The Glass Village

“Oh, you were on the phone with the Governor when Adams told all.” Johnny flipped his cigaret into the dark garden. “His trick was so simple it was clever. Adams’s alibi was that he’d left his office in Cudbury just before one o’clock Saturday afternoon and got back to his office ‘about two-thirty’ to find Emily Berry’s note saying that she was at the dentist’s office and he was to phone her there, she had a message for him from his aunt. So, Adams said, he used his office phone to call Mrs. Berry and she gave him his aunt’s message to go right over to Shinn Corners and he did — arriving here, he said, at three-thirty, over an hour and a quarter after her murder. Emily Berry confirmed the note business, Adams’s phone call at two-thirty; we ourselves saw him get to the Adams house at three-thirty... Complete. A rounded picture of his innocent afternoon.

“Only,” said Johnny, “we’d been conned. In all that mess of testimony and confirmation we lost sight of the only important fact in it: that Emily Berry had merely Adams’s word for it that when he phoned her at Dr. Kaplan’s at two-thirty he was calling from his office phone in Cudbury. The vital part of his alibi was completely without substantiation. A phone call can be made from anywhere. He might have been calling from New York — or Shinn Corners.

“So at two-thirty Saturday afternoon Ferriss Adams wasn’t necessarily in Cudbury, twenty-eight miles from the scene of the two-thirteen crime. And if Adams wasn’t necessarily in Cudbury at that time, neither was Adams’s car. In other words, neither Adams nor his car had a real alibi for the time of the murder, and that’s why I staked everything on my proposal to dig that coupé out of the muck.”

“The firewood,” murmured the Judge. He shook his head in the darkness. “And you say there’s no justice, Johnny? He’s going to roast in hell over that firewood.”

Johnny said nothing.

The Judge’s cigar glowed brightly.

“Tell me,” said the Judge at last, “about his confession. He found Em Berry’s note earlier Saturday, I take it?”

“Yes. He got back from lunch not at two-thirty but about twenty after one — he’d grabbed a sandwich at a diner. The note mentioned that there was a message from his Aunt Fanny. Instead of phoning Emily Berry at the dentist’s, Adams phoned his aunt direct... at one-twenty, from his office. And what Fanny Adams told him over the phone at that time sealed her fate.”

“What did she say to him? Why in God’s name did he kill her?”

“Nothing epic,” said Johnny. “He’s been scrabbling along with his law practice, barely making a living, and as Fanny Adams’s only relative he’d always expected to inherit from her when she died. She told him over the phone that she’d decided to make a will leaving her entire estate in trust to Shinn Corners — a permanent fund to be administered by the town elders for school maintenance, making up budget deficits, loans to needy villagers, and so on. She wanted him to draw the will for her... What you might call killed by kindness.”

“Johnny,” said the Judge.

“Well, wasn’t she?” Johnny was silent. Then he said, “He got his car and drove to Shinn Corners. It was just about two-ten when he drove down the hill into the village and saw a tramp running out of his aunt’s house stuffing something into a pocket. Adams parked in the driveway and went in. His aunt was painting away in her studio... At this point,” said Johnny, “our big bad killer starts whining. He had no intention of killing her, he says. He’d just come to plead his cause — the blood tie, his need, his hopes, the rest of his piddling concerns. But she cut him short and said he was still young and the town was old and in need. So he went blind-mad, he says, and the next thing he knew he found himself over her dead body, the bloody poker in his hand.”

Judge Shinn stirred. “The legal mind. He’s already setting up a plea of unpremeditated murder.”

“The whole thing, he says, took no more than two or three minutes. Right away his brain cleared — it’s wonderful how these attacks of temporary insanity go away as suddenly as they come! He needed an alibi and a fall guy, he says. Luck seemed to be with him. The tramp who’d been running away... Adams found the empty cinnamon jar and realized that the tramp had robbed the old lady. Made to order. He must be headed for Cudbury — the road went nowhere else — and going on foot he’d be a sitting duck any time that afternoon Adams chose to sick the hunters on him.

“As for the alibi, Adams says he had to use what means he had. He simply picked up his aunt’s phone in the kitchen at two-thirty and phoned Emily Berry at Dr. Kaplan’s office in Cudbury, telling her he was calling from his own office. The record of that call, by the way, ought to be a strong link in the evidence against him. It’s a toll call and will be in the phone company’s records.”