Murder in a Retirement Community(Martin Green) MurderRetC9omm (Approx. 1,400 wds.)

Murder in a Retirement Community

This one was different. For one thing, the murder had taken place in a retirement community just outside of our town. For another thing, it had taken place a week ago. The local sheriff had called our town’s police chief, Lester Lastrad, and asked for his help. He had a number of suspects but couldn’t decide who the actual murderer was. He had heard of the success of Watson, who’d helped Lestrad solve two murders. Watson was a robot who my friend Philip Marlowe Jones (his parents were big fans of Raymond Chandler), a criminology professor, had programmed by inputting into him the novels of every crime writer from Edgar Allan Poe to Agatha Christie. Oh, yes, I was a writer who’d chronicled Watson’s successes (see The Body in the Library and Murder of a Professor). I’d suggested that the robot be named Sherlock but my friend Phil said that he was Sherlock and so the robot became Watson.

So now we were all in the retirement community’s building called the Lodge, the center of the community’s activities, gathered in a meeting room with the suspects waiting to be interviewed in another meeting room. The sheriff’s name was Rod Simpson. Like Lestrad, who didn’t look like a small town police chief, he was a small dapper man with a large egg-shaped head, Sheriff Simpson didn’t look like a small town sheriff. He was tall and thin with a large nose. After we had all introduced ourselves the sheriff gave us a rundown on the case as it had gone so far,

The victim was an important man in the community, Donald Crump, the president of their Board of Directors. Crump was, or had been, a good-looking man in his sixties with silver hair and very tanned. He’d been an avid golfer and, perhaps appropriately, had been murdered at the third hole of the community’s golf course. He’d been killed, according to the coroner, by repeated blows to the head with a golf club. The club, which was found next to his body, had no fingerprints on it. From the looks of the body, of which we had seen photos, somebody had really done a job on him.

The suspects were, first of all, the victim’s wife, Gloria Crump. Sheriff Simpson told us rumors in the community were that Crump had an eye for the ladies so that she might well have had a motive, the jealous wife. Then there was Honey Rhinehart, the lady the rumors had as possibly the latest object of Crump’s wandering eye. This made Honey’s husband Tom a possible suspect as he’d be the jealous husband. Finally, there was Carl McQueen, the community’s golf pro, who’d been seen arguing with Crump the morning of the crime. There was also a rumor that there might be something going on between him and Mrs. Crump.

After giving us this rundown on the suspects the Sheriff said we were ready to interview them ourselves and see what we thought. He was especially interested in seeing what Watson, with his robot’s superior powers of observation, would make of them. For my part I was amazed at what was going on in a community of oldsters: a case of fraud, a possible affair or maybe two affairs and a murder. Who would have thought it?

* * *

“When did you last see your husband, Mrs. Crump?” asked Sheriff Simpson.

Gloria Crump, an older woman but still quite attractive, was nicely dressed with rings on both hands and a glittering necklace. “I’ve told you before. We had dinner and then he said he was going to the golf course. He said he wanted a little practice to get ready for some tournament or something.”

“And how did he seem at that time?”

“He seemed as usual, much more interested in his golf game than in what I might be doing while he was gone.”

“Did he say he was going to meet somebody at the course?”

“No. As far as I know, he was going to play by himself.”

“Hmm.” Sheriff Simpson rubbed his long nose and turned to us. “Any questions?”

“You sound as if you were upset that he was leaving you to play golf,” said Chief Lestrad. “Did you resent his doing that?”

“Oh, I was used to being a golf widow. Did I bash him in the head because I was mad at him? Don’t be absurd.”

“Maybe you suspected he was going to meet with Honey, er, Mrs. Rhinehart,” said my friend Phil.

“Why would I think that?”

“Wasn’t he having an affair with her?”

Mrs. Crump shrugged. “I don’t know and I didn’t care. I was used to Donald’s ways. We had an amicable marriage.”

“Ha,” said Honey Rhinehart. “It didn’t seem so amicable last week when you came over to play bridge and Don trumped your ace and you got so mad at him I thought you were ready to kill him.”

