The Murder in the Maxwell
House
There was a knock at the door.
"Go away, I don't have the rent money yet!" screamed the apartment's resident, Jerry McDonald.
"It's only me!" replied the person outside the door, turning the doorknob and letting himself inside. It was Jerry's personal friend, Samuel Thompson, who stood in the doorway, looking down at him.
Jerry was flopped in a reclining chair, his arms and legs going everywhere at once. His head was almost sticking out his open sixth story window, and the chair was rocking back and for th.
"Jerry! Watch where you're rocking! You're liable to fall right out of the window!" Samuel gasped.
"Me, Jerry McDonald, the reputed detective, fall out of a window?" he laughed. "It's absurd!" He laughed again, rocked back and forth. The chair fell over, dumping him onto the floor, his head being banged against the windowsill.
"I've always said that every time you've drawn a correct conclusion, it's been an accident," Samuel smirked, closing the door and inviting himself inside.
Jerry set the chair back up, stood, and walked across the apartment toward his friend. "Funny. Very funny. Even funnier is the fact that I haven't had a case for two months! Nobody has had enough respect for the genius inside me to actually call upon the best in the city, have they? Well, I'm getting bored!"
"...you've been on vacation for two months, Jerry."
Jerry paused for a minute, then looked uo at Samuel. "Oh...er, I mean, of course I have, Sam! I've just been testing you!"
Sam nodded in an understanding way, and sat down in a nearby chair, crossing his legs. He looked around the apartment as he usually did, and nothing had changed since the last time he had done so. Papers were scattered everywhere in uneven piles, the remains of chips and soda cans were strewn about the tables and couches, and the whole place possessed a smell that made you ask yourself if one noseplug was enough.
"So, what brings you here?" Jerry asked, leaning against a wall.
"I haven't exactly come to collect your rent money. Speaking of your ov erwhelming boredom, however, I think I have something that might actually put a few dollars back into your pocket."
"Oh?"
"Mmhmm."
"Are they rich?"
"Actually, yes..."
"Thank GOD."
Sam rolled his eyes and kept going. "There's been a death at the Maxwell house," he began, "and nobody knows exactly how the person in question died. There were rumors that they'd be calling you to investigate it, mostly because everyone else was out of town."
"Ah. Who is the person who has died?"
"Harold Maxwell."
"Oh, I love this already."
"They found him dead on the floor in the bathroom. That is, the butler did."
"He did it."
"Huh?"
"The butler always does it."
"I think you'd better check to be sure, Jerry. Anyhow, the butler found him dead on the bathroom floor and immediately ran off to tell everyone else. They've tried not to let anyone know about it yet, though, until some sort of solution is found."
"Then how did you find out?" Jerry asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I picked up a copy of the National Enquirer thi s morning. They know already. They're always on top of the news, you know."
"Of course. So you think that the Maxwells are going to call me?"
"I think they might."
The phone rang, as if on cue.
"A-ha!" Jerry shouted, propping himself up off the wall and darting to the phone. He answered it. "Hello! This is Jerry McDonald, professional detective speaking. I will be up at your house in an instant." He paused for a second, the smile draining off his face. "Oh...hi, Ms. Robertson. No, I don't have the rent money yet. I think I'll be getting some shortly, though? Hmm. What do you mean I'm going to get it? Oh, okay. I'll talk to you later, then. Okay. Bye." He hung up the phone, sighed, and walked back across the room.
"I think you're a little bit rusty," Sam sneered.
"Shh! My brain just needs a jump start. I judge that, by the way that the phone chose to rang at that exact instant, that if we continue to talk about telephones, it will ring again almost instantly!"
"Brilliant!...maybe. In fact, I don't remem ber that telephone. Did you get a new one?"
"In fact, Sam, I did. The old one broke, since the cat knocked it off of the table."
"So the cat was reponsible for breaking it?" Sam asked.
"Yes...I thought I just said that."
"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that the butler might have done it," he jabbed.
