Sunday At The Salvage Yard: "A Perfectly Natural Murder"

From The Collected Stories of Robert Arthur

"A Perfectly Natural Murder" was originally published in The Saint Detective Magazine in September 1956,  and, as far as I know, has never been reprinted before. I find that pretty surprising, because it’s a carefully-imagined and satisfying story, as well as the kind of mystery my father loved to write.

Not only does it portray a vivid physical setting—in this case, a spectacular Maine coast—but it gives the reader the sense that all mysteries can be solved with a little time and care. Fans of The Three Investigators series will recognize a certain feature of the landscape which showed up later in The Mystery of Skeleton Island, and fans of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle will approve of the way the personality of the murderer blends seamlessly with his milieu.

In a lot of Dad's most carefully conceived mysteries—stories which were published in The Saint or Ellery Queen's or Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine(s)—the tale is written in the first-person by a writer, and in "A Perfectly Natural Murder," the writer’s co-habitation with a quick-witted —though now retired—New York City police detective correctly suggests that my father, too, was a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle.

"A Perfectly Natural Murder" was published when I was only three, and my father and mother were both still living in Yorktown Heights, New York—where both of them were passionate gardeners.

Elizabeth Arthur

A PERFECTLY NATURAL MURDER

by Robert Arthur

"NEVER UNDERESTIMATE the power of an invalid," John Redrum said briskly as we sat down to dinner on the balcony of our room in the Old Cliff Hotel, the ocean thundering right below us.

As if by way of demonstration he swung himself unaided from his light folding wheelchair into the straight back chair the waiter held for him. The waiter moved the wheelchair back out of the way and began serving.

As a vacation spot, East Point is not ideal. The swimming is poor, with cliffs dropping down a hundred feet to boulder-strewn ledges at the water's edge. But the Old Cliff Hotel serves the best seafood in New England, in my opinion. To enjoy it I travel summer after summer almost to the end of Maine.

We had a seafood dinner with all the courses from local waters, caught that morning. John Redrum, normally a light eater, devoured everything in sight, and by the time the coffee came he had an air of relaxed contentment.

"Now," he asked, looking at me almost plaintively, "may we discuss the remarkable disappearance of Mr. Jordan Maxwell?"

I burst out laughing. "Redrum," I protested, "you're on vacation. You're up here to get away from mysteries, not to manufacture them."

"Manufacture?" He raised his dark eyebrows. "For a writer you use the English language carelessly. A man has vanished. No one knows what became of him. Ergo, a mystery exists. I certainly did not manufacture it."

"But Jordan Maxwell disappeared three months ago," I protested. "In any case he probably left without telling anyone, that's all. He never gave a damn for anyone around here."

Redrum shook his head. "There is a type of man who can, and often does, vanish. He simply departs and no one notices his going. From what you have told me, Maxwell is—or was—the exact opposite of that type. He is—or was—loud, blatant, aggressive, demanding. It is not in character for such a man simply to fade from public sight."

He leaned back, studying the rocky shore of the bay across from us. It was almost dusk, but the air was pleasantly warm for Maine in late August—an indication of the oppressive heat that still held further south.

Ten years earlier John Redrum had been a first grade detective on the New York Police Force. He had been on the Loft Squad, and one evening, surprising a gang of fur thieves, he had been shot through the back. Lying crippled, he had killed two fleeing thugs. In the hospital he had faced the fact that he could never hope to walk again.

Most men would have been crushed by the news. Not Redrum. He had to spend a year in bed and he put that year to use in educating himself. Having only a grammar school education plus a year of high school, he studied intensively in English and science.

When he was able to be up, in a wheelchair, he wangled a job in the technical lab of the New York Police Department. Here he spent four years, learning directly from the many brilliant specialists who work for the department. In the meantime he continued with his general education at Columbia. Ten years after becoming an invalid he probably knew more about criminology than any other man in the city—perhaps in the entire East.

He was not, of course, the equal of the specialists in their own fields, but his knowledge made up in scope for what it lacked in specialization. He was often called upon to analyze documents, to assess evidence other investigators gathered, to act as an expert witness, and to devise security systems for large corporations who wanted to keep their research secrets intact.

