The Problem Solver
and the Burned Letter
The gravel crunched and the leaves rustled in the tall trees that lined the private drive. Richard Verner guided his car past the expanse of close-clipped lawn that swept on and on from the gate and the brass plate lettered Frank G. Margate.
Seated beside him in the front seat of the car was the younger of Frank G. Margate’s two sons. Charles Margate, a short well-dressed man in his early fifties, glanced out the window as a small wooden sign saying Service Road came into view. “Keep to the right here, Mr. Verner. The house is up ahead.”
A white-brick mansion, with a white-pillared entrance, loomed through the trees as the drive curved to the right. The building was three stories high, with large wings thrust out at both ends, and a line of tall evergreens that blocked the view past the nearer, or western, wing.
Verner slowed the car. “Your father’s office isn’t in the nearer wing, Mr. Margate?”
“No, that’s the servants’ quarters. They have the day off, so I’m particularly anxious that we be here now. Father’s office, or study, as he calls it, is at the far end of the house, at the back of the east wing.”
Verner pressed lightly on the accelerator. As the car rolled down the drive, he thought for a moment of Charles Margate’s problem, as Margate had explained it that morning.
“Mr. Verner, I am being systematically worked into a false and dangerous position by my older brother, Bertram. As I told you, Bertram is comptroller of my father’s company, Margate Mills. I am vice-president in charge of manufacturing. My father, Frank Margate, founded the business, built it up, and it seemed natural for Bert and me to go into it. I wish now that I’d gone into something else—anything else—but that’s neither here nor there. About six months ago Bert suggested that Father, who is getting well along in years, be eased out. I didn’t agree, and I’m afraid we had quite a violent scene over it.”
Verner said, “Excuse me, Mr. Margate, but how old is your father?”
“I’m fifty-four. Bert is fifty-six. Father is eighty-two. But he’s in good health, and nothing will put him out of control of the company except sheer incapacity. Bert insisted it was time we took over. In fact, that would mean Bert would run the company. I’d rather work for Father, though believe me, that’s no bed of roses. Recently, I’ve learned that Bert has been cleverly criticizing my work to Father, and frankly I’m worried. Any executive of the company can now testify that there have been bitter clashes between Father and me, while he and Bert have apparently gotten along quite well lately.”
Verner frowned. “You’re afraid you’ll lose your position?”
“I’m afraid something will happen to Father, and that when it happens I’ll be suspected. Bert spoke pretty strongly while we were arguing. He said, ‘Will he never step aside? Look at us, Charlie! We’re practically old men. We’ve lost our chance to be independent, and where are we? It’s still Frank G. Margate, President! Maybe when I’m seventy and you’re sixty-eight, we’ll still be getting these little homely lectures from the great Frank Margate, President! Well, I’ve waited long enough!’”
“Your brother wants to control the company?”
“He does. At the least he wants some visible sign that he will control the company. Over twenty years ago I was vice-president in charge of manufacturing and Bert was comptroller. Since then there’s been no change. It was tacitly understood that when the time came, Father would move up to Chairman of the Board, and one of us, probably Bert, would become president, while the other became executive vice-president. This hasn’t happened. Meanwhile, Father keeps a very tight grip on the family investments. Bert and I work on salary, and live as moderately well-to-do executives. Father is extremely rich. No doubt he tells himself that what he has will be all ours some day. But I’m afraid Bert has decided that ‘someday’ will never come.”
Now, as the car rolled along the drive, Verner said, “You want me to try to get some line on exactly what plot your brother has in mind?”
Charles Margate nodded. “We can’t hope to unravel it in one afternoon. But there’s got to be a start. If you can get any clue at all, it will be a help.”
“Won’t your father resent me as an outsider?”
“No. I’ll vouch for you, and it will be all right. He likes to meet new people. You’ll have to expect that he’ll show you all over the place, and I’m afraid you’ll be worn out before that’s through. But I’m equally certain Bert will stick close to you, out of suspicion.”
Verner smiled. “At any rate I’ll meet the two men.”
“Yes. We’ve got to start somewhere, Mr. Verner. I just don’t like this situation. It’s dangerous.”
