The Case of the Homicidal Hunter
(pgs 53-54 in "Solv-A-Crime" by A.C. Gordon)
Sheriff Henderson is on the phone. “Hunting accident. Peculiar kind of hunting, too. With bows and arrows. One of the hunters ended up as the bull’s eye. I think it was murder. I’ll pick you up in 10 minutes.” The sheriff never wastes words.
You drive with him up a mountain road until a forest ranger flags you down. The ranger leads you thru dense undergrowth to a clearing where three somber-looking men are standing. Your eyes follow theirs – and you see a man’s body pinned flat against a pine tree by an arrow, the shaft protruding horizontally from his blood-stained chest.
One of the hunters blurts out, “My name is Arlen. I was down the slope, stalking some game, when I heard Tom here cry out! I struggled up the hill and found him pinned to that tree by that arrow! It was too late to do anything!”
Ed Henson was the second. “I was closet to Tom, I guess – on the other side of this clearing. But my back was toward him, and I was about to make my way to higher ground. Then I heard the arrow whistle by me from up there – and then I heard Tom crying out in pain!”
“Oh no you don’t!” cries the third man, Vernon Lane, “That’s a barefaced lie, and you know it! You’re trying to pin this murder on me! I was up that slope all right, but I didn’t shoot that arrow!”
Then you say, “If all of you are telling the truth about your whereabouts at the time of the killing, one of you has practically confessed.”
Whom do you suspect and why?
Sorry this is an easy one, I have other posts to do today!
Sheriff Henderson is on the phone. “Hunting accident. Peculiar kind of hunting, too. With bows and arrows. One of the hunters ended up as the bull’s eye. I think it was murder. I’ll pick you up in 10 minutes.” The sheriff never wastes words.
You drive with him up a mountain road until a forest ranger flags you down. The ranger leads you thru dense undergrowth to a clearing where three somber-looking men are standing. Your eyes follow theirs – and you see a man’s body pinned flat against a pine tree by an arrow, the shaft protruding horizontally from his blood-stained chest.
One of the hunters blurts out, “My name is Arlen. I was down the slope, stalking some game, when I heard Tom here cry out! I struggled up the hill and found him pinned to that tree by that arrow! It was too late to do anything!”
Ed Henson was the second. “I was closet to Tom, I guess – on the other side of this clearing. But my back was toward him, and I was about to make my way to higher ground. Then I heard the arrow whistle by me from up there – and then I heard Tom crying out in pain!”
“Oh no you don’t!” cries the third man, Vernon Lane, “That’s a barefaced lie, and you know it! You’re trying to pin this murder on me! I was up that slope all right, but I didn’t shoot that arrow!”
Then you say, “If all of you are telling the truth about your whereabouts at the time of the killing, one of you has practically confessed.”
Whom do you suspect and why?
Sorry this is an easy one, I have other posts to do today!
2 comments:
Hmmm- since the arrow was horizontal to the ground, it must have been Ed. Had either of the other two shot him, the arrow would have been angled.
That was my conjecture as well because if it is horizontal, it must be Ed. But I can not believe that someone named Ed would be a murderer. I think he was cleaning it and it went off. Or it was as Sheriff Henderson stated, an accident. Though, I am suspicious of Sheriff Henderson. First he claims he is going to pick me up in 10 minutes, but then I am driving up to the mountain alone, where I meet a ranger... what happened to the Sheriff? I think he killed Tom and tried to pin it on Ed and was in the process of fleeing the country while I was sent to investigate his crime. If we believe everyone, Ed heard the Sheriff shoot the arrow past him, then he called me to tell me of the accident.
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