His hobby and entertainment was the solution—or at least investigation, for he did not always solve them—of mysterious murders and disappearances. Of these he had an enormous file from historical records. He was also an avid reader of detective fiction, both for his own pleasure and because, as he said, Nature is constantly imitating Art. Redrum's original colloquial New York speech had gradually altered. If at times it now seemed a trifle bookish for one of his background, I secretly attributed it to that very phenomenon he had mentioned—Nature imitating Art.

As a writer, I had contacted Redrum originally to get material for a story. We found we hit it off well together, and in time developed such an easy relationship that I moved in to share his apartment and sometimes assist him with his work, gathering facts and evidence for him to digest in the quiet of his study and laboratory. Because of the heat in New York, I had this summer managed to get him to come with me to Maine for the first time.

"Admit," I said, "that your interest in Jordan Maxwell arose from the moment I mentioned that his next-door neighbor, Franklin Cherryman, is an invalid like yourself, confined to a wheelchair."

"I confess it freely," Redrum smiled. "You tell me the two men were enemies. One, as strong as a bull, weighing two hundred pounds, suddenly disappears. His neighbor, who hated him, a mere wisp of a man in a wheelchair, continues quietly about his business. Naturally I am intrigued. What was the source of the enmity?"

"Five years ago," I said, "Maxwell came roaring out of his driveway, drunk, in a big car, just as Franklin Cherryman was starting to town in an Austin. He smashed into Cherryman and turned his car over. Cherryman's legs were crushed and had to be amputated near the hips.

"Ah!" Redrum's eyes gleamed. "Did Cherryman collect compensation?"

"Maxwell's insurance company paid him fifty thousand dollars, if you consider that 'compensation.'"

"I was using the term only in its legal sense. I think we can take for granted Cherryman's secret desire to avenge himself. In his place I certainly would have felt the same desire."

"Perhaps we can assume that Cherryman would have liked to kill Maxwell," I conceded. "But supposing he had done so? What did he do with the body? He certainly couldn't move it—not even with the little electric car he uses to get around his garden in. He couldn't have dug a hole and buried it. The State Police made an investigation, during which they searched the houses and grounds of both Maxwell and Cherryman.

"They didn't find anything—not a sign of disturbance, no evidence of digging, no minutest trace of blood. So there you are. There may have been a motive, but for Cherryman to have murdered Jordan Maxwell is manifestly impossible."

"Never say anything is manifestly impossible," Redrum said mildly. And with that he dropped the subject, though continuing to glance speculatively from time to time at the cliff on the opposite side of the bay.

THE NEXT morning was warm and sunny. Redrum suggested that I drive him about and show him the countryside. Half an hour later we were down by the docks where barrels of lobster bait—rosefish carcasses—were being lowered into waiting lobster boats. A rich brinish aroma pervaded the air.

"It takes me back to my days as a rookie around the Fulton Fish Market," Redrum remarked, sniffing. "However, I'd like to see the view from the cliff up there."

"You mean from Maxwell's place?" I asked with pretended innocence.

We both laughed, and I took the route which carried us through the small, cluttered business section at the head of the bay, past the old village inhabited now chiefly by artists, and so to the cliffs on the far side of the bay.

A few expensive homes had been built up there, and a good many very modest ones. The closest the road comes to the cliff edge, except at the very tip, is two hundred yards, so the land around almost every house extends from the road to the cliffs.

Jordan Maxwell's place was ornate without being attractive. It was set well back from the road and screened by hemlocks and maples, so that only the red tile roof was visible. I turned up the narrow driveway and pulled the car up beside the empty house. It showed the obvious signs of neglect. A green awning was torn and flapping and the grass was a tangle of weeds. Dead branches had fallen on the driveway.

I stopped at the turnaround behind the house, where Maxwell's empty garage was. Jordan Maxwell, large, red-faced, loud and pugnacious, especially when drunk, had disappeared on an afternoon early in May, more than three months before. He hadn't driven away, because he had taken his car to the garage for a motor tuneup only that morning, walking home. Nor had he been seen to leave later either by train or bus. He didn't own a boat and he hadn't rented one. He was a well-known, if not well-liked figure in East Point, and he could hardly have left, even on foot, without someone in the little town noticing him. But no one had.

There was a graveled walk extending from behind the house into the woods, in the direction of the cliffs. "That will take us to an observation point," I told Redrum. "If it's the view you want to see."

"By all means," he answered.