“Yes, I was mad at him. Donald was a good golfer but a bad bridge player. But it certainly wasn’t something I’d kill him for. And by the way, were you and my husband having an affair?”

Honey bristled at this. “We were just good friends.”

“So you wanted to be more than just good friends,” said Phil, “and when he didn’t you killed him in a jealous rage.”

“Of course not. I didn’t even know he was at the golf course that evening. How could I have killed him?”

Lastrad turned his attention to Vincent Van Dyke, the Board Treasurer who was suspected of embezzling funds. “And what about you, Mr. Van Dyke? Hadn’t Mr. Crump threatened to expose you?”

Van Dyke was a large man in his sixties with a shiny face and oily hair. “Not at all,” he said. “In fact, I’d told him I’d temporarily borrowed some money because I had a can’t-miss investment I couldn’t pass up and I’d pay it back very soon.”

“A pretty flimsy story,” Lastrad said. I noticed that Sherriff Simpson again rubbed his long nose. Lastrad turned to the golf pro. “And what about you, Mr. McQueen? You were seen having an argument with Mr. Crump the morning of his death. What was that about?”

“It was nothing,” said McQueen. “I wanted to hire another groundskeeper for the golf course and Don said we didn’t have the money, maybe because Vincent here had taken it.”

“I told you, I was going to repay it very soon,” said Van Dyke.

Lastrad turned to Watson. “You’ve been very quiet,” he said. “Do you have any questions?”

No,” said Watson. “It’s been obvious all along who the killer was.”

* * *

I put in a break here to let the reader ponder the above and come to his own conclusion as to what Watson said was obvious. I also want to insert here that when Honey Rhinehart had told us about Gloria getting so mad about her husband’s trumping her ace I remembered a story I’d written about a wife killing her husband over a mistake in a bridge game. I’d written this in a joking way but who knows, it could very well have happened in real life. So I said, “I think I know who did it. It was Crump’s wife Gloria and it was because of that bridge game. I’ve written a story about a wife killing her husband because of a similar bridge mistake.”

* * *

“Well, Watson?’ asked Phil. “My guess would have been Mr. Van Dyke, the absconding Treasurer. His story about repaying the money, as Captain Lastrad said, “was flimsy and he would have faced serious consequences, like going to jail.”

“A very plausible hypothesis,” said Watson. “However, although Mr. Van Dyke may be a crook he is not a murderer. If he wanted to do away with Mr. Crump it would have been in a subtler way than hitting him repeatedly over the head with a gold club. That indicates a crime of passion. Mr. Green is correct. The killer is, as is usually the case in these types of crimes, the victim’s wife, Mrs. Crump.”

“Because of that bridge game?” I said.

“I wouldn’t say so. As you no doubt observed Mrs. Crump has a penchant for jewelry, expensive jewelry. I believe you’ll find out that there’s a nice insurance policy on Mr Crump with of course Mrs. Crump as the beneficiary. Money is always a powerful motive. Add to this Mrs. Crump was, as she said, a golf widow and despite her saying she was used to this I noticed that when she told us this she had her fists clenched. This is, as they say, a tell, just as the sheriff’s rubbing his nose indicated skepticism. It was a sign that she did indeed mind being a golf widow. And there was also her husband’s chasing after other women while neglecting her. The bridge incident may have been a contributing factor but there were a number of reasons for Mrs. Crump to finally be fed up and when Mr. Crump left her to play golf this was the final straw and she snapped. Thus the repeated blows to her husband’s head. She was in a rage.

^ * *

Mrs. Crump of course vehemently denied all this and said, “What does that stupid robot know?’ However, when taken to the sheriff’s station and questioned again she finally broke down and admitted she had committed the crime. “He deserved it,” she said. She hired a top attorney and a sympathetic jury composed largely of women found her guilty but recommended probation.

“Another success for you, Watson,” said Philip Marlowe Jones. “But,” he said, turning to me, “you also identified the murderer And just because you’d written a story about it.”

“It was elementary, my dear Sherlock, elementary.”

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