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The Mysterious Matter of the Unlikely Accident

John Ragusa

    Trapworth and I were playing dominoes one afternoon. The buzzer sounded, and I excused myself to go answer the door.
    Inspector Heathfield stood before me, looking distraught.
    “What is the matter, Inspector?” I asked.
    “I have a case that has proven to be very hard to crack. I thought you and Trapworth would be able to help me with it.”
    “Come into the den, if you will,” I said.
    Trapworth is a former boxer, and I’m his butler, Joseph. As a team, we assist Heathfield on thorny murder investigations.
    Heathfield walked into the den with me.
    “What is the mystery about this time, Inspector?” Trapworth asked him.
    We seated ourselves on the sofa.
    “Bing Cordney is the deceased,” Heathfield explained. “He was married to a woman named Dina. According to her, he physically abused her regularly.”
    “She might have killed him to end the abuse,” I suggested.
    “That’s what I thought, but Cordney’s death looks very much like an accident.”
    “What makes you say that?” Trapworth asked.
    “Cordney was cleaning his gun in the basement when it accidentally went off and shot him in the chest. He was killed instantly.”
    “The gun had to be close to Cordney when it was fired, right?”
    “Yes, indeed,” Heathfield said. “He held it near his chest when it was discharged.”
    “I’d like to have a look at the shirt Cordney was wearing at the time he was shot,” Trapworth said.
    “It’s in the evidence room at headquarters,” Heathfield said.
    Trapworth stood up. “Let’s go there.”

X X X

    We arrived there, and Trapworth examined the shirt.
    “Something should be there, but it isn’t,” he said, handing the shirt back to the officer who brought it to him.
    “What the dickens are you talking about?” Heathfield asked, puzzled.
    “I think we should go pay Mrs. Cordney a visit.”
    Off we went to the widow’s house.

X X X

    When we got there, Mrs. Cordney answered the door, and we heard lively jazz music.
    “Have we interrupted something?” Heathfield asked.
    “Oh no,” she said, smiling. “I was just enjoying some Dixieland jazz.”
    Trapworth and I exchanged looks, but all he did was shrug.
    We came inside the foyer. Heathfield introduced Trapworth and me. He then told Mrs. Cordney the reason we were present.

    “Wasn’t Bing’s death ruled an accident?” she asked.
    “Yes, but it seemed unlikely after I thought about it, because Mr. Cordney would have left the safety catch on while cleaning his gun, which he didn’t,” Trapworth said.
    Mrs. Cordney pressed together lips that trembled. “I see what you mean.”
    “Were you alone in the house with your husband when he was killed?”
    She nodded. “Yes. I was in the kitchen while he cleaned his gun in the basement.”
    “I believe you were really in the basement with him, actually,” Trapworth said bluntly.
    She frowned. “How do you know that?”
    “You had to be there with him to know he shot himself, right?”
    “Yes, that’s right,” she said nervously.
    “He wasn’t shot up close, because there would have been powder burns on his shirt. Yet I didn’t see any powder burns on it. That means he had to have been shot at a distance. And if that’s true, he couldn’t have accidentally shot himself. Someone else had to have shot him. Since you were alone with Mr. Cordney in the house, that person had to be you. Am I right?”
    She wrung her hands, weeping. “Yes. I killed Bing because he was abusing me. I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
    “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Cordney, but you’ll have to come with me to the station,” Heathfield said.
    He led the poor, pitiful woman to the squad car as he read her rights.
    “You know,” Trapworth said, “sometimes solving a murder case isn’t actually a triumph.”

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