“According to six eyewitnesses,” said Captain Jack Parker, handing a manila folder to Detective Sergeant Raymond Stone, “a man named Richard Townsend entered a telephone booth last night, closed the door, and toppled dead a few minutes later with an ice pick in his back. Crazy, huh?”

Stone grunted a monosyllabic affirmative. “Are you sure it’s murder?”

“A blade in the back usually is. Read the report Paul Decker turned in. You know him. Meticulous.”

“Why don’t you keep him on it?” Stone suggested.

“He prefers to stick to the night shift. Decker’s excellent at accumulating details, but he’s not keen on these brain busters. He thought you might be better suited to solve this one. So do I. I’ve notified Curtis and Lissner to report to you.”

Parker returned to his office, leaving Stone to glean the salient facts from the report, which was a typical Decker job, complete with a detailed account of the crime, statements of eyewitnesses, photographs, charts showing the location of the booth, and its exact description and measurements. The works.

Stone marveled at the thoroughness of the report. He skimmed through to familiarize himself with the details. A large number of fingerprints had been found both outside and inside the booth, but only Townsend’s were on the phone itself. Decker had noted that the usual litter – candy wrappers, cigarette butts, soda pop cans, and so on – was outside the booth. Each item found inside was listed separately. There were two crumpled Doublemint gum wrappers, a foot long piece of dirty string, a Dr Pepper bottle cap, a scrap of paper with a grocery list written on it, one Lucky Strike stub, and a two inch piece of shiny black electrical tape that had been found stuck to the glass at the bottom of the booth. Decker had made the notation that the tape probably had been left by the telephone repairman who serviced the booth just prior to Townsend’s using it.

The death weapon was an ice pick with a blade four and three-quarter inches long, set in a round wooden handle a fraction over one half inch in diameter and four and a half inches long. The ice pick was in the folder, and Stone noted that although the handle was newly painted with shiny red enamel, the blade showed signs of years of use. It was an excellent homemade job, perhaps manufactured especially for the murder.

The results of the post mortem were not in yet, but the medical examiner had speculated that death had probably been the result of a puncture wound through the heart. The pick had penetrated just below the left shoulder blade in a manner virtually impossible for it to have been self-inflicted. The photographs showed Townsend twisted in a heap on the floor, the handle of the weapon clearly visible in his back. The fold-in door was completely closed and held in place by the victim’s body. The door had had to be taken off so that Townsend could be removed.

Nothing out of the ordinary had been found on the body, nor was anything conspicuous by its absence. Townsend had carried the normal items a man might be expected to have on his person.

Stone sighed and leaned back. Although the report was a masterpiece of detail, it contained nothing to indicate who had put the ice pick into Townsend’s back or how the deed had been accomplished.

At nine Harvey Curtis and Fred Lissner came in. Stone assigned the detectives to a check on Townsend’s background, personal and business, and told them to report back at noon. Having come to the conclusion that the scene of the crime was the most significant aspect of the investigation so far, Stone decided to visit Lew Hall’s Service Station at the corner of Halliday and Twenty-seventh Streets.

Lew Hall was eager to tell Stone everything he had told the “other cops.”

“This guy drives in about nine last night, tells me to fill it up, and gets change for a dollar to make a phone call. I see him go into the booth and dial.”

Stone noted that the booth, except for its aluminum framework, was all glass, enabling him to see straight through to the concrete block wall beyond.

“While I’m cleaning the windshield, I glance over, see him hang up, and turn to open the door. But before he gets it open, he staggers backwards, then falls on the floor. I get the hell over there quick. Some other customers seen it too and hurry over with me. We see through the glass how he’s slumped over with this dagger or whatever in his back. I don’t know whether he’s dead or not. He could still be breathing, but he doesn’t move none. We try to open the door, only his body wedges it shut. I call the cops. They have to take off the door. The whole thing takes half an hour. By then he’s already dead.”

“You didn’t see anyone else by the booth?”

“Nary a soul,” Lew replied. “I been thinking, though. There was one other person that might have seen it. The phone booth had an out-of-order sign on it last night. The service man fixed it just before the dead guy drives in. Matter of fact, he was still at the station when the guy was in the booth. Over there at the air hoses.” Lew indicated a small service island at the left of the station. “Probably didn’t see nothing, though, the way he was bent over his tires. Must’ve drove off just before I ran to the booth.”

“Did you notice the truck’s number or get a good look at him?”

“Naw, you know how it is. They all look alike. A repairman and his truck. Guess I should say repairperson. Could have been a gal under that uniform and cap. Just noticed the… Excuse me a minute.” He dashed out to collect from a self-service customer who appeared ready to drive off without paying.

Stone studied the booth. It was a good thirty feet from any part of the station building and the same distance from the street. The door of the booth faced the station, so that anyone making a call would have his back to the pumps. On the right side of the booth were parking spaces for several cars. A small self-service air and water island was halfway between the booth and the service bay area, exactly twenty-eight feet, four inches from the booth, according to Decker’s precise measurements. The rear of the booth was no more than two feet from a seven foot concrete block wall, on the other side of which was a vacant lot.

Stone walked over and examined the structure carefully. It had suffered no vandalism. There were no holes in any of the panes of glass and the aluminum framework was intact. When the door was closed, the booth was completely sealed with the exception of a two inch ventilation space around the bottom of the structure. Stone kneeled and tried to reach into the booth with his right hand. It wouldn’t go beyond the wrist. Impossible for anyone to get an ice pick into Townsend’s back that way.

Inside the booth, Stone saw that the phone was attached to the right rear corner. To the left was a narrow shelf for the telephone directories, but both the yellow and white pages were hanging from it by their short lengths of chain. Even though it was daylight, Stone noticed that the booth light was not working. He recalled that Decker had stated in his report that the bulb was burned out. The telephone itself was in perfect working order.

Shaking his head, Stone walked back to Lew, who was leaning against a pump watching him.

“You said he opened the door and then staggered backwards?” Stone queried.

“No,” Lew replied. “He didn’t get the door opened. Just touched the handle, near as I could tell. You think someone threw the ice pick at him and he fell back into the booth?”

“It’s a logical conclusion.”

“Well, it’s a good thing there were five other witnesses, or you might think I could’ve done it. The door was closed. It was like some invisible man pulled him backwards and shoved a shiv through his ribs. Only I’m tellin’ you there ain’t no one else in the booth or anywhere near it. And you can’t throw nothing through solid glass without breaking it. You got a tough case here, sergeant.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Stone admitted. “Well, Mr Hall, thanks for your help. I may drop back for another visit.”

A check with the other witnesses verified Lew’s version and gave Stone absolutely no new information. He returned to headquarters somewhat discouraged. He hadn’t a thing that wasn’t already in Decker’s fine report.

The autopsy report was lying on his desk. It proved to be a bombshell. The coroner had discovered that the ice pick wound had not been the cause of death. The point of the pick had been coated with curare, and it was the poison that had caused Townsend’s death. The M.E. believed the wound alone would not have been fatal if the victim had received medical attention. He theorized that the poison had been used to make certain death would occur if the blade missed the heart.

There were other surprises in the report. Traces of opiates had been found in Townsend’s blood and he had a malignant brain tumor. The M.E. didn’t speculate about the significance of these two facts, leaving that to Stone.

Stone tossed the report into his out-basket just as Curtis and Lissner came in. “Well?” he said as the two detectives plopped onto straightbacked chairs by his desk.

“It’s disappointing, Ray,” Curtis said. “Never saw a guy less likely to get murdered than Townsend. Happily married. Has two teenaged sons. Haven’t been able to dig up a ghost of a motive.”

“Townsend himself?” Stone suggested gently.

“Age forty-nine. Quiet type, almost shy. No known enemies. We talked with dozens of people. Everybody really liked him. Said he was the type who wouldn’t hurt a fly. No one could imagine him ever getting murdered.”

“Business?”

“Ran a bookstore with his wife. Not lucrative, but he earned a living.”

“Will? Insurance?”

“Haven’t had time to check on those,” Lissner put in.

“Did you talk to his wife?”

“No, not yet,” Curtis said. “Thought you’d prefer to do that. She’s still under her doctor’s care.”

“All right. Go on out and do some more digging. Get a complete financial picture. Give the store a good going over, check on his insurance, and see if he left a will.”

“Okay if we get some lunch first?” Lissner asked.

“Certainly. But don’t make it a seven – course meal. I want some answers fast.”

Helen Townsend was very attractive, even in her grief. Wearing a pink quilted bed jacket, she was propped up in bed with several pillows behind her when Dr Wagner ushered Stone into the room. Her dark, wavy hair framed a face made pale by her ordeal. To Stone, the whole story was in her eyes, dry but still glazed from shock and recent tears. Stone knew she would be devastatingly beautiful if her face were not devoid of color and if she were smiling.

Dr Wagner, tall, ruggedly handsome, and just on the underside of fifty, stood by like a mother hen protecting her chicks. “You must realize, sergeant, that Mrs Townsend has suffered severe shock. I hope you’ll be discreet in your questioning.”

“It’s all right, Kurt,” Helen Townsend said. “I want to do everything I can to help.” She looked at Stone and waited for him to begin.

“I’ll try to be brief, Mrs Townsend,” Stone said gently. “I’m fully aware of the strain you’re under, but I’m certain you’re anxious to learn the reason for your husband’s death and who is responsible for it. I’ll have to ask you some forthright questions. Do you know of any reason why someone might want to murder your husband?”

She swallowed, and spoke slowly in a way that tugged at Stone’s heart. “No. I just can’t understand. It’s utterly inconceivable. If he’d been the victim of an accident, I could reconcile myself to it. But that he could be murdered is beyond my comprehension.”

“Could there be another woman? A jealous husband?”

Dr Wagner spoke sharply to Stone. “Look here, I object to your asking Helen such questions at this time.”

“It’s all right, Kurt. No, Mr. Stone, there was no other woman, no jealous husband, and I have no lover who would want to kill my husband. One of the things I’m very grateful for is my seventeen years with Rich. We were completely faithful to one another.”

Stone hoped she was right. “You worked with your husband at the store, Mrs Townsend. Wasn’t it customary for you to come home together?”

“No, I always left about two, in order to be here when the boys get home from school. A young college girl, Janice Carter, comes in shortly before I leave and also works on Saturday. Rich usually closed the store at six, but last night he stayed to check a shipment of books. I expected him about ten.”

“The station he called from is at least three miles out of the way if he was driving here from the shop. I’m wondering if he went there for a particular purpose. He made a telephone call just before he was killed.”

Helen Townsend bit her lips. “I know,” she said in a choked voice. “I know. He called me.” She buried her head in her arms and sobbed uncontrollably.

Stone didn’t know what to say. He had never expected to find out whom Townsend had called. Why had he driven several miles out of his way to call his wife? Why not call her from the store?

Dr Wagner had opened his medical bag and was preparing an injection. “I’ll have to ask you to leave now, sergeant. Helen is in no condition to continue.”

“All right, doctor, but, please, just one more question. Mrs Townsend, what did your husband say to you?”

Dr Wagner injected the sedative.

“He said he was on his way home. Then he said goodbye in a strange way. It was,” she fought for control, “almost as if he knew he wouldn’t be seeing me or the boys again. ‘‘ She closed her eyes and lay back quietly. Stone couldn’t tell whether she was asleep or not.

Closing the bedroom door behind him, Dr Wagner escorted Stone to the living room.

“I’m sorry if I disturbed her,” he apologized. “Please let me know when I can talk to her again.”

“Not for a day or two at least,” the doctor said. “Now I think you’d better go.”

“Of course. But may I ask you one or two questions?”

“What do you want to know?”

“The autopsy showed traces of drugs in Townsend’s blood. I’d like that explained. Was he an addict or had you given him medication?”

Wagner considered for a moment. “Rich Townsend was no drug addict. As a matter of fact he took the prescription only with reluctance. About four months ago, he came in for a checkup. He mentioned he’d been having headaches which aspirin didn’t help. I gave him a thorough exam and found he had a brain tumor. Inoperable. I told him he had six months to a year at the most. He took it better than I expected and asked me not to tell Helen or the boys. I probably will now that he’s gone. It might help.”

“I see. Tell me, was he in much pain?”

“He said no, but he could have been lying. A tumor like that can be relatively painless at first, but as the pressure increases, so does the pain. I gave him a prescription, and I suppose he had it filled. He wasn’t a great talker, you know. Preferred to suffer in silence.”

“Would the end have come quickly, or would it have been a long, lingering one?”

“Hard to say exactly,” Wagner said. “He might have had several months in severe agony, or he could have gone just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “The odds are for the longer period, but we’ll never know for certain now. I can’t see that it has anything to do with his murder. Or are you thinking it was suicide?”

“We’re looking into all possibilities,” Stone said. “I need all the information I can get. Have you been his doctor long?”

“For over sixteen years,” Wagner admitted. “I’ve been his friend even longer.”

“Do you know if he took out an insurance policy recently?”

“I don’t think so. I happen to give all the physicals for the agency that insures him. I couldn’t have signed a favorable exam report, which is required before a policy is issued. I suppose he could have gone to another company, but I don’t think he could have fooled the doctors. You might check with his agent, Hal Harris. I’m sure he’ll know more about it.”

“I’ll do that,” Stone replied, moving toward the front door. He turned to face the physician. “By the way, doctor, do you happen to know anything about curare?” He noticed his question brought a slight smile from Dr Wagner.

“I don’t wish to seem immodest, but I happen to be an expert in that field. Why do you ask?”

“The coroner has attributed Mr. Townsend’s death to curare on the point of the ice pick.” Stone paused slightly to allow Wagner to make a comment, but the doctor betrayed no reaction to the news. “Now I’m wondering how easy it would be for a person to get his hands on some of that poison.”

“Not too easy for a non-medical person unless he has friends along the Amazon,” Wagner replied. “Curare does have medicinal uses. Someone working for a pharmaceutical firm might be able to obtain it. Say, here’s a coincidence. Some crude curare I had in my office was stolen just a few weeks ago.”

Stone’s eyebrows shot upward. “Oh?”

“You can get complete details from your burglary department,” Wagner said. “When I reported the theft, I assumed the burglar was a drug addict, since my entire supply of drugs was taken. But it could have been the curare he was after, and he took the rest as a cover-up.”

“Possibly. May I ask why you had such a bizarre poison in your office?”

“It’s not so bizarre, sergeant,” Wagner explained. “It’s quite a natural hunting tool for South American Indians, and refined forms of it are often used in the medical field as a muscle relaxant. For the past several years I’ve been doing research to find additional uses for it. As an avocation I’ve made many canoe trips on the Amazon River, and I became interested there in curare. I was able to obtain a considerable quantity of it for research purposes.”

“Is it always fatal?”

“If the dose is large enough. In its crude form, curare is a deadly poison when injected into the victim’s bloodstream. Death occurs because, to put it simply, the respiratory muscles are paralyzed, and the victim dies because he is unable to breathe. If it’s injected into a vein, a man could die almost instantaneously. With a smaller dose, a person would live longer, depending on his size, and might even recover. There are antidotes which, if administered soon enough, can reverse the effect and save the victim’s life. If taken orally, the poison is ineffective. This is why the natives are able to eat the meat of poisoned animals.”

“Who knew you had the poison in your office?”

“Only several thousand local TV viewers, in addition to my office staff and a few patients.”

Stone paused to let this startling news sink in. “Would you mind explaining?”

“Not at all. It’s really very simple. I’ve taken movies of all my Amazon journeys and show them on TV. Channel 12 has a program called Adventurous Voyage, which I appeared on a few weeks ago. During the interview portion of the show, the host asked me questions about the poison the Indians in the film had used to kill game animals. I explained everything, even mentioning that I was doing research with the poison in my office lab. I didn’t know someone was going to steal it in order to kill Rich Townsend.”

“We don’t know where the curare came from, but it’s a good bet it could have been yours. You don’t suppose Mr Townsend could have taken some from your office?”

The doctor reflected a moment. “He had the opportunity. But for what purpose?”

“Perhaps to bring a swift end to his painful headaches,” Stone suggested.

“Not Rich. He wasn’t one to take his own life. Yet if the pain were unbearable…”

Stone extended his hand. “Thank you, Dr Wagner. You’ve given me some very useful information. I’ll try not to disturb Mrs Townsend again unless it is absolutely necessary.” The front door was closed behind him, and Stone returned to headquarters.

Curtis’s second report was in Stone’s in-basket. Lissner had yet to return from the bookstore. Curtis had been able to ascertain that all of Townsend’s property was held jointly with his wife. The big surprise was that Townsend had taken out life insurance for half a million dollars just three months previously. Stone whistled and gave Hal Harris a call.

Harris was on edge. Stone could hear the worry in his voice as he explained the situation. “Mr Townsend had all of his business and personal insurance with my agency. Until about three months ago he had only twenty-five thousand in term on his life. Then he came in and wanted a policy for half a million. That’s not so uncommon nowadays. You know, when a man reaches his late forties he begins to be a little more concerned about what might happen to his family if he should suddenly die. He wants a lot more protection. I was only too happy to service his insurance needs. I sent him to Dr Kurt Wagner, who does all our insurance physicals. Townsend came back with a report stating he was in excellent health and fully insurable. However, he did seem somewhat concerned about making the monthly premiums.”

“Did you try to talk him out of it?”

“Of course not. My business is trying to talk people into buying insurance. He paid the first month’s premium right away, of course, but he was considerably late with the second, and missed the third completely. The policy is still in force because there’s a thirty-day grace period. Sergeant, the company that underwrote the policy is not going to like paying. Any chance it was suicide?”

“You’re the second person to ask about that today,” Stone replied. “All I can say is that we are exploring all possibilities. Does his policy have a suicide clause?”

“You bet. Standard two-year,” Harris said. “By the way, sergeant. I’ve got a very special policy for police officers. If you’re interested, I’ll send you a brochure.”

“Well, thank you very much, Mr Harris. I’ll get in touch with you if I need any more information.”

Stone hung up and mulled over the conversation. Dr Wagner had stated he could not have signed a favorable physical exam report for Townsend, yet Harris had just told him that Townsend had a clean bill of health from Dr Wagner. Why would Harris lie? Stone could think of no reason. Why would Wagner lie? Townsend was his friend, and he might do it for a friend, especially if he were in love with the friend’s wife. The doctor could have wanted to be certain the window would be well provided for after her husband’s death. Stone decided it would be interesting to see a copy of that report.

Lissner’s rushing in caused Stone’s train of thought to run off the tracks. The young detective had a smile a mile wide across his face.

“I see you’ve had some luck,” Stone remarked.

Lissner could hardly contain himself, but he wanted to milk the suspense. “You call it luck. I call it hard digging.”

“Well, let’s have it.”

The burly detective took a crumpled slip of paper from his pocket and spread it out on the desk. “Found this in the wastebasket in Townsend’s office at the bookstore.”

Stone read the note. Call from Lew’s station – 9 P.M.

“Know who wrote it?”

“Townsend himself,” Lissner replied. “The bookstore was closed today, of course, but Townsend’s salesclerk, Janice Carter, showed up while I was there and helped me search. She identified the handwriting. The paper’s from a pad by the telephone. Someone set him up for the kill.”

“Could be,” Stone said. “On the other hand, he could have simply written himself a reminder. But it does show he knew where Lew’s is located. Didn’t even have to write down the address. Did you come up with anything else?” He noticed that Lissner was still grinning.

“Not much. Everything was in good shape, especially Janice. Now there’s one bright chick. When I mentioned insurance, she dug these out of the files. I can’t see they have anything to do with the case.”

He handed Stone two letters. The first one was from some insurance company’s main office, informing Townsend that the enclosed check for $3,482.87 was in full payment for his accident claim, policy number 987 756 32. The second letter was from Hal Harris, thanking Townsend for returning the insurance company’s check for $3,482.87, which had been sent to him inadvertently by the head office of one of the firms Harris represented. The letter went on to explain that such checks were normally sent to the local representative, who then presented them to the claimant. Through a computer error, the check had been erroneously sent directly to Townsend; moreover, it actually was intended for another Richard Townsend, a man who had been involved in an automobile accident. Harris thanked Townsend and commended him for his honesty in returning a check he could easily have cashed.

“More evidence that Townsend was a real nice guy,” Lissner commented.

Stone just hummed, not mentioning the matter of the spurious physical report. Or was it spurious? Dr Wagner might have lied about telling Townsend about his tumor. He had volunteered much confidential medical information. He could have given Townsend a favorable report for personal reasons. A beautiful widow with half a million could be sweet temptation.

After Curtis returned, without much useful information, Stone sent him and Lissner out with instructions to check very carefully on Dr Wagner, Hal Harris, Lew Hall, Janice Carter, and any other close friends or business associates of Townsend. He specifically instructed them to be alert for any connections one might have with another.

For a few minutes Stone sat thinking. The threads of evidence he had were now beginning to form a pattern in his mind. Then he called the telephone company. As he had expected, he was told that the phone booth at Lew’s station had not been out of order and that no service truck had been dispatched to repair it. Mr Larking, the manager, added that the truck seen at Lew’s was probably one that had been stolen and was later found abandoned a mile or so from the station. Larking was of the opinion the truck had been taken by a gang of coin box burglars. Numerous other trucks had been “borrowed” for a few hours during the past several days. It was the gang’s M.O. to place an out-of-order sign on a booth, then send a “service” man, who calmly emptied the coin box as he “repaired” the phone. The company had lost several thousands of dollars in the past few days.

Although Larking said officers from Burglary had already checked the stolen truck, Stone insisted that it be kept out of service until he personally released it. He thanked Larking for his cooperation, hung up, and dialed Burglary. Sergeant Kendrick answered.

“Kenny,” Stone asked, “what can you give me on the phone truck stolen last night?”

“Not much. Wiped clean. Not a single usable print. We think it was used by the coin box looters. It’s their M.O. all the way, and they’re known to be working this area.”

“How much was taken from the booth at Lew’s station?”

“Funny you should ask,” Kendrick replied. “Nothing.”

“How do you explain that?”

“On that kind of job they use a key or pick the lock and put everything back in order. Ordinarily we don’t know a booth’s been hit until a company collector opens the box and finds only a few coins. We wouldn’t have checked the box at Lew’s station if Townsend hadn’t been killed there, but when we did, we found it nearly full. I figure Townsend’s coming scared the guy off. He was probably waiting around the water and air hoses until the coast was clear so he could have another try. When he sees all the commotion, he beats it.”

“But the phony repairman was there almost ten minutes before Townsend arrived. Wouldn’t that have given him time to clean out the box?”

“Normally more than enough. But he could have run into difficulties. The phone company’s been installing tougher locks recently.”

“Sounds logical,” Stone conceded. “Okay, Kenny, thanks. Ring me if anything you find ties in with Townsend’s death.”

Kendrick’s explanation fit Lew Hall’s story all the way, but Stone had an uneasy feeling that something wasn’t as logical as Kendrick’s version made it seem. The sudden arrival of Curtis and Lissner interrupted his thoughts.

The subordinates dragged up chairs and plopped into them. It had been a tedious shift and Stone could tell from their demeanor that they were anxious to call it quits for the day and go home. Stone felt the same.

“Okay, boys, let’s hear it.”

“Hell, Ray,” Curtis complained, “we’re up a blind alley. We can’t find a motive for anyone to kill Townsend.”

“Just tell me what you’ve learned.”

“Wagner’s been a friend of Townsend for nearly twenty years. He’s been a widower for six. No children. Admittedly he’s fond of Helen Townsend, but we couldn’t come up with any evidence of hanky-panky. Wagner knew Townsend had only months to live. All he had to do was sit around and wait if he wanted the wife. He’s got a good practice. Makes great money. Several years ago he helped out Townsend financially.” Curtis unwrapped a stick of chewing gum and slid it into his mouth. He caught Stone looking at him. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not if you keep it noiseless. Continue.”

Curtis shifted the wad to the side of his mouth. “Hal Harris moves in an entirely different social circle than Townsend did. He’s the country club type. Young, dynamic. Hell, he’s only twenty-nine, but he has an extremely lucrative business. He has a gorgeous wife, no kids. His only connection with Townsend is that he happens to be his insurance agent.”

“What about any others? Lew Hall, the bookstore girl?”

Lissner stirred uneasily. “Nothing there, Ray. Janice Carter is just a college student who works part time at the bookstore. No romantic involvement with Townsend. She’s got a steady boyfriend. Townsend bought his gas regularly at a station downtown. Probably had never been to Lew’s before, but he could have driven past it many times because it’s near Dr Wagner’s office.”

“It would be great to find a motive,” Curtis added. “A motive would lead to a suspect. Now we don’t have either.”

“So where does that leave us?” Lissner answered his own question: “With an unsolvable murder. Cripes, let’s face it, this one’s impossible. No one could’ve killed Townsend from either inside or outside the booth.”

Curtis was quick to agree. “Right. And even though Townsend had a motive for suicide, he couldn’t have stabbed himself in the back. Not even a well-trained contortionist could have done that. And even if he could have, he would have left prints on the ice pick handle. And there were no prints.”

All three sat silent, thinking. After a few moments, Stone said, “Look, either it’s murder or suicide. There’s no way we can call it an accident. Now, Townsend did have a compelling motive for suicide. He had a brain tumor and could have been suffering unbearable pain. But why would he want his suicide to look like murder?”

Curtis’s eyes widened with sudden understanding. “The insurance! His wife couldn’t collect if he took his own life.”

“Right. But why such a bizarre death?” Stone wanted to know. “He could have ‘accidentally’ stepped in front of a vehicle moving at high speed or driven his car into a telephone pole, and there would have been no question of suicide or murder.”

Lissner was right on it. “Townsend was a really nice, thoughtful guy. He never wanted to do anything to hurt anyone. He probably felt a car accident might involve others or that he might be horribly injured but not killed. I think he figured if he set up an impossible murder, no one could be charged with the crime, and his family would be certain to collect his insurance. He’d taken one of those pain-killing pills and put curare on the ice pick to make death quick and certain.”

Curtis put a damper on this theory. “Yeah, but how?”

Stone didn’t answer the question. “That’s what I want you two to think about. Go on home, get a good night’s rest, and we’ll talk it over in the morning.”

After Curtis and Lissner had left, Stone sat meditating. He let his mind replay the conversation with Sergeant Kendrick and suddenly it was clear to him why Kendrick’s logical explanation was not so logical. Stone decided it would be very wise to visit the scene of the crime once more.

Lew waved to him as he pulled into the station. It was nine p.m. – about the same time that Richard Townsend had died on the previous night.

“Hi, sergeant! What can I do for you?”

Stone nodded a greeting. “Mind keeping an eye on me the way you did on Townsend?” He walked over to the booth, stepped inside, closed the door, and performed a brief experiment. Then he went back to the pumps.

“Well, Mr Hall?”

Lew pushed back his cap and scratched his forehead. “Looked like you were reenacting the crime. You went through all the same motions the dead guy did, ’cept you didn’t fall down dead. How come?”

“It helps me immensely in solving crimes if I don’t fall down dead,” Stone retorted with a suggestion of a smile. “Now pretend I’m the telephone repairman. Tell me if what I do is about what you saw last night.”

Stone drove over to the booth. He got out of his car, entered the booth, closed the door, took the receiver off the hook, put it back, bent down, straightened up, then stepped outside to the back of the booth. He knelt for a moment, then moved slowly over to the air and water service island, returned to the booth, and drove his car to the island, where he checked the tires. He walked back to where Lew was standing.

“Pretty good show, sergeant,” Lew laughed. “Like I said this morning, I didn’t see him all the time, but I’d say he did pretty much what you just went through.”

“Thanks for your help, Mr Hall.” Stone extended his hand and got a firm return shake from the station operator.

“Don’t mention it. Think it’ll help you find the killer?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all,” Stone flung over his shoulder and he got into his car and drove off.

Harvey Curtis was already in the squad room when Stone arrived at eight the following morning. Lissner came swinging in moments later with that mile-wide grin across his face.

“Looks as if you have something to tell us,” Stone said.

“Would you believe I’ve solved this one? I knew my TV watching would pay off.”

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Curtis said.

“You know how we were talking about Townsend being the only one with a motive but we couldn’t figure out how he could have got that ice pick in his back? Well, I can tell you, thanks to a movie I saw last night. It’s called Rage in Heaven. Stars Ingrid Bergman and Robert Montgomery. Both dead now, but they live on in the movies. Maybe you saw it?”

“Can’t say that I have,” Stone replied. “Well, get on with your story.”

“The picture’s about this nutty millionaire who kills himself so it looks like murder, so the guy he thinks is his wife’s lover will get executed. The guy wedges a knife in the door jamb, then walks backwards into it. He falls on the floor and it looks like somebody has stabbed him in the back. That’s how Townsend did it. He wipes the handle of the ice pick clean, and holding it by the tip, puts it into the return coin slot, which held it at the right height and angle to penetrate his heart. Then all he had to do was to be sure someone was around to witness his murder and fall backward onto the blade. Sort of hara-kiri in reverse.”

Curtis slapped his thigh. “Hot damn, Fred, that’s it! Suicide made to look like murder. That’s the only solution. Well, Ray, it looks like we can toss this one in the closed file.”

“I don’t think so,” Stone said. “Townsend didn’t kill himself; he was murdered. A very clever murder, which was supposed to be termed suicide. Just as you two did.”

“Come again,” Lissner blurted.

“I don’t get it,” Curtis admitted.

Stone sighed. The two detectives were good investigative officers, but without much imagination. “The murder of Townsend was well planned and executed. Incidentally, Fred, I thought of the ice-pick-in-the-coin-slot ploy yesterday and nearly came to the same conclusion you did. I let you go through the suicide theory to see if you would agree it was the only solution, and you did. That’s the conclusion the killer wanted. He knew we’d sooner or later figure out how Townsend could have put the ice pick into his own back. Once we thought of that, we’d call it suicide and close the case. I’ll admit I was almost ready to do it. But a few things didn’t fit.”

“Such as?” queried Lissner.

“First, the telephone booth was supposedly out of order and had been fixed just before Townsend used it. Logically the repairman’s fingerprints should have been all over the phone, yet only Townsend’s were found. That told me that the repairman must have wiped the phone clean. No legitimate repairman would have done that. He might have cleaned the phone, but his prints should have been on it. Also a genuine company employee would have replaced the burnt-out light bulb and swept out the booth before putting it back into service. This one didn’t. That tells me he was a phony.”

“But,” Lissner interrupted, “the phone company told us he was a fake attempting to rifle the coin box. We know that.”

“We know nothing of the kind,” Stone said gently. “Sure, he could have been one of the gang. Stranger coincidences have happened. But a couple of things told me he wasn’t. If he had been attempting to break into the coin box, he wouldn’t have taken down the out-of-order sign before successfully looting it and putting everything back in order. If he hadn’t opened the box in a few minutes, he would have run. He certainly wouldn’t have waited around for a second chance.”

Both Curtis and Lissner were more than a little dubious. Lissner had come up with a perfectly good explanation of Townsend’s death, and they were reluctant to abandon it. However, they could see some logic to Stone’s reasoning. “What else?” Lissner asked.

“That piece of electrical tape found in the booth. We assumed that the phone company’s serviceman left it there. But remember the phone company hadn’t sent out anyone to fix the phone, so that little piece of tape set me thinking. It convinced me that the fake repairman murdered Townsend and then drove off in the stolen truck while Lew and the other witnesses were discovering the body.”

The two detectives looked at each other and shook their heads. Curtis spoke for both of them. “I can see how Townsend could have killed himself, Ray, but what you say is impossible. The booth was completely closed. How could anyone get the ice pick into the booth without breaking the glass?”

“Very simply,” Stone explained. “He put it into the booth before Townsend entered.”

Curtis seemed puzzled. “Okay, say the ice pick was in the booth when Townsend entered. Why didn’t he see it? How’d the fake repairman get it into his back when he was at least thirty feet away?”

Stone hesitated. In his mind he had already worked out the solution to how the crime was committed and he was positive he was correct. “The ice pick wasn’t in the coin return slot. The killer used compressed air to project the ice pick into Townsend.”

“Compressed air?” The puzzled look remained on Curtis’s face.

“You know that Lew’s station has water and air hoses situated at a distance from the gas pumps, so drivers using those facilities don’t hold up the gas lines. It’s the only place in town with a setup like that. That’s why the murder occurred there. That’s why Townsend was lured to that telephone booth. It had been converted into a death chamber. The mechanics of the thing are simple. Dr Wagner’s mentioning South American Indians hunting with the poison started me thinking. The hunters use poison darts and blowguns. The killer used the ice pick as his dart and had his own version of a blowgun.”

“Sounds complicated to me,” Lissner remarked.

“Not really. This is the way I think it happened. The murderer, posing as a telephone repairman, arrives in the stolen truck ostensibly to fix the phone. Earlier he had put an out-of-order sign on the booth to keep it free for his use. He then attaches his blowgun – a light-weight cylinder of some kind, probably cardboard or plastic, and about five inches long – to the underside of the telephone book shelf with some electrical tape, so that it hangs just slightly below the shelf and points to a predetermined spot which he is sure will coincide with the victim’s heart. The shelf is just slightly lower than the shoulder blade of a man of Townsend’s height. The killer inserts the ice pick into the tube, which is just a fraction wider than the diameter of the handle. Hanging phone books effectively conceal the device from anyone entering or standing in the booth.”

Stone paused to see if Curtis or Lissner wanted to make a comment. Neither did.

“Attached to the closed end of the cylinder is a length of transparent flexible tubing – probably plastic – which the killer runs through the rear ventilation opening at the bottom of the booth. He uses a couple of short pieces of electrical tape to hold the thin hose against the framework, where it is virtually invisible. Then he goes over to the air and water island, connects his tubing to an air hose, and pretends to be checking his tires. A few seconds later Townsend enters the death chamber. The killer uses the free compressed air supplied by Lew to blow his ‘dart’ into Townsend’s back. He gives a hard tug on the tubing; the cylinder comes loose from the shelf and drops to the floor. The killer pulls it and the tubing over to his truck and drives off just as Lew and the other witnesses are rushing to the booth. Unfortunately for the murderer, one small piece of his tape remains in the booth. Any questions?”

Lissner was dubious and blunt. “Well, it’s a helluva lot more complicated than my suicide theory, but I’ll have to admit, it does account for all those bothersome little details.”

Curtis went further. “Okay, suppose we agree that the phony repairman is the killer. How do we find out who he is? He wasn’t recognized and left no fingerprints.”

The reaction of the two officers to his splendid deductions was not as enthusiastic as Stone would have liked. To give them time to appreciate his mental efforts, he got up and walked to the window. The view wasn’t good – the police parking lot with a couple of billboards thrown in for good measure. He turned to face his subordinates.

“I know,” he teased. “Don’t you?”

Both shook their heads.

“I take it we agree that Townsend was murdered. Okay, then we have to accept as fact that the murder was conceived to lead the police to label it suicide, just as you did, Fred. The murderer has to be someone who knew Townsend might have a reason to kill himself and make it appear to be murder.”

Jumping to conclusions was one of Curtis’s weaknesses. “Dr Wagner! He was the only one who knew Townsend had a tumor. And he had possession of the poison. He could easily have faked that robbery. He could get his hands on the insurance money by marrying the widow.”

“Wagner knew Townsend was going to die,” Stone said, “but I don’t believe he knew about the insurance, since he was aware Townsend was not insurable. And even if he did know about it, he had no motive to kill Townsend, since the man was going to die in a few months. Now, we know that Townsend didn’t tell his family about his illness, and Wagner says he told no one. I believe him. But Townsend himself may have told another person, and I’m certain he did.”

Curtis and Lissner sat there with open mouths.

“Fred, get a warrant and search for rubber or plastic tubing, red paint, and electrical tape. Also check the area where the telephone truck was abandoned. The blowgun device may have been discarded near there. I’d sure like to get a look at that thing. Harve, you bring in the suspect for questioning.”

“Who?” both detectives asked.

“Hall Harris.”

By five in the afternoon proof that Stone’s deductions were amazingly accurate started coming in. A search of Harris’s garage yielded some plastic tubing, a can of paint that matched that on the ice pick handle, and a roll of tape like the piece found in the booth. Detective Lissner even managed to come up with the death device Harris had put together. It was found by neighborhood youngsters in a trash dumpster a few blocks from where the phone truck had been abandoned. Lissner had enlisted the kids in the search and it had paid off for both the detective and the children. It had cost him twenty dollars in rewards, but it was well worth the money, for Harris’s fingerprints were all over the gimmick. The device looked almost exactly as Stone had envisioned it – a five-inch piece of PVC sprinkler pipe on one end of a forty foot length of quarter-inch plastic tubing and a connecting tire valve on the other. The files at Harris’s office contained a copy of the medical report supposedly signed by Dr Wagner. It was an obvious forgery.

The result of all this evidence was that Hal Harris, after having been questioned for more than two hours in the presence of his attorney, calmly dictated and signed a full confession. It was probably his best move, for by doing so he was certain to avoid the death penalty.

At six in the evening Sergeant Ray Stone sat in an upholstered chair in front of Captain Jack Parker’s desk. Parker wanted some personal explanations. “I still don’t see how you knew it was Harris.”

“It had to be Harris or Wagner. Those were the only two who knew of Townsend’s impending death. Wagner had no reason to murder Townsend. Harris was the only one with a motive. Townsend was blackmailing him.”

Parker leaned forward eagerly. “How’d you figure that out?”

“Townsend managed to get a whopping big insurance policy when he had only a short time to live. Dr Wagner said he didn’t give Townsend an insurance physical, yet Harris told me Townsend came in with a clean bill of health from Wagner. He was lying. No doctor lets the patient carry the exam report back to the company. He sends it. Harris had to have forged the examination report that was sent in with the policy application. It wasn’t worth the risk to do that unless someone forced him. That someone could only have been Townsend.”

This explanation did not completely satisfy Parker. “What did Townsend know that enabled him to blackmail Harris?”

“It’s not so much what he knew, but what he guessed,” Stone replied. “Those two letters we found in Townsend’s files put me onto it. Harris was filing false claims and pocketing the proceeds. Townsend threatened to tell Harris’s parent companies to examine his claims for fraud unless Harris got the policy approved. Townsend, normally a very nice and honest guy, was not concerned for himself when he learned of his terminal illness. He wanted his family to be without financial worries after he was gone. That’s why he felt forced to blackmail Harris.”

Stone leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Any more questions, Jack, or have I completely satisfied your curiosity?”

“Not quite,” Parker said. “How did Harris get Townsend to go to the telephone booth? After all, he was the blackmailer. You’d think he’d set up the meeting.”

“We got the answer from Harris himself. Townsend wasn’t able to come up with the third month’s premium, so he asked Harris to give him a receipt stating the premium had been paid. Now Harris began to sweat. If Townsend didn’t die soon – and many who are given months hang on for years – he was afraid he would be paying all the future premiums for Townsend. He had to come up with a way to get rid of Townsend and have the policy canceled without an extensive investigation. ‘Suicide’ was the answer. It would appear as if Townsend were trying to bilk the insurance company by faking his own murder.”

Stone’s pausing briefly caused Parker to blurt out, “So what did Harris do?”

“He telephoned Townsend and suggested that for formality’s sake the premium should be sent to the main office. He persuaded Townsend to go to Lew’s station at nine o’clock that night and make a phone call from the booth there. Harris told Townsend that when he got back to his car he would find the necessary cash in an envelope on the front seat. Then all Townsend would have to do was to deposit the money in his account and send in a check for the premium.”

“You know, Ray, Harris’s plan was ingenious,” Parker remarked. “It would have succeeded, too, if it hadn’t been for your keen observations.”

“Could be,” Stone said. “It was an almost perfect crime.”

Carroll Lockyear came out of the attache’s private office at the New Zealand Legation on X Street, Washington, D.C. He was tall and skinny. The sallow skin of his gaunt face was drawn tight over his doorknob cheekbones like that of an Egyptian mummy. The resemblance to a mummy did not end with the tightness of his skin. Sticking out from his sharp chin, like a dejected paintbrush, was a russet-colored King Tut beard. He looked like a well-dressed beatnik. In his left hand he carried a brown cowhide briefcase, his long fingers curled under the bottom of it.

The secretary in the reception room, Miss Gertrude Wagner, looked up at him. He approached her desk and laid his briefcase carefully down on it, then towered over it toward her.

“Yes, Mr Lockyear?” she said.

“I have another appointment with Mr Gosling on next Tuesday, Miss Wagner.”

Gertrude penciled a line in an appointment pad.

“Good day,” said Lockyear. He picked up his briefcase and walked out.

Gertrude smiled thinly at the Army officer waiting on the lounge. He was reading a copy of the Ordnance Sergeant, but it wasn’t holding his attention as much as it should. He wore a green tunic with sharpshooter medals on the breast, and his legs, in pink slacks, were crossed. Gertrude stopped her professional smile and picked up the earpiece of the interphone and pressed a button.

“Mr Gosling,” she said, “Captain Cozzens is waiting to see you.” She held the earpiece to her head for a moment, then lowered it. “Captain,” she said. Cozzens looked up with bright expectancy from his magazine. “Mr Gosling wants to know if you’d mind waiting a minute.”

“Not at all,” said Cozzens, eager to agree with such a good-looking girl. No doubt, visions of dinners for two were dancing in his head.

Gertrude stood up suddenly and tugged her skirt straight. She had black hair cut in a Dutch bob and dark blue eyes. The austere lines of her blotter-green suit could not entirely disguise her big-boned femininity. She gathered up a steno pad and a mechanical pencil and started to walk toward the closed door of Mr Gosling’s private office. Glancing at the slim bagette watch on her wrist, she stopped short. It was as if she had almost forgotten something. She went back to her desk. On it lay a sealed large bulky manila mailing envelope. A slip of paper had been pasted on its side. Typed in red on the paper was the Legation address and:

Deliver to Mr Kermit Gosling at 11:30 a.m. sharp.

Gertrude grasped the envelope by the top and proceeded into Gosling’s office, leaving the door open. This private office, it was carefully noted later, was on the third floor of the building. It had two windows and both these windows were protected by old-fashioned iron bars. It was a room in which an attaché might consider himself safe.

Captain Cozzens had been following Gertrude’s flowing progress with admiring eyes. Those narrow skirts did a lot for a girl if she had the right kind of legs and hips. And Gertrude definitely had the right kind.

Another man sitting near Cozzens was watching her too. He was red-haired and young, with a square face and a pug nose. The jacket of his black suit was tight across his shoulders. He was Alvin Odell and it was his job to watch what went on in the office. He was an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But he too was watching Gertrude with more interest than his job called for.

From where Cozzens and Odell sat they could see the edge of Gosling’s desk. They saw the closely observed Gertrude stand before it, facing across it, and she held the bulky envelope up waist-high.

There was a slight pause.

Then three shots spat harshly.

Cozzens and Odell, shocked at the sudden ripping apart of their daydreams by gunfire, saw Gertrude flinch before the desk. Then the two men sprang up together and rushed in to her side.

Gosling, a heavy-featured man with limp blond hair, was tilted sideways in his desk chair. Blood stained his white shirt front, Odell stared at the three bullet holes under the left lapel of the grey business suit.

Captain Cozzens’ voice was hoarse. “Those three shots – where did they come from?”

Gertrude’s blue eyes, dazed, searched Cozzens’ face as if she had never seen him before. Dumbly she lifted up the heavy envelope.

Before Cozzens could move, the FBI man was faster. Odell snatched the envelope out of her hand.

It was still tightly sealed. There were no holes or tears in it. Odell started to rip it along the top. A wisp of bluish smoke curled up in the still air.

Odell tore the envelope wide open and out of it onto the desktop spilled a freshly fired automatic pistol.

Heavy blunt-tipped fingers on speckled hands turned over the brown State Department envelope. It was addressed to Honorable Brooks U. Banner, M. C, The Idle Hour Club, President Jefferson Avenue, Washington, D.C.

The addressee was a big fat man with a mane of grizzled hair and a ruddy jowled face and the physique of a performing bear. He wore a moth-eaten frock coat with deep pockets bulging with junk and a greasy string tie and baggy-kneed grey britches. Under the open frock coat was a candy-striped shirt. On his feet were old house slippers whose frayed toes looked as if a pair of hungry field mice were trying to nibble their way out from inside. He was an overgrown Huck Finn. Physically he was more than one man – he was a gang. Socially and politically he didn’t have to answer to anybody, so he acted and spoke any way he damned pleased.

He was sipping his eighth cup of black coffee as he read the letter.

It was from the Assistant Secretary of State. In painful mechanical detail, it reported the murder on X Street with as much passion as there is in a recipe for an upside-down cake. Toward the end of the letter, the Assistant Secretary became a little less like an automaton and a little more human. He confessed to Banner that both the State Department and the FBI were snagged. They couldn’t find an answer. And considering the other harrowing murder cases that Banner had solved, perhaps he could be of some help in this extremity.

Banner crumpled the letter up into a ball and stuck it into his deep pocket. Thoughtfully his little frosty blue eyes rested on the white ceiling. He had read about the case in the newspapers, but the account had not been as full as the State Department’s.

He pulled the napkin from under his chin, swabbed his lips, and started to surge up to his feet. He looked like a surfacing whale.

A waiter hurried up with a tray. On it were three more cups of black coffee, “Aren’t you going to drink the rest of your coffee, sir?” asked the waiter in an injured tone.

“Huh?” said Banner absently. Already his mind was soaring out into space, grappling with the murder problem. “I never touch the stuff,” he said and went lumbering out.

Jack McKitrick, who looked like a jockey trainer, was an FBI department chief. He stood near Captain Cozzens in the New Zealand Legation office. When Banner came trotting in the door McKitrick said sideways to Cozzens: “That’s Senator Banner. They don’t come much bigger.”

Cozzens shook his head as he eyed the impressive hulk that rumbled forward.

“Morning, Senator,” said McKitrick to Banner.

Banner grunted an answer, mumbling words around a long Pittsburgh stogie clamped in his teeth.

“Senator,” continued McKitrick, “this is Captain Cozzens of the Ordnance Division, U.S. Army.” The two men clasped hands. “Cozzens is a small firearms expert.”

“Mighty fine,” said Banner.

“You were an Army officer yourself, weren’t you, Senator?” said Cozzens.

Banner truculently chewed on the stogie. “Yass. I never got above the rank of shavetail. We were the dogfaces who gave ’em hell at Chateau Thierry. But I’ll tell you all about my war experiences later, Cap’n. We’ll all work together on this. Not nice seeing our New Zealand friends getting bumped off. Not nice at all.”

“No, certainly not,” said Cozzens.

Banner struck an attitude of belligerent ease. “Waal, I’m listening, Cap’n. You were one of the witnesses to this murder. What were you doing at the Legation?”

Cozzens frowned. “I was here by appointment, Senator. Mr Gosling wanted me to suggest a good handgun for his personal use and to give him instructions in how to handle it.”

“Why?”

“I think,” said Cozzens slowly, “he wanted to use it to protect himself.”

“Against what?”

“He never had a chance to tell me. But I think this might supply part of the answer.” He held up a wicked-looking pistol. “This is what did the trick, Senator. It’s all right to handle it. No fingerprints were found on it.”

Scowling, Banner took it from him. “So that’s the Russian pop-pop.”

“Right,” said Cozzens. “A Tokarev, a standard Russian automatic. It’s a 7.62-mm. with a Browning-Colt breech-locking system and it uses Nagant gas-check cartridges.”

“This was the gun in the sealed envelope,” said Banner. “Are you sure it wasn’t some other gun you heard being fired?”

Cozzens slowly shook his head. “I’ve spent a lifetime with guns, Senator. I’ve got to know their ‘voices’ just the way you know people’s. When you hear an accent, you know what part of the world the speaker comes from. That’s the way I am with pistols and revolvers. So I’ll stake my reputation that the shots we heard had a Russian accent, meaning they were fired from a Tokarev automatic, slightly muffled. Besides that, ballistics bears me out. The bullets found in Gosling’s body were indisputably from that gun.”

Banner grunted. “And all the while the gun was sealed up tight in an envelope and you could see the secretary holding the envelope while the shots were fired?”

“That’s right,” answered Cozzens.

“How d’you explain it, Cap’n? What’s your theory?”

“Theory? I haven’t any. I can’t explain it. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it.”

“Anything else you have to offer?” asked Banner.

“Nothing. That’s all.”

The stogie in Banner’s mouth was burning fiercely. He looked around the office where the murder had been committed. It was a completely equipped modern office. Nothing had been disturbed. He mumbled: “Gosling knew his life was in danger!”

Banner turned to McKitrick. “I’ll see Odell.”

Cozzens left while Banner was being introduced to the FBI agent, Odell.

“You heard Cozzens’ story about the shooting, Odell,” said Banner. “Have you anything to add to it?”

Odell shook his red-haired head. “No, it happened just that way, Senator.” His frank boyish face was grave.

“Why were you stationed here?”

“At a request from Mr Gosling. He asked for our security.”

“How long’ve you been hanging out here?”

“About a week, Senator.”

McKitrick interrupted to say: “Odell asked for this assignment.”

Banner studied the young man with the rusty hair. “What’s the reason, Red?”

Odell hesitated, growing crimson around the ears. “Well, Senator – a – Miss Wagner – Well, you’ll have to see her to appreciate her-”

Banner suddenly chuckled. He was thinking of his own misspent youth chasing the dolls.

Odell sobered. “She’s a hard girl to make friends with,” he admitted ruefully.

“It’s tough, Red,” grinned Banner. “Fetch in the li’l chickie and we’ll see if I can’t make better time with her than you did.”

Odell went out of the office and returned with Gertrude. She looked scared at Banner. Big men in authority seemed to have given her a sudden fright. Her shoulders were hunched up as if she were cold. Odell held her solicitously by the elbow.

“Hello, Gertie,” boomed Banner as familiarly as if he had helped to christen her. “Siddown.”

She dropped gratefully on the leather lounge as if relieved to get the strain off her shaky knees.

“Gertie, there’s no reason why you should think I’m gonna panic you. I’m your big Dutch uncle, remember?”

She smiled at him.

“Now, Gertie,” he resumed, “you live with your people, don’t you?”

“No,” she said hoarsely, then she cleared her throat. “No, Senator. I have no relatives in America. They’re all living in Germany.”

“Germany?” Banner made a quick pounce. “What part of Germany?”

“On a farm outside of Zerbst.”

Banner’s little frosty blue eyes looked shrewd. “That’s in East Germany, ain’t it, Gertie?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about ’em. And how you got out?”

It wasn’t too complicated a story. Gertrude had been born just after the end of World War Two. She grew up in a Communist dominated land, where everybody was schooled in the Russian language. She learned to speak English too – from an ex-Berlitz professor who ran a black market in verboten linguistics. Farm life had been stern, as she grew big enough to help her father and crippled mother with the chores, but Gertrude had become sturdy on plenty of fresh milk and vegetables, and she used to walk back from the haying fields with her rakehandle across her back and shoulders and her arms draped over it. It made her walk straight and developed strong chest muscles.

“Yass,” muttered Banner at this point. “Like those Balinese gals carrying loads on their heads.” He dwelt silently on Bali for a moment, then he said: “Go on. How’d you get outta East Germany?”

She had, she explained, visited East Berlin several times, helping to bring farm products to market. Each time she came an urge grew stronger in her to see all the things she had heard rumors about, the free and wealthy people of the West, the shops and cinemas along the Kurfurstendamm, and the opportunities for a better life. One day, at the Brandenburg Gate, the urge overcame her. She made a wild, reckless dash, eluding Soviet soldier guards, and made it, panting, falling into the arms of sympathetic West Berliners in the American Sector. She had thought that she would surely find somebody who could help to get her crippled mother and her father free too, but so far there was nobody who could perform that miracle.

Her good looks and quick learning ability eventually got her sponsored for a trip to the United States. Mr Gosling, of the New Zealand Legation, had proved kind to her and had got her the job.

She stopped talking, her brunette head with the Dutch bob bent low.

“Haaak!” Banner cleared his throat, making a sound like a sea lion. “Who’re you living with now?”

“Nobody. I have a small apartment to myself. I have become an American citizen.”

Banner sourly eyed the chewed wet end of the stogie in his hand. “Now about this envelope with the gun in it. When did it come to your desk?”

“Sometime near 11:00 o’clock in the morning, Senator.”

“Who brought it?”

“A man from the special messenger service.”

“Would you know him if you saw him again?”

“I think I would.”

“Was your boss, Mr Gosling, engaged at 11:00?”

“Yes, Mr Lockyear was in there.”

“What time did Cap’n Cozzens come into the reception room?”

“Around 11:15.”

“Did anyone tamper with that envelope once it reached your desk, Gertie?”

“No, sir. No one.”

“What time did Lockyear come outta the private office?”

“It was nearly 11:30.”

“When he came out,” said Banner carefully, “did he go straight out?”

“Yes – he stopped only to make an appointment for next Tuesday. I jotted it in my pad.”

“Then what’d you do?”

“I spoke to Mr Gosling on the interphone,” she said in a low hushed voice. “I told him that Captain Cozzens was waiting to see him next. He told me to withhold him for a minute and for me to come in with my notebook. I started to go in, then remembered the envelope. The sticker on it had said: Deliver to Mr Kermit Gosling at 11:30 a.m. sharp. I went back to my desk for it.”

“It was now just about 11:30, eh? When you went into the private office, what was Gosling doing?”

“He was sitting at his desk.”

“He was perfectly all right?”

“Yes, Senator.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

She opened her mouth. She paused. “No, he didn’t actually say anything. He just smiled and motioned me toward the chair I usually take dictation in. I held up the envelope. I was just about to tell him about it when the gun went off.”

“And you saw Gosling being hit with the bullets?”

She nodded wretchedly. “He jerked back, then started to sag over. Then Captain Cozzens and Mr Odell rushed in.”

“Is that all?” rasped Banner.

She bowed her head again.

McKitrick, the FBI departmental head, stirred uneasily by the wall. “Now,” he said, “you see what’s got the wits of two organizations stymied!”

Banner was looking down at his stogie. It had gone out, but he wasn’t even thinking about it. He said: “I’ll tell you what I think about it.”

McKitrick looked at him hopefully. “What?”

“It couldn’t’ve happened! It’s too damned impossible!”

Ramshaw must have been about forty-five. A cigarette dangled limply out of his slack lips as he sat on the bench at the special messenger service. He wore a weather-faded blue uniform with shrunken breeches and dusty leather leggings.

Banner loomed over him, his enveloping black wraprascal increasing his already Gargantuan size. “You remember the envelope you delivered to the New Zealand Legation yesterday?”

“That’s easy, mister. I never handled one like that before. A 10-year-old kid came into our agency about 10:00 in the morning and said somebody told him to leave the envelope with us to be delivered immediately. We didn’t ask too many questions, seeing as the kid had more than ample money to pay for the delivery.”

“Did he say whether the someone was a man or a woman?”

“Nope.”

“Did anyone tamper with the envelope while it was here?”

“Nope. I was assigned to do the job, mister. I kept the envelope right in front of me till I delivered it to the Legation at 11:00. It had written on it, Deliver to Mr Kermit Gosling at 11:30a.m. sharp, so I wanted to be sure it got there in plenty of time.”

Banner glowered. “Didja know there was a gun in it?”

Ramshaw squirmed as if his shrunken breeches chafed him. “I – I thought there was. That’s what it felt like through the heavy paper.”

“Nobody stopped you on the way to the Legation? Tell me if someone even bumped into you.”

“Nope, nope. Clear sailing all the way, mister.”

Banner looked down at a pocket watch that must have been manufactured by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. He muttered: “I can still ketch Lockyear before lunch.”

He went out of the agency, leaving behind him a grinning messenger. “Say, mister! Thanks for the tip!”

Lockyear, in his office on Pittsylvania Avenue, played with his King Tut beard as Banner made himself known to him.

“It’s the strangest thing I ever heard of, Senator,” said Lockyear. “But I’m afraid I can be of very little help. Gosling was far from dead when I left him.”

“While you were in the office,” said Banner, “did you notice anything threatening?”

“Threatening? No, not a thing, Senator.”

“Perhaps you’d tell me what you were seeing Gosling about.”

“Of course I have no objection, Senator. I’m an exporter-importer. I’ve been seeing Gosling about clearing some shipments that have been going in and out of New Zealand. Governments are touchy these days about cargoes.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all, Senator.”

In a few minutes Banner was on his way back to the Idle Hour Club. As he entered the convivial surroundings and lumbered into the dining room, he found McKitrick waiting for him.

“The only thing about this case that’s plain,” said McKitrick abruptly, “is the motive. We know why Gosling was killed.”

“Do you?” Banner squeezed in behind a table and told a waiter he wanted some straight whiskey.

McKitrick said in a lower voice: “Gosling was collecting information on a spy who’s been selling all our secrets to the Russian Government. Gosling didn’t know exactly who it was, but he was getting dangerously close to that truth. Unfortunately the spy got to Gosling first. The Russian pistol is evidence of that.”

McKitrick stopped talking long enough to allow the waiter to place Banner’s whiskey before him.

“Yass?” Banner fired up another big stogie.

McKitrick continued: “I’ve been thinking about Gertrude Wagner. She admits she’s from East Germany. Her sympathies might easily lie with the Commies. We have only her word that she’d broken with them. What’s more to the point, Banner, she was in the room with Gosling when he was killed. The only person in the room with him. And she was holding the gun that killed him!”

“So?” muttered Banner. “Mebbe you can explain away the sealed envelope.” When McKitrick didn’t answer, Banner shrugged. “How was she able to shoot the gun through the envelope without making any holes in it?”

McKitrick sighed. “Times are getting brutal for us investigators when all a murderer has to do is send his victim a gun by mail and it does the killing for him.”

The wind coming across the Potomac River that afternoon had the icy sting of early winter on its breath.

Gertrude Wagner, wrapped up in a cloth coat, walking on the park path, stopped suddenly. She stared nervously around her. A man in an oystercolored balmacaan, who had been following her, veered around a turn in the path. When he saw her looking straight at him he hesitated for a fraction of a second, then he kept on coming, his pace more deliberate. Under the slant brim of his hat Gertrude could see the bright red hair. The wide shoulders were familiar.

She stood there until Odell came up to her. He grinned sheepishly. “Hello, Gertie. Mind if I walk the rest of the way with you?”

She drew back a pace as if she was afraid he might contaminate her. Her face looked pale and scared. “You’ve been following me,” she accused him.

Odell was sober. “To tell the truth, Gertie-”

“Why do you have to hound me? Can’t you leave me alone?”

“I’m not hounding you,” he said, disheartening to know that she had interpreted his actions that way.

“You are, Mr Odell. I haven’t been able to make a move since you came to the Legation without having your eyes on me. You people are watching me all the time, waiting to pounce on me for the least slip I make. I thought America was a free country, but the police watch you here as much as they do over there… You think I killed Mr Gosling!”

“Did it ever occur to you,” he said through clenched teeth, “that I might have other reasons for wanting to be near you?”

“What?” she said, hardly believing her ears. “What did you say?”

“You’re not hard to take, Gertie,” he said.

“Take?” she said in confusion. “Oh but-”

“You never gave me much encouragement. You always seemed to have so much on your mind, Gertie.”

“If that’s really true, Mr Odell, I’m sorry I – if I offended you just now.”

“If it’s really true! You don’t think I’m telling you the truth?”

“I can’t be sure of anything any more.”

“I was in that office to protect Mr Gosling – and you.” He looked at her steadily. “You believe me, Gertie.”

She looked back at him for a long moment, and he thought her eyes were watering.

She lowered her gaze. “Yes, Mr Odell, I do. I do believe you.”

“Well, then,” smiled Odell, “I hope you’re not doing anything tonight, as I want-”

“Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry. Not tonight. I have an appointment I can’t break. Shall we make it some other time?”

“Sure, Gertie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” She smiled. “So long then.” She had her right hand in her coat pocket. She took it out and held it toward him. He grasped her palm. And then he felt that she had something in her hand – a slip of paper. When she drew her hand away she left it in his palm. He felt, with a rush of intuition, that everything was wrong. He pretended not to notice what she’d left in his hand. As she turned on her high heels to walk swiftly away from him, he thrust his own hand into his pocket.

He watched her go out of sight along the path, then he walked out of the park in the opposite direction. He was curious about what she was trying to convey to him. He went into the first street corner phone booth he came to and took the slip of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it.

The wrinkles of perplexity increased on his forehead.

The paper was blank except for two circles, a small one inside a much larger one, drawn on it in pencil.

Gertrude, the cold night wind whipping the coat about her knees, went up the legation steps. All the windows were dark. X Street was dark. Fumbling in her handbag, she took out a key, unlocked the front door, and slipped into the vestibule. It was all cold marble, like a mausoleum. She left the front door unlocked behind her as she went in, as if she was expecting someone else to follow her.

She flicked on a cigarette lighter to light her way up the plush carpeted stairway to the third floor. This was the floor on which the murder had been committed. She went into the office, tiptoeing past her desk in the reception room, going into the private office.

She looked at Gosling’s empty chair behind the desk. Gosling’s bloodied ghost still seemed to occupy it. And she shuddered.

She remembered a line from one of the newspapers … A nameless horror has stalked through the Legation…

The watch on her wrist ticked away loudly. She was painfully conscious of time. Everything had depended on time.

She did not know anyone was in the room with her until she heard the door between the offices click softly closed.

She turned around with a violent start. The cigarette lighter flicked out when she released her thumb. A shadow moved against the closed door.

“Is that you?” she gasped.

A powerful flashlight blinded her.

“Yes,” answered a voice. “Have you done all that was expected of you?”

She nodded miserably.

“Fine.” She heard a heartless chuckle.

And that was all she heard, for it is doubtful if she heard the two quick coughs before the lead slugs tore into her breast.

She was dead before she hit the floor.

McKitrick was saying: “The patrolman on the X Street beat saw the door of the Legation swinging open in the wind. He thought something was up, so he took a prowl through the building. He was the one who found her.”

Someberly Banner looked down at all that was left of Gertrude. “It’s a crying shame,” he muttered.

Odell sat gloomily on the edge of the desk. He roused himself up enough to say: “Well, this isn’t as puzzling as the first shooting. I talked to Gertie in the park this afternoon, Senator. She said she was going to meet someone tonight. Whoever it was just followed her in here and shot her. If I had any inkling this would happen, I never would have left her alone.”

Banner nodded. “It’s not your fault, Red.” He glared around. “What kinda gun this time? D’you know?”

McKitrick answered: “The medical examiner thinks it’s a.38.”

Banner snorted. “An American gun! This’s striking closer to home.”

Odell said: “There’s something else I’ve got to tell you, Senator. It might help you. I confess it doesn’t mean a thing to me. In the park today Gertie slipped this into my hand. She acted mighty secretive about it.” He gave Banner the paper with the circles drawn on it.

“Whatzit mean?” snapped Banner.

“Circles within circles. Wheels within wheels. You tell me, Senator.”

Banner looked at it front and back and held it up to the light to see if there were any pinpricks in it. Then, without saying anything, he crumpled it up and shoved it into his marsupial pocket. Plainly he could not make head or tail of it, but he wasn’t going to say so.

Though they stayed there till dawn they found no other clue to point to Gertrude’s murderer.

McKitrick woke up to find his phone ringing insistently and Banner on the other end of the wire.

“You never sleep, do you?” snorted McKitrick.

“Hardly ever, Mac. We ain’t got time for that now. It’s after breakfast. Come to the Legation and bring that small arms expert with you.”

“Captain Cozzens?”

“Yaas. Him. I’ve figgered out what everything means.”

“What put you on it?”

“Those circles.”

“Suppose you quit being so damned mysterious, Banner, and-”

“Get cracking to the Legation,” interrupted Banner. He hung up.

Banner was sitting in a leather chair, comfortably waiting for them to arrive. He bobbed his big grizzled head at McKitrick and Cozzens. His grizzled mane looked like a fright wig this morning, as if he had been trying to comb it with an eggbeater.

