Man Sinister

I had one strip of side yard to cross between the house and trees. Once in the trees I made better speed, skirting the yard, taking to the weed-grown lots that lay between me and the cottage.

The cottage, when I reached it, was dark. I tried the back door and found it unlocked, giving me no purpose for the ring of keys I had filched from the pantry.

The floor creaked once as I entered. I stopped, listened, gripping the flashlight I’d picked up in Wilfred’s room. I moved forward again, and there was a sudden burst of movement before me.

The light flared, catching Wilfred as he flung a desperate look over his shoulder while he lunged for the door across the room.

As he yanked the door open my fingers grabbed his collar. I jerked him back and he stood breathing thickly. His face was as white as dough, his eyes jutting in an oblique angle.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said quietly. He stood quivering like a beaten pup and watched me warily as I removed my hand from his collar and stepped back from him.

“Now let’s sit down and talk this over like gentlemen.” I found a ramshackle, dusty chair and pushed it toward him. He let his body come in stiff sitting contact with the edge of it.

“It was foolish of you to run, Wilfred.”

He shook his head, breathing through his mouth.

“Let’s go back over what happened,” I said. “Last night Harold rushed into the house on Northland. A few moments later Papa Joe arrived. He spoke to Harold; then went to his room. A little while after that, Papa Joe called for you and you went up to him. After that — a blank, until Papa Joe was found this morning. What did Papa Joe want you for, Wilfred?”

“To get him a drink of whisky.” He stopped, as if the words had expended all his energy.

I waited, and said finally, “Did you get it for him?”

Wilfred nodded. “I went downstairs first, but the bottle was gone from the buffet. It was the only bottle in the house, I thought. I remembered then that young Mr. Cranford took it to his room earlier in the day. When I went up to get it, I heard him and his wife wrangling, so I didn’t go in.”

“Why not? Were you more afraid of breaking in on Harold than of refusing Papa Joe’s request?”

“I’ll say not! But I happened to think of the pint of Old Seaman you put on your bureau when you came home yesterday. I’d brought me a glass from downstairs and a bottle of ginger ale. Instead of going to young Mr. Cranford’s room for the whisky, I went to yours. The pint was still on your bureau.”

My heart began hitting my ribs with a hammer-like beat at the implications his story was unfolding.

“You poured him a drink from the Old Seaman?”

“Yes, sir. A big drink, the kind he always liked. He throwed it down his throat, made a face, and used the ginger ale for a chaser. Then he looked like somebody had hit him over the head with a club. He fell into a chair and looked at me, his eyes terrible, the color funny in his cheeks. He opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything. Then he slid off the chair onto the floor.”

Wilfred chewed the side of his lip. “I thought right away he was plumb dead and that I’d poisoned him even if I hadn’t meant to. I was scared clean to my toenails. I just wanted to get away from there until they found out who did it. I was afraid that they’d catch me and wouldn’t look any further. I slipped back this morning to tell Ellen I hadn’t done it, and where I was, and for her to get me some grub.” He touched my arm timidly. “Please don’t take me back, Mr. Martin! I swear I didn’t do it, even if it was me that gave him the whisky!”

“I believe you,” I said. Tears welled in his eyes.

I waited a moment, and when the shaking ceased in his fat moon face and round shoulders, I reached in my pocket for the lead pellet I’d found in Harold’s room. I Jet the light play on the chunk of lead as I rolled it around in the palm of my hand.

Wilfred paled.

“You dropped one of the slugs,” I said. “Did you carry the rest of them away with you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I found you in Harold’s room yesterday with his gun in your hand and a pair of pliers in your pocket. You went to his room with one purpose in your mind. You hated him with all the intensity of your being. You felt that only you could save your sister.”

“She wouldn’t listen to me,” Wilfred said miserably.

“Yet for all your hate you were afraid to do anything to Harold directly. You knew he was in danger of some kind, going out armed to protect himself. You wanted to remove that protection, so you peeled the slugs out of his cartridges, leaving him with a gun loaded with blanks.”

Wilfred hung his head sheepishly. “I thought it was pretty smart, Mr. Martin. Just everybody wouldn’t have thought of it.”

“Pretty underhanded, too.”

“Yes, sir,” he said.