I got out, took the folding wheelchair from the back of the car, and set it beside the car door. Redrum, who was a six-footer before his crippling, slender but wiry and powerful, had broadened through the chest and arms in the intervening years. He handled himself easily, requiring no assistance to swing by his arms into the wheelchair. Once settled, he wheeled himself easily down the gravel path.

It went through a grove of hemlocks and after about two hundred yards ended at the top of the cliffs. The sea was a hundred feet below us, the blue water churning itself white as it wove endless patterns around the jagged rocks. Sea gulls dipped and soared. The sun was warm, the wind from the Atlantic chilly.

Redrum wheeled himself up to the stout log barrier that prevented the incautious from venturing too close to the edge.

"Beautiful!" he exclaimed. "Have you any idea if Maxwell came here often?"

"Practically never, I'd guess," I told him. "Money, liquor, and women in that order were his interests. Not scenery."

"Does Cherryman have a similar observation spot?"

"I don't think so. The ground is rougher and more sloping. But we can go investigate, if you like."

"We'll find him at home, no doubt?"

"Not today," I answered, giving him a hand up the slight slope as we started back.

"Today is the annual Fall Flower Exhibit of the East Point Garden Club. Cherryman will be down at the Town Hall, collecting blue ribbons. A good chance to look over the grounds for Maxwell's body," I added facetiously.  But Redrum took me seriously.

"No," he said. "That would not be quite fair, would it? But if we can get him to invite us . . . Suppose we visit the exhibit? I have a feeling Cherryman and I have a great deal in common."

IN THE MODEST gymnasium of the Town Hall, we found a very respectable display of fall flowers—zinnias, gladioli, chrysanthemums, dahlias, tithonias, asters. There were a score of middle-aged women present, and one man. He sat in a wheelchair similar to Redrum's.

Franklin Cherryman had always been slender. Now, in his wheelchair, with his thin, bright-eyed features and light-colored hair, he looked as slight as a teen-aged boy. The idea that he could have killed and disposed of a man weighing more than two hundred pounds was patently absurd.

I introduced Redrum to him, adding as Redrum had insisted that my friend was a consulting detective on vacation. Then I turned away and fended off the chairlady of the exhibit, a buxom summer resident named Mrs. Logan. Pretending an interest in flowers, I kept her away from Redrum and Cherryman. She and I toured the exhibits, moving as slowly as I could manage.

I noted that in the dahlia class Cherryman had won blue, red, and yellow ribbons, and I admired the magnificent colors and elaborate petalage of his blooms. Mrs. Logan gushed that even in New York they would have created a sensation, and I found it easy to believe her.

We finally worked our way back to where the two men were chatting. His thin features animated, Cherryman was apparently instructing Redrum in horticulture. As we came up, Redrum brought the conversation deftly to a close.

"This afternoon, then," he said. "At five." He turned to me. "We've been invited for cocktails after the exhibit closes."

"And to see my gardens," Cherryman smiled. "The cocktails are the bait, but to earn them, all visitors have to admire my flowers first."

As we left the Town Hall, Redrum asked me to take him to the local library. This was just down the block, so we did not take the car. But when we reached it, it turned out to be closed—being open only three days a week, somewhat to Redrum's annoyance. Next to the little brick building, however, was Charlie Lamb's real estate office, and pasted on Charlie's window, Redrum spotted a picture of Jordan Maxwell's home with a For Sale legend over it.

Redrum's eyes immediately lit up. Over my protests—I didn't want to miss lunch at the Old Cliff Hotel—he insisted that we go in and talk to Charlie.

Charlie Lamb is a tall, spare New Englander, with a prominent Adam's apple and a habit of prefacing every second sentence by "E-yup." He approaches life with a relaxed attitude which should sustain him to great age, if not at the height of prosperity. After considerable prodding, Redrum extracted from Charlie the information that early in May Jordan Maxwell had requested him to put his house on the market. Charlie had advertised in the local papers and the Sunday New York Times, putting out fifteen dollars of his own money to do so. You could see it had hurt him.

It was Charlie, apparently, who had first discovered that Maxwell was missing, though he had not realized it at the time. Driving out to tell him that the ads had brought no inquiries—and to be reimbursed for his fifteen dollars—Charlie had found Maxwell's house empty, and a bottle and glass on the living room table—as if Maxwell had just had a drink and was coming back for another.