Jerry rolled his eyes. The telephone, a few seconds late, rang. Jerry ran across the room and picked it up.
"Hello?" he more cautiously answered this time. He paused a couple seconds to wait for the response. "Yes, this is Jerry McDonald, the detective. Mmhmm." A smile came to rest firmly upon his face as the person on the other end of the phone went on. "A murder? Oh no! Who has been killed? ...Harold Maxwell himself? Oh, tragedy!" he uttered dramatically with the smile still planted on his face. "You want me to come up there? Yes? Okay, I shall be there before you can say 'Jack Robinson'!" He paused a couple seconds. "Oh, not literally, mam. I'll be there shortly." He hung up the phone and looked to Sam.
"So?" Sam asked.
"So...you were right. They want me up there immediately."
"Does that mean you're going?"
"Of course. Why wouldn't I?"
"I know you."
"They're rich, Sam, I'd better."
So, the two left the apartment and went down to the parking lot. Jerry's car looked like it had been through a few accidents and, Sam wagered, looked about as pleasant as someone who had been crushed by a steamroller. They got into the car, and Jerry started it up. It made a sound that shook the entire car and made Sam wonder if the entire thing was about to fall apart. Luckily, it didn't.
The drive up to the Maxwell mansion was quite pleasant, since the passengers got to enjoy a scenic countryside that they weren't usually accustomed to seeing. After about a half hour of curving around a mountainside on a windy road, the mansion at the top of the hill came into view.
"Ah! That must be it!" Jerry exclaimed.
"What would the world do without your brilliant deductions, Jerry?"
"Let's just say that the world would be minu s an incredible public figure, and a fantastic working mind, Sam."
"Sure, Jerry. Sure."
Jerry drove the car all the way up to the iron gates which separated the end of the road from the house's private driveway. As soon as the car pulled up, the gates automatically opened, and the car was allowed to drive up to the front door of the house. Jerry parked the car, got out, and breathed the fresh air.
"Ahhh, beautiful air! Geez, I wish I could breathe what these folks breathe everyday!"
Sam shook his head at the sheer corniness of Jerry's little soliloquy, and stepped out of the car. As he did so, a person stepped out the front door of the mansion and greeted the two of them.
"Good afternoon. You must be Jerry McDonald. One of you," said the man.
"Jerry? Yes, that would be me," Jerry replied, proudly displaying his photogenic grin.
"So glad you could make it. There has been a terrible tragedy."
"What has happened?"
"Someone has died."
"I think I figured that part out. What do I look like, an idiot?" Je rry asked, walking toward the man to shake hands, and tripping over his untied shoelace in the process.
"It seems that your shoelace has come untied, sir."
Jerry looked down at his shoe and noticed the untied laces. "Er, yes, well...the game is not a foot! The game is a murder, and murderous games can be dangerous. Right, Sam?"
Sam, stepping up to the other two, replied, "Oh, yes. Of course."
Jerry nodded humbly, and proceeded to extend his hand to the man.
"I suppose a formal introduction would be pleasant. I am, of course, Jerry McDonald, and this is my good friend Sam Thompson," he told the man.
"And I am Jeeves, the house butler. If you have any questions, just ask me."
"Well, in fact, I do have a quick question to ask of you."
"Yes, sir?"
"Could you show me to where the body was found?"
"Certainly, sir. Step inside."
He motioned them into the house. They followed him up a flight of fancy, flourishing red-carpeted stairs.
"It seems they have unrolled the red carpet just for my charismatic pre sence, Sam," Jerry said.
The butler led them down a long hall that seemed neverending, until he came to a closed door.
"This is the bathroom, sir."
"No thank you, Jeeves. I don't need to."
"This is where the body was found, sir."
"Oh! Is it? Well, then! I'll take a look!"
They stepped inside. The red carpet that covered the hall floor was quite thick, and they had to watch their step as they walked down onto the linoleum bathroom floor. There was a window at the far end, past the bathtub, that was open, and the aroma of the entire bathroom smelt faintly of rotten eggs.