“Gennelmen,” he said, “this won’t take too much of your precious time. Lemme get on with it. First off, you will swear that there ain’t any Tokarev pistols hidden in that private office.”

“Of course not,” responded McKitrick a little testily. His face bore the results of a very hasty shave. There was a nick on his chin. “There isn’t as much as a needle hidden in there that we don’t know of.”

“And you can search me and find out I’m not packing a Russian pop-gun.”

“We’ll take your word for it, Senator,” said McKitrick shortly.

“We get on together,” chuckled Banner. He got up with a heave and a vast grunt. “You two sit here on the lounge, the way you were the other day with Odell, Cap’n.” He watched them sharply as they followed his suggestion. “I’m going in there.” He entered the private office, where Gosling and Gertrude had been killed, leaving the intervening door open. He was out of sight from the two watchers for about five minutes, then he reappeared and stood in the doorway, filling the frame with his bulk, his hands deep in the bulging frockcoat pockets. “Nothing up my sleeve, mates,” he announced.

They both stared at him, not knowing what to expect. Then both of them leaped to their feet.

Three loud shots had crashed out in the empty office behind Banner’s back!

Banner did not even take his hands out of his pockets. “And there you have it,” he said.

“But, great Godfrey!” yipped McKitrick, pushing past Banner to see who else was hidden in the private office. “Who fired that pistol?”

“It was a Tokarev automatic!” said Cozzens. “I’ll swear to that!”

“But there isn’t anyone here but you!” McKitrick glared helplessly around the room.

“Neverthless-” began Banner. “But let it keep awhile. There’re more important things like searches and seizures to be made.”

“Confound you, Banner!” said McKitrick, but he was in good humor about it.

“You can begin by arresting-”

The search was fruitless until Banner suggested that what they were after might be on microfilm and if they could not find microfilm in all the obvious places, it might be hidden in the electric light sockets.

That was where they found it.

They had all the proof they needed to arrest their man for espionage and murder.

And Carroll Lockyear, the export-import man, almost pulled his King Tut beard out by the roots when they confronted him.

McKitrick and the Assistant Secretary of State made impressive members of Banner’s small audience. Banner was prancing back and forth, gnawing a long stogie, as if he were holding a press conference. But he had not let the reporters in yet. They were all ganged up outside in the hall, waiting.

The Assistant Secretary of State fingered his chin reflectively. “The riddle of the sealed envelope-”

“Yaas, yaas!” Banner chuckled. “It’s simple when you know the sorta thimble – rigging that went on behind the scenes. I said in the beginning that I thought the murder was too damned impossible cuz one person alone couldn’t’ve accomplished it. Lockyear is the murderer and spy, all right, but he had forced poor Gertie to help him. Y’see, he was a Commie agent and Gertie told us that her crippled mother and her father are still stranded in East Germany. You can now see how easy it was for him to get her to agree to his scheme. He could tell her he’d get ’em outta East Germany if she played ball. If she still didn’t agree, he could easily threaten to turn the old folks over to the untender mercies of the MVD agents.”

He paused a moment before going on. “Gosling was getting onto Lockyear’s trail. Some time before the murder, Lockyear used a standard tape recorder. Lockyear let the tape run silently for three minutes, then he fired his Tokarev pistol three times near the recorder. He now had a tape recording of three minutes of dead silence, followed by three quickly fired shots. He handed that roll of tape over to Gertie for her to put in Gosling’s private office where he could get his hands on it later on. When he went into Gosling’s office to commit the murder that morning he had in his briefcase the Tokarev pistol with silencer on it, and also in the briefcase was a large manila mailing envelope that was a duplicate of the one to be delivered to Gertie’s desk by the messenger service. The gun that was delivered to Gertie by the special messenger route was probably a toy pistol, so that if the envelope were opened prematurely the whole thing could be laughed off as a practical joke.

“It was all timed to the split second. Lockyear stalled with Gosling till almost 11:30, talking business, then swiftly he pulled the silenced automatic outta the briefcase and shot Gosling in the chest three times with it before his victim could blink or cry out. Naturally the shots were not heard outside the room with the door closed. He whipped out the prepared envelope, snatched the silencer off the pistol – barrel, and shoved the pistol, still smoking, into the envelope, sealing it immediately. Next he set the prepared reel of tape on the recorder alongside Gosling’s desk – there’s one in every office and you’ve noticed that Gosling’s office had all the modern equipment – and then picked up the envelope and briefcase. It was now, according to his watch, 11:27. He flipped the tape recorder switch to on. Three minutes of dead silence, remember, then three shots. He put his arm around both the envelope and the briefcase so that the briefcase would entirely conceal the envelope to anyone waiting in the lounge. He came out of the private office and walked to Gertie’s desk on which the second envelope with the toy gun in it was lying, waiting to be delivered at 11:30 sharp. He put his briefcase down on her desk, so that it covered both envelopes. After getting Gertie to jot down his phony appointment for next Tuesday, Lockyear picked up his briefcase again – together with the envelope that had been lying on Gertie’s desk! In its place he left the one with the real murder weapon in it. He carried the other envelope out with him, still concealed behind his briefcase, and nobody was aware of the switch. So the gun that had just been used to commit the murder was now waiting for Gertie to carry it back in. She had been forced into it. She knew Gosling was already dead. She had to play out her part. She pretended to talk to Gosling on the interphone to give the illusion that Gosling was still alive after Lockyear left. Then she started to go into the private office, looked at her watch, knew the three minutes were almost up, then carried the sealed envelope in.”

He stopped and glowered around the room. “The three shots that were heard by the two witnesses were the ones already on the tape recorder! Cozzens even remarked that they were somewhat muffled!… The tape recorder ran itself out silently again, till Gertie, in the excitement that followed the discovery of Gosling’s dead body, managed to flip the switch off.”

“Good God!” muttered somebody in the room,

Banner cleared his throat with a big sea lion noise. “Haaak! Although Gertie had been terrorized into helping Lockyear remove a threat to his existence as a spy, she wanted desperately for one of us to know the truth. She knew she was being watched by everybody, their side as well as ours, so she couldn’t come right out and tell us about it. She drew two circles, one inside the other, on a piece of paper. She didn’t dare hint further. She was trying to call our attention to the reel of the tape recorder – circular. Yunnerstand? And she was trying to help us, boys. If she had completely obeyed the instructions of the murderer, I never would’ve found the tape still on the recorder in that office – she would’ve destroyed it. Last night the murderer killed her as a safety measure, thinking that his trail on tape had been completely wiped out.”

During his years with the Mongolian police Inspector Dorj had witnessed crimes in sufficient variety to inspire several Shakespearean tragedies, but until the crowbar-wielding midget sent the locked door of the circus caravan flying open the inspector had never seen a man murdered by a corpse.

Hercules the lion-tamer was, it is true, an exceptionally large and powerful corpse, but a corpse nevertheless. He lay wedged between the bed on which Dorj had last seen him and the blood-smeared door of the ancient caravan’s lavatory cubicle. His enormous hands were still reaching for his victim. Nikolai Zubov, sprawled partly under the table near the door, was now beyond Hercules’ reach, but the ugly welt ringing the circus owner’s neck made it clear what must have happened. Dorj said so.

“Clear?” muttered Dima, the midget, peering around Dorj into the disordered caravan. Dima’s bone white clown makeup ran with sweat from his efforts with the crowbar, turning his face almost as ghastly as Zubov’s. “How can you say it is clear when it seems Zubov was strangled by a dead man?”

“Of course the lion-tamer was dead,” said Batu, Dorj’s assistant. “The lion went berserk and practically disembowelled him. No one could have survived a gaping wound like that. You’re lucky you got bored and left the performance before the lion-taming act started.”

Dorj now regretted dragging the young man to the circus, which had turned out to be a sorry affair even before the accident. “You kept an eye on the caravan while I returned to town to make arrangements?”

“I would have seen anyone approaching.”

“So only Zubov and Hercules were inside?”

A cloud-like frown passed over Batu’s round, flat moon of a face, a typical Mongolian face in contrast to Dorj’s sharper-angled features. “The names of those deceased should not be spoken so soon after death. Souls linger. So many people, saying their names – they may call the dead back from the lower world.”

Dorj had long since abandoned trying to talk Batu out of his native beliefs and instead had taken to occasionally exposing the young man to some culture – unfortunately, as it turned out, in the case of the circus. So now he simply instructed his assistant to begin the tedious collection of evidence and then, to be alone to consider the conundrum, walked away from the caravan and the abandoned Russian airplane hangar the circus had borrowed for its performances.

A rutted track led into the desert where a cold September wind rolled small bits of gravel against his carefully polished shoes. Unlike Batu, who had grown up in a ger, the traditional movable tent of the Mongolian nomads, Dorj was city bred. Until the great earthquake that some called freedom had driven him to a posting in the Gobi, he had rarely strayed far from the relatively cosmopolitan world of Ulaanbaatar.

He was not comfortable in his own country. He hated the Gobi, a featureless immensity beside which men and the culture Dorj valued so highly seemed small and insignificant. Out here Batu’s half-civilized ideas about returning souls seemed almost plausible. Or at least as good as any explanation the inspector had for a murderous corpse.

Staring out to the far off horizon where mountains sat like clouds, Dorj tried to recall what he had witnessed earlier. It was possible those events might have something to tell him about Zubov’s mysterious death. But since the lion-tamer’s death had been a grisly accident, Dorj had not examined the scene as carefully as he would have if a crime had been committed, and he regretted it now.

The inspector had arrived at the hangar door just as the lion-tamer’s corpse was being laid beside it, beneath a line of carelessly slapped on posters advertising that those who visited the circus would, among other delights, view a recreation of:

“The First Labour of Hercules. See The Mighty Hercules Slay the Nemean Lion.”

Dorj had been struck by the irony of Hercules’s death because, while some survived the vagaries and misfortunes of life by seeing dark humour in it all, he survived by noting the irony.

And thinking back now, what else had he noticed, aside from distressed circus-goers edging past the corpse?

Zubov was standing outside the hangar, still wearing his ringmaster’s top hat, speaking to a muscular young man decked out in spangled tights.

“Perhaps if I go back and perform my act, it will distract the crowd,” the young man suggested.

“Conceited fool!” the older man snapped back. “Go help direct them out the exits and make sure they don’t panic. Do you think anyone wants to see you preening and swinging like a monkey, with a man lying dead right outside?”

Zubov was soft featured, chubby around the middle, but his voice was harsh. His magic tricks involving a red ball and three boxes with obviously false bottoms had driven Dorj outside.

Dorj also remembered a woman standing beside the door, head bent. She was a tall, striking blonde, perhaps nearing middle age but it was difficult to be certain, given her heavy make-up. She was dressed in layers of diaphanous sequined material that billowed in the bitter wind, but she stood motionless, a great glittering icicle.

Because he was a government official at the scene, Dorj introduced himself to Zubov. There were arrangements to be made.

“We’ll put the fat man in my caravan where I can keep on eye on him for now,” the circus owner said brusquely. “Dima! Get the wheelbarrow!” He looked around for the clown.

“Where’s that idiot runt?” Turning back to Dorj, he continued, “You can’t rely on anybody these days. But you must know how it is, Inspector. I suppose you deal with enough underlings yourself – and all of them slackers and idiots.”

Dorj followed as the dead man was taken to the ringmaster’s caravan and laid on the bed. A few moments later, the blonde woman appeared at the caravan door. She resembled a ghost, icily composed, arms folded around herself as if she were trying to hold in a terrible storm of emotions. At last she was overwhelmed.

“Ah, Cheslav! My poor husband, I am so sorry! So sorry!” Weeping, she threw herself onto the corpse.

“Stop it, Ivana,” barked Zubov. “It’s too late to be sorry.”

But Ivana continued to sob hysterically, embracing her dead husband, smoothing his hair and rearranging his blood-soaked clothing as if to somehow repair the damage the lion had inflicted.

Dorj had hesitated, uncertain whether to intervene. He preferred the theatre where tumultuous emotions could be safely observed, caged upon the stage. He had been thankful when some of the other performers finally escorted Ivana away. The chilly wind no longer billowed out her robes; they had been soaked with her husband’s blood.

And those few impressions seemed to tell Dorj nothing at all about how the dead man had committed a murder. Perhaps there was something in Batu’s theory of returning souls after all.

“Watch out!”

As he approached the back of the caravan, returning from his solitary walk, Dorj felt a hand on his shoulder and paused in midstep. There was a loud metallic snap. Glancing down, he saw a trap, rusty jaws now locked shut, sitting on the gravel a centimetre or two from his foot. Turning around, he saw he had been warned by a woman. It was difficult to tell her age because of her beard.

“We catch marmots to feed to the animals,” she explained in Russian. Seeing Dorj understood, she added, “You’re lucky you didn’t step in one of these traps before. I saw you wandering around out here during the show, didn’t I? I’m sorry our performance drove you out into the cold.”

Dorj tried to think of something polite to say while at the same time trying not to stare too obviously at the woman’s somewhat sparse but unmistakable dark beard.

He had a soft spot for circuses. They had a certain magic, an otherworldly air, reminding him of Prospero’s island. Lights, sequins and distance transformed even the plainest of performers into fabulous creatures. But in truth, the Circus Chinggis had immediately struck him as the sort of seedy undertaking where the owners would be more likely than not to toss the main tent into the back of a 25-year-old Russian military lorry, herd the trained fleas onto a dusty lion and slip out of town under cover of darkness. Except, in a nation where thousands of people actually lived in tent-like gers, this forlorn circus apparently had no tents to call its own.

“You sold a programme to my colleague earlier, didn’t you?” was all Dorj could think to say.

“I suppose you’re one of those who never forgets a face! My name is Larisa Sergeyevna.”

Her voice was soft, her skin fair. To his chagrin Dorj found his gaze, leaving her beard, caught by her eyes, as blue as the sky over the Gobi.

Embarrassed, the inspector introduced himself. “I regret I will have to ask you some questions. For instance, I gather you haven’t been the Circus Chinggis for long.” He indicated the fresh and badly painted lettering on the side of the caravan.

Larisa glanced quickly at the caravan and then looked away, perhaps mindful of the two dead men inside. “You’re right. A few weeks ago Zubov decided he would have a better chance of meeting expenses by charging tugriks rather than rubles, not that any of us have actually seen either since we crossed the Mongolian border.

“But,” she continued, “Since you asked, let’s see, we were the Comrades’ Circus at one time, not to mention the Paris Troika. I even recall a time when we were just plain Buturlin’s. But I expect we’ll have to remain Mongolian for a while since we’re nearly out of paint, as well as running low on food. Perhaps you’ll give us another chance, and not want your admission money back?”

“I’m sure you put on a fine show. Perhaps it is just that I am out of humour. Or more in the mood for Shakespeare. Not that a circus doesn’t have more than a touch of Shakespeare.”

“You have a silver tongue, Inspector Dorj! I’ve never heard a circus compared to Shakespeare before. He wrote mostly about boring old kings killing each other, didn’t he?”

“But even his historical plays have a lot of magic in them, really. All manner of ghosts and portents, witchcraft and unnatural creatures…” Realizing his gaffe, his voice trailed off, but the bearded lady just smiled quietly at him. Then, to his distress, her blue eyes pooled with tears.

“Poor Cheslav,” she said. “He was always so afraid of the lion.”

Dorj gave her a questioning look.

“Cheslav – Hercules – was no lion-tamer. He was our strong man,” she explained. “Alexi, our real lion-tamer, he left us in Erdenet a few weeks ago. He thought he could find work in the copper mines. So Zubov ordered Cheslav to take over. Just like Zubov, that was!”

She turned away and pitched forward suddenly. Dorj caught her arm to keep her from falling. In the instant her warm weight was on him, his breath caught in his chest.

“My weak ankle,” she said. There was anger in her voice. “I used to be an acrobat. Imagine that. Then I got injured, but Zubov insisted I keep performing. He even forced me to keep training on the trapeze. My back is bad now, too. So I’m reduced to hawking programmes.” A tear ran down Larisa’s pale cheek and into her beard. “He was a hateful man. I could almost believe a corpse would rise up to kill one like him!”

When Larisa had gone Dorj remained aware, uncomfortably so, of the pleasurable sensation of her warmth near to him. It occurred to him that she was not so much ugly as she was… exotic… magical.

He checked around the caravan again. The murder had occurred, it seemed, just before Dorj returned from Dalandzadgad, where he had gone to arrange for an ambulance to take the dead man away. It would have been much easier to have been able to call one with the aid of a portable telephone, but nothing of the sort had been made available to him out here in the desert. Batu, whom he had left at the circus as an official guard, had heard strange noises from the caravan. When there was no reply to the young policeman’s shouted inquiry, he had finally tried the door. It had been securely locked from the inside.

The small caravan was of vintage nineteen fifties design; no doubt it was towed behind one of the circus’s old lorries as the troupe moved from place to place. But now it stood alone, surrounded by flat, empty ground, some distance from both the hangar and the other circus vehicles. Dorj’s footsteps crunched on the gravel as he circled it. Batu would probably have heard, and surely seen, anyone trying to approach by stealth.

The caravan was as decrepit as the rest of the circus, Dorj thought as he noted a couple of badly patched holes in its rusted walls, half hidden by the freshly applied paint. There was a tiny window in each side wall and a vent in the curved roof. Dorj paced back a short distance, to get a better look at the vent. The opening was far too small for anyone to squeeze through. Dorj, thin as he was, wouldn’t have got more than an arm through it. For a moment he wondered about Dima, the small clown, but decided that even Dima could never have managed to squeeze through the vent. As for the windows, he noticed on closer inspection that they were sealed shut by carelessly applied and obviously undisturbed paint.

Glancing through the window, he saw the two dead men, Zubov now on the bed and his apparent murderer on the floor near him, were decently covered by a couple of pieces of canvas, perhaps the remains of the Circus Chinggis’s missing Big Top.

“Ah, Cheslav, I wish you could speak,” muttered Dorj. Then he recalled what Batu had said about calling back the souls of the dead, and hurried away from the caravan.

“Everyone hated Zubov,” Dima stated, confirming what Larisa had told Dorj. The midget, wiping dry, cracked make-up from his chin, was seated on a crate near the hangar door.

The inspector inquired why Zubov had been so hated.

“You saw the way he treated me! Do you doubt it?”

“He treated everyone the same, then?”

“Of course he did. Isn’t that always the way with people like him?” Dima climbed off the crate. He barely came up to Dorj’s waist. “He used to constantly criticize me for not being short enough,” he continued. “Can you imagine that? He’d laugh and shout at me that I couldn’t even manage to be small enough to be a proper midget.”

“He kept you on, though,” the inspector reminded him.

“He had no choice.”

Dorj asked him what he thought would happen to the little circus once the investigation was closed.

“I won’t be running it, that’s for certain!” Dima replied. “But as to that, Zubov didn’t confide in anyone. Who knows what his arrangements were?”

As patches of Dima’s make-up were removed, wrinkles were revealed at the corners of his mouth. Dorj realized that the man was middle-aged. It was difficult not to think of him as a child.

“Why was it that the others hated him?”

“You mentioned Larisa’s story, how the beast turned her into a cripple, but all the women had reason to hate him, the old lecher.”

“What about Ivana, Cheslav’s wife?”

Dima nodded. “They all did, as I said. And then there’s Fabayan Viktorovich, our aerial artist. He was angry that Zubov refused to take the circus to Moscow to perform. And he – Fabayan, that is – thought he should be the headline act. Zubov did not agree. Now, if you don’t mind, there’s work to be done, whatever our future might be. If I were you, Inspector, I would look no further. A corpse can’t be punished and Zubov’s murderer deserves no punishment. So perhaps there’s justice for the downtrodden, after all.”

“I’m glad you found me, Inspector,” Ivana said as she opened the door to let Dorj into the trailer. “For I have a confession to make. I’m afraid I am a murderer.”

Dorj had had opportunity to keep his Russian polished, but still he was not certain he had understood her words correctly.

“Yes, that’s right, Inspector. I’m a murderer,” she repeated calmly. She had changed from her bloodied clothing into a tight pink leotard. It did not conceal her body as had the diaphanous robes; it was hardly mourning apparel, Dorj thought.

Dima had told Dorj that he would find the others in what he called “the back yard”, the area where the rest of the circus lorries, animal trailers and caravans were parked. Their age and condition caused the back yard to resemble a junk yard.

Dorj had noticed a light on in a long trailer, and knocked on its door. Ivana had answered his summons.

Illuminated by a single bare bulb, the trailer was a dim confusion of shadows. It had an exotic smell, a mixture of animal dung and something worse. Evidently it was used to haul circus animals around from place to place.

“Take care you don’t step in that pile of marmots,” Ivana warned him after her astonishing confession. “They’ve been dead for quite some time.” Then she began to sob.

Dorj had never cared much for Russian literature of the more melodramatic kind, and was beginning to think that it perhaps reflected national characteristics more accurately than he had hitherto imagined.

Amid the stark shadows striping the trailer, he could distinguish a few empty cages and pens. The faded paintings on the trailer’s outside walls depicted lions and tigers, trained poodles, alligators and snakes and a trumpeting elephant. A quick look around the interior showed a ragged cockatoo perched sleepily in a bird cage. One of several aquariums held an iguana. A rumble from the darkness at the back of the trailer reminded him that there was, at least, a lion.

“You’re understandably upset,” Dorj assured the woman softly.

Under normal circumstances he would have dismissed Ivana as a suspect, simply because a normal woman could not have inflicted with her bare hands the damage he’d seen on Zubov’s neck. But, he had to keep reminding himself, circus people could not necessarily be judged by what some might call normal standards. After all, so far he had spoken to a man the size of a child and a woman with a beard. Nevertheless, it still seemed impossible that anyone except Cheslav and Zubov could had been locked inside the caravan.

Ivana, who appeared to be unusually normal by circus standards, retreated toward the back of the trailer and Dorj followed her. In the deeper shadows at the far end, the lion’s holding cage was bolted securely to the floor. The lion, which looked scrawny and mangy when viewed at close hand, was asleep. Dorj hoped it would not have to be euthanized.

“We don’t suspect you of anything. You surely could not have strangled Zubov,” Dorj reassured Ivana.

“I’m not speaking of Zubov. It was my husband I murdered.” She quickly shoved something small between the bars of the lion’s cage – a marmot – and wiped her hands on her pink leotards before rummaging in a small cabinet near the cage. “Look here.”

Dorj glanced over her shoulder and saw several glass bottles and a frighteningly large hypodermic on the shelf above them. He began to point out that in fact a dreadful injury had caused her husband’s death. Then another thought occurred to him.

“Are you saying you drugged your husband before he went in the ring with his lion taming act?”

“Not Cheslav. No, I drugged Raisa – the lion. Cheslav could never be a real lion-tamer. A timid man, he was. Raisa is not that fierce, but we always drugged her, for safety reasons, you know? We even drugged her for Alexi, to make her more manageable, or rather Alexi did that himself.

“Since he left, I’ve taken over looking after the animals. Not that I can do much for them. We’re beginning to run out of tranquilizer, as well as their food. It is so sad. Perhaps hunger is what made Raisa so fierce.”

She slammed the cabinet door shut and Raisa, disturbed by the noise, rumbled in her sleep. Dorj felt the raw power of the deep sound vibrating in his chest and through the thin soles of his shoes.

“So Zubov ordered me to cut down on the dosage to make what we had last longer,” the woman continued. “I should have known better. But I was afraid of him, so I did what he said. And now my poor husband is dead. So you see, as I said, I’m guilty.”

“If what you say is true, it was not murder, it was a terrible accident. But in any event, it is Zubov’s murderer I’m interested in finding.” He did not add that the more he found out about the man the less interested he was in the task. Yet, one did one’s duty.

Ivana’s eyes glinted as they reflected the light of the bare bulb. “But the evidence is clear. Surely it shows that my husband got up off his death bed to take his revenge on the man who turned me into a murderer?”

As he walked away from the trailer Dorj found himself looking for Larisa. There were things he had forgotten to ask her about, he told himself. Instead he ran into the young man in spangled tights whom he had seen earlier talking to Zubov.

“I’m Fabayan Viktorovich, the aerialist,” the young man said, after Dorj had introduced himself. “In fact, I’m the Fabulous Flying Fabayan, as the posters say. Or would have said, if Zubov had ever got them printed.”

Dorj, shivering in his thin coat as the wind picked up, suggested they talk somewhere more sheltered. Fabayan led the way back to the hangar, where the fluttering circus posters Zubov had handprinted in bold red letters, and that long ago from the crumpled looks of them, still promised a brave show with jugglers and clowns, fortune-tellers and snake-charmers, acrobats and contortionists, and of course, the mighty lion-taming Hercules.

“I just want to check on my rigging, though I doubt we’ll be putting on another performance tonight. Accidents happen in threes, we always say. I’m sure you will have many questions.”

As they entered the ill-lit, empty hangar, Dorj asked the muscular young man about the lion tamer.

“Cheslav was a roustabout, not a performer,” replied Fabayan, contempt evident in his tone. “He was an out-of-work stonemason. Zubov spotted him leaving after a show in Chelyabinsk. We needed some muscle to set things up, to help move cages, to haul up the rigging.” He indicated the complicated arrangement of ropes, nets and trapezes half hidden above them. “I couldn’t trust him with the knots or getting the nets in the right places, or any of that. Eventually Zubov gave him the lion-taming act.”

Nothing at the circus was what it seemed, thought Dorj. Its amazing and glittering wonders were nothing more than tawdry deceits. Yet what about a murderous corpse? What sort of deceit was that? Or was that real?

Dim light outlined the web of ropes high up in the cavernous hangar. Certainly the distance between Fabayan’s trapeze, up near the ceiling, and the hard concrete floor far below was real enough.

“It takes true skill to perform up there,” boasted Fabayan, following Dorj’s gaze. “Buturlin recognized talent. He was born to the circus. He was the one who engaged me. If he were still alive, it would be different.”

“Buturlin was the former owner?”

“Yes, and then Zubov and he became partners. Buturlin died a year or two ago. But Zubov, he was originally just the accountant; he knows nothing about talent or the circus.”

“Zubov did perform some magic,” Dorj pointed out.

“Anyone can buy a trick box. The only thing Zubov made disappear was our pay cheques. If he had headlined my aerial act rather than a fat, unemployed labourer and a drugged big cat, we would be the toast of Moscow by now.”

Fabayan’s voice echoed around the empty hangar as he walked about, testing several thick ropes dangling from above. Dorj followed a few steps behind.

“Why did Zubov imagine you would do better business in Mongolia?” he finally asked.

“Because we would have no competition, or so he said. But, more importantly, as it turned out, he did not realize that you Mongolians don’t have enough tugriks to keep the traffic lights working, let alone pay for art.”

Not put diplomatically, but true enough, reflected Dorj. It struck him that the deaths of both the owner and his favoured lion tamer had at once removed two impediments to Fabayan’s career. He wondered who else might have been angered by Zubov’s refusal to headline aerialists. “Do you perform alone?”

“At the moment, yes. However, I have been training Ivana. Naturally, the audience wants thrills and artistry such as I provide, but I also needed a vision of beauty on the wires, to complement my performance.”

The young man stared up into the shadows, a bird with its wings clipped.

“Isn’t it dangerous, trying to learn something like that at her age?” Dorj ventured delicately.

The other dismissed the suggestion. “Ivana is closer to my age than Cheslav’s,” he said, somewhat heatedly it seemed to Dorj. “Besides, she is an accomplished acrobat. She took over for Larisa when she could no longer continue her act. Her acrobatic act, at least. We no longer have a contortionist. Larisa was the only one of us with that talent.”

Larisa had mentioned only her acrobatic skill. For a moment Dorj said nothing. He was thinking about her remarkable blue eyes. It was hard to imagine those blue eyes belonged to a woman who was, or had been, a contortionist, as well as… Dorj forced his thoughts back to more important matters.

“Is it true that the women had reason to hate Zubov?” he asked, recalling Dima’s comment.

“You mean because he was constantly propositioning them? Actually, the way he was always looking at Ivana, I am surprised poor Cheslav waited until he was dead to kill the old lecher. If I had been her husband, I would have strangled him long ago!”

Dorj immediately recognized the possessive jealousy in Fabayan’s voice. How often had he encountered that fierce tone while investigating a crime? Perhaps that was why he so distrusted his own emotions. So often strong emotions led to disaster.

He might have felt compelled to ask whether the young man had been having an affair with Cheslav’s wife, but the aerialist grabbed one of the hanging ropes and hauled himself up into the shadows. A few seconds later, Dorj heard the creak of the swinging trapeze.

Dorj climbed into Zubov’s caravan. Having spoken to the last two or three members of the small troupe, he had discovered that, predictably, they all claimed that everyone else but themselves had good reason to hate the circus owner.

It was hard to remember he had driven out here hoping that for a few hours the circus’s dazzling lights, nimble performers and sideshows would free him from the dreariness of the vast grey desert and cramped grey offices of his official life. In Ulaanbaatar he had had the consolation of the State Theatre. Out here in Dalandzadgad culture was a traveling circus.

Dorj removed his wire-framed eyeglasses and carefully wiped their round lenses with his handkerchief. But when he put the spectacles back on, the scene remained unchanged and just as murky.

He examined the interior of the caravan. It held no revelations. Its few cupboards contained only household necessaries, and in any event they were too small for purposes of concealment. Nor had anyone been hiding in the lavatory cubicle, waiting to escape in the general excitement. He would surely have been noticed.

The blood smears on the floor and the imprint of a bloody hand on the lavatory door mutely reproached his lack of understanding.

Dorj positioned himself beneath the closed roof vent and reached up to touch it. When he had noticed it earlier, while examining the outside of the caravan, he’d guessed it was too small to serve as an entrance. Now he was certain. His shoulders were much wider than the opening and Dima, although short, was at least as broad. Not a proper midget, as Zubov had said. In addition, the vent gave no evidence of having been opened recently. Indeed, a ropy bit of cobweb hung down from it.

The cobweb made him think about Fabayan’s rigging. Didn’t aerialists fly through the air, in a manner of speaking? He would have had a motive, certainly, unless Dorj were mistaken about the aerialist’s relationship with Ivana. For that matter, Ivana was an acrobat. Dorj tried to imagine some way aerial or acrobatic skills might breach a locked caravan.

After a moment’s thought, Dorj replaced Zubov’s wooden chair to the spot he had seen it while assisting Dima to lay Hercules’ body on the bed. He sat down where Zubov had sat. Why had the circus owner locked the door until the ambulance came? As a precaution, no doubt. People who were hated had reason to lock their doors.

He glanced around again. By the disordered bed an empty vodka bottle had rolled into a corner.

So, he reasoned, perhaps Zubov had felt the need for a drink, sitting in his cold caravan with the corpse of his headline act. It was not surprising. Dorj tried to imagine how it would have been, sitting there with the dead man, drinking, perhaps eventually dozing.

And suddenly the dead man is rising from the bed. Impossible. It must be the vodka, or the tail end of a nightmare. Half awake, he is confused. He jumps to his feet. The chair topples over as the dead man advances. Convulsed with panic, the ringmaster backs away, but there is no escape. The corpse staggers against the lavatory door, steadies itself with a bloody hand. Then those huge hands fasten on Zubov’s throat. Trying to push the nightmare away, the ringmaster finds only a barrel chest gashed by a hideous wound.

Dorj shuddered. Trying to imagine the scene he had felt himself being drawn into it, almost like the shaman he had once seen performing for some tourists. Certainly the masked man, beating a drum and dancing about, had known as well as his spectators that he was not descending into the lower world. But as his gyrations became wilder it seemed to Dorj that the man was convincing himself that he was actually taking the impossible journey and in so doing was also persuading the spectators – most of them, at least – of the fact.

But what Dorj had imagined – a murderous corpse – was simply not possible.

And yet, the lion-tamer had been dead. The wound had been so terrible, he must have gone into shock instantly and died within minutes.

Dorj’s thoughtful gaze was drawn again to the bloody handprint on the door. Nor could he forget the welt around the strangled man’s neck.

Again he tried to picture the performers, and how their skills might have contributed to Zubov’s death. All the exercise did was remind him of a snippet of his limited knowledge of native Mongolian culture. Along with masks, shamans-religious magicians, scoffers called them – wore mirrors on their clothing. Weren’t the sequins sewn into circus performers’ outfits tiny mirrors? Perhaps it was just as Batu said, the soul being called back, simple magic. Was it so dreadful to believe there might be magic in the world?

Dorj finally found Larisa standing outside the cookhouse among the vehicles in the back yard.

“Do you have a few spare moments?” he asked.

The bearded lady shrugged. “We won’t be leaving until tomorrow.”

“You’ll continue to tour?”

“What else can we do? Eventually some legal person will let us know who owns the circus. Meanwhile we have to make a living.”

Dorj paused, gauging the light. It would be more than an hour before it was completely dark. “I need to ask you a few more questions. And there’s something you might like to see. A local landmark.”

“How mysterious. It’s been a long time since I’ve been asked out walking by a gentleman! I’d be pleased to accept.”

“Well, it isn’t exactly, that is to say – there are questions…”

“What? You aren’t shy about being seen with a girl who looks like me, are you?”

As they followed faint tyre ruts up a small hill that rose almost imperceptibly several minutes’ walk from the abandoned hangar, Dorj had to admit to himself that although he might indeed be shy about being seen with a bearded woman, it was nevertheless a marked, almost welcome, change from his grey official life.

“Here’s something you might want to know,” Larisa said, when they were well away from the back yard. “Dima is Buturlin’s son. Illegitimate. I understand when Buturlin made Zubov a partner, their agreement required the circus to keep Dima on, even in the event sole ownership passed to Zubov. The agreement apparently didn’t specify that Zubov had to treat him like a human being.”

Dorj nodded, wondering why Larisa was offering the information. Perhaps it was just to be helpful. People did not always need ulterior motives, he reminded himself. “Perhaps Zubov hoped to force him to leave?”

“It would be his way,” agreed Larisa.

“Does Dima have any interest in the circus, now that his father’s partner is gone?”

“I don’t know. You don’t suspect Dima, do you? Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything.”

The wind was still cold, but walking made Dorj feel warmer. Perhaps it was his slight build that made him mind the chill. It was not a good trait for a Mongolian, even a city dweller as he had been, since in Ulaanbaatar in the winter it was not unknown for the temperature to reach 40 below.

He asked his companion about Ivana and Fabayan. Larisa confirmed his suspicion. “She married Cheslav in a fit of pique shortly after Zubov hired him, because she’d just had a big quarrel with Fabayan. Ivana is impetuous and emotional, always has been. She and Fabayan quickly made it up. Poor Cheslav. I often wondered how he could not have known.”

They had reached the windswept brow of the hill. From this vantage point, they could see the black bulk of the hangar. Beyond it lay a litter of abandoned Russian military equipment, left there to rust into oblivion in the Gobi’s vast emptiness.

Here at the top of the hill was the much older landmark Dorj had wanted to show Larisa. It was a pile of rocks standing higher than his head, a sacred obo, built stone by stone by passing travellers over the span of hundreds of years. Up here, looking at such a thing, it was easy to believe the impossible.

“So Cheslav avenged himself on the wrong man,” mused Dorj.

“You don’t really believe a dead man got up and strangled someone, do you? You’re thinking like Shakespeare, with all those ghosts stamping about calling for bloody vengeance!”

“You know Shakespeare?”

“Circus people know everything.”

“I really can’t make anything of it,” Dorj admitted. He related his conversation with the dead man’s wife.

Larisa pondered for a few moments. “What if she somehow gave the tranquilizer to Cheslav?” she finally suggested. “Not to kill him outright. Just to make him slow, perhaps affect his reactions. Give the lion its chance, you know? He was frightened of the lion, and I think they can sense it. Well, she was too, especially having to feed it. Though she disliked the reptiles even more.”

Dorj nodded. It almost seemed a reasonable theory, given the character of the widow. A tawdry triangle and a more than melodramatic way to get rid of an unwanted husband.

Larisa continued. “But here is another idea. About that terrible wound Cheslav had – perhaps it didn’t kill him immediately because of the tranquilizer in him? And he came to in the caravan? He probably thought that Zubov had plotted with Ivana, and that would be enough. He would want revenge before he died.” She sighed and continued, “But it is all too fantastic, even for a circus, don’t you think?”

Dorj shrugged without comment. Her theories made as much, or as little, sense as anything he had been able to think of up to that point.

Sunset was a purpling bruise on the horizon. In its soft light, they stood looking at the pile of stones that formed the obo. It was not the sort of thing to which Dorj was usually drawn. But it was the only magic he could think to offer this strange woman.

“This is an ancient place of power,” he explained.

“A good spot to solve your mystery, then.”

Dorj listened to the wind sighing around the obo. He thought of the unknown number of ancient hands, belonging to forgotten people all now turned to dust, this single action of their lost lives, the placing of a stone, now all that was left of them.

“It is a good place to make one believe the dead might return,” he said, quietly. “We should go back before it gets dark.”

He picked up a pebble and added it to the obo. As Larisa bent to do the same, she stumbled and, as he had earlier, Dorj caught her arm. This time he was not so quick to let go.

“You would never guess I was an acrobat once,” she said.

“And, so I am told, a contortionist. You didn’t mention that.”

Larisa’s blue eyes widened slightly. “You don’t suspect me, do you? Do you suppose I managed to wriggle into the caravan somehow?” She looked away from him. “I’m sorry, Inspector. But in fact, I have indeed misled you about something else. You didn’t think this was real?”

She grabbed the edge of her beard and pulled. Dorj stared for a second at the suddenly smooth face. “Now there is a magical transformation which the Bard himself would have been proud to preserve in his work,” he finally said.

To his distress he saw that the unveiled face was set in a frown.

“I have never suspected you, Larisa,” he quickly assured her. “In fact, right now I need your assistance.” He grabbed her hand – he could hardly believe he had done so – and hurried her back down the hill.

“There may be another trap around here,” Larisa worried. “Be careful. Dima might have put some more out. I wish you’d tell me what you’re looking for.”

So far she and the inspector, searching around the back of the hangar with the aid of a fading torch, had located perhaps a dozen traps, finding only one sprung, and that holding an unfortunate rat. Dorj merely insisted they continue looking. She swung the feeble yellow light across the ground until it lit upon a metal stake. The flickering beam slid down the stake’s attached chain to reveal another trap, and beside it a semi-comatose snake.

“It belongs to the circus, doesn’t it?” said Dorj.

“Yes. It’s Nikita. How do you know?”

“I grew up in the city, but I don’t think boa constrictors are native to the Gobi. Not even ones as small as this.”

“He’s just a baby,” Larisa pointed out. “Zubov traded our big python for it. He eats less. Ivana didn’t say anything about him being missing.”

“There were pictures of snakes on the animal trailer, but I didn’t notice any inside. At least one aquarium was empty, though. When you wondered whether I suspected you’d managed to wriggle into the trailer caravan, it reminded me.”

Sluggish from ingesting whatever it had found in the trap, the snake was quickly popped into the empty feed sack Dorj had brought with him. “We’ll need this for evidence,” he commented.

“You’re saying the snake killed Zubov?”

Dorj hefted the sack, hoping the snake would not emerge too quickly from its post-prandial lethargy.

“I should have realized that manual strangulation would leave finger marks on Zubov’s neck, not a continuous welt all around it,” he explained. “If nothing else, the bloody handprint in the caravan should have reminded me.

“It got there during the struggle. What I surmise happened is that Zubov, having drunk heavily, fell asleep.” Dorj continued quickly, wanting to finish without distressing the woman too much. “The snake, having escaped, got into the caravan. Snakes are attracted to warmth and the only warm thing in the cold caravan was the slumbering Zubov.”

“The first and last time anything was attracted by Zubov’s warmth,” the woman said wryly.

“Then he was suddenly woken up by the boa tightening around his neck. He couldn’t call for aid. Trying to get it off him, he crashed around, and in doing so knocked the corpse off the bed.”

He paused momentarily. “That would explain the blood on the floor and the lavatory door.”

Larisa shuddered. “It must be true. Boas that feel threatened instinctively tighten their coils, so I hear.”

“Once Zubov was dead,” Dorj continued, “he was too big to ingest. Or perhaps the snake was scared away by Batu’s pounding on the door. It crawled off through one of those badly patched holes in the caravan wall, in search of other prey. It was probably hungry. In fact, I don’t doubt hunger also contributed to the lion attacking Cheslav.”

“You don’t think it’s what Ivana said – not enough tranquilizer?”

They had arrived at the unlocked animal trailer. Dorj looked around for the empty aquarium. The bag he was holding shifted alarmingly.

“I’m not certain about the lion. Perhaps it was just as Ivana said, an accident with the tranquilizer. Or possibly she saw her chance.”

“So both deaths were nothing more than accidents. How very strange.”

“Yes. Strange indeed. Too strange. Unless…” Dorj frowned. He stared into the dimness. “What if Nikita didn’t escape? In the confusion, after her husband was killed, Ivana could have returned to this trailer and tranquilized the boa. It isn’t a large boa and easily concealed under that billowy outfit she was wearing. Under the circumstances we would never have noticed. And when she threw herself so dramatically onto the corpse-well, he was a big man and there was plenty of room inside that wound for a smallish boa. It would have awakened in a cooling corpse, in a cold caravan, and gone for Zubov.”

Larisa blanched.

The sack Dorj had all but forgotten jerked suddenly open. The head of the snake whipped into view. Another convulsive twist of its body and it had knocked the sack from Dorj’s hands. The freed boa slithered across the floor. But in the wrong direction. A leonine paw flashed out from between cage bars, and then Raisa was rumbling contentedly as she ate the unfortunate killer.

So accidents did come in threes, as Fabayan had said, Dorj thought.

Larisa and Dorj left the trailer and stood gazing up at the impossibly enormous moon sitting on the edge of the horizon. Its bright light, flooding down from the dark sky, painted the world silver. Ebony shadows pooled here and there. Inside the trailer the lion was devouring the only credible evidence for Dorj’s unlikely story.

The strange bearded creature he had met only hours earlier, now transformed into a beautiful woman, leaned nearer to brush a magical kiss onto his cheek. Dorj felt certain he must have fallen into some Shakespearean enchantment.

“I am sorry,” whispered Larisa. “But in a way I am not. We circus people stick together. And only Ivana knows what really happened. There is no proof of anything, really.”

Dorj wondered what his superiors would say about the report he would be submitting in due course. His reputation would certainly suffer, and he suspected that over the next few months he would be finding rubber snakes hidden in his office desk with monotonous regularity.

But at least he could state the murderer’s identity with certainty. How the boa had got into the caravan would be difficult to ascertain, and indeed he was beginning to doubt the fantastic tale he had spun. Perhaps the snake had arrived in the caravan by its own efforts, without anyone’s assistance. That part he would leave to his superior’s imagination.

“Larisa,” he said softly, “Did you know Shakespeare mentions a snake around someone’s neck? A beautiful gold and green snake. And there’s a lioness in the same scene. In fact, now I think about it, the original Hercules strangled the Nemean lion. What happened here almost makes some sort of sense.”

The woman smiled. “Though it is the wrong season, do you mean it almost makes sense in a dream-like midsummer night’s sort of way, Inspector Dorj?”

There was a terrace behind the house with swags of cream and apricot roses, steps leading down to a broad lawn with a cedar tree. The lawn sloped away to a deep ditch, separating the garden from a meadow where cattle grazed. At the boundary of lawn and meadowland was a small lake a couple of acres in extent. The island was not quite in the centre of the lake, nearer the shore on the meadow side, about the size of a large drawing room, with a marble statue of Venus, half-draped, rising from a tangle of rushes and meadowsweet. Nothing else to see at all except, early on that June morning, a horse. A white horse, standing up to the hocks in meadowsweet and early morning mist from the lake, looking itself like a statue, except when you got closer you’d have seen that it was shivering and its nostrils flaring, not being the sort of horse used to spending its nights in the open, even in an English summer. No ordinary horse either. If half-draped Venus had grown tired of English country life and summoned the gods’ horse Pegasus to carry her back up to Olympus, this was what might have arrived in answer. Only Venus couldn’t fly away after all because the instant his Olympian hooves touched the damp soil of Berkshire, Pegasus had lost his wings and became, like her, marooned in 1866 on a small island on the moderate-sized estate of a man who had made his fortune from railways.

That, at any rate, is how it might have looked to a fanciful observer with a rudimentary knowledge of classical mythology who happened to be looking out from the terrace early that morning. In fact it was a housemaid glancing from her window in the attic who first saw it and she-knowing nothing of Pegasus or Venus-went downstairs and informed the undercook that one of the carriage horses must have got let out of its stable and there’d be the devil to pay when the head groom found out about it. From there the news went out to the stables where a hasty check of heads found that all six equine members of Sir Percy Whitton’s establishment were present and correct in their boxes. A delegation of stable staff, along with some of the gardeners picked up on the way, hurried across the lawn to the edge of the lake, and realised at once that this was no ordinary horse. Where it came from and how it had arrived overnight, saddled and bridled, on Sir Percy’s little island, was a cause of universal puzzlement overtaken by the necessity of getting it to more solid land. This presented problems because the small rowing boat that was usually kept on the lawn side of the lake for the amusement of Sir Percy’s guests had been reduced to splinters in an accident with a garden roller the week before and its replacement had not yet arrived. After some discussion several grooms and gardeners took off their boots, waistcoats, and jackets and waded into the lake. At its deepest it came up to chest height but they went on firmly, encouraged by shouts from their friends on the bank and, possibly, the prospect of some substantial sign of gratitude from whoever turned out to be the owner of the animal which was watching them apprehensively, showing every sign of wanting to bolt but, of course, with nowhere but the lake to go. I would guess that at this point, in spite of the difficulties, the rescuers were lighthearted. It was a diversion from the work of the morning and there was no reason to think that they were engaged in anything more sinister than the recovery of a fine animal. A groom was the first to step ashore. I suspect that the ardour of the gardeners decreased as they came closer to the dancing, snorting object of their quest. He put hand on the rein, made calming noises. Then he gave a shout and the horse reared up, almost dragging the rein from his hand.

“There’s a man here, a man hurt. I think it’s Sir Percy.” But long before the swaddled form was carried on a hurdle up the lawn and under the cedar with silent gardeners and grooms around it, the whole household knew that the groom had been only half right. The man on the island was indeed their employer, Sir Percy, but he wasn’t hurt – he was dead.

The bare outline of Sir Percy’s death reached me on a June evening in London. I read it on a damp galley proof in my place of work, a subeditors’ room in inky Fleet Street.

We have received reports from Berkshire that the director of the South Western Shires Railway Company, Sir Percy Whitton, has been killed in a riding accident on his estate near Maybridge. An inquest is to take place tomorrow. Funeral arrangements will be notified.

In the calculation an allowance has to be made for the Gregorian Correction of the calendar in 1752. Then it becomes apparent that the time elapsed between the firing of that bullet and its plunge into Westmacott’s body was exactly two hundred and twenty-two years, two months, one week, five days, twelve hours and forty-seven minutes…

The duelling pistol from which it was shot was fired by Ensign the Honourable Nigel Koffard. He was a young officer in one of Marlborough’s crack squadrons and had but recently homed to England after the decisive bloodiness of Malplaquet. The man whom his shot wounded two hundred odd years after was Mr Henry Leonard Westmacott, a branch-cashier of the London and Southern Counties Bank, Limited.

Nigel Koffard pressed the trigger of that pistol, in the park of Ravenshaw Hall, Derbyshire, at precisely eight o’clock on the radiant morning of August the second, 1710.

Henry Westmacott was sitting by his own hearthside in the drawing-room of The Nook, Bettington Avenue, Thornton Heath, Surrey, when Koffard’s bullet struck him and shattered his right shoulder. He had just settled down – on the dismal and rainy night of October the twenty-third, last year-intending to listen to a concert broadcast from the Queen’s Hall. The ball hit him as the B.B.C. announcer was concluding an apology for the programme being late by saying: “It is now eight forty-seven, and we are taking you straight over-”

Thus was the second time most accurately determined.

All the day long, young Mrs Westmacott had been anxious about their little boy, Brian. He was running a slight temperature.

Hence she no sooner had dinner ended when she needs must go up to the nursery. In the swift way of tummy-troubled baby boys, Brian had contrived to lose his pains. He was sleeping serenely. Except for a slight flush and a dampness in his hair, he was normal.

Pamela Westmacott smiled ruefully as she smoothed his rucked sleeping suit and re-arranged his cot clothes…

The shot, the groan and the stumbling fall among the fireirons all sounded on that instant. With mechanical acumen Mrs Westmacott also noted that some china crashed to ruin in the kitchen, and that the opening chords of the Symphony Orchestra’s performance were lost to a thud and a sudden silence.

She rushed down the stairs to collide with her maid-servant, who had burst with almost equal speed from her domain.

“Oh, ma’am! Wh-what in the name o’ glory’s happened?”

“Hush, Biddy, and stay there! I-I’ll go in myself and see what’s the matter.”

Westmacott had raised himself to his knees and was delicately pawing at his right shoulder.

“Henry! Henry-darling!” Pamela Westmacott was down beside him. “What’s gone wrong?” Then she saw the sodden red horror of his shoulder. “Oh, my poor old boy!… Biddy-phone Doctor Smithers and the police. Tell them to hurry. Say it’s serious: Mr Westmacott has been shot!”

When doctor and police arrived Westmacott had been got to bed. He was fully conscious and calm, despite his excruciating pain. His wife had managed him in a way that won Doctor Smithers’ admiration. Her first-aid had stanched most of the bleeding.

Smithers turned to her with a smile as he unscrewed the nozzle of the syringe with which he had administered an opiate.

“Sensible woman, Mrs Westmacott! You made everything very easy… What’s that?… Dangerous? Oh no, not at all! Direct compound fracture of the scapula socket and a flake chipped off the head of the humerus. Abominably painful, but that’s about all.”

Old Smithers patted her hands and definitely pressed her to the door. “Now run along and leave hubby to me. Go down and satisfy the curiosity of those exceedingly impatient policemen. Above all, don’t-you-worry.”

Pamela Westmacott went in to see Brian before returning to the drawing-room. He had slept through all the hubbub.

The police were certainly impatient. Their cross-examination had foundered poor Biddy. After their dismissal of her she had gone back to the kitchen to blubber among the neglected crockery.

In Mrs Westmacott was discovered harder and less hysterical material. She told them all she knew. Essentially because it tallied so exactly with Biddy’s account, the officers became more and more confounded…

“But are you absolutely sure, Mrs Westmacott, no one came out of this room as you rushed down the stairs? Or slipped out by the front door without your seeing ’em?”

“Oh dear, how many more times must I tell you? No!” Wearily she smoothed her forehead. “Who could have done so?”

“Whoever fired that shot,” grunted Inspector Ormesby, “there’s no weapon to be found. The windows are all properly secured. There isn’t any glass broken. Your husband wasn’t potted at by someone lurking in the garden, that’s self-evident. And he couldn’t possibly have shot himself.” The Inspector nodded toward the wireless cabinet which the bullet had struck. “The position of his wound and the subsequent flight of the missile settles that... Somebody shot him! Then who was it?”

A plain-clothes officer turned from his inspection of the damaged cabinet. He had been pencilling notes referring to the tarnished ball of lead which showed itself, half embedded, in the seven-ply veneered woodwork. It had struck a spot directly in front of a valve, and the impact had been sufficient to shatter filaments, so stopping reception.

This man’s talking was far less truculent than that of Inspector Ormesby. But it was deadlier.

“You’ve told us that the front door was locked for the night. Have I got that right-hey?”

“Yes; you have.”

“I noticed that a little brass bolt is on the inner side of the door. Then there’s the main lock and a Yale latch. All of ’em secured?”

“No. The key of the big lock wasn’t turned, but the bolt was pushed home. Naturally the latch held as well.”

“Had you to open those to let us in?”

“I had.”

“Wasn’t it natural for your maid to open that door? Why yourself?”

“Why not? Especially in-in such a crisis! As a matter of fact, Biddy was hopeless – helpless.”

The plain-clothes man watched her through half-closed eyes.

“Now, you remember, you also told us that you came helterskeltering down the stairs at such a rate that you bumped into this Bridget O’Hara woman at the bottom. And she’d just flown out of the kitchen – hey?”

“Perfectly correct. When the shot was fired, Biddy dropped a plate or something. Then she rushed here. We – we converged on the room like two mad things.”

“No one went out of the door.” It seemed that the plain-clothes man was musing aloud. “No one, so you say, went up the stairs past you. No one could have doubled out by way of the kitchen, and no one could have doubled out of here back into the dining-room or into the cupboard under the stairs, without you or your servant seeing ’em… Um-m-m!” He paused, and ignored Mrs Westmacott completely, to smile past her at Inspector Ormesby. “And no weapon found,” he slowly murmured. “You carry on here, Inspector. Strikes me I’ll have to have another heart-to-heart talk with our faithful Bridget – our exceptionally clever and faithful Bridget. Perfect treasure of a maid, I’ll bet!”

Pamela Westmacott flinched as though a viper had reared itself before her eyes as she watched the inimical C.I.D. man saunter from the room. Mad as it seemed; horrible, fantastic and unreal as it was, nevertheless she realised she was the suspect here.

Now let interpolation be made of the somewhat astounding experience of an official police photographer, called Coghill.

A genial little fellow, Egbert Coghill; a craftsman of infinite patience and capability. He was the man who went to The Nook the next day and, acting on police instructions, set about securing photographs of the drawing-room and, more especially, the bullet-splintered radio-set.

Mr Coghill was highly gratified by all he saw. Plenty of light, artificial and otherwise; plenty of space, and most admirable contrasts of dark furnishings against pale matt walls.

Cheerily, with an incessant whispering whistle, he moved about and made himself quite at home. He dumped his big camera on a table. The black leather case, which contained his plates in their mahogany slides, he placed in front of the wireless cabinet. Still softly whistling, he pottered around, making his notes and selecting his objects and angles.

Thereafter he erected his camera and screened its peerless lens with a precisely-chosen colour-filter, designed to obtain for him the correct qualities and the infinitude of detail that the satisfaction of his craftsmanship demanded.

He made various long exposures. He took photographs of the door, the windows, the blood-stained rug, the untidy hearth, and the arm-chair in which Westmacott was sitting when he was wounded. After these, Coghill concentrated on his most important work. He removed his plate carrier from its place in front of the wireless set and focused on the half-embedded bullet and the starry matrix wherein it lay. He expended his remaining four plates on this.

When he came to the development of his material, Coghill was astonished and alarmed. Without exception, each dripping negative held-superimposed on its actual detail – a wee portrait of something that appeared to be an astronomical portrait view of the planet Saturn. These were ring-impounded orbs which had a quality of eerie brilliancy that had struck the plates with something amounting almost to halation. Yet they were mottled by shadows of an intensity and a delicacy Mr Egbert Coghill had never previously developed out of any sensitive emulsion.

More than this phenomena, the four exposures of the wireless cabinet were useless. These, which should have been Coghill’s acme, not only bore the eerie imprint of the tiny incandescent “planet”, but a great maelstrom of fog about the place where the bullet should have been. The cabinet was clear enough. Only that area which should have been occupied by a representation of the leaden slug was at fault.

Mr Coghill equipped himself with another camera and a new assortment of plates. Back he went to the drawing-room of The Nook. He duplicated his previous exposures and again developed them.

None of this second group of negatives showed the Saturn-like globe. Equally, none of the seven plates he had, secondarily, exposed on the cabinet front was in any better state than the former four. Except for the non-appearance of the queer orb, there were the identical coils of fogginess about the splintered woodwork – and no sign of the bullet.

Mr Egbert Coghill made a number of prints from all these negatives. Together with his notes and the plates themselves, he gave these into police keeping. This done, he fared forth and drank deeply.

Without much loss of time those photographs went, by way of Scotland Yard, to a Home Office department in Whitehall: to Barnabas Hildreth. He studied them and puzzled over them, as he afterwards told me, until he was sick to death of the very sight of them. Disgruntled and bewildered, Barnabas then went out to Thornton Heath and interviewed the Westmacotts.

The unfortunate Henry had nothing of much value to relate. He had been reading, he said, and had just put aside his evening paper to listen to the broadcast. As he leaned back in his chair, taking off his pince-nez and rubbing his closed eyes, he heard a curiously violent hissing as of air escaping from a pin-punctured tyre. Then there was a detonation and a fierily enormous blow at his shoulder. The next thing he realised was that he was wambling about the floor, suffering pain.

He scouted the idea that anyone could have been in the room with him without his knowledge. And on the subject of the police theory – that his wife had shot him and, in collusion with Bridget O’Hara, had thereafter established incontestable alibi-he was sardonically and sulphurously vehement. When he discovered Hildreth so far agreed with him under that head as to veto further official brow-beating, Westmacott became a different man. He was so relieved, so pathetically relieved, that Hildreth was touched – actually was humanised sufficiently to accept an invitation to stay for tea!

So it came about that the grim Intelligence Service officer and Master Brian Westmacott became friends. Hildreth chuckled over this.

“There was no resisting the little beggar, Ingram. He’s a sturdy kid and as sensible as the deuce. No sooner had I finished examining the drawing-room than he lugged me off to build what he called a ‘weal twue king’s palace’-from bits of wood; wood such as I’ve never seen a child playing with before. He had a big box full of sawn-up chair legs and rails; ‘pillars’ for his palace. And he’d scores of miniature arches and so forth – all shaped out of carved walnut and mahogany and oak and elm-little blocks, battens and angle-pieces that had originally been parts of furniture. One glance at ’em showed they were scores of years old and had come from the workshops of masters like Hepplewhite and Chippendale.”

I sensed something of extraordinary import here.

“Oh, and where’d he got ’em from?”

“Out of the family woodshed. Or, at least, his father had.” Hildreth grinned. “I looked it over-lots of the same stuff there. Y’see, Westmacott has a brother in the antique furniture trade: does restorations and repairs and so forth. Westmacott gets all the waste from his brother’s workshops. The likely bits he cuts up to add to Brian’s collection of blocks and pillars. The remainder is burnt.

“While I was in the drawing-room, old man” – he deliberately went off at a tangent – “I poked that bullet out of the wireless set and took a pair of callipers to it. It’s a pistol ball right enough. But where in the name of glory did it come from? And, who cast it – when?”

“‘Who cast it?’” I echoed. “What, isn’t it an ordinary revolver slug?”

“Mass-produced?” Barnabas rubbed his hands together in glee. “Not on your life! It’s as big as a marble and perfectly spherical. And it has marks on it that only the closure of a beautifully accurate bullet-mould could have made. More than that. It’s of an unusual calibre-one so unusual that it opens up a tremendous field of conjecture, yet, at the same time, defines the narrowest of tracks. A track, indeed, that a fool could follow.”

Silently I watched the peculiar fellow twiddle about with his smoking cigarette. He was looking through its writhing spirals at me with a glitter of satanical humour in his dark eyes.

“Calibres of firearms,” he softly stated, “are not little matters left to individual discretion, Ingram. They’re registered and pedigreed better than bloodstock – at least, in this country. Ever since 1683 any armourer or gunsmith drilling a new size of bore has had to deposit a specimen barrel and exact measurements with the Tower authorities before he could fit it to a stock or sell or exploit it in any way.

“Remembering that, I asked for records to be searched. The answer is, that ball was cast to be shot out of only two particular types of weapons. It’s of a size that’s quite obsolete to-day. Either it could have been shot from a long gun, registered in London by Adolph Levoisier, of Strasbourg, in 1826, or out of a duelling pistol fashioned by Gregory Gannion, a gunsmith who had an establishment in Pall Mall between the years 1702 and 1754.

“The exact date of Gannion’s application for a licence to put on the market a weapon of a new type and calibre which he called ‘an excellently powerful small-arm, for the practise of the duel, or in other uses, for delicacy and swiftness of discharge in defence or offence’… was February the ninth, 1709. And, according to all accounts, the bloodthirsty young bucks of that day went daffy about it. Y’see, it was the first ‘hair-trigger’ pistol on the market: ugly, but useful.

“I’m working up from that. I’ve a shrewd idea that good English lead wouldn’t come out of a continental long-gun. No, a Gannion duelling pistol seems indicated.”

I am getting ever more used to Barnabas Hildreth’s tortuous tricks. The queerly precise ordination of those words, “good English lead”, made me curious.

“How does one determine the nationality of-er-lead?” I suavely asked.

“All as easily as one differentiates between a Chinaman and a Zulu,” he sourly grinned. “All as simply as one distinguishes Cleveland iron-ore from Castillian heematite; Poldruinn copper from Norwegian; Aberdeen granite from that of Messina – by looking at it first of all, ass, and studying it afterwards.

“According to the assay-notes, furnished me this morning, the lead from which that ball was cast came from one particular area of Derbyshire, and nowhere else! What’s more, it’s almost pure native stuff” – his face shone with some inner ecstatic light – “and, as it chances, so absolutely unique… that it’s worth its weight, and more, in gold. In fact, if the fervours and excitements of the metallurgical chemists are anything to go by – and they’re simply frazzling over it – it’s the clue to a pretty fat fortune for someone!”

He got up then, and growling something about my hospitality and his thirst, calmly stalked across to my tantalus and mixed whisky and sodas. Then he challenged me across the brim of his glass.

“Well, old man, all the best! And here’s to the speedy solution of one of the neatest mysteries I’ve struck for months.”

So far as I recollect, it was two days later that Hildreth descended on me. He wanted me to go to Thornton Heath with him, and I went. We visited the premises occupied by Westmacott’s brother Ralph – Westmacott and Company, Ltd.: “Antique Furniture Restored, Renovated, Repaired and Reproduced” – reproduced mainly, if my layman’s eye had any common sense behind it.

Admittedly, Ralph Westmacott had certain specimen pieces in his workshops. These were the magnificent possessions of connoisseurs, to whom the factor of financial worth hardly counted. They were all undergoing tiny but incredibly painstaking forms of restoration, and guarded jealously for the treasures they were.

However, as Hildreth said, these were not our meat. Westmacott took us to the larger, general workshop. Here we saw really valuable, but ordinary, examples of olden furniture in the processes of repair and “faking”.

“We pride ourselves,” Westmacott told us, “on our ability to replace a faulty participle with a sound one, so meticulously reproduced and fitted – grafted on, one might say – that no one outside first-flight experts can detect the addition.”

“That, of course, necessitates,” smoothly came Hildreth’s question, “your carrying an amazing stock of old cabinet-making woods, I presume?”

Westmacott looked curiously at my friend.

“Aye, amazing is the word,” he laughed. “Come and have a look in here!”

He preceded us to a vast loft that was filled by racks and shelving – and all of them packed with broken parts of old-fashioned furniture.

“Here you are,” he exulted, “from Tudor to Early Victorian; from linenfold panelling to pollard-oak sideboard doors… gathered together from the auction rooms of half the globe. We couldn’t carry on a day without ’em. Unless similar old stuff is used on replacement jobs-”

“Stuff like this, for instance,” Hildreth interrupted to point at a great stack of dirty wood, looking to me like huge half-cylinders of amber-flecked bog oak: split tree trunks. “This lot seems to be pretty ancient.”

Ralph Westmacott moved delicately to Hildreth’s side.

“Aye,” he concurred, “it’s old enough! That wood’s been buried in the earth for a century and more.”

Brightly, blandly, almost with the alert cockiness of a schoolboy, Barnabas Hildreth replied:

“I don’t doubt that for a moment, Mr Westmacott! They’re elm-wood water conduits, aren’t they? And, judging from their boggish appearance, they’ve come out of moorland or country where there’s plenty of peat about.”

Ralph Westmacott scratched his grizzled hair.

“Yes, they are conduits, and they certainly came out of peaty loam – from Derbyshire, as a matter of fact. We’ve men on the job up there now. They came from Ravensham Park, near a place called Battersby Brow… we bought the whole line of wooden water-pipes that used to serve the hall and the village. Finest tackle in the world for reproduction purposes.”

Grimly enough Hildreth chuckled.

