The Man in the Moonlight, page 6
“I don’t want the wad — I want the bullet!” snapped Foyle. “We’ve searched both rooms and it isn’t here.”
“Maybe it went out a window.”
“They’re nailed down, and they’re of unbreakable glass.”
“Well, it isn’t in the body.”
“It must be. You can’t shoot a man without a bullet!”
“Better search the rooms again.” Dalton rolled down his shirt sleeves and adjusted his cuff links. “Not that it matters much. Clear case of suicide.”
“Would a suicide have wiped Prickett’s fingerprints off the gun?” Foyle was indignant. “Konradi talked to me this afternoon. He knew he was in danger and he warned me that the murder of a refugee might be mistaken for suicide. He said, ‘No matter what happens, I shall not commit, suicide.’”
“You can’t go by what they say.” Dalton shrugged his shoulders into his jacket sleeves. “Douglas Kerr mentions a case where a man discussed plans for a vacation with his family though he planned to kill himself the next day and did so. You can’t prove Prickett’s revolver was stolen this afternoon. He might have dropped it somewhere and Konradi might have found it and rubbed off Prickett’s fingerprints inadvertently. Everything else points to suicide. It’s May — May and June are the suicide months. Konradi was a refugee and every time you pick up your morning paper some refugee has committed suicide. A man is always more likely to kill himself when he’s been overworking and everyone says that’s what Konradi has been doing. He was a chemist and there’s a high suicide rate among chemists.”
“Surely a chemist wouldn’t shoot himself?”
“Why not? A shot is as quick and probably as painless as any poison.”
“He escaped from Germany and got a job over here doing work he liked — and so he killed himself?” Foyle was mocking Dalton.
“You don’t need a rational motive for suicide. Ask Willing about the Freudian death-wish. Self-preservation can be inverted like any other instinct. Even courage in the face of danger may be a perverted desire for self-destruction. The same temperament that becomes a hero or a martyr in one situation may become a suicide in another. Suppose you take a look at the wound. It speaks for itself.”
In the floodlights they could see the entrance wound — not a clean drilled hole, but a large, ragged wound shaped like a cross, scorched with flame, blackened with smoke and tattooed with unburned grains of black powder. But jaw, lips and teeth were uninjured except for a cracking of skin around the mouth caused by distention of the cheeks during the explosion.
“Obviously a contact shot,” said Basil.
“In the roof of the mouth — one of the seven places always chosen by a suicide to shoot himself.” Dalton was triumphant. “There’s only one way you can make a wound like that: by putting the muzzle of the gun between the teeth in contact with the skin in the roof of the mouth. Then the high-pressure gases released by the explosion are concentrated in the hollow chamber of the mouth — a pressure of about 10,000 pounds to the square inch. Contact with the skin forces the gases into the wound with the bullet. They find a way out by shattering the top of the skull — as you see. Now tell me how a murderer could force the muzzle of a big .45 revolver between a man’s teeth without bruising his lips and breaking his teeth? You simply can’t shoot an unwilling victim in the roof of the mouth unless you use violence. That’s why such a shot is considered clear proof of suicide when the lips and teeth are uninjured.”
“If Konradi were bound—” began Foyle.
“But he wasn’t!” insisted Dalton. “There are powder burns on his right hand — I took a nitrate test to make sure. That proves the gun was in his right hand when it was fired. You can’t bind a man tightly without leaving some marks on his wrists and ankles. You can’t strangle him without leaving some mark on his neck. You can’t drug him without leaving some symptom. You can’t even stun him without leaving some mark external or internal. Satisfied?”
“No.” Foyle was unexpectedly stubborn. “We had a case once where a man was sandbagged and the medical examiner couldn’t find any mark of a blow or any symptoms of concussion during the autopsy.”
“Those freak cases are rare. There’s no way a murderer faking suicide could make certain that the body would show no signs of concussion. He wouldn’t dare take a chance on it. And there’s another thing.” Dalton shifted his gum to the other side of his mouth. “Come in here a minute.”
