The Wrong Way Down by Elizabeth Daly

there wasn’t pavement dust in the wound, or why there was indoor dust on it. He mustn’t ask himself anything.”
    â€œIf that scarf was tied around her head as soon as the blow was struck there wouldn’t be so much blood to get rid of indoors, either.”
    â€œAll right for the scarf. The old railing, rusted out already, gets a final loosening. The leaf of the old front door is left open. The body is brought out and laid on the pavement.”
    â€œYes, but who got into the house to find out about the loose railing and the mosaic floor and all the rest of it? Vance never did all that planning on Sunday afternoon.”
    â€œAnd if she didn’t, who else got in to do it? And how? Well…who’d have an old latchkey?”
    â€œJames Ashbury. He could have passed it along, or it might have fallen into other hands without his knowing it. I suppose anybody could have wandered around up there day or night without Miss Paxton knowing it; any time except those two hours in the afternoon when the Keate woman was on the premises.”
    â€œThe Keate woman’s deaf.”
    â€œThat makes it perfect. And tonight Miss Paxton had letters ready for mailing; one of them was picked up and put in her coat pocket, and it certainly made the picture look right.” Nordhall paused to smile. “Miss Vance had a letter ready for mailing too, so you say. Looks as though the murder plan was in her mind, even if she didn’t know when it was coming off. Well, nothing left for the party to do now but to flatten the railing, leave a door open, place the body outside, and walk off. I wouldn’t say the whole job took more than fifteen minutes, would you? Wash-up and all. That makes the doctors right.”
    â€œAnd cuts down the time the body lay in the street to a minute or two—the time it took for the murderer to walk to the corner.”
    â€œBig risk, those last few minutes.”
    â€œA short one—and the murderer had a good view up and down.”
    â€œStill, that rail was flat and that door open while the killer was still in the house with the dead body and couldn’t see out.”
    â€œWho looks up in New York at night, on a dark, quiet, empty stretch like that? There was a half-moon, and there were clouds; but nobody in New York looks at the moon, nobody but me. Not at the most magnificent Hunter’s moon I ever saw in the sky. You tell somebody to look up, and they think you’re crazy.”
    â€œAll right, the murderer took the risk and got away with it. Now tell me,” said Nordhall, his eye on Gamadge and his mouth widening into a smile, “about that other thing the murderer brought along besides the woollen scarf. Wrapped up in it perhaps, and then wrapped up in newspapers the way you brought the picture into Vance’s flat. The blunt instrument.”
    â€œI’ve been wondering about that,” admitted Gamadge.
    â€œI should think you would. How many blunt instruments have that extent of surface without a cutting edge? It had to look like a wound she’d get on the flat of her head by hitting a pavement block.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œIt didn’t make a ridge or a roughness. Mighty few blunt instruments like that, mighty few.”
    â€œCall it a portable flat surface. A portable flat surface with a handle.”
    â€œThat describes it, but what was it?”
    â€œHanged if I know.”
    â€œIt had to be swung; that blow had force behind it. It had to be broader than a hammer head, less tricky than the side of an axe, more purchase than a flatiron. It had to be just right. If it wasn’t just right, then the medical examiner would ask himself questions. You’re putting a lot of brains into this thing, and I don’t mean your own.”
    â€œYes, it was a brainy job, and a vicious one.”
    â€œThere must have been a telephone call beforehand, Miss Paxton must have been ready and willing to come