“What a game it is!” he drily stated. “Now, ‘Battersby Brow,’ in Derbyshire” – he was jotting down these particulars in a notebook – “and ‘Ravensham Park,’ you say?”

“Yes, that’s all correct.” Westmacott seemed puzzled.

“And this hall you mentioned? What d’you call it?”

“Ravensham Hall, the residence of General Sir Arthur Koffard, you know.”

Hildreth put away his book and began to fumble among the blackened elm-wood. He pointed to one or two big fragments which lay about.

“Might I have a chunk to take away with me?” he inquired. “I want it for certain experiments that have to be made.” Westmacott nodded. “And will you ratify this? Certain lumps of this wood that you knew would be useless for your work you gave to your brother Henry, didn’t you?”

“I – I did! What’s the-”

“That’s right! I thought I recognised the stuff again. I saw some in his wood-shed.” Hildreth smiled. “Thanks!”

With that we went away and back to London.

From the “Black Bull,” at Battersby Brow in Derbyshire, a letter came to me on the twenty-ninth of October:

My dear Ingram,

If you can leave your mouldy rag to look after itself for the weekend, come over here and be interested. Of all the intricate bits of work I’ve ever struck, this is the trickiest! Don’t let me down, old chap. I promise you a really noble denouement for the mystery of the Westmacott bullet: an ending that, I suppose, you’ll stick on one of your scandalous chronicles of my cases and complacently claim as your own.

Sincerely,

B.H.

So I set out for Battersby Brow and the “Black Bull” as soon as I put my paper to bed in the early hours of Friday, the thirty-first. At nine o’clock the next morning I was in a beautiful and brilliant country of whistling airs and mighty hills.

Over breakfast, Barnabas crowed mightily.

“Done a lot of work since I saw you, old man! Only one tiny coping-stone to be put on, and the job’s complete.

“It was a Gannion duelling pistol that fired that ball. I’ve seen it. There’s a pair of ’em, and they’ve been laid away in a case since seventeen hundred and ten… One was discharged. The other was loaded, but I got permission to draw the charge. I drew it right enough!” He chuckled. “D’you know, it was a curious experience. There I had in hand another ball, similar to the one that wounded Westmacott. And there were tiny tattered fragments of a newspaper that had been used for a wad between bullet and powder – an issue of the Northern Intelligencer for August the first, seventeen-ten.

“The Koffards of Ravensham Hall have been awfully decent about everything. At first they were inclined to be stand-offish, but when I told old General Koffard the story you know, he tucked into things like a good ‘un.”

“Sorry to butt in, Barnabas – but, tell me, what story do I know? It occurs to me that I’ve only a few strikingly dissimilar and baffling incidents in mind, all hazily mixed up with lead that’s ‘worth its weight in gold’ and old elm logs which you proved had come from this district.”

Hildreth finished eating and lit a cigarette.

“Listen, old man, and follow me carefully… Go back in thought to the night of the twenty-third. You have Westmacott sitting in his chair. A bullet, apparently fired out of the void, strikes his shoulder and is deflected into the wireless set. Point the first to be made: direction of bullet’s flight proved it was shot from somewhere in the region of Westmacott’s feet. Got that?” I surveyed the scene in mind… I had to agree. “Now for point the second. Had a ball of that size possessed a high velocity, it’d have made the dickens of a mess of the humerus. It’d have caused a comminuted fracture, and, without much doubt, it would have glanced across and gone through his throat.

“But no, it was a missile of low velocity – only a direct compound fracture of the scapula socket and a lazy glide off, to smack the front of the wireless set.

“No one can say where the ball came from. The ineffable Egbert Coghill goes to photograph it… He puts his platecarrier dead in front of the set, incidentally in front of the bullet. For fully a quarter of an hour he footles about, then, when he comes to take his photographs, he carries on each plate he afterwards exposes a portrait of the ball, transmitted by its own power through the leather case, through the whole clutter of his mahogany slides and, in fact, through everything within eighteen inches of the radio cabinet!”

I jumped at that.

“D’you mean those Saturn-like globes were-”

“Photographs of that ball! Precisely! It emitted a short, hard ray of far more intensity than the usual X-ray apparatus employs!”

“But how on earth could that come about?”

“Pitch-blende,” said Barnabas Hildreth, “that’s why! Apart from certain areas in Cornwall, only the Peak district of Derbyshire and some isolated caverns round about Ingleborough in Yorkshire have pitch-blende deposits. Usually, it’s in association with lead that has a high silver content… The assay of that ball not only showed lead and silver, but definite traces of pitch-blende striations, all melted together.

“To clinch that part of the business, however” – Hildreth glanced at the time – “remember that the second batch of Coghill’s prints did not show the eerie little ‘planet’. That was because he did not bung his plate-carrier in front of the set on his second venture. The active emissions were powerless outside a small range.

“But neither set of plates would betray anything except a fogginess where the bullet should have been. What could you reasonably expect?” Hildreth shrugged. “A long exposure, with powerful lens concentrating radium rays on a speedy photographic emulsion – nothing but fog could result!”

In the end I realised that Hildreth was right. Radio-active properties in that leaden slug would explain everything. Incidentally I caught the drift of what he meant when he spoke about the value of the bullet and its potentiality as the clue to a fortune.

“Do you mind” – Hildreth was on his feet and again looking at his watch – “if we hustle? We’ve a walk of a few miles if we’re to get that coping-stone set, y’know. And I want it done to-day.”

That long tramp across the sage-green acres of the Derbyshire countryside terminated in the park of Ravensham Hall. A group of navvies, excavating a snakish trench, paused in their work and watched us curiously. And, from out of a near-by hut, a podgy and bespectacled man clad in a white coat, and an old iron-haired fellow with a face of claret, came to greet us. One was a chemist called Sowerby and the elder man was Major-General Sir Arthur Koffard, the owner of the estate.

“Well, Sowerby,” Hildreth briskly questioned when introductions were completed, “had any luck? Tried my little experiment – eh?”

Sowerby smiled unctuously and beckoned us back to the hut. In there, he pointed to a fire-clay retort that glowed above a fierce petrol-air lamp. Around the squat nozzle of the retort a big plume of intensely blue and brilliant flame was glowing. It made the popping sound of the burst of gorse-pods to August sun: an infinitesimal tattoo of whispering explosions.

“Yes, Mr Hildreth, your surmise was right enough. It’s methyl hydride, without a doubt.” He pointed to the halcyon fire. “Almost pure, to burn like that.”

“Most ’strordinary – most ’strordinary thing,” this was the crisp clacking of Koffard, “tha’ one can live a lifetime, ’mong things like these, an’ never know – never know. ’Course, this land’s been full o’ will-o’-th’-wisp lights for years, but one never stops to give ’em much thought – what?”

Barnabas abstractedly nodded and walked out. We followed him to the side of the trench. For a long while he studied the enormous hollow trunks that the navvies had dug out of the black and oozy earth.

“Magnificent trees,” he muttered. “Veritable giants! Took some labour, I should say, to gouge their innards out!”

Then he turned to Koffard and asked him something about a map.

“Aye, I’ve got it here.” The rattlevoiced old officer produced a tin cylinder and drew out of it a scroll inscribed by rusted lines of ink. “The avenue stood across there. Nigel Koffard fought his duel” – he pointed to a level sward forty yards away – “just on that patch. At the beginning of the avenue, exactly.”

When we went to this place we could plainly see a series of little hummocks stretching, in parallel, for almost half a mile. It was explained to me that here had been a hundred and more elms making a great avenue that was felled in 1803 – under each knoll was a mighty stump. The trunks, hollowed out, had gone into the formation of that pipe-line (for conveying drinking water from a hillside spring) the navvies were excavating.

Hildreth stopped exactly on the spot on which one Nigel Koffard had taken his stance to fight a duel on the morning of August the second, 1710.

“Now Sir Arthur,” Hildreth murmured, “let’s work things out. Your ancestor challenged his cousin to a duel, primarily over the intentions of that cousin toward your ancestor’s sister. When the affair came to its head, Nigel Koffard was fully determined to put a ball through his cousin. But that doughty lad, conscious of honour and innocence, did not so much as lift his own pistol. Refused, point-blank, to defend himself.”

“Tha’s right; quite right!” Koffard applauded. “He must ha’ had guts, y’know – simply stood there. Completely broke Nigel’s nerve.”

“And the said Nigel,” Hildreth grinned, “thereupon did a bit of quick thinking. It dawned on him that he had misjudged his man. So, to show his regret and to extend an olive branch, he turned and fired his bullet straight into the nearest elm. Whereupon the youngsters shook hands. The cousin got permission to marry Nigel’s fair sister, and the Gannion duelling pistols – one discharged and the other loaded – were put back in their case and guarded thereafter, for the sake of the episode, as family heirlooms. And everyone lived happily ever afterwards.”

“Precisely, sir!” said General Koffard. “Admirably put, sir! B’gad quite neat, I say – neat!”

“Then, if that’s so” – Hildreth was already on the move – “we’ll trouble that invaluable plan of yours once again. Now we want to see this place called Skelter’s Pot, where lead was mined in those days.”

… We tramped a full mile up a mountainous slope and were eventually rewarded by the view of a bite into a pinkish face of spar, which the old map told us was “Skelter’s Pot.”

“Out of here,” Sir Arthur Koffard told us, “came all the lead used hereabouts. The hall is roofed by it. That pistol-ball was certainly cast from it. But it doesn’t pay to work it now.”

Hildreth took a geologist’s hammer from his pocket and knocked away at a piece of semi-translucent quartz in which dull grey patches showed and on which strangely green filaments were netted.

“I would like,” he softly returned as he put this specimen away, “to own your roof! At a modest estimate, it’ll be worth more than the hall and this estate put together.”

“Now, you see, old chap” – Hildreth tapped the rough pencil sketch he had made – “this was the way of it.” I leaned across the table, and under the steady oil-lamp light of the old Black Bull, I looked at the drawing. “Here we’ve all we need.”

I smoked my pipe and wondered.

“When Nigel Koffard shot that ball, at closest range, into the living elm-tree it made a deep cavity, a tunnel, in which it stopped. In a few more years a ‘rind-gall’ was formed. The elm closed over the wound in its structure by a growth of annular rings. The cylindrical little tunnel remained and the ball remained, precisely as they were.

“Then our elm showed signs of what is called ‘doatiness’ – incipient decay. It, together with all the others in the avenue, was felled, hollowed out, and used for an aqueduct. Y’see, old man, elm is the one wood which never changes if kept constantly wet. They’ve actually dug Roman elm-wood conduits out of the middle of Piccadilly, as sound as the day on which they were laid…

“This is a queer countryside, Ingram. And the elm is a queer tree. Get those facts in mind.

“That chamber which held the bullet also held the gases of the elm’s former disruption, and to these were added those similar gases which lurk in peaty land. ‘Similar,’ did I say? Identical would be a better word… You heard old Koffard talk about marsh-gas; natural gas, that is… Well, that’s what we’re considering. You saw that chemist fellow, Sowerby, with a retort full of elm-wood burning such gas at the mouth of the apparatus.

“Methyl-hydride; methane; carburetted-hydrogen – call it what you will, and still you’re right – is marsh-gas. Also it’s the dreaded and terribly explosive thing which miners call fire-damp... when mixed with air.

“You see it burning away in every fireside in the land. It’s the illuminating property of coal. And it always results when bodies of a peaty, woody or coaly constituent are subjected to great heat.”

I began to have an inkling of what Hildreth was getting at.

“However, to the mechanics of the situation.” He laughed and drank some beer. “Ralph Westmacott, the furniture man, buys some old weathered elm-wood from Derbyshire in order to fake his manufactures. What he has to spare – useless – he gives, as usual, to his brother, Henry Leonard. Our good Henry Leonard diligently saws it up into chunks and fills the family woodshed.

“Now comes a rainy and dismal October night. Henry puts a log on the open-hearth fire, extends his slippered feet and prepares to enjoy the evening.

“But the wild mystery of the ever-burgeoning earth comes into the simple household of The Nook and claims him… He hears a violent hiss. That was air rushing into the vascular tissue of that hot elm-log, combining with the incredible chemistry of Nature with the terrible potential of that hydro-carbon, methane, in the hollow where the bullet lay concealed.

“Nigel Koffard’s powder had not half the fulminating property, in the steel barrel of his pistol, that fire-damp had in the smooth wound of the elm-log… Pressure increased, since the hollow was filling every second with more and more gas, and air was in combination with it. At last, the hungry fire, eating away the inner face of the log, reached the terribly explosive mixture. Then bang, up and outwards shot the ball into Henry’s shoulder.

“So we’re back at our beginning – the very first point I made: that the ball was fired from somewhere about Westmacott’s feet. I recalled flying fragments of coal and co-related things… allowing, always, for the unusual.

“But, instead of coal and cinders, the well of the grate was filled with half-burned fragments of wood – like fragments of furniture, surmounted by a big tricorne hunk of charred elm-wood. I wondered, vastly, about those fragments. Then, when I saw the little boy, Brian, playing with his home-made building blocks, I was definitely set on the second line which led me to solution.”

He picked up his tankard and smiled.

“That green network you saw on the surface of that spar was pitch-blende! I’m told it’s more than usually rich in radium and uranium salts.

“The land on which Skelter’s Pot is situated belongs to the Commissioners. It’s an open common land. Anyone procuring the necessary faculty, and entering into serious negotiations, can mine it… So, with the joyous approval of Mr Henry Leonard Westmacott, I have entered my innocent ally Master Brian’s name on our list-”

“‘Our list’?” I was puzzled by his most deliberate pause. “What list?”

“Oh, the little company I’m forming: myself, yourself, Koffard, Westmacott and young Brian, to exploit the pitch-blende deposits of our property in Skelter’s Pot, Derbyshire.” He laughed and stretched his long arms. “It ought to provide for us in our old age, if nothing else!”

… Judging by my latest returns from that adroitly-contrived concern, I am inclined, stoutly, to agree.

To say that hotels in Luddersedge were thin on the ground was an understatement of gargantuan proportions. Although there were countless guest houses, particularly along Honeydew Lane beside the notorious Bentley’s Tannery – whose ever-present noxious fumes seemed to be unnoticed by the guests – the Regal was the only full-blown hotel, and the only building other than the old town hall to stretch above the slate roofs of Luddersedge and scratch a sky oblivious to, and entirely disinterested in, its existence.

The corridors of the Regal were lined with threadbare carpets, hemmed in by walls bearing a testimonial trinity of mildew, graffiti and spilled alcohol, and topped by ceilings whose anaglypta was peeling at the corners and whose streaky paint-covering had been dimmed long ago by cigarette smoke. The rooms themselves boasted little in the way of the creature comforts offered by the Regal’s big-town contemporaries in Halifax and Burnley.

For most of the year, the Regal’s register – if such a thing were ever filled in, which it rarely was – boasted only couples by the name of Smith or Jones, and the catering staff had little to prepare other than the fabled Full English Breakfast – truly the most obscenely mountainous start-of-the-day plate of food outside of Dublin. Indeed, questions were frequently asked in bread-shop or bus-stop queues and around the beer-slopped pub tables at the Working Men’s Club, as to exactly how the Regal kept going.

But there were far too many other things to occupy the attention and interest of Luddersedge’s townsfolk and, anyway, most of them recognized the important social part played by the Regal in the lives of their not-so-distant cousins living in the towns a few miles down the road in either direction. Not that awkward questions were not asked about other situations in which the Regal played a key role, one of which came to pass on a Saturday night in early December on the occasion of the Conservative Club’s Christmas Party, and which involved the one hotel feature that was truly magnificent – the Gentlemen’s toilet situated in the basement beneath the ballroom.

To call such a sprawling display of elegance and creative indulgence a loo or a bog – or even a john or a head, to use the slang vernacular popular with the occasional Americans who visited the Calder Valley in the 1950s, the heyday of Luddersedge’s long-forgotten twinning with the mid-west town of Forest Plains – was tantamount to heresy.

A row of shoulder-height marble urinals – complete with side panels that effectively rendered invisible anyone of modest height who happened to be availing themselves of their facility – was completed by a series of carefully angled glass panel splashguards set in aluminium side grips and a standing area inlaid with a mosaic of tiny slate and Yorkshire stone squares and rectangles of a multitude of colours. It was an area worn smooth by generations of men temporarily intent on emptying bladders filled with an excess of John Smith’s, Old Peculiar and Black Sheep bitter ales served in the bars above.

Two wide steps down from the urinals was a row of generously sized washbasins, set back and mounted on ornate embellishments of curlicued brass fashioned to resemble a confusion of vines interlinked with snakes. They nested beneath individual facing panels split one-half mirror and the other reinforced glass, the glass halves looking through onto an identical set of basins on the other side of the partition, behind which stood the WCs.

It was these wood-panelled floor-to-ceiling enclosed retreats – with their individual light switches, oak toilet seats and covers, matching tissue dispensers, and stained glass backings behind the pipe leading from the overhead cistern – that were, perhaps, the room’s crowning glory. They were even more impressive than the worn leather sofas and wing-backed chairs situated on their own dais at the far end of the toilet, book-ended by towering aspidistras and serviced by standing silver ashtrays and glass-topped tables bearing the latest issues of popular men’s magazines.

But while these extravagant rooms – albeit small rooms, designed for but one purpose – had rightly gained some considerable fame (particularly as the town was not noted for anything even approaching artistic or historical significance) they had also achieved a certain notoriety that was not always welcome.

Such notoriety came not merely from the time, in the late 1940s, when an exceptionally inebriated Jack Walker pitched forward rather unexpectedly – after failing to register the aforementioned double step leading to the urinals – and smashed his head into one of the glass-panelled splashguards. Nor did it come from that legendary night when Pete Dickinson was ceremoniously divested of all of his clothes on his stag night and reduced to escaping the Regal, staggering drunkenly through Luddersedge’s cold spring streets, wearing only one of the toilet’s continuous hand towels (those being the days before automatic hand dryers, of course), a 50-foot ribbon of linen that gave the quickly sobering Dickinson the appearance of a cross between Julius Caesar and Boris Karloff’s mummy.

Rather, the toilet’s somewhat dubious reputation stemmed solely from the fact that, over the years, its lavish cubicles had seen a stream of Luddersedge’s finest and most virile young men venturing into their narrow enclosures with their latest female conquests for a little session of hi-jinks where, their minds (and, all too often, their prowess and sexual longevity) clouded by the effects of ale, a surfeit of testosterone and the threat of being discovered, they would perform loveless couplings to the muted strains of whatever music drifted down from the floor above.

The practice was known, in the less salubrious circles of Calder Valley drinking establishments, as “The Forty Five Steps Club”. The name referred, in a version of the similar “honorary” appellation afforded those who carried out the same act on an in-flight aeroplane (“The Mile High Club”), to the toilet’s distance below ground – three perilously steep banks of fifteen steps leading down from the ballroom’s west entrance.

And so it was that, at precisely 10 o’clock on the fateful night of the Conservative Club’s Christmas Party, it was to this bastion of opulence and renown that Arthur Clark retired midway through a plate of turkey, new potatoes, broccoli and carrots (having already seen off several pints of John Smith’s, an entire bowl of dry roasted peanuts and the Regal’s obligatory prawn cocktail first course) to evacuate both bladder and bowel. It was a clockwork thing with Arthur and, no matter where he was or whom he was with, he would leave whatever was going on to void himself – on this occasion, all the better to concentrate his full attention and gastric juices on the promised (though some might say “threatened”) Christmas Pudding and rum sauce plus a couple of coffees and a few glasses of Bells whisky. Arthur’s slightly weaving departure from the ballroom, its back end filled with a series of long dining tables leaving the area immediately in front of the stage free for the inevitable dancing that would follow coffee and liqueurs, was to be the last time that his fellow guests saw him alive.

“Edna. Edna!” Betty Thorndike was leaning across the table trying to get Edna Clark’s attention, while one of the Merkinson twins – Betty thought it was Hilda but she couldn’t be sure, they both looked so alike – returned to her seat and dropped her handbag onto the floor beside her. Hilda – if it was Hilda – had been to the toilet more than fifteen minutes ago, while everyone else was still eating, her having bolted her food down in record time, and had spent the time since her return talking to Agnes Olroyd, as though she didn’t want to come back and join them: they were a funny pair, the Merkinsons.

When Edna turned around, from listening – disinterestedly – to John and Mary Tullen’s conversation about conservatories with Barbara Ashley and her husband, she was frowning.

“What?”

“He’s been a long time, hasn’t he,” Betty said across the table, nodding to the watch on her wrist. “Your Arthur.”

“He’s had a lot,” Edna said with a shrug. The disc jockey on the stage put on Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman.

“Oh, I love this, me,” Mary Tullen announced to the table, droopy-eyed, and promptly began trying to join in with the words, cigarette smoke drifting out of her partially open mouth.

“You’ve been a long time, Hilda,” said her sister Harriet, pushing her plate forward. Hilda noted that the food had been shuffled around on the plate but not much had been eaten.

“Been talking to Agnes Olroyd.”

“So I saw.”

“She was asking me about the robbery,” Hilda said.

“Robbery? I thought you said nothing had been taken.”

Hilda shrugged. “Robbery, break-in-it’s all the same thing.”

Hilda worked at the animal testing facility out on Aldershot Road where, two days earlier, she had come into work to discover someone had broken in during the night-animal rights protesters, her boss Ian Arbutt had told the police – and trashed the place.

Not wanting to talk about the break-in again – it having been a source of conversation everywhere in the town the past 36 hours, particularly in the Merkinson twins’ small two-up, two-down in Belmont Drive – Hilda’s sister said, “How’s her Eric?”

Hilda made a face. “His prostate’s not so good,” she said.

“Oh.” Harriet’s attention seemed more concentrated on Edna Clark.

As Mary elbowed her husband in the stomach, prising his attention away from a young woman returning to a nearby table with breasts that looked like they had been inflated, Betty Thorn-dike said to Edna, “D’you think he’s all right?”

Edna said, “He’s fine. He always goes at this time. Regular as clockwork. Doesn’t matter where he is.” This last revelation was accompanied by a slight shake of her head that seemed to convey both amazement and despair.

“I know,” Mary Tullen agreed. “It’s common knowledge, your Arthur’s regularity.”

“But he’s been a long time.” Betty nodded to Arthur’s unfinished meal. “And he hasn’t even finished his dinner.”

“He’ll finish it when he gets back,” Edna said with assurance.

Behind her, somebody said, “There’s no bloody paper down there.”

Hilda Merkinson knocked her glass over and a thin veil of lager spilled across the table and onto her sister’s lap. “Hilda! For goodness sake.”

“Damn it,” Hilda said.

Edna threw a spare serviette across the table and turned around. Billy Roberts was sliding into his seat on the next table.

Sitting across from Billy, Jack Hanlon burst into a loud laugh. “You didn’t use your hands again, did you, Billy? You’ll never sell any meat on Monday-smell’ll be there for days.”

Billy smiled broadly and held his hand out beneath his friend’s nose. Jack pulled back so quickly he nearly upturned his chair. He took a drink of Old Peculiar, swallowed and shook a B &H out of a pack lying on the table. “If you must know,” Billy said, lighting the cigarette and blowing a thick cloud up towards the ceiling, “I used my hanky.” He made a play of reaching into his pocket. “But I washed it out, see-” And he pretended to throw something across the table to his friend. This time, gravity took its toll and Jack went over backwards into the aisle.

As Jack got to his feet and righted his chair, Billy said, “I flushed it, didn’t I, daft bugger. But I was worried for a few minutes when I saw there wasn’t any paper – course, by that time, I’d done the deed. They need to check the bloody things more regular.” He blew out more smoke.

“Aren’t you going to tell somebody, Billy?” Helen Simpson asked, her eyes sparkling as they took in Billy Roberts’s quiffed hair.

“Can’t be arsed,” Billy said. “There’s some poor sod down there now – probably still down there: he’ll have something to say about it when he gets out,” he added as he did a quick glance at the entrance to see if he could see anybody returning who looked either a little sheepish or blazing with annoyance.

“That’ll be Arthur.” Edna looked over her shoulder at Betty. “I bet that’s my Arthur,” she said. She tapped Billy on the shoulder. “That’ll be my Arthur,” she said again.

“What’s that, Mrs Clark?” Billy said, turning. “What’s your Arthur gone and done now?”

“He went to the toilet ages ago. Billy says there might not be any paper. There’ll be hell to pay if there isn’t.”

Harriet Merkinson shuffled around in her handbag, produced a thick bundle of Kleenex and she held them out. “Here, why don’t you take him these?”

Edna nodded. “Thanks, er-”

“Harriet,” said Harriet.

“Thanks, Harry-good idea.” She passed the tissues back to Billy and gave a big smile. “Here, be an angel, Billy and go back down and push these under the door for me.”

“You haven’t been down to the gents, have you, Mrs Clark?” There was a snigger at the last part from Jack Hanlon. “You can’t get sod all under them doors.”

“Well, can’t you knock on his door or something?” She nodded to the table behind her. “He hasn’t even finished his meal.”

Hilda looked across at Arthur’s plate and noted that it didn’t look much different to her sister’s – the only difference was that one meal was finished with and the other wasn’t.

When he got back to the toilet, Billy saw one of the young waiters about to go into each cubicle to fasten a new roll of tissue into the dispenser. “Somebody tell you, did they? Was it Arthur Clark?”

The boy shook his head, his cheeks colouring. “It was some bloke, don’t know what he’s called,” the waiter said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Said he’d come down and a lot of the-” The boy paused, searching for the word.

“Traps?” Billy ventured.

The boy smiled. “Said a lot of the traps didn’t have no paper.”

“When was that?” Billy asked.

“Well, when he was down here, I suppose,” he said, frowning and holding up an armful of toilet rolls. “I just said-”

“No, when was it this other bloke mentioned about there been no paper.”

“Oh,” the boy gasped. “I see.” He frowned and chewed his lip. “A while back. I had to get the key to the stock cupboard first and I was still collecting dishes.”

Outside the entrance to the toilet there was a sudden burst of high-pitched giggling. “There’s a bloody waiter in there!” a girl’s voice said. Billy chuckled. Presumably only the waiter’s presence was preventing the girl from coming into the gents with her partner and not the fact that the toilet area was filled with men, young and old, either standing at the urinals or washing at the basins. Alcohol was a wonderful thing and no denying.

The chuckling continued and was complemented by the sound of feet hurriedly ascending the 45 steps back to the ballroom. A man Billy didn’t know wafted through the doors, unzipping his flies and grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Billy exchanged nods with the man and turned his attention back to the waiter. He was still smiling – until he saw that the door to the cubicle which had been occupied while he was down here was still firmly closed.

“Has somebody just gone in there? I mean, while you’ve been down here.”

The boy glanced at the closed door and shook his head. “Not while I’ve been down here.”

Billy looked down at the Kleenex in his hand and felt the waiter look down at them at the same time. He jammed them into his jacket pocket, walked across and tapped gently on the door. “Hello?”

There was no response.

“He’ll be sleeping it off, lad, whoever he is,” a stocky bald man confided to Billy as he held his hands under the automatic drier. “You’ll need to knock louder than that.”

Billy nodded slowly. He rapped the door three times and said, “Mister Clark-are you in there? We’ve got toilet paper out here if you’ve run out.”

No answer.

The bald man finished his hands off on the back of his trousers and moved across so that he was standing alongside Billy. Although he was short, a good six inches shorter than Billy and three or four beneath the lofty height of the young waiter, the bald man had a commanding air about him. The waiter shuffled to one side to give the man more room.

The bald man hit the door several times with a closed fist and shouted, “Come on, mate, time to get up. You’ll be needing a hammer and chisel if you stay in there much longer, never mind bloody toilet paper.”

Still no answer.

“He must be a bloody heavy sleeper,” Billy said. “Either that or he’s pissed as a newt.”

The bald man turned to the waiter. “Is there any way into these things? I mean, some way of getting in when they’re locked.”

“I don’t know,” the waiter said.

“Well, can you find somebody who does know? And can you do it bloody sharpish?”

The waiter turned around and ran to the door and disappeared, his clumping feet echoing up the steps to the ballroom.

The man lifted his hands and felt around the door. “Do you know this bloke, whoever he is?”

Billy shook his head. “No. Well, I do; I know his name and that, but I don’t really know him. His wife asked me to come down.”

The man nodded. “Why was that, then?” he said, turning around.

“Well, there’s no paper in any of the toilets.”

“How did his wife know that?”

“She heard me telling them on my table. I’d just got back from, you know-”

“Having a crap, I know, get on with it lad.”

Billy straightened his shoulders. He would usually square up to anyone who spoke to him like that – after all, he wasn’t a lad: he was almost 25 – but there was something about the bald man that made him shrink back from confrontation. “That trap was closed when I came down here and it was still closed when I went back up.”

The bald man reached into his inside pocket and removed a packet of Marlboro. While lighting a cigarette he said to Billy, “Did you hear anything while you were down here?”

Billy shrugged. “Like what?”

The man blew smoke out. “Groans, plops, farts, throwing up – the usual.”

“No; no, I didn’t.”

The man nodded. He hammered on the door again, louder this time. “What did you say his name was?”

“Arthur Clark.”

“Not the bloke who wrote 2001, I suppose? I loved that picture.”

“I don’t think so,” Billy said with a chuckle.

“No, me neither.” He hammered again. “Mister Clark, if you can hear me, open the door. It’s the police.”

Billy was watching the door but when he heard that he turned to the man. “Are you really the police? I mean, are you a, a copper?”

Before the man could answer, the waiter came back into the toilet. He was trailing behind a tall man with bushy eyebrows that met over his nose. His face, which was scowling, was a mask of excess, folds of skin lined with broken blood vessels. He said, “What’s going on?”

“Who are you?” the bald man asked.

“Sidney Poke. I’m the manager of the Regal.”

The bald man nodded. “Any way into these things when they’re locked on the inside?”

Sidney Poke said, “Who are you?”

The bald man jammed his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, pulled a credit-card holder from his inside pocket and shuffled through the little plastic flaps. He found what he was looking for and held it out for inspection. “Detective Inspector Malcolm Broadhurst, Halifax CID,” he said.

“What’s the problem, Inspector?” Sidney Poke said, his manner suddenly less aggressive.

“Somebody’s in there and we can’t get them to open the door. Been there a while, this lad says,” Malcolm Broadhurst said nodding at Billy Roberts.

“Who is it? Who’s in there?” Sidney Poke asked Billy.

“Never mind who he is,” the policeman said. “How do we bloody well get in to him?”

Sidney Poke shrugged. “I suppose we have to knock the door down.”

Malcolm Broadhurst nodded. “Why did I know you were going to say that? Right-” He threw his cigarette on the floor and ground it with his foot. “One of you go upstairs and call for an ambulance – just to be on the safe side.”

A blond-haired man said, “I’ll do it,” and disappeared at a run out of the toilet.

The policeman took hold of Billy’s left arm and squeezed the biceps. “What do you do for a living, lad?”

“I’m a butcher.”

“Just the job,” he said, and he stepped back out of the way. “Right, break that bloody door down – and, daft as it sounds, try not to go mad: he could be on the floor at the other side.”

As he squared up to the door, Billy said, “How the hell do I do that? Knock the door down but go steady, I mean.”

“Just do your best. Now, you others stand back and give him room.”

The door jamb splintered on the sixth try. It came away on the eighth, still fastened but only loosely.

“Brilliant job, lad,” Broadhurst said taking Billy’s arm. He pulled him back and stepped close to the door, squinting through the small gap that had appeared. “It’s still fastened, but only just.”

He stepped back and frowned. “No time to bugger about looking for something to prise it open. If the fella couldn’t hear all that din then he’s in a bad way.” He stepped back and nodded to Billy. “Break it down, lad.”

Billy pulled himself back onto his left foot and hit the door with all his strength. The lock snapped and they heard something – a screw, maybe, or part of the actual lock-clatter inside the cubicle. The door stopped against something on the floor.

Malcolm Broadhurst pushed Billy out of the way and, holding the door, squeezed his way into the cubicle. When he was inside, the policeman closed the door again.

They heard shuffling.

“Is he all right?” Sidney Poke asked. Billy thought it was a pretty stupid question.

For a few seconds there was no answer and then the policeman said, “He’s dead.” Then, after a few seconds more of shuffling sounds and sounds of exertion, he said, “Bloody hell fire.”

Billy said, “What is it?”

When the door opened again the policeman was rubbing his face, looking down at the floor.

Billy and Sidney Poke and the young waiter – whose name was Chris and for whom this was his first night working at the Regal-followed Malcolm Broadhurst’s stare.

Arthur Clark was now sitting up against the side wall of the cubicle, the toilet paper dispenser-containing almost a full roll of paper – just above and to the side of his left ear. He was fully clothed but his shirt had been ripped apart at the stomach. Worse than that, the man’s flesh looked to have been flayed, with thick red welts and deep gashes covering the skin, and the top of his light grey trousers seemed to have been dyed black around the waistband: but they knew the original colour had been a deep red.

Chris the waiter gagged and turned away, his hand clamped over his mouth as he made for the washbasins. He made it just in time. When he was through, he leaned his head on his hand to one side of the basin and, in a surprised voice, said, “Hey, that’s where they were.”

The boy crouched down and reached his hands to the deep metal basket on the floor between his basin and the one next to it. When he stood up he was holding an armful of toilet rolls, some full and still thick and some partly used.

“Bloody idiots,” said Sidney Poke. “Do anything for a laugh but they wouldn’t think it was so damned fun-”

“Get everyone out, Mister Poke,” the policeman said. His voice sounded tired. “Get everyone back upstairs. But not you, butcher boy,” he said, turning to Billy. “You can give me a hand getting him out of here.”

The toilet was completely empty when they finally struggled out with Arthur Clark and laid him on the floor beside the washbasins.

“He looks like he’s been got at by a wild animal,” Billy said. “And scared to death, by the look on his face.”

The policeman shook two Marlboros from his pack and handed one to Billy. “Give it up tomorrow,” he said as he held his lighter under Billy’s cigarette.

Billy drew in the smoke and watched the bald man crouch down by the body. He turned over Arthur Clark’s hands one by one and said, “He was the wild animal. He did it to himself. See-” He held one of the hands up for Billy to see. The nails were caked with blood and skin – they looked like the hands of a butcher.

“Why? What did he think he was doing, do you think?”

“Looks to me like he was trying to get into his own stomach.”

“Arthur?” a woman’s voice shouted from outside the toilet door.

Then a man’s voice said, “You can’t go in there, madam.”

“Arthur!” the woman’s voice screamed.

There was a crash outside the door that sounded unquestionably like someone falling over.

“Shit,” said Detective Inspector Malcolm Broadhurst.

The ambulance arrived with siren wailing but it left silently.

Malcolm Broadhurst sat with Edna Clark for a long time, initially with Betty Thorndike, Joan Cardew and Miriam Barrett by her side, offering consolation in the undoubtedly heartfelt but seemingly sycophantic way that people have when they feel there but for the grace of God. To the policeman from Halifax CID, the trio was doing more harm than good and he sent them packing. “Like the bloody witches from Hamlet,” he said to Billy Roberts over at the bar, ordering a couple of stiff Jamesons from Sidney Poke, who had assumed bar duties for the duration.

The rest of the guests and all the staff had given their names to a couple of uniformed officers from Halifax and had gone home.

“Macbeth,” Sidney Poke said quietly.

Billy looked up from his Irish frowning. He would have been happier with a pint but the policeman had ordered. “What?”

“The three witches. It was Macbeth, not Hamlet.”

“Oh.”

“And what about Bill and Ben? That was a turn-up for the books.”

“Who’s Bill and Ben?”

“Oh, the Merkinsons. The two old women.”

“Oh, the one who collapsed.”

Billy nodded. “And her sister.”

“Which one of them was it who collapsed?”

Billy shrugged. “You can never tell. They both always look the same – dress the same, talk the same; it’s really weird.”

The two “old” women, as Billy Roberts had called them, were 53 years old. Malcolm Broadhurst wouldn’t have been far out with his own estimate of 50-51. The same age, give or take a year – he always forgot his own age but he knew he’d had his fiftieth because of the stripper they’d bought for him down at the station – and he didn’t consider himself as old. But then again, maybe he was. “Twins, are they?” he said.

Billy nodded.

Broadhurst had noticed them, standing by while he was talking to Edna Clark, because they were identically dressed, right down to the two-string necklace of fake pearls hanging over the first half-inch of their maroon dresses. One of them was looking after the other, the one who had collapsed, feeding her sips of brandy brought over by Sidney Poke.

“Like a couple of weirdos,” Billy Roberts said, remembering the scene in vivid detail. “Funny though, her keeling over like that.”

Now it was the policeman’s turn to nod. “She the Hilda Merkinson who works at the animal rights centre? The one that was done in this week?”

Billy frowned. “Don’t know. But she’s the only Hilda Merkinson in Luddersedge.”

“Cheers!” said Malcolm Broadhurst. He lifted his glass and drained it, then set it back on the bar top. “How much do I owe you?” he said to the Regal’s manager.

Poke shook his head. “On the house. Think I’ll have one myself.”

It was one o’clock.

“What was it, d’you think?” Billy asked. He lit a B &H from the packet he’d retrieved from the table and offered it to the other two. Poke waved a hand and the policeman simply produced his Marlboros and took one out.

“We’ll know when the autopsy boys know,” Broadhurst said around a cloud of smoke. “His missus says he didn’t have a bad heart or anything, but it’s either that or something he ate.”

“I thought that,” Billy offered, and then wished he hadn’t when he caught the glare from the Regal’s manager.

“Or drunk,” Broadhurst said. “I’ve had his meal wrapped up for tests, along with the pint he was working his way through.”

“Fancy,” Billy said, more to himself than to the others, “getting up for a crap halfway through your meal.”

“His missus says he does it regular as clockwork,” Broadhurst said.

“That’s right,” Billy said. “Doesn’t matter where he is or who he’s with. Come ten o’clock he has to disappear to do the deed. It’s legendary around town – everybody knows.”

“Another?” Poke said, holding the bottle of Jamesons over the policeman’s glass.

Broadhurst frowned over the answer to that and other questions that were already forming in his mind.

It was almost two o’clock when Broadhurst made his way from the ballroom and along the corridor towards reception. At the steps leading down to the Gentlemen’s toilet he paused. The steps were well lit but only in stages, the main house lights of the hotel having been dimmed an hour earlier. Now only single bulbs, secured behind half shells equally spaced down the flights, lit the steps leaving a well of darkness at the bottom.

The darkness seemed inviting and off-putting, both at the same time.

The policeman shook a cigarette from his packet, lit it and breathed smoke around him. It felt good… felt normal somehow. For there was a lot about what had happened that was not normal.

Before he even realized he was moving, Broadhurst had reached the landing at the foot of the first flight, his hand on the rail and his eyes squinting into the gloom. He took the next two flights two steps at a time but when he reached the bottom, with the ornate doors leading into the toilet right in front of him, he stopped and listened.

What was he listening for, he wondered. Was he listening for the sounds of Arthur Clark, screaming in agony? For didn’t some folks say that no sound ever died but only grew faint, waiting to be heard once more by those with the most finely tuned sense of hearing? No, it was something more than that; something more than the late-night campfire thoughts of ghoulies and ghosties and things that went phrrp! in the night.

He threw his cigarette stub to the floor and stepped on it hard, pushing open the doors and stepping inside.

The toilet was silent. There was no sound save for the distant chuckle of water moving through ancient pipes, turning over in radiators and cisterns, and dlup dlupping down drain holes.

He looked around.

Someone else had been in here, someone who knew more about Arthur’s tragic death than he did. A lot more. Broadhurst felt it – felt it in his water, he thought, cringing at the unintentional pun. The death was neither natural nor unintentional. But he couldn’t understand how it could be anything else.

He walked along the row of cubicles, their doors either fully open or ajar, and felt a sense of threat, as though someone was going to step out of them, perhaps someone recently dead come to exact his revenge, or someone who knew more about the death, come to prevent being caught. Broadhurst stepped away from the line of cubicles and stopped, staring at the open doors.

What was he thinking of? How could the death be anything other than natural? The cubicle walls went from floor to ceiling, the door the same… save for barely an inch of space top and bottom-certainly far less than would be required to get into the cubicle if the door were locked from the inside. And, of course, the same went for getting out again when the deed was done.

“What deed?” Broadhurst said softly. There was no answer, just a giggle of water over by the sofa at the far end of the room.

He leaned on one of the basins and continued to look around. He moved from the basin, reluctantly turning his back on the cubicles until he was reassured by their reflection in the mirror over the basin in front of him, and looked some more. What are you looking for, Kojak? a small voice whispered in the back of his head, using the name granted to him long ago by his colleagues in Halifax CID. It’s an open and shit case, seems to me, it added with what might have been a wry chuckle.

“Funny!” Broadhurst snapped, and he looked along the basin-tops, down to the floor and then along beneath them. There was a basket beside each one.

Hey, that’s where they were.

The young waiter’s voice sounded clear as a bell in his head. Broadhurst could half see him, stooping down to lift an armful of toilet rolls.

Then Sidney Poke’s voice chimed in. Bloody idiots… Do anything for a laugh.

Broadhurst frowned.

The ghost of Billy’s voice said, That’s right, doesn’t matter where he is or who he’s with. Come ten o’clock he has to disappear to do the deed. It’s legendary around town – everybody knows.

Broadhurst turned around to face the cubicles-

everybody knows

– and walked slowly towards them, his back straightening as they came nearer. He started at one end and walked slowly, pushing open each door and staring at the empty tissue holder-

Hey, that’s where they were

– attached to the wall of each cubicle, right next to where an arm would be resting on a straining knee, where so many arms had rested on so many straining knees-

It’s legendary around town

– until he reached-

everybody knows

– a cubicle with toilet paper. The cubicle.

He stared down at the now empty floor and closed his eyes. He saw Arthur Clark writhing in agony, crying out for help; so much pain that he could not simply unlock the cubicle door and crawl for help.

Broadhurst removed his handkerchief from his pocket and, stepping into the cubicle, wrapped it around the toilet roll.

Seconds later he was going up the steps away from the Regal’s Gentlemen’s toilet, two steps at a time; and wishing he could move faster.

Sundays in Luddersedge are traditionally quiet affairs but the events of the previous evening at the Conservative Club’s Christmas Party had permeated the town the same way smoke from an overcooked meal fills a kitchen.

In the tiny houses that lined the old cobbled streets of the town, over cereals and toast and bacon butties, and around tables festooned with open newspapers-primarily copies of the News of the World, the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Sport-voices were discussing Arthur Clark’s unexpected demise in hushed almost reverent tones.

Conversations such as this one:

“I’ll bet it was his heart,” Miriam Barrett said from her position at the gas stove in the small kitchen in 14 Montgomery Street.

Her husband, Leonard grunted over the Mirror’s sports pages. “Edna said not,” he mumbled. “Said he hadn’t had no heart problems.”

Miriam was unconvinced as she fried her bacon and sausages, and a few pieces of tomato that looked like sizzling blood-clots. “All that business with his-toilet,” she said, imbuing the word with a strange Calder Valley mysticism that might be more at home whispered in the gris gris atmosphere of a New Orleans speakeasy. “Can’t have been right.”

Leonard said, “He was just regular, that’s all.”

“Yes, well, there’s regular and there’s regular,” Miriam pointed out sagely. “But having to go in the middle of your meal like that, just ‘cos it’s ten o’clock, well, that’s not regular.”

Leonard frowned. He wondered just what it was if it wasn’t regular, but decided against pursuing the point.

But not everyone in Luddersedge was talking.

In his bedroom over his father’s butcher’s shop at the corner of Lemon Road and Coronation Drive, Billy Roberts opened his eyes and stared at the watery sun glowing behind his closed curtains. His mouth was a mixture of kettle fur and sandpaper and using it to speak was the very last thing on his mind. It was all he could do to groan, and even then the sound of it sounded strange to him, like it wasn’t coming from him at all but maybe drifting from beneath the bed where something crouched, something big and unpleasant, waiting to see his foot appear in front of it.

Billy turned to his side and breathed deeply into his cupped hand. Then he stuck his nose into the opening in his hand and sniffed. The smell was sour and vaguely alcoholic, almost perfumed. He slumped back onto the pillows. It was those bloody whiskies that did it. He should have stuck to the beer, the way he usually did. It didn’t do to go mixing drinks.

Billy had had a bad night, even after all the booze. He supposed there was nothing like messing around with a dead body – particularly one that had smelt the way Arthur Clark’s had done, Arthur having so recently dumped into his trousers – to sober a person up. It had taken Billy more than an hour to drop off after getting in-despite the fact that it was three in the morning – and even then his dreams had been peppered with Arthur’s face… and the man’s ravaged stomach.

Work had been underway in the ballroom of the less than palatial Regal Hotel for several hours when Billy Roberts was beginning to contemplate getting out of bed.

The wreckage was far worse than usual somehow, even though the festivities had been cut short by the tragic events in the gentlemen’s toilet. But at least most of the explosive streamers were still intact and there were fewer stains than usual on the cloths and the chairs. The most surprising thing was the number of personal possessions that had been left in the cloakroom, particularly considering the very careful population of the town. But then the unceremonious way the guests had been dispatched for home after been questioned made a lot of things understandable.

Chris Hackett had arrived after the clear-up had begun, clocking into the ancient machine mounted on the green tiled wall leading to the Regal’s back door at 7.13. He didn’t think anyone would object to the fact that he was almost quarter of an hour late, not after last night. He set to straight away, throwing his yellow and blue bubble jacket onto one of the chest freezers in the kitchen and emerging through the swing doors into the ballroom. It was a hive of activity.

Elsewhere, various men and women were dismantling trestle tables, creating a mound of jumbled tablecloths, loading glasses and bottles and plates and cutlery onto rickety wooden trolleys, the sound of their labours dwarfed by the sound of similar items being loaded into the huge dishwashers in the kitchens.

Wondering where he should start, Chris Hackett saw a table that had been untouched, over by the far wall. He went across to it, moving around to the wall side to begin stacking the plates. Halfway along the wall he caught his foot on something and went sprawling onto the floor, knocking over two chairs on the way.

Somebody laughed and their was a faint burst of applause as Chris got to his feet and looked around for the culprit of his embarrassment.

It was a lady’s handbag.

Malcolm Broadhurst sat smoking a cigarette. He had been up since before dawn, having snatched a couple of hours’ fitful nap lying fully clothed on the eiderdown; unable to settle to anything, his mind full of the previous evening.

The call came through at a little after ten o’clock.

A man’s voice said, “You up?”

“Yeah.”

“Been to bed?”

Broadhurst grunted. “Didn’t sleep though.”

“Well, you were right not to,” the voice said. “We’ve been on this all night-well, all morning would be more accurate.”

“And?”

“We’ve not finished yet but we’ve got a pretty good idea.”

The voice with the “pretty good idea” belonged to Jim Garnett, the doctor in charge of forensic science at Halifax Infirmary and who doubled as the medical guru for Halifax CID. He chuckled. “It’s a goodie. You were right to be suspicious.”

The policeman shook another cigarette from his packet and settled himself against the bed headboard. “Go on.”

“Okay. Two hours ago, I’d’ve been calling you to tell you he’d had a heart attack.”

“And he didn’t.”

“Well, that’s not exactly true: he did have a cardiac arrest, but it wasn’t brought on by natural causes.” Garnett paused and Broadhurst could hear the doctor shifting papers around. “What made me a little more cautious than usual-apart from your telephone call last night – was the list of symptoms, all classical.”

Broadhurst didn’t speak but it was as though the doctor had read the question in his mind.

“There were too many. Profuse salivation-”

“Profuse – is that like, there was a lot of it?”

“You could say that,” came the reply. “The poor chap’s shirt was soaked and he’d bitten through the back left side of his tongue; he’d vomited, messed his pants-diarrhoea: most unpleasant – and there were numerous contusions to the head, arms and legs.”

“Suggesting what?”

“The contusions?” Garnett smacked his lips. “Dizziness, auditory and visual disturbances, blurred vision, that kind of thing – and not what you’d want to experience when you’re stuck in a WC. It’s my bet he shambled about in there like a ping-pong ball, bouncing off every wall. And, of course, the pain would have been nothing to what he was having from his stomach – that’s why he’d clawed at himself so much. By then, he’d be having seizures-hence the tongue – and he’d be faint.”

“Why didn’t he just come out, shout for help?”

“Disorientation would be my guess. And panic. He’d be in a terrible state at this point, Mai.”

Broadhurst waited. “And?”

“And then he died. I’ve seen cases before-cardiac arrests-with two or three of the same symptoms, but never so many together… and never so intense. This chap suffered hell in his final minutes.”

Garnett sighed before continuing. “So, we checked him out for all the usual bacteria-saliva, urine, stool samples; and there were plenty of those, right down to his ankles – and-”

“So he hadn’t even been to the toilet?”

“No, he had been. His large bowel was empty. This stuff came as the result of a sudden stimulation to the gut and that would release contents further up the bowel passage. Anyway, like I said, we checked everything but it was no go. Then I checked the meal-bland but harmless – and the beer… nothing there either.”

Garnett moved away from the phone to cough. “God, and now I think I’m coming down with a cold.”

“Take the rest of the day off.”

“Thanks!” He cleared his throat and went on. “So, in absolute desperation, we started checking him for needle marks: thought he might be using something and that was why he always went to the toilet so regularly. But there was nothing, skin completely unbroken. And then…”

“Ah, is this the good bit?”

“Yes, indeedy – and this is the good bit.”

Broadhurst could sense the doctor leaning further into the phone, preparing to deliver the coup de grâce.

“Then we turned him over and we found the rash.”

“The rash? All that and a rash too?”

“On his backside, across his cheeks and up into the anus. A nasty little bastard, blotches turning to pustules even five hours after he died. At first I thought maybe it was thrush but it was too extreme for that. So we took a swab and tested it.”

The pause was theatrical in its duration. “And… go on, Jim, for God’s sake,” Broadhurst snapped around a cloud of smoke.

“Nicotine poisoning.”

The policeman’s heart sank. For this he had allowed himself to get excited? “Nicotine poisoning?” he said in exasperation. “Nicotine, as in cigarettes?” He glanced down at the chaos of crumpled brown stubs in the ashtray next to him on the bed.

Garnett grunted proudly. “Nicotine as in around eight million cigarettes smoked in the space of one drag.”

“What?”

“That was what killed him – not the heart attack, though that delivered the final blow-nicotine: one of the most lethal poisons known to man.”

“And how did he get it, if it wasn’t in the drink or in the meal, and it wasn’t injected? And assuming he didn’t smoke eight million cigarettes while he was sitting contemplating.”

Garnett cleared his throat. “He got it in the arse, Mal, though God only knows how.”

Broadhurst glanced across at the solitary toilet roll sitting on his chest of drawers. “I know, too,” he said. “But the ‘why’, that’s the puzzler.”

“And the ‘who’?”

“Yeah, that too.”

Edna Clark sat at her kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a mug of steaming tea. Sitting across from her was Betty Thorndike.

When the knock came on the front door, Betty said, “You stay put, love – I’ll get it.”

Hilda Merkinson had been in every room in the house but her sister was nowhere to be found.

Worse still, she couldn’t find her handbag.

“Harry?” She had already shouted her sister’s name a dozen times but, in the absence of a more useful course of action, she shouted it again. The silence seemed to mock her.

Hilda knew why Harriet had gone out. She had gone out to clear her head, maybe to have a weep by herself. No problem. She would get over it. It might take a bit of time, but she would get over it – of that, Hilda was convinced.

They had lived together, Hilda and Harriet Merkinson, in the same house for all of their 53 years; just the two of them since their mother had died in 1992.

They had a routine, a routine that Hilda did not want to see altered in any way. It was a safe routine, a routine of eating together, cleaning together, watching the TV together, and occasionally slipping along to The Three Pennies public house for a couple of life-affirming medicinal glasses of Guinness stout. It was a routine of going to bed and kissing each other goodnight on the upstairs landing and of waking each morning and kissing each other hello, again in the same spot; a routine broken only by Harriet’s job in Jack Wilson’s General store, and Hilda’s work at the animal testing facility on Aldershot Road, where she’d been for almost seven years. The same length of time that Harriet had worked.

During that time, the routine had persevered.

It had been all and its disappearance was unthinkable.

Not that there hadn’t been times when things looked a little shaky, namely the times when Ian Arbutt had cornered Hilda in the small back room against the photocopier and sworn his affection-despite Ian’s wife, Judith, and his two children. But basically, Ian’s affection had been for Hilda’s body and Hilda had recognized this pretty quickly into the relationship – if you could call the clumsy gropes and speedy ejaculations performed by her boss on the back room carpet a relationship.

Hilda had had to think of how to put an end to it – thus maintaining her and Harriet’s beloved routine-while not having it affect her position at the testing centre.

The solution had been simple, if a little Machiavellian. She had sent an anonymous letter to Judith Arbutt saying she should keep a tighter rein on her husband. “I’m not mentioning any names,” the carefully worded (and written) letter had continued, “but there are some folks around town who think your Ian’s affections might be being misplaced.” Hilda had liked that last bit.

A very anxious and contrite Ian had suggested to Hilda, on the next occasion that they were both alone in the centre, that he felt he wasn’t being fair to her. “Trifling with her affections” is what Hilda imagined he was wanting to say but Ian’s pharmacological expertise did not extend to the poetic. “I hope you’re not leading up to suggesting I look for other work,” Hilda had said, feigning annoyance, brow furrowed, “because that would mean something along the lines of sexual harassment, wouldn’t it?”

The answer had been emphatic and positive. “A job for life”, is how he worded it. “You’re here for as long as you want to be here, Hilda,” he said. And he had been true to his word, at least Hilda could give him that.

No, Hilda would have nothing come between her and her sister. They were all either of them had and their separation was something she could not contemplate. She had thought that Harriet felt the same way.

And then came the fateful day, almost a week ago – was it really only a week? it seemed so much longer – that had threatened to change all that.

Every Thursday, without fail, Harriet always walked along to the fish-and-chip shop on the green-Thursday being Jack Wilson’s early closing day – and had the tea all ready for Hilda when she got in. But on this particular Thursday, following four days of solid rain, when Hilda – a little earlier than usual because Ian also had flooding and wanted to get off – had gone past the General Store, she had seen Harriet helping Jack with moving boxes around due to the leakage through the front windows. He had asked her to stay back and give him a hand, and Harriet couldn’t refuse, despite her other “commitments”.

“We’ll just have some sandwiches,” Harriet had shouted through the locked door of Jack’s shop, looking terribly flustered. “You just put your feet up and I’ll make them when I get in,” she added.

Hilda had nodded. Then she had gone home, put the kettle on and, at the usual time Harriet always left the house en route for the fish and chips, Hilda had embarked into the darkness on the very same journey. Imagine her surprise when, from behind the big oak tree on the green, a shadowy figure leapt out, grabbed her by the shoulders and planted a big kiss on her mouth.

It was Arthur Clark.

“Thought you weren’t coming,” Arthur had announced to a bewildered Hilda. “Been here bloody ages,” he had added. “Edna’ll be getting ideas – mind you,” Arthur had confided, “it won’t matter soon. Must dash.” Then he had given her another kiss and had scurried across the green bound for home, calling over his shoulder, “See you on Saturday anyway, at the Christmas do.”

Hilda had stood and watched the figure disappear into the darkness, and she was so flabbergasted that she almost forgot all about the fish and chips and went home empty-handed. But already she was thinking that that would not do. That would not do at all.

The “meeting” had given her advance knowledge of a potential threat to the beloved routine. And by the time she was leaving the fat-smelling warmth of the shop, Hilda had hatched a plan.

She knew all about poisons from Ian’s explanations, long-drawn-out monologues that, despite their monotony, had registered in Hilda’s mind. Which was fortunate. She knew about nicotine, and about the way it was lethal and produced symptoms not unlike heart failure.

Getting a small supply would not be a problem. There were constant threats against the centre – notably from animal rights groups based out in the wilderness of Hebden Bridge and Todmorden-so a small break-in, during which most of the contents of the centre could be strewn around and trashed, was an easy thing to arrange… particularly after administering a small dose of sleeping tablets to her sister, who obligingly nodded off in front of the TV.

Hilda scooted along Luddersedge’s late night streets, let herself in with her own key-thanking God that he had seen fit to make Ian make her a joint key-holder with him-did what she considered to be an appropriate amount of damage, and removed a small amount of nicotine from the glass jar in Ian’s office cabinet, to which, again, she had a key. She left the cabinet untouched by “the vandals” who had destroyed the office. Then, after resetting the alarm, she had smashed in the windows with a large stick and returned home.

It wasn’t until she was almost back at the house that she heard the siren. She had smiled then – it had been long enough for whoever had broken in to do all the damage and escape without challenge. The night air had smelled good then, good and alive with… not so much possibilities but with continuance. Back in the warmth, she had settled herself down in front of the TV and, after about half an hour, had dropped off herself. The icing on the cake had been the fact that it was Hilda’s sister who woke Hilda up. A wonderful alibi, even though none would be needed.

Two days later, on the night of the Conservative Club’s Christmas Party, Hilda had bolted her meal and – though she knew she was risking things – had gone to the toilet at ten minutes to ten (Arthur Clark’s toilet habits being legendary). Once out of the ballroom, she had run down to the Gentlemen’s toilet, removed the tissue rolls from all but one WC, and had treated the first few sheets of the remaining roll with the special bottle in her handbag. It was four minutes to ten when she had finished.

She had arrived back in the ballroom at 9:58 just in time to see Arthur get up from the table and set off for his date with his maker. She had not been able to go straight back and was grateful for Agnes Olroyd catching her to talk about the break-in and about her Eric’s prostate. By the time they had finished talking, Hilda’s composure was fully restored and she was able to rejoin the table.

And now Harriet was nowhere to be seen. But that could wait.

The main thing as far as Hilda was concerned was to find her bag.

And she had a good idea as to where it was.

Harriet’s revelations had hit Edna Clark harder even than her husband’s death less than twelve hours earlier.

In Edna’s kitchen, with the sun washing through the window that looked out onto the back garden and with steam gently wafting from the freshly boiled kettle, Edna sat at the table feeling she had suddenly lost far more than her life partner: now she had lost her life itself. Everything she had believed in had been quickly and surely trounced by the blubbering Harriet Merkinson when she burst through the front door, ran along the hall-pursued by a confused Betty Thorndike – and emerged in the kitchen, tears streaming down her face. And now Edna’s 27 years with Arthur lay before her in tatters; every conversation, every endearment whispered to her in the private darkness of the their bedroom, every meal she had prepared and every holiday snapshot they had taken.

While Harriet continued sniffling and Betty simply stood leaning against the kitchen cabinets (installed by Arthur, Edna recalled, one laughter-filled weekend in the early 1980s), her eyes seemingly permanently raised in a mask of disbelief, Edna looked around at the once-familiar ephemera and bric-a-brac of a life that now seemed completely alien. These were things from another life – another person’s life – and nothing to do with Edna Clark, newly bereaved widow of one Arthur Clark, late of this parish.

The story had been a familiar one. Even as Harriet Merkinson had been burbling it out – the clandestine meetings, the whispered affections, the promise of a new life once Arthur had built up the nerve to leave his wife-Edna felt that she had heard it all before… or read it in a book someplace, maybe even watched it on television. The Arthur revealed by Harriet was not the Arthur she remembered, save for one thing: his toilet habits. At least something was constant in her husband’s two lives.

And now, while Edna’s mind raced and backtracked and questioned and attempted – in the strange and endearing way of minds – to rationalize and make palatable the revelations, the “other” woman continued to burble a litany of regret and sorrow and pleas for absolution and forgiveness.

“I can’t forgive you,” Edna said at last, her words cutting through the thick atmosphere like a knife through cheese. “Never,” she added with grim finality. “I can understand, because I know these things do happen, but I can never forgive you. You haven’t taken only my husband’s memory, you’ve completely removed my entire life.”

It was the most articulate statement Edna had ever made, and the most articulate she would ever make in what remained of her life. Of course, she would come to terms with what had happened, but she would never get over it.

“Edna, Edna, Edna, Ed-”

“Now get out,” Edna said, cutting Harriet’s ramble off midword. Her voice was quieter now, more composed, gentle even. There was no animosity, no aggression, no threats of retribution: just a tiredness and, the still silent Betty was amazed to see, a newfound strength that was almost majesterial. “I never want to speak with you again.”

Minutes later, Betty and Edna heard the distant click of the front door latch closing. It sounded for all the world like the closing of a tomb door or the first scattering of soil on a recently lowered coffin. Edna leaned forward and placed her face in her hands, and she began to sob, quietly and uncontrollably.

While Malcolm Broadhurst was greeting the two uniformed policemen on the steps of the Regal’s ornate front door, two things were happening, both of them personally involving the Merkinson twins.

For Harriet, the routine so cherished by her sister had been a chore. More than that, it had been the bane of her life.

Harriet had long wanted to get out of the repetitive drudgery of the existence she shared with Hilda, and Arthur Clark-dear, sweet Arthur, with his strange toilet habits – had been her ticket to salvation. Love was a new experience to Harriet: for that matter, she did not know – not truly, down in those regions of the heart and the soul where such things reside – whether she really loved Arthur, for she had never experienced such feelings, even as a teenager and a young woman. But she did see in him the means whereby she could attain a new life, a life of relative importance. “Harriet and Arthur”, “Arthur and Harriet” – she couldn’t decide which she preferred, but she preferred either to “The Merkinson twins” or “Hilda and Harriet”.

As she fished out the old clothesline from the kitchen cupboard, taking care to replace the various bottles and cartons of disinfectant and packets of soap powder, she felt a calmness come over her. Arthur’s death had effectively removed her last chance for salvation, and she had been destitute. But now, thanks to the clothesline, she saw a solution. It wasn’t the one she would have preferred but it was now the only one available. The only game in town. She could neither face life with Hilda nor life without the constant frisson of excitement she got prior to meeting Arthur, and she certainly could not face the comments and whispers around town when she walked down the high street or around the green. No, this way was best for all concerned. It was best for Edna – who might at least derive a little satisfaction when she heard – and it was best for Hilda, who would have to put up with her own share of her sister’s shame.

She climbed the stairs wearily and attached one end of the clothesline to the upstairs banister rail. Then, after ensuring that the line’s drop was sufficiently short to do the job, she fashioned a noose of sorts and slipped it over her head. With one final look around the landing she climbed over the rail and sat on the banister, staring down at the floor far below. As she jumped, in that fleeting but seemingly endless second or two before the line pulled taut without her feet ever touching the hall floor, she wondered where Hilda was… and what she would say when she came home.

“You’ve got something for forensics?”

Broadhurst nodded. “It’s inside. I didn’t want to be seen with it outside.”

They started to walk.

“I came up last Wednesday,” Malcolm Broadhurst explained to the two uniforms. “To check into the break-in down at the animal testing centre.”

“Oh, yeah?” one of the policemen observed. His name was James Proctor and he had perfected that same aggressive and questioning response to even the most innocent facts or snippets of information, seeming to require confirmation or substantiation to anything said to him.

“Yeah,” Broadhurst confirmed. They were now walking up the Regal’s steps and approaching the wide, oak-panelled revolving door. “Your Inspector Mishkin asked me up because there were a few things he wasn’t too happy about. I take it you two aren’t working on that case?”

“We didn’t know it was a case,” the second policeman said as they emerged from the revolving door into the hotel’s reception area. He said the word “case” with a heavy-handed touch of sarcasm. “Thought it was just a simple break-in.”

“Yes, well,” Broadhurst continued. “That’s the way it looked, and Inspector Mishkin and I decided to keep it that way until things made a little more sense.”

“And have they now?” the second policeman asked.

Broadhurst hit the bell on the reception desk.

“Look at it this way,” the policeman said, turning from the desk and looking the two uniforms in the eye. “Whoever broke in through the window managed to trash the place and then place all the broken glass on top of the wrecked office.” He nodded, smiling. “That’s a pretty good trick, don’t you think?”

