The Glass Village

“Alibis for what,” Johnny corrected. “Why, for cars.”

“For cars?” The Judge stared. “Is that—”

“Yes,” said Johnny. “Remember Burney Hackett? ‘I parked my car in the garage.’ And ‘it’s only a one-car garage.’ Burney Hackett owns one automotive vehicle. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” said the Judge, “because it’s true.”

“And where was Hackett’s only car at two-thirteen P.M. Saturday? It was some nineteen miles from Fanny Adams’s house, being driven back by Hackett from Lyman Hinchley’s office in Cudbury.

“And the Berrys,” said Johnny, murdering a mosquito. “A passenger car, a delivery truck, and a wrecker from the public garage. At two-thirteen P.M. Saturday the passenger car was locked in a parking lot in Cudbury while Emily Berry and her children sat in Dr. Kaplan’s office. At two-thirteen Saturday the delivery truck was standing in Berry’s garage, where it had stood since at least ten minutes of two, when Berry began tinkering with it to find out why it didn’t start. And what’s more, the truck was boxing in his wrecker, as he complained on the stand. Three vehicles, all accounted for.

“Hosey Lemmon?” Johnny shook his head. “No conveyance of any kind. You told me that yourself.

“Prue Plummer’s car? She said on the stand it was at Wurley’s garage in Cudbury being overhauled for a trip. She said Peter Berry saw Wurley’s mechanic take it away. A statement she’d hardly have made in Berry’s hearing it if weren’t true. Out.

“The Hemuses. Two available vehicles, according to Hube’s testimony: the passenger car he drove to the village, and the farm truck his family took to follow. At two-thirteen Saturday the car was parked before Berry’s store in plain sight. At the same time his truck had to be on the Hemus place, because no one else in his family left the farm till the news of the murder came.

“The Sheares, no car at all.

“Pangman.” Johnny slapped himself in the face. “Same as the Hemuses — one passenger car, one truck. The truck was parked below the barn roof all Saturday afternoon while Joel Hackett handed up shingles to Orville. And the car, Pangman said, was in his garage.

“Scott. Again two vehicles, a car and a jeep. The car was with Drakeley in Comfort at two-thirteen waiting for a banker to say no. The jeep, according to Mathilda, stood out front on the Scott place all day.

“Calvin Waters. Like Hosey Lemmon, no vehicle of any kind, you said.

“The Isbels: one farm wagon, period. So it shares the alibis of old Mert and Sarah Isbel.

“That cleans out Shinn Corners,” said Johnny, “except for you and Dr. Cushman. And you had Russ Bailey drive that decrepit hack of yours back to Cudbury when he dropped us here a week ago, and I established through Dr. Cushman’s nurse that at two-thirteen Saturday the doctor’s car was parked outside his office in Comfort.

“Hell, you can even eliminate Judge Webster, if you’ve got that type of mind. His car didn’t get to Shinn Corners until the day after the murder.

“And that,” said Johnny, “covers the alibi of every vehicle involved with anyone in the case. Except one, the one that’s brought us here. And by the way, how did I pull it off? I don’t remember.”

“Neither do I.” Judge Shinn shivered.

There were shouts now on the still night air, peculiar sucking sounds, clanks and creaks and the muffled straining of an engine.

“But how do you connect the two parts of the argument?” asked the Judge. “Because that’s what they’re going to want to know.”

“No, they won’t,” said Johnny. “They won’t want to know anything after this. All they’ll want to do is go home and milk their lousy cows. Till the next time.”

“Johnny, Johnny,” said the Judge with a sigh. “The world does move. You’ve just moved it a little... If you won’t tell them, will you tell me?”

“It was the wood, the firewood.” Johnny listened; it seemed to him from the confused sounds that it must soon be over. “What happened to Aunt Fanny’s firewood? It was always the sixty-four dollar question, but we were too stupid to ask it...

“The wood was in that lean-to, where Kowalczyk had stacked it at two o’clock. Aunt Fanny painted it before she died at two-thirteen. After she died, after two-thirteen — gone. Taken away.

“Because taken away it was — off the property, an act of total removal, not just a transfer from one place to another. I searched for those twenty-four pieces of wood myself and didn’t find them.

“Aunt Fanny was struck down dead and her striker-downer picked up twenty-four lengths of split log — and did what?” smiled Johnny. “Carried them off by hand? With a fresh corpse a few yards away and the possiblity of interruption and discovery any minute? It would have taken four or five trips — he could hardly have carried more than five or six pieces of wood in one armful... The likely answer was a vehicle of some sort. A car, or a wagon. Took the mental stature of a foetus to figure out! Disgusting.

“If the wood was carted off in a car or a wagon, and only one vehicle has no alibi — or rather, a faulty alibi...” Johnny shrugged.