They rounded the last curve of the drive and were now traveling parallel with the front of the house. The drive widened here, to allow room for cars to park near the door. Further ahead, partly hidden by tall shrubbery, was a separate graveled parking space.
“That’s Father’s own parking place,” said Charles Margate. “A walk leads straight back from there to his study. When he has men from the plant out here, or other people strictly on business, they park there. Stop right here, Mr. Verner, and we’ll walk to the study.”
Verner pulled to the side, shut off the engine, and got out. Now he could see past the tall shrubs. Two cars were parked in the space ahead. One was a new deep-blue hardtop, highly polished. The other was a police car.
Verner stood motionless. He could still hear only the rustle of the leaves overhead. But there was a faint scent in the air.
Charles Margate got out and shut the car door. The slam sounded loud in the stillness.
Verner sniffed once sharply, then sniffed again.
Now he recognized the faint odor.
Kerosene.
Charles Margate glanced uneasily at Verner, who looked around quickly.
The breeze came from the north, and now there was another faint scent, like that of hot metal.
Suddenly the front window of the west wing lit up in a reddish glow, that showed almost at once in the next window, and then in the next.
Verner opened the car door. “Get in! Quick!”
Charles Margate hesitated in confusion.
Verner turned the ignition key. The engine caught with a roar.
“Get in!”
Margate got in, then tensed. “Father—”
Verner pressed down the gas pedal. With a spray of gravel the car shot ahead, across the edge of the drive onto the walk and the lawn, past the two parked cars. He spun the wheel, rounded the eastern corner of the house, and then they were at the rear of the mansion, where a long flagstone terrace ran the full length of the house. At this side the terrace ran around the corner, almost to the line of shrubbery. In this wall, looking out on the back terrace, were two windows and a door.
“Your father’s study?”
“Yes.”
The door opened and a grim-faced man, helped by a uniformed policeman, was carrying out a large white-haired man, his body stiff and unnatural.
With an inarticulate cry Charles Margate jumped out of the car.
Verner got out, looked around sharply, then ran across the terrace and through the door into the elder Margate’s study.
Ahead of him was a large desk, facing the rear door, and on the desk was a standard-sized typewriter. Nearby was a wastebasket, crammed nearly full with crumpled typing paper. On the floor nearby lay a small square typewriter-ribbon box. There were several filing cases below windows in the north wall of the room; a closed door and book shelves filled the west wall; in the east wall was a fireplace, where a police officer crouched, gently working a piece of fragile burned paper into a large Manila envelope. In the corner to one side of the fireplace was an open safe. Along the remaining wall was a leather sofa and two armchairs. Near the middle of the floor was a large brownish stain.
From the main part of the house came a gathering roar. Underfoot, the floor began to tremble.
Verner bent briefly and intently over the desk, then stepped around to the other side. He was acutely conscious that the evidence was about to be destroyed before his eyes. Then a second police officer burst into the room, shouting, “Get out! The whole place is on fire!”
The first policeman went out, carefully carrying his Manila envelope. The second officer glanced quickly around, stepped to the safe, pulled out a thick bundle of papers, and ran outside. Verner, half choked in the smoke that now swirled in through the open door, picked up the wastebasket and raced out across the terrace onto the clipped green lawn.
A wave of heat hit him, and then he was at the car. He slid inside, swung the car in a wide circle, and looked back at the mansion.
Nearly every window in the lower two floors was alight. From some opening in the roof a long tongue of flame climbed into the sky.
Verner spun the car farther around, and drove back onto the graveled drive. Ahead of him the two other cars now rolled down the drive away from the house. When they stopped, Verner parked about twenty feet from the police car.
Inside the police car one officer was talking on the radio. The other was outside, his face tinged pink by the fire; he was shaking his head to the two well-dressed men who stood with tense faces to one side.
“—all we could do,” the policeman was saying. “There just wasn’t any time.”
The shorter of the two men was Charles Margate, Verner’s client. The taller must be Bertram Margate, Charles’ older brother, who now said angrily, “I don’t care what it costs, or who suffers. Whoever is responsible for this is going to pay for it.”