Jerry sniffed this, shrugged, and proceeded to ask the obligatory detective questions. "So...where was the body found in here, since you seem to have taken the liberty of removing it?"
"He was found on the floor over by the sink. His belt was unbuckled, and he was lying face-down on the tile, sir."
"Hmm," he pondered, looking around the bathroom for further clues. "What time of day was Mr. Maxwell found? And in what condition? Any distinguishing features, such as stab wounds or bullet holes?"
"Just this morning, sir. No distinctive marks at all. We think it may have been a heart attack. I found him in here a little past breakfast."
"Hmmm...and what did he eat for breakfast?"
"The same as he always does. Two fried eggs, three strips of bacon, a pancake with butter and syrup, and a glass of orange juice. Nothing out of the ordinary."
"The same thing that he always eats?"
"Yes, sir. The same thing that he always eats."
"And who prepared the food?"
"Gretta, our house cook. In case you think she did something to the food, let me inform you that I, personally, took it upon myself to supervise her this morning, and I assure you that the food was prepared no differently than it usually is."
Jerry walked across the bathroom, leaned over to Sam, and whispered in his ear, "See? I told you he had something to do with it!"
"You don't know that, Jerry."
"Ah, no! But I certainly think that, Sam! Doesn't he just have that sinister look about him?"
"Looks can be deceiving," he murmured, scanning the ceiling of the bathroom. There was nothing there, except for the ordinary bathroom fan and a hook which suspended a plant above the washbasin.
Jerry looked around the bathroom once again, and then turned back to Jeeves. "So, who else was around the mansion around the time of the killing?"
"Let me see...I was here, Gretta was here, a few maids were here cleaning up in other parts of the mansion, the handyman was examining and fixing a few broken things, and Mr. Maxwell's wife, Jean, was here."
"Did Mrs. Maxwell have breakfast with Mr. Maxwell?"
"Yes, sir. She did."
"Do you think she would have any desire to kill her husband?"
"Not that I know of, sir. She loved him with all her heart. I have not se en them apart once since they were married fifteen years ago."
Jerry paced around the room again, pondering the information the butler was feeding him. He turned around, looked the butler in the eye, and said, "Are all the people who were here this morning still around?"
"Yes, sir."
"I would like to speak with all of them at once, please."
"That can be arranged, sir," the butler replied, turning around and walking out of the room.
As soon as he had left, Jerry turned to Sam. "What do you think, Sam?"
"I think that you're the detective," he smirked, looking around the room again.
Jerry poked around the room, taking in everything he saw, and occasionally pulling out the obligatory detective notebook to jot a few things down. A few minutes later, the butler returned and motioned them downstairs. He led the way, while Jerry and Sam followed, and soon they found themselves in a large, beautiful sitting room. Everyone was standing, or sitting, around the room, looking in different directions and looking very annoyed.
Upon seeing Jerry enter the room, Mrs. Maxwell looked up, and screeched, "How long do we have to be in here? You have interrupted me in the middle of my afternoon slumber."
"I am sorry, madam, but your husband is dead."
"Tell me something I didn't know."
"The murderer is in this room, then."
"Ah," she replied bitterly.
Jerry looked around at everybody in the room, eyeing them individually, and thinking of questions to ask them.
"Where where all of you this morning around the time that Mr. Maxwell met his end?" he asked.
There was a cacophony of voices speaking at once. After the voices realized that they couldn't be heard, they begun shouting obscenities and "shut up"s at each other.
"Be quiet!" Jerry yelled, loud enough so that the entire room came to rest in an awkward, eerie silence. "Now...one at a time. Where were each of you this morning?"
"I was eating breakfast with my husband," Mrs. Maxwell said.
"I was fixing the breakfast in the kitchen," Gretta answered.
"Fixin' junk 'round the house," the handyman responded.
"Making beds in the bedrooms," the maids chimed in simultaneously, to which Jerry started laughing.