“So-”

“So,” Broadhurst continued, watching the main staircase as a young man appeared and started down, “the ‘vandal’ clearly had access to the centre and wanted to cover up the fact that they had been there. Now that reason could be simply a matter of their wanting to fight the animal testing, kind of like a fifth columnist, or it could be another reason. I think we now have that reason-although the reason itself must have a reason – and that’s what I now bloody well intend to find out.”

“Yes, sir?” the young man said as he reached the bottom of the stairs and approached the three men at the desk. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Is Mister Poke around?” Broadhurst asked. “I gave him something to look after for me.”

The man nodded and moved around the desk. “I’ll give him a call, sir,” he said.

As Harriet Merkinson was swinging gently from side to side in the hallway of the house she shared with her sister, Hilda Merkinson slipped quietly into the back door of the Regal.

“Hello, Miss Merkinson,” Sidney Poke said. His tone was quite reverential, a tone he would use when speaking with anyone who had been at the previous evening’s party, and particularly those who had been closely involved with the tragic death of Arthur Clark.

Hilda nodded. “I wondered,” she said, “if you had found anything this morning. When you were cleaning up, I mean.”

Sidney frowned attentively. “Have you-” The ring of his mobile phone interrupted him. “Excuse me just a minute,” he said, pulling his phone from his side pocket. He pressed a button and said, “Yes?”

Hilda looked around as Poke listened on the phone.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll get it and bring it through.” He waited another few seconds and then said, “Very well, I’ll meet them on the way.”

“Now,” Poke said as he returned the phone to his pocket. “Where we were? Ah yes, have you lost something?”

They started walking slowly through the ballroom, which was now cleared. Tables were folded and leaning against the far wall; chairs were stacked in towering piles in front of the stage; and an army of young men and woman were busy with vacuum cleaners, criss-crossing the floor, their attention fixed on the carpet.

“My handbag,” Hilda shouted above the drone of the cleaners. “I think I must have left it last night.” Poke nodded and looked around absently. “In all the excitement,” Hilda added, suddenly wondering if “excitement” were the correct word to use under the circumstances.

“Ah!” Sidney Poke motioned Hilda towards a small occasional table set up by the door leading out to the toilets. The table contained a few jackets plus an assortment of bags.

“All those were left last night?” Hilda said in astonishment.

Poke gave an approximation of a laugh sounding more like a snort. “No, these belong to the cleaners,” he said, “but your bag – if you did leave it, and if it has been found-is most likely here as anywhere.”

As they reached the table, Hilda saw her bag. Her heart rose-or surfaced… or whatever it was that hearts did that was the opposite to sinking – and she reached out for it, careful not to appear too anxious. “That’s it,” she said triumphantly.

She picked up the bag and unfastened the sneck. She removed her purse, noting with grim satisfaction that the small bottle was still there, nestled in the bottom amongst Kleenex tissues, lipstick, comb and all the other rudiments of a woman’s handbag, and flipped it open. “There,” she announced, proudly displaying her library card, “just to show it’s mine.”

Hilda replaced the card and dropped the purse back into the depths of the handbag. Fastening the sneck, she said, “Well, I’ll get off then.”

Sidney Poke nodded. He took her arm and gently led her towards the main door that went on to the toilets and out to the reception area.

“How are you today? I mean, how are you feeling?”

Hilda made a face. “Oh,” she said, “you mean after-”

Poke nodded with the quietly attentive air of an undertaker.

“It was my sister. It was Harriet who collapsed. Not me.”

“Ah.” He pushed open the door and ushered her through ahead of him. “Well, I’ll leave you here, if that’s okay, Miss Merkinson.” Poke stopped at a desk in a small recess and shuffled in his pocket. He produced a set of keys and set about opening the desk’s deep drawer. “We’re running a little behind, what with-you know.”

Hilda nodded, watching Poke reach around into the drawer.

Somewhere far off, but coming closer, she could hear footsteps.

“Ah, here it is,” Poke grunted. “Must have pushed it further back than I thought.” His back to Hilda, Poke pulled out a small bundle and closed the drawer.

The footsteps were getting closer. Hilda tried to ignore the yawning staircase on her right, the fabled 45 steps that led down to the Gentlemen’s toilets. Deep in her mind, the footsteps belonged to Arthur Clark as he descended less than 12 hours earlier to empty his bowel and meet his end… except they seemed to be coming towards her rather than away from her. She shook her head and turned back to see the Hotel manager holding a toilet roll enclosed in a polythene bag.

“Right then,” Poke was saying, though his words sounded like rushing water in Hilda’s ears. Rushing water and footsteps, now getting very close-echoing-as though there were more than just Arthur coming back.

Poke moved the bag from one hand to the other as he returned the keys to his pocket. Hilda frowned at the bag, looked at Poke, smiled awkwardly, and turned around to face the toilet steps, half expecting to see Arthur climbing up to see her, to ask her why she had done what she had done, and bringing other people with him, friends of his, friends who-wanted toilet paper…

– wanted to talk to her and smooth her troubled brow with grave-cold hands. She turned sharply, took a couple of steps in the direction of the reception area and then stopped. There were figures approaching, figures making footstep-sounds. Her initial relief at discovering that the footsteps didn’t belong to her sister’s fancy man quickly evaporated when Malcolm Broadhurst called out to her.

“Ah, one of the Misses Merkinson.” Broadhurst’s tone was cheery. There were two policemen with him. “Now which one are you?”

Hilda started to speak and then, clutching her bag tightly, she spun around. Behind her, Sidney Poke was still standing by the doors leading into the ballroom, the toilet roll in his hand.

“Miss Merkinson?”

Hilda looked all around, clutching the bag even tighter, willing it to disappear… willing it to be a week earlier, willing there to have been no rain so that Jack Wilson’s General Store had not been flooded and Harriet had not had to stay and so Hilda had not gone for the fish and chips and so met Arthur who believed that she was her own sister… willing herself, back seven years ago, not to take the job at the animal testing centre… so many things. So many opportunities for her to have avoided this single instant.

But it was too late.

The footsteps were growing louder and slightly faster, moving towards her along the polished floor.

“Miss Merkinson?”

Then it all became clear.

She could escape through the toilets somehow. Escape and find Harriet and they could run off together, start a new routine… just the two of them.

She turned and almost leapt forward.

The piece of slanted ceiling that descended with the steps stayed straight for a second or two and then tilted.

Just as she was wondering why that was, Hilda hit her head on the side railing. She felt something warm on her cheek, spun around, and smashed her shin on one of the steps. For a second, amidst the confusion and the pain, she thought she could see a figure standing at the foot of the 45 steps, a figure patiently waiting for her to come down. She heard a crack.

Hilda slipped backwards and to the side somehow, hitting the back of her head on another step before turning over fully and ramming her face into one of the rail supports. More warmth…

And then blackness.

Another step broke her nose and her pelvis, another her third and fourth ribs-sending a splinter of bone into her left lung and scraping a sliver of tissue away from the second and third ventricles of her heart.

Two more steps fractured her skull, broke her left collarbone and smashed the base of her spine. The final step on the first flight sent another piece of rib through her heart.

She rolled onto the first landing and then proceeded down the second flight. And then onto the third.

It was Betty Thorndike who found Harriet.

She had called around on her way back from Edna Clark’s house, just to see if Harriet was all right. Of course, she wasn’t.

By Monday afternoon, it was all over bar the shouting. And as far as Malcolm Broadhurst was concerned, there would be little of that. He had been to see Edna Clark on the Sunday afternoon, with both of the Merkinson sisters lying on metal trays in the cold and strangely-smelling basement of Halifax General.

In the silent loneliness of Edna’s kitchen, the widow had told him everything that Harriet had told her. Broadhurst put the rest of it together himself.

He had spoken with his boss at Halifax CID and they had agreed between the two of them that there was little to be achieved by releasing all of the gory details. They decided that Hilda had been a keen promoter of animal rights, using her position at the centre to obtain vital information of the testing Ian Arbutt was carrying out-hence the break-in.

Harriet, meanwhile, had been unable to come to terms with her sister’s death and had hanged herself. Only a slight discrepancy in timing suggested that such might not be the case and nobody would hear about that discrepancy. Now the two of them were united again… in whatever routine they could arrange.

Edna Clark cried when the policeman explained what he had organized. It meant that her life had been partially restored. To all intents and purposes, she was still the grieving widow of a fine and upstanding member of the Luddersedge community. Betty Thorndike, who had not said anything to anyone about Harriet Merkinson’s revelations – and had had no intention of doing so-consoled Edna and assured her that everything was all right.

“He was a good man,” Edna whispered into her friend’s shoulder. “Deep down,” she added.

“I know he was, love,” Betty agreed. “They all are-deep down.”

Driving back to Halifax late afternoon on Monday, there was just one thing that niggled Malcolm Broadhurst. He could not understand why Ian Arbutt had seemed somehow relieved-albeit momentarily-when he was told of Hilda’s unfortunate accident.

But the policeman did not believe Arbutt was in any way involved in either the break-in or Arthur Clark’s murder. There was another story there, somewhere, as, of course, there always is.

We sat in the room where old Stanley Park had died so suddenly that morning. As the witnesses unfolded the story, even Paul Toft seemed to grow a mere huddle of sharp knees and elbows in his arm-chair, while Inspector Grimes became a bouncing mass of irritation as he realised that he had been dragged out to Friars’ Vale on the mere reasonless suspicions of a headstrong young woman. The local police sergeant and I sympathised with him.

This was no crime, but a sheer waste of time.

Gerald Park was perfectly frank about the part he had played in the tragedy of his uncle’s death.

He had come out from Stripe to old Stanley Park to borrow money. He hadn’t had much hope of getting it, he admitted, because there was bad blood between him and his uncle – who had kicked him out of this very house for stealing, less than a month ago. He was so desperately hard up, however, he had had to make the try.

He had come out by train to Friars’ Vale Halt and had taken a taxi from there. He had timed himself to arrive about 10.30, because that was the time his uncle always read his papers in this sitting-room. He let himself in with the door-key he had kept when his uncle had turned him out. He did that because he knew that if he rang, Mrs Ferris, his uncle’s housekeeper and only servant, would not let him in. It would have been more than her place was worth, seeing how his uncle had come to hate him.

Anyhow, his idea was to slip in quietly, getting into his uncle’s presence before anything could intervene. But “springing” himself on the old man like that had proved to be a horrible mistake. His uncle saw him even before he could get into the room, and rose from his arm-chair by the fire with such a snarl of rage that Gerald stopped dead in the very doorway.

The old man made furious gestures at him to get out. Gerald spoke, attempting to placate him, but that only made matters worse. At the sound of his nephew’s voice, old Stanley Park took a step forward as though he meant to throw the weedy young man out with his own hands – and then, quite suddenly, he crumpled up and fell to the floor.

Gerald, terrified, sure that the old man had had a stroke at the sight of him, called over his shoulder to Grass, the taxi-man – for the thing had happened so swiftly that he had never even moved inside the sitting-room door. Grass ran in and together they went to the old man. Or, rather, Gerald left that to Grass, who was more competent, while he himself ran back into the hall and called out to Mrs Ferris in the kitchen, before hurrying across the hall into the dining-room to get brandy from the cellarette.

Mrs Ferris was coming up the hall as he came out with the brandy, and they went into the sitting-room together. By then Grass was sure that there was very little hope for old Stanley, though on Gerald’s instructions he drove at once for a doctor, there being no telephone in the house. Mrs Ferris had, meanwhile, taken charge of the old man, Gerald standing by doing anything she ordered. But it was plain there was nothing to be done, and indeed old Stanley was dead before the doctor arrived, about ten minutes later.

Gerald Park, a weedy, rather slick fellow in the early twenties, was clad in smart clothes now gone to seed, rather shamefacedly “supposed” that the sight of him had given his uncle the shock that killed him. He admitted his uncle had good cause for anger against him – he’d behaved like a heartless young fool. Although his uncle had taken him into his home when his father died a few years ago, and had been as kind as his strict nature allowed, he, Gerald, had played fast and loose, got himself into bad company and ways and ended-well, by robbing his uncle on the sly.

He hadn’t any excuse. Of course, he’d hoped to pay the money back sometime, and he probably would have if someone hadn’t sneaked to his uncle and so caused the final explosion. After that he hadn’t a chance. His uncle was terribly down on that sort of thing. He’d been absolutely beside himself with fury and had turned Gerald out of his house then and there. That was his way. Drove his own nephew right out of his life from that moment, warning him never on any account to show his face in Friars’ Vale again.

Perhaps he oughtn’t to have risked coming back, seeing how bitterly the old man felt, but, as he’d said, he was absolutely on the rocks and had to get money somehow – and then, how was he to know that the sight of him would have such a fatal effect?

A straightforward story. Grass, the taxi-driver, not only confirmed it, but strengthened it by several items Gerald Park had left unsaid.

For instance, he had kept his taxi waiting beside the door because Gerald had given him the wink… Well, wink was a manner of speaking. Gerald had asked him to wait in a sheepish sort of way, and Grass, knowing how things were between old Stanley and that young blackg- this nephew of his, as all the village did, anticipated a quick return fare with Gerald being booted out.

While Grass waited he watched Gerald. That was easy. Gerald left the front door wide open – for a quick run out, of course, should his uncle turn nasty. As the sitting-room door was just to the left of the hall, Grass naturally saw Gerald open that. Saw him all the time, in fact, for he never really went over the threshold of the sitting-room-never had the chance from the look of it.

Yes, Gerald stopped dead in the doorway. He seemed scared to go in. Grass heard him call out loud something like, “But, Uncle, give me a chance…” After that there was a crash inside the room, and Gerald turned a frightened face over his shoulder, yelling that his uncle had had a fit or something.

Gerald was so paralysed with surprise that Grass had to push him out of the sitting-room doorway to get at the old man. He found Stanley Park in a heap beside his arm-chair-yes, right across the room, by the fire – and, from the look of him, there wasn’t much chance. Oh, he was still alive, but it was plain his heart had burst or something, at the sight of Gerald, and it was all u.p.

No, Gerald hadn’t gone near him. He stood hovering away off by the door like a frightened puppy, until, suddenly, he thought of the brandy and Mrs Ferris. Grass had heard him yelling for Mrs Ferris. She came in ahead of Gerald, who handed her the brandy and glass; he was still that scared and helpless. In fact, the only thing the feller did try to do was to take off his coat and hand it to him to put under his uncle’s head. Even then Mrs Ferris had stopped him and made him fetch a cushion instead.

Mrs Ferris, a rabbit-mouthed, but plump and motherly sort of woman, bore all this out. She had been at the scullery sink washing the breakfast things when she heard Master Gerald call. She had come at once, after drying her hands. Master Gerald was coming from the dining-room with the brandy and glass in his hands as she reached the sitting-room door. He shouted that his uncle had been taken ill, and she ran into the sitting-room. She didn’t like the look of the old gentleman at all, and sent Grass for the doctor.

No, it was she who gave that order; maybe Master Gerald repeated it to Grass, but the poor boy was so terribly upset he did not know what he was doing. Yes, he stood about helpless the other side of the room, so flummoxed at what had happened that he seemed terrified of coming near his uncle. Yes, he did take off his coat for his uncle’s head, which only showed how struck all-of-a-heap the poor boy was, seeing he could have reached for any of three cushions from the settee.

Mrs Ferris’s manner made it plain that she had a warm corner in her heart for Gerald. She agreed that he’d been wild and reckless, and that his uncle had been terribly set against him because of his theft. But she held he’d been led away by his kind heart. Also, though she didn’t want to cast no aspersions, there was those who had worked against him, too. Yes, Miss Barbara Tabard, if they must have it. All she would say was that if Miss Barbara had only let well alone, poor old Mr Stanley would be alive and happy now.

Miss Barbara Tabard was the reason why we were in the case. She was the daughter of Stanley Park’s sister, and she and Gerald were the only living relatives of the dead man. She lived in Stripe, where she taught in an elementary school, for she was an independent, pretty, and vehement girl in the middle twenties.

For these reasons she had an enmity for Gerald, whom she considered a slimy, unscrupulous little sponger who had wormed his way into their uncle’s good graces solely to feather his own nest. She had already told us quite frankly that it was she who had discovered his thefts and so caused the break between him and his uncle.

Barbara had made the twenty minutes’ journey from Stripe immediately on receiving the wire about her uncle’s death. Finding Gerald on the scene, she had become suspicious at once. Also she found Stanley Park’s doctor puzzled. He could not understand how the old man had come to die from heart failure-as it seemed. Only a few months before, he had given Stanley Park a thorough overhaul, and his heart had then been as sound as a bell. Of course, a shock might have made a difference, but he was perplexed.

Barbara had seized on that (“She would,” Grimes had snarled). She at once became sure there had been foul play. She declared that Gerald would stop at nothing when it was a question of money. And there was a question of money. Stanley Park had been a rich man. He had meant the bulk of his fortune to go to Gerald, as his natural heir, with a smaller sum for her, Barbara. But after Gerald’s exposure and disgrace he had decided to make a fresh will, cutting Gerald out entirely and leaving everything to her.

Gerald, Barbara insisted, must have learnt that he was altering his will and so taken a desperate step to prevent his own disinheritance. The doctor and even the local sergeant thought her suspicions too wild in the face of the evidence, but the impetuous girl promptly tackled the indulgent Mrs Ferris and forced from her an admission that, not only had she been in correspondence with Gerald, but that she had told him that his uncle had actually made an appointment with his lawyer for the next week in order do put the alteration of his will finally in hand.

On learning that, Miss Barbara went off the deep end, as the local sergeant put it, telling him that if he did not move she herself would go to headquarters at Stripe and force the police to take action. As she was plainly the sort to keep her word-with interest – the harassed sergeant decided that the best way out would be to let Stripe hold the baby, so to speak; so he had ‘phoned headquarters. That was why Inspector Grimes and Paul Toft had picked me up at my consulting-room on the way to Friars’ Vale. As Medical Officer I might find something that Stanley Park’s doctor had missed. But they hadn’t much hope. As Grimes said when we’d finished with the witnesses.

“Sheer waste of time an’ tissue. On the face of it, this Gerald Park never had a chance o’ doing anything to his uncle, even if he wanted to. There never was a case in it…”

“I don’t know… I feel…” Paul Toft muttered, and at that ominous “Kill,” we swung on him – and gaped. He had not uncoiled his lank limbs, but his left hand was churning away at a soft piece of india-rubber, that unmistakable sign that his queer mind had sensed crime.

“But – but you can’t feel,” Grimes protested. “Everything’s against foul play. There’s no hint of wound or bruise on the body, for instance, an’ there couldn’t be. Gerald never went within fifteen feet of his uncle. An’ that taxi-driver, who was watching him all the time, saw nothing suspicious.”

“Yes, that taxi-odd,” Paul Toft’s great domed forehead frowned. “Less than ten minutes’ walk from the station – yet this youngster, though he’s financially on the rocks, took a taxi… Queer extravagance, eh?”

“No! Just the sort o’ fool thing his sort does,” Grimes was curtly brushing the suggestion away, when I found myself blurting with that strange impulse that is so often helpful to Toft’s curious gift:

“That driver made a very useful witness, though. Only one who could, with those trees screening the carriage-way. That might be a reason for taking a taxi… And doesn’t he seem to have made the most of it? I mean leaving the front door open and so forth.”

“That’s been explained,” Grimes began, but Toft flashed at me the smile that always tells I have given him a lead, and nodded.

“Ah, Doctor, you always touch the point… You’re right. There’s a certain overemphasis… His strange keeping away from his uncle, for instance… He let the taxi-driver and Mrs Ferris do everything while he stood afar off. Seems a bit over-done-pointed…”

“Yes,” I agreed, “as though he was definitely trying to create the impression that he could not possibly have had anything to do with his uncle’s death.”

“What – you mean you think he had?” Grimes cried.

“I feel – yes, I feel that murder was done here,” Paul Toft said with his most dreamy conviction.

We stared at him. When Paul Toft talked like that we no longer scoffed, he’d proved those extraordinary “feelings” of his too often. But even I could not feel quite convinced. If ever there was a case when the whole mass of the evidence made murder seem quite impossible, this was it. In fact, Grimes all but bellowed:

“How in the name o’ Job did he do it then? Look, the old man was in this chair, by the fireplace. Gerald stood in the door there, fifteen feet away. He was under observation all the time. He simply couldn’t ha’ done a thing, or raised a hand without the taxi-man knowing all about it. How then? Did he mesmerise the old chap to death-or what?”

Even Toft had no answer to that. On the face of it, it was quite impossible for Gerald Park to have struck his uncle down. Unless, as I said: “He shot him from the doorway.”

Directly I spoke I knew I’d said a foolish thing. Though Toft looked at me sharply, Grimes let go a savage bark. “Funny how we’ve all overlooked the loud report of a pistol. A darn loud report, get me, seeing it was fired inside the house. I wonder why the taxi-driver forgot to mention hearing a little thing like that… aye, an’ seeing Gerald using his pistol.”

I wanted to kick myself for blurting without thinking. Not only would it have been impossible for the taxi-man to miss such pistol play, Mrs Ferris must have heard the report too. Crestfallen, then, I was surprised when Toft unlimbered his reedy limbs, and, ignoring Grimes’ “What the devil -?” crossed to the door to call the taxi-man into the room again.

But even the suggestion of hope that brought proved vain. The taxi-man was as contemptuous of the pistol idea as Grimes.

“A pistol? Not a chance,” he said emphatically. “I tell you I had my eyes on Gerald all the time… Expecting fireworks when his uncle saw him, you see. He couldn’t ha’ used a pistol without my seeing-let alone me hearing.”

“That’s sure-you heard nothing?” Grimes insisted.

“Not a thing-an’ I know what pistols sound like, too.”

“He might have been using one with a silencer,” I put in. “You say he called out loudly to his uncle…”

“He did, sir. But that made no manner o’ difference. I mean, I’m ready to swear there wasn’t even the ghost of another noise.”

“Your engine was still running though,” Toft put in.

“Maybe,” the man shrugged. “But that wouldn’t make any difference. We get so used to it we hear other sounds agin it – and I’d have heard even a silencer… An’ then, as I say, I was watching him close. He didn’t make the motions like shooting. Just stood still an’ stiff all the time.”

“How can you be so sure?” I objected. “Can you remember exactly how he stood?”

“Well, I can then,” the man snapped. “He stood practically half out o’ that sitting-room door all the time. His hand was holding it open by the knob all the time… the nearest hand that’d be, the left. His right hand was in his pocket. His arm never lifted or moved or anything-no, not even up to when I shoved him aside to go in to his uncle.”

“But that means his right hand was hidden from you by his body,” I fill muttered. “I’ve heard of people shooting from their pockets…”

Grimes cut in: “You say Gerald took off his coat to put under his uncle’s head – were you able to see if there was a pistol in its pocket, or anywhere on him?”

“There wasn’t, sir,” the taxi-man declared. “I’m certain of that. I’ll tell you why: I noticed how ragged the lining of that coat was, thinking what a come-down it was for a chap like him. It was so ragged that I couldn’t ha’ missed seeing a pistol poking out or bulging. Another thing. It was me he handed the coat to before Mrs Ferris told him to get a cushion-an’ from the weight o’ that coat, there couldn’t have been a pistol in it.”

That seemed conclusive enough, yet Paul Toft muttered: “Odd bit of by-play, that coat business… as though it were part of a thought-up alibi…”

We did not pay much attention to him. The pistol theory was destroyed, especially as the taxi-man went on:

“An’ it’s all stuff, anyhow. As if I didn’t know what bullets do to people… I saw plenty enough in the War. An’ there was no sign o’ wound on poor old Mr Stanley.”

That clinched the matter, as it were, but it also reminded me that it was about time I took a look at the dead man. The body had been taken into the sitting-room behind the one we were in, and as I examined it the thought of foul play receded farther and farther from my mind. There was simply no sign of wound or violence. I pointed this out to Paul Toft, who stood brooding over me as I worked.

“Eh? Nothing there, Doctor?” he muttered, coming out of his medium’s trance… “Nothing that would show, no… I feel that’s it… Something that was sure not to show… How?” He examined the body. “Hair, maybe… Hair still thick and black…”

“It couldn’t hide a bullet wound,” I said.

“No… no, not a bullet wound, but… How would he have stood as Gerald came into the door? Left front to Gerald, eh…? Shave the head on the left side, please, Doctor…”

I did this, not with much hope, but rather because I was always peculiarly under the spell of this strange, lank man’s strange powers. The more of the surface of the skull I uncovered the more pessimistic I became-until Toft’s bony finger prodded forward and he muttered:

“What do you make of that, Doctor?”

It was a tiny puncture in the skin well above the left ear, a little red speck so small that it might have been anything from a flea-bite to the prick of a needle-point. I said as much.

“Needle-point!” he breathed. “Ah, we’re getting warmer.”

“How?” barked Grimes, who had joined us after a routine search of the house. “You suggesting that Gerald jabbed a poisoned needle into the old fellow? Just when did he manage that-never having been near him?”

“A dart might have done it”; I had taken fire at Toft’s suggestion. “A poisoned dart.”

“Fine!” Inspector Grimes jeered. “An’ Gerald being a rackety one was no doubt a first-class darter from practice in pubs. Only you’re forgetting the taxi-man swears he never took his hand from his pocket. Also…”

“An air-pistol fires darts,” I said excitedly. “And, by Jove, an air-pistol makes next to no noise, not enough to be heard above the sound of a taxi-engine, I’ll bet.”

“Fine, Doctor,” Toft smiled at me, but the Inspector went on grimly:

“As I was about to finish-also even air-pistol darts aren’t invisible to the naked eye. They’re quite solid bits of metal, with a point and a lead butt an’ tufts o’ silk to steady ’em. How is it the taxi-man missed such a dart sticking in the old man’s head? Remember Gerald never went near enough to pull it out.”

“I feel… it fell out,” Toft said, but I could not support him there. From the nature of the wound it would have remained sticking into the head.

“The doctor doesn’t think so,” Grimes said, reading my face. “Also, say it did fall out, it would have dropped close to the body. It’s a plain dark brown carpet in that room. Would the taxi-man, Mrs Ferris, and the other doctor have missed seeing it as they worked on the body? It’s a thousand to one against. There was no sign of it in the room then – no sign of it now. I’ve been over that room with a hand-brush. I’ll show you.”

He called out, and the local sergeant brought in a dust-pan with the sweepings of the sitting-room. There was little more than a litter of fluff and scraps, tiny bits of coal, fragments of paper, a couple of wireless screws, a thin, capped pencil, also the little red cylinder of indiarubber that belonged to it though it had been trodden out, one or two buttons, the half of what looked like the elastic button strap of a pair of braces… stuff like that, but no sign of anything like a dart.

“You’re going to say Gerald might have picked his dart up,” Grimes said. “Well, I don’t think he could have, not before it was seen. What’s more, I don’t think he’d risk his neck on anything so conspicuous… And then, there’s the pistol? What became of that? There’s no sign of it anywhere about or on Gerald… No, it won’t wash. You’re only making a case out o’ moonbeams, Toft.”

It seemed so. I stood dejected. Paul Toft said in his dreamy calm:

“There’s no getting over that.” He touched the tiny puncture on the skull. “That’s how he died… I feel that. And he was deliberately wounded under the hair so that we’d miss it.”

“Oh, heck!” wailed Grimes; “an’ I’ve just been telling you that all the facts say no!”

“Of course they would. The whole thing was carefully, brilliantly schemed to make facts say no,” the reedy man mused on. “From the careful employment of that taxi-driver as a witness, to the firing of an all but silent air-pistol from the pocket… a helpfully ragged pocket, remember… And you’ll probably find that Gerald Park is a first-rate marksman.”

“I probably will,” the Inspector said bitterly. “That won’t be so hard as to find how he managed to make a dart and a pistol vanish into thin air under the noses of witnesses. Just crank up a really good feeling to explain that, my lad.”

Toft only blinked and looked at me, and in trying to think of a way out I did remember something.

“Just precisely when did Gerald offer his empty coat to his uncle?” I asked.

“Didn’t you hear Mrs Ferris say it was after she came into the sitting-room,” Grimes said sourly.

“After he’d fetched the brandy,” Toft put in swiftly. “Yes, that’s the loophole, Doctor. He was out of sight of witnesses, at least while he was in the dining-room getting the brandy.”

“An’ a fat lot that’s going to help,” Grimes said as we went into the dining-room. It was, indeed, sparsely furnished; just a gate-table, six stiff chairs, and a side-board with two cupboards, one of which was the cellarette.

“I’ve even searched behind the pictures; there’s nothing here,” Grimes began, and added as Toft walked straight towards a French window in the rear, that opened on to the garden. “An’ that’s no good, either. It’s been locked all winter, an’ the key’s not in it.”

“That’s what makes it queer,” Paul Toft said. “The key’s usually left in this sort of window from year’s end to year’s end. Did someone want to create the impression that nobody could have got out through this window to-day?” He stood still, staring at the lock with his queer other – worldly gaze. Then he muttered:

“Hum! Someone locking this window, snatching out the key, moving on the run to the room across the hall… where would he hide the key?” His eyes twinkled at me. “How’s this for real pukka police deduction, Doctor? There’s a hall stand full of umbrellas on the way… Wouldn’t he toss the key into them in passing?”

I went to the hall stand. The third bulgy umbrella I upended and shook, shot a key to the hall floor. It fitted the French window.

We stepped through it on to a small redtiled veranda overlooking the garden. This was without railing, but it had an inclined glass roof supported by pillars to keep off the rain. We stood and looked at half an acre of neat garden.

“You think he might have nipped out here and chucked his pistol into one of them bushes, or hidden it in one of the flowerbeds?” Grimes asked in a voice not so assured as it had been. “A mug’s trick. He’d ha’ known bushes and flower-beds are the first things we think of.”

“And being a smart fellow he would think of a cleverer place,” Toft said. “Cleverer but handy… easy to use in a hurry, handy to get at when suspicious people like ourselves had gone.”

He stepped out into the garden and looked up at the roof of the veranda. A gutter ran along the edge of it, terminating in large, old-fashioned rain-water heads and down pipes at each end. With his left hand churning away at its indiarubber, Toft walked to the nearest down pipe, stretched his reedy arm up into the rain-water head, and, after a sharp tug, brought his hand away – with an air-pistol.

It was a short, but obviously powerful weapon with a rather full bore, and looked of foreign make. Toft broke it, charging its air chamber, and fired. It made very little sound, and was plainly in perfect working order.

“Job!” Grimes said in grudging admiration. “Your feelings do get you there, I fill… He’s a smart one, that Gerald, just fancy his thinking of locking the window after hiding this and then hiding the key to keep us from looking here… All the same, there’s the dart. He’s got everything so neatly alibi-ed that you’ll have to prove that dart before you can be sure of pinning it on him.”

That was a fact. Paul Toft stood, his great head brooding as he churned away at his indiarubber. Grimes and I examined the pistol, talking quietly not to disturb him. It was an interesting pistol, and I pointed out some oddnesses about it to Grimes – the size of the bore, for instance.

“Too big to carry any air-gun pellet I know,” I said. “Why, you could shoot a pencil from that.”

“Pencil!” Toft’s voice came suddenly, alight with eagerness. “That’s it, Doctor… I wonder why I felt?… But I remember reading about it now.”

“What?” both Grimes and I demanded in one voice, but his lank limbs were carrying him headlong into the house, and he was calling to the sergeant for the pan of sitting-room sweepings.

He was in the sitting-room when they were brought. Toft picked from the mess the little cylinder of rubber that had dropped out of the cap of the pencil.

“Clever,” he muttered. “Devilish clever… Dropping that pencil, too…”

“What’s the pencil got to do with it?” Grimes frowned.

“Nothing,” Toft grinned, “but you’d never suspect that, would you? This bit of rubber looks as if it belonged to that pencil, doesn’t it? Just an ordinary eraser off the top of a pencil. But look-” Toft broke the pistol, exposing the breech hole, and into that he shoved the rubber cylinder. “It fits the pistol as perfectly as any lead slug, you see. Doctor, will you put that big book on top of that arm-chair. Good, now put a sheet of clean notepaper against it… and stand clear. I’m not such a good shot as Gerald Park.”

But he was good enough. He walked to the door, just where Gerald had stood, though instead of shooting from his pocket he took aim in the orthodox way, and fired.

Again the pistol made only a slight sound; a much sharper rap came from the paper where the rubber pellet struck. It struck with such force, in fact, that it bounded right across the room, and only Toft’s sharp eyes followed it to a corner under the book-case some twelve feet away.

“Your eyes show you the first advantage of such a bullet,” Paul Toft said. “Being rubber – having, in fact, a pneumatic tip – it bounces away with great violence from whatever it strikes. Bounces, you might say, right out of range of the victim, so that there is little chance of its being connected with him… and being innocent rubber, anyhow, it is likely to be over-looked. Only it’s not innocent rubber…”

He walked across the room and lifted up the sheet of notepaper the bullet had struck. On that paper we saw a faint ring impression made by the head of the rubber, and in the centre of it a tiny puncture – just such a puncture as had pierced the skin of Stanley Park’s head. It was then that we realised that there must be a needle bedded in that rubber cylinder. Paul Toft proved it to us.

Rescuing the bullet from under the book-case, he held it delicately by one end, and, taking a pair of tweezers from his pocket, pressed the outer edges of the circular top down. As he did that, a tiny needle-point emerged from an almost imperceptible hole in the nose, a needle-point no more than an eighth of an inch long, but, if that point was poisoned – deadly.

“I read about this some time ago… but forgot it until Doctor Jaynes stirred my memory,” the dreamy fellow smiled. “They’ve been using this deadly weapon in several countries of Europe for safe and secret murder. You can see how horribly efficient it is. An assassin can shoot at his man anywhere, in the street, in a crowd, in a theatre. Nobody hears the report of the air-pistol, so nobody can trace the shooter. The victim falls dead, but nobody knows how he dies. There is only that tiny poison hole, hidden by the hair, no doubt, as in Stanley Park’s case. The bullet – that has already bounced off into the litter of the street… it automatically vanishes when it has done its work. Even if fired in a room it can be covered up, as Gerald Park so nearly covered it up, by dropping a pencil from which the rubber eraser is missing… so you would think the bullet merely part of that…”

“Almost fool proof,” Grimes nodded. “When the murdered man tumbled down without wound, without any hint of anybody attacking him, it’d naturally be taken for heart failure or a stroke, as we thought Stanley Park’s death was; and all the murderer has to do is to walk away… Just as Gerald Park nearly did – but won’t.”

But I am afraid Gerald Park did. When Grimes arrested him he was startled, but took it quietly. He simply couldn’t believe we had caught him until he heard the charge read over to him, and saw the pistol. Even then he went quietly to his cell – and committed suicide. He’d been searched, of course, very carefully, but the police had overlooked a further quality of that deadly little indiarubber bullet. It could be too easily hidden. He’d hidden another bullet in the turn-up of his trousers, we thought. But we could never be sure. He was found next morning with the rubber cylinder gripped tight in his fist. The point driven into his palm, so that the hydrocyanic compound on it had done its deadly work. Thus we never knew how he had come to plan his murder – even though Paul Toft had brought it home to him.

Matt Kehoe leaned his hunting rifle against one of the small pine trees that encircled his hiding place in the still woods and beat his mittened hands together to get some circulation stirring in his fingers. Even through the two sweaters and the thick parka he was wearing the icy cold crept up his spine and made him shiver uncontrollably. His snowshoes creaked loudly as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“Mister Kehoe, will ye hold still, if ye please? Oi’m a guide, sor, not a worker of miracles. If ye expect a deer to pass this way so’s ye kin get a shot at it, ye’ve got to stop soundin’ like a boiler factory at full production.”

The whispered voice with its rich Irish brogue conjured up visions of the morning sun rising over the green fields of County Cork and the smoke of peat fires issuing from the chimneys of sod huts in Galway. Kehoe looked at his companion and shook his head in amazement.

For the man who had spoken, crouched down on his snowshoes in a position Kehoe would have sworn it was impossible to achieve, had the swarthy skin, high cheekbones and thin, hawklike nose of a full-blooded Indian. His blue denim jacket could provide little in the way of warmth, while his wide-brimmed hat was perforated with several bullet holes as well as a few larger openings which looked suspiciously as if they had been made by human teeth. Yet the cold didn’t seem to affect him at all. The look of repose on his face might have been graven from stone.

“Joshua, I’m going to freeze to death if we don’t start moving around,” Kehoe said through chattering teeth. “Wouldn’t it be better to go looking for deer instead of just waiting for them to come to us?”

Joshua Red Wing shook his head slowly and looked up at Kehoe with reproachful eyes. “Yesterday when I agreed to guide ye in yer huntin’,” he said, “I understood ye wuz one o’ them detective chaps like oi’ve read about in the penny-dreadful magazines. Oi thought ye’d be used to a bit uv hardship, what with runnin’ down alleys an’ climbin’ fire escapes like I see on the tellyvision. It’s a sad disappointment to discover yer as soft as the rest uv the hunters from the city. Next oi’ll be findin’ out ye can’t shoot worth a damn, neither.”

Joshua reached into a pocket and drew out a dented tin flask. “Here,” he said, passing it to Kehoe, “this’ll warm yer blood a bit.”

Kehoe grasped the flask, removed the top and took a single long swallow, then suddenly jerked the flask from his lips. Strange gasping sounds came from his throat, and his face turned bright red as the liquid, which felt as if it had been produced from sulfuric acid liberally laced with ground glass and old razor blades, streaked down his gullet.

“Luscious, ain’t it?” asked Joshua, retrieving the flask. “It’s from an old family recipe me sainted mother gave to me at the time of-”

“Joshua,” Kehoe said, tears streaming from his eyes, “I’d pull you in right now for attempted poisoning if I hadn’t seen you drink that stuff yourself. Is it that brew that makes you sound like an Irish Geronimo?”

“No,” replied Joshua with a twinkle in his eye. “Fact is, oi spoke nothin’ but Injun up to the age uv four. At that point oi began workin’ at a church in the village in exchange fer an eddication. Me English wuz learned from a Father McGrath and a cook named Bridget O’Toole. They wuz both first-generation Irish, which accounts fer me way uv speakin’. If it offends ye, why oi kin do ‘ugh’ and ‘how’ ez good ez any Injun ye’ll see in the movies.”

Before Kehoe could reply, Joshua stood up, gripping his rifle in one hand and motioning for silence with the other. “Oi heard somethin’ off in the woods,” he whispered to Kehoe. “Comin’ this way, it wuz. Now ye sees the wisdom uv me ways. Let the other hunters drive the game ahead uv ’em. We’ll be here to greet it when it arrives.”

Kehoe nodded, pumping a cartridge into the chamber of his own gun.

“Wait fer a good shot, an’ try to drop the animal in its tracks,” Joshua breathed. “Old Karl Spearing’s land begins about two hundred yards over to the left. If a wounded deer makes it that far, no sense chasin’ it. Spearing’s a mean one an’ won’t have anybody comin’ on his land to hunt. The few who tried hev wound up with a rump full uv buckshot.”

“I think I see something off there in the woods,” Kehoe said, pointing. “I’ll just-”

“Don’t be too hasty,” Joshua warned. “It could be anything. Mebbe a black bear that got up too early from its winter nap.”

A loud shout established the inaccuracy of the bear theory. “Help! Is anybody around? Help!”

Through the trees Kehoe caught sight of a man headed toward them at a dead run. He envied the man’s ability to handle snow-shoes without tripping over them.

“It’s Tip Spearing, Karl’s lad,” Joshua said. “Over this way, young fella.”

Joshua stepped out of the grove of pines. As the running man approached he tripped and would have fallen if the Indian hadn’t caught him in his arms.

“Take it easy, lad,” Joshua said to the gasping man. “Now then, Tip, what’s the trouble?”

“Josh, I-I-” Tip Spearing was in his mid-twenties, at the peak of his manhood, but judging from the ghastly expression on his face, he had looked into the deepest pit of hell itself.

“It’s terrible,” Tip went on. “I can’t believe-”

“Calm down,” whispered Joshua soothingly. “What is it now?”

“It’s Dad. He didn’t come back home last night. I’ve been out looking for him and-” He gulped convulsively. “I’ll take you to where he is.”

Beckoning to them, Tip turned, and retraced his tracks. Joshua followed at an easy trot, while Kehoe stumblingly brought up the rear. They passed through a large clearing where the ground had been blown free of snow, and Kehoe almost tripped as twigs and leaves caught at the webbing of his snowshoes.

Reentering the forest, the men finally reached a vertical mass of shale that jutted upward like some monstrous grave marker. Tip signaled for Joshua and Kehoe to stop. “Over… over there.”

Leaning their rifles against a tree, the two men left Tip and moved off in the direction that he had indicated. The white snow on the ground caught the sunlight that filtered through the branches and threw it back into their eyes so they squinted from the glare. They burst out onto what appeared to be a game trail amid the trees – and suddenly the snow wasn’t white anymore.

It was red. The bloody, frozen circle was almost six feet in diameter.

Kehoe had seen dead men before, but he clamped his teeth together and swallowed loudly as he beheld the body of Karl Spearing spread-eagled in the snow, its lower part across the bloody stain. The body’s left foot was shod in a calked boot with the letter “S” worked into the sole – but all that was left of its right leg was a stump, ending in a raw, open wound.

“Cut clean through the leg bones, just below the knee,” Kehoe said to Joshua. “Knife’s missing from the sheath at his hip, too. What do you suppose happened?”

“Oi’ve got a fair idea,” replied the Indian. “Not too pretty, either. Oi’ve heard about such things often enough in this country, but this is the first time oi’ve seen it. Would ye mind followin’ me? An’ hev a care where ye step, if ye please, so’s not to destroy tracks. Eventually we’ll hev to call in the local law. No sense ruinin’ all such things fer ‘em.”

They moved off down the trail, keeping well clear of the wide swath in the snow where Karl Spearing had evidently dragged his tortured body in a desperate attempt to seek help. The trail led past a thick stand of willow shoots. Joshua pulled aside the leafless branches.

“Yonder’s the trap, Mr Kehoe. Hev a look.”

Kehoe gaped at the shiny-toothed jaws of the bear trap in the midst of the white snow of the willows. They were clamped inexorably together on a bloody booted leg.

His eyes riveted on the leg, Kehoe spoke to Joshua. “You said you knew what happened here. What was it?”

Quickly the Indian sketched in the story. A lone man in midwinter, the chance misstep, and the heavy jaws of the trap, chained to a thick tree, leaping up out of the snow to grip the leg. In such a fix there was only one desperate chance, to be taken before cold seeped too deeply into the bones and blood.

A tight tourniquet was applied, after which the imprisoned limb was packed with snow to numb it as much as possible. Then, in a grinding hell of shock and pain, the pinioned man performed an amputation – on himself. Finally, if cold and loss of blood did not take their toll, it might be possible to make one’s way to where help was available. A slim chance at best, but Karl Spearing knew what must be done. He had tried – and he had lost.

“Spearing’s house is but a short ways beyond the trees there,” Joshua said, pointing. “Great big stone buildin’ it is, with a telephone line down to the village. If he’d been able to get to it, he might be alive now.”

“Rotten business,” added Kehoe. He pointed to a bone-handled hunting knife lying on the flattened snow. “Must be what he did the operation with. The poor devil hardly had a chance, did he? Well, what now?”

“We’d best get back to Tip and take him to the house. Oi’ll call Vern Lefner from there.”

“Lefner? Who’s that?”

“He’s our sheriff. When he’s done makin’ out his reports on this – that’ll take several hours, ez Vern loves to scribble on official papers – the two of ye kin talk about police work fer the rest uv the day. What with all our shoutin’ and hollerin’, oi doubt there’s a deer left in the whole county.”

“Do you think it’ll be okay to leave the body unguarded? I mean, couldn’t it be mutilated by wild animals?”

“Oi’d doubt it. There’s some bears ez travels this game trail during the summer, but they’re all hibernatin’ now. Besides, they’re not too partial to human flesh. And the body’s too cold and stiff to attract wolves.”

The two men flanked the wide trail in the snow that led back to Karl Spearing’s body. Kehoe gave the corpse a wide berth, but Joshua seemed intent on examining it at close range. Suddenly he paused, peering quizzically at a spot on the ground.

“There’s a queer thing,” he breathed softly.

“What’s the matter?” called Kehoe, who had moved a few paces ahead.

“Oi’ve found a bit uv an oddity here. Yer the detective. Come and tell me what you make uv it.”

Kehoe padded closer on his snowshoes.

“Hev a care,” Joshua said. “Ye’d not want to destroy evidence, would ye?”

“Evidence? What evidence?”

Joshua pointed to a spot near the toe of the left snowshoe. “What hev ye to say about that?”

“Karl Spearing’s footprint, that’s all. There’s no mistaking that ‘S’ from the bottom of his boot. He probably tried to stand before he became too weak to do so, and-”

“Mister Kehoe, would ye take note uv the fact that the print wuz made by the right foot? An’ the leg to which that foot’s attached is now caught fifty yards back down the trail in a bear trap.”

“Why yes, that’s true, but-”

“Then tell me, sor, how did the print get up here next to the body?”

“Well, it… that is… Oh, there’s got to be some simple answer.”

“Then would ye care to offer an explanation? Is it yer contention that the severed leg, takin’ on a life uv its own, somehow got out uv the trap an’ then hippety-hopped down here to the body like a Pogo stick? An’ then later returned and put itself back into the trap?”

“No, of course not. But… well, maybe Karl Spearing left the print several days earlier. If there was no new snow since then…”

“He just happened to be in the area, I suppose? An’ how would you suggest he arrived here that first time? There’s no second set of footprints. Just the ones that lead to the thicket where the trap is.”

“Oh. Then perhaps Spearing walked ahead on the trail a little way and came to this spot. He went back for some reason, and that’s when he got himself caught. Dragging his body along, he’d have covered up the other tracks he made.”

“Oi see.” Joshua’s voice dripped sarcasm. “He walks up to here. ‘Oh my!’ he sez, ‘oi’ve forgotten somethin’.’ So he turns about, walks back down the trail and thrusts his foot into a trap he’d set hisself. After cuttin’ off his own leg he crawls back, destroyin’ all tracks except this one by the body, which he leaves to confound us. No, Mr Kehoe. There’s more to Karl Spearing’s death than meets the eye.”

“Josh, according to what you told me yourself, this whole thing is open and shut. Karl Spearing cut off his leg and then bled – or froze – to death. Stop trying to make such a big deal out of it. Why, if you hadn’t seen that footprint-”

“Ah, but I did see it, Mr Kehoe. An’ so did you.”

“Yes, and I’ll bet when this Lefner fellow gets here, he’ll have a dozen logical explanations for how it got there. Better leave detective work to the police, Josh.”

“Very well. But oi’ll hev no part uv any explanation uv Karl Spearing’s death that doesn’t take that footprint – that damned impossible footprint – into account.”

The two men returned to where the weeping Tip Spearing was waiting and half-led, half-carried him through the woods to his house. While Kehoe looked for the telephone to put in a call to the village, Joshua laid logs in the huge fireplace and soon had a roaring blaze going. From the liquor cabinet he took a bottle and administered a healthy tot of whiskey to Tip as well as taking a mammoth swig for himself. Then he laid Tip on the couch and repeated the dosage. Within half an hour the bottle was nearly empty, Tip was asleep, and Joshua was honoring Kehoe with a nasal rendition of “The Rose of Tralee”.

It was almost noon when Sheriff Vernon Lefner’s jeep stopped at the edge of the dirt road that ran past the house. Matt Kehoe met him at the door.

“Glad to know you,” Lefner said when Kehoe had introduced himself. “Always good to meet another cop. How’s the hunting been going?”

“Got me a new guide this time,” Kehoe said. “His name’s Joshua Red Wing. He looks Indian but talks like he was mayor of Dublin. Do you know him?”

“Know him?” was the reply. “I’ve run him in for hunting and fishing out of season more times than I can remember. He’s a good guide though, at least when he’s sober. By the way, what’s that sound? Is somebody using a chain saw out back?”

In reply Kehoe opened the door to the livingroom. In front of the embers of a dying fire Joshua was sprawled out in a leather easy chair. His eyes were closed, but his open mouth resembled the entrance to a mine shaft. The gargantuan snores coming from his throat reverberated from the room’s beamed ceiling.

Lefner, considering the empty bottle on the floor near the Indian’s right hand, said, “He’ll be out for quite a while, but it’s just as well. It’ll give the two of us a chance to examine Karl Spearing’s body.”

“Fine.” Kehoe hauled his parka from the closet. “By the way, Josh found a footprint down there. A little strange, its being where it is, I guess. But he’s trying to make a big thing of it.”

“Between his police magazines and what he sees on TV, Josh considers himself another Sherlock Holmes,” Lefner commented. “C’mon. Maybe we can get back before he wakes up and decides he’s being attacked by a herd of pink elephants.”

It was almost sundown when Joshua woke. He got up from his chair, holding his head as if it were about to burst, and gingerly walked to the kitchen.

“Cold lamb,” he groaned, looking from the two men at the table to the platter in front of them through bloodshot eyes. Within the Indian’s head a gang of tiny miners seemed to be excavating his brain with pickaxes and dynamite.

“We found it in Karl’s refrigerator,” Lefner said. “I had some men come up and take the body to Dr Fanchion’s in town for a medical examination, but I wanted to be here to ask Tip a couple of questions when he wakes up. I thought we might as well eat while we’re waiting. Slice some off, Josh, and dig in.”

“No sense me even tryin’ to eat,” moaned Joshua softly. “With a bit o’ luck, oi’ll be dead within the hour anyway.”

He shuffled to the door, threw it open, and took several deep breaths of the cold, clear air. Slowly his eyes focused, and the mining operations within his head closed down. “An’ what, Vernon, is yer conclusion ez to Karl Spearing’s death?”

“An accident, no question about it, Josh. Spearing did everything he could to save himself. If he hadn’t cut off his leg he’d have frozen to death right there in the trap. As it was, well, at least he went a lot more quickly his way.”

“An’ the footprint? Ye did see it, didn’t ye?”

Lefner nodded. “I saw it, Josh. It’s gone now, of course. When the men came for the body they scuffed up the area pretty badly.”

“So it’s gone, eh? An’ with it, any embarrassin’ explanations ye’d hev to make about it.”

Lefner gestured toward Kehoe. “We both saw it, Josh. We admit it was there. It’s just that we don’t think it’s that important.”

“Oh.” Joshua slumped into a chair. “Oi see. Then how d’ye explain its presence by the body?”

“I don’t know, Josh, but…” Lefner shook his head in annoyance. “Kehoe, talk to this knothead, will you? Tell him what police work is really like.”

Joshua turned to Kehoe, a look of intense interest on his face. “Do that, Mr Kehoe,” he said. “Talk to me about how the police ignore clues that’s right in front of their noses.”

Kehoe cut himself another slice of lamb, the knife grating on the bone of the roast. “What Lefner is trying to say,” he began, “is that real police cases aren’t like the shows on TV. On the crime shows everything’s neatly wrapped up at the finish. But in real-life criminal cases there are a lot of loose ends-”

“Ez the police,” interrupted Joshua, “oi merely want yez to explain how that one footprint got up by the body, when the foot that made it wuz fifty yards away, caught tight in a bear trap. Is that too much fer a tax-payin’, law-abidin’ citizen to ask?”

Lefner was taken with a sudden fit of coughing. “Josh, we’ve got to be getting back to town,” he said finally, getting control of himself. “Now we’re going to have to wake Tip, and when we do, I don’t want to hear anything more about that footprint. The boy’s been through enough for one day.”

“Then ye wouldn’t be interested in me theory.”

Kehoe and Lefner looked at one another and then both stared at Joshua. “What theory?” asked Kehoe.

“About the footprint, uv course. But if you two detective gintlemen are too busy, why…”

Lefner, red-faced, began rising from his chair. Kehoe restrained him. “Just a minute, Vern. How long will this take, Josh?”

“P’rhaps thirty minutes. Oi’m sure Tip’ll sleep that much longer. He drank almost ez much ez oi did from that bottle, an’ he ain’t had near the practice.”

“Okay!” Lefner pounded the table. “Okay, Josh. We’ll hear you out. But it had better make sense. And after this, no more talk about that blasted footprint. Agreed?”

“Yer charmin’ manner puts me completely in yer power,” Joshua said. “Agreed.”

The Indian stood up and dug a hand deep into a trousers pocket. Then he held the hand over the table and allowed three scraps of grimy paper to fall lightly in front of Lefner. “Oi’d ask yez to look at these,” he said. “Meanwhile oi’ll be outside, lookin’ about a bit.”

As Joshua left the room, Lefner took one of the bits of paper and passed another to Kehoe. “Looks like an IOU,” Lefner said. “From Tip Spearing to Joshua. Seven dollars and eighteen cents.”

“Mine’s the same,” Kehoe said. “But the amount’s different. A dollar and a quarter.”

“Less than a week old, both of them. The third’s for five dollars even. Josh probably got ’em in one of those poker games they hold at the hotel. Everybody in town knows Tip gives IOU’s. But he always makes good on them.”

“But what’s this got to do with the footprint?” Kehoe asked. “I still don’t see-”

He was interrupted by the thump of something being deposited on the back porch. Then the outside door burst open, and amid a blast of frigid air, Joshua entered, smiling broadly at the two.

“We saw the IOU’s, Josh,” Lefner said. “What’s the matter, don’t you think Tip will make good, now that his father’s dead?”

“Oi’ll disregard yer remark ez unworthy uv ye,” Joshua said, grinning expansively. “Fer while yez two were sittin’ here stuffin’ yerselves, oi’ve been solvin’ the murder of Karl Spearing.”

“Murder!” Lefner’s face turned a beet-red. “Josh, I’ve heard enough already. Nothing’s been said at all about Karl Spearing’s being murdered.”

“Yes there has. Oi just said it meself. Now if ye’ll calm down a bit, oi’ll elucidate fer ye.”

Lefner turned to Kehoe, shaking his head.

“Ye see, Vernon,” Joshua began, “there wuz somethin’ about Karl Spearing lyin’ there in the snow that disturbed me from the first. In addition to the footprint, oi mean. A couple of things, in fact. In the first place, while the snow around the body itself wuz drenched with blood, there wuz none to speak uv back at the trap. What oi mean to say is, the leg wuz covered with it, but none at all on the snow. Even if Karl had wrapped his tourniquet to the tightest, seems ez if there’d be a drop or two, don’t it?”

Kehoe was seeing the Indian through new eyes. “You know, you’re right,” he said. “But that’s still not conclusive, Josh.”

“P’rhaps not. But try this. Karl Spearing had a sheath knife to do his cuttin’ with. The blade wuz mebbe six inches long. Oh, t’was sharp enough, and he could hev performed the amputation with it. But only if he’d cut off his leg at the knee where the joints come together. But no. The bones wuz sheared through cleanly, a few inches below the joint. An’ ye just can’t cut a bone like that with a knife without doin’ a good bit o’ hagglin’ at it. Ye kin experiment on the lamb roast right now, if ye’d like.”

Both Kehoe and Lefner let their confusion show in their faces. Their preconceived notions were trickling out of their minds like sand through an hourglass.

“Karl Spearing’s leg,” Joshua went on, “wuz cut off with the one weapon an outdoorsman might carry that could slice through bone with a single cut – a finely-honed ax.”

“Wait a minute,” protested Lefner. “Karl Spearing didn’t have an ax with him.”

“Ah.” Joshua held up a finger triumphantly. “So finally yer comin’ around to me way o’ thinkin’, eh? Ye’ll admit, then, the presence uv a second party?”

“Well… yeah, I suppose so,” Lefner said. “But I still don’t see how the other person got there. I mean, there were no tracks around except Karl’s.”

“But there wuz other tracks, don’t ye see? Don’t forget the trail Tip Spearing, Mr Kehoe an’ me made when we went to view the body.”

“Why, sure we did,” Kehoe said. “But neither of us killed-” He stopped abruptly.

“Yer beginnin’ to see what oi’m drivin’ at, ain’t ye?” Joshua said, smiling.

Kehoe jerked a thumb in the direction of the livingroom. “Are you saying you think Tip killed his own father and then retraced his trail back to where we were?”

“Somethin’ like that. O’ course the killin’ wuz probably done a day or so ago. But ez long ez Tip walked in the tracks he’d first made, there’d be just the single trail. When Tip located us in the woods an’ took us to the body, we figured the tracks had been made when he discovered his father. But they could just ez easy uv been put there a day or two before, when the killin’ wuz done.”

“Josh,” Lefner said, “I don’t care when the trail to the body was made. I still can’t see that Tip’s guilty of murder. I mean, what motive did he have?”

“Karl Spearing owns this house and a good deal uv the land around here. A man uv considerable means. An’ yet Tip, his own son, wasn’t allowed to have enough pocket money even to play a few hands uv penny-ante poker. He had to use IOU’s an’ then account to his father for every cent he lost. A most degradin’ situation fer Tip. Might it be that he went searchin’ fer his father to ask fer money to pay his debts? Tempers flared, an’ there wuz a fight, with Karl comin’ out the loser. Oi tried to point out this possible motive by presentin’ yez with them IOU’s uv mine, but I suspect ye wuz hard put to divine their true meanin’.”

“So you think Tip killed his father, eh?” asked Lefner. “Well what about the foot in the trap? And that footprint by the body?”

“All right, let’s sum up the whole operation. At some time yesterday-or p’rhaps the day before, I dunno, what with the body bein’ froze the way it wuz-Tip is out in the woods, carryin’ an ax. He sees his father on the game trail an’ decides to ask fer money. There’s an argument, ez I said, an’ a brief struggle. Tip loses his temper an’ swings the ax, takin’ off Karl’s leg. Karl falls to the ground, fast bleedin’ to death, right at the spot where we seen his body. Out there in the woods, who wuz to hear his cries of pain?

“But Tip’s mind is on other things. He knows if the body is found in its present condition, he’ll be the number-one suspect.

“Then, an inspiration. Tip’s heard stories, ez oi hev, about men bein’ caught in a trap an’ what they had to do to save themselves. He knows the bear trap’s nearby. So he picks up the bloody leg, and off he goes down the trail. Once in the willow thicket, he jabs around with that grisly member ‘til he hits the pan uv the bear trap under the snow. The jaws crunch together on the leg. Then Tip drops Karl’s sheath knife by the trap to complete his alibi and muckles up the trail between the trap an’ the body so it’ll look like a man’s dragged himself along it. All the footprints are destroyed, or so Tip thinks. But there’s still one uv Karl’s near the body that he overlooked an’ oi found.”

Joshua leaned back in his chair and spread his hands expansively. “An’ that’s the way it wuz, ez they say on the tellyvision. This mornin’ Tip went lookin’ fer someone to be witness to Karl bein’ dead with one leg cut off an’ caught in the trap. He found Mr Kehoe an’ me. If we didn’t immediately assume what Tip wanted us to, oi’m sure he stood ready to point out what he wished us to believe. Ye must, uv course, give Tip credit fer his actin’ ability. He’d uv succeeded, too, if me sharp Injun eyes hadn’t spotted that footprint in the snow by the body.”

“He could beat the rap yet,” Kehoe said. “You’ve got an interesting theory there, Josh, but no real proof.”

“Would the murder weapon do?” Joshua asked. “Oi found an ax out in the shed. Somebody did a hurry-up job uv tryin’ to wipe it clean, but there’s still some reddish stains on the handle an’ blade. Oi dropped it off on the steps on me way in from outside. Could yer police chemists make somethin’ uv them stains, Vern?”

“Yeah.” Lefner got up and peered into the livingroom to check on Tip Spearing. “If the stains are human blood, we’ll have a pretty tight case.”

“Well,” Joshua said, “at least ye’ll hev it easy apprehendin’ yer suspect. Oh my, the hangover he’ll have when he wakes. Oi hope, Vern, that ye won’t be too severe with him.”

“Hell, Josh, he killed a man – his own father.”

“True. But what kind uv a man wuz the father? Seems to me the milk uv human kindness might uv turned to gall in the man’s veins.”

“Look, just because he didn’t give Tip any money-”

“No, oi wuz thinkin’ about how that bear trap wuz placed. It’s winter. No need fer a trap with the bears all hibernatin’. Besides, no bear’s about to hide in a thicket. That’d be the place where the hunters would lurk, waitin’ fer game to pass by on the trail. Like we wuz doin’ this mornin’, Mr Kehoe.”

Kehoe stared wide-eyed at Joshua. “You mean…”

Joshua nodded. “Karl Spearing couldn’t stand to hev people huntin’ his land. He’d do anythin’ to keep ’em away, even shoot at ’em. So I don’t believe he wuz after bear when he set that trap.

“It wuz put there to catch a man.”

Pinero said, “Marciano or Lewis – who’d you take in that one?” He lowered his Ring Magazine and looked at McGrath, watched the little man down his fourth cup of coffee of the morning, rub his grey face.

McGrath played around some more with his Blackberry, his right eyelid twitching as he stared at the glowing screen. “I told you, I don’t follow boxing. It’s too violent.” Thumbs flying like a twelve-year-old video-gamer chalking up kills on God of War, he added, “You should see all the great features on this thing.”

Pinero raised his magazine again, recrossed his feet on top of his desk. “You’re gonna get radiation poisoning from all those gadgets of yours,” he warned, taking some satisfaction in his partner’s stricken expression.

Pinero was young, liked to wear his clothes flashy, gel his jet-black hair into a subtle Mohawk. But despite all that, he considered himself old-school, less concerned with the geeky forensic fantasies of criminal investigation, than the pavement-pounding, door-dusting street solving of it. And he was good at it, like his father had taught him.

“Pretty soon we’ll be able to break cases without ever even leaving the office,” McGrath stated. “Like fighting a war by remote control.” He tilted his empty mug against his lips, almost choked on the plastic stir straw.

McGrath was well past the age when most cops were puttering around their Victoria condos, bald as a bagel and just as rubbery. But he’d carved out a niche for himself in the Department by becoming a tech-savvy guru, an indispensable computerized tool in the 21st-century assault on crime.

The men’s mutual loathing went back to the first day they’d been paired together in Homicide. Pinero despised McGrath’s foul coffee breath and chronic health whining, his holier-than-Intel attitude. While McGrath didn’t envy Pinero his smooth good looks and muscular physique; he detested him for them, in fact. And the young detective’s apparent indifference to all things chip-driven earned him a special place of contempt in McGrath’s ebook.

Pinero was two weeks away from transfer-bait for trolling John’s with the Vice Unit – and both men were counting the days, one on his Dukes of Hazzard wall calendar, the other on his Outlook software.

Sergeant Bugler walked into the Squad Room, barked, “McGrath, Pinero!” They looked up. “Got a job for you two.” They waited. “Lenny ‘The Rat’ Laymon’s been found dead.”

It was a skid row bungalow bordered by a boozecan on one side and a crack house on the other; smack-dab in the middle of the sour armpit of Vancouver – the downtown eastside. Inside: the nude body of Lenny Laymon, curled up in a fetal ball on the bottom of his bathtub, like a rat in its hole.

Pinero stared at the hunk of limburger on the toilet lid, gestured. “That a joke?”

McGrath slurped java out of a paper cup. “Air freshener, more likely.”

Constable Mullings laughed. “The Rat did like his cheese.”

The two detectives and the uniformed cop looked down at Lenny’s sunken body. The water had still been running from the showerhead when the girl had discovered him, both he and the water ice-cold by then. Even with the long soak, Lenny still looked dirty, the yellow skin on his hairless body going blue, backbone spined like a Stegosaurus. His eyes and mouth were wide-open, back of his blonde-fringed head a bloody mess.

“When’d the girl find him?” Pinero asked Mullings.

“’Bout an hour ago,” the Constable replied, wiping a big, red nose with a big, red hand. “She couldn’t reach him on the phone all of yesterday, so she decided to pay him a visit this morning.”

“How old is she, anyway?”

“Fourteen.”

