“He could very easily have placed the gun nearer the body. He could have wiped off his own fingerprints, and pressed the weapon into the hand of the dead man.”
“That’s logical,” the sheriff said.
“And,” Mason went on, “the murderer must have wanted the officers to find the gun.”
“Baloney,” Sergeant Holcomb said. “The murderer simply didn’t want the officers to find the gun on him. That’s the way all clever murderers do. As soon as they commit a crime, they drop the rod. They don’t even keep it with them long enough to find some place to hide it. The gun can hang them. They shoot it and drop it.”
“All right,” Mason said, smiling, “you win. They shoot it and drop it. What else, Sheriff?”
“The parrot cage was over here on the floor,” the sheriff said, “and the door was propped open with a little stick so the parrot could walk out whenever he wanted to.”
“Or walk in, whenever it had been out?” Mason asked.
“Well, yes. That’s a thought.”
“And how long do you think the parrot had been here without food or water, Sheriff?”
“He’d had plenty of food. The water had dried up in the pan. See that agateware pan over there? Well, that had evidently been left pretty well filled with water, but the water had dried out — what the parrot hadn’t had to drink. You can see little spots of rust on the bottom which show where the last few drops evaporated.”