Verner studied the brothers’ faces, then said in an apologetic tone, “Officer—”
The policeman turned. He looked intelligent, but baffled.
Charles Margate glanced warningly at Verner. His brother, Bertram, said sharply, “Who the devil is that?”
Charles said, “A friend of mine, Bert. He drove out with me to see Father.”
Verner said, his voice carefully and intentionally apologetic, “Odd what a person will do in an emergency. I picked up the wastebasket and saved it from the fire.”
Charles Margate looked disappointed.
The police officer shrugged. “Bring it over. You never know—it might help.”
Bertram Margate gave a slight but perceptible start. For an instant his eyes seemed to glitter. Then he relaxed. “We all make mistakes.”
Verner glanced at the policeman. “You’d better come with me. We’ll have to check under the seats to be sure nothing has fallen under them from the wastebasket.”
Once they reached his car, out of hearing of the two brothers, Verner said quietly, “You were picking something out of the fireplace. Was it the ashes of a letter?”
The policeman looked at him intently. “What do you know about it?”
“The typewriter was out on the desk. It’s natural to think that Frank Margate had typed something. But there was no paper in the typewriter or on the desk.”
“Keep talking.”
Verner put his hand in his pocket, took out a small, square flat object, and put it in the policeman’s hand. “Who first noticed the ashes in the fireplace?”
The policeman stared at his hand, hesitated only a fraction of a second. “Bertram Margate.”
Verner nodded thoughtfully. He and the policeman exchanged a few more words, then the officer carried the wastebasket back to the police car in the glow of the burning house.
The next day Verner was at the police station, along with Charles and Bertram Margate, the policemen who’d been at the scene, and a chunky police Lieutenant who spoke politely to Verner’s client.
“Mr. Margate, you realize that you’re entitled to be represented by your lawyer?”
“Yes,” said Charles Margate shortly. “But I don’t need a lawyer. I want to know what you’ve found out.”
“I’m sorry to say, Mr. Margate, that the wastebasket contained half a dozen unfinished letters—some mere openings—all addressed to Roger Pohl, your father’s lawyer.”
Charles Margate frowned. “What about it?”
The Lieutenant’s voice grew softer. “Apparently it was a difficult letter for your father to write.”
Charles Margate looked at him steadily.
The Lieutenant went on, “In the fireplace there was a burned typewritten letter. Many people believe, Mr. Margate, that if a letter is burned, the letter is completely destroyed. Not necessarily. If the ashes are not broken up, it may still be possible to reconstruct the letter. Type can often be read clearly, black against the gray of the ash, the letters shrunken but legible. I’m sorry to say, Mr. Margate, that the letter in the fireplace contained instructions to Mr. Pohl to disinherit you, as your father had discovered that you’d been tampering with company records in an attempt to shift the blame for stealing company funds onto your brother, Bertram.”
Charles shut his eyes.
Bertram, tall and well-groomed, said in a voice filled with astonishment, “Good God, Charles! Why didn’t you come to me?”
Charles opened his eyes and looked directly at Verner. Then he drew a deep slow breath and turned to the Lieutenant. “Yes. Now I will need a lawyer.”
The Lieutenant said coolly, “You might be interested to know that the crumpled unfinished letters in the wastebasket tie in perfectly with the contents of the burned letter.”
Charles Margate thrust out his jaw and said nothing.
In another room a phone began to ring; it stopped when someone answered.
A moment later a detective looked in. “A lawyer named Pohl is on the line, Lieutenant. He wants to speak to you personally.”
The Lieutenant excused himself.
There was silence in the room after he left, and his voice could be heard outside: “Yes, Mr. Pohl . . . Yes . . . Wait a minute, now. Could you read me that again? . . . Yes, I see. When was it postmarked? . . . You’ll vouch for the signature . . . Yes, you’re right. It’s like a dead hand striking from the grave . . . No, we had the wrong man, Mr. Pohl. Just photostat it and the envelope, put the photostats in your office safe, then bring the original down here right away. It makes an open-and-shut case . . . Yes, Mr. Pohl. We can take him into custody at once.”