"What are you laughing at?" Mrs. Maxwell snapped.
"Why are you so bitter?" Jerry snapped back at her.
"I have answered this already. You have interupted my afternoon slumber."
"...which is obviously more important than your husband's death, Mrs. Maxwell?"
She glared at him through a thick forest of ugly eyeliner and false eyelashes. He continued on.
He turned to the handyman, who was leaning against the wall. He was wearing a pair of torn-up blue jeans and a shirt that was soggy with sweat. "The handyman...what was your name?"
"Uh...Bill."
"Bill. You say you were fixing things. What exactly were you fixing?"
"I was fixin' some stuff in the kitchen, like the freezer. And then I went up to the roof and did some repairs up there."
"What were you repairing up there?"
"Holes in the ceilin'. Mr. Maxwell was always complainin' about how terribly the roof leaked and how b ad I did fixin' it up, so I went up there and made sure that there weren't no holes anymore."
Jerry nodded to himself, taking a couple notes down. He went to the simultaneously-speaking maids next, approaching them with the same amused grin on his face that he had dawned a few minutes earlier.
"The maids...what are your names?"
"Bella and Ella."
"Bella and Ella...how are you today?"
"We're okay."
"You were making the beds this morning, then, when Mr. Maxwell was found dead?"
"Yep. We were making the bed in the master bedroom, since Mr. Maxwell always threw a fit whenever he returned to his room after breakfast and found that his bed had not been made. Once he even got so angry that he threw a vase at us. We ducked just in time, luckily, and it shattered against the wall. It shook us up a lot, though. We were scared...what a frightening man."
Jery nodded, scribbling a few extra things down on the notepad. He walked across the room to Gretta, the kitchen cook, and looked her in the eye.
"So, Gretta, yo u were in the kitchen this morning fixing the food for Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell?"
"Yes...but I swear I didn't do anything to it! I swear! I would never do anything to Mr. Maxwell's food. He just gave me a raise because he said I cooked the best meat loaf he's ever eaten. He was such a sweet old man. I would never bite the hand that feeds me."
"But would you bite the hand that you feed?"
Gretta stood with a dumbfounded look on her face for a couple of seconds, blinked, and said, "I don't think so."
Jerry smil 'ed in a cheerful way, and moved back to Mrs. Maxwell, who was laying down on the couch, drifting in and out of sleep.
"Mrs. Maxwell," he started. She shot up out of the couch suddenly, saw who had called upon her, and resumed her position bitterly.
"Mrs. Maxwell, how are you today?"
"How kind of you to ask, Ronald."
"It's Jerry."
Her nostrils flared and she looked up at him again, glaring. "How do you, Mr. Detective...oh, I apologize, JERRY, think I'm feeling? My husband is dead and I can't even sleep it off in peace."
"Mrs. Maxwell, I would appreciate your coopera--"
"Just ask me what you want to ask me."
"Fine, then. You were eating breakfast with your husband?"
"Is this some crime?"
"Just answer the questions that I want to ask you, please."
"Fine, then. Yes, I was eating breakfast with my husband."
"Can you relate to me what happened at the breakfast table?"
"I would love to," she said nastily, clearing her throat in a completely unattractive way.
Jerry stood with his arms crossed, staring straight ahead at her. "I'm glad," he added, right as she was about to speak.
She looked up at him, frustrated, and started to talk. "We came downstairs together, walked into the dining room, sat down at the table, and waited to be served. The service was, as usual, slow, but we waited, exchanging a little pleasant early-morning chitchat along the way. Eventually, Jeeves came out of the kitchen with the plates in his hand, and served them to us. We ate in peace, and both finished. Strangely, though, Harold dashed off to the bathroom as soon as he had taken the last bite."
"To the bathroom just down the upstairs hall?" Jerry asked.
"I didn't exactly follow him," she replied sourly.
"So where did you go after breakfast?"
"I went for a walk in the garden."
"A walk in the garden?"