With fifteen dollars at stake, Charlie had waited for an hour and had then walked next door to Cherryman's to inquire if the latter had seen his neighbor. Franklin Cherryman had been able to tell Charlie that Maxwell had dropped over for ten minutes earlier in the afternoon, to discuss a complaint of Cherryman's that some of Maxwell's trees were shading his garden. Then he had left, not saying where he was going.

Charlie had gone back and waited still another hour, not leaving until it became dark. The next day he'd tried again. Maxwell was still absent. On his way home Charlie had stopped in at Ferguson's garage for gas, and seen Maxwell's red sedan on the grease rack. Learning that Maxwell had left the car the previous morning for a general overhauling and had walked home, Charlie became alarmed—not so much about Jordan Maxwell, he admitted readily, as about his fifteen dollars.

He'd consulted with Heck Whitingham, the constable, and he and Heck had first gone out to search the Maxwell house. Then, finding no trace of the missing man, they had phoned the State Police. Two troopers had answered the call, and the four of them had gone again to look over Maxwell's house and grounds.

Finding no clue whatever to the missing man, they had interviewed Franklin Cherryman again. Because Cherryman had been the last person to see his neighbor, and because their enmity was well-known in the region, the troopers had—with the invalid's permission—searched his house and grounds. They had found—to use Charlie's words—"Not a ding-danged thing."

Further inquiries in and around the village had merely established negative facts—no one had seen Jordan Maxwell since he had left his car at the garage. His whereabouts were still a mystery, though the local residents generally agreed that he had either gotten drunk and fallen in the ocean, or had gotten drunk and wandered off.
"Sure would like to find him," Charlie's voice trailed after us as we thanked him and left. "E-yup, sure would. So I could get my fifteen dollars."

Outside, Redrum made a gesture of comic despair.

"Twenty-four hours!" he said. "A man vanishes and it's a full day before anyone even realizes it. Why, in twenty-four hours I could—" He paused, looking thoughtful. "But you could only count on an hour or two," he added. "Any plan to dispose of Maxwell would have to be based upon an outside time limit of two hours."

"Surely, Redrum, you don't still think Frank Cherryman murdered him!" I expostulated.

"No." Redrum smiled as we went back to my car. "Now that I have learned Maxwell put his house up for sale, I don't think Cherryman murdered him. I know it."

Then he became irritatingly silent as we drove back to the hotel—where, fortunately, we were just in time to get lunch: New England fish chowder, piping hot, and boiled lobster with butter sauce.

After lunch Redrum bought some gardening magazines and retired to our room. I went for a hazardous swim at the one passable beach. When I got back, Redrum looked annoyed.

"A lot of pretty pictures," he said, indicating the magazines, "and a little information."

We arrived at Cherryman's just before five. It was a pleasant little one-story cottage nestling close to the road among white oaks and sugar maples. It was set off by a well-tended lawn, and behind it to the south was almost an acre of flower garden, now a mass of bloom.

As we stopped beside the house and Redrum swung out into his wheelchair, Cherryman came out to greet us. A ramp took the place of steps from the driveway to the low porch. He rolled down this to us.

"I'm not really such a tyrannical host," he greeted us. "We can skip the guided tour of my garden. The drinks are waiting inside."

"Not at all," Redrum answered. "I want to see your garden and particularly hear how you manage it. I'm sure I don't see how you can."

"Nor can I see how you became a successful detective," Cherryman said blandly. "I suppose it comes down to the fact that a man can succeed at anything that interests him enough, no matter how badly he's handicapped. All right then. This way and I'll show you my garden buggy."

In the rear of the cottage was a two-car garage. One side held a light sedan fitted up to be driven entirely by hand—a model developed originally for wounded war veterans. The other held a contraption rather like a child's toy automobile, except that it was larger. Behind this was a miniature trailer which held, on clamps, a short rake, a hoe, a leaf spear, clippers, hand sprays, and a small compressor attached to a tank sprayer.

"Electric," Cherryman said, swinging himself into the miniature auto. "I charge it from the house current."

He touched a button and the small car glided out of the garage, pulling the tool trailer after it. Redrum and I followed easily along the hard-packed gravel walk to the garden. It was in full bloom—zinnias, chrysanthemums, and dahlias, with a few late gladioli making magnificent plumes of color.