He led them to Konradi’s laboratory by way of the corridor. “When Konradi shot himself he was sitting in this chair near the side door leading to Prickett’s lecture hall. The shape of these drops shows they fell from a man sitting or standing still.” Dalton pointed to a spattering of blood on the floor around the chair — circular stains with an irregular edge all around. “As Konradi fell across the threshold the door must have been unlatched and he must have forced it open by falling against it.”
“And why was the door unlatched?” cried Foyle. “It’s usually locked. A murderer might have unlatched it and placed the body near it when he heard people in Prickett’s room. He knew they’d stop to examine the body before going into the laboratory, and that would give him time to reach the janitor’s window by way of the corridor. But there’s no reason a suicide should place himself beside this door.”
“Oh, yes, there is!” Dalton waved a hand toward the small, round mirror Foyle had noticed when he first entered Konradi’s laboratory. “Get it? Konradi was sitting right in front of that mirror when the shot was fired. Would a murderer want to watch himself in the mirror? Hardly! But suicides often sit in front of a mirror so they can see where to point the gun.”
Basil contemplated Dalton with interest. “In the dark?”
“What do you mean?”
“Foyle tells me Konradi was shot at eight o’clock — after Prickett had turned off all the lights in the building by tampering with the main switch.”
Dalton expelled his breath slowly as a deflated balloon. Then he rallied. “Maybe there was moonlight.”
“On the west side of the building? At eight o’clock? The moon still rises in the East, Dalton!”
“Maybe Konradi had a flashlight.”
“Then what became of it?” As Dalton hesitated, Basil went on. “You may not be the first student of medical jurisprudence to enter this room tonight!”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t it odd so many little details all point to suicide? In most criminal cases there’s some uncertainty. But in this case every signpost shrieks: Suicide! Just as if a rather academic mind had studied the subject and determined to manufacture a classic case of suicide including every known clue. Things don’t work out so neatly when they’re unplanned. The perfect textbook case is as rare in criminology as in medicine.”
“Well, that’s a new kind of logic!” Dalton’s scorn was massive. “It must be murder because there’s too much evidence of suicide! How would that sound in court? And it isn’t a perfect textbook case because there’s no suicide note. When a murderer plans a fake suicide that’s the first thing he thinks of!”
“There was a suicide note,” cried Foyle quickly. “We found it here beside the body.” He took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. “We examined it for clues, but this murderer is too cagey to leave any. He typed it on Konradi’s own machine — the Underwood here in the laboratory. It’s on University notepaper, just like that in Konradi’s desk. And Konradi’s fingerprints are the only ones on the paper and the typewriter.”
“And that proves Konradi didn’t write it and it’s just a plant?!” Dalton was rapidly losing his temper.
“The prints on the typewriter keys are smudged,” explained Foyle. “Someone wearing gloves must have used it after Konradi.”
“You never get clear prints on typewriter keys,” retorted Dalton. “The typist smudges his own prints each time he touches a key.”
Basil was reading the note. The heading was engraved:
Division of Biological Chemistry: Research Department, Yorkville University,
East End Avenue at 86th Street, New York.
All the rest was typewritten — even the signature:
Sorry to involve the University in this rotten business, But life is hopeless if one loses friends ho;e country , , , everything, , , F Konrqdi.
“It was typed in the dark,” explained Foyle. “I walked all around this building tonight just before eight o’clock, and when I passed this corner I heard someone typing in here. I wasn’t sure whether I’d heard it or imagined it because it only lasted a moment and there wasn’t a light at any window. Now I feel sure it was the murderer typing this note on Konradi’s typewriter. He couldn’t risk using the typewriter during the day when the building was full of people. He had to do it at night and chose Saturday night because that’s when the janitor goes to choir practice and the building is empty. Even then he didn’t dare show a light for fear someone who knew Konradi wasn’t in the laboratory would investigate. Of course he never dreamed I would be poking about.”