"Yes. It's what I do every morning after breakfast. The gardener does not arrive until noon, and so I take my walks in the morning so I don't disturb her."
"I see." He hastily scribbled down some more notes, and walked over to where Jeeves was standing.
"Yes, sir?" Jeeves perked up.
"JeevesÉwhere were you at breakfast time?"
"I was in the kitchen making coffee and supervising Gretta, sir," he answered.
"Coffee? I recall you saying that Mr. Maxwell drank orange juice for breakfast."
"He does."
"Then why were you making coffee?"
"Mrs. Maxwell has a certain distaste for orange juice, and always requests a cup of coffee in the mornings. I always put a pot on, serve her some, and drink the rest. It really is quite splendid coffee."
"Is it? You must make me some."
"That can be arranged," said Jeeves, turning around.
"Oh, hold it. I'm not done quite yet, Jeeves!" Jerry said in a progressively loud voice.
"I apologize, sir."
"Don't mention it. Instead, mention who was in the kitchen at the time."
"Just Gretta, Bill, and myself, sir."
"Gretta was fixing breakfast, you were making coffee, and Bill was fixing the freezer?"
"Yes, sir. That is correct."
"Curious," Jerry seemed to say to himself.
"Speaking of curiosity," Mrs. Maxwell butted in, "I'm curious as to when I can resume sleeping." She yawned quite rudely, and Jerry flinched and turned away.
"Soon enough, Mrs. Maxwell. I just have to do a little more detective work, get a few ideas into my head, and then I shall be back."
"You're implying that I will not be able to leave for a while."
"I'm not implying it, madam, I am guaranteeing it," he said, handing a gun to Sam. "Sam will watch you and make sure that nobody leaves this room until I return. The gun is just a precaution, of course, assuming that the murderer is, in fact, in this room. I don't think Sam will shoot anyone accidentally again."
Upon hearing Jerry's words, everybody tensed up, their eyes bugging out. Jerry laughed, with an appalled tone in his voice. "Come on, can't you take a joke?" He shrugged, and turned around. "I'm sure, Sam, you will tell me if anything out of the ordinary happens?"
"Of course, Jerry," he said, taking the gun in his hands.
"As for Jeeves, I believe that he offered me a cup of coffee. I can't refuse such an offer, being a sucker for coffee like I am. Come along, Jeeves."
He motioned the butler out of the room. Jeeves stepped forward and led Jerry to the kitchen, where he immediately started fixing the cup of coffee. It was done very shortly, and Jerry drank it, while looking around the kitchen in a detective-like way. As soon as he was done with the cup, he returned Jeeves to the room with everybody else.
Mrs. Maxwell looked up as she saw them returning. "Oh, thank God," she uttered, standing up and starting to walk out of the room.
"Hold up a minute, Mrs. Maxwell. I'm only returning Jeeves to wait with the rest of you while I look around the house for other evidence. I shouldn't take long, don't worry."
"My God! You're meaning to tell me that we're letting this imbecile roam around my house alone?!" she shrieked at nobody in particular.
"I think, in fact, that's what he is meaning to tell you, Mrs. Maxwell," said Sam, still holding the gun.
"Ugh," she said, falling back onto the couch.
"Don't worry. I won't be too long," Jerry said for the third time. "Sam, watch them closely. They're crafty little devils. All of 'em!" He spoke the words, turned around, and walked out of the room, whistling an ear-grating tune that nobody could place.
The minutes crawled along like snails, with Sam up against a wall, watching the others like a hawk. The crowd became progressively more annoyed, impatient, and fidgety, and Sam judged that any one of them was likely to have a violent outburst at any minute. An hour and a half passed until Jerry returned, a satisfied little half-smile on his face. Sam knew the expressionÉit was Jerry's fantastic expression of success.
"Jerry!" said Sam delightedly as the detective walked back into the room.
"From all I've been able to deduce, that is my name," he said with a smarmy air.
"SoÉhave you got anything?" Sam asked him, though he was almost sure he knew the answer already.