As we came closer, we saw that the rows of plants were spaced almost four feet apart. On the far side of the garden a man was loading something into a wheelbarrow. He looked up and nodded as Franklin Cherryman approached, but went on working.

The little electric car ran easily between the wide-spaced rows. Cherryman steered in between two rows of dahlias and waited for us. A few small weeds had taken root. He reached back, got the short-handled hoe from the trailer, and was able to exterminate the offending plants without having to leave his runabout. Then he reached for the spike-tipped leaf spear and dexterously stabbed a few early maple leaves which had drifted into the garden, putting them into a burlap bag on the side of the little car.

“Now you see how I manage," he said as we came up. "Of course I have help, especially in the spring. Jud there digs and plows for me, puts the tubers and bulbs in under my direction, and does all the heavy work. Later he'll dig up the glad bulbs and the dahlia tubers for me, spread mulch and fertilizer, and help me get everything ready for the winter. But much of the actual cultivation I do myself. I can spray, hoe, weed, and trim."

"Beautifully worked out!" Redrum said admiringly. "Did you plan it all in advance or come to this scheme through trial and error?"

"Oh, I did it all in my mind first," Cherryman said with an airy gesture. "I'm a great believer in advance planning. Trial and error involves so much wasted motion."

He waved toward the dahlias all around us. "Dahlias are really the most fascinating of all flowers, for me," he said. "Did you know that no dahlia ever breeds true? They are the result of so many crosses that it's impossible to know what kind of flower the seed will give you."

"Sounds awkward," I said, "not knowing what you're going to get when you plant."

"That's the fascination of it," Cherryman said. "You're constantly getting new varieties and hoping for something special. If you do have a plant which you like, you can propagate it by green slips or by separation of the roots. I won't bore you with the technical details.

"Just let me show you some of my varieties. There are two thousand varieties of dahlia on the market now, and at least fourteen thousand others have been introduced at one time or another. So you can see that being a dahlia enthusiast is a full-time job."

Prattling on, Cherryman led us down one row and up another. It was true that he had an incredible variety of blossoms. To my untrained eye it seemed impossible they could all belong to the same species.

He assured us that they did, and added, "I don't cultivate the showiest varieties for a very good reason. They may grow to a height of five or six feet and that's awkward for me. I concentrate on pompoms and miniatures. They're quite enough to keep me busy."

Redrum, as was his habit when encountering a subject new to him, seemed to be drinking in every word and storing it away for possible future reference.

After ten minutes or so Cherryman steered his electric car out of the rows of flowers and stopped on a stretch of clipped grass.

"There isn't much more to my estate," he said. "I wish I could show you the view of the sea. It's quite remarkable. But the rough ground and the woods makes it impossible for me to get to the edge of the cliff."

He waved his hand, indicating the screen of pines which hid the sea from us.

"However, there's an oddity which might intrigue you," he said.

He rolled forward a hundred feet and stopped, just at the edge of the trees. A little circle of rocks, like a miniature well coping, had been built there. We heard a regular, rising-and-falling soughing sound, like the breathing of a large animal. The sound came from a dark hole, no more than six inches wide, which plunged into the earth.

"A blowhole," Cherryman explained, pleased at our obvious interest. "A tiny fault in the rock which reaches all the way down to sea level. I believe there's a cavern beneath us into which the sea makes its way, though no opening has ever been discovered from the water."

Redrum and I leaned over the hole. The rhythmic sound of waves, translated into a soughing respiration of air, became louder. A faint salty smell was noticeable when one was close enough.

"Extraordinary!" Redrum exclaimed. "Are there any other blowholes around here?"

"Not in this region," Cherryman answered. "This one is quite unique. I tried to enlarge it, but it can't be done. The underlying rock is granite and six inches is the approximate width all the way down."

He chuckled. "Do you know what the family who owned this property before me used the blowhole for? Garbage disposal! Any trash that wasn't too big they just dumped down here. At least it was efficient—no garbage ever showed up on the beaches. There must be a natural trap of some kind down there."

I picked up a small stone and dropped it into the hole. It rattled against the rocky sides for a moment, then silence. I could hear no splash.

"I can understand the impulse," Redrum observed. "It seems ideal for garbage disposal."