Charles Margate’s eyes were wide.
The two policemen, apparently intent on the voice from the other room, were turned partly away, listening.
Abruptly Bertram Margate sucked in his breath, leaned forward, and jerked the revolver from the nearest officer’s holster.
“Don’t move. I’ve killed once and if I have to, I’ll kill again.” He glanced at his brother. “Damn him, Charlie, he never did step aside. All I wanted was to be independent. That’s why I took the money. It would never hurt him. It would have been mine anyway some day, but damn him, he was going to cut me off!”
Abruptly he whirled, and moving with incredible speed was out the door. Instantly there was the sound of a struggle, a click, and a heavy crash. Then the Lieutenant stepped back in, smiled at Verner, and turned to Charles Margate.
“Mr. Margate, you don’t need a lawyer when you’ve got this fellow—” he nodded toward Verner—“You can leave anytime. You’re free.”
***
Charles Margate, seated in the client’s chair in Richard Verner’s office, said in bafflement, “Mr. Verner, I think my brother’s mind has been warped for the past few months. But the only flaw I can see in his plan was the timing. He could set the fire, and hope the police would have time to pick up the clues he’d left. But he couldn’t be sure the fire wouldn’t burn too fast. Still, that’s the only flaw I can see. But this letter Mr. Pohl received from Father—why, Father would never have revealed such a family scandal, even to his lawyer—not until he had decided exactly what to do. And to be certain of that he would have to see Bert first. He might write the letter—but it would remain unmailed till he’d spoken to Bert. And I know he hadn’t spoken to Bert about this before the day of the fire. Mr. Verner, Father never mailed that letter to Pohl.”
Verner nodded. “However, he did write it.”
“But how did it reach Pohl?”
“When I went into your father’s office, there was a small square typewriter-ribbon box on the floor by the desk. I looked at the typewriter, and saw that a fresh ribbon had very recently been put in it.”
Margate looked puzzled.
Verner said, “Each time a key, any letter or punctuation mark, was struck on the typewriter, it left its imprint on that fresh ribbon.”
Margate sat up. “You mean, by studying the ribbon, you could reconstruct the letter?”
“Exactly—and we’re lucky the fire left the ribbon in the typewriter intact. Now, the first thing typed on the fresh ribbon was a letter accusing your brother. That was followed by the various openings found in the wastebasket, and finally by the finished letter accusing you—the one burned in the fireplace but only partially destroyed. All the letters, incidentally, had the same date.”
“How could you tell which letter was genuine?—that is, written by Father.”
“People rarely put a fresh ribbon in a typewriter and then put the typewriter away. Usually they put the fresh ribbon in just before typing something, and that something naturally appears first on the new ribbon. So whoever put in the new ribbon also typed the first letter—which accused your brother. Now, would someone else be likely to put a fresh ribbon in your father’s typewriter while he was alive?”
“No. Father would have noticed the fresh ribbon the next time he used it, and known that someone else had been using his typewriter.”
“Then, you see, we have to conclude either that the murder had already taken place—in which case we’d have two sets of fake letters—or that the first letter was typed by your father. As for the later letters, they could only be genuinely your father’s if he had changed his mind completely in a very short time—maybe minutes. And then we have to explain all those later unfinished letters in the wastebasket. Having already written a complete letter disinheriting your brother, why should your father have any difficulty whatever phrasing the opening of an identical letter disinheriting you instead?
“The only explanation that covers all the facts is that the first letter is the genuine one, and the others are false. In that case you are innocent and your brother is guilty. That solution led the police to set up their trap.”
Charles Margate shook his head. “It would have been too bad if Father hadn’t changed ribbons, if his letter had been typed on old ribbon. Or if you hadn’t noticed that this one was brand-new.”
Verner nodded. “Or if your brother had realized it. But he didn’t. So when he typed that letter to disinherit you, he condemned himself.”
Charles Margate looked at Verner quizzically. “What is it you call yourself? Not a crime consultant or a detective, but a—”
“Heuristician.” Verner smiled. “A problem solver.”