An almost-perfect crime!

Inspector Ryan was baffled. Never had he come across such a case in all his life. The constables stood nearby, looking at each other, one of them holding his nose. “No fingerprints anywhere?” the Inspector asked in exasperation. “None, save those of the murdered lady”, said Rosby, one of the constables. “And this bit of black cloth on a nail near the back door.”

“But she was strangled to death! There are no signs of a break-in, and she seems to have known the visitor. The teacup, the sofa, well.... the murderer must have left his prints somewhere, if not on the victim’s neck!”“He must have used gloves”, said Gilham, the other constable.

“Or he must have wiped off his prints everywhere, before he left!” added Rosby.“There wasn’t enough time for that”, Ryan said. “Remember what her neighbour Lucy told us? She could see the shadows in the living room as the curtains weren’t drawn; she saw them talking awhile before the scuffle broke out. Says she sounded the alarm as soon as she saw the woman dropping dead to the floor.”

“The murderer seems to have escaped from the back door, for she says she didn’t see anyone coming out from the front of the house”, added Rosby.“Call her in again”, said Ryan.Lucy came in, trembling and whimpering, still in her night dress. “Quite the nosy kind”, thought Ryan to himself.

“Mrs. Lucy, why were you peeping into your neighbour’s house at ten in the night?” asked Ryan.“Oh, I wasn’t peeping, Sir, I beg your pardon, but it was there for all to see, and I was the unlucky one who happened to see it..”“So do you usually stand on the balcony and observe the goings-on in your neighbour’s house?” Ryan sounded stern.

“Ooooh, never, I would never do such a thing; it’s just that Mrs. Drake is a widow and hardly has any visitors, and she mostly never leaves the house, and it was quite surprising to see someone in her living room at that time. Having a cup of tea with her, he was”, said Lucy, stopping to catch her breath. “I thought it must be her son, come back after all, to give some comfort to his poor mother, but then this looked like a taller, well-dressed, portly gentleman—”

“How do you know that?” interrupted Ryan sharply. “You just said you saw only shadows in the living room.”“Well, I think, he was wearing a proper suit and had a hat on— I can’t be sure”, said Lucy. “But her son Sean is nothing like that, mind you! He’s nothing more than a tramp, wandering the streets, stealing food and money, and refuses to work.

Talks like a mad man sometimes. Used to go about saying he’s the heir of a wealthy family. Poor Mrs. Drake! She finally had to throw him out, he was such a troublemaker.”She lowered her voice to a whisper. “In fact, I am pretty sure that he must have killed his mother for the house and the little bit of savings she’s put in the bank”, she said.

“But you said the shadow looked nothing like the son”, said Ryan. “Well, I’m not really sure about that, it might have been him after all”, said Lucy slowly. “Maybe Mrs. Drake allowed him in because she thought he had changed his ways.”
Two days later, Sean was picked up from the streets and dragged away to the police station.

“What were you doing on the night of the 21st? Where were you?” Ryan asked.“I was lying in a ditch, drunk and passed out”, Sean grinned fearlessly, showing his yellow-stained teeth. “ Do you have an alibi?” Ryan asked. “I don’t have an alibi but I could sing you a lullaby”, replied the man. Ryan frowned.

His clothes were tattered and torn. It was quite possible that the bit of cloth they got from the nail outside the back door was torn from his coat. “Don’t you have another set of clothes to wear?”“T’is the only set I have”, he said.

“Did you kill your mother for her money?” Ryan questioned him. “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t”, Sean laughed loudly and nervously. Ryan was losing his patience. Sean looked every bit the mad man that Lucy had described him to be.

The constables had more startling news to tell as they examined Sean. “He has no fingerprints”, Rosby told Ryan in a hoarse whisper. “It’s really strange, but his hands are absolutely flat. No ridges and grooves like that of normal people.”

“That explains it, I suppose”, said Ryan, “why we couldn’t find any fingerprints at the site of the murder. Press charges against him and we will produce him before the magistrate on the morrow.”

But the whole night, Sean kept screaming in his cell. “I haven’t killed anyone. I haven’t killed my mother!” Then he would sob for a while and laugh for a while. Ryan was highly disturbed. Lucy’s description of the murderer hadn’t mentioned such erratic behaviour. He had a talk with the forensic examiner the next day.

“The boy has Adermatoglyphia”, said the examiner, after he had gone over the case. “It’s a rare genetic condition, which one is born with, where the person has no fingerprints on his palms or soles. But how is that possible? The condition has been identified in just four families in our country, and all of their details have been documented. But I don’t think the name of “Drake” is one of those!”

“Which are these families? Maybe they are related in some way, and I am missing a clue”, Ryan said. “It could have been someone else with the condition who has committed the crime.” Ryan took the details of the four families. When he came back to the station, Rosby had more news.

“We came to know that Mrs. Drake visited one Mr. Willington at his Manor two days ago.” Ryan looked at his papers. The Willington family was one of the four families affected with Adermatoglyphia!

He made a visit to Mr. Willington, who didn’t seem at all happy to receive him. “We are an honourable family and we wouldn’t be mixed up in cases like these”, said the old man. “That lady did visit us, but she came to ask us for a donation to some charitable trust. We sent her away.”

No matter how Ryan questioned him, Mr. Willington was stubborn. He seemed to remember nothing about the victim, and refused to talk any further. Ryan gave up. “I believe you have a son and a daughter. May I meet them?”
A flash of fear flickered in the old man’s eyes for a fleeting second, which died down almost immediately. “You’re mistaken, Inspector. I only have a daughter. There is no son.”

Ryan wanted to persist, but the man got up and called for his butler to bring him his coat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment”, he said, as Ryan watched him putting on his coat and leaving.

The next day, the murderer was produced before the Magistrate by Inspector Ryan. The case created a wide uproar, as the murderer was none other than Mr. Willington, multi-millionaire and businessman who was charged with murdering his daughter-in-law, Susan Drake.

“Your records showed that Mr. Willington had a son and a daughter”, said Inspector Ryan to the Forensic Examiner over a glass of beer. “The man disowned his son when he married against his wishes long ago. His son died too, but it is not included in your records as he started living under the false name of ‘Drake’.

Susan Drake had a hard time bringing up her only son, and went to this man to request him to accept Sean as his grandson, if not as his heir. The man threw her out then. He later went back to negotiate. When she refused to give up her claim, he killed her in a fit of rage.”

“But how did you decide so quickly it was him?”“It is true that Sean has inherited the condition from his father. But I knew it was Mr.Willington when I saw him putting on his coat while I was at the Manor. It had a hole at the back, which corresponded exactly to the piece of cloth on the nail.”

- Sneha Verghese is a research scholar in Journalism at Osmania University, Hyderabad. Also a post-graduate in biotechnology, she loves teaching and writing stories for kids to explain scientific concepts