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Suppose, Miss Howard said, that little Thomas had, in fact been sitting in Clara’s lap when the rig stopped. The girl had been shot in the chest, and there was no way that anybody could have shot her in that region without first moving Thomas out of the way. So, Miss Howard said, we had to figure that Libby had taken Thomas and stuck him somewhere else-probably in Matthew’s lap. Libby’d then shot Clara, an act what almost certainly would’ve made Thomas very upset, causing Libby to shoot him quickly Now, the Colt.45 Peacemaker was a powerful gun: the bullet what’d struck Clara had traveled clear through her chest and neck. So the bullet what’d hit little Thomas would definitely have gone straight through him and into whatever was behind him-or whoever was behind him, if we now accepted the idea that he’d actually been sitting in front of Matthew.
This thought got Marcus’s and Lucius’s eyes twinkling again. Was Miss Howard suggesting, they asked, that the two boys had been killed by one bullet? To be sure, she answered; nothing else made any sense, given the state of the Colt. But before anybody went getting too happy, Miss Howard continued, we had to remember one thing: the single bullet might not have been traveling with enough power to make it through both bodies and into the front of the wagon’s wooden bed. If that was the case, we were in trouble; for among the many things Dr. Lawrence’s report didn’t mention was his having taken any bullets out of the dead boys. In other words, if the missing bullet wasn’t in the hunk of wood in front of us, then it’d been buried with Matthew Hatch in Ballston’s town cemetery (which was, it turned out, just around the corner from Mr. Picton’s house). This realization wiped the smiles right back off the detective sergeants’ faces, and also lit a new fire under me and Mr. Moore-joined, now, by Miss Howard-to tear the piece of planking and the driver’s seat into toothpicks in an effort to find the second deadly missile; because without it, we had no way of even suggesting that Daniel Hatch’s Colt had been involved in the shootings.
As we madly pursued our work, Marcus and Lucius went back to working on the gun. Mr. Picton eventually returned to his house for lunch, and over that meal we told him about our morning’s work, which he found intriguing but also very unsettling. Once he’d set back out for his office, we went to work again with even more determination; but the early hours of the afternoon went by without anyone making any discoveries.
The approach of evening brought the return of Dr. Kreizler and Cyrus, who took up positions next to us and joined in the search. Still, though, there were no hopeful sightings. We were begi
As soon as they were safely out of earshot, Mr. Moore’s face filled with urgency. “All right,” he said, putting his magnifying lens down. “That’s it for tonight. Everybody knock off.”
“But why, John?” Miss Howard said. “There’s still some daylight, and not that much left to do-”
“That’s exactly the point,” Mr. Moore answered. “We’re going to need some part of this thing to be intact in the morning.”
I was still confused; but Cyrus had begun to nod in understanding. “It’s not here, is it, Mr. Moore?”
“The odds are against it,” Mr. Moore answered. “A forty-five-caliber bullet would’ve left a big enough mark that one of us would’ve seen it by now.”
“So why save some of the thing?” I asked.
“Because I don’t want Rupert to have to outright lie in court, or Marcus and Lucius to have to perjure themselves. There’s only one place that bullet can be-and we’re going to get it. Then, tomorrow morning, we’ll put it in what’s left of this thing and let them find it. None of us are going to be called to testify in this particular area, so we don’t need to worry about lying-and so far as the rest of them will know, they’ll be telling the truth.”
The Doctor’s eyebrows arched a bit. “John-you realize that you’re suggesting-”
“Yes, I know what I’m suggesting, Kreizler,” Mr. Moore said, moving away from the table. “But there’s no other option. We all know we’d never get a judge to order something like this without the mother’s permission. Not based on the little evidence we’ve gathered so far.” He paused, waiting for arguments; but none came. “I’ll check in the basement for a shovel,” Mr. Moore went on. “We’ll do the job tonight.”
Miss Howard, Cyrus, and I looked at one another in a little shock; but the Doctor summed up all our deeper feelings by saying, “Moore’s right. It’s the only way we can be sure.”
All five of our heads started nodding slowly; but much as we may have agreed that Mr. Moore’s plan was the only way to both get what we needed and look out for Mr. Picton’s and the detective sergeants’ legal and ethical positions, that didn’t change the fact that we were contemplating a grisly, frightening, and illegal action, one what had gotten many people hanged-or worse-over the centuries. It took, you might say, a little adjusting to.
Mr. Moore did manage to find a shovel in the basement, along with a couple of lengths of strong rope, and he put them all outside the kitchen door while the rest of us were in the living room. Then we all went in to di
CHAPTER 34
The house finally grew completely quiet at just past one o’clock. I left my room carefully and got outside, almost ru
“All right now, remember,” the Doctor murmured, as Mr. Moore and I reached them. “What we are about to undertake is a serious criminal offense. Moore and I will therefore be the only ones to actually participate. Stevie you’ll stand watch at this end of the street. Cyrus, you go an equal distance in the opposite direction. Sara will be our last line of defense-she’ll guard the cemetery gate.”
”With the artillery,” she said, producing the weapon what she used on really special occasions: a.45-caliber Colt revolver of her own, one with a short barrel and pearl grips. She checked its chamber with the quick moves of an expert as the Doctor went on: