The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

"Mrs. Magin," Miss MacDonald began, right off, the minute the door had closed behind Danny, "I want to ask you to help me with this case."

"I couldn't be any help to you," I said. I guess I was rather tart about it.

"Why not?"

"One reason is," I said, "that anybody who doesn't know any better than to suspicion Danny, in this affair, would need a lot more help, to get anywhere, than I could give them."

"My only suspicion concerning Miss Canneziano," she answered, "is that she knows more than she is willing to tell. I may be wrong about that. Have you any other reason for refusing to help me?"

"Only that you don't believe a word I say. If you would consider that I am, anyway, trying to be honest, and if you'd do the same with the others, until you are sure that you have reason to do otherwise, I'd consider it an honor to help you, and I'd thank you kindly."

"I am afraid that I don't entirely understand."

"Crime and wickedness," I told her, "aren't the general rules of the world. If they were, all the good people would have to be locked up, for safety's sake, while the criminals ran loose for lack of space to confine them. Why, instead of doubting my simple word, this morning, when I told you how Sam always lighted a fire, for any excuse, couldn't you have believed that I was telling the truth, and that whoever put the key in there knew that Sam would light the fire, and so throw suspicion on himself?"

"That is possible," she admitted. "But the key, there, leads me to suppose that whoever put it there, to hide it, would be too stupid for much subtle reasoning. Keys, you know, don't burn."

"They don't," I agreed. "But we never take the ashes out of the fireplace as you did this morning. We open the ash-dump and shoot them down into a barrel in the basement. Every few months the ashes are emptied in starvation field, eight miles or more away from here. Not a bad way to get the key carried off the place, if that was what he wanted. Not a bad way, either, to throw more suspicion on Sam, if the key was found."

"Most criminals are stupid, though," she clung to her point. "Try as they may, they always make some stupid blunder."

"It seems to me," I said, "that the ones who get caught are stupid; they are the ones who have made the blunder, left the clue. But look at the number of criminals who get clean away. Not long ago, I was reading some statistics -- "

"You know what Mark Twain said about statistics? ‘There are three kinds of liars: liars, damned liars, and statistics."

I had to laugh. I think she said that to put me in a good humor, for she went right on to say, "But you haven't told me, yet, that you will be my assistant in this case."

She couldn't hoodwink me. "I told you that I'd be no use to you, as long as you doubted every word I said."

"But," she argued, "by your own admission you tried to shield Mr. Stanley, immediately after the murder; stopping to clean away his-the pipe ashes. If you tried, once, to shield him, wouldn't you try again to shield him, if you needed to?"

"No," I said, "I wouldn't. I'll tell you why. That night, and for several days after, my mind was like a dirty cluttered kitchen. I couldn't get enough space cleared in it to start thinking, let alone working at it. I have tidied up a place, since then, and I've done a batch of thinking. I know, now, that Sam doesn't need me, nor anyone, to shield him. Any evidence found against him, will be good evidence, in the end, against whoever fixed it to throw blame on him."

"I am inclined to agree with you," she said. "Now then: Is there anyone here who would benefit by his conviction?"

"Am I," I questioned, "your assistant, or am I not?"

"Does it make a difference in your answer? " she questioned in return.