“How’d she get in?”

“Had her own key.”

Pinero mauled a hunk of bubblegum. They could hear the girl, Kristal, crying away in the next room, lamenting a life gone down the drain: a con artist, fraud artist, sneak thief, pickpocket and stool pigeon.

“Look what I found when I made her empty her pockets,” Mullings added, pulling something out of his jacket. He held it up. It sparkled in the light of the bare bathroom bulb.

“A diamond ring,” McGrath said, taking it from the Constable and examining it.

“Rock’s gotta be at least one-carat,” Mullings guessed. “She claimed Lenny gave it to her – like anyone’d believe The Rat was gonna pop the question, eh – then finally admitted she’d found it on Lenny’s dresser and palmed it, after she found the guy soaking in the tub.”

“It’s got ZJ stamped on the inside of the band,” McGrath stated.

“Zammy Jewelers,” Pinero responded. “They’ve got a store in the Centre Mall-make their own rings. And right now I’m betting they’re at least one bauble short of a glitter palace.”

He pulled a couple of Kleenex’s, a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket. He set the Kleenex carefully down on the grimy tile floor and knelt beside the tub, dressed his hands in the throwaway gloves. He ran a finger along the bottom of the tub, up to and around Lenny’s body. He poked the corpse.

McGrath turned his head and spoke to the two guys from the Fire and Rescue Service who were lounging in the doorway, “Looks like an accident, huh?”

They nodded.

“If it was anyone but The Rat, we wouldn’t even be here,” he grumbled, fingering what he suspected was a cellphone tumor growing behind his right ear. “Hey, I heard you guys get Workers’ Comp now, if you develop lung cancer, or have a heart attack twenty-four hours after a fire. That right?”

The guy with the Stalinesque mustache nodded, smiled a self-satisfied smile. “You’re darn right it is. The Union got the legislation passed a couple of months ago, eh.”

“I just started smoking again myself,” the other firefighter joked.

“Cops should have something like that,” McGrath groused. “I’m sure I’m getting cancer from using my computer and cellphone all day, in the line of duty. My doctor even said-” He halted his grievance when he saw his partner tilt Lenny’s stiffened body face-up, so he could check out The Rat’s other profile.

Pinero dug around in Lenny’s right ear. “Gimme a pair of tweezers, someone.”

He was handed a pair, and everyone watched as he pulled something out of Lenny’s oversized ear. He held the small, brown object up for inspection. “How many guys take a shower with their hearing aid still in?” he asked.

McGrath was working his wireless keyboard like the Chicago Stadium organist when Pinero reemerged from Robbery. “There was a heist at the Zammy Jewelers store in the Centre Mall last night alright,” he informed his partner. “Estimated loss: four hundred grand.”

McGrath whistled. “Lenny pulled a couple of jewel snatches back in the day, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, with a little help from some friends-turned enemies.” Pinero glanced at the piece of paper in his hand. “The last one that we know of was the Big Rock Diamond Mountain store on Granville-five years ago. The Rat weaseled out of heavy jail time by squealing on all his partners, including the inside guy, the fence, a couple of US Customs slobs, and half the local Hell’s Angels starting line-up.”

The phone on Pinero’s desk rang. He scooped it up, growled, “Yeah?”

“Detective Pinero, Dr Rampersand, Coroners Office.”

“Yeah, Doc?”

“Yes, you wanted us to phone as soon as we had some preliminary results from our examination of Leonard Laymon.”

“The Rat. Yeah, go, Doc.” Pinero snagged a pad and pencil.

“Yes, well, cause of death appears to be a single blow to the back of the head-blunt force trauma-as you no doubt observed for yourself. Time of death was approximately two to four a.m., the morning of 16 November.”

Pinero glanced at his watch, the comely picture of Daisy Duke: 2:10 p.m., Wednesday the 17th. “What else?”

The doctor cleared his throat. “Well, not much, I’m afraid. There appear to be no other untoward signs of trauma on the body, other than the usual assortment of bruises, burns, cuts, scabs, pimples, and warts that come from a bad diet and a life lived close to the streets. We found soap scum, lime scale, and tile grains in the wound, consistent with someone knocking their head on the edge of a bathtub after losing their footing.”

“Thanks, Doc.” Pinero hung up, thought for a moment, then reconnected. “Hey, Doc, forgot to ask – what about the hearing aid?”

“It’s a completely-in-the-canal type of hearing aid, very small. It’s not waterproof, of course, but someone could well forget about it when taking a shower.”

“Thanks, Doc.” Maybe The Rat had actually gone out the same way he’d come in-accidentally, Pinero thought. He relayed the information to his partner.

McGrath’s cellphone chimed the alien greeting from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He plucked it off his belt. “Okay, we’ll be right down.” He stood up and reholstered his cell, swallowed dregs and said to Pinero, “The Lab’s got something for us to see.”

The two men trotted on down to the basement.

“The Zammy Jewelers’ cameras, all the mall cameras, went blank as a blacked-out Canucks game at midnight – for ten minutes,” Cordweider explained.

“Covered up?” Pinero asked the lab technician.

“Naw. Off-line,” Cordweider snorted, “along with the alarm system. Everything came back up like the new programming day at 12:10 a.m. But by the time the security company got there, the jewelry store was a whole lot less sparkly.”

“Did the cameras see anything interesting before they blinked off?” McGrath asked, fondling the bag under his left eye and staring at the bank of monitors.

“Indeed,” Cordweider teased. “We’ve been running the mug-shot file against the surveillance camera facial shots, looking for matches, and you wouldn’t believe who turned up.”

“Who?” Pinero gritted impatiently. He and Cordweider had gone a few rounds during a late-night stakeout once, when bad food and conversation had turned decidedly personal.

Cordweider grinned. “Take a look at this, hot-shot.” He pointed to a blank monitor, pressed a button. People started walking in and out of quadruple doors. “That’s the entrance to the mall on West Georgia. Note the date and time.”

Pinero and McGrath noted: 16 Nov 2005, 2103:44 and counting.

Cordweider pressed another button and the picture froze. A guy in a bulky jacket was coming through the door. Cordweider fingered a roller ball, locked on the guy’s face, clicked. The face jumped up and filled the screen, unmistakable.

“Lenny ‘The Rat’ Laymon,” McGrath exhaled.

Back in the Squad Room, the detectives went to work. What had been a simple slip-up in the tub-one more bad guy washed away – was now something strangely different. If the Coroner was right – and he had a lucrative book deal and speaking calendar to attest to his brilliance – then the unanswered question was: how could a Rat lying dead in a bathtub early Tuesday morning slink into a shopping mall late Tuesday night, with the intent, it seemed, of knocking over a jewelry store?

It didn’t make sense. And when something doesn’t make sense, you work some sense into it. Pinero hooked up with Forensics, while McGrath mined Lenny’s computer for pertinent information.

“Tolmeyer speaking?”

“Pinero. What’d the boys in Forensics get off the crime scene?”

Tolmeyer laughed. She had a soft spot for Pinero-right between the legs whenever he wanted it. “We ‘boys’ are still on scene. But so far, everything looks pretty clean – from a crime perspective, that is, not a housekeeping one. No signs of forced entry, lots of fingerprints-Lenny’s and the girl’s – nothing else unusual, so far.”

“No Athabaska Terrier hairs? Albino herb roots native only to Cape Breton Island? Poisoned tea bags? Furry creature suits with DNA-identifiable sweat?”

Tolmeyer laughed again. “You’ve been watching too many TV shows, Detective.”

“What about the tub? Any evidence someone dusted it with a Zamboni-made it extra slippery for the bathing beauty?”

“In my professional opinion, that bathtub hasn’t been cleaned since it was installed. And nobody greased the soles of Laymon’s feet, either, before you ask.”

Pinero grunted, shelved the phone as Tolmeyer was enquiring about his dinner plans for the evening.

He was chewing things and a wad of gum over when McGrath pointed at his computer screen. “Take a look at this,” he said.

Pinero strolled over, looked at the listing up on the LCD flat screen.

“This is Lenny’s email history,” McGrath explained, his hand stroking his optical mouse with caffeine jitters. He highlighted the first message listed after a backlog of porn and penis enlargement spam. It was dated Monday, 15 November, from meatman@yahoo.com, subject: “Ready to go to work?”

McGrath looked at Pinero. Pinero looked back. They both knew The Rat didn’t work-honestly, anyway. McGrath clicked on the message. It read: “Job’s a go. Come prepared.”

“Did The Rat respond?” Pinero asked.

“Not by email, no.”

“Who’s Meatman? J.M. Schneider?”

“Don’t know.” McGrath admitted. “The account information’s as phony as a three-dollar coin. But I ran a trace on all Internet activity associated with the account, and found something fairly interesting.”

“Give.”

“Meatman is a ‘member’ of an adult dating site-kinkyluvers.com. The profile is of a thirtysomething guy with a peccadillo for morning toe jam, I kid you not. No picture, though. And the membership contact info is limited to the email address.”

“Don’t you need a credit card or something to sign up to those sites?”

“Not this one. It’s run free of charge by The Friends of Fetish – a government-subsidized think-tank operating right here in the downtown. Anyway, I already sent Meatman a message-with an attachment.” McGrath clicked, and Pinero ogled a busty brunette with black-stockinged, red-ribboned legs long enough to span Burrard Inlet, her silky feet close-up displayed in open-toed, patent-leather red pumps. Her hair covered up her face, if she had one.

“Just call me Clarissa,” McGrath chuckled, coughed. He took his hand off the mouse long enough to pour himself a mouthful of mocha.

The two detectives kept at it, logging frustration and overtime at time-and-a-half. Pinero ran a check on Lenny’s known associates; McGrath and the lab techs continued to pour over Lenny’s hard-drive and the mall surveillance video.

Lenny’s “associates” were the scum de la scum of the Vancouver crime scene. “Rainy Day” Izzo: part-time drug dealer, full-time drug user; ratted out by Lenny on a heroin deal that went bust; parole records stated that he was currently weaving hemp into saleable product in Nelson, four hundred miles due east. Sylvia Wojawoski, aka “Skye Flowers”, so named because she was always on her back, looking up at the sky: Stanley Park prostitute and bit – player MILF in locally-lensed porn; cohabitated with Lenny for five years; currently suing the deceased rodent for child support-three kids that he denied were his despite their enormous overbites; busted on a low-track sweep Sunday night, now cooling her high heels in lock-up. John Jorossismo, aka “Jarhead”, aka “Jason” (of Friday the 13th movie fame): US Marines deserter and Hell’s Angels patch prospect, weapons smuggler, loansharker, goalie in an industrial beer league, and recent Vancouver Port Authority employee of the month; stiffed out of a grand and stooled on by Lenny – the Big Rock Diamond Mountain job; current whereabouts a gated subdivision in White Rock. And…

“Matthew Kolvin,” Pinero and McGrath spoke as one.

They looked at each other. “Why’d you say-” they both said.

McGrath pointed a shaky digit at his computer screen. Pinero trucked on over, stared at a picture of a bare-chested Matthew Kolvin, shaved head gleaming, blue eyes glinting hard as diamonds, thick lips curled into a smirk, torso tanned and rugged as Desert Storm khaki.

“Clarissa received a response to her email,” McGrath said, grinning triumphantly.

Pinero recited the file he’d just been looking at: “Matthew Kolvin: strong-arm specialist, extortionist, cigarette, alcohol, and Lotto ticket smuggler – and sometime jewel thief; handed a ten-year sentence for his role in the Big Rock Diamond Mountain job; served half, release date: 10 November-one week ago today.”

“Maybe you, me, and Clarissa should pay Matthew Kolvin a visit,” McGrath added unnecessarily.

The detectives rousted Kolvin and an underage hooker out of bed at the fleabag rooming house address he’d given his parole officer. He was spitting mad. Pinero calmed him down only slightly with a shot to the groin.

“I never robbed no goddamn jewelry store!” he gasped. “Don’t know nuthin’ about any dead Rat, neither!”

“Listen, Meatman,” McGrath countered, knocking back a caffe latte and eyeballing a laptop, scanner, camcorder, and printer huddled together on a ratty couch, along with the hooker. “We’ve got an email that you sent Lenny talking about a ‘job’ – a day before Lenny did a back flip in his bathtub and a day-and-a-half before the Zammy Jewelers store was hit.”

Kolvin glared at the men.

“You hated Lenny’s guts, didn’t you – for ratting you out on the Big Rock Diamond Mountain job?” Pinero stated. “But not bad enough to turn your nose up at another good heist, team up with the guy again?”

Kolvin’s incisors glinted silver. “I ain’t talked to that bum in five long years.”

“How do you explain the email then?” McGrath asked.

“I don’t,” Kolvin growled.

Silence.

“What’s your brother up to these days-Bertrand?” Pinero asked, changing tactics. “You talk to him since his release?”

“I talk to that bum like I talk to Lenny and you bums!”

The detectives exited the flophouse with the exact same thing they’d entered it with-one flimsy cyber link between Lenny Laymon and Matthew Kolvin that would vaporize in the ether of a court of law, without plenty more supporting evidence.

“Maybe we should brace Bertrand?” Pinero suggested, as the two men sat in their unmarked and stared at the constant drizzle. “He knew and hated Lenny, was in on the BRDM job, too.”

“Maybe…” McGrath mused.

Matthew and Bertrand Kolvin were, in fact, identical twins, but that’s where the similarities ended. Matthew was a muscle boy, Bertrand a finesse man – an accountant gone bad, writing a ticket to the easy life through cheque kiting, money order doctoring, credit card fraud, and embezzlement. He wore his blond hair long, usually in a ponytail, build: slender.

The two brothers hated each other with a passion reserved for only the overly intimate, since their teen years. They’d nonetheless worked together on a number of jobs since graduating from young offenders status, business being business – the last one the BRDM job. They’d demanded separate trials, then jails, and been granted both by the accommodating Canadian judicial system.

“But how do we explain Lenny walking into a mall – presumably robbing a jewelry store, presumably with Matthew Kolvin’s help-eighteen hours after he’s supposed to be dead?” McGrath continued.

“Reincarnation?” Pinero suggested. “He picked right up in the new life where he’d left off in the old? Or maybe it was a guy in a Lenny Halloween mask, like bank robbers wear Nixon masks and cheating husbands wear Clinton’s?” Pinero laughed.

McGrath didn’t. “A mask…” he pondered, sucking the last drops of life out of his latte. “Did you happen to notice all that computer equipment in Kolvin’s apartment?”

“I noticed. What about it?”

“The mall surveillance system is digital-computer-controlled. I wonder…”

“Wish upon a star while you’re at it,” Pinero growled. “I’m gonna grab me some gym time then sack out.”

“Good idea,” McGrath said, eyeing a street-corner Sally Ann that served all-night joe. “I think I’ll log some sleep myself. Then first thing tomorrow morning, I think I’ll consult with a high-placed friend of mine. A friend who sees all, knows a thing or two about subterfuge.” He winked a pouchy eye at his partner.

Pinero snorted.

Early next morning, Pinero dropped McGrath off at the Defence Department Building downtown, then proceeded to Lenny’s bungalow for another look-see. He lifted the yellow tape, ducked inside the squalid digs.

Everything was just as crummy as before, the dust settled back to where it had lain for the fifty years before Forensics had disturbed things. Pinero went into the bedroom, looked at the dirty clothes strewn on the floor, the unmade, sheet-soiled bed, the battered nightstand with the “barely legal” skin mags on top, the splintered garage sale card table where Lenny’s powerful stolen computer had sat.

He walked over to the doorless closet, fingered through the tie-dyed and BC Bud T-shirts, the Manitoba Moose jerseys, getting nothing more out of it than a probable skin rash. Kristal had told the detectives that lover-boy Lenny was nutso over the Moose, a minor league hockey team playing in the frozen tundra of Winnipeg, Manitoba-Lenny’s birthplace.

And as Pinero stared at the jerseys, something suddenly tumbled inside his skull. He retraced his steps, to the front door of the rathole, where a Manitoba Moose jacket hung on a hook. He examined the bulky jacket, fingered the sewn – on crest – a smug-looking cartoon moose holding a hockey stick, a frozen pond in the background. He plucked the jacket off the hook and took it with him.

When Pinero entered the Squad Room he found Sergeant Bugler hanging over one of McGrath’s bony shoulders, their eyes glued to something on the computer screen. Pinero admired Bugler’s tight, round bottom for a moment, then said, “Found another good Jimmy Neutron site?” He flung his leather jacket over the back of his chair.

Bugler glanced up, annoyed. McGrath’s pavement-hued face tinged slightly red.

Pinero took up position behind an unoccupied shoulder.

“The lab technicians have finished stripping Lenny’s computer equipment,” McGrath told his partner. “They found enough child porn to put the Thailand Bureau of Tourism out of business, but look what they found in his webcam history.” The detective took a long, suspenseful slurp of fresh-brewed coffee.

“Why would a rat like Lenny even have a webcam?” Pinero asked no one in particular. “To see him is to hate him.”

McGrath finally swallowed. “Lenny was technologically armed, like all professional criminals are getting these days.” He looked up at Sergeant Bugler meaningfully. “Like all law enforcement officials need to be to keep up with them.”

Bugler nodded vaguely, squeezed his shoulder.

McGrath stroked the keyboard, and Lenny’s ugly mug popped up on-screen, wispy whiskers framing a buck-toothed mouth. McGrath dragged the bar at the bottom, and Lenny went all fast and jerky. Then his jaundiced face suddenly turned mouse-white, his beady eyes registering panic. McGrath lifted his finger, returning the action to normal speed.

Lenny leaped out of his chair and skittered to the bedroom door. Someone was yelling at him from the hallway: “You put me away and I’m going to put you away, Rat!”

Lenny backed away, paws up and out in supplication, and a face briefly appeared in the shadowy doorway. McGrath froze the picture, cleared away some of the shadow, locked onto and enhanced the face: Bertrand Kolvin, delicate features twisted with rage, ponytail in a knot.

“Hmmm,” Pinero commented. “So Bertrand Kolvin threatened Lenny’s life. Who hasn’t? I heard the Doukhobors even put out a contract on the guy once.”

McGrath’s brown-toothed grin was a thing of triumph for everyone but the BC Dental Association. He restored the full picture, pointed to the timeline at the bottom of the screen. It read: 14 Nov 2005, 21:45:24. He said, “We know Bertrand Kolvin threatened Lenny Laymon on Sunday at 9:45 p.m. Now, let’s just see if he followed up on that threat. There’s nothing more of interest on the webcam, but remember that high-placed friend I was telling you about? Well, he CSIS’s all. Take a gander at this video, and note the time and date again.”

Pinero cracked his knuckles. Bugler sighed. McGrath clicked. The computer revealed a black world inhabited by white images, a timeline reading: 16 Nov 2005, 01:47:38 PTZ. The view was from on-high, way high, the white figure emerging out of a parked car a thermal image. The figure crossed a street with the jerky movement of time lapse photography, paused at the door of a house, and then went inside.

“Location?” Pinero asked.

“Two hundred block of Alexander Street,” McGrath crowed. “That bungalow,” he pointed, “is Lenny’s place-right around the time of his death.”

“Lenny coming home after a hard day’s night of working the back pockets of the bar crowd?” Pinero suggested.

McGrath shook his head, replayed the sequence. “See how the figure dips to the right when he walks? Do you know what that is?”

“A limp,” Bugler breathed.

McGrath beamed. “A limp is right. A noticeable limp. Lenny didn’t limp. But-”

“Bertrand Kolvin limps,” Pinero admitted.

The three police officers watched some more, watched a figure come skulking down the sidewalk, pick something up out of the gutter along the way, slip into Lenny’s house at 02:15:52 PTZ-Lenny returning home? Watched the limper exit Lenny’s house at 02:30:21 PTZ, get in a car and drive away.

“Like I said before, we should brace Bertrand Kolvin,” Pinero stated. Then added, “Too bad none of this is admissible in court, privacy laws and Charters of Rights and Freedoms being what they are.”

“It’s all strictly on the qt,” McGrath agreed. “I have to delete everything in an hour. But… the show’s not over yet.” He pointed and clicked and dragged some more, seemed to replay the scene of the limper exiting a car and entering Lenny’s house. Only now the timeline read: 17 Nov 2005, 02:02:13 PTZ. A full day later.

“What!? Why would Kolvin risk returning to the scene the next night?” Bugler asked.

“Good question,” McGrath replied, as they watched the limper leave Lenny’s death trap at 02:06:37 PTZ.

Bugler straightened up, her back cracking, head shaking. “But if Lenny was actually bumped off by Bertrand Kolvin early Tuesday morning, then how in heck did he participate in a jewelry store robbery Tuesday night?”

“Another good question,” McGrath responded, browning his nose still further. He looked at his partner. “Did anyone think to bring in Lenny’s jacket, by any chance?”

“Yeah,” Pinero replied, blowing a bubble. “I did – just now. It’s in the Lab, undergoing intense comparison with some surveillance video.”

McGrath nodded, grinned, tried to wash back the rising tide of his excitement with a shot of coffee. “My friends at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service also provided me with some useful information about making faces-false faces.”

Bugler glanced at Pinero as McGrath cackled, choked and coughed up some coffee. Pinero just shrugged.

Search warrants were issued, served, and executed on Bertrand Kolvin’s swank Port Coquitlam condominium, Matthew Kolvin’s downtown dump, that afternoon. McGrath and Pinero happily split up so they could cover both searches, and two hours and ten phone calls later, they felt they had enough evidence to bring the Kolvins in for questioning.

The twins were placed in Interrogation Room 104. It was the first time they’d met since they’d been busted five years earlier, and much like that time, it didn’t go well. They attacked one another on sight.

“Sit down and behave yourself!” Pinero commanded, shoving Matthew into a wooden chair, sending him and it skidding into the wall.

The brothers glared at each other, twin faces of hate.

Pinero kicked off the proceedings, talking about Lenny “The Rat” Laymon’s fateful tumble in the tub. “It looks like an accident, it smells like an accident – a guy taking a shower makes a wrong step and one-and-one-half-gainer later, he’s cold as a Coho. Happens all the time, right? No signs of forced entry, violence, lube on the porcelain, nothing incriminating like rat poison lying around.” He paused. “But does it sound like an accident? You didn’t know Lenny had a hearing aid installed two years ago, did you, Bertrand? Because you were doing five for a crime Lenny stooled you on.”

Bertrand folded thin arms across a bony chest, tilted his fine, blonde head up in a haughty manner that would’ve done the CEO of a Crown Corporation proud. “I didn’t know, and I don’t care. I’m glad the little rat’s dead, but I had nothing to do with it.”

“Then how come your face shows up on Lenny’s webcam-your voice threatening to do him bodily harm-only a couple of days before the guy’s soft head met hard surface in a love embrace?”

“What!? That’s preposterous!” Bertrand wailed.

“What!? That’s preposterous!” Matthew mimicked, an octave or two higher.

Bertrand lunged at him. Pinero, McGrath, and Bugler wrestled the two siblings apart, planted them firmly back in their chairs again.

McGrath struggled to catch his breath, mop up and strain into a cup his spilled coffee. Then he said, “We have surveillance pictures of a man entering Lenny’s house-easily picking his lock-Lenny coming home, the man exiting, right around the time of Lenny’s death. A man limping rather badly. That puck to the knee back in junior hockey put a permanent crimp in your stride, didn’t it, Bertrand?”

“Thanks to my brother, yes,” the man sniffed.

“I was aiming for his balls,” Matthew gritted. “But they were too small a target.”

Bertrand ignored him, said to McGrath, “I was home in bed when Lenny died, nowhere near his rat hole.”

“And what about the mystery of a man caught on a surveillance camera, entering a mall, eighteen hours after he’s supposed to be dead?” Pinero intoned. “How’s that possible?”

The Kolvins went stone-faced.

Pinero leaned into Matthew. “You emailed Lenny about a ‘job’ – Meatman. Was it the Zammy Jewelers job at the Centre Mall? A diamond ring was found at Lenny’s place – a down payment maybe, before the loot was fenced?”

Matthew snorted. “I told you dickheads already I had nuthin’ to do with that job.”

“Funny thing about that surveillance video, though,” McGrath interjected, tonguing the rim of his coffee cup. “Detective Pinero noticed something strange about the jacket ‘Lenny’ was wearing in the video. It’s got a Manitoba Moose logo on it – the new logo, that is: a stylized angry moose baring its teeth, set against a background of trees.”

Pinero held up Lenny’s jacket, fingers covering the logo.

“But Lenny hadn’t bought the new one yet,” McGrath went on. “It only came out in September, just before the start of the season. The jacket we found at his house still has the old logo on it…”

Pinero moved his fingers aside.

“… a smug-looking cartoon moose holding a hockey stick, a frozen pond in the background.”

Matthew glanced at Bertrand; Bertrand glanced at Matthew.

“It’s like the man in the video knew Lenny wore a Moose jacket, but when he recently purchased one, he unknowingly got a slightly different moose than the one Lenny sported,” McGrath said. “It’s tough to keep track of all these marketing gimmicks, isn’t it?”

“And while I was taking note of Mick E. Moose’s facial expression,” Pinero clocked in, “Detective McGrath was taking note of the zipper on the jacket – the zipper tongue, specifically. It looked wider, shinier than the narrow black one on Lenny’s jacket. Reason?” He plucked it out of McGrath’s shirt pocket, held it up.

Everyone looked at the glinting tongue, waiting for it to speak.

McGrath interpreted. “We ran it through the Lab. It can be used to mesh metal teeth together alright, but it’s also a device used for what’s called ‘facial provocation’. A device developed by a certain spy agency which shall remain nameless, that can be purchased on the black market or rigged up at home by a real tech expert. A device that when triggered throws up a preprogrammed, made-to-specs image-almost like a hologram, except more realistic. In this case, a preprogrammed image of Lenny Laymon’s face, masking the face of the real man who entered that mall and hid in it until after closing, then shut down the Zammy Jewelers security system and the mall security cameras just long enough to rob the store and make his escape.”

Gum chewing. Foul, ragged breathing. Twin sets of teeth grinding.

“Someone wanted to pin the robbery on Lenny; someone with technological expertise. Someone who didn’t know The Rat was already dead when he was supposedly knocking over a jewelry store.”

Pinero said, “I talked to the warden at Stony Mountain, Matthew, asked how you spent your five years. He said you were a royal pain in the ass the first three, until you discovered the computer lab your last two. They had to almost drag you out of there when your sentence was up. Boning up for crime in the new millennium, eh, Matthew?”

A single finger – the middle one – in the upright and locked position, was the Kolvin response.

Pinero slapped it aside. “And guess who was doing exactly the same thing fourteen hundred miles away in the William Head pen? Your twin brother Bertrand. You guys might hate each other, but you still think alike, like identical twins will.”

“You’re the one tried to frame me and Lenny for the jewel heist,” Matthew snarled at Bertrand, “hacking into his computer and planting that phony email, his ugly mug on your stinking face, that ring at his place!”

“You’re the one tried to pin a murder rap on me,” Bertrand snarled back, “hacking into Lenny’s computer and planting my face in his webcam, your voice-our voice-threatening him, limping around like you were me!”

They launched themselves at one another. Mutually assured destruction.

Sergeant Bugler walked into the Squad Room. Detectives McGrath and Pinero were at their desks eating, yammering, the crumbs and insults flying. “Well, Bertrand Kolvin just signed his confession to the jewelry robbery,” she informed the pair, “admitting to trying to frame his brother and Lenny Laymon for the job. Apparently, he doesn’t want to face a possible murder charge.”

Pinero stuck a pencil behind his ear, chewed corned beef and said, “Lucky we found that zipper tongue in his condo, along with enough computer equipment to stock a Radio Shack. He tossed the Moose jacket, but I guess the tongue was just too valuable – for other jobs and other frames.”

“You think Matthew will confess to murdering Lenny?” Bugler asked, hands on her hips.

“Maybe, once we break his alibi. We know where he was the morning Lenny was killed-faking a limp in front of Lenny’s house to implicate his brother, just to be on the safe side in case there were any witnesses around. Like ones in the sky that he may or may not know about.”

“How do you think he killed Lenny?”

McGrath fielded that one in a spray of coffee cake. “We’re guessing he just caught Lenny in the bathroom and overpowered him, slammed his head against the tub, killing him instantly. He worked it out to look like an accident, but he set his brother up to be the fall guy just in case it was ruled foul play. There’s no such thing as a perfect crime, after all, Sergeant.”

Bugler nodded. “But it was actually Bertrand going into Lenny’s house the night after the murder, right? He says so, anyway.”

“Right,” McGrath confirmed, picking his teeth. “He was planting that diamond ring to really tie Lenny into the jewelry heist. He never even saw the body – just heard the water running and assumed Lenny was taking a shower. That two man limping oddity, along with the ‘dead’ Lenny going shopping mystery, of course, is what made us realize there was a frame going on-in this case, a double frame.”

Bugler gave her head a shake. “Instead of working together, like good twins should, they were working at cross-purposes – and didn’t even know it.”

Pinero nodded, belched. He interlaced his fingers behind his head and propped his feet up on his desk, almost toppled over backwards. “Yup. They were going to fix The Rat for what he did to them-each in their own way – so why not kill two jailbirds with one stone by framing each other for their crimes at the same time?”

Bugler let out a sigh. “Well, thank goodness that unlike the Kolvins, you two work so well together.”

McGrath spluttered Java. Pinero untangled hands and feet and shot upright. “Huh!?” they gaped.

“So well, in fact,” Bugler continued, smiling, “that I’ve canceled your transfer out of Homicide, Detective Pinero. This is one pairing that’s just too valuable to split up.”

On the plane en route to Central America my uncle and I paused for a moment, then lowering our voices we resumed our conversation.

“But, Uncle Edward,” I asked, “what can this Dr Marlin hope to gain from all this? He must know he can’t do what he claims.”

“He sounds like a monomaniac with delusions of grandeur, who may become violent when his demonstration fails,” my uncle replied. “That’s one reason I asked you to come with me.”

“One reason?”

“Yes, Jimmy, the other is I need someone I can trust-absolutely.”

Filled with curiosity at the summons from my uncle, Mr Edward Dobbs, Chairman of Western University’s Board of Trustees, I had joined him at the airport, but we had no time for conversation until we were in the plane and on our way.

Then at last I asked my uncle what it was all about. In reply he handed me a newspaper clipping, and I read:

“CAN DO INDIAN ROPE

TRICK,” SAYS SAVANT

LAYS CLAIM TO $500,000

REWARD

San Francisco, July 6 – It was announced at Western University today that an attempt to claim the $500,000 reward offered by the late Richard Welton to anyone who can perform the Indian Rope Trick will be made in the Republic of Del Rio. The claimant is a Dr Clive Marlin, self-styled student of the occult, who has resided in Central America for a number of years.

Richard Welton, who died three years ago, provided in his will that the reward could be claimed outside the United States in some country which had no income tax.

Mr Welton, a life-long student of spiritualism, considered that a successful performance of the Indian Rope Trick under test conditions would be an absolute proof of the genuineness of psychic phenomena, as even Houdini-exposer of many fraudulent mediums-never attempted it.

As often described, but never by an eye witness, the “Indian Rope Trick” is supposed to be a demonstration of mind over matter. The yogi causes a rope to rise in the air by supra-normal means; then a boy climbs to the top of the rope and vanishes, to be rematerialized a mile or more away.

Harry Price, the English expert, once offered a similar reward for anyone who could perform the trick, but no one ever tried to claim it. But Mr Welton thought that a much larger reward might be more effective.

Less than a week after the 1942 election that insured a seventh and final term for Sheriff Lens, the Allied invasion of French North Africa began. It was a joyous time for everyone, a sign that we had launched a major ground offensive at last. (Dr Sam Hawthorne paused to refill the glass of his listener.) It was also a time for war-bond rallies in the cities, when celebrities sometimes came to help raise money for the war effort.

Towns like Northmont ordinarily would not have attracted a war-bond rally on any large scale, but as it turned out we had a local celebrity hardly anyone knew about. The November election brought us a new mayor, Cyril Bensmith, a slender, vigorous man of forty, a bit younger than me. I’d hardly known him before he ran for office, and I didn’t know him much better now. His family had a small farm over near the town line, almost into the adjoining township of Shinn Corners, which probably explains why I hadn’t heard about him or his boyhood chum Rusty Wagner.

Rusty’d been George Snider at the time. He didn’t become Rusty till he moved to New York and landed the villain’s role in a mildly successful Broadway play. From there he went off to Hollywood and became Paramount’s answer to Humphrey Bogart. He was never as big a star as Bogart, but by April of 1943, with the Allies advancing in Tunisia and many of the younger male stars in the service, Rusty Wagner was doing his part by touring the country selling war bonds. Health problems and his age, just turning forty, had kept him out of the army. When Mayor Bensmith heard he’d be at a rally in Boston he invited his old friend to make a side trip to his hometown.

“Did you hear the news?” my nurse April asked that morning. “Rusty Wagner is coming here for the war-bond drive.”

“We don’t go to many movies,” I admitted, though the town boasted a pretty good theater. “I guess I’ve seen him once or twice.”

“I’m going to help out on the drive,” she said. April’s husband Andre was away in the service and I could understand her urge to get involved.

“That’s good. I’ll come and buy a bond from you,” I promised.

That night at home I mentioned it to my wife Annabel, who showed a bit more excitement than I had. “That’s great news, Sam! Something’s finally happening in this town.”

I smiled at her remark. “A lot of people think too much happens here already. Our murder rate-”

“I wish you wouldn’t blame yourself whenever somebody gets killed in Northmont. I’m sure there were murders here before you ever came to town. I’ll have to ask Sheriff Lens when he and his wife come to dinner.”

The sheriff had been elected to his first term in 1918, just days before the armistice that ended the war. I hadn’t moved to town and set up my practice until a few years later, in January of ’22, and for some reason we’d never really talked much about Northmont’s past crimes.

We dined with Sheriff Lens and his wife Vera every couple of months, and it was their turn to come to our house two nights later. While Vera helped Annabel with dinner in the kitchen I engaged the sheriff in conversation. “Annabel and I were talking the other night about Northmont’s crime rate. How was it before I came here in ’twenty-two? Did you have just as many murders?”

Sheriff Lens chuckled, resting his hand on the glass of sherry my wife had provided. “Can’t say that I remember any at all before you came to town, Doc. Guess you brought ’em with you.” He took a sip from the glass and added, “There was the fire over at the Black Cloister, of course, but no one ever suggested that was murder.”

I’d driven past the burnt-out building several times during the past twenty years, wondering why the county didn’t just tear it down and sell the land at auction. “Exactly what happened there?” I asked.

“Well, it was in the late summer of ’twenty-one. The place had been built late last century as a sort of farming commune for disenchanted monks and other religious men who’d left their various orders but weren’t ready to return to the secular world. Occasionally they took in one or two juvenile offenders if the courts asked them to, on the theory that a hard day’s work might set them straight. Nobody paid much attention to them out there, except about once a month when a couple of them came into town for supplies. They called it the Black Cloister, named for the Augustinian monastery in Germany where Martin Luther lived. After the Reformation the monks moved out but Luther continued to live there, offering shelter to former monks and travelers. Upon his marriage in fifteen twenty-five the building was given to him as a wedding gift.”

“You know a good deal about it, Sheriff.”

“Well, Vera’s a Lutheran even though we were married by a Baptist minister. We got talking about the Black Cloister one night and she filled me in on all that history.”

“I heard my name mentioned,” Vera Lens said as she came in to join us. “Dinner will be ready in three minutes.”

“Doc was just wondering about the Black Cloister,” the sheriff explained.

“Funny you should mention that, Sam. We’re putting together an antique auction for the war-bond rally and someone donated the ornate oak front door from the Black Cloister. You can see it along with the other antiques down at the town hall.”

“Maybe I’ll take a look. When is this all going to happen?”

“Next Tuesday, the twentieth. That’s the day after the Boston rally. They’re tying it in with Patriots’ Day and the Boston Marathon.” Easter Sunday that year was not until April twenty-fifth, the latest it could be.

We took our seats at the table as Annabel came in with our salads. “I was just talking to Vera about the rally,” she told me. “I told her I wanted to help out, too.”

“A lot of people are. April at my office said she’d help. There’s nothing like a movie star to brighten things up.”

“Rusty Wagner isn’t exactly a heartthrob,” Vera remarked, plunging her fork into the salad. “Sometimes his face looks like it went through a meat grinder.”

“He makes a perfect villain, though,” Annabel said. “I saw a couple of his films before we were married.” Turning to me, she said, “Sam, we have to start going to the movies more.”

Somehow the conversation never did get back to the fire at the Black Cloister. It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon, two days before the scheduled rally, when I accompanied Annabel to the town hall and stood before the fire-scorched door, that I remembered the burned building. The thick oak door was indeed a thing of beauty, leaning against the wall. Its front showed a bas-relief of a hooded monk kneeling in prayer, and this is what would have greeted visitors to the Cloister.

“You can see the door was badly scorched in the fire,” Vera said as she came up to join us. We were in the ornate lobby of the town hall, where a score of items of all shapes and sizes had been assembled for the auction.

I ran my fingers over the bas-relief, admiring the carving. “Looks as if there are a few little wormholes in it, though,” Annabel remarked.

There were indeed, toward the sides and top of the door. I pulled it away from the wall, but the back was smooth and unmarked, without a trace of scorching. “What was the story about this fire?” I asked Vera. “It was before I moved here.”

“I was pretty young then myself, but I remember the Cloister as some sort of religious community. There was a fire and one young man died. After that the rest of the community just scattered.”

“Who owns the property?”

“I have no idea. Felix Pond at the hardware store donated the door. He said it had been in the family for years, but I don’t know that they ever owned the place.”

“How does this charity auction sell war bonds?” Annabel asked.

Vera Lens explained. “People bid by purchasing the bonds, so it’s not really costing them anything. They get their money back when the bonds are redeemed. The items are all donated and I don’t imagine they have any great value. But something like this door could be cleaned up and painted and put to good use. Some church might even like it.”

I ran my fingers over the wood once more, again impressed by the workmanship. “I wonder who carved this. Was it someone locally, or perhaps one of the residents at the Black Cloister?”

“It’s possible Mayor Bensmith might know.”

“I think I’ll ask him.”

Cyril Bensmith had a dairy farm on the North Road. His tall, gaunt frame reminded some of Abraham Lincoln, though he’d never thought of entering politics until his wife died a few years earlier. They had no children, and perhaps in search of a new beginning he’d run for mayor and been elected handily. He still worked his farm every day. Being mayor of Northmont was not a time-consuming occupation.

He had just arrived at the town hall and was greeting people with a handshake when I went up to him. “How are you, Sam? Good to see you here. I think the rally on Tuesday’s going to be a big success.”

“It should be,” I agreed, “especially with Rusty Wagner’s appearance.”

“Rusty’s an old friend. I haven’t seen him in years, but we’ve stayed in touch.”

“I was admiring that door from the old Cloister,” I explained, gesturing toward it. “Know anything about it?”

“No more than you. Felix Pond at the hardware store donated it.”

“I was wondering if the carving was by a local person.”

“I couldn’t tell you that. If there’s an opportunity you might ask Rusty when he’s here Tuesday.”

“Rusty?”

“He was living at the Black Cloister at the time of the fire.”

“How old would he have been at that time?”

“Eighteen, I think. Same age as me. He and another boy, Fritz, were caught stealing a car in Hartford. The judge suggested they could avoid jail by spending the summer doing farm work at the Cloister and they agreed quickly enough. That’s how I got to know Rusty. His name was George then, but he never liked it. We saw a lot of each other that one summer, before the fire.”

He moved on to greet others, and I was left with unanswered questions.

On Monday Sheriff Lens stopped by my office in a wing of Pilgrim Memorial Hospital. He was chatting with April as I finished seeing the morning’s last patient and I invited him into my examining room. “Everything set for the bond rally tomorrow, Sheriff?”

“I guess so. Vera’s had me run ragged, picking up donations for the auction.”

“I was talking to our mayor yesterday and he tells me Rusty Wagner was a resident of the Black Cloister. You never did finish about the fire.”

“It was so long ago I can barely remember it now. Like I said, it was the summer of ’twenty-one. The Cloister was home to about a dozen men, some from a Trappist monastery that had closed, and others from various Protestant denominations. They were men with problems or at loose ends. There were also those two kids doing farm work to avoid prison. I guess Rusty Wagner was one of them. The other fellow was killed in the fire.”

“Tell me about it.”

Sheriff Lens sighed. “Don’t you have enough mysteries in the present to satisfy you, Doc? This was no impossible crime or anything. No crime at all, far as I know. The fire started in the kitchen somehow and spread to the rest of the house. It was in the afternoon and the other residents were out in the fields working. Wagner and this other young fellow, whose name I don’t recall-”

“The mayor said it was Fritz.”

“That’s right, Fritz Heck. Anyway, they were preparing the evening meal when it happened. Wagner managed to get out with a few bad burns, but the other boy didn’t make it. I suppose that little scarring on Wagner’s face didn’t hurt when he started playing villain roles.”

That was pretty much all he remembered, but I was still interested in tracking down the origin of that door. I drove over to Felix Pond’s hardware store on my lunch hour and waited while he took care of a couple of customers. Pond was a bristling, bearded man who seemed strong as an ox, constantly carrying lumber and supplies out to waiting wagons. I was not one of his regular customers, but he knew me by sight. “Dr Hawthorne! What brings you here? Got a need for a hammer or screwdriver?”

“Curiosity brings me,” I told him. “I was admiring that door from the old Cloister and they told me you’d donated it. I wondered how you came by it.”

“That’s easy,” he said with a grin. “I stole it, years ago. The place seemed to be just rotting away after the fire. The residents had all scattered and no one was even sure who owned the property. It was a sin to see that fancy door just sit there and decay like that so I took it home with me. Stored it in my supply shed out back and forgot all about it till somebody asked me about it last year.”

“It might be worth some money,” I speculated.

“Sure might! It’s fine workmanship, made by one of the original residents of the Cloister. But I figured I couldn’t really sell it since it wasn’t mine to begin with. When someone suggested I donate it for the bond auction it seemed like a good idea.”

“I’m sure people will bid on it. I might even do so myself.” But then something clicked in my mind. “Tell me, Felix. Did you decide to donate this to the bond auction after you heard Rusty Wagner was going to be here?”

He frowned at my question. “Why would I do that?”

“Someone told me he was living in the Cloister at the time of the fire.”

“Really?” He thought about it. “I guess maybe it was after we heard he was coming. Can’t remember who suggested it, though.”

I left the hardware store, wondering more than ever what was bringing Rusty Wagner back to Northmont.

Tuesday was sunny and mild, a perfect spring day to greet the crowd that had turned out for the war-bond rally. It was nothing compared to the Boston crowd, of course, but I recognized several people from Shinn Corners and other towns who’d driven over for the event. We’d set up a stage in the town square, with a billowing flag bunting as a backdrop. The auction items were all on view, including the Cloister door standing upright against one of the backdrop supports.

Just before the rally began, Mayor Bensmith made a point of introducing me to the star attraction, Rusty Wagner. He was shorter than I’d expected, and his features were a bit sharper. Close up I could see the scarring on the right side of his face. It appeared that the skin had been burnt, apparently during the Cloister fire. The damaged area was not large and could have been easily covered by make up if he wished. Accompanying him was his manager, a fellow named Jack Mitchell, looking uncomfortable in a suit already rumpled from their train trip.

“I understand you lived here for a time,” I said, shaking Wagner’s hand.

He smiled pleasantly. “A long time ago, one summer before I moved to New York City. The town has changed a lot since then.”

The mayor rested a hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “We’re going to start in a few minutes. You’d better get in position on the stage.” He turned to me with a wink. “We want to open with a bang, like in Rusty’s movies.”

For a moment I didn’t know what he meant. Then, as Wagner took the stage amidst an outburst of applause, a man in a German officer’s uniform suddenly appeared from behind the flag bunting and stood before the Cloister door, taking aim at him with a Luger pistol. There were screams from the spectators as a shot rang out and Rusty Wagner clutched his chest, falling to the floor.

Immediately Mayor Bensmith sprang to the microphone, holding up his arms to calm the audience. “That, folks, is what could happen right here if not enough of us support our government with war bonds! Happily, the German officer is really our own Milt Stern, and Rusty Wagner is alive to fight another day.” He motioned to the downed star. “Time to greet your public, Rusty!”

But Wagner remained sprawled on the floor of the stage without moving. I went quickly to his side. There was no blood, no sign of a wound, but I knew at once that he was dead.

When a well-known movie star dies before hundreds of people at a bond rally, it makes news all over the country. Mayor Bensmith and Sheriff Lens both knew Northmont would be on the front pages the following day and they turned to me for help. I urged them to calm down, reminding them that we didn’t yet know the cause of Wagner’s death. “One thing we know for sure, whatever killed him, it wasn’t a bullet from Milt Stern’s gun.”

Nevertheless, while the mayor tried to calm the crowd and get on with the war-bond auction, Milt was the first person the sheriff and I questioned. He was a ten-year resident of Northmont, in his mid thirties, married with two children. For the past several years he’d worked at the local feed store. “Is Wagner dead?” he asked us at once. “They took him away in the ambulance and somebody said he was breathing.”

“He’s dead, son,” Sheriff Lens told him. “We just didn’t want to announce it right away and put a damper on things. After the bond rally’s over there’ll be an announcement.”

Stern passed over the German Luger for our examination. “All I had was one blank cartridge in it.” I slid out the clip and confirmed that it was empty. “The mayor got the gun and uniform from a theatrical costume place in Boston.”

“It was the mayor’s idea?” I asked.

“Well, he was talking about something like that to start things with a bang. I volunteered to play a Nazi and fire a blank at him.”

The facts were clear-cut and I would have been awfully surprised if the autopsy showed Rusty Wagner had been poisoned or choked to death. It didn’t. By the following morning we knew that he’d died of a heart attack. There was no wound anywhere on his body.

Still, I stopped by the mayor’s office to have a talk with him. “Apparently the man had a weak heart,” I said. “Maybe that’s what kept him out of the army, that and his age.”

“It’s just a tragedy it had to happen here,” Mayor Bensmith said. “He could have dropped dead in Boston just as well.”

“Tell me something. Did you explain to Wagner exactly what you had planned, with the Nazi officer and all? Did he know someone would fire a blank cartridge at him?”

“Certainly. I went over every bit of it with him as soon as he arrived. My secretary, Rita, was with us at the time.” He called her into the office. “Rita, what did I tell Rusty Wagner when we met him at the station?”

Rita Innes was a prim middle-aged woman who’d worked in Bensmith’s office at the farm before his election as mayor. He’d taken her with him to the elective office and she’d settled in well. Now she answered, “You explained about the man dressed as a Nazi who’d fire a blank at him. He’d fall to the stage and you’d tell the audience to buy bonds. He wasn’t surprised. He said he’d acted out scenes for audiences in other cities, too.”

“The heart attack was just a coincidence, happening when it did,” Bensmith decided.

I had to agree with him. From both a medical and a legal viewpoint, there’d been no crime.

Wagner’s death had completely overshadowed the war-bond auction, and it was a couple of days later before I saw Vera Lens and remembered to ask her about it. “We did well,” she reported, “considering everything.”

“Who bought that door from the Black Cloister?”

“Funny you should ask. It went to a man named Jack Mitchell. He was Rusty Wagner’s manager and was making the tour with him. The door’s still here. We’re supposed to ship it to him in California.”

On the following Monday, the day after Easter, I was driving past the ruins of the old Cloister and decided to stop. Walking through the high grass to the gaping front entrance, I found a roof partly burned through, and weathered walls still showing scars from the fire. There was evidence of children playing there, and ground into the dirt out back I found a used shotgun shell. Every farm family kept a weapon close at hand. There were always varmints on the prowl.

After lunch I stopped in to see Sheriff Lens at his office. “I drove by the Black Cloister this morning and took a look. Can you tell me any more about the fire and your investigation?”

The sheriff gave one of his familiar sighs. “Doc, there’s no crime for you to solve, neither here nor back in nineteen twenty-one. That Rusty Wagner could be killed by a shot from a blank cartridge isn’t an impossible crime, it’s no crime at all!”

“Let’s get back to the Cloister fire for the moment. Tell me about the young man who died there.”

He went over to the file and opened the bottom drawer. “I haven’t looked at that folder myself in years. Probably should have discarded it after all this time.” Opening the slender file, he took out some papers and a few photographs. “The victim’s name was Fritz Heck. He was eighteen, same age as Wagner. Nice-looking fellow. That’s him on the right in this photo.”

“Is this Wagner with him?”

“No, it’s Heck’s younger brother.”

I nodded. “I should have guessed that from the resemblance.”

“We got the photo from the family in Hartford, for identification purposes. There was no doubt it was him, though. Heck’s finger-prints were on file with the Hartford police. Him and Wagner stole a car but didn’t know much about driving it.”

“How did the fire start?”

“Wagner told me they were preparing dinner, chatting about a girl they’d met in town, when Heck got careless and some hot grease caught fire. They tossed water on it but that just spread it around. The flames went up along the ceiling and into the living room.” He referred to his notes and Wagner’s statement. “Heck ran into the living room and tried to beat it out, but it was too late. He was trapped by the fire and smoke, and died inside the front door, trying to get it open.”

“Why is the house still standing after all these years?”

Sheriff Lens shrugged. “I heard tell Heck’s family bought it, wanted it as a memorial to their son. But they never did anything except pay the taxes.”

“Did you ever meet any of them?”

He shook his head. “If they came here I didn’t see them. Of course the body was shipped back to Hartford for burial.”

“What about Rusty Wagner? What happened to him after the fire?”

“They took him back to Hartford, too, for treatment of his burns. We heard later that he moved to New York and was in a play. Mayor Bensmith was a friend of his and stayed in touch over the years.” He squinted at me over the tops of his glasses. “You’re tryin’ to make something out of all this, aren’t you?”

“I’m trying,” I agreed with a smile. I picked up the snapshot of Fritz Heck and studied it. “Do you have an autopsy report there?”

“Well, not really. Back in 1921, Northmont’s coroner was just a local sawbones eager to make a few extra bucks. He just had to look at the body to know the fire killed Heck. The Hartford police furnished us with medical records on the two boys, though.”

He passed them over to me and I glanced quickly through them. There were the usual childhood illnesses, plus a serious bout of influenza for Heck during the nineteen epidemic. Wagner had suffered from rheumatic fever twice as a child, but had escaped the flu. “What else do you have there?”

“Just Wagner’s statement on the fire, which I’ve told you about. His face was burnt trying to save his friend.”

I thought about that. “Do you have a phone number for this manager of his, Jack Mitchell?”

“I think it’s here somewhere. Why do you want it?”

“Vera says he was high bidder on that Cloister door. It seems an odd thing to bother about when your client has just died.”

I phoned Mitchell’s West Coast office and after some delay was put through to him. “Mr Mitchell, this is Dr Hawthorne, back in Northmont. We’re still investigating Rusty Wagner’s unfortunate death.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I just got in the office. I’ve been making arrangements for the memorial service. What can I do for you?”

“I’m told that you were high bidder for the door from the Black Cloister, where Rusty lived for a time.”

“That’s correct. He wanted me to bid on it for him. It seemed very important to him. When the ambulance took him away I was hoping he was still alive. I entered my bid on the door before following him to the hospital.”

“What do you plan to do with the door?”

“Do with it?” his voice rasped over the phone. “Nothing. Now that he’s dead you can keep the door, auction it off again.”

“Did he have any reason for wanting it so badly?”

“None that I know of. He’d lived at that Cloister for one whole summer. I suppose it brought back memories.”

“I’m sure it did,” I agreed. “His friend died in the fire, and he was badly burned.”

“He never went into detail about it. He just asked me to buy the door at the auction.”

I thanked him and hung up. Sheriff Lens asked, “Did you learn anything?”

“He doesn’t want the door now that Wagner’s dead. He said we should keep it and auction it off again.”

“I’ll tell Vera.”

“Where’s the door now?”

“Still over at the town hall. In the mayor’s office, I think.”

“Let’s go have another look at it,” I suggested.

We walked across the square to the town hall. Mayor Bensmith hadn’t yet returned from lunch, but his secretary Rita showed us the door leaning against his office wall. “We’re waiting for shipping instructions,” she informed us.

“He doesn’t want it,” I told her. “We’ll auction it again.”

I moved over to examine the door more closely and asked Rita, “Do you have a pair of tweezers?”

“I think so.” She went back to her desk and returned with them.

“What are you after, Doc?” Sheriff Lens wanted to know.

“I’m not sure, but I know Wagner wanted this door, and his statement to you at the time of the fire wasn’t completely accurate.”

“How’s that?”

“He said Fritz Heck died inside the front door, trying to get it open. But look at this door. The scorching is on the outside, while the inside is unmarked by flames. This door had to be open at the time of the fire, and if that was the case how could Heck have been trapped there by the fire and smoke? He could have simply run outside.”

“I never thought of that,” the sheriff admitted.

I took a penknife from my pocket. “I wish we’d had a more complete autopsy report.”

“In those days-”

“I know.” I concentrated on one of the wormholes Annabel had noticed earlier, enlarging it a bit with my knife. Then I went to work with the tweezers. After a moment I extracted what I was seeking.

“What is it, Doc?”

“Buckshot. Annabel thought they were wormholes, but I noticed the other side was unmarked. These were worms that went in but didn’t come out. Notice the unusual pattern they formed.” I pointed out a half-dozen small holes toward the sides and top of the door.

“A buckshot pattern would be more circular,” he argued.

“Not if something or someone had been in its way. Don’t you see, Sheriff? Fritz Heck was standing by this open door when someone fired a shotgun at him. I know they probably had one on the premises because I found an old shotgun shell in the dirt there. The missing pellets from the pattern are in Heck’s body, and judging by the close grouping of these other pellets that shotgun blast was probably enough to kill him.”

“Rusty Wagner was the only one in the house at the time.”

“Exactly,” I told him. “We’ll never know now what happened, but Wagner told you they’d been chatting about a girl they met. Maybe they argued about her, maybe Wagner picked up the shotgun that every farmhouse had in those days and tried to drive Heck from the Cloister. Maybe it went off accidentally by the front door.”

“Then he started the fire deliberately?”

I nodded. “To cover the crime. He probably made a special point of burning the body, to cover up the wounds from the shotgun pellets. When he got too close and burned his own face it added verisimilitude to his story.”

“Any coroner today would have found those shotgun pellets.”

“Probably. He certainly would have spotted the absence of smoke in the lungs, a sure sign that Heck was already dead when the fire started.”

Sheriff Lens sighed. “With Wagner dead there’s not much point in exhuming the body now.”

“None whatsoever.”

“I only wish you’d been around here a year earlier, Doc, and I wouldn’t have missed all this. It was a perfect crime.”

I shook my head. “No, Sheriff. The perfect crime was the murder of Rusty Wagner in front of this building last Tuesday. And there’s not a thing we can do about it.”

As it happened, Annabel and I were dining at Max’s Steakhouse, our favorite restaurant, a few nights later when I spotted Milt Stern drinking at the bar. “Excuse me for a few minutes,” I told her. “I’m going to talk to him.”

“Sam! You said you wouldn’t.”

But I got up anyway and went over to him. “Got a few minutes, Milt?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“I just want to chat. Over in that empty booth would be best.”

He glanced toward Annabel at our table. “You shouldn’t leave her alone.”

“This won’t take long.”

He followed me to the booth and slid in the other side. “So what’s this all about?”

“Rusty Wagner.”

“God, I feel terrible about that! It’s as if I’d murdered him.”

“You did.”

He moistened his lips and gave a half laugh. “Well, not really. The gun had a blank cartridge in it.”

“What was it that made you move here, Milt? Did you know your brother had been murdered that day up at the Cloister?”

“He wasn’t-”

“Yes he was, Milt. I saw the snapshot of the two of you and even then I noticed the resemblance. Ten years ago you left Hartford and moved here, changing your name from the German Heck to its English meaning, stern. You suspected all along that Wagner had killed your brother. Perhaps he hinted at trouble between them in one of his letters. Once here you settled down and married. Somewhere along the line you saw the Cloister door that Felix Pond had rescued from the place, and recognized those little ‘wormholes’ for what they were. When you heard that Wagner would be coming here to take part in a war-bond drive, the idea came to you.”

“What idea?”

“You would suggest to Pond that he donate that old door for the war-bond auction. Then, when the mayor was discussing a clever way to bring Wagner on stage, you volunteered to dress in a Nazi costume and fire a blank pistol at him. You knew, of course, that he’d had rheumatic fever twice as a child. Perhaps your brother mentioned it or you read it in a movie fan magazine. Such a medical history almost certainly would have left him with a weak heart, probably the reason for his draft deferral.”

“He knew in advance I was going to fire a blank pistol at him,” Milt Stern said. “That wouldn’t have caused a heart attack.”

“Perhaps not alone. But when he came onto that stage what he saw was the friend he’d killed twenty-two years ago, aged a bit but still recognizable, standing in front of that same door and pointing a gun at him. In the instant the gun went off, his weak heart failed.”

“Do you really expect anyone to believe that?”

“No,” I admitted. “Certainly not a jury.”

Milt Stern smiled at me. “Then why are you telling me this? Who else have you told?”

“Sheriff Lens knows, and the mayor soon will know. They can’t bring any charge against you, but it might be better if you left Northmont, moved back to Hartford.”

He studied my face for a long time. “Don’t you understand it’s something I had to do? Whether he lived or died was out of my hands.”

“Whether you stay or go is out of my hands, too,” I told him.

“All right,” he said at last. “I’ll take your advice.”

I left the booth and went back to join Annabel. I’d done all that I could.

“What does it matter whether it were accident or suicide?” said Magnum into the telephone with decided irritation, because he was being interrupted in the midst of a highly complex calculation of a formula based on crystallographic angles and axes, requiring quaternions and perfect quiet.

“It matters fifty thousand pounds,” replied the legal voice at the other end of the wire. “That’s the value of his insurance policy. The company contend it was a case of suicide, and therefore the policy is null and void.”

“At the present moment,” snapped Magnum, “I don’t care if he were insured for the National Debt! Find a detective, and don’t bother me!”

Leaving the receiver off the hook, so that he could not be rung up further, Magnum plunged again into the world of sin ∝ and cos β.

The interrupter was the junior partner in East, East, and Stacey, a young man of some pertinacity as well as legal ability. He happened to have a very special interest in the case of the deceased, because the next-of-kin was a particularly charming young lady; at least, particularly charming to himself. So he jumped into a taxi and drove from Clifford’s Inn to Upper Thames Street, where the scientific consultant had his office and laboratories.

“The deuce!” was Magnum’s welcome for him.

“Awfully sorry to interrupt. How long will you take to finish?” was the soft answer designed to turn away wrath.

“Till midnight!” snapped Magnum, hunching his bushy reddish eyebrows, and thrusting out his straggly reddish beard belligerently.

“I’ll wait,” decided Stacey. “I’ll go and talk scandal with Meredith.”

Ivor Meredith was a young Welshman, an analytical genius and Magnum’s right-hand man. He was the very essence of shyness and modesty. Stacey went into the laboratories and began to chaff him in order to kill time.

“What’s this I hear about you and a certain fascinating widow?” was his opening gambit.

Young Meredith, blushing furiously, protested that he didn’t know any fascinating widow. Which was perfectly true, as he was mortally afraid of all the feminine sex.

In an hour’s time Magnum appeared from his office. His crystallographic analysis had borne out his personal guess exactly, and the thundercloud temper had vanished from his skies. He found that his young Welsh protégé had scored off Stacey by challenging him to blow a glass bulb, which looks delightfully simple and in reality requires months of practice. Stacey, perspiring over the blow-lamp, was surrounded by a score of horrible bulbous monstrosities.

“Better stick to the law,” smiled Magnum. “You can make a successful lawyer even if you have ten thumbs to your hands. Now what’s this trouble about the insurance policy?”

Stacey answered him seriously with a résumé of the case. Abel Jonasson, a somewhat eccentric recluse, a man of fifty-four and a bachelor, had insured his life for fifty thousand pounds with the Empire Assurance Company six months previously. On a railway journey through the Sevenoaks tunnel he had been alone in a second-class compartment. In some way he had fallen out of the moving train; had been killed possibly by the fall; and had certainly been run over by a train passing on the other line of metals. A coroner’s jury had returned an open verdict. On the advice of their doctors and counsel, the Empire Company, a firm of first-class reputation, had decided to fight the claim up to the House of Lords if necessary.

They contended that, for a man of his limited income, a fifty thousand pound policy was far too heavy, unless he deliberately intended to take his life in order to secure a large sum of money for his relatives. Such cases had cropped up before.

“Then they shouldn’t have insured for such a heavy amount,” interrupted Magnum.

“Well, they did,” answered Stacey. “They took his premium, and now they fight the claim. Miss Gerard, his niece and next-of-kin, has very slender means, and so-”

Something in Stacey’s tone gave Magnum the clue to this unusual interest in a client of slender means.

“Another wedding present to buy!” he interjected cynically.

Stacey took the remark on the half-volley, and flicked it neatly over the net:

“Help us, and we’ll consider it as the wedding-present.”

“I don’t see that the case lies in my province. Try Scotland Yard.”

“I have. No satisfaction. A scientist is wanted. Scotland Yard can’t tell me why the dead man carried in his pocket a phial of atoxyl.”

“Specific against sleeping sickness.”

“A Central African disease. It’s unknown in England. Why should he carry the antidote about with him?”

“Have his serum examined.”

“That’s been done. No trace of the disease has been found. But the Empire doctor claims that Jonasson must have thought he had the disease, and therefore committed suicide. A book on the subject was found at his country cottage. Our side will have to prove some other reason for his carrying that phial of atoxyl. That’s one point on which I want your help.”

Magnum pulled out a disgracefully malodorous pipe from his baggy, shapeless working-jacket, and proceeded to stuff it with a smoking mixture of his own blending, strong to the point of rankness.

Meredith hastened to their library above the office, and returned with one of the twenty bulky volumes of Watts’s Dictionary of Chemistry. His chief took it, and turned thoughtfully to the half-column description of the chemical properties of the drug, one of the arsenic derivatives. Presently he remarked:

“Have you considered the possibility of foul play?”

“That was one of our first thoughts,” returned Stacey. “But Jonasson was seen alone in the compartment at Tonbridge Junction, only five miles from the tunnel, and there were no traces on the footboard of anyone clambering along from one compartment to another.”

“Windows?”

“All shut.”

“A man under the seat?”

“No traces.”

“When was the discovery made?”

“As soon as the train came out of the tunnel into Sevenoaks Station. The door of Jonasson’s compartment was open, and banging to and fro… All the evidence goes to show that he was entirely alone in the compartment; that he opened the door himself – fingerprints on the handle – and fell out. We claim that he must have become suddenly frightened – he was a nervous old man – and that he lost his head, opened the door to call for help, and was thrown out by the rush of wind against the open door.”

“Sounds very probable.”

“The Empire Company say that if he wanted help he could have pulled the alarm-cord. There was no one else in the compartment – that’s certain from the footprints in the dust. He had nothing to be afraid of, they claim.”

“Equally plausible.”

“Can you tell me why he carried that atoxyl with him?”

Magnum was not a man to confess openly to ignorance. He replied curtly:

“I’m not a theorist. Ask me practical questions.”

For reply, Stacey produced from his pocket a blank manuscript-size envelope, and from the envelope a much-creased sheet of folded paper – blank.

“I found this in Jonasson’s study while hunting for his will. I have a strong feeling that it contains a message written in invisible ink. Miss Gerard tells me that he was the kind of eccentric who would do that. Will you try to get the message out?”

“Suppose,” asked Magnum shrewdly, “it were to say that he intended to commit suicide?”

“In that case,” laughed the lawyer, “I shouldn’t call you as a witness.”

“You young scoundrel!”

“But it won’t do that,” answered Stacey, returning to seriousness. “Miss Gerard knew him well – he was very fond of her in his queer, angular way – and she is perfectly certain that he had no intention of committing suicide.”

