Mr. Sheare looked distressed. His hands clasped and unclasped. He addressed the hooked rug at his feet, telling how Mrs. Adams had taken him into her kitchen for a talk, how she had offered him twenty-five dollars to buy his wife a new summer dress—
“Just a moment, Mr. Sheare. Where did Aunt Fanny get the money she offered you?”
“Out of one of her spice jars on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet.” Mr. Sheare’s voice faltered.
“What kind of spice jar was it? Was it marked in any way?”
“Yes. The word
“Is this the jar, Mr. Sheare?” Adams held it up.
“Yes.” Johnny had to strain to hear the response.
“Exhibit D, your honor, entered in evidence.”
Josef Kowalczyk had his hands flat on the table, staring at the jar, his gray skin a muddy grave color. And the jury looked at him without expression.
“Mr. Sheare, do you know how much money was
“Yes...”
“How much?” Adams had to repeat the question. “How much, Mr. Sheare?”
“A hundred and twenty-four dollars.”
A sound, very slight, rippled through the room. It raised the short hairs on Johnny’s neck.
“How do you know she had a hundred and twenty-four dollars left in this jar after she gave you the twenty-five dollars?”
“’Cause she told me the jar contained a hundred and forty-nine dollars in bills, besides some loose change.”
“And twenty-five from a hundred and forty-nine, by simple subtraction, left a hundred and twenty-four, is that correct, Mr. Sheare? That’s how you know?”
“Yes...”
“What did she do with the cinnamon jar after she gave you the money?”
“She put it back on the cabinet shelf.”
“In the kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“And this happened on Friday, the day before the murder?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sheare. Your witness.”
Andy Webster waved.
“I call as my next witness,” said Ferriss Adams bashfully, “er... Judge Lewis Shinn.”
But while the presiding judge left his bench to come around and take the oath as a witness in the case he was trying, Johnny edged out of his seat and stole away.
He went into Aunt Fanny’s kitchen, looked up a number in the telephone book on the cabinet, and gave it to the operator. It was a Cudbury number.
A girl’s voice answered. “Lyman Hinchley’s office.”
“Mr. Hinchley, please. Tell him it’s John Shinn, Judge Shinn’s cousin. I met him at a Rotary lunch in Cudbury about ten days ago.”
The brassy tones of Cudbury’s ace insurance broker belled into Johnny’s ear almost at once. “’Lo there, Shinn! Enjoying your stay with the Judge?”
Then Hinchley hadn’t heard. “Real vacation, Mr. Hinchley,” Johnny said with genuine heartiness. “Fishing, lazing around... Oh, I’ll tell you why I’m calling. It’s going to sound silly, but I’ve been having an argument with Burney Hackett here — you know Burney, don’t you?”
“Sure do,” chuckled the insurance broker. “Real hick constabule. Harmless, though. Fancies himself as an insurance man.”
“Yes. Well, Burney tells me he was over to see you Saturday about some insurance advice and says he drove the twenty-eight miles back from your office to Shinn Corners in forty minutes by the clock. I said he couldn’t do it in that jalopy of his, but he swears he left your office at two o’clock Saturday. Did he, or is he pulling my leg?”
“I guess he’s got you, Shinn. At least he did leave here around two. I remember he hadn’t been out of my office two minutes when the rain started. And that was two o’clock on the nose.”
“Well, I’ll have to apologize to his heap! Thanks, Mr. Hinchley...”
And returned to his campchair in time to hear Judge Shinn finish the recital of their movements Saturday and to be called to the stand himself.
Johnny’s story corroborated the Judge’s in detail, including the meeting with Josef Kowalczyk in the rain about a mile and a quarter from the village.
“You say, Mr. Shinn,” said Ferriss Adams, “that you passed the defendant on the road at twenty-five minutes to three. How sure are you of the time?”
“Pretty sure. Judge Shinn had looked at his watch at two-thirty. My estimate is that about five minutes passed, and then we spotted Kowalczyk across the road going toward Cudbury.”
“What time did you and Judge Shinn arrive at the Judge’s house?”
“Just about three o’clock.”
“In other words, it took you and Judge Shinn twenty-five minutes to get from the spot where you met Kowalczyk to the Judge’s house?”
“Yes.”
“Did you walk steadily?”
“You mean without pausing?”
“Yes.”
“We paused three times,” said Johnny. “First, we stopped to stare after Kowalczyk when he passed us and before we resumed our hike. Second, Burney Hackett’s car passed us without seeing us and gave us a splashing, and that held us up for a short time. Third, we halted at the top of Holy Hill near Hosey Lemmon’s shack.”
“How long would you say, Mr. Shinn, those three pauses took altogether?”
“Maybe a minute.”