"You better believe that I do, Sam."
The crowd of suspects turned to look at Jerry, each one trembling considerably. Jerry, sensing this, spoke a little phrase to try and relieve them. "Oh, don't worry, my lovely captive audience! None of you have anything to worry aboutÉexcept for one of you." This, of course, didn't help the intense nature of the situation any, but he enjoyed speaking the words nonetheless.
"So who, I know you're asking yourselves, has anything to worry about? Only the person who knows that they did it! Let me say that even I, the brilliant Jerry McDonald, was quite surprised at the way the pieces fit together. But the pieces did fit, and they formed the perfect picture, and so I am ready to disclose this killer's ingenious method. And it was quite ingenious, I must say. Not one that I would expect a handyman to execute so well."
The crowd gasped melodramatically, and Bill trembled severely in the corner where he was standing. "You dunno that," he managed to say.
"Oh, but you see, I do! You said that Mr. Maxwell was always complaining about the terrible job you did fixing the roof. Let me say, you do a pretty awful job - my apartment building has a better quality roof than this mansion. You didn't take the criticisms very well to start with, and became increasingly angrier with each time he told you that you had done a horrible job. Mr. Maxwell was the sort of person who seemed to take pleasure in putting other people down. It was obvious that nobody - the maids, the butler, whoever - received good treatment from him. Barring, of course, Gretta, whose cooking he had a special soft spot for, and his own equally obnoxious wife. It was truly a marriage made in heaven."
"How dare you!" Mrs. Maxwell screamed, incomprehensibly offended.
"Shh! I'm not done yet. You can, of course, sleep through my explanation, though, if you want to," he said in a voice that was happy for retaliation. "So, Bill was driven by Mr. Maxwell's constant prods so much that he decided that he had to get rid of him, and so he took the task upon himself.
"While the cook was preparing breakfast and Jeeves was making coffee, Bill was across the room fixing the freezer. As soon as the cup of orange juice was set on a table and was ready to be taken out, Bill slipped away from the freezer and managed to drop a small, but powerful, laxative, or phenolphthalein, if you want to be technical, into the glass. This was taken out to Mr. Maxwell, and he drank it all up while eating his breakfast. It, naturally, took a few minutes to take effect, but as soon as it did, he felt the urgent need to go to the bathroom. Hence, as soon as he finished his last bite, he darted away from the table, up the stairs, and into the bathroom.
"As soon as Bill saw that Mr. Maxwell had run upstairs, he quickly exited through a back door, climbed up a ladder to the roof, and went to work up there. What he told me earlier was completely true. He was fixing stuff in the kitchen, and after he was done there, he did proceed to work on the roof. What he neglected to tell me, however, was the fact that he had been working up there previously, in the early hours of the morning.
"What could he possibly be doing up there? He sure wasn't fixing the holes in the roofÉhe was altering them. You were right, Sam, looks can be very deceiving. Especially when it comes to bland, boring looking bathroom ceilings. Bill managed to take out the bathroom fan, reverse it, and, with a little electrical work, stick it back in so it was fully functional. Functional, however, in the opposite way that one might expect. Bathroom fans are designed to carry the malodorous air up and out of the room, making it somewhat more tolerable inside. However, when you reverse one of these fans, it will work in the opposite way: It will blow down the contents of what is above it. Therein lies the secret.
"What was above it? Well, attached to the pipe that carried air out of the bathroom by means of the fan was a sizeable container of cyanide gas. How do I know this? Well, I managed to do a little poking around on the roof myself, and, to one side of this pipe was a container that read 'Cyanide Gas - Do Not Handle!' on the side. It's really not rocket science. So, Mr. Maxwell, feeling the need to use the bathroom, switched on the fan as soon as he walked through the door. The gas immediately started flowing down the pipe, through the fan vent, and filling the room.