“If you prove wrong,” warned Magnum, “don’t count on me to keep silent in a case of fraud.”

He passed the sheet of paper to Meredith, who examined it eagerly, his eyes alight at the thought of pitting his chemical knowledge against the secret of the apparently blank paper.

Meredith’s first move was to cut the sheet into four quarters, so as to avoid the risk of spoiling the whole of it in the course of experimenting.

The heat test gave no result, nor did the iodide test, nor the sulphuretted hydrogen test.

Magnum, suspecting that they were in for a long session, looked at his watch, found it marking seven o’clock and sent out for three porterhouse steaks, a Stilton cheese and bread, and lager beer.

“I should prefer oysters, a fried sole, and a bottle of claret,” suggested Stacey.

“You’ll have what’s good for you,” retorted Magnum, who had unæsthetic views on food.

It was close on nine o’clock before Meredith at length triumphed. Fitting together three-quarters of the sheet of paper – the other quarter had become spoilt in the course of testing – the following wording stood out in roughly written capital letters:

“She sure bled a lot.”

I ignored Officer Coursey, my attention focused on the dead woman’s arm. The cut had almost severed her left wrist, a flash of pink bone peeking through. Her right hand was curled around the handle of a utility knife.

I’d been in Homicide for more than ten years, and still felt an emotional punch whenever I saw a body. The day I wasn’t affected was the day I hung up my badge.

I wore disposable plastic booties over my flats because the shag carpet oozed blood like a sponge wherever I stepped. The apartment’s air conditioning was set on freeze, so the decomposition wasn’t as bad as it might have been after a week – but it was still pretty bad. I got down on my haunches and swatted away some blowflies.

On her upper arm, six inches above the wound, was a bruise.

“What’s so interesting, Lieut? It’s just a suicide.”

In my blazer pocket I had some latex gloves. I snapped them on.

The victim’s name was Janet Hellerman, a real estate lawyer with a private practice. She was brunette, mid thirties, Caucasian. Her satin slip was mottled with drying brown stains, and she wore nothing underneath. I put my hand on her chin, gently turned her head.

There was another bruise on her cheek.

“Johnson’s getting a statement from the super.”

I stood up, smoothed down my skirt, and nodded at Herb, who had just entered the room. Detective First Class Herb Benedict was my partner. He had a gray mustache, Basset hound jowls, and a Santa Claus belly. Herb kept on the perimeter of the blood puddle; those little plastic booties were too hard for him to get on.

“Johnson’s story corroborates?”

Herb nodded. “Why? You see something?”

I did, but wasn’t sure how it fit. Herb had questioned both Officer Coursey and Officer Johnson, and their stories were apparently identical.

Forty minutes ago they’d arrived at apartment 3008 at the request of the victim’s mother, who lived out of state. She had been unable to get in touch with her daughter for more than a week. The building superintendent unlocked the door for them, but the safety chain was on, and a sofa had been pushed in front of the door to prevent anyone from getting inside. Coursey put his shoulder to it, broke in, and they discovered the body.

Herb squinted at the corpse. “How many marks on the wrist?”

“Just one cut, deep.”

I took off the blood-soaked booties, put them in one of the many plastic baggies I keep in my pockets, and went over to the picture window, which covered most of the far wall. The view was expensive, overlooking Lake Shore Drive from forty stories up. Boaters swarmed over the surface of Lake Michigan like little white ants, and the street was a gridlock of toy cars. Summer was a busy time for Chicagoans-criminals included.

I motioned for Coursey, and he heeled like a chastened puppy. Beat cops were getting younger every year; this one barely needed to shave. He had the cop stare, though – hard eyes and a perpetual scowl, always expecting to be lied to.

“I need you to do a door-to-door. Get statements from everyone on this floor. Find out who knew the victim, who might have seen anything.”

Coursey frowned. “But she killed herself. The only way in the apartment is the one door, and it was locked from the inside, with the safety chain on. Plus there was a sofa pushed in front of it.”

“I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that suicides are treated as homicides in this town, Officer.”

He rolled his eyes. I could practically read his thoughts. How did this dumb broad get to be Homicide Lieutenant? She sleep with the PC?

“Lieut, the weapon is still in her hand. Don’t you think…”

I sighed. Time to school the rookie.

“How many cuts are on her wrist, Coursey?”

“One.”

“Didn’t they teach you about hesitation cuts at the Academy? A suicidal person usually has to work up the courage. Where was she found?”

“On the floor.”

“Why not her bed? Or the bathtub? Or a comfy chair? If you were ending your life, would you do it standing in the middle of the living room?”

He became visibly flustered, but I wasn’t through yet.

“How would you describe the temperature in this room?”

“It’s freezing.”

“And all she’s wearing is a slip. Little cold for that, don’t you think? Did you read the suicide note?”

“She didn’t leave a note.”

“They all leave notes. I’ve worked these streets for twenty years, and never saw a suicide where the vic didn’t leave a note. But for some strange reason, there’s no note here. Which is a shame because maybe her note would explain how she got the multiple contusions on her face and arm.”

Coursey was cowed, but he managed to mumble, “The door was-”

“Speaking of doors,” I interrupted, “why are you still here when you were given an order to start the door-to-door? Move your ass.”

Coursey looked at his shoes and then left the apartment. Herb raised an eyebrow.

“Kinda hard on the newbie, Jack.”

“He wouldn’t have questioned me if I had a penis.”

“I think you have one now. You took his.”

“If he does a good job, I’ll give it back.”

Herb turned to look at the body. He rubbed his mustache.

“It could still play as suicide,” he said. “If she was hit by a sudden urge to die. Maybe she got some terrible news. She gets out of the shower, puts on a slip, cranks up the air conditioning, gets a phone call, immediately grabs the knife and with one quick slice…”

He made a cutting motion over his wrist.

“Do you buy it?” I asked.

Herb made a show of mulling it over.

“No,” he consented. “I think someone knocked her out, sliced her wrist, turned up the air so the smell wouldn’t get too bad, and then…”

“Managed to escape from a locked room.”

I sighed, my shoulders sagging.

Herb’s eyes scanned the view. “A window washer?”

I checked the window, but as expected it didn’t open. Winds this high up weren’t friendly.

“There’s no other way in?” Herb asked.

“Just the one entryway.”

I walked up to it. The safety chain hung on the door at eye level, its wall mounting and three screws dangling from it. The doorframe where it had been attached was splintered and cracked from Coursey’s entrance. There were three screw holes in the frame that matched the mounting, and a fourth screw still remained, sticking out of the frame about an inch.

The hinges on the door were dusty and showed no signs of tampering. A black leather sofa was pushed off to the side, near the doorway. I followed the tracks that its feet had made in the carpet. The sofa had been placed in front of the door and then shoved aside.

I opened the door, holding the knob with two fingers. It moved easily, even though it was heavy and solid. I closed it, stumped.

“How did the killer get out?” I said, mostly to myself.

“Maybe he didn’t get out. Maybe the killer is still in the apartment.” Herb’s eyes widened and his hand shot up, pointing over my shoulder. “Jack! Behind you!”

I rolled my eyes.

“Funny, Herb. I already searched the place.”

I peeled off the gloves and stuck them back in my pocket.

“Well, then there are only three possibilities.” Herb held up his hand, ticking off fingers. “One, Coursey and Johnson and the superintendent are all lying. Two, the killer was skinny enough to slip out of the apartment by going under the door. Or three, it was Houdini.”

“Houdini’s dead.”

“Did you check? Get an alibi?”

“I’ll send a team to the cemetery.”

While we waited for the ME to arrive, Herb and I busied ourselves with tossing the place. Bank statements told us Janet Hellerman made a comfortable living and paid her bills on time. She was financing a late model Lexus, which we confirmed was parked in the lot below. Her credit card debt was minimal, with a recent charge for plane tickets. A call to Delta confirmed two seats to Montana for next week, one in her name and one in the name of Glenn Hale.

Herb called the precinct, requesting a sheet on Hale.

I checked the answering machine and listened to thirty-eight messages. Twenty were from Janet’s distraught mother, wondering where she was. Two were telemarketers. One was from a friend named Sheila who wanted to get together for dinner, and the rest were real estate related.

Nothing from Hale. He wasn’t on the caller ID either.

I checked her cell phone next, and listened to forty more messages; ten from mom, and thirty from home buyers. Hale hadn’t left any messages, but there was a “Glenn” listed on speed dial. The phone’s call log showed that Glenn’s number had called over a dozen times, but not once since last week.

“Look at this, Jack.”

I glanced over at Herb. He set a pink plastic case on the kitchen counter and opened it up. It was a woman’s toolkit, the kind they sold at department stores for fifteen bucks. Each tool had a cute pink handle and a corresponding compartment that it snugged into. This kit contained a hammer, four screwdrivers, a measuring tape, and eight wrenches. There were also two empty slots; one for needle nose pliers, and one for something five inches long and rectangular.

“The utility knife,” I said.

Herb nodded. “She owned the weapon. It’s looking more and more like suicide, Jack. She has a fight with Hale. He dumps her. She kills herself.”

“You find anything else?”

“Nothing really. She liked to mountain climb, apparently. There’s about forty miles of rope in her closet, lots of spikes and beaners, and a picture of her clinging to a cliff. She also has an extraordinary amount of teddy bears. There were so many piled on her bed, I don’t know how she could sleep on it.”

“Diary? Computer?”

“Neither. Some photo albums, a few letters that we’ll have to look through.”

Someone knocked. We glanced across the breakfast bar and saw the door ease open.

Mortimer Hughes entered. Hughes was a medical examiner. He worked for the city, and his job was to visit crime scenes and declare people dead. You’d never guess his profession if you met him on the street – he had the smiling eyes and infectious enthusiasm of a television chef.

“Hello Jack, Herb, beautiful day out.” He nodded at us and set down a large tackle box that housed the many particular tools of his trade. Hughes opened it up and snugged on some plastic gloves and booties. He also brandished knee pads.

Herb and I paused in our search and watched him work. Hughes knelt beside the vic and spent ten minutes poking and prodding, humming tunelessly to himself. When he finally spoke, it was high-pitched and cheerful.

“She’s dead,” Hughes said.

We waited for more.

“At least four days, probably longer. I’m guessing from hypovolemic shock. Blood loss is more than forty percent. Her right zygomatic bone is shattered, pre-mortem or early post.”

“Could she have broken her cheek falling down?” Herb asked.

“On this thick carpet? Possible-yes. Likely-no. Look at the blood pool. No arcs. No trails.”

“So she wasn’t conscious when her wrist was cut?”

“That would be my assumption, unless she laid down on the floor and stayed perfectly still while bleeding to death.”

“Sexually assaulted?”

“Can’t tell. I’ll do a swab.”

I chose not to watch, and Herb and I went back into the kitchen. Herb pursed his lips.

“It could still be suicide. She cuts her wrist, falls over, breaks her cheek bone, dies unconscious.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m not. I like the boyfriend. They’re fighting, he bashes her one in the face. Maybe he can’t wake her up, or he thinks he’s killed her. Or he wants to kill her. He finds the toolbox, gets the utility knife, makes it look like a suicide.”

“And then magically disappears.”

Herb frowned. “That part I don’t like.”

“Maybe he flushed himself down the toilet, escaped through the plumbing.”

“You can send Coursey out to get a plunger.”

“Lieutenant?”

Officer Coursey had returned. He stood by the kitchen counter, his face ashen.

“What is it, Officer?”

“I was doing the door-to-door. No one answered at the apartment right across the hall. The superintendent thought that was strange – an old lady named Mrs Flagstone lives there, and she never leaves her home. She even sends out for groceries. So the super opens up her door and… you’d better come look.”

Mrs Flagstone stared up at me with milky eyes. Her tongue protruded from her lips like a hunk of raw liver. She was naked in the bathtub, her face and upper body submerged in foul water, one chubby leg hanging over the edge. The bloating was extensive. Her white hair floated around her head like a halo.

“Still think it’s a suicide?” I asked Herb.

Mortimer Hughes rolled up his sleeve and put his hand into the water. He pressed her chest and bubbles exploded out of her mouth and nose.

“Didn’t drown. Her lungs are full of air.”

He moved his hand higher, prodding the wrinkled skin on her neck.

“I can feel some damage to the trachea. There also appears to be a lesion around her neck. I want to get a sample of the water before I pull the drain plug.”

Hughes dove into his box. Herb, Coursey, and I left him and went into the living room. Herb called in, requesting the forensics team.

“Any hits from the other tenants?” I asked the rookie.

He flipped open his pad. “One door over, at apartment 3010, the occupant, a Mr Stanley Mankowicz, remembers some yelling coming from the victim’s place about six days ago.”

“Does he remember what time?”

“It was late, he was in bed. Mr Mankowicz shares a wall with the vic, and has called her on several occasions to tell her to turn her television down.”

“Did he call that night?”

“He was about to, but the noise stopped.”

“Where’s the super?”

“Johnson hasn’t finished taking his statement.”

“Call them both in here.”

While waiting for them to arrive, I examined Mrs Flagstone’s door. Like Janet’s, it had a safety chain and, like Janet’s, it had been ripped from the wall and the mounting was hanging from the door. I found four screws and some splinters on the floor. There were no screws in the door frame.

A knock, and I opened the door. Officer Johnson and the super. Johnson was older than his partner, bigger, with the same dead eyes. The superintendent was a Pakistani man named Majid Patel. Mr Patel had dark skin and red eyes and he clearly enjoyed all of this attention.

“I moved to this country ten years ago, and I have never seen a dead body before. Now I have seen two in the same day. I must call and tell my mother. I call my mother when anything exciting happens.”

“We’ll let you go in a moment, Mr Patel. I’m Lt Jack Daniels, this is Detective Herb Benedict. We just have a few…”

“Your name is Jack Daniels? But you are not a man.”

“You’re very observant,” I deadpanned. “Did you know Janet Hellerman?”

Patel winked at me. Was he flirting?

“It must be hard, Lt Jack Daniels, to be a pretty woman with a funny name in a profession so dominated by male chauvinist pigs.” Patel offered Herb a look. “No offense.”

Herb returned a pleasant smile. “None taken. If you could please answer the Lieutenant’s question.”

Patel grinned, crooked teeth and spinach remnants.

“She was a real estate lawyer. Young and good looking. Always paid her rent on time. My brother gave her a deal on her apartment, because she had nice legs.” Patel had no reservations about openly checking out mine. “Yours are very nice too, Jack Daniels. For an older lady. Are you single?”

“She’s single.” Herb winked at me, gave me an elbow. I made a mental note to fire him later.

“Your brother?” I asked Patel.

“He’s the building owner,” Officer Johnson chimed in. “It’s the family business.”

“Did you know anything about Janet’s personal life?”

“She had a shit for a boyfriend, a man named Glenn. He had an affair and she dumped him.”

“When was this?”

“About ten days ago. I know because she asked me to change the lock on her door. She had given him a key and he wouldn’t return it.”

“Did you change the lock?”

“I did not. Ms Hellerman just mentioned it to me in the elevator once. She never filled out the work order request.”

“Does the building have a doorman?”

“No. We have security cameras.”

“I’ll need to see tapes going back two weeks. Can you get them for me?”

“It will not be a problem.”

Mortimer Hughes came out of the bathroom. He was holding a closed set of tweezers in one hand, his other hand cupped beneath it.

“I dug a fiber out of the victim’s neck. Red, looks synthetic.”

“From a rope?” I asked.

Hughes nodded.

“Mr Patel, we’ll be down shortly for those tapes. Coursey, Johnson, help Herb and I search the apartment. Let’s see if we can find the murder weapon.”

We did a thorough toss, but couldn’t find any rope. Herb, however, found a pair of needle nose pliers in a closet. Pliers with pink handles.

“They were neighbors,” Herb reasoned. “Janet could have lent them to her.”

“Could have. But we both doubt it. Call base to see if they found anything on Hale.”

Herb dialed, talked for a minute, then hung up.

“Glenn Hale has been arrested three times, all assault charges. Did three months in Joliet.”

I wasn’t surprised. All evidence pointed to the boyfriend, except for the damned locked room. Maybe Herb was right and the killer just slipped under the door and…

Epiphany.

“Call the lab team. I want the whole apartment dusted. Then get an address and a place of work on Hale and send cars. Tell them to wait for the warrant.”

Herb raised an eyebrow. “A warrant? Shouldn’t we question the guy first?”

“No need,” I said. “He did it, and I know how.”

Feeling, a bit foolishly, like Sherlock Holmes, I took everyone back into Janet’s apartment. They began hurling questions at me, but I held up my hand for order.

“Here’s how it went,” I began. “Janet finds out Glenn is cheating, dumps him. He comes over, wanting to get her back. She won’t let him in. He uses his key, but the safety chain is on. So he busts in and breaks the chain.”

“But the chain was on when we came in the first time,” Coursey complained.

Herb hushed him, saving me the trouble.

“They argue,” I went on. “Glenn grabs her arm, hits her. She falls to the floor, unconscious. Who knows what’s going through his mind? Maybe he’s afraid she’ll call the police, and he’ll go to jail – he has a record and this state has zero tolerance for repeat offenders. Maybe he’s so mad at her he thinks she deserves to die. Whatever the case, he finds Janet’s toolkit and takes out the utility knife. He slits her wrist and puts the knife in her other hand.”

Five inquisitive faces hung on my every word. It was a heady experience.

“Glenn has to know he’d be a suspect,” I raised my voice, just a touch for dramatic effect. “He’s got a history with Janet, and a criminal record. The only way to throw off suspicion is to make it look like no one else could have been in the room – to show the police that it had to be a suicide.”

“Jack,” Herb admonished. “You’re dragging it out.”

“If you figured it out, then you’d have the right to drag it out too.”

“Are you really single?” Patel asked. He grinned again, showing more spinach.

“If she keeps stalling,” Herb told him, “I’ll personally give you her number.”

I shot Herb with my eyes, then continued.

“Okay, so Glenn goes into Janet’s closet and gets a length of climbing rope. He also grabs the needle nose pliers from her toolbox and heads back to the front door. The safety chain has been ripped out of the frame, and the mounting is dangling on the end. He takes a single screw,” I pointed at the screw sticking in the door frame, “and puts it back in the doorframe about halfway.”

Herb nodded, getting it. “When the mounting ripped out, it had to pull out all four screws. So the only way one could still be in the doorframe is if someone put it there.”

“Right. Then he takes the rope and loops it under a sofa leg. He goes out into the hall with the rope, and closes the door, still holding both ends of the rope. He tugs the rope through the crack under the door, and pulls the sofa right up to the door from the other side.”

“Clever,” Johnson said.

“I must insist you meet my mother,” Patel said.

“But the chain…” Coursey whined.

I smiled at Coursey. “He opens the door a few inches, and grabs the chain with the needle nose pliers. He swings the loose end over to the door frame, where it catches and rests on the screw he put in halfway.”

I watched the light finally go on in Coursey’s eyes. “When Mr Patel opened the door, it looked like the chain was on, but it really wasn’t. It was just hanging on the screw. The thing that kept the door from opening was the sofa.”

“Right. So when you burst into the room, you weren’t the one that broke the safety chain. It was already broken.”

Coursey nodded rapidly. “The perp just lets go of one end of the rope and pulls in the other end, freeing it from the sofa leg. Then he locks the door with his own key.”

“But poor Mrs Flagstone,” I continued, “must have seen him in the hallway. She has her safety chain on, maybe asks him what he’s doing. So he bursts into her room and strangles her with the climbing rope. The rope was red-right, Herb?”

Herb grinned. “Naturally. How did you know that?”

“I guessed. Then Glenn ditches the pliers in the closet, makes a half-assed attempt to stage Mrs Flagstone’s death like a drowning, and leaves with the rope. I bet the security tapes will concur.”

“What if he isn’t seen carrying the rope?”

No problem. I was on a roll.

“Then he either ditched it in a hall, or wrapped it around his waist under his shirt before leaving.”

“I’m gonna go check the tapes,” Johnson said, hurrying out.

“I’m going to call my mother,” Patel said, hurrying out.

Herb got on the phone to get a warrant, and Mortimer Hughes dropped to his hands and knees and began to search the carpeting, ostensibly for red fibers – even though that wasn’t his job.

I was feeling pretty smug, something I rarely associated with my line of work, when I noticed Officer Coursey staring at me. His face was projecting such unabashed admiration that I almost blushed.

“Lieutenant – that was just… amazing.”

“Simple detective work. You could have figured it out if you thought about it.”

“I never would have figured that out.” He glanced at his shoes, then back at me, and then he turned and left.

Herb pocketed his cell and offered me a sly grin.

“We can swing by the DA’s office, pick up the warrant in an hour. Tell me, Jack. How’d you put it all together?”

“Actually, you gave me the idea. You said the only way the killer could have gotten out of the room was by slipping under the door. In a way, that’s what he did.”

Herb clapped his hand on my shoulder.

“Nice job, Lieutenant. Don’t get a big head. You wanna come over for supper tonight? Bernice is making pot roast. I’ll let you invite Mr Patel.”

“He’d have to call his mother first. Speaking of mothers…”

I glanced at the body of Janet Hellerman, and again felt the emotional punch. The Caller ID in the kitchen gave me the number for Janet’s mom. It took some time to tell the whole story, and she cried through most of it. By the end, she was crying so much that she couldn’t talk anymore.

I gave her my home number so she could call me later.

The lab team finally arrived, headed by a Detective named Perkins. Soon both apartments were swarming with tech heads – vacuuming fibers, taking samples, spraying chemicals, shining ALS, snapping pictures and shooting video.

I filled in Detective Perkins on what went down, and left him in charge of the scene.

Then Herb and I went off to get the warrant.

My name is Jeff Winsor and I’d like to say straight off and for the record that I don’t believe in ghosts. I never have believed in them. I never will. And I can’t think of one good reason why I should.

The whole notion of restless, prowling spirits strikes me as a waste of time. Even in the afterlife there must be better things to do than wander around moaning and wailing, frightening poor mortals out of a good night’s sleep. Messages from the recently departed are an even sillier idea. Let’s face it, most people say far too much in one lifetime to have anything worthwhile left over for broadcasting from The Great Beyond. And as for things that go bump in the night, all I can say is that they never bump into me.

I figure it’s over when it’s over. You total up a life’s credits and debits, rise quietly from the table, and cash in your chips. Maybe there’s an after-life. Maybe there isn’t. But either way, there are no such things as ghosts.

Now what I do believe in is the scarcity of good apartments in New York City. The kind of elegant, spacious apartments you find in those old but beautifully maintained buildings surrounding Gramercy Park. The kind of apartment I finally got to move into when Admiral Miles Penny tripped on the carpet and fractured his skull.

I’d like to be more sympathetic, but I never met the man. From everything I’ve heard, he’d led a long, full, if somewhat tempestuous life. Not to mention all the trouble he caused me after he died. But up until I moved in, the only connection between us was that I got his apartment. I’m not even going to go into what I had to do to get it or how much the rent is. Let’s just say that wretched excess pretty well covers it all.

I moved into the place on October first, a week to the day after they moved Penny out to a less spacious but far more permanent address. I wanted to concentrate on unpacking, but I had an assignment due. I decided the cardboard carton obstacle course would have to wait for a while.

As it turned out, both projects got sidetracked. Because that was the day the first postcard arrived.

It was jammed in the apartment door mail slot along with some catalogues from a shoe company, a bookseller, and one of those Vermont cheese and smoked ham places. It was an old postcard, yellowed at the edges, with a view of a few ragged palms and a seedy looking pink stucco hotel. All that was on one side. The following brief message was on the other.

Miles,

You were right about that adaptation of the Krimsky book. It stank. I didn’t like the lizard scene either. Knight to C-3.

Fraternally yours,

Charles

I was beginning to think that Lieutenant Ader had finally run out of bizarre cases. He hadn’t bothered me for almost six months, or since that “Circle in the Dust” affair.

But I should have known better; it was just a breathing spell. His jurisdiction, mainly the city of Arden, isn’t likely to be free of skulduggery for long. Not that I minded too much; in fact, I like playing detective. For that matter, who doesn’t?

This was something of a switch, however; because instead of asking me to help solve a murder, it was more a matter of unsolving one first, you might say.

I’m used to being called on by Ader. As the only reasonably well qualified expert in forensic medicine in these parts – I’m chief pathologist at Pasteur Hospital, serving the whole county – I do work for a number of communities in the area. You see they don’t trust their local coroners, since most of them are political hacks long out of practice. So whenever they need a dependable autopsy, especially the kind their man would just as soon not handle – say somebody buried a month – they send for Dr Joel Hoffman: me.

Last Tuesday I was happily preparing a slide of some muscle section; it had a bunch of the finest roundworm parasites that you’ll ever see. Oddly enough, it occurred to me that these organisms, so loathsome to the laymen, were not only gracefully proportioned, and miracles of design, but never killed each other through greed or hate, and would never, never build a hydrogen bomb to destroy the world.

Well, think of the Devil-in this case, murder – and he’s sure to appear. Into the lab came Lieutenant Ader with a young girl in tow. Him I’ve seen before, but never in such company, so being a man first and a pathologist second, I looked at her. A small girl, dark, and just a bit plump. What my racy old man used to call a “plump partridge.” She had been crying a lot; it didn’t need eight years of medical study to tell that. As for Ader, he was half angry, and half ashamed.

“This is my niece, Dana,” he said gruffly. “You’ve heard me mention her occasionally.”

I smiled. She fixed her enormous, smoky grey eyes on me, and said: “You’re the only one who can help us. Everything adds up all wrong. Larry couldn’t have done it, and yet there’s nobody else who went out there.”

“Whoa,” I said. “Back off a few paragraphs, and start over again.”

“Larry’s her fiance,” Ader explained. “I’m holding him on a first degree murder charge.”

I must have looked surprised, because he reddened slightly, and snapped, “I had to, but she thinks he’s innocent. Why, I don’t know. I’ve told her about your work before, and now she expects you to perform a grade A miracle to order. In other words, Dana’s picked you to smash my nice open-and-shut case to little pieces.”

“Thanks a lot, both of you,” I said sardonically. “But I only do wonders on Wednesday and Friday; this is Tuesday, remember.”

“That’s all right; you can solve the whole case tomorrow,” the lieutenant said, giving his niece a rather sickly grin. It was a noble attempt to cheer her up, and of course a complete failure, as such things always are.

“Look,” he added, obviously on a hot spot, and not enjoying it, “I’ve got the boy cold; the evidence is overwhelming. You’ll see what I mean in a minute. But Dana here isn’t convinced, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t see Larry bludgeoning an old man to death for money, myself. He’s pretty hot-tempered, but gets over it fast. I don’t think he goes in for physical violence, anyhow. Still…” He broke off, and I could almost read his mind. When you’ve met enough murderers, one thing soon becomes as clear as distilled water: there’s simply no way to tell a potential killer in advance of the crime.

“Why are you so sure he didn’t do it?” I asked Dana.

Her round little chin rose stubbornly; I liked her for that. I hate the passive, blonde, doughy kind of girl.

“I know he couldn’t kill anybody,” she said, “especially an old man lying on the sand. He might punch another fellow his own age, if they were both on their feet, but that’s all. Do you think I could love a murderer, and be ready to marry him?”

I looked at Ader, and both our faces must have become wooden at the same time, because she gave a little cry of pure exasperation.

“Ooh! All you men know is evidence. I know Larry!”

The lieutenant is married, and so knows about women. Even so, this line of reasoning, being so feminine, made him wince. But the answer was about what I expected. So I merely remarked: “Suppose you give me the main facts, and then we’ll fight about who’s guilty.”

“Right.” Ader seemed relieved. He was always at his best with evidence rather than theories or emotions. I imagine that Dana, in cahoots with his very warm-hearted wife, Grace, had been needling him for hours. Not that he’s unsympathetic. I’ve known cops who wouldn’t mess with a case that was all sewed up to please their wives, children, or grandparents. He was doing it for a mere niece.

“First,” Ader said, “the victim is Colonel McCabe, a retired Army Officer, sixty-two years old. Yesterday morning, quite early, he went down to his private beach, as usual, accompanied by his dog. After a brief paddling in the shallows, he dozed on a blanket, and while he was dozing somebody came up to him, carrying a walking stick, and calmly smashed his skull with the heavy knob. It seems beyond a doubt that the killer must have been Larry Channing, the colonel’s nephew, a boy of twenty-four, who lives in the same house.”

“And the motive?”

“Money. McCabe had a bundle. Larry’s one of the minor heirs, but fifty thousand or so isn’t hard to take at his age.”

“Larry’s going to be a doctor,” Dana flared. “He wants to save lives. And he didn’t need the money. His uncle was going to see him through med school.”

“That’s true,” Ader said. “But a quick fortune might tempt even a potential doctor.”

“Not only potential ones,” I said a little enviously, thinking of the ocean cruiser I’d like to own some day. “But just how did you tag Larry as the murderer?”

“Because the young hot-head acted like a complete fool. He left enough evidence-you couldn’t call them ‘clues’; they’re much too obvious – to convict an archangel. Let me show you the sketch.”

Here Ader reached into his briefcase, and brought out a scale diagram which indicated the position of the body on the beach and the footprints made by the Colonel and those made by the murderer – to the body, and away from it.

“The sand was quite unmarked to begin with,” Ader said, “smoothed out by the tide the night before. We found the colonel’s prints, leading from the stairs across the sand to the water, and then back to where he lay down on his blanket. Then there are Larry’s tracks from the stairs to McCabe, and back. Nobody else’s there except the dog’s, which go all over, above and beneath the others. The beach is accessible only from the house and the sea; there’s no possible approach at the sides for they’re sheer rocky cliffs. That perfect privacy is what makes the property worth $200,000. Now, considering all that, what can any sensible person conclude? McCabe’s only visitor, as clearly shown by the tracks, was Larry Channing.”

“I suppose you checked all the prints.”

“Of course. Although it was hardly necessary. Larry admitted walking out to see his uncle about seven-thirty, while the rest of the family still slept. He even told us that they quarreled again. It wasn’t the first time. You see, the colonel didn’t want him to marry a poor girl like Dana.” A tinge of bitterness came into Ader’s voice. As an honest cop, he was always one jump ahead of the finance company. “The old man said that nobody but a fool married except for money, that love was a typically modern delusion, confined largely to soft-headed teen-agers and the women who read confession magazines. It’s just as easy to fall for a rich girl as a poor one, he maintained. That’s how he got his own fortune-by marrying a wealthy widow, no beauty, needless to say. The hell of it is, that gives the boy a better motive than money alone. The colonel was mad enough to cut him off for picking Dana. In that case, no med school.”

“Sounds pretty bad. What about the weapon?”

“Well, since McCabe’s skull was crushed, we looked for some kind of club. It wasn’t near the body, so we figured Larry got rid of it. But blamed if we didn’t find it right in the house, at the back of his own closet. It’s Larry’s pet walking stick, an ebony one with a roughly rounded, heavy knob for a handle. It had been carelessly wiped. There’s still some blood and hair on the thing. Now isn’t that a stupid way to commit murder?”

At that Dana leaped up, her eyes blazing. “He didn’t do it, that’s why! Don’t you see it’s too obvious, too easy?”

Ader grimaced.

“I’ve thought of that,” he said, “and in a way I agree. Unless he hoped to make us think that way – to believe he was framed, and very crudely at that. Larry is a bit hot-tempered, as I’ve said, but no fool. And only a prize idiot would leave a damning trail like this one. Talk about painting yourself into a corner. This bird put on a dozen coats.”

I had been studying the diagram while Ader talked, and now I groaned. “It was sure to happen some day. I might have known.”

“What’s that?” the lieutenant demanded.

“I’ll tell you. If Larry is innocent, you’ve got a real classic here – a locked room murder, basically. The tracks on the sand show plainly that nobody else came anywhere near the victim. Are you positive he was killed by a blow from that stick?”

“Not yet, although I’d bet on it. But there’s been no autopsy yet, and the stick hasn’t been tested by a pathologist. All we’ve done so far is check finger-prints and tracks. They’re all Larry’s and the colonel’s. The rest is up to you. But the man’s skull was dented badly, so if anything else killed him, the blow was superfluous, which makes no sense. However, the body’s at the morgue; I’ll have it brought here. You can have the stick any time, too.”

“What about Doc Kurzin? Going to bypass him again?” Kurzin’s the coroner, an ancient incubus who missed his forte as a meat-cutter for some supermarket.

“I’ll have to, if we’re going to get anywhere. Your standing as an expert in this county gives me that right, officially.”

“All right,” I said, a little reluctantly, because to be honest, it seemed that the boy must be guilty. After all, most murders are not subtle; they are chock full of blunders. When a man is keyed up to the point of killing, he’s not likely to be a cool planner. “I’ll do the P.M. as soon as you get the body here to the hospital. Then, if you want to bring the stick later, I’ll see if the blood and hair are really the victim’s. Meanwhile, do the usual and make me one of your fine lists of suspects. You know, descriptions, character analysis – the works. You’ve a knack for that.”

“There are plenty of possibles,” Ader said glumly. “Four other heirs in the house, and I don’t think the colonel ever won any popularity contests in the army or out of it.”

“How many of the other suspects fly? Because, believe me, it’ll take wings or teleportation to explain how the old man got killed without the murderer leaving tracks on the sand.”

“That’s why I can’t help thinking Larry did it. I don’t want to believe it, but the alternative, as you say, means a parachute jump, or something. And,” he added in a bitter voice, “a similar jump in reverse-upwards.”

“Larry is innocent,” Dana said firmly to me. “If you remember that, you’ll find the explanation. You’re our only hope, so please try very h-hard.”

“I should warn you of one thing,” I told them. “I’m not an advocate, remember; I can’t take sides. What if the facts of my investigation-” I was going to say,” – put another nail in the boy’s coffin?” but had the good sense to hunt a different metaphor – “make the case against Larry even worse? Maybe you should give the job to Kurzin at that. He’ll mess it up so that the jury might give the boy all the benefit of the doubt.”

“You won’t hurt his chances. He didn’t do it, and that’s what the evidence is bound to show finally,” Dana said, her voice still firm.

Ader shrugged in half humorous resignation.

“You heard her,” he said. “I’m inclined to agree that there’s nothing to lose, really. The worst D.A. in the business couldn’t fail to get a conviction right now, with no further investigation.” He led his niece gently towards the door. “I’ll have the body brought over immediately. And I’ll drop by myself with the stick later, unless I get tied up somewhere.” He patted the girl’s shoulder sympathetically, and they left.

Watching Dana leave, chin up, I thought that if Larry was smart enough to pick her, he wasn’t likely to bungle a murder so badly. Then I thought my logic was getting worse than hers, so I went back to my roundworms.

The body arrived about ninety minutes later, and things being slack at Pasteur, I was able to get right to work. Beginning, as usual, with the head, I had to agree with Ader that the crushed skull certainly explained the man’s death. In addition, it was also true that the old boy was remarkably healthy otherwise, and could have reached a hundred. There were laborious tissue and toxicological tests possible, but I felt them to be counter-indicated. I had no doubt he was killed by a blow on the head. I was just finishing up these gross tests, when Ader came in with the walking stick.

He studiously avoided looking at the remains, even though everything was back in place. In another minute I was through, and covered the body with a sheet. Then Ader came closer.

“Well?” he demanded.

“He was killed by a clout on the head, all right. Let’s see that stick.”

He gave it to me. There was a plastic bag over the heavy end of the stick; the stem was thin, tough ebony, thirty-eight inches long. There was little doubt that egg-shaped handle could account for the bone injury. Whether it had or not remained to be seen.

The blood test was fast and simple, a matter of typing the blood. The hair didn’t take long either, using a good comparison microscope. I shook my head ruefully at the results, and Ader’s face was bleak. He had his tail in a crack, so to speak. On the one hand, he had a dream of a case, with none of the usual rat-race of finding reluctant witnesses and other sorts of elusive evidence. On the other there was his niece, Dana, a favorite relation I inferred, about to lose her beloved to the gas chamber, or, if they were lucky, to a prison for thirty years or so. Either way, the lieutenant wasn’t going to be happy. Unless, of course, we found a new candidate for the big jump.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is no help. McCabe was killed by this stick. I’ll stake my professional reputation on that – and will have to so testify under oath.”

“I wasn’t expecting anything else,” he said listlessly. “For Dana’s sake, I was only hoping. Anyhow, here’s that complete run-down on the rest of the household. Read it over tomorrow, and maybe you’ll think of something. You’ve done it before on more hopeless cases.”

“This one out-hopelesses all the others,” I said. “And frankly, we don’t need suspects as much as we need ‘how was it done.’ One murder; one rather obvious killer – what’s the point in additional names?”

“I don’t know,” he said wearily. “But begin by assuming Larry is innocent, and then figure out how somebody else might have done it.”

“Very simple,” I replied. “All I need is another month and fifty per cent more brains. But I’ll try, Master.”

Ader left, looking desperately tired. He probably hadn’t slept much since the murder.

It was after eleven, but I didn’t feel pooped at all, so I sat down with the family dossier. Ader is very good at this sort of thing, and I could easily visualize the members of Colonel McCabe’s household.

There were five in the family itself, exclusive of the dead man. They were Larry, the nephew, a boy of twenty-four; two sons, Harry, aged thirty-two, and Wallace, thirty-nine; the colonel’s brother, Wayne, fifty-seven; and a cousin, Gordon Wheeler, twenty-eight. As for servants, an elderly couple kept the place clean and did the gardening. A middle-aged woman did the cooking.

When it came to motive, they all had it, except for the servants, who were provided for whether the colonel lived or died. For the family, it was a matter of money. McCabe was worth well over a million, his late wife having been the childless widow of a rich manufacturer. The colonel’s will was no secret. The two sons were down for $200,000 each; the brother, $150,000; Larry, $50,000; and the cousin, $30,000, all tax free. After a few small annuities to the servants, anything Uncle Sam left would go to the local museum, provided they kept McCabe’s arms collection, all of it, on permanent display.

For the old man fancied himself a military expert of high order. But instead of refighting the Civil War, and the one in 1914, he preferred to correct the errors of earlier generals. In short, he intended to rewrite Oman’s “The Art of War in the Middle Ages”.

One room of the house was devoted to a collection of medieval arms and armor. This was the responsibility of the cousin, Gordon, who catalogued the stuff, and kept it so polished and functional that McCabe could have left on a crusade at any moment, perfectly equipped with plate armor, sword, lance, dagger, and crossbow. Only a horse was lacking.

The late colonel was something of a bully at times, but not really a bad sort. There was no evidence that he interfered unduly with the members of his family, or that any of them had serious cause to hate him. It seemed to me, reading between Ader’s lines, that the only reasonable motive was money. For McCabe was possibly a bit stingy on handouts, although everybody had an allowance of sorts.

But, actually, motive wasn’t the basic problem here. My real job was just as I’d stated it to Ader: If Larry didn’t kill the colonel, how was it done? The “who” could wait, and would probably come from the method, I felt sure.

I took out the diagram and photos again. There’s a process called “brain-storming”, very popular on Madison Avenue. It consists of throwing the rational mind out of gear, and letting its motor race. You give your wildest fancies free rein, hoping to find gold among the dross. I tried that, and came up with some weird notions. The craziest was a theory that the murderer wore shoes giving fake pawprints of a dog. The trouble with that was the obvious shallowness of the prints on the photos. The coach dog weighed perhaps sixty pounds, this weight distributed over four paws. A 160 pound man would leave suspiciously deep prints by comparison. Still, I meant to have Ader check on the actual depth of the prints. I was desperate, you see.

But that “solution” didn’t even convince its inventor, so I took another tack, and this one gave me a thrill of hope. What if the approach had been from the sea? According to Ader’s notes, all members of the family were waterskiers, and the like-why not skin divers, too? If the murderer came out of the water, with or without special equipment, killed the colonel, and returned the same way, would he have left tracks, or would the tide erase them? Here was a very tenable possibility.

I was tempted to ring Ader at once, but it was after twelve, and I remembered his weariness. Wednesday would be soon enough. So I went home to bed, and dreamed of a skin-diving coach dog that terrorized the bathers.

The next morning I phoned the lieutenant, and told him my two theories. The man walking like a dog, as I’d feared, was nonsense. The plaster casts – this surprised even me, but Ader leaves nothing to chance-showed them far too shallow to have been made by a man.

The second solution, about approach from the sea, however, did excite him. The only question was whether such a feat was possible at the private beach. One way to settle that was to check with Sammy Ames, sports editor of the local paper, a buff on water games. Ader gave him a call, while I listened in, conference style. Ames was very emphatic. Nobody unwilling to commit suicide would swim within five miles of that coast at this time of the year. The undercurrents made it physically impossible to survive there; not even an Olympic gold medalist could manage it.

That was bad enough, but a call to the Yacht Club brought further verification, plus the fact that some footprints would have been left, at least until the evening tide came in.

It was hard enough finding those two theories; now I had to come up with a third, and it had to be a better one. That made a visit to the house mandatory, so I asked the lieutenant to take me there.

The place was quite impressive: a big, roomy, two-story mansion, with stairs in the back leading down some sixty feet of rock to the private beach. That beach was bounded with those minor precipices on three sides, and the sea itself on the fourth.

I won’t waste time describing the family, since their physical qualities are not relevant. All the men were healthy, athletic types, strongly masculine. They seemed genuinely sorry for Larry, but certain he was guilty.

The collection of medieval arms would have made the visit worthwhile in less harrowing circumstances. The walls were lined with daggers, battle-axes, bills, pikes, crossbows, and other ancient man-killers. There were several dummies in full suits of armor, beautifully burnished. Wheeler, the curator of this family museum, was obviously proud of the collection, and had become a trained specialist on medieval warfare through his research for the colonel. He enthusiastically demonstrated the correct use of several outlandish weapons, handling them with the assurance of an expert.

But none of this was clearing up the mystery – if there was one, and Larry didn’t happen to be our murderer.

Well, I was pretty discouraged at this point. Maybe John Dickson Carr can make up and solve these locked room puzzles on paper, but this was too much for me. I was ready to throw in the sponge, and go back to Larry as the killer.

But then I recalled other recent cases Ader and I had worked on. In those, a fresh appraisal of the evidence broke the impasse. Besides, I liked Dana. And it makes a difference, when you have a personal interest in an investigation.

So back I went to the lab. The first thing I did was re-read my notes on the autopsy. They didn’t change a thing. The colonel’s skull had been fractured just above the right ear. I tried to visualize how the blow might have been struck. If the killer had stood to the right of, and just behind the old man, lying there with his feet towards the sea, and made a golf-like swing from right to left, with the knobby end of the stick down, hands near the ferrule, that would account for the injury. Nothing unlikely there; no inconsistencies to take hold of.

Rather gloomily, I turned to the remaining evidence, the stick itself. I held it in the way I had pictured it, and tried to re-enact the fatal swing. Suddenly I felt a surge of hope. The blood and hair were in the wrong place! If the stick had been swung, like a golf-club, by a standing man, the side should be stained. In fact, that would be true no matter how the thing was manipulated as a bludgeon. But instead, the very top of the handle had the blood and hair. How was that possible?

Excited, I experimented again. The only way to hit a person with the top of the knob would be to make a spear-like thrust forward with it. But that would be awkward and unlikely even if enough power was possible, something I doubted. Then a whole new prospect opened before me, one that suggested many significant modifications of our interpretation of the evidence. That stick hadn’t been used as a club at all. It must have been projected like a spear, knob first. But how? Certainly nobody could actually throw the thing, like a lance, with sufficient force and accuracy to kill a man from – how many feet? I checked the drawing again. The body was almost forty feet from the foot of the stairs, which is where the murderer would have had to stand in order to avoid tracking up the sand. Such a throw was utterly fantastic by sheer muscle power. The skull has thick bones, not easily fractured.

Then, looking at that long, slender body of the stick, I had an idea. I grabbed my lens and studied the metal ferrule. Sure enough, there were two shallow but definite grooves across the tip. They could have only one explanation; in them a taut string would not slip off the end of the ferrule. That meant a crossbow – it seemed obvious, now. What could be simpler than placing the narrow ebony rod in the slot of a strung crossbow, knob forward, and then, from a position on the stairs, aiming at the man lying there on the sand. The stick, propelled with all the force of a powerful metal leaf spring, would strike a terrific blow on the victim’s head.

I began to pace the floor feverishly. A perfect solution; one that explained everything. So that’s why there were no other tracks. The killer didn’t need to leave the stairs. What no mere arm could do, the crossbow made easy. Aiming one was no harder than pointing a rifle, and forty feet was a short range. Even so, the murderer must have practiced a bit to make sure. Perhaps he hadn’t hoped to convict Larry, but merely to confuse the issue.

All right, he shot the strange arrow, then leaving it by the body – I cursed. Another good theory gone to pot. The stick had not remained by the corpse. How did the marksman recover it without leaving tracks?

I thought of a string, say a nylon fishline, tied to the missile. But another peek at the photos ruined that solution. There was no long, narrow trail in the soft sand to show where the stick was hauled back.

But I knew there must be some explanation; the rest fitted too well. I examined the stick again, starting at the ferrule. In the middle of the polished stem, I found some indentations. They were not deep, but then the wood is very hard. I measured them, and noticed their spacing. There were no others like them; obviously, Larry took good care of his prize possession. It was baffling, especially because I felt that I was getting close.

Then, seeing the photo again, it came to me. The sort of thing I should have spotted immediately. But any theory needs testing, so I called Ader, and asked him to meet me at the beach. He was to get, on the Q.T., one of the non-suspects, say the housekeeper, to bring Gustavus Adolphus, the coach dog. I wanted somebody the animal knew, and would obey. Since she fed him, that was no problem. He knew and obeyed her.

At the beach, I showed Ader the marks on the stick, and explained the crossbow theory.

“Those marks have been made by teeth,” I told him. The Dalmatian was racing about, happy to be out on the beach again for a romp along the shore. At our request the housekeeper, a little bewildered but willing, stood on the stairs and flung the ebony stick end over end towards the water. “Fetch, Gustavus!” she shrilled, and barking joyously, the spotted dog raced out, seized it with his mouth, and carried it to the woman.

I grinned at the lieutenant.

“That completes the story. When the old man was dead, and the killer stood where she is now, all he had to do was shout ‘Fetch!’ and the dog retrieved the murder weapon. A wordless accomplice. Neat. No footprints on the sand.”

“He was sure a lot of help to the poor colonel,” Ader snapped, giving the clumsy hound an indignant glare. “Instead of chewing up the murderer, he helps the guy get away with it. Or almost.”

“Don’t blame the dog,” I said. “You can’t expect these so called lower animals to understand murder. That takes the higher intelligence; the same that invented it. But Wheeler must be our man; as you saw, he’s an expert on all those medieval weapons. Now that I think of it, he didn’t demonstrate or even discuss the crossbow. That’s pretty significant.”

“I’ve no doubt that’s the way it happened,” Ader said. “Now to prove it to a jury.”

“That won’t be easy,” I said. “Except for the grooves for the bow-string, and the teeth marks on the stick, there isn’t any evidence to impress laymen. I can’t prove the stick was actually fired. Maybe we haven’t helped Larry very much, even now.”

“Don’t you believe it,” was the grim reply. “I know just how to break Wheeler down. The oldest trick in the game. He’ll get an anonymous phone call tonight. Somebody will describe the main points of the murder, claiming to be an eye-witness, and demanding a pay-off. If Wheeler’s guilty, and I’ve no doubt about that, he’ll want to meet that Mr X very badly, either to bribe or kill him. We’ll have him cold, with witnesses. But first, we’ll have to see that the housekeeper doesn’t spill the beans. Luckily, Gustavus Adolphus can’t talk.”

“Don’t say that. If he could talk, our job would have been a lot easier.”

Well, as Ader promised, the trap worked. I can see why. A murderer is full of fears generally, and the worst of them is an eyewitness to the crime.

Dana says that she and Larry will name their first boy after me. I suggested Gustavus Adolphus instead. Although he was an accomplice, he finally testified for the defense, making our case solid.

Private Nicholas Train was sitting on his bunk polishing his combat boots, wondering if he hadn’t made a mistake when he passed up the chance for an exemption. They considered cops essential, the Selective Service Board did, and he could have filed papers and stayed out of the draft, stayed safely at home. Pounding a beat in Brooklyn wasn’t exactly cherry duty, but it beat the hell out of getting shot at by the krauts or the nips and maybe coming home with some pieces missing, or maybe in a box.

But, what the hell, he hadn’t liked Hitler from the start, and when his Chinese girlfriend asked him to take her to Mott Street for roast duck lo mein and he’d got an earful from her about what was going on in China he decided that the nips were no better than the Nazis.

Pearl Harbor was the last straw. He was ready to sign up the next morning but there would have been nobody to take care of his mother so he kept pounding his beat, mooning around the house when he was off duty, and taking his Chinese girlfriend to Mott Street whenever she asked him to.

Then, almost a year after Pearl Harbor, Mom died. The day after the funeral Train had dressed in civvies, put in his papers at the precinct and signed up for the United States Army.

And here he was halfway through Basic, sitting on his bed polishing his boots. Somebody had brought a portable radio into the barracks and they were playing Christmas music. A couple of guys were writing letters home. There was a lazy poker game going on, the cards smacking down and coins rattling on a foot locker. And Private Aaron Hirsch was sitting on his bunk crying.

“What’s the matter with you, Jewboy?” That was Private Joseph Francis Xavier Schulte, former altar boy, former star fullback of St Aloysius’s Academy, designated barracks anti-Semite. “You got no right to cry at Christmas carols, you Christ-killer.”

Hirsch jumped up. His face turned the same color as his crinkled red hair. “Shut the hell up, Saint. What I do is my business.”

“Oh, listen to the little kike. Ain’t you tough, Hirsch? You want some of what I gave that Jewboy halfback from Maimonides? I put that bastard in the hospital, in case you don’t remember.”

“Cut it out!”

Ah, the voice of authority. The soldier standing in the doorway wore two chevrons on his winter OD’s. His olive drab uniform was neatly pressed. In it he looked like a military fashion plate compared to the trainees in their baggy fatigues. He wore a brassard around one sleeve, designating him as the corporal of the guard.

“Hey, Pops!” He pointed a finger at Train. “Grab your piece and report to the company office. Captain Coughlin wants to see you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

“Captain Coffin?”

“Very funny. Don’t let him hear you call him that.”

“What’s he want me for?” This had to be something serious. If it wasn’t, Corporal Bowden would have handled it himself, or at most Sergeant Dillard. The company first sergeant was as close to God as they ever saw, most days. Officers were some kind of exotic creatures who kept to themselves and spoke to the GIs only through sergeants and corporals.

“Christ, Pops, how the hell do I know?” Bowden took a few steps and clicked the portable radio into silence. “Hey, it’s Saturday morning. You guys get a few hours off to polish your gear and get your letters written. What’s this?”

He picked up the playing cards and the cash that was laid out on a foot locker between two cots. “You guys know there’s no gambling allowed in the barracks. And it’s payday. How do you have any mazuma left to play for? Now I have to confiscate this evidence.” He stuffed the cards in one pocket and the money in another. “I don’t know, I don’t know, how are we ever going to make soldiers out of you sad sacks?”

Nick Train had shoved his feet into his boots and tucked his fatigue jacket into his trousers. “Coughlin really wants to see me, Bowden?”

“No, I’m just trying to ruin your Saturday. Of course he wants to see you.”

“No idea why?”

“Nope.”

Train smoothed out the blankets on his bunk, took his Garrand rifle down from the rack near the barracks door and headed out into the wintry Georgia air. For a December morning the day wasn’t too cold, certainly no colder than Train was used to in Brooklyn. The sky was clear and sparkling and the sun was a brilliant disk. There were a few patches of snow still on the ground. The last snowfall had been three days ago. Train held his rifle at port arms and quick-timed across the company area toward the office.

The building behind him was new construction, whitewashed wooden walls under a green tar-paper roof. It would probably be hot as blazes in the summer but he wouldn’t know that. It was definitely freezing cold in the winter.

First Sergeant Dillard was working at his desk in the company office. He looked up when Train arrived, then back at his paperwork. He didn’t say anything, didn’t indicate why Train had been summoned.

Train stood at attention facing the First Sergeant’s desk.

After a while, Dillard looked up again and grunted. “Go back to the door and knock the snow off your boots. What kind of pigsty do you think this is?”

Train complied. Then he returned to stand in front of Dillard, his Garrand at his side, butt on the linoleum floor beside his polished boot.

“Captain Coughlin wants to see you, Train.”

“Corporal Bowden told me. What’s it’s about, Sarge?”

“Sergeant.”

“Sorry. Sergeant.”

“I don’t know.” First Sergeant Martin Dillard shook his head. “I don’t know, but it’s something big. He’s got Lieutenant McWilliams in there with him. And I heard some walloping a while ago.” He shook his head again. “Just go knock on the door, Train, and maybe say a prayer while you’re at it.”

Lieutenant Phillips McWilliams opened the door to the captain’s office when Train knocked. McWilliams was gussied up in officer’s dark greens, the silver bars shining on his shoulder straps like miniature neon bulbs, the US insignia and crossed rifles of the infantry on his lapels polished to a sheen. He even affected the Sam Browne belt that every other officer Train knew had abandoned.

Train almost expected him to be wearing a parade ground saber with his uniform, but he wasn’t. Instead, there was a holster hooked to his uniform belt, the regulation holster issued to officers along with their.45 caliber Colt automatics.

The lieutenant jerked his head toward Captain Samuel Coughlin’s desk.

Train crossed the room, halted, thumped his rifle butt on the floor and executed a sharp rifle salute, the way he’d been taught a few weeks ago.

Captain Coughlin bounced his forefinger off his right eyebrow, then folded his hands in front of him on his desk. Even in December he sat in his shirtsleeves, his uniform jacket with the railroad tracks on the shoulders on a nearby hanger. Train had never been in the captain’s office before. He kept his posture but even so he was able to see the pictures on the freshly whitewashed wall behind the captain. There was a standard shot of President Roosevelt, one of old General Pershing and one of General Marshall, and a blow-up that must have been made in France during the First War. It showed a very young Samuel Coughlin standing rigidly while an officer who had to be Douglas MacArthur himself pinned a medal on his khaki tunic.

There was a fire axe on Captain Coughlin’s desk. Behind him, Train saw another doorway. The door-frame and the door had been damaged, Train guessed, by the fire-axe.

“They call you Pops, don’t they?” Captain Coughlin asked.

Train said, “Yes, sir.”

“Why is that?”

“They’re mostly kids, sir. All of them, in fact. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old. I guess Hirsch is a little older, maybe twenty. They think I’m an old man.”

“How old are you, Train?”

“I’m twenty-four, sir.”

“Used to be a police officer, did you?”

Captain Coughlin knew damned well that Train used to be a police officer. He knew how old he was, knew everything else that was in Train’s 201 file, the personnel folder that every man Jack in the Army had. Still, he answered.

“Yes, sir.”

“Twenty-four.” The Captain smiled sadly. “Twenty-four and they call you Pops. Well, I guess we did the same thing in ’18.” The Captain’s face was leathery and etched with lines, his hair graying at the temples.

Captain Coughlin jerked his thumb in the direction of the damaged doorway. “Do you know what’s in there, Train?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s the company safe room. We keep classified information locked up in there. What passes for classified information in this kindergarten. We also put the payroll in there the night before payday.”

Captain Coughlin pushed himself back from his desk and stood up. He moved toward the damaged doorway. “Take a look, soldier. Go ahead in there.”

It was only a few steps. Once inside the safe room Train stopped. The safe door hung open. Train couldn’t tell what if anything was inside. A coffee mug stood on top of the safe. Corporal Miller, the company pay clerk, sat beside it in a battered wicker chair. His arms hung over the arms of the chair, almost but not quite dragging on the linoleum. His head was canted to one side. His hair was matted with blood. He wasn’t moving, and Train had seen enough bodies in the line of duty as a cop to know that he was dead.

Even so, he flashed an inquiry to the Captain, got a suggestion of a nod in return, then felt the side of Miller’s neck, searching for a pulse. There was no pulse. The body was cold. There were no windows in the room. Most of the light came from a shaded fixture hanging by a long cord from the ceiling, casting macabre shadows on Miller’s face. A little more light filtered through the open doorway from the Captain’s office.

Train turned around. Captain Coughlin was standing with his fists balled and balanced on his hips. “Poor fellow,” Coughlin murmured. “He was one of our good boys, you know. Religious as all get-out. Chapel every Sunday. Rosary in his pocket, Missal in his foot-locker. Poor bastard.”

Coughlin didn’t use strong language very often.

Lieutenant McWilliams stood in the doorway, looking like a photographer’s model.

Turning back to Corporal Miller, Train observed that Miller, too, had been issued a forty-five. The holster hung from Miller’s belt, the butt of the automatic visible from where Train stood.

“I should probably call the Provost Marshal right now,” Captain Coughlin announced. “It’s his business eventually, in any case. But they’re looking to put me out to pasture. I shouldn’t tell you this, Train, I wouldn’t tell it to any of the kids in this outfit, but I’m going to rely on your maturity. If I turn up with a dead payroll clerk and an empty safe, they’ll decide I can’t cut it any more and I’m out of here on a pension. Not for me, Sunny Jim! Not with a big war going on.”

He walked around the safe and the wicker chair with its motionless occupant. “No, sir, not for Samuel Coughlin, USA. If we can solve this thing and present a solution to the Provost Marshal instead of a mystery, I just might get out of this kindergarten and got a chance to do some fighting before I’m through.”

“I don’t know if that’s wise, Captain.”

Lieutenant McWilliams had a cultured voice. He was the opposite of the Captain.

Train knew-everybody in the unit knew – that Coughlin was a mustang. He’d been an enlisted man in the first World War, earned a commission and spent the Roaring Twenties and the Depression years soldiering at backwoods Army posts. Now he was overage in grade and hanging on by his fingernails.

But McWilliams was the scion of a high society family. Barracks rumors claimed that his mother had wanted him to live out her own thwarted ambitions, to become a great and famous botanist. Either that, or enter the priesthood. Or both, like old Gregor Mendel. Instead, Old Man McWilliams was delighted when Junior opted for the United States Military Academy. All it took was a couple of phone calls and a generous campaign contribution to a United States Senator, and young McWilliams was in. And he’d done his daddy proud. Cadet Captain, top 10 percent in his class, starting quarterback on the Army football team until a knee injury sidelined him for his senior season. And that might have been a blessing in disguise. The team had played badly and wound up the season losing the Army-Navy game for the third year in a row. At least Phillips McWilliams wouldn’t be tarred with that loss. And the 1942 football season hadn’t been much better, ending with another loss to Navy, a disgraceful fourteen – nothing shellacking.

But now Phillips McWilliams was a First Lieutenant in the United States Army, executive officer of a training company at the Infantry School with a glittering future before him and only a careworn middle-aged Captain to climb over – at least for the moment. As an officer his duties weren’t too rigorous. Train knew that. The ordinary GIs knew more about the lives of officers than the other way around. The people on the bottom always knew more about the people on top. That was one of life’s constants. The trainees knew that Lieutenant McWilliams drove a shiny new Packard convertible, one of the last to roll off the line before the factory switched to war production, and he used it to cruise down broad Lumpkin Boulevard to Columbus or across the Chattahoochie River into Phenix City, Alabama, for a night of drinking and gambling and whoring pretty much whenever he felt like it.

McWilliams’s Packard was just one car that all the trainees recognized. All the officers and NCOs in the permanent party had cars: Captain Coughlin’s gray Plymouth, Sergeant Dillard’s battered Ford station wagon, Corporal Miller’s little green Nash. They all bore Fort Benning tags, blue for the officers, red for the NCOs, all carefully logged in or out every time they passed through the post gatehouse.

Captain Coughlin was talking again. Train snapped back to the moment. To the – he grinned inwardly-crime scene. “The First Sergeant called me this morning,” he said. “Told me that he couldn’t get a rise out of Miller. Corporal had spent the night in the safe room, same as every month the night before payday.”

The Captain paused. The room was silent. A platoon of officer candidates passed by outside. Train could hear their boots crashing on the frozen Georgia soil, hear them singing the unofficial Fort Benning Infantry School song.

High above the Chattahoochie

Near the Upatois

Stands our dear old alma mater

Benning’s School for Boys.

The episode of the nail and the requiem was one of the most characteristic of all those in which, over a relatively brief period, I was privileged to watch Trevis Tarrant at work. Characteristic, in that it brought out so well the unusual aptitude of the man to see clearly, to welcome all the facts, no matter how apparently contradictory, and to think his way through to the only possible solution by sheer logic, while everyone else boggled at impossibilities and sought to forget them. From the gruesome beginning that November morning, when he was confronted by the puzzle of the sealed studio, to the equally gruesome denouement that occurred despite his own grave warning twenty-four hours later, his brain clicked successively and infallibly along the rails of reason to the inevitable, true goal.

Tarrant had been good enough to meet us at the boat when Valerie and I had returned from our wedding trip; and a week later I had been delighted with the opportunity of spending the night at his apartment, telling him of the trip and our plans and hearing of his own activities during the interval. After all, he was largely responsible for my having won Valerie when I did; our friendship had grown to intimacy during those few days when the three of us, and Katoh too, had struggled with the thickening horror in Valerie’s modernistic house.

It was that most splendid time of year when the suburban air is tinged with the smoke of leaves, when the country beyond flaunts beauty along the roads, when the high windows of the city look out every evening through violet dusk past myriad twinkling lights at the gorgeous painting of sunset. We had been to a private address at the Metropolitan Museum by a returning Egyptologist; we had come back to the apartment and talked late into the night. Now, at eight-thirty the next morning, we sat at breakfast in Tarrant’s lounge while the steam hissed comfortably in the wall radiators and the brisk, bright sky poured light through the big window beside us.

I remember that we had nearly finished eating and that Tarrant was saying: “Cause and effect rule this world; they may be a mirage but they are a consistent mirage, everywhere, except possibly in subatomic physics, there is a cause for each effect, and that cause can be found,” when the manager came in. He wore a fashionable morning coat and looked quite handsome; he was introduced to me as Mr Gleeb. Apparently he had merely dropped in, as was his custom, to assure himself that all was satisfactory with a valued tenant, but the greetings were scarcely over when the phone rang and Katoh indicated that he was being called His monosyllabic answers gave no indication of the conversation from the other end he finished with “All right; I’ll be up in a minute.”

He turned back to us. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but there is some trouble at the penthouse. Or else my electrician has lost his mind. He says there is a horrible kind of music being played there and that he can get no response to his ringing at the door. I shall have to go up and see what it is all about.”

The statement was a peculiar one and Tarrant’s eyes, I thought, held an immediate gleam of curiosity. He got out of his seat in a leisurely fashion, however and declared: “You know, Gleeb, I’d like a breath of fresh air after breakfast. Mind if we come up with you? There’s a terrace, I believe, where we can take a step or so while you’re untangling the matter.”

“Not at all, Mr Tarrant. Come right along. I hardly imagine it’s of any importance, but I can guarantee plenty of air.”

There was, in fact a considerable wind blowing across the open terrace that, guarded by a three-foot parapet, surrounded the penthouse on all sides except the north, where its wall was flush with that of the building. The penthouse itself was rather small, containing as I later found, besides the studio which comprised its whole northern end, only a sleeping room with a kitchenette and a lavatory off its east and west sides respectively. The entrance was on the west side of the studio and here stood the electrician who had come to the roof to repair the radio antenna of the apartment house and had been arrested by the strange sounds from within. As we strolled about the terrace, we observed the penthouse itself as well as the wide view below. Its southern portion possessed the usual windows but the studio part had only blank brick walls; a skylight was just visible above it and there was, indeed, a very large window, covering most of the northern wall, but this, of course, was invisible and inaccessible from the terrace.

Presently the manager beckoned us over to the entrance door and, motioning us to be silent, asked: “What do you make of that, Mr Tarrant?”