Basil agreed. “If you heard Konradi typing, there would certainly have been a light in the laboratory. And Konradi wouldn’t have typed his signature. The Viennese are nothing if not punctilious.”
“Ain’t psychology grand?” said Dalton sweetly. “If you study that note for ten minutes I suppose you’ll be able to tell us just how a murderer can force a gun between a conscious victim’s teeth without injuring his mouth. I’m going home! You don’t need a medical examiner around here — you need a magician!”
“Wait, a minute!” Basil’s voice stopped him. “Any old scars on the body? Any signs of ill health?”
“No. Why?”
“How long was Konradi at Dachau?”
“Four months.” Dalton frowned. “I see what you mean. A concentration camp is not a health resort.”
“I’ve heard they never release any prisoner whose body bears permanent scars,” put in Foyle.
“But Konradi,” answered Basil, “escaped.”
“Every prisoner, released or escaped, is broken in health,” added Dalton.
“And Konradi?”
“His body was in remarkably good condition. No sign of premature senility except a few scattered white hairs. No sign of ill health except a very slight lesion in the nose between the nostrils. Theoretically, that could be leprosy in its first stage — or cocaine inhalation. But he had no other symptoms of the cocaine addict and he never experimented with lepers. It’s queer…”
Prickett, Salt and Halsey had been kept “on ice,” as Foyle put it, in Prickett’s office. Prickett constituted himself spokesman. “It’s nearly midnight, Inspector. How much longer are we to be kept waiting?”
“Only a few minutes. This is Dr Willing. Tell him about your experiment this evening. He’s the psychol — psychiatrist attached to the district attorney’s office.”
Prickett had taken pains to instruct Foyle in the difference between a psychologist, like himself, and a mere psychiatrist like Basil Willing. Psychologists were scientists who experimented with the normal mind. Psychiatrists were only doctors of medicine who got morbid ideas from observing the abnormal behaviour of mental patients. Foyle was a little disappointed when Prickett greeted Basil cordially. Even a Freudian psychiatrist may seem like a fellow human being to a behavioural psychologist who has just spent three hours in the hands of the Homicide Squad. Basil Willing might hold nonsensical theories, but at least he would have some idea what Prickett was talking about while the detectives had concluded that Prickett was either criminal or crazy.
“I feel sure Dr Willing will uphold me when I say there was nothing out of the ordinary about my experiment,” announced Prickett. “It was planned to test the scientific value of the lie-detector—”
“What!” Ian Halsey was on his feet. “You told me it was a memory experiment!”
“Naturally. You were the subject, and a lie-detector test has greater significance when the subject doesn’t know he is going to be tested until the last moment.”
Halsey’s face was congested, his fists clenched. He took a step forward.
Prickett retreated. “Really, Ian! You know the Department of Psychology expects active cooperation from all students in its research projects.”
“Why, you—” Halsey’s response should have been interesting, but he never finished it. He collapsed in a chair suddenly. His whole body was shaking, his breath as quick as if he had been running. He didn’t seem to notice Basil’s fingertips on his pulse.
“This boy is in no condition for questioning. He should be put to bed.”
“The Dean’s house is nearest,” said Salt. “He’s at the Alumni Dinner, but Mrs Lysaght will be there.”
“Okay,” agreed Foyle. “I’ll send one of the boys with him and the watchman can show them the way.”
“Do Halsey’s parents know about this?” asked Basil.
“They’re in Egypt at the moment,” explained Salt. “I suppose the Dean will telephone to Cairo.”
Prickett seemed to breathe more freely after Halsey had left the room. “I never expected to find such a completely personal bias in a boy who has had nearly four years of psychological training!”
Basil brought him back to the question. “Just what type of lie-detector did you plan to use?”