"Cyanide gas itself is quite heavyÉheavier than air, anyway, and so it was pulled down to the ground, past where Mr. Maxwell's head would have been. He, of course, started breathing in the gas and started to feel sicker and sicker. He quickly and frantically finished his business, stood up, pulled his pants up, flushed the toilet, and before he could do anything else, like buckle his belt, fell facedown onto the floor, dead. The gas is very toxic, and is, in fact, what was used regularly in gas chambers. Needless to say, the effects on the human body are extremely quick, and Mr. Maxwell died almost immediately.
"Bill, peeking into the bathroom window as he climbed the ladder up to the roof, saw that Mr. Maxwell was quite dead inside. Attaching a hook with an adjoining cord to an external portion of the window, he continued climbing up. As soon as he was at the top, he pulled on the cord, opening the window and evacuating a large portion of the gas. He removed the container of cyanide from the pipe very carefully, as not to breathe it in. As soon as the container had been removed, the fan began pumping in plain air. The amounts of air going down helped to push the remaining cyanide out of the bathroom by means of the window. It couldn't possibly have seeped out under the door, due to the thick carpet that runs under it.
"By the time Jeeves found the body, all of the gas had been evacuated from the bathroom. The air inside was perfectly harmless to him. He switched off the fan, ran to the body, and examined it. Mr. Maxwell was dead. He rushed off to get somebody to remove the corpse, had a maid call my residence, and I came to the rescue.
"There was one last thing, though, that the handyman ingeniously thought out. Even though all the gas had been pushed out of the bathroom, there was still a lingering aftersmell - the acute smell of rotten eggs, which is what the remains of cyanide gas smells like. I, of course, smelt this upon my first visit to the bathroom and thought nothing of it, which is exactly what was hoped for. Nobody's going to pay any attention to bad smells in a bathroom, especially one in which somebody had died. Bill resumed work in other sections of the house, not daring to re-reverse the fan or remove the container of cyanide. I'm sure that the thought crossed his mind, but with my presence and Sam holding the crowd of you here at gunpoint, he was never able to complete the task."
Bill stood wide-eyed and astonished across the room. "Wh-wh-whyÉI thought I had dunnit so well, too."
"It was done well. Very well. But you hadn't counted upon my superior intellectual problem-solving abilities being present."
Sam coughed at this.
"I have already taken the liberty of calling the policeÉand they should be hereÉright aboutÉ" he pausedÉ"now!"
The doorbell rang. Jerry turned to Sam. "A little rusty, eh?"
He ran to answer the door, and led the police officers in. They took Bill, handcuffed him, and led him off. The cars quickly drove off the premises, with only the howl of the siren left to be heard several minutes later.
"Mr. McDonald! Excellent work!" praised the crowd of enthusiastic onlookers. Jerry bowed, smiled for pictures, and made the best of his crowd's fascination.
"How can we ever repay you?" said a much-relieved, cheerful Mrs. Maxwell.
"Oh, we'll worry about the payment later," he said, thinking of his snotty landlord. "As for now, I really must be going. I have a little bit of slumber to catch up on myself," he added, jokingly.
The group sadly, but gladly, let him go, and soon he was out the front door, getting into his car. He turned the key in the ignition, the car started with the same ominous, apocalyptic noise as it had earlier, making Sam shake his head. With a final wave to the people standing in the doorway, Jerry put the car into gear, and drove off down the road.
A while through the drive, Sam spoke up. "Well, I must say, JerryÉthat was quite brilliant! Except for one thing."
"What thing?" Jerry asked curiously.
"The fact that the butler didn't actually do it," Sam said, amusedly.
"Ah! But he did!" Jerry replied with a delighted expression on his face.
"Huh? What? What did he do?" Sam inquired, raising an eyebrow curiously.
"He made the coffee."
"But the coffee had nothing to do with itÉ"
"Ah, yes it did! It gave this certain detective a little brainpower. As Jeeves himself said, it was quite splendid."
"Was it?"
"Oh, of course! I never doubted him for an instant! Maxwell House coffee is always good to the last drop!"
"Very funny, Jerry. Very funny."