The D.A. Breaks an Egg

Larkin was on more sure ground now, and it was impossible for him to keep a certain triumphant note from his voice. “There’s a driveway running along the side of the building into a double garage. There’s a little portico effect on one side so you can step out of a car and be under cover as soon as you step out, and on the other side is a hedge. I combed that ground over pretty carefully. At first I didn’t find anything, but I just kept moving along studying every inch of ground under the hedge.”

Larkin paused dramatically, then said, “I found the murder weapon sticking with its point in the ground, just where somebody had thrown it. Just like you’d throw a dart.”

“Where is it now?” Brandon asked.

Larkin said, “Doc Carson has it. He’s going over it for bloodstains, and he’s found some. It had been all wiped off slick and clean, but nevertheless there are bloodstains left on it.”

“How about fingerprints?”

“No fingerprints. It had been wiped, really polished, but Doc Carson has some new test for finding bloodstains that’s so sensitive you can bring them out on steel or on the handle of a knife even after it’s been wiped off.

“Now, this murder weapon is a long thin stiletto with a horn handle; that is, it’s made out of rings of horn strung on a thin piece of metal and then buffed off, the way they make those things down in Mexico, and there’s a little etching on the blade that says, ‘Tijuana, Mexico.’ ”

“You took photographs, of course, showing the position of the stiletto in the ground and marked exactly where you’d found it?”

Larkin ran his perspiring hand over his partially bald head, smoothing back the thin locks of hair. “It was pretty dark to take a photograph in there,” he said. “It was right in under the hedge — and I was anxious to test the blade for fingerprints. I felt certain I’d find something on the blade or the handle and...”

“In other words, you didn’t take photographs?”

“No.”

“Did you mark the exact place?”

“Well, I can tell you right where it was, and...”

“Did you mark it?”

“No, I didn’t mark it.”

Selby said, “You know what’s going to happen in this case, Larkin. You’re going to be the key witness on finding that murder weapon. You’re going to have to point out exactly where it was found and then you’re going to have to stand up to cross-examination as to whether it was ten feet this way or ten feet that way.”

“I can stand up. They can’t rattle me.”

“Or a foot this way or a foot that way.”

“Well, of course,” Larkin said, “when you get down to measurements like that it’s a little difficult.”

“Well, go ahead, where was it? Just how was it found?”

“Well, it was about halfway between the street and the portico, the blade sticking in the ground, just the way it would have been if someone driving up in an automobile had popped that dagger out of the automobile window.”

“Dorothy Clifton’s car was parked in front of the portico?”

“That’s the way I understand it.”

“And this dagger, then, was found back of where her car had been parked?”

“Where she’d popped it out of the window just as she was driving in,” Larkin said positively.

“Popped it out of what window?” Selby asked.

“Why, the window on the side of the hedge.”

“The right-hand side of the car?”

“That’s right.”

“Sticking in the ground at what angle?”

“Well, sort of slanting backwards.”

“What do you mean by backwards?”

“Toward the street.”

“You don’t know the exact angle?”

“Well, sort of like this,” Larkin said, holding up his finger.

Brandon studied the angle of the finger. Larkin, looking at it, slowly changed it a little, saying, “Well, perhaps a little more like this.”

“Inclined toward the driveway or away from the driveway?” Selby asked.

“Well, I didn’t notice that so much. I was looking to get the other angle. It was just about like this,” Larkin announced, holding up his finger once more. “Just the way it would have been if someone had popped it in the ground, throwing it just like you would throw a dart.”

“From the right-hand window of an automobile,” Selby said.

“That’s it.”

“Then the angle must have been inclined rather sharply toward the driveway.”

“No, it was sort of straight up and down.”

“Just how could a person behind the steering wheel, on the left-hand side of a car, ‘pop’ a stiletto out of the right-hand window in the manner you have described,” Selby asked, “without having the stiletto slanted sharply toward the car?”

“It must have hit a twig or something in the hedge and sort of straightened out,” Larkin said.

“And it’s the murder weapon?” Brandon asked.