Midsummer Murder by Clifford Witting

Author:Clifford Witting
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Galileo Publishing
Published: 2022-07-11T14:22:11+00:00

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XIV.

Intermission

LET US pause awhile to consider the problem that confronted Charlton. His chief trouble, of course, was that each crime was carried out at what is erroneously called and, with inexcusable slovenliness, is described here as, the psychological moment. With Earnshaw, the crowded Square, the excitement of the escaping bull and the clatter of the pneumatic drills; with Ransome, the empty Square, with no one awake but a nodding night-watchman: and with Humphries, again the empty Square, with a thunderstorm raging overhead. No witness had seen the flash of any of the three shots; no witness had been able to say that the report had come from a certain point. There was not a single person whom Charlton had so far met, who had any apparent reason for shooting the first two men, which left him with the conviction that the murderer was mad—and madmen need no other motive for murder than the stimulus of their own diseased imaginations.

If he had to look for a homicidal maniac, from whom had he to choose? Somebody, naturally, who had access to a roof or window of any of the three suspected buildings: the Horticultural Hall, Beamish’s second­hand shop and Pope’s tobacco and confectionery shop. All the other properties—the monumental masons’, the Bank, the Post Office, the empty shops in the High Street, Harbottle’s, Highman’s, Burnside’s, the two shops to the south of Burnside’s and those along the southern side—were out of it. The weight of evidence was against them.

A roof or a window. Let us take the roofs first. The roof of the Hall could be reached from the ground by means of the iron ladder on top of the lavatories, but the manoeuvre would have been almost sure to attract notice. The two other suspected roofs were approach­able from all the buildings round as far as the corner of Effingham Street and a man who moved warily might have made his way from one end to the other without inviting attention. His chief difficulty would have been to get on to the roof in the first place and down again when the job had been done. Everybody, then, who was in that block at the time of the second crime was suspect, unless he or she could produce evidence to prove the contrary.

Certain buildings were locked up and empty: the Bank with its unoccupied flat, the Post Office, the ironmonger’s, the offices of the Paulsfield Weekly News, and the multiple store. Therefore, apart from those in the suspected buildings, the only persons in the block when Arthur Ransome was murdered were Mr. and Mrs. Muttigen and their agoraphobic son, Harold.

On the evidence of her husband, Mrs. Muttigen was out shopping when Earnshaw was killed and at Southmouth-by-the-Sea when Humphries was shot. At the time of the first and third crimes, then, the Muttigen father and son were alone together in the house.

We will take the father’s case first.

When Ransome was killed, Mr. Muttigen was in bed with his wife. That

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