"Yes," Cherryman agreed, turning his electric car about. "But I have better uses for my garbage. I'm an organic farming enthusiast."

"Organic farming?" Redrum asked. "You mean only natural fertilizer, and so on."

"That's it," Cherryman agreed. "No chemicals for me. Leaf mould, humus, manure, compost—especially compost. Compost is the decomposition product of any organic material which is left to rot. Jud here knows what a bug I am on compost, eh Jud?"

We had reached the overalled hired man, who was stolidly forking a large pile of brownish material into a wheelbarrow. He looked up and nodded briefly. There was no smile on his face, which was like seasoned oak.

"E-yup," he said. "Can't burn a leaf, or Mr. Cherryman gives me hail Columbia." He paused, and spat on the pile.

"Horrible practice, burning leaves," Cherryman said. "Robs the soil of organic material which would normally go back to it. 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' you know—the immutable law of nature. The only way we can keep from exhausting the soil. As it is we've lost about half of the precious topsoil this country had when Columbus discovered it. And it takes a thousand years for nature unaided to create a single inch of topsoil."

He gave us a rueful glance. "Don't let me get started on the subject," he said. "I'm a conservation fanatic. I do my part by composting—every scrap of organic material that is discarded becomes compost, unless it's diseased or insect-infested. This particular pile was an experiment, incidentally . . . How would you say it worked out, Jud?"

Jud, forking up the last of the material, leaving a bare spot on the ground some seven feet long by four feet wide, paused again.

"Well, now," he said, with deliberation. "Worked all right. Pretty near ready to use, just since spring, too. Would've been better, though, if'n you'd let me turn it over, couple of times."

"I know," Cherryman agreed. "I was digging into it just the other day, to see how it had come along. But I didn't want it turned over. I wanted to see how it progressed the lazy man's way, just being left alone."

Jud spat again, picked up the wheelbarrow handles, and started off toward a spot behind the garage.

"Jud likes chemical fertilizer," Cherryman smiled. "It's easier. But he humors me. This particular pile was a load of fresh garbage only last spring. I had Hank Selden, the town garbage collector, dump a truckload here for me. Then I sprinkled it heavily with some new goo that just came on the market—actually a powder, a concentration of decay-producing bacteria which are the agents that cause the breakdown of organic material. I kept it sprinkled, and the pile turned into well-decayed compost just over the summer.

"You know—" he started toward the house and we followed— "out in California they've succeeded in processing raw organic material into the finest compost in three weeks under ideal conditions. The bacteria will decompose anything organic rapidly—leaves, vegetation, grass cuttings, garbage, cloth, paper—anything you choose. They're working now on making fertilizer out of sawdust, and down in Louisiana a man is dredging up the lilies that are choking the rivers there, and turning them into fertilizer.

"But I keep forgetting you're city people—not truly interested in the sort of thing that we country folk find exciting. So now for the drink, eh?"

Presently we were having the drink, efficiently mixed by Cherryman himself. We chatted for a few minutes more, then took our leave. As soon as we reached the hotel, Redrum plunked once more into the gardening magazines he had bought and did not emerge until supper was served—oysters on the half shell, followed by a casserole of seafood au gratin to which we both gave undivided attention.

"Well," I said when we had finished and settled back for a cigarette, our gaze on the cliff across the bay, "are you ready to agree now that Cherryman couldn't possibly have killed, concealed, and disposed of a man weighing over two hundred pounds and accomplished it without leaving a trace?"

When he did not reply, I added, ironically: "Of course, he could have stabbed him in the back with that leaf spear he uses so proficiently. Then he could have chopped Maxwell into small pieces—given the time—and dropped the pieces down the blowhole. But butchery is quite an art, besides being bloody. And the blowhole will accommodate no object more than six inches wide. So it would be a rather tedious business. Not to mention one which would surely have left traces for the State Police to find the next day."

Smiling, Redrum shook his head. "No," he said, "that theory doesn't appeal to me—at least not in its entirety."

"I suppose you have a better theory!" I said, nettled.

"No, not a theory." Redrum poured himself more coffee. "I did have one, but since Cherryman confirmed it for me it's no longer a theory. It's a fact."

"Now really, Redrum!" I protested. He raised his eyebrows.