In the silence the sound of doleful music was more than audible. It appeared to emanate from within the studio; slow, sad and mournful, it was obviously a dirge and its full-throated quality suggested that it was being rendered by a large orchestra. After a few moments’ listening Tarrant said: “That is the rendition of a requiem mass and very competently done, too. Unless I’m mistaken, it is the requiem of Palestrina… There; there’s the end of it… Now it’s beginning again.”

“Sure, it goes on like that all the time,” contributed Wicks, the electrician. “There must be someone in there, but I can’t get no answer.” He banged on the door with his fist, but obviously without hope of response.

“Have you looked in at the windows?”

“Sure.”

We, too, stepped to the available windows and peered in, but beyond a bedroom that had not been used, nothing was visible. The door from the bedroom to the studio was closed. The windows were all locked.

“I suggest,” said Tarrant, “that we break in.”

The manager hesitated. “I don’t know. After all, he has a right to play any music he likes, and if he doesn’t want to answer the door-”

“Who has the penthouse, anyhow?”

“A man named Michael Salti. An eccentric fellow, like many of these artists. I don’t know much about him, to tell the truth; we can’t insist on as many references as we used to, nowadays. He paid a year’s rent in advance and he hasn’t bothered anyone in the building, that’s about all I can tell you.”

“Well,” Tarrant considered, “this performance is a little peculiar. How does he know we may not be trying to deliver an important message? How about his phone?”

“Tried it,” Wicks answered. “The operator says there isn’t any answer.”

“I’m in favour of taking a peek. Look here, Gleeb, if you don’t want to take the responsibility of breaking in, let us procure a ladder and have a look through the skylight. Ten to one that will pass unobserved; and if everything seems all right we can simply sneak away.”

To this proposal the manager consented, although it seemed to me that he did so most reluctantly. Possibly the eerie sounds that continued to issue through the closed door finally swayed him, for their quality, though difficult to convey, was certainly upsetting. In any event the ladder was brought and Tarrant himself mounted it, once it had been set in place. I saw him looking through the skylight, then leaning closer, peering intently through hands cupped about his eyes. Presently he straightened and came down the ladder in some haste.

His face, when he stood beside us, was strained.

“I think you should call the police,” he grated. “At once. And wait till they get here before you go in.”

“The police? But – what is it?”

“It’s not pleasant,” Tarrant said slowly. “I think it’s murder.”

Nor would he say anything further until the police, in the person of a traffic patrolman from Park Avenue, arrived. Then we all went in together, Gleeb’s passkey having failed and the door being broken open.

The studio was a large, square room, and high, and the light, sweeping in through the north wall and the skylight, illuminated it almost garishly. It was sparsely furnished; a couch, a chair, a stool, an easel and a cabinet for paints and supplies stood on a hardwood floor which two rugs scarcely covered. The question of the music was soon settled; in one corner was an electric victrola with an automatic arrangement for turning the record and starting it off again when it had reached its end. The record was of Palestrina’s Requiem Mass, played by a well-known orchestra. Someone, I think it was Tarrant, crossed the room and turned it off, while we stood huddled near the door, gazing stupidly at the twisted, bloody figure on the couch.

It was that of a girl, altogether naked; although she was young – not older than twenty-two certainly – her body was precociously voluptuous. One of her legs was contorted into a bent position, her mouth was awry, her right hand held a portion of the couch covering in an agonised clutch. Just beneath her left breast the hilt of a knife protruded shockingly. The bleeding had been copious.

It was Tarrant again who extinguished the four tall candles, set on the floor and burning at the corners of the couch. As he did so he murmured:

“You will remember that the candles were burning at eight forty-seven, officer. I dislike mockery.”

Then I was out on the terrace again, leaning heavily against the western parapet. In the far distance the Orange mountains stood against the bright horizon; somewhat nearer, across the river, huddled the building masses that marked Newark; overhead a plane droned south-westward. I gagged and forced my thoughts determinedly toward that plane. It was a transport plane, it was going to Newark Airport; probably it was an early plane from Boston. On it were people; prosaic people, thank God. One of them was perhaps a button salesman; presently he would enter the offices of Messrs. Simon and Morgetz and display his buttons on a card for the benefit of Mr Simon… Now my insides were behaving less drastically, I could gasp; and I did gasp, deep intakes of clear, cold air.

When I came back into the studio, a merciful blanket covered the girl’s body. And for the first time I noticed the easel. It stood in the south-east corner of the room, diagonally opposite the couch and across the studio from the entrance doorway. It should have faced north-west, to receive the light from the big north window, and in fact the stool to its right indicated that position. But the easel had been partly turned, so that it faced south-west, toward the bedroom door; and one must walk almost to that door to observe its canvas.

This, stretched tightly on its frame, bore a painting in oil of the murdered girl. She was portrayed in a nude, half-crouching pose, her arms extended, and her features held a revoltingly lascivious leer. The portrait was entitled “La Seduction”. In the identical place where the knife had pierced her actual body, a large nail had been driven through the web of the canvas. It was half-way through, the head protruding two inches on the obverse side of the picture; and a red gush of blood had been painted down the torso from the point where the nail entered.

Tarrant stood with his hands in his pockets, surveying this work of art. His gaze seemed focused upon the nail, incongruous in its strange position and destined to play so large a part in the tragedy. He was murmuring to himself and his voice was so low that I scarcely caught his words.

“Madman’s work… But why is the easel turned away from the room… Why is that…?”

It was late afternoon in Tarrant’s apartment and much activity had gone forward. The Homicide Squad in charge of Lieutenant Mullins had arrived and unceremoniously ejected everyone else from the penthouse, Tarrant included. Thereupon he had called a friend at Headquarters and been assured of a visit from Deputy Inspector Peake, who would be in command of the case, a visit which had not yet eventuated.

I had gone about my business in the city somewhat dazedly. But I had met Valerie for luncheon downtown and her presence was like a fragrant, reviving draft of pure ozone. She had left again for Norrisville, after insisting that I stay with Tarrant another night when she saw how excited I had become over the occurrence of the morning. Back in the apartment Katoh, who, for all that he was a man of our own class in Japan, was certainly an excellent butler in New York, had immediately provided me with a fine bottle of Irish whisky (Bushmills, bottled in 1919). I was sipping my second highball and Tarrant was quietly reading across the room, when Inspector Peake rang the bell.

He advanced into the room with hand outstretched. “Mr Tarrant, I believe?… Ah. Glad to know you, Mr Phelan.” He was a tall, thin man in multi, with a voice unexpectedly soft. I don’t know why, but I was also surprised that a policeman should wear so well-cut a suit of tweeds. As he sank into a chair, he continued, “I understand you were among the first to enter the penthouse, Mr Tarrant. But I’m afraid there isn’t much to add now. The case is cut and dried.”

“You have the murderer?”

“Not yet. But the drag-net is out. We shall have him, if not today, then tomorrow or the next day.”

“The artist, I suppose?”

“Michael Salti, yes. An eccentric man, quite mad… By the way, I must thank you for that point about the candles. In conjunction with the medical examiner’s evidence it checked the murder definitely at between one and two a.m.”

“There is no doubt, then, I take it, about the identity of the criminal.”

“No,” Peake asserted, “none at all. He was seen alone with his model at 10.50 p.m. by one of the apartment house staff and the elevator operators are certain no one was taken to the penthouse during the evening or night. His fingerprints were all over the knife, the candlesticks, the victrola record. There was a lot more corroboration, too.”

“And was he seen to leave the building after the crime?

“No, he wasn’t. That’s the one missing link. But since he isn’t here, he must have left. Perhaps by the fire-stairs; we’ve checked it and it’s possible… The girl is Barbara Brebant – a wealthy family.” The inspector shook his head. “A wild one, though; typical Prohibition product. She has played around with dubious artistics from the Village and elsewhere for some years; gave most of ’em more than they could take, by all accounts. Young, too; made her debut only about a year ago. Apparently she has made something of a name for herself in the matter of viciousness; three of our men brought in the very same description – a vicious beauty.”

“The old Roman type,” Tarrant surmised. “Not so anachronistic in this town, at that… Living with Salti?”

“No. She lived at home. When she bothered to go home. No one doubts, though, that she was Salti’s mistress. And from what I’ve learned, when she was any man’s mistress he was pretty certain to be dragged through the mire. Salti, being mad, finally killed her.”

“Yes, that clicks,” Tarrant agreed. “The lascivious picture and the nail driven through it. Mad men, of course, act perfectly logically. He was probably a loose liver himself, but she showed him depths he had not suspected. Then remorse. His insanity taking the form of an absence of the usual values, he made her into a symbol of his own vice, through the painting, and then killed her, just as he mutilated the painting with the nail… Yes, Salti is your man all right.”

Peake ground out a cigarette. “A nasty affair. But not especially mysterious. I wish all our cases were as simple.” He was preparing to take his leave.

Tarrant also got up. He said: “Just a moment. There were one or two things-”

“Yes?”

“I wonder if I could impose upon you a little more, Inspector. Just to check some things I noticed this morning. Can I be admitted to the penthouse now?”

Peake shrugged, as if the request were a useless one, but took it with a certain good grace. “Yes, I’ll take you up. All our men have left now, except a patrolman who will guard the premises until we make the arrest. I still have an hour to spare.”

It was two hours, however, before they returned. The inspector didn’t come in but I caught Tarrant’s parting words at the entrance. “You will surely assign another man to the duty tonight, won’t you?” The policeman’s reply sounded like a grunt of acquiescence.

I looked at my friend in amazement when he came into the lounge. His clothes, even his face, were covered with dirt; his nose was a long, black smudge. By the time he had bathed and changed and we sat down to one of Katoh’s dinners, it was near to half-past nine.

During dinner Tarrant was unaccustomedly silent. Even after we had finished and Katoh had brought our coffee and liqueurs, he sat at a modernistic tabour, stirring the black liquid reflectively, and in the light of the standing lamp behind him I thought his face wore a slight frown.

Presently he gave that peculiar whistle that summoned his man and the butler’s valet appeared almost immediately from the passage to the kitchen. “Sit down, doctor,” he spoke without looking up.

Doubtless a small shift in my posture expressed my surprise, for he continued, for my benefit, “I’ve told you that Katoh is a doctor in his own country, a well-educated man who is over here really on account of this absurd spy custom. Because of that nonsense I am privileged to hire him as a servant, but when I wish his advice as a friend, I call him doctor – a title to which he is fully entitled – and institute a social truce. Usually I do it when I’m worried… I’m worried now.”

Katoh, meantime, had hoisted himself on to the divan, where he sat smiling and helping himself to one of Tarrant’s Dimitrinoes. “Sozhial custom matter of convenience,” he acknowledged. “Conference about what?”

“About this penthouse murder,” said Tarrant without further ado. “You know the facts related by Inspector Peake. You heard them?

“I listen. Part my job.”

“Yes, well that portion is all right. Salti’s the man. There’s no mystery about that, not even interesting, in fact. But there’s something else, something that isn’t right. It stares you in the face, but the police don’t care. Their business is to arrest the murderer; they know who he is and they’re out looking for him. That’s enough for them. But there is a mystery up above, a real one. I’m not concerned with chasing crooks, but their own case won’t hold unless this curious fact fits in. It is as strange as anything I’ve ever met.”

Katoh’s grin had faded; his face was entirely serious. “What this mystery?”

“It’s the most perfect sealed room, or rather sealed house, problem ever reported. There was no way out and yet the man isn’t there. No possibility of suicide; the fingerprints on the knife are only one element that rules that out. No, he was present all right. But where did he go, and how?

“Listen carefully. I’ve checked this from my own observation, from the police investigations, and from my later search with Peake.

“When we entered the penthouse this morning, Gleeb’s passkey didn’t suffice; we had to break the entrance door in because it was bolted on the inside by a strong bar. The walls of the studio are of brick and they have no windows except on the northern side where there is a sheer drop to the ground. The window there was fastened on the inside and the skylight was similarly fastened. The only other exit from the studio is the door to the bedroom. This was closed and the key turned in the lock; the key was on the studio side of the door.

“Yes, I know,” Tarrant went on, apparently forestalling an interruption; “it is sometimes possible to turn a key in a lock from the wrong side, by means of pincers or some similar contrivance. That makes the bedroom, the lavatory and the kitchenette adjoining it, possibilities. There is no exit from any of them except by the windows. They were all secured from the inside and I am satisfied that they cannot be so secured by anyone already out of the penthouse.”

He paused and looked over at Katoh, whose head nodded up and down as he made the successive points. “Two persons in penthouse when murder committed. One is victim, other is Salti man. After murder only victim is visible. One door, windows and skylight are only exists and they are all secured on inside. Cannot be secured from outside. Therefore, Salti man still in penthouse when you enter.”

“But he wasn’t there when we entered. The place was thoroughly searched. I was there then myself.”

“Maybe trap-door. Maybe space under floor or entrance to floor below.”

“Yes,” said Tarrant, “well, now get this. There are no trapdoors in the flooring of the penthouse, there are none in the walls and there are not even any in the roof. I have satisfied myself of that with Peake. Gleeb, the manager, who was on the spot when the penthouse was built, further assures me of it.”

“Only place is floor,” Katoh insisted. “Salti man could make this himself.”

“He couldn’t make a trap-door without leaving at least a minute crack,” was Tarrant’s counter. “At least I don’t see how he could. The flooring of the studio is hardwood, the planks closely fitted together, and I have been over every inch of it. Naturally there are cracks between the planks, lengthwise; but there are no transverse cracks anywhere. Gleeb has shown me the specifications of that floor. The planks are grooved together and it is impossible to raise any plank without splintering the grooving. From my own examination I am sure none of the planks has been, or can be, lifted.

“All this was necessary because there is a space of something like two and a half feet between the floor of the penthouse and the roof of the apartment building proper. One has to mount a couple of steps at the entrance of the penthouse. Furthermore, I have been in part of this space. Let me make it perfectly clear how I got there.

“The bedroom adjoins the studio on the south, and the lavatory occupies the north-west corner of the bedroom. It is walled off, of course. Along the northern wall of the lavatory (which is part of the southern wall of the studio) is the bath-tub; and the part of the flooring under the bath-tub has been cut away, leaving an aperture to the space beneath.”

I made my first contribution. “But how can that be? Wouldn’t the bath-tub fall through?”

“No. The bath-tub is an old-fashioned one, installed by Saltri himself only a few weeks ago. It is not flush with the floor, as they make them now, but stands on four legs. The flooring has only been cut away in the middle of the tub, say two or three planks, and the opening extended only to the outer edge of the tub. Not quite that far, in fact.”

“There is Salti man’s trap-door,” grinned Katoh. “Not even door; just trap.”

“So I thought,” Tarrant agreed grimly. “But it isn’t. Or if it is he didn’t use it. As no one could get through the opening without moving the tub – which hadn’t been done, by the way – Peake and I pulled up some more of the cut plank by main force and I squeezed myself into the space beneath the lavatory and bedroom. There was nothing there but dirt; I got plenty of that.”

“How about space below studio?”

“Nothing doing. The penthouse is built on a foundation, as I said, about two and a half feet high, of concrete building blocks. A line of these blocks runs underneath the penthouse, directly below the wall between the studio and bedroom. As the aperture in the floor is on the southern side of that wall, it is likewise to the south of the transverse line of building blocks in the foundation. The space beneath the studio is to the north of these blcoks, and they form a solid wall that is impassable. I spent a good twenty minutes scrummaging along the entire length of it.”

“Most likely place,” Katoh confided, “just where hole in lavatory floor.”

“Yes, I should think so too. I examined it carefully. I could see the ends of the planks that form the studio floor partway over the beam above the building blocks. But there isn’t a trace of a loose block at that point, any more than there is anywhere else… To make everything certain, we also examined the other three sides of the foundation of the bedroom portion of the penthouse. They are solid and haven’t been touched since it was constructed. So the whole thing is just a cul-de-sac there is no possibility of exit from the penthouse even through the aperture beneath the bath-tub.”

“You examine also foundations under studio part?”

“Yes, we did that, too. No result. It didn’t mean much, though, for there is no entrance to the space beneath the studio from the studio itself, nor is there such an entrance from the other space beneath the bedroom portion. That opening under the bath-tub must mean something, especially in view of the recent installation of the tub. But what does it mean?”

He looked at Katoh long and searchingly and the other, after a pause, replied slowly: “Can only see this Salti man construct this trap, probably for present use. Then he do not use. Must go some other way.”

“But there is no other way.”

“Then Salti man still there.”

“He isn’t there.”

“Harumph,” said Katoh reflectively. It was evident that he felt the same respect for a syllogism that animated Tarrant, and was stopped, for the time being at any rate. He went off on a new tack. “What else specially strange about setting?”

“There are two other things that strike me as peculiar,” Tarrant answered, and his eyes narrowed. “On the floor, about one foot from the northern window, there is a fairly deep indentation in the floor of the studio. It is a small impression and is almost certainly made by a nail partly driven through the planking and then pulled up again.”

I thought of the nail through the picture. “Could he have put the picture down on that part of the floor in order to drive the nail through it? But what if he did?”

“I can see no necessity for it, in any case. The nail would go through the canvas easily enough just as it stood on the easel.”

Katoh said: “With nail in plank, perhaps plank could be pulled up. You say no?”

“I tried it. Even driving the nail in sideways, instead of vertically, as the original indentation was made, the plank can’t be lifted at all.”

“O.K. You say some other thing strange, also.”

“Yes. The position of the easel that holds the painting of the dead girl. When we broke in this morning, it was turned away from the room, toward the bedroom door, so that the picture was scarcely visible even from the studio entrance, let alone the rest of the room. I don’t believe that was the murderer’s intention. He had set the rest of the stage too carefully. The requiem; the candles. It doesn’t fit; I’m sure he meant the first person who entered to be confronted by the whole scene, and especially by that symbolic portrait. It doesn’t accord even with the position of the stool, which agrees with the intended position of the easel. It doesn’t fit at all with the mentality of the murderer. It seems a small thing but I’m sure it’s important. I’m certain the position of the easel is an important clue.”

“To mystery of disappearance?”

“Yes. To the mystery of the murderer’s escape from that sealed room.”

“Not see how,” Katoh declared after some thought. As for me, I couldn’t even appreciate the suggestion of any connection.

“Neither do I,” grated Tarrant. He had risen and began to pace the floor. “Well, there you have it all. A little hole in the floor near the north window, an easel turned out of position and a sealed room without an occupant who certainly ought to be there… There’s an answer to this; damn it, there must be an answer.”

Suddenly he glanced at an electric clock on the table he was passing and stopped abruptly. “My word,” he exclaimed, “it’s nearly three o’clock. Didn’t mean to keep you up like this, Jerry. You either, doctor. Well, the conference is over. We’ve got nowhere.”

Katoh was on his feet, in an instant once more the butler. “Sorry could not help. You wish night-cap, Misster Tarrant?”

“No. Bring the Scotch, Katoh. And a siphon. And ice. I’m not turning in.”

I had been puzzling my wits without intermission ever since dinner over the problem above, and the break found me more tired than I realised. I yawned prodigiously. I made a half-hearted attempt to persuade Tarrant to come to bed, but it was plain that he would have none of it.

I said, “Good-night, Katoh. I’m no good for anything until I get a little sleep… Night, Tarrant.”

I left him once more pacing the floor; his face, in the last glimpse I had of it, was set in the stern lines of thought.

It seemed no more than ten seconds after I got into bed that I felt my shoulder being shaken and, through the fog of sleep, heard Katoh’s hissing accents.” – Mister Tarrant just come from penthouse. He excited. Maybe you wish wake up.” As I rolled out and shook myself free from slumber, I noticed that my wrist watch pointed to six-thirty.

When I had thrown on some clothes and come into the living-room, I found Tarrant standing with the telephone instrument to his head, his whole posture one of grimness. Although I did not realise it at once, he had been endeavouring for some time to reach Deputy Inspector Peake. He accomplished this finally a moment or so after I reached the room.

“Hallo, Peake? Inspector Peake?… This is Tarrant. How many men did you leave to guard that penthouse last night?”… “What, only one? But I said two, man. Damn it all, I don’t make suggestions like that for amusement!”… “All right, there’s nothing to be accomplished arguing about it. You’d better get here, and get here pronto.”… “That’s all I’ll say.” He slammed down the receiver viciously.

I had never before seen Tarrant upset; my surprise was a measure of his own disturbance, which resembled consternation. He paced the floor, muttering below his breath, his long legs carrying him swiftly up and down the apartment.

“Damned fools… everything must fit… Or else…” For once I had sense enough to keep my questions to myself for the time being.

Fortunately I had not long to wait. Hardly had Katoh had opportunity to brew some coffee, with which he appeared somewhat in the manner of a dog wagging its tail deprecatingly, than Peake’s ring sounded at the entrance. He came in hurriedly but his smile, as well as his words, indicated his opinion that he had been roused by a false alarm.

“Well, well, Mr Tarrant, what is this trouble over?”

Tarrant snapped, “Your man’s gone. Disappeared. How do you like that?”

“The patrolman on guard?” The policeman’s expression was incredulous.

“The single patrolman you left on guard.”

Peake stepped over to the telephone, called Headquarters. After a few briet words he turned back to us, his incredulity at Tarrant’s statement apparently confirmed.

“You must be mistaken, sir,” he asserted. “There have been no reports from Officer Weber. He would never leave the premises without reporting such an occasion.”

Tarrant’s answer was purely practical. “Come and see.”

And when we reached the terrace on the building’s roof, there was, in fact, no sign of the patrolman who should have been at his station. We entered the penthouse and, the lights having been turned on, Peake himself made a complete search of the premises. While Tarrant watched the proceedings in a grim silence, I walked over to the north window of the studio, grey in the early morning light, and sought for the nail hole he had mentioned as being in the floor. There it was, a small, clean indentation, about an inch or an inch and a half deep, in one of the hardwood planks. This, and everything else about the place, appeared just as Tarrant had described it to us some hours before, previous to my turning in. I was just in time to see Peake emerge from the enlarged opening in the lavatory floor, dusty and sorely puzzled.

“Our man is certainly not here,” the inspector acknowledged. “I cannot understand it. This is a serious breach of discipline.”

“Hell,” said Tarrant sharply, speaking for the first time since we had come to the roof. “This is a serious breach of intelligence, not discipline.”

“I shall broadcast an immediate order for the detention of Patrolman Weber.” Peake stepped into the bedroom and approached the phone to carry out his intention.

“You needn’t broadcast it. I have already spoken to the night operator in the lobby on the ground floor. He told me a policeman left the building in great haste about 3:30 this morning. If you will have the local precinct check up on the all-night lunch-rooms along Lexington Avenue in this vicinity, you will soon pick up the first step of the trail that man left… You will probably take my advice, now that it is too late.”

Peake did so, putting the call through at once; but his bewilderment was no whit lessened. Nor was mine. As he put down the instrument, he said: “All right. But it doesn’t make sense. Why should he leave his post without notifying us? And why should he go to a lunch-room?”

“Because he was hungry.”

“But there has been a crazy murderer here already. And now Weber, an ordinary cop, if I ever saw one. Does this place make everybody mad?”

“Not as mad as you’re going to be in a minute. But perhaps you weren’t using the word in that sense?”

Peake let it pass. “Everything,” he commented slowly, “is just as we left it yesterday evening. Except for Weber’s disappearance.”

“Is that so?” Tarrant led us to the entrance from the roof to the studio and pointed downwards. The light was now bright enough to disclose an unmistakable spattering of blood on one of the steps before the door. “That blood wasn’t there when we left last night. I came up here about five-thirty, the moment I got on to this thing,” he continued bitterly. “Of course I was too late… Damnation, let us make an end to this farce. I’ll show you some more things that have altered during the night.”

We followed him into the studio again as he strode over to the easel with its lewd picture, opposite the entrance. He pointed to the nail still protruding through the canvas. “I don’t know how closely you observed the hole made in this painting by the nail yesterday. But it’s a little larger now and the edges are more frayed. In other words the nail has been removed and once more inserted.”

I turned about to find that Gleeb, somehow apprised of the excitement, had entered the penthouse and now stood a little behind us. Tarrant acknowledged his presence with a curt nod; and in the air of tension that his tenant was building up the manager ventured no questions.

“Now,” Tarrant continued, pointing out the locations as he spoke, “possibly they have dried, but when I first got here this morning there was a trail of moist spots still leading from the entrance door way to the vicinity of the north window. You will find that they were places where a trail of blood had been wiped away with a wet cloth.”

He turned to the picture beside him and withdrew the nail, pulling himself up as if for a repugnant job. He walked over to the north window and motioned us to take our places on either side of him. Then he bent down and inserted the nail, point first, into the indentation in the plank, as firmly as he could. He braced himself and apparently strove to pull the nail toward the south, away from the window.

I was struggling with an obvious doubt. I said, “But you told us the planks could not be lifted.”

“Can’t,” Tarrant grunted. “But they can be slid.”

Under his efforts the plank was, in fact, sliding. Its end appeared from under the footboard at the base of the north wall below the window and continued to move over a space of several feet. When this had been accomplished, he grasped the edges of the planks on both sides of the one already moved and slid them back also. An opening quite large enough to squeeze through was revealed.

But that was not all. The huddled body of a man lay just beneath; the man was clad only in underwear and was obviously dead from the beating in of his head.

As we bent over, gasping at the unexpectedly gory sight, Gleeb suddenly cried, “But that is not Michael Salti! What is this, a murder farm? I don’t know this man.”

Inspector Peake’s voice was ominous with anger. “I do. That is the body of Officer Weber. But how could he-”

Tarrant had straightened up and was regarding us with a look that said plainly he was anxious to get an unpleasant piece of work finished. “It was simple enough,” he ground out. “Salti cut out the planks beneath the bath-tub in the lavatory so that these planks in the studio could be slid back over the beam along the foundation under the south wall; their farther ends in this position will now be covering the hole in the lavatory floor. The floor here is well fitted and the planks are grooved, thus making the sliding possible. They can be moved back into their original position by someone in the space below here; doubtless we shall find a small block nailed to the under portion of all three planks for that purpose.

“He murdered his model, set the scene and started his phonograph, which will run interminably on the electric current. Then he crawled into his hiding-place. The discovery of the crime could not be put off any later than the chambermaid’s visit in the morning, and I have no doubt he took a sadistic pleasure in anticipating her hysterics when she entered. By chance your radio man, Gleeb, caused us to enter first.

“When the place was searched and the murderer not discovered, his pursuit passed elsewhere, while he himself lay concealed here all day. It was even better than doubling back upon his tracks, for he had never left the starting post. Eventually, of course, he had to get out, but by that time the vicinity of this building would be the last place in which he was being searched for.

“Early this morning he pushed back the planks from underneath and came forth. I don’t know whether he had expected anyone to be left on guard, but that helped rather than hindered him. Creeping up upon the unsuspecting guard, he knocked him out – doubtless with that mallet I can just see beside the body – and beat him to death. Then he put his second victim in the hiding-place, returning the instrument that closes it from above, the nail, to its position in the painting. He had already stripped off his own clothes, which you will find down in that hole, and in the officer’s uniform and coat he found no difficulty in leaving the building. His first action was to hurry to a lunch-room, naturally, since after a day and a night without food under the floor here, he must have been famished. I have no doubt that your men will get a report of him along Lexington Avenue, Peake; but, even so, he now has some hours’ start on you.”

“We’ll get him,” Peake assured us. “But if you knew all this, why in heaven’s name didn’t you have this place opened up last night, before he had any chance to commit a second murder? We should have taken him red-handed.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know it last night,” Tarrant reminded him. “It was not until late yesterday afternoon that I had any proper opportunity to examine the penthouse. What I found was a sealed room and a sealed house. There was no exit that had not been blocked nor, after our search, could I understand how the man could still be in the penthouse. On the other hand, I could not understand how it was possible that he had left. As a precaution, in case he were still here in some manner I had not fathomed, I urged you to leave at least two men on guard, and it was my understanding that you agreed. I think it is obvious, although I was unable then to justify myself, that the precaution was called for.”

Peake said, “It was.”

“I have been up all night working this out. What puzzled me completely was the absence of any trap doors. Certainly we looked for them thoroughly. But it was there right in front of us all the time; we even investigated a portion of it, the aperture in the lavatory floor, which we supposed to be a trap-door itself, although actually it was only a part of the real arrangement. As usual the trick was based upon taking advantage of habits of thought, of our habitised notion of a trap-door as something that is lifted or swung back. I have never heard before of a trap-door that slides back. Nevertheless, that was the simple answer, and it took me until five-thirty to reach it.”

Katoh, whom for the moment I had forgotten completely, stirred uneasily and spoke up. “I not see, Misster Tarrant, how you reach answer then.”

“Four things,” was the reply. “First of all, the logical assumption that, since there was no way out, the man was still here. As to the mechanism by which he managed to remain undiscovered, three things. We mentioned them last night. First, the nail hole in the plank; second, the position of the easel; third, the hole in the lavatory floor. I tried many ways to make them fit together, for I felt sure they must all fit.

“It was the position of the easel that finally gave me the truth. You remember we agreed that it was wrong, that the murderer had never intended to leave it facing away from the room. But if the murderer had left it as he intended, if no one had entered until we did, and still its position was wrong, what could have moved it in the meantime? Except for the phonograph, which could scarcely be responsible, the room held nothing but motionless objects. But if the floor under one of its legs had moved, the easel would have been slid around. That fitted with the other two items, the nail hole in the plank, the opening under the bath-tub.

“The moment it clicked, I got an automatic and ran up here. I was too late. As I said, I’ve been up all night. I’m tired; and I’m going to bed.”

He walked off without another word, scarcely with a parting nod. Tarrant, as know now, did not often fail. He was a man who offered few excuses for himself and he was humiliated.

It was a week or so later when I had an opportunity to ask him if Salti had been captured. I had seen nothing of it in the newspapers, and the case had now passed to the back pages with the usual celerity of sensations.

Tarrant said, “I don’t know.”

“But haven’t you followed it up with that man, Peake?”

“I’m not interested. It’s nothing but a straight police chase now. This part of it might make a good film for a Hollywood audience, but there isn’t the slightest intellectual interest left.”

He stopped and added after an appreciable pause, “Damn it, Jerry, I don’t like to think of it even now. I’ve blamed the stupidity of the police all I can; their throwing me out when I might have made a real investigation in the morning, that delay; their the negligence in overlooking my suggestion for a pair of guards, which I made as emphatic as I could. But it’s no use. I should have solved it in time, even so. There could only be that one answer and I took too long to find it.

“The human brain works too slowly, Jerry, even when it works straight… it works too slowly.”

The policeman was thinking about magic.

It was a strange thought for a policeman to have, but even his superiors might have forgiven him on an evening like this. It was late August, and a velvet-dark midsummer night had descended on the streets of the city. On this particular street, with its big comfortable homes and airy lawns turning from green to black in the smoky twilight, the darkness seemed to sing with a kind of summer magic that even a policeman can feel.

But Lieutenant-Detective Jerry Doran was thinking of another kind of magic – the kind which involves playing cards and white rabbits, bouquets of flowers that burst from nowhere and beautiful ladies who vanish at the wave of a silver wand. This kind of magic had somehow got loose from the safe confines of the stage and was causing Lieutenant Doran a severe occupational headache; and now he was ringing the doorbell of the one man who might help him – a man who did not believe in magic at all.

“Sometimes I think,” said Richard Sheilan as he ushered his guest into the living room, “that it takes a murder to make you come visiting. Your soul is Machiavellian, Jerry. You should have been a politician.”

“I should have been an astronaut,” Doran said feelingly, “or a short-order cook. Anything but a policeman.”

“Tch-tch,” said Sheilan. He stepped over to the liquor cabinet and extracted a bottle and two glasses. “Those were sympathetic noises,” he explained, “the kind I reserve for my un-retired friends. But I take it from what you said over the phone that you want more than commiseration.” He handed Doran a glass. “What is it this time, Jerry? Murder, of course.”

It had been a number of years since Sheilan had retired from police work and moved into his new home. He seemed quite at ease here in this large cream-colored room, as he hunched a little in his monstrous black armchair.

Sheilan was a very big man – not tall and wiry like Doran – but built on a huge scale. He stood well over six feet, on disproportionately long legs; he was big-boned and slender, with ropy-veined wrists and impressively broad shoulders. He had a ruddy complexion and what might be called ruddy hair – red-tinted where it had not already silvered with age. For all his quietness of manner he cut an imposing figure, and small people with loud voices rarely felt comfortable in his presence. He was quiet now, and the hazel eyes watched his friend’s face attentively.

“It’s murder,” Doran affirmed. “I’m surprised you haven’t read about it in the papers. It’s been getting front-page coverage ever since it broke this morning.”

“I don’t read the papers,” Sheilan said simply. “What sort of case do you mean?”

“A screwy one. The kind,” Doran said with a trace of malice, “that we save for our un-retired friends.” Sheilan snorted as Doran went on, “Mr Charles Kimball was killed early this morning in a downtown hotel. During the few seconds that the murder must have taken place, he was alone in an elevator car where no living soul could have come near him. And yet he was murdered.”

Sheilan sighed. “You’ve hooked me, Jerry,” he said. “Now I suggest that you begin at the beginning, omit the melodrama, and tell a straight story.” Doran looked belligerent. “Suppose you begin with the victim – Mr Kimball.”

“All right,” said Doran. “Mr Charles Kimball. What do you think Mr Charles Kimball was?”

Sheilan shut his eyes. “A sorcerer,” he intoned. “A student of occult mysteries who tampered with forces beyond his control-”

“Bingo!” said Doran. “Got it the first guess. Charles Kimball was a professional magician, a stage illusionist – and a damn good one, from what I hear.”

Settling back in his chair, the policeman began to tell the story…

Standing in the arctic glare of the blue spotlight, draped like a statue in the black robes of his profession, the magician looked for all the world like the lanky personification of some ancient plague. The skin of his hands was the color of snow, and a madman’s shock of white hair, tied with a thin ribbon, crowned his skull; his mouth was like a black sore.

Earlier in the evening the stage had been crowded with gaudy apparatus – coffin-like boxes for sawing a woman in half and cabinets for making her vanish like a puff of smoke. Now the magician stood alone under the spotlight. With a creative gesture of his cupped hands he produced a single white dove which perched for a moment on his arm and then flew away. Then another appeared, and another and another – until it seemed as if there were a hundred of them fluttering around the weirdly lit stage.

The magician was billed as Dr Satanus; he was, of course, none other than Mr Charles Kimball, an entertainer whose checkered career had embraced everything from tightrope acrobatics to cardsharping, from juggling to escape artistry. Somewhere along the line he had married a chorus girl named Margaret Linden and incorporated her into the act as his assistant. Now, after more hard work and disappointment than he cared to remember, Charles Kimball was at the peak of his career.

Backstage, the Dr Satanus troupe was getting ready to go home – home tonight being three scattered rooms in the Hotel Bowman, a second-rate theatrical establishment just off Broadway. Leo Gurney, a wiry little man with a head of curly black hair and a monkey-ugly face, was leaning against a pile of flats and tinkering with an obscure bit of machinery; in addition to his duties as stage manager, Gurney was Kimball’s right-hand man, the mechanical genius who designed and built all the illusions in the show.

There was also Dave Hooker, promotion manager and Jack-of-all-trades – presently off somewhere picking up coffee and sandwiches for a late-night snack. And, of course, there was Margaret Kimball, a still-young woman with a face and figure which could only be described in metaphors of fruit, flowers, and heavenly beings. Still dressed in her Satanic red costume, she stood in the wings and watched the finish of the dove illusion. The curtain came down to a good round of applause, and Charles Kimball swept past, gleamingly spectral in his stage trappings.

It had been a routine performance. However, one thing happened a little later that was out of the ordinary. A few minutes after the curtain dropped, Dave Hooker reappeared, a fair-haired, innocuous young man with an armful of paper bags from some nearby diner, which he quickly distributed. With one bag left over, he went to the door of Kimball’s dressing room, rapped once, and stuck in his head.

Charles Kimball started up out of his chair, his hand darting instinctively for something hidden in the dressing-table drawer. Seeing Hooker, he seemed to collect himself; he said something pleasant in reply to a question only half heard, but his hand still hovered over the drawer.

When Hooker had gone, Kimball reached inside and took out a worn-looking.32 automatic. He gripped it tightly, seeming to draw comfort from it. But his hand still shook, and when he looked at his face in the mirror he saw fear as plainly as if the word had been written there in phosphorescent letters…

The lobby of a hotel is seldom an inspiring sight. The lobby of the Hotel Bowman at seven o’clock on this particular morning was no exception. It was small, and it was dirty; the fake marble linoleum wasn’t fooling anybody.

There were never many people loitering about, especially this early in the morning. Now there were only two: the sandy-haired, shirt-sleeved desk clerk and a fat well-dressed man who looked like a hog. The latter, it appeared, was waiting for someone. He had strolled in and plumped himself down a few minutes before, and now he sat quietly scanning his morning newspaper and eyeing the elevator.

As it happened, the desk clerk was also watching the elevator, which had gone up a few minutes before and was now presumably descending. He watched because he was curious about the hoggish gentleman, and because he had nothing else to do. This was important, because it meant that there were two witnesses to what happened next.

Both men heard the bump of the arriving car, and the hoggish gentleman rose from his seat, depositing the newspaper behind him like an egg. Then the elevator doors rolled open and they both saw that the only occupant of the car was lying down. Startled, the clerk moved around in front of his desk to get a closer look, and suddenly something turned over in his stomach. There was a ragged tear in the man’s coat, and something dark staining the fabric.

The next thing he knew, the desk clerk was standing at the elevator doors watching dazedly as the hoggish gentleman lowered himself beside the body. He touched nothing, but he surveyed the scene as if fixing it in his mind. Then he rose with difficulty and turned to the white-faced clerk. His own face might have been stuffed with sawdust, for all the emotion it betrayed.

“My name is Bailey,” the hoggish man said, flipping out some sort of identification. “I’m a private detective, I’ll stay here while you call the police.” The clerk’s oyster eyes blinked. “Call the Homicide Squad,” the fat man added ominously.

The body on the floor of the elevator was that of Charles Kimball, and – let it be said now – he was dead before the elevator doors opened…

“We’ll begin,” said Doran, “with the elevator.” He leaned forward, folding his hands under his chin like a preacher meditating before a sermon.

“First, Mrs Kimball’s testimony. She says that her husband was up early this morning, around six-thirty, and that he woke her up at about the same time. He shaved and showered and dressed, talking at some length about a mysterious appointment, but refusing to answer any of her questions. She says he looked worried, that he’d been acting a little odd all week-nervous and scared. Just before he left he said something that frightened her. He said, quote: ‘I’m going to see a man who knows secrets. ‘”

Sheilan said nothing. Doran went on, “Kimball’s appointment was for seven o’clock. He was already late when he left – Mrs K. glanced at his watch, when he asked her for it and she handed it to him, and saw that it was just after seven.

“The elevator was directly across from the Kimballs’ room, which is on the eleventh floor. Mrs Kimball followed her husband to the elevator door and stood there watching him as he pushed the button for the car, got in, and started down. Since she had her own reasons, which I’ll get to in a minute, for being worried about this mysterious appointment, she watched the floor indicator over the door, and she swears that he went straight down to the lobby without making any stops.

“Fortunately for Mrs K., we have a second witness, a celebrity-conscious maid who was in the hall at the time and recognized Kimball. We have her corroborative testimony that he was alive when he got into the car, and that he went straight down to the lobby without making any stops.”

Doran’s voice became grim. “In the lobby,” he said, “there was a man named Bailey, a licensed investigator for the Powell Detective Agency. Now, the Powell Agency is one of the finest in the city, and Bailey is one of their best men. He was in the lobby because he was waiting for Kimball; he had an appointment to meet him there at seven and turn over evidence which Kimball had hired him to collect. The evidence was to be used in divorce proceedings against Kimball’s wife.”

Sheilan smiled, but still said nothing, “There was also a desk clerk,” Doran said, “a man named Boyd. Both men were watching when the elevator reached the lobby with Kimball, dead of a knife wound in the back. They both saw it; there cannot be the slightest doubt. The inevitable conclusion-”

“- is that Kimball was killed between the time he got into the elevator on the eleventh floor and the time the car arrived in the lobby,” said Sheilan. “I think you’ve established that. How long would it take the car to make the descent?”

“About forty-five seconds. The timing checks. Mrs Kimball says it was a little after seven when her husband left their room. Bailey noted the time on the clock in the lobby when the car arrived; it was exactly 7:03.

“Now there were two ways for someone to get into that car while it was traveling between floors-through the inner car-doors or through the escape panel in the ceiling. But both ways have been definitely ruled out.

“The inner doors of the car are solid steel. As long as the car is in motion, those doors are automatically held locked in place: the car can move only so long as the inner doors remain closed. Since the car never stopped, no one could have gotten through them; for all practical purposes they were welded shut.

“The second means of entrance is also eliminated. The escape panel is a simple trap door installed at the top of most elevators as an emergency exit. Normally, it would have been possible for someone to drop through there, catch Kimball by surprise, and kill him before he had a chance to resist. But about a year ago one of the hotel’s younger guests went climbing up through this hatch and nearly got himself squashed in the elevator mechanism. The management decided on the lesser of two evils and had the trap door padlocked – from the inside.

“So you see where that leaves us. No one could have gotten through the trap door to kill Kimball; and even if he did, he couldn’t have gotten out again and left the hatch as it was found, padlocked on the inside. Unless we postulate a kind of Dr Fu Manchu elevator containing a secret passage, there was no way in and no way out. It’s an absolutely impossible crime!”

“I suppose,” said Sheilan, “that you’ve ruled out the possibility of suicide?”

“Unquestionably. For one thing, no weapon was found in the car. For another, the nature of the wounds was such that they could not have been self-inflicted. There were actually three wounds – two shallow gashes on the left arm and one deep stab wound under the left shoulder blade, penetrating straight to the heart. The blade that was used was over six inches long and about half an inch wide. Very sharp.”

Reaching into his pocket, the policeman pulled out a gun, nickel-plated with a yellowed ivory grip. He said, “We found this gun lying on the floor by the body. It’s a Colt.32 automatic, equipped with a hair-trigger and-” he produced a stubby black cylinder and clipped it on the muzzle.” – a Maxim silencer. Not the sort of thing I’d care to come up against in an enclosed space as small as an elevator car.” He handed the gun over for Sheilan’s inspection.

“I suppose,” said Sheilan, “this is Kimball’s own gun.”

“It’s his, all right – his wife identified it positively. She found it last week, hidden under a pile of underwear. He has a permit to own one, but he hasn’t carried a gun in years. But from what we’ve heard from other members of the troupe, Kimball had been acting funny all week-nervous, as if he were afraid of his own shadow. And the gun, as I pointed out, was recently acquired. It all ties in with the theory that Kimball knew he was in danger and carried this to protect himself. And the gun was never fired – he didn’t even have time to pull the trigger.”

“Hmm,” said Sheilan. “Did this notion of impending doom have anything to do with the assignment he gave to the private detective?”

“No. Kimball saw Bailey only once – three weeks ago when the magic show first came to town. He hired Bailey to do some unobtrusive prying into Mrs Kimball’s relations with Leo Gurney.”

“Aha!” said Sheilan, twirling an imaginary mustache.

“Well, now,” said Doran, “Margaret Kimball is no Lady Macbeth, but she’s good-looking enough to stir up plenty of homicidal intentions in a close-knit little theatrical family like this one. What’s more, Gurney is a first-rate mechanic with a good working knowledge of abracadabra and Hop-o-my-Thumb-modern style. And just to round things out, Gurney’s got a record. Before joining up with Kimball he served time for armed robbery. Would he commit murder to get a troublesome husband out of the way? He’d naturally be cautious, with his record, but I still wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Undeniable possibility,” said Sheilan. “I wonder that he isn’t locked up in a cell already.”

“Two reasons,” said Doran. “One: I’m not arresting anyone until I know how that elevator trick was worked. Two: I’ve been building a case against a straw dummy. Gurney had no more motive to kill Kimball than I do. Private eye Bailey dropped a bombshell – it seems that Kimball was barking up the wrong tree. His wife was playing around – but not with Gurney.”

“Dave Hooker?”

“Correct. By process of elimination. It’s not too surprising when you come to think about it. Hooker is good-looking, in a fuzzy sort of way. But he has a way of making himself – well, sort of invisible; it takes a real effort of concentration to pay attention to him when he talks. So it’s really no wonder that Kimball picked the wrong man.”

“Did Bailey communicate his discovery to his client?”

“No. Bailey’s instructions were to avoid any contact until seven this morning, at which time he planned to present his evidence and watch Kimball’s jaw drop. But somebody got to Kimball before he did.”

Sheilan raised his eyebrows. “The question being – who? Whom do you favor, Jerry? The so-called Invisible Man, with his shining motive? Leo Gurney, with his sinister past? Or Margaret Kimball, with her ironclad alibi? How did they stand up under questioning?”

“A more nerveless bunch of suspects I never saw,” said Doran, “I questioned them individually and collectively for three solid hours without extracting one useful piece of information. Hooker and his lady friend expressed no regrets about their activities; she remained calm the whole time, and he was even helpful. Suggested I look for some way the knife could have been fired like a bullet from a gun-” Doran made vague, harpoon-like gestures “- and reeled back on a string through one of the air vents in the car. I informed him that the air vents were covered with a fine wire mesh which showed no signs of tampering; he shrugged and grinned and looked oh so apologetic.

“Gurney grinned the whole time, like a damned orangutan. Volunteered nothing, swore he’d never had a thing to do with Kimball’s wife, and didn’t bat an eye when I brought up the little matter of his record.” Doran grimaced and took a pull at his drink. “Dead end,” he said, “to an embarrassing afternoon. Bailey sat in on the whole interrogation, wooden-faced as a cigar-store Indian. I gather that his opinion of the abilities of the force have been confirmed in spades.” But then Doran saw that his host wasn’t listening.

Sheilan had moved from his chair and was standing in front of one of the big windows. Outside, the twilight had vanished and been replaced by blind darkness.

Doran was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Well, the force is asking for a second opinion. What do you make of it?”

Sheilan turned and looked at him speculatively. “I make a great deal of it,” he said, “Before I can be sure, you’ll have to answer three questions.”

“Three questions,” said Doran, settling back, “Fire away.”

“One: can you tell me what floor of the hotel each of the three suspects was staying on?”

Silently Doran pulled out his notebook and consulted it. “The Kimballs had a room on the eleventh floor,” he said. “Gurney and Hooker had single rooms on the ninth and fifth floors, respectively.”

“Excellent,” said Sheilan. “Question Number Two: can you tell me something more about the elevator? The outer doors – not what you called the inner doors, but the ones on the various floors – how can they be opened?”

“They open automatically, of course, when the elevator comes to rest at each floor. When the elevator is on some other floor, they can be opened from the outside with a key, and from the inside by exerting pressure on a lock-bar-”

“And Question Number Three,” Sheilan interrupted, rubbing his palms together. “Is there a laundry chute?”

Doran blinked. “I’ll have to use your phone,” he said. And a few minutes later, in a brief conversation with the hotel manager, Doran established that there was no laundry chute in the Hotel Bowman.

Sheilan seemed satisfied. “Just a frill,” he explained, “but a possibility that had to be considered. If there had been a laundry chute, it would have spoiled the logical symmetry of my deductions.”

“I’m listening,” said Doran.

“I should hope you would be,” said Sheilan. “Now, to begin with, you will have noticed the imprint of a magician on this murder. A very special kind of legerdemain was required to bring off the elevator trick. Does that suggest anything to you?”

“Not much,” said Doran. “Our suspects are really a trio of magicians. Leo Gurney knows every trick of the trade, so does Dave Hooker, and for that matter, so does Margaret Kimball, who was her husband’s assistant for a number of years-although as you pointed out she does have an ironclad alibi.”

“Now that you mention it,” said Sheilan, “there’s a very close resemblance between the Problem of the Hermetically Sealed Room and the Problem of the Ironclad Alibi. No, I’m not talking about Margaret Kimball – not, for that matter, any of your trio of magician-suspects.”

“Do you mean there’s someone else? A fourth magician?”

“Precisely. A fourth magician who has played the Invisible Man much better than Dave Hooker and completely eluded your hawk-like instincts. Someone who had a better motive for murder than Margaret Kimball, Dave Hooker, and Leo Gurney all rolled into one. Someone who is apparently safe from suspicion-”

“Bailey!” breathed Doran. “The one person-”

“Bailey!” Sheilan let out a snort. “Let’s not be fantastic! He and the desk clerk alibi each other. No, the person I am referring to is safe from suspicion for a very convincing reason – he happens to be dead. That’s right, the person I’m talking about is Charles Kimball.”

“I see,” said Doran slowly.

“No, I’m afraid you don’t,” said Sheilan, “It’s a complicated business. Charles Kimball is dead, but he is still the only murderer we have to deal with. Jerry, you’ve been holding this puzzle upside down.

“Suppose I take it from the beginning and reconstruct. Didn’t it strike you as strange that Kimball should carry a gun with a silencer? If he were carrying a gun for protection against a person or persons unspecified, surely he’d want noise, wouldn’t he? He’d have nothing to hide; on the contrary, he’d want people to hear the shots and come running to help him, wherever and whenever he was attacked. No, the silencer indicated a guiltier purpose.”

“I see what you mean,” said Doran. “You mean Kimball was going to commit a murder.”

“Exactly,” said Sheilan, “and all that abracadabra with the elevator was arranged by Kimball – to give himself an alibi. But that alibi backfired and presented you with an impossible situation.

“The person Kimball was planning to murder was obviously the man he suspected of being his wife’s lover-Leo Gurney. He had no way of knowing, of course, that Dave Hooker was really the culprit, and that he was planning to kill the wrong man.”

“But if that was the case,” said Doran, “why didn’t he wait for confirmation from Bailey?”

“Two reasons. First, because it would look better for Kimball if the murder took place before he received confirmation from Bailey. That was why he instructed Bailey to avoid making contact with him before the time set for the appointment. Who would suspect that a man would hire a detective to investigate his wife’s infidelity and then murder the lover even before the investigator made his report? The second reason is more important: Bailey wasn’t hired as a detective at all; he was hired as part of the murder plan – because Kimball needed an unsuspecting, unimpeachable witness for his alibi.

“Kimball knew he would be suspected immediately if Gurney were found murdered, so he set about creating a foolproof alibi. He did it the same way he would create an illusion for his show, making full use of his talents as an acrobat and escape artist.

“The crux of your impossible situation, you see, is that you were looking at it the wrong way. It was a closed circle with no way for a murderer to get in, but the circle could be broken if the ‘victim’ got out.

“The plan was probably suggested to him when he saw that the elevator door on the eleventh floor was directly across from his room. His first step was to hire Bailey and arrange for him to be waiting in the lobby on the morning of the murder. Then he acquired a gun and waited. The telltale symptoms of nervousness which were so widely misinterpreted were just that – the nervousness of a man about to engage in the most dangerous of enterprises-committing a murder.

“When he came back to the hotel last night, he did two things. First, he picked the padlock on the trap door and left it open, arranging the lock so that it would appear as usual to any ordinary inspection. Then, before he went to bed, he set his watch ahead about fifteen minutes.

“He got up early this morning and deliberately awakened his wife so that she would testify that she’d been with him from, say, 6:30 to 7:02. He asked her to hand him the watch so that the false time would be fixed in her mind. Kimball actually left the room a good ten minutes before seven, not a few minutes after.

“He was certain she would be sufficiently curious about his hints of ‘secrets’ to follow him to the elevator door and try to get some idea of where he was going. And so she watched the indicator and saw that he went straight down to the lobby.

“Or rather, the car traveled straight down. The escape panel was already open; all Kimball had to do was climb through and stay perched on top of the car. The car reached the lobby, but it seemed to arrive empty, and Bailey, the carefully planted witness, noticed nothing.

“In the meantime, Kimball stepped from the roof of the car up to the second floor – a short enough distance-forced the outer door in the manner you indicated was possible, and got out. Then he simply turned around, pushed the button for the elevator again, and rode back up to the ninth floor to complete his plan. On the way up he erased any traces of the deception by setting his watch back and padlocking the trap door again.

“The rest was simple. He picked the lock of Gurney’s door, stepped inside, intending to put a bullet through Gurney’s head. It was still early in the morning and Kimball, expecting his victim would still be asleep, did not even consider the possibility of encountering resistance. By the time he’d get back to the elevator and ride down to meet Bailey, no more than ten minutes would have elapsed.

“Bailey would be waiting with the evidence which presumably would confirm his suspicions of Gurney. Kimball could then play the outraged husband and ask Bailey to accompany him to Gurney’s room and stage a confrontation.

“And what would they find in Gurney’s room? Gurney with a bullet in his head. To Bailey’s professional eye it would be clear that Gurney had been killed only minutes before. And Kimball would have an indisputable alibi. From 6:30 to 7:02 he had been with his wife in their room. At 7:02 he had left his wife and ridden straight down to meet Bailey, who would then supply him with the rest of his alibi. In short, it would be an illusion-exactly the kind of production by which Kimball made his living and on which he would be perfectly willing to stake his life. If the illusion succeeded, he would have gotten away with murder.

“But, unfortunately for Kimball, the magician paid more attention to the mechanics of the illusion than to the mechanics of the murder itself. What must have happened when Kimball got to Leo Gurney’s room seems clear enough. Kimball went there to kill Gurney, but because of stupidity, jitters, or just plain bad luck the attempt backfired and Kimball died instead.

“We can infer that, for some reason or other, Leo Gurney was not asleep when Kimball got to his room; if he had been, he would be dead now, not Kimball. And it certainly seems likely, judging from his record, that Gurney was a man who knew how to protect himself, that he would be able to get the gun away from his attacker before he had a chance to fire. Then again, it would be very much in character for a man like Gurney to carry some sort of weapon – a switchblade knife, say, that could cause a wound like the one which killed Kimball.

“So Kimball is disarmed, but he is still determined. He attacks with his bare hands, overcomes Gurney – a much smaller man – and begins to choke the life out of him. Gurney manages to pull out his knife, and using his right hand he hacks twice at Kimball’s left arm in an attempt to dislodge his grip. Then, in desperation, and as they are struggling, Gurney aims to kill, burying the blade in his opponent’s back. Kimball died instantly.

“All speculation, of course, but soundly based on the known facts. The next part, however, is a logical certainty. Gurney has a choice to make: he can plead self-defense or he can try to conceal the crime. Since he has remained silent, we know that he must have panicked and chosen the more dangerous second course. Once he had made his decision, he was faced with one inescapable necessity – to get rid of the body, as soon as possible.

“If the body were found, not just in his room but anywhere on the ninth floor of the hotel, where he alone of the Satanus troupe was staying, it would be extremely dangerous for him. But how was he to get rid of it? Carry it up two flights of stairs to Kimball’s floor, or down four flights to Hooker’s floor? Any trip up or down the stairway, carrying a bulky corpse, would be much too risky. A laundry chute in the hall would have been safer – but there was no such chute.

“There was only one other possibility, and that was, as luck would have it, the easiest of all: the self-service elevator. Gurney acted quickly. He made sure the coast was clear, lugged the corpse to the elevator, pressed the button for the car, dumped the body in, and sent the car down to the lobby.

“Bear in mind that Gurney knew nothing of Kimball’s planned alibi for himself, or of the witness waiting in the lobby; he was simply disposing of the body as quickly and as safely as he could. But the result turned into a perfect illusion. A little over ten minutes had elapsed since Kimball said goodbye to his wife, his first witness, and stepped into the elevator on the eleventh floor. Now it was two or three minutes past seven, and the elevator was on its way to the lobby and its rendezvous with Bailey, the second witness, who would assume the car had just come from the eleventh floor. The closed circle was complete; the incontrovertible alibi was forged. The only discrepancy was that Gurney, the intended victim, was alive, while Kimball, the murderer, was dead.”

“Well,” Doran exploded, “I’ll be a double-dyed prestidigitator!”

Sheilan shrugged modestly. “It’s not really so amazing. Once you tumble to the significance of the silencer on the gun, the rest follows inevitably from the logic of the so-called ‘impossible situation’.”

Doran grinned. “I suppose, in keeping with hoary tradition, the wise old detective will now insist that it was all the work of a celestial Fifth Magician who stood back in the shadows, invisible and omniscient, pulling the strings-”

“Oh, yes,” said Sheilan, “I believe in that, most definitely. Fate does work startling tricks at times. In fact,” he said, smiling, “that’s the only kind of magic I do believe in.”

A full-grown man in the grip of uncontrolled panic is not a pleasant sight. Worse still, was the sight of His Majesty, James II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, Duke of York, Earl of Ulster and Duke of Normandy, wringing his hands, his lips quivering and eyes flitting from side to side in fear, pacing the entrance hall of Dublin Castle.

“Are the horses ready yet?” he paused and demanded of Henry Fitzjames, the Lord Grand Prior of England, who stood nervously near the great doors that opened onto the cobbled courtyard. It was not for the first time that he had asked his son the same question in petulant, fearful tone.

“Your Majesty’s Life Guards are not yet fully assembled.”

“God rot them! What ails them to be so negligent of the safety of their King at such an hour?”

“Sire, it is hard to obtain fresh horses in the city at this time. His Grace, the Duke of Powis, has scoured every stable unsuccessfully for fresh mounts.”

“It is already dawn.” The King pointed with shaking hand to the early morning light outside. “Have I not been given intelligence that my son-in-law’s army,” he referred to William, Prince of Orange’s relationship to him, with a sneer, “that his piquets have already marched within cannon shot of the outer defences of the city?”

“A report greatly exaggerated, sire. My brother, His Grace of Berwick, has his regiments encamped far to the north and there are no rumours of any alarums.”

The King was not listening.

“Men of the like that flock to the banners of the Prince of Orange captured, tried and executed my poor father when I was but sixteen years old. They cut off his head in front of his own palace of Whitehall. I do not intend to suffer the same fate. We must mount immediately and ride for the coast, fresh horses or not. See that it is so!”

The Lord Grand Prior left to obey his father’s orders.

Her Grace, Lady Frances, the Duchess of Tyrconnell, had roused herself in the early morning hours to witness the King’s departure from the city of Dublin. Now she stood watching him with a look of contempt. With her in the hall was the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Terence McDermott, while at her side stood Father Taafe, her husband’s chaplain who had just arrived in the city. Her husband, Richard, was James’ Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and was even now in continued danger at the head of his cavalry regiment somewhere between Dublin and the River Boyne, facing the Prince of Orange’s army. Her Grace had tried her best to calm the panic of the King.

“Majesty, our Irish troops will hold the army of the Prince of Orange long before they reach the city. You are safe as yet.”

“Hold them?” The King sneered, turning an ugly countenance to her. “Did they hold them at Oldbridge, madam, when the Prince of Orange and his men swarmed across the Boyne River? Cowards, every one. They fled before William like greyhounds in a race. Your countrymen, madam, can run well.”

Her Grace of Tyrconnell’s lips twitched in anger. She was not Irish. She had been born near St Albans in Hertfordshire but she felt a desire to defend her husband, the Duke of Tyrconnell, and his countrymen against this insult.

“Not so well as your majesty,” she snapped back, “for I see that you have won the race.”

Her companions could not disguise the smiles that sprang to their lips, for King James had been in continued panic since he had galloped into the city at midnight, directly from an engagement at the Boyne, shouting that all was lost.

“The horses are ready, Your Majesty,” cried the Lord Grand Prior, coming swiftly back into the hall and saving the King from trying to think of a suitable retort.

James turned quickly, without even bidding farewell to the wife of his Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Tyrconnell. The King seemed to have forgotten her presence and those of her companions as he scuttled towards the doors. Then a thought seemed to strike him. He paused and crashed one pale fist into the palm of his hand.

“Pox take me! Have I no one to remind me?”

The Lord Grand Prior looked in bewilderment as his father turned and almost ran towards the room where he had spent the last few hours. It was a small study in which he had previously been engaged in writing his final orders to the Comte de Lauzun, commander of his army. The King hurried to the desk. Ah, thank God he had remembered. A small metal box stood on the desk where he had left it. He picked up the heavy object, unlocked and pushed back the lid. It was filled with jewellery. On top of the diamonds and emeralds and assorted jewels lay a glittering blue stone about one and a half inches in length by an inch wide. The Stuart Sapphire was the pride of his collection. His brother, Charles II, had saved it from falling into Cromwellian hands after his defeat at Worcester. It was worth a king’s fortune; it was the fortune of this King, anyway. These were all that were left of the Crown Jewels of the Stuart Dynasty. He snapped the lid shut and turned the key again.

“This casket is to stay with me at all times. It is the guarantee of the survival of the House of Stuart,” he grunted at his bewildered son, the Lord Grand Prior. “Now, let us ride for Waterford with all speed.”

Without another word, he swept by Lady Tyrconnell, who performed a courtly curtsey; her every movement was filled with irony. Her companions merely inclined their heads.

Lady Tyrconnell waited a few moments until she heard the clattering of horses leaving the castle yard and then her features twisted in disdain.

“I wonder if His Majesty knows what his good subjects of Ireland are already calling him?” She smiled grimly at the troubled faces of the Lord Mayor MacDermott and Father Taafe. “I learnt the Irish from my maid. Seamus an Chaca - James the Shit! Methinks my sister, Sarah, the Lady Marlborough, is right when she agreed with her husband that these realms will be better off without such a petty, devious and faint-hearted man as James Stuart on the throne.”

Conte Salvatore Volpe of the Ordo Equester Nobile de Nostro Signore, the Papal bodyguard, paused for a moment outside the tall ornate doors with their gilt covered carvings and brass fixtures. He adjusted his sword and raised a hand to ensure his cravat was in place. Then he nodded to the nervous looking sacredotti who stood ready. The young trainee priest smote the door twice and then opened it and announced in a whispering tone to the occupant:

“Count Volpe, prefect commander of the Order of the Noble Knights of Our Lord.”

Volpe strode into an antechamber and then halted in momentary surprise. He had been expecting to be greeted by the elderly Cardinal York of Frascati but a ruddy-faced man with dark hair and clothes that bespoke more of a man of fashion and elegance greeted him. He was fair of skin and his features seemed to identify him as a foreigner but he greeted Volpe in fluent courtly Italian as one born to the language.

“I have surprised you, count,” the man observed. “I am sorry but it is necessary to have a word with you before you are received by my master. I am…”

“The Marchese Glenbuchat.” Volpe had difficulty pronouncing the Scottish name.

“You are well informed, Conte.”

“It is my duty to be so, Marchese, for I am placed in charge of the safety of all the Cardinal princes of Holy Mother Church who are gathering here.”

“Then you may also know, who my master is? I want to tell you, before you speak with him, that I have met with great reluctance from him in allowing you privy to a matter, which is of the greatest gravity to him and his cause. He does not want this matter to be voiced abroad. So I must hear from you that you are willing to treat it in utmost secrecy.”

“Without knowing the nature of the matter, I cannot take such an oath,” replied Volpe. “But if it does not offend the holy office that I hold sacred, I will treat the matter with discretion. Perhaps I can be told the nature of this problem that your master wishes to consult me about?”

Lord Glenbuchat hesitated.

“I will leave that to him.”

He crossed to a door and knocked on it discreetly, opened it and announced Volpe’s presence.

Count Volpe crossed the marble tiled floor to the chair by an ornate fire carved in the same stone. The slight figure of the elderly man in the robes of a Cardinal was seated to receive him. Volpe came to a halt and bent to kiss the ring of the frail hand that the Cardinal had reached out towards him.

He wondered how he should address someone whom many recognized as the rightful King of England, Scotland and Ireland, but who was Bishop of Frascati and known to his fellow prelates as Cardinal York.

“Eminence,” he managed to mutter as he bent over the bishop’s ring. He paused a moment and then straightened looking into the pale face and dark haunted eyes of Henry Benedict Maria Clement Stuart, grandson and only surviving legitimate heir of James II who had fled his kingdoms to a life of exile over a century before. Since the death of his elder brother, Prince Charles Edward in 1788, the Cardinal had been hailed as Henry IX of England and I of Scotland. The last of the Stuart claimants to the throne.

