“When this merger idea first took shape, last summer, Dunmore saw how unalterably opposed to it Mr. Fleming was, and he began wishing him out of the way.  Some time later, he decided to do something about it.  I suppose Anton Varcek gave him the idea, in the first place, with his jabber about the danger of a firearms accident.  Dunmore decided he’d fix one up for Mr. Fleming.  First of all, he’d need a firearm, collector’s type and in good working order.  It couldn’t be one of the guns in the collection.  He’d have to keep it loaded all the time, waiting for an opportunity to use it; he couldn’t take a weapon out of the collection, because it would be missed, and he couldn’t load one and hang it up again, because that would be discovered.  So he had to get one of his own, and he got it from Arnold Rivers.”

“You know that?  I mean, that’s not just a guess?”

“I know it.  The gun he got from Rivers was a .36 Colt, 1860 Navy-model, serial number 2444,” Rand told her.  “Rivers had that gun last summer.  He had it refinished by a gunsmith named Umholtz.  After Umholtz refinished it, the gun was in Rivers’s shop until November of last year, when it was sold by Rivers personally.  And that was the revolver that was found in Lane Fleming’s hand, and the one I got from the coroner, with a letter vouching for the fact that it had been so found.”

He finished his cocktail.  Gladys picked up the shaker mechanically and refilled his glass.

“Now we have Dunmore with this .36 Colt, loaded with powder, caps and bullets from the ammunition supply in the gunroom, waiting for a chance to use it.  And also, he has this Mill-Pack contract in his safe deposit box at the bank.  That takes care of the weapon and the motive; only the opportunity is needed, and that came on the 22nd of December, when Mr. Fleming brought home that Confederate Leech & Rigdon .36 he had just bought.  It was just a piece of luck that both revolvers were alike in caliber and general type, but it wouldn’t have made a lot of difference.  Nobody was paying much attention to details, and Dunmore was on the scene to misdirect any attention anybody would pay to anything.

“Now, we come to the mechanics of the thing; the modus operandi, or, as it is professionally known, the M.O.  You remember what happened that evening.  Nelda had gone out.  You and Geraldine were listening to the radio in the parlor, over there.  Varcek had gone up to his lab.  Mr. Fleming was alone in the gunroom, working on his new revolver.  And Fred Dunmore said he was going to take a bath.  What he did, of course, was to draw a tub full of water, undress, put on his bathrobe and slippers, hide the .36 Colt under the bathrobe, and then go across the hall to the gunroom, where he found Mr. Fleming sitting on that cobbler’s bench, putting the finishing touches on the Leech & Rigdon.  So he fired at close range, wiped the prints off the Colt with an oily rag, put it in Lane Fleming’s right hand, put the rag in his left, grabbed up the Leech & Rigdon, and scuttled back to his bathroom, deadlatching and shutting the gunroom door as he went out.  This last, of course, was a delaying tactic, to give him time to establish his bathtub alibi.”