Pudd'nhead Wilson Chapter 20: The Murderer Chuckles Summary

  • It's the big day of the trial.
  • The courthouse is packed. Tons of the townspeople including Chambers and Roxy come to watch the show.
  • Pembroke Howard argues his case against Luigi and Angelo. The evidence is pretty damaging; things aren't looking too good for the twins.
  • Pudd'nhead begins his case in defense of the twins before the court adjourns for the day.
  • Heh, heh. Tom is feeling super smug that he's going to get away with murder. He's so confident that he decides to go to Pudd'nhead's house and bust on him about how pathetic his defense of the twins is—typical Tom, right?
  • Just before he arrives, Pudd'nhead is looking over his fingerprint collection, checking to see if he's overlooked anything important.
  • Knock, knock. Tom greets Pudd'nhead and picks up one of the glass strips that holds some of the fingerprints Pudd'nhead has collected.
  • Tom looks through the collection and finds his fingerprints from when he was a kid. He asks Pudd'head a question about the fingerprints and Pudd'nhead looks closely at the glass that contains Tom's fingerprints.
  • Pudd'nhead can't believe what he sees and practically faints.
  • What in the world is wrong, Tom wants to know. Pudd'nead tells him he needs to go to bed right away so Tom takes off.
  • The minute he leaves, Pudd'nhead examines all of Tom's fingerprints and revels in the fact that he's cracked the case: the prints are identical to the fingerprint on the knife. Wooohooo!
  • But then Pudd'nhead notices that the first set of fingerprints taken when Tom was just a baby (before Roxy made the switch) aren't the same as the others.
  • Pudd'nhead puzzles over this mystery for a while, but then decides to call it quits for the night and go to bed.
  • Before long, though, Pudd'nhead wakes up and tries to recall the dream he just had in which he solved the mystery.
  • Apparently recalling what happened in the dream, Pudd'nhead runs over to his fingerprint collection and cries out, "for twenty-three years no man has ever suspected it," suggesting that he figured out the babies were switched.