3:15 a.m. —The Properties of Horror
“Doctor,” Lieutenant Valcour said, “our immediate concern is to find out who fired that shot. The principal reason is quite academic: we want to catch and arrest the person who did it. A secondary reason is that many people who reach the state of mental unbalance where they are impelled to commit murder don’t stop with the crime. They’ve tasted blood. They are in a state of abnormal acuteness, and are driven by a new fear: that of discovery and capture. To prevent being captured, they reason, why not kill again? There is nothing to be lost. You see, they can only be electrocuted once. I am presupposing, of course, that the criminal is an outsider—some person at present hidden in the house, who will make some desperate effort at escape. It is a supposition that must be entertained, even though it is not a very good one. I believe that the facts will eventually prove the criminal to be a legitimate inmate.”
“That narrows the field, doesn’t it, Lieutenant, to whoever was in Mrs. Endicott’s room?”
“It does, unless somebody dropped a rope ladder from an upstairs window and got onto the balcony in that way. But I don’t put much stock in those tricks, Doctor, any more than I do in sliding panels and trapdoors. Outside of the badger game I’ve never come across a sliding panel in my life, and I don’t ever expect to, either.”
Dr. Worth was inclined to take the idea more seriously. “But a rope ladder—there might very well be one around the house for an emergency fire escape.”
“All right, who was in the room just above this one? You. Did you come down a rope ladder and shoot Endicott?”