“A combination of the Marston systolic blood-pressure test and the Jung association time test.” Prickett turned back to Foyle. “You see, there’s more than one kind of lie-detector, but they’re all based on physical and mental tests originally used to detect disease. They’ve proved equally useful in detecting guilt because a guilty conscience is a disease — at least it has a pathological effect on physical and mental functions such as blood pressure and association.”
“Sure, I know all that!” Foyle was growing impatient. “I want to know why you turned the lights off and locked the front door just before Konradi was shot.”
“The lie-detector is used chiefly in criminal investigation.” Prickett might have been addressing a classroom. “Now…to test a method of criminal investigation, what is the first essential? Why—” he smiled brightly. “A crime — of course!”
Foyle blinked. “Do you mean—”
“He’s not confessing to a real crime,” explained Basil. “He’s talking about a sham crime.”
“A what?” Foyle looked as if he thought it might be a short step from a sham crime to a real one.
But Prickett continued without appearing to notice. “Unfortunately it is not practical to have anyone commit a real crime for experimental purposes. Therefore we devise an act approximating a real crime and we call this a sham crime. After it’s over the experimenter puts the sham criminal and a number of other people ignorant of the sham crime through a lie-detector test dealing with the sham crime. Their responses are analysed by a second experimenter who knows all the details of the sham crime but who does not know the sham criminal. If he can discover the sham criminal through his analysis of the tests alone, he has proved their value to criminal investigation. The sham crime I arranged for this evening was to have been the first in a series. I used my own students as subjects and I divided them into groups, each consisting of one sham criminal and nine people ignorant of the sham crime — controls, as we call them. Ian Halsey was selected as the sham criminal for Group No. 1.”
Foyle fumbled in a pocket and dragged out a crumpled paper. “Then you wrote this cockeyed letter?”
“Y-Yes.” Prickett’s composure was shaken. “How did you get hold of it?”
“Found it on the campus this afternoon.”
“How could Ian have been so careless! If one of the controls found that letter, he would have learned enough about the sham crime to ruin the experiment!”
“It doesn’t say anything about a sham crime,” drawled Foyle. “But it says a lot about murder.”
Prickett tried to smile. “I couched my instructions in melodramatic terms purposely in order to intensify the emotional reaction of the subject.”
“One moment,” Basil interrupted. “Do you claim that there is no connection between the real crime and the sham crime?”
“None whatever!”
“And that this letter is nothing but a letter of instruction to Halsey outlining the sham crime?”
“Exactly.”
“In that case why did it alarm Dr Konradi when he saw it this afternoon?”
“I don’t know.” Prickett’s bewilderment seemed genuine. “Perhaps he was afraid of something else and mistook my letter for part of it. When you fear a thing you see it wherever you look.”
“Why did you stage this sham crime in Konradi’s laboratory?” demanded Foyle. “The letter says, ‘You will proceed directly to the laboratory.’ You must have meant Konradi’s laboratory because he’s the only chemist with rooms in Southerland Hall.”
Prickett laughed a little heartily. “I was referring to the psychological laboratory — the room you insist on calling the lecture hall. The rest of the letter makes that clear.”
Prickett took a carbon copy from his desk. Foyle read it aloud:
“You will find various articles on the table including a candle which you may light after pulling down the window shades. Investigate the objects on the table carefully. Eat and drink anything edible. Smoke some of the cigarettes and take particular notice of the brand. Help yourself to anything that may seem of value. Then turn to page 116 of the book you will find there and copy the first three paragraphs on the typewriter. This passage includes a rather gruesome description of an actual murder. While copying it endeavour to identify yourself mentally with the murderer.
“By this time it should be approximately eight-forty-five (8:45) and you must make haste to leave the building as surreptitiously as possible. If you follow these instructions exactly and if you can prevent the person who will test you afterward from discovering that you did so, you will receive a prize of five dollars ($5.00). Enclosed is a key to the psychological laboratory. The east door of Southerland Hall will be unlatched.”