"You're not using much imagination," he chided. "I repeat—never underestimate the power of an invalid. Cherryman no doubt spent a couple of years deciding just how to kill the man who had crippled him. Without condoning murder under any circumstances, I can understand his motivation. When he learned that Jordan Maxwell had put his house up for sale—no doubt by reading Charlie Lamb's advertisement in the local paper—he was impelled to act at once.

"He knew, you see, that if Maxwell moved away he would lose his opportunity. So he made his preparations. Then he phoned Maxwell and asked him to drop in, using as a pretext his concern over the way in which Maxwell's trees shaded his garden. Maxwell probably came over. Cherryman talked him into walking out into the garden with him—and then, as you suggested, killed him with one expert stab of that leaf picker. Maxwell fell dead on the spot."

"And then what did Cherryman do with the body?" I asked, exasperated. "I've never denied that Cherryman could have killed him. But he couldn't have disposed of the body—not even by dragging it away behind that little electric car."

"He had help," Redrum said calmly. "I've known all along he must have had help. I just didn't know at first where the help came from. Now I do. It came from a few hundred billion bacteria, concentrated into the compost-making mixture that Cherryman called 'goo.' He undoubtedly left Maxwell's body just where it fell. After spreading a good many pounds of that bacteria 'goo' over him, he simply raked the pile of fresh garbage on top of the body, spread the rakings with the composting agent too, and left the whole pile to nature's devices.

"All told, it probably didn't take half an hour. When the troopers searched the premises the following day, they paid no attention to the two or three low piles of leaves, vegetation—and garbage—on the grounds. Who would hide a man in such an obvious way? Besides, Cherryman's idiosyncrasy for organic gardening is well-known in the community. So you see, he didn't have to dispose of the body. He let the body dispose of itself for him. He got the living man where he wanted the body to be later."

"Then you mean—" I stared at him—"that all summer Maxwell's body has been resting beneath a compost pile right beside Cherryman's garden? It's there now?"

Redrum shrugged.

"Not now," he said. "You saw his hired man spading up the last of the pile. Obviously Cherryman moved the remains several days ago. After a summer of being—shall we say composted?—Jordan Maxwell no longer weighed two hundred pounds. He was probably pretty well reduced to bone, and perhaps sinew. In such a case, the bones would be easily separated and broken up with the tools Cherryman had handy. And there would be no blood, of course.

"Undoubtedly Cherryman put the separate bones and pieces of bones down that blowhole. Maxwell's clothing would have composted too. The odds and ends—the soles of his shoes, belt buckle, pen, watch and so forth—would go down the blowhole easily. Only the skull would remain. A human skull is a tough nut to crack. But it's easily hidden and disposed of. It wouldn't surprise me if it came to light yet.

"If we had been a few days earlier, we might have caught Cherryman. As it is I'll have the pleasure of putting this down in my notes as the perfectly natural murder. Cherryman's motive was a natural one, and so was his method of disposing of the evidence."

Redrum's eyes twinkled. "He just let nature dispose of him, as she has disposed of some billions of us over the years—helping her along a bit, of course. As he said himself, so meaningfully, 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' Even in murder he was true to his principle of letting nothing organic go to waste."

We did not get to see Cherryman again before we went back to New York. But the following spring Redrum received a package and a note from him. With the note was a newspaper clipping. The clipping said that a human skull had been found washed up on the beach at East Point, and identified by the local dentist as being Jordan Maxwell's. The authorities had decided that Maxwell had somehow fallen in the ocean and drowned, probably while intoxicated, and a watch was being kept for any further remains that might wash up. The note said:

I felt you would be interested in the enclosed, having been so intrigued by the mysterious disappearance of my ill-fated neighbor—who, it seems, came to a natural end after all.

In remembrance of your kindness in letting me show you my garden, I am venturing to send you a few tubers of a new dahlia variety I have developed. Perhaps someone you know would be interested in planting them. I call the variety "Jordan Maxwell," in honor of my late neighbor, and to show that I feel no ill-will toward his memory. It is a gross  feeder, so warn whoever plants the tubers to fertilize them well.

Sincerely,

Franklin Cherryman

My sister, who lives in Connecticut, was happy to put the tubers in her garden.
She reported later that they turned out very well. The flowers were large, of an almost brick red color, and would have been very handsome had there not been a certain unpleasant coarseness about them.