definite. “No, the abrasion’s trifling but it extends from the edge of the palm onto the side of the little finger. Ergo, that finger was curled — with the rest, most likely. Extend three fingers stiffly while curling the smallest and you’ll understand: it’s a strain, not natural.”

John Taylor had the indefinably sodden looking, drowned-strawberry nose of the dedicated toper, and spectacularly bloodshot eyes. They squeezed shut and he groaned at the assault of light at seven thirty A M. “What’s your game?” he croaked belatedly, for Dick Flinders was across the threshold by then.

“Hide and seek. Listen, sunshine, I’m in a hurry and I don’t want trouble — neither do you. This won’t take long.”

Flinders opened the door to the right of the pinched hall. “This where it happened?” It had to be: dark linoleum, straight-backed chairs, a central hanging light with the bulb showing blackened and dead.

“What if it is? You one of them reporters?”

“Maybe.” Flinders turned slowly, like a gun turret on a battleship, examining everything. A seldom-used room in a loveless house. Framed photographs over the fireplace — wedding group, an elderly couple outside a farmhouse, a far younger John Taylor smirking and in uniform as a National Service private in the Catering Corps.

Flinders’ arm came up in one piece, like a railway signal. A large oval of unfaded wallpaper.

“Who took the picture down?”

“Mirror, not picture, Mr. Know-all,” Taylor replied sulkily. “She broke it. She might have been a woman copper, ordering folk around and stirring up trouble, but she was a dead loss around the house.

“Rotten temper, too. Lash out, she would, when she was in the mood. Between being clumsy, and wanton bloody destruction...”

Dick Flinders counted back from ten, silently. “She broke it... the night it happened?”

Puzzled by the big fellow’s interest, Taylor closed his eyes and lounged against the door frame. “Yes, it was all right in the afternoon, I used it to straighten my tie. First thing I spotted; well, the main thing was Mary snuffing it, goes without saying.” The grieving widower sniggered and wagged his head.

Flinders went out through a kitchen already smelly, sink piled with dirty crocks, to the back doorstep. The mirror was propped beside the dustbin, its heavy chain starting to rust from drizzle and dew.

Its wooden backing had stopped its breaking outright, but the egg-shaped glass was cracked down the middle. Flinders curled his fingers and swung his hand against the silvery surface, gingerly. He felt the dangerous kiss of the razor edge where one half of the glass was higher at the fracture line.

Mary Taylor had used her hand like a hammer, Professor Craigie believed.

“Seven years bad luck,” Taylor jeered from the back doorstep. “Who are you, anyway?”

Flinders brushed past him without answering. Taylor was shouting by the time he was in the hall, but the slammed front door cut it off.

“Two weeks’ leave, just like that.” Inspector Tuckey wagged his head wonderingly. “And here’s me boosting you up all these years as the steadiest bloke between Rosetta Street and the North Pole.”

Detective-Sergeant Flinders rubbed his nose. “Male menopause,” he suggested helpfully.

“Don’t get saucy as well as awkward. All right then, seeing as it’s you. And watch your step.”

Flinders blinked at him. Either Cyril Rollason had been indiscreet and set the grapevine quivering, or Tuckey, a master of the art, was firing shots at random.

“I always do, Skip. And thanks.”

Flinders put the scribbled notes away as Miss Angel came to the public library counter. He’d been studying them all morning.

Roger James Endaby, age 37, general dealer. Suspected receiver of stolen goods. Mary Taylor had been keeping observation on his scrapyard.