“How may I serve your Eminence?” Volpe said, taking the regulatory step backwards from the Cardinal’s chair. He was aware that Lord Glenbuchat was standing anxiously behind him.

The old man sighed deeply, raising his tired eyes to gaze on the commander of the Pontifical Guard.

“You are acquainted with my family’s sad history?” he asked.

“Eminence.” Volpe made the word an affirmation, feeling sorry for this apparently exhausted old man. However, these were times of hardship for everyone. The armies of revolutionary France were scouring the Italian countryside, looting and plundering, and with Pius VI recently dead in Valence, after a mere six months in office, and the godless French agents suspected of complicity in his death, the Cardinals had been unable to find a sanctuary to meet to elect a new Holy Father. They had even been driven from Rome by the French invasion. Volpe was uncomfortably reminded that the old man before him had also had to flee from his villa at Frascati, when it had been attacked and sacked by the French army. Now the Cardinals were gathering on this little island in Venice, in the old Benedictine Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, to enter into the conclave in the hope of electing a new Holy Father.

Count Volpe had only recently been appointed to command the old aristocratic bodyguard of the Papal successors. He was a young man and conscious of his office.

Cardinal York spoke in a tired tone.

“A thief has broken into these apartments and made off with jewellery worth a great fortune.”

Volpe’s eyes widened but he said nothing. After a moment, the Cardinal continued.

“The jewellery was my personal property, family property, bequeathed to me by my brother, Charles.”

Volpe knew well of the dissolute and drunken Prince Charles Edward, pretender to the English throne who had died of apoplexy in Rome some ten years before.

“Eminence, what manner of jewellery has gone missing?”

“The wealth of over three centuries of my family’s history as Kings of Scotland and then of England and Ireland,” replied the old Cardinal. “Among them, the great Stuart Sapphire. I brought them safely from Frascati, as my grandfather had also brought them safely when he was forced to flee into exile. Before that my great-uncle had hidden them safely when his father was executed by his subjects.”

Volpe tried to restrain a grim smile.

“Eminence, your family have borne many misfortunes,” he remarked with what he hoped was sympathy.

“The Stuart Crown Jewels are beyond mere commercial wealth,” intervened Lord Glenbuchat. “They are the symbols of His Majesty’s rightful claims to the throne that has been usurped by the family of the Duke of Brunswick-Lúneberg-Celle, the so-called House of Hanover. The jewels must be found and the culprit punished.”

“Eminence, I shall do my utmost to bring this matter to a satisfactory and immediate conclusion,” Volpe assured the old Cardinal, addressing him rather than turning to Lord Glenbuchat.

The old man sighed and waved his hand to the Marquess.

“I have had my chamberlain, Lord Glenbuchat, make out a list of the items that are missing.”

“You say that these apartments were broken into?” Volpe queried. “May I see where the entrance was forced?”

Cardinal York coughed nervously.

“I did not mean to be taken literally,” he said as if in bad temper. “There was no sign of anyone actually breaking into these chambers, was there, Glenbuchat?”

The Marchese shook his head.

“No doors nor windows bore signs of forced entry nor even the secret cabinet in which the jewels were kept for safety.”

Volpe frowned.

“I presume that the doors to these apartments are locked when there is no one present?”

“Of course, though there is usually myself or my chamberlain here. If we are not, there is my bodyguard, Colonel O’Sullivan, and my manservant, Iain.”

“These have access to the chamber where the jewels were kept?”

The Cardinal nodded.

“No one else?”

“None that have free access to these rooms.”

“If someone will be so good as to show me where these jewels were kept…?” asked Volpe after a moment’s reflection.

Cardinal York glanced to his chamberlain.

Lord Glenbuchat took Volpe by the arm and led him to another door.

“This is His Majesty’s bedchamber,” he confided. Volpe could not get used to the form of address. He supposed that, to his followers, the Cardinal was totally accepted as the rightful king. Glenbuchat had opened the door and pointed to the key in the lock.

“This key is always in the possession of His Majesty or myself when His Majesty was not in this room. The room was always kept locked because of the presence of the jewels.”

“There is only one key?”

“So I am told by the abbot of this monastery.”

“And where were the jewels kept?”

Lord Glenbuchat led the way into the chamber, which was covered with frescoes from the time of Palladio who had built the church of San Giorgio Maggiore. Most of them were framed either in the ornate cornices of the ceiling or with raised plasterwork on the walls. There were copies of Tintoretto paintings such as the“Gathering of Manna” which had been executed by his students. The room was also sumptuously furnished. Volpe saw that there was one window, a small one that he knew only gave access of view to an inner courtyard, some ten metres below.

The Marchese went to the head of the bed, by the right hand side and leaned forward, pressing a panel, which slid aside and reveal a small iron door. He reached for a key on the table and unlocked the door, swinging it open to reveal a tiny metal safe beyond. Apart from some papers, it was empty.

“This is where the jewels were kept,” he said, standing aside.

Count Volpe glanced quickly at the safe. It would tell him nothing, except that the lock had not been forced.

“Where was the key kept?” he asked.

“So far as we knew, it was with His Majesty the entire time.”

“There being no other key?”

“Again I was assured by the abbot that there was none.”

Volpe moved to the window and noticed the latches were secured. He opened it and peered out. It was only a tiny window, no bigger than to allow one’s head to be put through. Certainly no one could exit nor gain access through this aperture, even if they had a ladder long enough to reach up from the courtyard.

“Who knew of this secret panel and the safe?”

“Apart from His Majesty and myself as chancellor, only Colonel O’Sullivan and the manservant.”

“I presume the previous occupants of this chamber and, of course, the abbot, would know of the safe,” Volpe dryly pointed out.

“But they would not have known of the valuables that had been placed there,” replied Lord Glenbuchat.

Volpe conceded that it was a point.

“Who knew about these jewels? I do not mean their exact location but of their existence?”

“Of the existence of the Stuart Crown Jewels? I would say, countless people. Now and then emissaries from the usurper Hanoverian court came to make offers to His Late Majesty, when I served him.”

“His Late Majesty?” frowned Volpe.

“Charles the Third,” replied Glenbuchat irritably. “And, when his brother succeeded, twice they came with offers. The House of Hanover would like possession of the jewels in order to boost the legitimacy of their claims. But the exact whereabouts was only known to we of the household. Indeed, Colonel O’Sullivan deemed it best, when we fled from Frascati, to put it abroad that the French had taken the jewels when they sacked the villa at Frascati.”

Volpe was thoughtful.

“Are you saying that no one outside the four of you knew that these jewels were here in the monastery?”

“That I am.”

“Then this makes my work either very easy or very hard.”

Lord Glenbuchat turned with a quizzical gaze.

“Let us return to His… His Eminence,” Volpe suggested. “I would like to hear when the jewels were last seen and when and how they were discovered to be missing.”

The elderly Cardinal was still sitting before the fire but now there was a young man in attendance to him, serving a pewter goblet whose contents proved to be with mulled wine. Volpe presumed, with accuracy, that this was the Cardinal’s servant, Iain, and sought confirmation after he had withdrawn from the room.

“Now, Eminence, would you recall for me the last time you saw the jewels secured in your room?”

Cardinal York pursed his lips.

“I think I ascertained their safety late yesterday.”

“It was in the evening, Majesty,” added Glenbuchat quickly. “You will recall the evening Angelus was sounding but you had felt a distemper, deciding to retire early for the night.”

“Ah, so I did, so I did.”

“And why were the jewels inspected?” queried Volpe.

“Some papers had arrived, which I felt that His Majesty should lock away for safekeeping until we were able to deal with them.”

“Papers?”

“A report from our chief agent in London which was not for eyes other than myself and His Majesty,” replied Glenbuchat.

“And did they also disappear?”

“They did not. Only the jewels.”

“So, Eminence, you retired to bed early last night… and then what?”

“My servant Iain had brought me some hot brandy and, having partaken of it, I fell asleep and was not roused until this morning.”

Volpe unconsciously stroked his chin in thought.

“So you were not disturbed during the night?”

“I slept soundly.”

“And, Marchese, you told me it was the custom for His Eminence’s bedchamber to be secured?”

Glenbuchat nodded.

“There have been, from time to time, agents of the Hanoverians who might believe assassination was a solution to the claims of His Majesty to the throne of England. This is the first time in years that we have been in a more public place than in the confines of the villa at Frascati. We have to be vigilant. Indeed, you must know that there are some representatives of the clergy attending this conclave who declare their allegiance to the Hanoverian usurpers. Even the Irish bishops have had their allegiance bought by promises of seminaries and an easing of the Penal Laws against the Catholic population in Ireland.

“The Archbishop of Dublin, for example, Troy, is bending over backwards claiming that only those expressing loyalty to the Hanoverian Kings in London should be promoted as Irish bishops. He has condemned the uprising of the Irish last year and is even preaching legislative union of Ireland with England and Scotland. If such is the position of Irish Catholics, then the Stuart cause is lost forever. Such supporters of Archbishop Troy have the effrontery to come here to Venice to support the election of the new Holy Father.”

It was clear that Lord Glenbuchat was impassioned with his cause.

“So the bedchamber was secured?”

“We ensure that His Majesty secures his bedchamber door from the inside. And when he retires for the night O’Sullivan or Iain take it in turn to stay outside the door.”

“And this was faithfully carried out last night?”

“It was.”

“So when were the jewels discovered missing?”

“About mid-morning,” replied Glenbuchat.

“In what circumstances?”

It was the Cardinal who answered.

“I arose early and Iain helped me to dress so that I could go to the church to attend the early morning Angelus and mass. As I left my chamber, I locked the door behind me, as was my custom. When I returned I opened the chamber door so that Iain could clean my bedchamber and prepare the bed.”

“You were in the chamber when this was being done?”

The Cardinal shook his head.

“I was sitting here with Lord Glenbuchat on matters of business. I dictated some letters, for his lordship acts in the position of my secretary as well as chancellor.” The old man smiled wanly. “Thus have the Kings of England and Scotland in exile fallen on hard times.”

“It was the secret report from our agent which prompted me to open the safe,” added Glenbuchat. “I saw the jewellery box was gone. We questioned the household first. His Majesty was reluctant to send for outside assistance in case the news was spread abroad. But I hope we have your assurance of discretion.”

If it was an implied question, Volpe chose to ignore it.

“So, what you are saying is that the theft must have occurred in the hours when His Eminence left the bedchamber and went to attend early morning mass and the time when he returned to this apartment, there being no other opportunity for anyone to enter the chamber and remove the jewels?”

Glenbuchat shrugged helplessly.

“It would seem so. But His Majesty had taken both keys. Iain was here, as was I, awaiting the return of His Majesty. O’Sullivan had accompanied His Majesty to the mass as bodyguard. So we would have surely heard if anyone had forced an entry and remember that there were no signs of a forced entry.”

“No, whoever took the jewels had a key,” agreed Volpe.

“And we have been assured that there was no other key. Neither key to the safe nor to the bedchamber.”

“With your permission, Eminence, I would like a word with your servant, Iain, and also with Colonel O’Sullivan,” Volpe said rising.

“They can tell you nothing more than what my lord Glenbuchat and myself have furnished you with,” the old Cardinal pointed out.

Volpe smiled softly.

“In such an investigation as this, Eminence, it is always best to confirm things at first hand. A word here, a gesture there, may tell one far more… And, with your permission, I would like to see them alone, in their own quarters.”

He questioned the manservant Iain, a lad whose great-grandfather had come from Scotland to serve the House of Stuart, but whose connection with that country was solely his name. He was a young, excitable man with a Roman accent and a fast way of speaking, uttering half a dozen words in one breath, pausing and uttering half a dozen more. To Volpe, he seemed rather naïve. At first, Volpe thought he might be somewhat simple but then realized it was due to the youth’s unworldly attitude. He confirmed everything that the Cardinal and Glenbuchat had said. During the morning he had not stirred outside the apartments, as his task was to clean and maintain them for the Cardinal’s entire household. He was in and out of the main chamber, where the Marquess of Glenbuchat was working on some papers, within sight of the locked bedchamber door, until the return of Cardinal York and Colonel O’Sullivan.

Count Volpe then went to see Colonel O’Sullivan.

O’Sullivan was a tall man with a mane of golden-red hair, flushed fair features and a ready smile. Unlike the others of the Cardinal’s household who were descended from exiles, O’Sullivan was an Irishman born but had spent ten years in Dillon’s Regiment of the Irish Brigade in French service until the French Revolution had caused the Brigade to be disbanded in 1792. Too many Irish families, in service with the Irish Brigade of France, had risen to be ennobled in the French aristocracy. The new National Assembly of the French Republic did not trust the loyalty of the Irish regiments as many of their commanders had declared themselves as royalists.

Colonel O’Sullivan had made for Rome and offered his service to the Stuart household. He was too bombastic for Volpe’s liking. A man quick to temper and equally quick to humour. He was of too ephemeral a nature.

Volpe interviewed him in the colonel’s small, rudely furnished bedchamber in which there was room for scarcely anything other than a camp bed, a canvas campaign chair and a travelling chest. Volpe perched himself on the chest and motioned the big man to be seated. O’Sullivan dropped to the bed with a grin.

“Well, it seems as if this is the last throw of the dice for the Stuarts. After this I scarce imagine His so-called Majesty will be able to employ the likes of me.”

Volpe’s brows drew together. There seemed a certain amount of disrespect in O’Sullivan’s tone for one whom, so Volpe presumed, he regarded as his rightful king.

Catching sight of his expression, O’Sullivan slapped his hand on his knee and let out a laugh.

“Lord bless you, but I am a pragmatist. Sure, the Stuarts have provided me with an income after the French disbanded my regiment. But I am not the fool to forget that they never did my poor benighted country any good. Wasn’t it the Stuart king who sent the English and Scottish colonists pouring into Ireland and driving the likes of me to their deaths by the thousands? Thousands more of us had to escape to France, Spain or Austria. I serve the money, not the man.”

Volpe’s eyes widened.

“You are either an honest fellow or a fool,” he observed. “You have just provided me with a reason why I should suspect you of this theft.”

O’Sullivan grinned.

“You are at liberty to search my room. What you see is all I have. But as for stealing these jewels… why, I might have done had I known of their whereabouts. I didn’t know until this morning of the cunning hiding hole in the wall. Then that plumped-up jackanapes, Glenbuchat, started his ranting and raving. The old man was a closed mouth. As for Iain, God help him, he knows his station and will not depart from it. If he had found the Crown Jewels in a dark alley he would have come obediently to his master and handed them over without thought of recompense.”

“Are you saying that you did not know of their existence?”

“Sure, my Italian is not fluent but I think I made myself clear,” chided the other. “I knew of their existence. I knew the Cardinal had them but I did not know where he had hid them until this morning when I was told they had gone.”

“So you were told after you returned with His… His Eminence from mass this morning?”

“Lord, but you are a sharp one,” chuckled the big man.

“And during the preceding night you and Iain, the servant, took turns to stay outside the door of the Cardinal’s bedchamber.”

“That we did. The Cardinal returned to bed early, so Iain took the early part of the evening. I took my turn on watch when it lacked an hour until midnight. I did a four hour watch and then Iain relieved me and, of course, his watch was relatively short being but two hours before he had to rouse the old… the Cardinal to get him up for the Angelus and Mass.”

“And you were not disturbed during this time?”

“Not I. No, I had a candle and good reading to occupy me. A countryman had sent me Mister Tone’s Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland… a fascinating little book the like of which I wish I had come across sooner. It put me in mind of returning home and offering my sword arm to these United Irishmen to strike for the liberty of my own country. I’d be better occupied than with a lost cause like…”

He nodded towards the door.

“Nevertheless, you are paid to be a bodyguard to His Eminence,” pointed out Volpe.

“And, by the saints, I earn my pay,” replied O’Sullivan quickly. “I guard the old man and no one can claim that I have allowed a single assassin to get near him.”

“You believe there are such assassins abroad?”

Again, O’Sullivan laughed sharply.

“The enemies that the Stuarts have in London are not beyond paying a fellow a few golden sovereigns to rid them of an irritant if they cannot buy them off. The old man has been growing fearful in recent years. It is not to be wondered at. Why, I’ll tell you an irony, an English agent in Madrid in Spain assassinated my own kinsman, The O’Sullivan, chieftain of Beare. The irony being that assassin was sent by a Stuart king who feared poor wee Felim O’Sullivan. The current King of England, Farmer George as he is called, has more to fear from the last of the Stuarts than ever the Stuarts had to fear from my forebear.”

Volpe frowned, not really understanding.

“So,” he said, trying to make sense of things, “you believe there is justification to fear assassination?”

O’Sullivan leaned forward with a wink and tapped Volpe’s arm in a conspiratorial manner.

“Justification, indeed. Didn’t I see that wee man, Father Vane, sneaking near these chambers these last two days?”

“Father Vane?” Volpe mentally tried to remember the delegates and their attendants.

“Aye, a weasel of a man. One of the delegates from England. A Catholic? What Englishman is truly a Catholic these days? I’d sooner believe that he has an assassin’s dagger in his cassock than a rosary.”

Volpe smiled thinly.

“You are prejudiced, my friend.”

“If an Irishman can’t be prejudiced about the English, then I have no understanding of this world.”

“Are you saying that this Father Kane has been seen lurking near these apartments?”

O’Sullivan didn’t understand the word nascondersi and Volpe had to use a simile to express the action of someone hiding themselves near the apartments.

“Not exactly hiding themselves,” confirmed O’Sullivan, “but keeping to the shadows. In fact, before I took over my watch from Iain last night I was sure I saw the little ferret below in the courtyard.”

Now it was Volpe’s turn to be lost.

“You saw a furetto in the courtyard?” he exclaimed.

“Vane, the wee fella,” explained the Irishman.

“Ah. How did you observe him?”

O’Sullivan rose and went to the tall windows, the porta-finestra, in his room and opened one of them. Outside was a small balcony. O’Sullivan beckoned Volpe to join him.

“Was I not having me a pipe out here when I saw him. The old man does not like the smell of tobacco and, seeing that tobacco is one of the few pleasures I can indulge in, I have my smoke outside.”

Volpe saw that the balcony overlooked the courtyard below.

“It must have been dark at the time,” he said. “How could you recognize anyone down there as Father Vane?”

“Bless ye, and ye are no fool,” chuckled O’Sullivan. “However, at dusk along comes one of your own men and helpfully lights those torches you see on the walls there.”

“And you can swear that you saw this Father Vane standing down there… show me exactly where.”

O’Sullivan pointed to an area further along. It was a spot immediately below the small window of Cardinal York’s bedchamber some ten metres above.

“You say that you suspect Father Vane of evil intentions towards His Eminence and yet you had no fear when you saw him there? You raised no alarm?”

“Love you for a cautious man, but what harm? Have you seen the piddling little window in the old man’s bedroom? Even had he been able to climb the wall, he wouldn’t have gained entrance by that means. No, if Vane is your thief, he came in through the door. If he came in through the door, he must have had a key. If he had a key, then he must have taken it from somewhere. If not from the hand of the old man, then there must be two keys. And even if there was another key, he must have had the other key to the safe and knew of the secret panel. And if he had all that, then he also had the miraculous ability to have made himself invisible to pass either Iain or myself last night.”

“Then there are two possibilities,” observed Volpe in a dry tone.

The big Irishman stared at him for a moment.

“Which are?”

“Either Iain or yourself allowed the thief to enter or one or other of you are the thief.”

There was a silence. Then O’Sullivan roared with laughter.

“There is no denying that you are a sharp one, Count Volpe. There’s yet another explanation. If the jewels were not removed through the door then the only possible method was through the small window, and who can get through it but the wee fairy folk. Have you thought that the sídhe might be at work here… the wee folk of the hills?”

Volpe left O’Sullivan enjoying his obscure joke and returned to the main chamber.

Cardinal York had retired to his bedchamber for his private devotionals and the Marchese Glenbuchat was pacing the room in front of the fireplace.

“Well?” he demanded roughly, when Volpe re-entered. “Have you come upon a solution?”

Volpe smiled thinly.

“Let us say that I have a few lines of inquiry that need to be pursued. If I may suggest, Marchese, let us be seated for a moment.”

Reluctantly, Glenbuchat sat down and Volpe took a chair and pulled it opposite him.

“As I understand it, you are more concerned with His Eminence’s political position rather than his ecclesiastical one? You serve him as rightful claimant to the English throne than as Bishop of Frascati, am I correct?”

Glenbuchat frowned.

“As rightful King of England and Scotland,” he corrected. “I am a faithful subject and servant of His Majesty, Henry Ninth, by divine right…”

“Just so,” intervened Volpe. “How long have you served the Stuart Household?”

“All my life. My grandfather was a young man on the staff of His Grace, the Duke of Berwick. He served both His Majesty James the Second and James the Third while they were in exile at St Germain-en-Laye. He went back to Scotland and fought at Glenshiels in Seventeen-Nineteen. My father was born in St Germain-en-Laye and continued that service. He was in Lord Drummond’s Regiment when we defeated that fat German who called himself the Duke of Cumberland at Fontenoy and, a few months later, sailed with Prince Charles Edward back home to Scotland. When Charles Edward came back to exile and then became Charles III, my father returned with him. I was born in Rome and continued in that service. When Charles died, I went to serve the next Stuart monarch, King Henry at Frascati.”

Glenbuchat recited all this with a great deal of passion and pride in his voice.

Volpe nodded thoughtfully.

“So you know much of the politics of the conflict between the Hanoverians and Stuarts?”

“Of course.”

“His Eminence is considered the last of the Stuarts?”

“The last of the direct line although there are relatives by consanguinity.”

“I am told that His Eminence is poor?”

“This last decade has seen his fortune vanish because of this revolutionary fever among the French. The French have taken all the Stuart possessions that remained to them.”

“Except the Crown Jewels.”

“Except the Stuart Crown Jewels,” confirmed Glenbuchat. “The Stuart cause is bereft of wealth. Why do you wish to know this? Your task is to find the thief who took them last night.”

Volpe smiled.

“I know my task, Marchese. And that is precisely my intention. I am pursuing it in my own way. Tell me, do you really think that the people of England or Scotland are interested in the return of the Stuarts to the throne?”

Glenbuchat’s mouth tightened.

“Whether they are interested or not, the Stuarts are the rightful kings.”

Volpe sighed wistfully.

“Kings are not the currency they once were. They can be easily deposed as the French have just shown. The creed of the republicans has swept Europe like a forest fire.”

“The French!” sneered Glenbuchat.

“Wasn’t it the English who showed the way? They executed one Stuart king and chased another out of the kingdom. For over a hundred years the Stuarts have been in exile. Now we have a frail old man, a Cardinal no less, as the last of the line. Do you think anyone really cares now whether this old man can suddenly be restored to the throne of his grandfather?”

Glenbuchat had turned almost apoplectic with rage.

“How dare you, sir! You insult my King. I have fought duels for less.”

Volpe sat back unperturbed.

“I am prefect commander of the guard protecting all the princes of the church meeting at this monastery to elect a new Holy Father. You, Marchese, are here on sufferance only because you are employed by one of the Cardinal delegates. I should be careful with your threats. Now, I make the point, that monarchy is unfashionable, the Irish seem to have turned to republicanism, even your own Scottish nation with its Friends of the People seem to be declaring for a republic. The Stuart cause is no longer justified.”

Glenbuchat was still angered.

“I called you here to investigate a theft and bring a criminal to justice. My family and I have devoted our lives, our estates and our good name to the cause of the Stuarts and we are still prepared to defend that cause.”

Count Volpe rose abruptly.

“I can see that, Glenbuchat. I think that you may be what the English call the last of the Jacobites. I believe you to be an honest man in that cause.”

Glenbuchat regarded him in bewilderment at his conciliatory tone.

“Well, sir, are you to proceed in solving and resolving this theft and naming the culprit?”

“I think I already see a solution to this affair,” Volpe replied complacently. “Before the culprit is named, I would like another word with His Eminence.”

Glenbuchat looked surprised.

“You have… if you have the name of the culprit, give it to me. I am chancellor to…”

Volpe raised a hand.

“Please, Marchese. I have little time to indulge in discourse on protocols.”

Glenbuchat stood up in annoyance.

“I will see if His Majesty will receive you,” he said stiffly. He turned to the Cardinal’s bedchamber, knocking softly before entering. A moment later, he reappeared and beckoned to Count Volpe.

The old Cardinal was sitting in a chair by his bed.

When Glenbuchat made no move to withdraw, Volpe said: “Eminence, I would have a few words with you alone.”

At once Glenbuchat began to protest but Cardinal York said quietly: “You may wait outside, my lord. I will call you when needed.”

With an expression of annoyance, Glenbuchat withdrew, shutting the door behind him. For a few seconds the Cardinal and Count Volpe remained in silence, their searching eyes meeting as if duellists preparing to engage.

“Well, Eminence,” Volpe said, after a while, “is it worth my while to order a search of the room and belongings of Father Vane for your jewels?”

A few moments passed and then the Cardinal gave a long, low sigh.

“You are undoubtedly a very clever man, Count Volpe,” he said.

Volpe shook his head.

“It required little cleverness, only logic. To make this look like theft it was but poorly done. Little thought was given to arranging opportunities by which a thief might have stolen the jewels, which might have confused me. With few opportunities to dwell on, what was left, however improbable, had to be the solution. You, yourself, removed the jewels and dropped them out of the tiny window to where this Father Vane was waiting below to receive them. Is that not so?”

Cardinal York lowered his head.

“I thought that I would have had a little more time to arrange things, but before I had a chance, Glenbuchat demanded sight of the document which we had put in the safe the night before and, in doing so, realized the jewels were no longer there. I tried to stop him making an official furore but there was little I could do.”

“So no theft had been committed?”

“As you have deduced. Count Volpe, I am old and weary. Tired of pretending to something that I know that I cannot have and, frankly, that I do not want to have. My grandfather suffered a mental decline after his exile and took refuge in religion. My father was, all his life, a depressed and gloomy individual, resigned to failure from the years of ill fortune. He became a refugee, dying in Rome with only the Holy Father insisting on addressing him as King of England. My brother, as you well know, ended his life ended his years as a depressive and a drunk. I have found solace in serving Holy Mother Church. I live frugally and in poverty. Why should I keep these remaining baubles of happier times for my family? I will never be, and never want to be, King of England, Scotland or Ireland.”

Volpe waited patiently and then asked: “But the descendants of your family? They might have been entrusted with the jewels?”

“There is no issue after me. My brother had a daughter, illegitimate, who married the Duke of Albany and died the same year as my brother. I am the last of the Stuarts. Let the offspring of the Brunswick-Lúneberg-Celle family keep the throne. After all, they’ve had it for so long I’ll wager no one in England can even remember our family except with bitterness.”

“So I presume that this incident was but a surreptitious handover of these Crown Jewels to…?”

“Let us say that they have been passed on to the nations over which our family once ruled.”

“What will you tell the likes of Glenbuchat? He will be angered at the demise of his cause.”

“He has lived in the past too long. I will make my confession in due course and hope the new Holy Father, once we have elected him, will allow me to retire to Frascati to end my days in peace as a due servant of the Church.”

On 14 March 1800, after three months in conclave in the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, the Cardinals elected Giorgio Barnaba Chiaramonti as Holy Father. He took the name of Pius VII. One of his first acts was to disband the Order of the Noble Knights of Our Lord and replace them with a new unit called the Guardia Nobile del Corpo di Nostro Signore. Count Volpe refused to renew his commission and retired to his estates of Ferarra and Imola, south of Venice. In the same year, George William Frederick, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke and Elector of Hanover, agreed to pay to Cardinal York, Bishop of Frascati, a pension of £4,000 for life. The last of the royal Stuarts died at the age of 82 at Frascati on 13 July 1807, and was buried in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

And the mystery of the Stuart Crown Jewels? When the Princess Alexandrina Victoria was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India at Westminster Abbey on 28 June 1838, she wore a newly reworked State Crown. The famous Stuart Sapphire occupied a prominent position on it and today it is one of the two famous sapphires that rest in the collection of the British Crown Jewels.

All that day, the last day of March, the cableway to the top of Table Mountain had operated normally. Every half hour the car on the summit descended, and the car below ascended, both operating on the same endless cable. The entire journey took seven minutes.

Passengers going up or coming down gawked at the magnificent panorama over the head of the blase conductor in each car. In his upper-station cabin the driver of the week, Clobber, hunched conscientiously over his controls during each run, and was usually able to relax for the rest of the half hour.

In the restaurant on the summit, Mrs Orvin worked and chatted and sold curios and postcards and buttered scones, and showed customers how to post their cards in the little box which would ensure their stamps would be canceled with a special Table Mountain franking.

In the box-office at the lower station, the station master, Brander, sold tickets for the journey, and chatted with the conductor who happened to be down at the time, and drank tea.

Then, at 5.30 p.m., the siren moaned its warning that the last trip of the day was about to commence. Into the upper car came the last straggling sightseers, the engineer on duty, Mrs Orvin, and the conductor, Skager. Alone in the lower car was the other conductor, Heston, who would sleep overnight on the summit.

Then two bells rang, and the cars were on their way. For the space of seven minutes Clobber and the Native labourer, Ben, were the only two on top of the mountain. Then the cars docked, and Heston stepped jauntily on to the landing platform.

He joined Clobber, but neither spoke. Their dislike was mutual and obvious. They ate their evening meal in silence.

Clobber picked up a book. Heston took a short walk, and then went to bed.

Some hours later, he woke up. Somewhere in the blackness of the room he could hear Clobber snoring softly.

Heston bared his teeth. Snore now, he thought, snore now. But tomorrow…

The night began to grow less black. The stars faded first, then the lights far below in the city also winked out. The east changed colour. The sun rose.

It was tomorrow.

Brander came into the room which housed the lower landing platform, and peered myopically up along the giant stretch of steel rope.

The old Cape Coloured, Piet, was sweeping out the car which had remained overnight at the lower station – the right-hand car. He said: “Dag [1], Baas Brander.”

“Dag, Piet,” said Brander.

Two thousand feet above, the upper station looked like a doll’s house, perched on the edge of the cliff. The outlines of Table Mountain stood deep-etched by the morning sun. On the flat top of the elevation there was no sign of cloud – the tablecloth, as people in Cape Town call it – and there was no stirring of the air.

Brander thought: Good weather. We will be operating all day.

Piet was sweeping carefully, poking the broom edgeways into the corners of the car. He noticed Brander looking at him, and his old parchment flat-nosed face creased suddenly into a myriad of grins “Baas Dimble is the engineer today,” he said. “The car must be very clean.”

“That’s right, Piet,” said Brander. “Make a good job for Baas Dimble. You still have twenty minutes.”

In the upper station, Clobber settled himself in his chair in the driver’s cabin, and opened the latest issue of Armchair Scientist. He had just about enough time, he reckoned, to finish the latest article on the new rocket fuels before the test run at nine-thirty.

Line by line his eyes swallowed words, phrases and sentences. Then, interrupting the even flow of his thoughts, he felt the uneasy consciousness of eyes staring at the back of his neck. He had an annoying mental image of Heston’s thin lips contorting in a sardonic smile.

He turned. It was Heston, but this time his face was unusually serious. “Did I interrupt you?” he asked.

“Oh, go to hell,” said Clobber. He marked the place in his magazine, and put it down. He asked: “Well?”

“I wanted a few words with you,” said Heston.

“If it’s chit-chat you’re after, find someone else.”

Heston looked hurt. “It’s… well, it’s rather a personal problem. Do you mind?”

“All right. Go ahead.”

“I’m a bit worried about the trip down.”

“Why? You know as well as I do that nothing can go wrong with the cable.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just… Look, Clobber, I don’t want you to think I’m pulling your leg, because I’m really very serious. I don’t think I’m going to get down alive. You see, yesterday was my birthday – I turned thirty-one and it was 31 March – and I had to spend last night up here. Now, I’m not being superstitious or anything, but I’ve been warned that the day after my birthday I’d not be alive if my first trip was from the top to the bottom of the mountain. If I hadn’t forgotten, I’d have changed shifts with someone, but as it is…”

“Look here, Heston, if you’re not bluffing, you’re the biggest damned fool-”

“I’m not bluffing, Clobber. I mean it. You see, I haven’t got a relation in the world. If anything does happen, I’d like to see that each of the men gets something of mine as a sort of keepsake. You can have my watch. Dimble gets my binoculars-”

“Sure, sure. And your million-rand bank account goes to Little Orphan Annie. Don’t be a damned fool. Who gave you this idiotic warning, anyway?”

“I had a dream-”

“Get to hell out of here, you little rat! Coming here and-”

“But I mean it, Clobber-”

“Get out! It would be a damned good thing for all of us if you didn’t reach the bottom alive!”

Dimble, neat and officious but friendly, arrived at the lower station wagon, and with him were Skager and Mrs Orvin.

Brander shuffled forward to meet them.

“Nice day,” said Dimble. “What’s your time, Brander? Nine twenty-five? Good, our watches agree. Everything ship-shape here? Fine.”

Skager scratched a pimple on his neck.

Mrs Orvin said: “How’s your hand, Mr Brander?”

The station-master peered below his glasses at his left hand, which was neatly bound with fresh white bandages. “Getting better slowly, thanks. It’s still a little painful. I can’t use it much, yet.”

“Don’t like that Heston,” said Dimble. “Nasty trick he played on you, Brander.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t a trick, Mr Dimble. Perhaps he didn’t know the other end of the iron was hot.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs Orvin. “He probably heated it up, specially. I can believe anything of him. Impertinent, that’s what he is.”

“Even if he did do it,” said Brander, “I can’t bear any hard feelings.”

Dimble said: “You’re a religious man, eh, Brander? All right in its way, but too impractical. No good turning the other cheek to a chap like Heston. Probably give you another clout for good measure. No, I’m different. If he’d done it to me, I’d have my knife into him.”

“He’ll get a knife into him one of these days,” said Skager, darkly. He hesitated. “He’ll be coming down in the first car, won’t he?”

“Yes,” said Brander.

“And it’s just about time,” said Dimble. “We’d better get in our car. After you, Mrs Orvin. So long, Brander.”

“Goodbye, Mr Dimble – Mrs Orvin – Skager.”

Heston came through the door leading to the landing platform at the upper station. In the car, the Native Ben was still sweeping.

“Hurry up, you lazy black swine,” said Heston. “What in hell have you been doing with yourself this morning? It’s almost time to go, and you’re still messing about. Get out of my way.”

The Native looked at him with a snarl. “You mustn’t talk to me like that. I’m not your dog. I’ve been twenty years with this company, and in all that time nobody’s ever spoken to me like that-”

“Then it’s time someone started. Go on-get out!”

Ben muttered: “I’d like to-”

“You’d like to what? Come up behind me when I’m not looking, I suppose? Well, you won’t get much chance for that. And don’t hang around – voetsak!” [2]

From the driver’s cabin they heard the two sharp bells that indicated that the cars were ready to move. Ben stepped aside. As the upper car began to slide down and away Heston went through the door, up the short flight of stairs and into the driver’s cabin. Ben looked over Clobber’s shoulder at the plate-glass window.

The upper car was then 20 or 30 yards from the station. Both men saw Heston lean over the side of the car, and salute them with an exaggerated sweep of his right arm. Both men muttered under their breath.

As the seconds ticked by, the two cars approached each other in mid-air.

In the ascending car Dimble looked at the one that was descending with a critical eye. Suddenly, he became annoyed. “That fool,” he said. “Look how he’s leaning out over the door. Dangerous…”

His voice tailed off. As the cars passed each other, he saw something protruding from Heston’s back – something that gleamed silver for an inch or two, and was surmounted by a handle of bright scarlet. Dimble said: “God!” He reached and jerked the emergency brake. Both cars stopped suddenly, swaying drunkenly over the abyss.

Skager moaned: “He’s not leaning…”

Mrs Orvin gulped audibly. “That’s my knife,” she said, “the one he said…”

The telephone bell in the car rang shrilly. Dimble answered it.

“What’s the trouble?” came Clobber’s voice.

“It’s Heston. He’s slumped over the door of the car. There seems to be a knife in his back.”

“A knife? Hell! He was alive when he left here. He waved to me… What should we do?”

“Hang on a second. Brander, are you on the other end? Have you heard this conversation?”

“Yes, Mr Dimble.”

“Okay, Clobber. I’m releasing the brake now. Speed it up a little.”

“Sure.”

The cars moved again.

At the top, Dimble led the rush up the stairs to the driver’s cabin, where Clobber’s white face greeted them. They waited.

The telephone rang.

Clobber stretched out a tentative hand, but Dimble was ahead of him.

“I’ve seen him,” said Brander, queerly. “He’s dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. He’s dead.”

“Now look, Brander, we must make sure nothing is touched. Get on the outside phone to the police right away. And let Piet stand guard over the body until they get here, OK?”

“It might be difficult, Mr Dimble. There are people here already for tickets, so I can’t leave here, and Piet is scared. He’s said so. I’ve locked the door leading to the landing stage-won’t that be enough?”

“No. If anyone there is curious, they can climb round the side of the station to the car, and possibly spoil evidence. Let me speak to Piet.”

“Here he is, Mr Dimble.”

“Hullo, Piet. Now listen – I want you to stand guard on the landing stage and see nobody touches the car until the police arrive.”

“No, Baas. Not me, Baas. Not with a dead body, Baas.”

“Oh, dammit. OK, Let me speak to Mr Brander. Brander? Listen – this is the best plan. Don’t sell any tickets – we won’t be operating today, anyway. We’ll start the cars and stop them halfway so nobody will be able to get near them. In the meantime you telephone the police. Do you get that?”

“Yes, I will telephone the police.”

“And give me a ring the moment they are here.”

“Yes, Mr Dimble.”

The police came. Caledon Square had sent its top murder team. Lieutenant Dirk Joubert was in charge of the party, and with him was his uncle, Rolf le Roux, the “expert on people” as he jocularly styled himself, the inevitable kromsteel [3] protruding through the forest of his beard. Happy Detective-Sergeant Johnson was there, Lugubrious Sergeant Botha, Doc McGregor and several uniformed men. They mounted the steps to the lower station building and found Brander waiting for them.

“Where is the body?” asked Joubert.

Brander pointed out the two tiny cars on their thin threads a thousand feet above. “Will you please speak on the internal phone to Mr Dimble, the engineer in charge, who’s at the upper station?” he asked.

“Get him for me,” said Joubert.

Brander made the connection, and then handed over the phone.

“Mr Dimble? I am Inspector Joubert of the Cape Town C.I.D. I want the cable car with the body to be allowed to come down here. What? No, it’d be better if you people stayed on top of the mountain while we do our preliminary work here. I’ll ring you when we’re ready. Hullo! Just one moment, just bring me up to date on the discovery of the crime-briefly, please. I see. You were going up in the right-hand car, and when you passed the other one at halfway, you saw a knife sticking out of the conductor’s back. His name? Heston… yes, I have that. And then? I see. Yes. Yes. And why did you move the car with the body half-way back up the mountain? Mm. No, that’s all right – it was a good idea. Right, better get the body back here now.”

Almost as soon as he put the receiver down, the cable began to whine.

From the landing-stage they watched the approaching car. Even at some distance they could see the slumped figure quite clearly, with the scarlet splash of the knife handle protruding from its back.

“I can tell you one thing right now,” said McGregor. “It’s not a suicide.”

As the car came closer to the landing-stage, Johnson began checking his photographic and fingerprint equipment.

Brander mumbled: “It is the will of the Lord…”

He looked almost grateful when Joubert said: “There’s nothing we can do here, Brander. Let’s go into the ticket office. There are one or two questions…”

Rolf went with them.

Joubert said: “I’ve had the rough details of the story from Mr Dimble. You were here when the body first came down. Did you examine it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He was dead. I could see that.”

“And did anyone else come near the body? This Coloured, Piet?”

“No, not Piet. He was afraid. He wouldn’t go near the car. He stood at the door until the motors-started, though, in case anyone else wanted to go through.”

“Anyone else? Who else was here?”

“Well, there was a man and two women-passengers – but they left when I wouldn’t sell them tickets.”

Joubert tried a new tack. “This Heston, now. Tell me, Brander, what sort of a man was he? Was there anyone working here who hated him?”

Brander hesitated. “I do not like to talk about him. He is dead now. What does it matter what he was like in life?”

Joubert said: “Answer my question. Is there anyone here who hated him?”

“He was not liked,” said Brander, “but nobody here hated him enough to kill him.”

“No? Someone stuck a knife in his back, all the same. Who could have done it?”

“What does it matter?” said Brander. “He’s dead now. Let him rest in peace.”

The experts had finished. Two constables carried a long basket clumsily down the steps to a waiting ambulance.

“Well, Doc?” asked Joubert.

“One blow,” said McGregor. “A very clean swift blow. No mess. The murderer struck him from behind and above. Either the killer stood on something, or he was a very tall man.”

“Or woman?”

“Maybe. I canna say one way or another.”

Johnson made his report. “No fingerprints on the knife, Dirk. Couple of blurred smears, that’s all. Probably wore gloves.”

Joubert said: “All right. Doc, you go back with the body, and do the P.M. If you come up with anything new, telephone me here… Now let’s talk to this Coloured, Piet.”

But Piet knew nothing. He was old and superstition-ridden. He had not even looked at the body. The nearest he had come to it was to stand on guard on the other side of a closed door.

Joubert phoned Dimble. “We’re coming up. What is the signal for starting the car? Two bells – right. I’m not interested in rules about conductors on every trip. We’re coming up without one, and the car at the top must come down completely empty. All right – so it’s irregular. So is murder. I’ll take the responsibility… We’ll want to interview you one at a time. Is there a room there we can use? The restaurant? Right. You’ll hear the signal in a couple of minutes.”

Joubert, Rolf le Roux and Johnson. Four uniformed policemen. Going up in the car in which death had come down.

“I don’t think we’ll be long,” said Joubert. “The solution’s on top, obviously.”

Rolf said: “How do you make that out?”

“When the cars reached the middle of the run, Heston already had the knife in his back. He was alone in the cable-car. Therefore he must have been killed before he left the summit. One of the men stationed up there is the chap we’re looking for.”

Rolf looked worried. He said: “I hope you are right.”

“Of course I’m right. It’s the only possible explanation.”

“So you’ll start off by concentrating on the men who were on the mountain when the cars started this morning?”

“No, let them stew in their own juice for a while. This Dimble seems a proper fuss-pot – better get him over first.”

Dimble

“… And so I told Brander to see the body was guarded, and when I found Piet was afraid I told him…”

“Right, Dimble. We’ve got all that. Now, let me get one thing clear. Apart from Heston, there were two men who stayed overnight at the summit – Clobber, and the Native, Ben?”

“Yes.”

“Did either of these two have anything against Heston?”

“Probably. Heston wasn’t very likable, you know. But I don’t think anyone would murder him.”

Joubert said again: “Someone did. Now look, Dimble – to your knowledge did either Clobber or Ben have anything against Heston?”

“Not to my knowledge, no. They may have. For that matter, we all disliked him. He was always doing something… objectionable. Like practical jokes – only there was malice behind them, and he never acted as though he was joking. Never could be sure. Nasty type.”

Rolf asked: “Exactly what sort of objectionable actions do you mean, Mr Dimble?”

“Well, like putting an emetic in my sandwiches when I wasn’t looking. Couldn’t prove it was him, though. And burning Brander’s hand.”

Joubert said: “I noticed his left hand was bandaged. What happened?”

“Heston handed him a length of iron to hold, and his end was all but red-hot.”

“I see. So it would appear that both you and Brander had cause to hate the man?”

“Cause, yes, and I must admit I didn’t like him. But Brander’s different. We were talking about it this morning, and he didn’t seem to bear any grudge. He’s a religious type, you know.”

“So I gathered,” said Joubert, drily.

Dimble went on: “And that reminds me – Skager had it in for Heston too. When I mentioned that if it had been my hand he burnt, I’d have my knife in for him, Skager said that one day someone would… Hey! That’s ironic, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Joubert. “All right, Dimble. Let’s have Skager.”

Skager

A pasty, pimply young man, with a chip on his shoulder.

“I didn’t mean anything by it, Inspector. It’s just an expression. I didn’t like him.”

“So you didn’t like him, and you just used an expression? Doesn’t it strike you as strange that a few minutes later Heston did have a knife in his back?”

“I didn’t think about it.”

“Well, think now, Skager. Why did you hate him?”

“Look, Inspector, I had nothing to do with the murder. How could I have killed him?”

“How do you know how he was killed? I tell you, Skager, I am prepared to arrest any man who attempts to hide his motives… Now answer my question?”

A slight pause of defiance, then -

“Well, I don’t suppose it makes any difference. I’ve got a girlfriend. Some time ago, someone rang her up and warned her not to go out with me because I had an incurable disease. It took me weeks before I could convince her it was a lie.”

“And you thought Heston made the phone call?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because he was always making snide remarks about my pimples. Besides, it’s just the kind of sneaky trick he would get up to.”

“So you hated him, eh, Skager-hated him enough to kill him?”

“Why do you pick on me, Inspector? I know nothing about any murder. Why don’t you speak to Mrs Orvin? At least she recognised the knife…”

Mrs Orvin

Mrs Orvin said: “Yes, the knife is mine. My brother-in-law sent it to me from the Congo.”

“What did you use it for?”

“Mainly as an ornament. Occasionally for cutting. It was kept on this shelf under the glass of the counter.”

“So anyone could have taken it while you were in the kitchen?”

“Yes, that’s what must have happened.”

“When did you find it was missing?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“And before that, when did you last notice it?”

“Only a few minutes earlier. I’d been using it to cut some string, and I put it down to attend to something in the kitchen-”

“Was there anyone else in the restaurant at the time?”

“Yes, quite a few people. Four or five tourists and Heston and Clobber.”

“Clobber was here?”

“Yes, having his tea. He sat at the far corner table.”

“And Heston?”

“At first he was on the balcony, but when I came back from the kitchen he was sitting at this table.”

“So when you missed the knife, what did you do?”

“I spoke to Heston…”

Heston looked up innocently at her. “Yes, Mrs Orvin?”

“Mr Heston, have you by any chance seen my knife?”

“You mean the big one with the red handle? The voodoo knife? Of course I have. You were using it a minute ago.”

“Well, it’s gone now. Did you see anyone take it?”

“No, I didn’t see anyone take it, Mrs Orvin, but I know what happened to it all the same.”

“What?”

“It suddenly rose in the air, and sort of fluttered out through the door. All by itself…”

“Mr Heston, you’re being stupid and impertinent-”

“But it’s true, Mrs Orvin, it’s true. Some of the other people here must have seen it, too. Why don’t you ask Clobber?”

I’ve been a city cop for 32 years now, and during that time I’ve heard of and been involved in some of the weirdest, most audacious crimes imaginable – on and off public record. But as far as I’m concerned, the murder of an attorney named Adam Chillingham is the damnedest case in my experience, if not in the entire annals of crime.

You think I’m exaggerating? Well, listen to the way it was.

My partner Jack Sherrard and I were in the Detective Squad-room one morning last summer when this call came in from a man named Charles Hearn. He said he was Adam Chillingham’s law clerk, and that his employer had just been shot to death; he also said he had the killer trapped in the lawyer’s private office.

It seemed like a fairly routine case at that point. Sherrard and I drove out to the Dawes Building, a skyscraper in a new business development on the city’s south side, and rode the elevator up to Chillingham’s suite of offices on the sixteenth floor. Hearn, and a woman named Clarisse Tower, who told us she had been the dead man’s secretary, were waiting in the anteroom with two uniformed patrolmen who had arrived minutes earlier.

According to Hearn, a man named George Dillon had made a 10:30 appointment with Chillingham, had kept it punctually, and had been escorted by the attorney into the private office at that exact time. At 10:40 Hearn thought he heard a muffled explosion from inside the office, but he couldn’t be sure because the walls were partially soundproofed.

Hearn got up from his desk in the anteroom and knocked on the door and there was no response; then he tried the knob and found that the door was locked from the inside. Miss Tower confirmed all this, although she said she hadn’t heard any sound; her desk was farther away from the office door than was Hearn’s.

A couple of minutes later the door had opened and George Dillon had looked out and calmly said that Chillingham had been murdered. He had not tried to leave the office after the announcement; instead, he’d seated himself in a chair near the desk and lighted a cigarette. Hearn satisfied himself that his employer was dead, made a hasty exit, but had the presence of mind to lock the door from the outside by the simple expediency of transferring the key from the inside to the outside – thus sealing Dillon in the office with the body. After which Hearn put in his call to Headquarters.

So Sherrard and I drew our guns, unlocked the door, and burst into the private office. This George Dillon was sitting in the chair across the desk, very casual, both his hands up in plain sight. He gave us a relieved look and said he was glad the police had arrived so quickly.

I went over and looked at the body, which was sprawled on the floor behind the desk; a pair of French windows were open in the wall just beyond, letting in a warm summer breeze. Chillingham had been shot once in the right side of the neck, with what appeared by the size of the wound to have been a small-caliber bullet; there was no exit wound, and there were no powder burns.

I straightened up, glanced around the office, and saw that the only door was the one which we had just come through. There was no balcony or ledge outside the open windows – just a sheer drop of 16 stories to a parklike, well-landscaped lawn which stretched away for several hundred yards. The nearest building was a hundred yards distant, angled well to the right. Its roof was about on a level with Chillingham’s office, it being a lower structure than the Dawes Building; not much of the roof was visible unless you peered out and around.

Sherrard and I then questioned George Dillon – and he claimed he hadn’t killed Chillingham. He said the attorney had been standing at the open windows, leaning out a little, and that all of a sudden he had cried out and fallen down with the bullet in his neck. Dillon said he’d taken a look out the windows, hadn’t seen anything, checked that Chillingham was dead, then unlocked the door and summoned Hearn and Miss Tower.

When the coroner and the lab crew finally got there, and the doc had made his preliminary examination, I asked him about the wound. He confirmed my earlier guess – a small-caliber bullet, probably a.22 or.25. He couldn’t be absolutely sure, of course, until he took out the slug at the post-mortem.

I talked things over with Sherrard and we both agreed that it was pretty much improbable for somebody with a.22 or.25 caliber weapon to have shot Chillingham from the roof of the nearest building; a small caliber like that just doesn’t have a range of a hundred yards and the angle was almost too sharp. There was nowhere else the shot could have come from – except from inside the office. And that left us with George Dillon, whose story was obviously false and who just as obviously had killed the attorney while the two of them were locked inside this office.

You’d think it was pretty cut and dried then, wouldn’t you? You’d think all we had to do was arrest Dillon and charge him with homicide, and our job was finished. Right?

Wrong.

Because we couldn’t find the gun.

Remember, now, Dillon had been locked in that office – except for the minute or two it took Hearn to examine the body and slip out and relock the door – from the time Chillingham died until the time we came in. And both Hearn and Miss Tower swore that Dillon hadn’t stepped outside the office during that minute or two. We’d already searched Dillon and he had nothing on him. We searched the office – I mean, we searched that office – and there was no gun there.

We sent officers over to the roof of the nearest building and down onto the landscaped lawn; they went over every square inch of ground and rooftop, and they didn’t find anything. Dillon hadn’t thrown the gun out the open windows then, and there was no place on the face of the sheer wall of the building where a gun could have been hidden.

So where was the murder weapon? What had Dillon done with it? Unless we found that out, we had no evidence against him that would stand up in a court of law; his word that he hadn’t killed Chillingham, despite the circumstantial evidence of the locked room, was as good as money in the bank. It was up to us to prove him guilty, not up to him to prove himself innocent. You see the problem?

We took him into a large book-filled room that was part of the Chillingham suite – what Hearn called the “archives” – and sat him down in a chair and began to question him extensively. He was a big husky guy with blondish hair and these perfectly guileless eyes; he just sat there and looked at us and answered in a polite voice, maintaining right along that he hadn’t killed the lawyer.

We made him tell his story of what had happened in the office a dozen times, and he explained it the same way each time – no variations. Chillingham had locked the door after they entered, and then they sat down and talked over some business. Pretty soon Chillingham complained that it was stuffy in the room, got up, and opened the French windows; the next thing Dillon knew, he said, the attorney collapsed with the bullet in him. He hadn’t heard any shot, he said; Hearn must be mistaken about a muffled explosion.

I said finally, “All right, Dillon, suppose you tell us why you came to see Chillingham. What was this business you discussed?”

“He was my father’s lawyer,” Dillon said, “and the executor of my father’s estate. He was also a thief. He stole three hundred and fifty thousand dollars of my father’s money.”

Sherrard and I stared at him. Jack said, “That gives you one hell of a motive for murder, if it’s true.”

“It’s true,” Dillon said flatly. “And yes, I suppose it does give me a strong motive for killing him. I admit I hated the man, I hated him passionately.”

“You admit that, do you?”

“Why not? I have nothing to hide.”

“What did you expect to gain by coming here to see Chillingham?” I asked. “Assuming you didn’t come here to kill him.”

“I wanted to tell him I knew what he’d done, and that I was going to expose him for the thief he was.”

“You tell him that?”

“I was leading up to it when he was shot.”

“Suppose you go into a little more detail about this alleged theft from your father’s estate.”

“All right.” Dillon lit a cigarette. “My father was a hard-nosed businessman, a selfmade type who acquired a considerable fortune in textiles; as far as he was concerned, all of life revolved around money. But I’ve never seen it that way; I’ve always been something of a free spirit and to hell with negotiable assets. Inevitably, my father and I had a falling-out about fifteen years ago, when I was twenty-three, and I left home with the idea of seeing some of the big wide world – which is exactly what I did.

“I traveled from one end of this country to the other, working at different jobs, and then I went to South America for a while. Some of the wanderlust finally began to wear off, and I decided to come back to this city and settle down – maybe even patch things up with my father. I arrived several days ago and learned then that he had been dead for more than two years.”

“You had no contact with your father during the fifteen years you were drifting around?”

“None whatsoever. I told you, we had a falling-out. And we’d never been close to begin with.”

Sherrard asked, “So what made you suspect Chillingham had stolen money from your father’s estate?”

“I am the only surviving member of the Dillon family; there are no other relatives, not even a distant cousin. I knew my father wouldn’t have left me a cent, not after all these years, and I didn’t particularly care; but I was curious to find out to whom he had willed his estate.”

“And what did you find out?”

“Well, I happen to know that my father had three favorite charities,” Dillon said. “Before I left, he used to tell me that if I didn’t ‘shape-up,’ as he put it, he would leave every cent of his money to those three institutions.”

“He didn’t, is that it?”

“Not exactly. According to the will, he left two hundred thousand dollars to each of two of them – the Cancer Society and the Children’s Hospital. He also, according to the will, left three hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the Association for Medical Research.”

“All right,” Sherrard said, “so what does that have to do with Chillingham?”

“Everything,” Dillon told him. “My father died of a heart attack – he’d had a heart condition for many years. Not severe, but he fully expected to die as a result of it one day. And so he did. And because of this heart condition his third favorite charity – the one he felt the most strongly about – was the Heart Fund.”

“Go on,” I said, frowning.

Dillon put out his cigarette and gave me a humorless smile. “I looked into the Association for Medical Research and I did quite a thorough bit of checking. It doesn’t exist; there isn’t any Association for Medical Research. And the only person who could have invented it is or was my father’s lawyer and executor, Adam Chillingham.”

Sherrard and I thought that over and came to the same conclusion. I said, “So even though you never got along with your father, and you don’t care about money for yourself, you decided to expose Chillingham.”

“That’s right. My father worked hard all his life to build his fortune, and admirably enough he decided to give it to charity at his death. I believe in worthwhile causes, I believe in the work being done by the Heart Fund, and it sent me into a rage to realize they had been cheated out of a substantial fortune which could have gone toward valuable research.”

“A murderous rage?” Sherrard asked softly.

Dillon showed us his humorless smile again. “I didn’t kill Adam Chillingham,” he said. “But you’ll have to admit, he deserved killing – and that the world is better off without the likes of him.”

I might have admitted that to myself, if Dillon’s accusations were valid, but I didn’t admit it to Dillon. I’m a cop, and my job is to uphold the law; murder is murder, whatever the reasons for it, and it can’t be gotten away with.

Sherrard and I hammered at Dillon a while longer, but we couldn’t shake him at all. I left Jack to continue the field questioning and took a couple of men and re-searched Chillingham’s private office. No gun. I went up onto the roof of the nearest building and searched that personally. No gun. I took my men down into the lawn area and supervised another minute search. No gun.

I went back to Chillingham’s suite and talked to Charles Hearn and Miss Tower again, and they had nothing to add to what they’d already told us; Hearn was “almost positive” he had heard a muffled explosion inside the office, but from the legal point of view that was the same as not having heard anything at all.

We took Dillon down to Headquarters finally, because we knew damned well he had killed Adam Chillingham, and advised him of his rights and printed him and booked him on suspicion. He asked for counsel, and we called a public defender for him, and then we grilled him again in earnest. It got us nowhere.

The F.B. I, and state check we ran on his fingerprints got us nowhere either; he wasn’t wanted, he had never been arrested, he had never even been printed before. Unless something turned up soon in the way of evidence – specifically, the missing murder weapon – we knew we couldn’t hold him very long.

The next day I received the lab report and the coroner’s report and the ballistics report on the bullet taken from Chillingham’s neck – 22 caliber, all right. The lab’s and coroner’s findings combined to tell me something I’d already guessed: the wound and the calculated angle of trajectory of the bullet did not entirely rule out the remote possibility that Chillingham had been shot from the roof of the nearest building. The ballistics report, however, told me something I hadn’t guessed – something which surprised me a little.

The bullet had no rifling marks.

Sherrard blinked at this when I related the information to him. “No rifling marks?” he said. “Hell, that means the slug wasn’t fired from a gun at all, at least not a lawfully manufactured one. A homemade weapon, you think, Walt?”

“That’s how it figures,” I agreed. “A kind of zip gun probably. Anybody can make one; all you need is a length of tubing or the like and a bullet and a grip of some sort and a detonating cap.”

“But there was no zip gun, either, in or around Chillingham’s office. We’d have found it if there was.”

I worried my lower lip meditatively. “Well, you can make one of those zips from a dozen or more small component parts, you know; even the tubing could be soft aluminum, the kind you can break apart with your hands. When you’re done using it, you can knock it down again into its components. Dillon had enough time to have done that, before opening the locked door.”

“Sure,” Sherrard said. “But then what? We still didn’t find anything – not a single thing – that could have been used as part of a homemade zip.”

I suggested we go back and make another search, and so we drove once more to the Dawes Building. We re-combed Chillingham’s private office – we’d had a police seal on it to make sure nothing could be disturbed – and we re-combed the surrounding area. We didn’t find so much as an iron filing. Then we went to the city jail and had another talk with George Dillon.

When I told him our zipgun theory, I thought I saw a light flicker in his eyes; but it was the briefest of reactions, and I couldn’t be sure. We told him it was highly unlikely a zipgun using a.22 caliber bullet could kill anybody from a distance of a hundred yards, and he said he couldn’t help that, he didn’t know anything about such a weapon. Further questioning got us nowhere.

And the following day we were forced to release him, with a warning not to leave the city.

But Sherrard and I continued to work doggedly on the case; it was one of those cases that preys on your mind constantly, keeps you from sleeping well at night, because you know there has to be an answer and you just can’t figure out what it is. We ran checks into Chillingham’s records and found that he had made some large private investments a year ago, right after the Dillon will had been probated. And as George Dillon had claimed, there was no Association for Medical Research; it was a dummy charity, apparently set up by Chillingham for the explicit purpose of stealing old man Dillon’s $350,000. But there was no definite proof of this, not enough to have convinced Chillingham of theft in a court of law; he’d covered himself pretty neatly.

As an intelligent man, George Dillon had no doubt realized that a public exposure of Chillingham would have resulted in nothing more than adverse publicity and the slim possibility of disbarment – hardly sufficient punishment in Dillon’s eyes. So he had decided on what to him was a morally justifiable homicide. From the law’s point of view, however, it was nonetheless Murder One.

But the law still had no idea what he’d done with the weapon, and therefore, as in the case of Chillingham’s theft, the law had no proof of guilt.

As I said, though, we had our teeth into this one and we weren’t about to let go. So we paid another call on Dillon, this time at the hotel where he was staying, and asked him some questions about his background. There was nothing more immediate we could investigate, and we thought that maybe there was an angle in his past which would give us a clue toward solving the riddle.

He told us, readily enough, some of what he’d done during the 15 years since he’d left home, and it was a typical drifter’s life: lobster packer in Maine, ranch hand in Montana, oil worker in Texas, road construction in South America. But there was a gap of about four years which he sort of skimmed over without saying anything specific. I jumped on that and asked him some direct questions, but he wouldn’t talk about it.

His reluctance made Sherrard and me more than a little curious; we both had that cop’s feeling it was important, that maybe it was the key we needed to unlock the mystery. Unobtrusively we had the department photographer take some pictures of Dillon; then we sent them out, along with a request for information as to his whereabouts during the four blank years, to various law enforcement agencies in Florida – where he’d admitted to being just prior to the gap, working as a deckhand on a Key West charter-fishing boat.

Time dragged on, and nothing turned up, and we were reluctantly forced by sheer volume of other work to abandon the Chillingham case; officially, it was now buried in the Unsolved File. Then, three months later, we had a wire from the Chief of Police of a town not far from Fort Lauderdale. It said they had tentatively identified George Dillon from the pictures we’d sent and were forwarding by airmail special delivery something which might conceivably prove the nature of Dillon’s activities during at least part of the specified period.

Sherrard and I fidgeted around waiting for the special delivery to arrive, and when it finally came I happened to be the only one of us in the Squadroom. I tore the envelope open and what was inside was a multicolored and well-aged poster, with a picture of a man who was undeniably George Dillon depicted on it. I looked at the picture and read what was written on the poster at least a dozen times.

It told me a lot of things all right, that poster did. It told me exactly what Dillon had done with the homemade zipgun he had used to kill Adam Chillingham – an answer that was at once fantastic and yet so simple you’d never even consider it. And it told me there wasn’t a damned thing we could do about it now, that we couldn’t touch him, that George Dillon actually had committed a perfect murder.

I was brooding over this when Jack Sherrard returned to the Squadroom. He said, “Why so glum, Walt?”

“The special delivery from Florida finally showed up,” I said, and watched instant excitement animate his face. Then I saw some of it fade while I told him what I’d been brooding about, finishing with, “We simply can’t arrest him now, Jack. There’s no evidence, it doesn’t exist any more; we can’t prove a thing. And maybe it’s just as well in one respect, since I kind of liked Dillon and would have hated to see him convicted for killing a crook like Chillingham. Anyway, we’ll be able to sleep nights now.”

“Damn it, Walt, will you tell me what you’re talking about!”

“All right. Remember when we got the ballistics report and we talked over how easy it would be for Dillon to have made a zipgun? And how he could make the whole thing out of a dozen or so small component parts, so that afterward he could break it down again into those small parts?”

“Sure, sure. But I still don’t care if Dillon used a hundred components, we didn’t find a single one of them. Not one. So what, if that’s part of the answer, did he do with them? There’s not even a connecting bathroom where he could have flushed them down. What did he do with the damned zipgun?”

I sighed and slid the poster – the old carnival sideshow poster – around on my desk so he could see Dillon’s picture and read the words printed below it: STEAK AND POTATOES AND APPLE PIE IS OUR DISH; NUTS, BOLTS, PIECES OF WOOD, BITS OF METAL IS HIS! YOU HAVE TO SEE IT TO BELIEVE IT: THE AMAZING MR GEORGE, THE MAN WITH THE CAST-IRON STOMACH.

Sherrard’s head jerked up and he stared at me open-mouthed.

“That’s right,” I said wearily. “He ate it.”

Killing Martha Griever was the only thing Nathan Griever had ever really done well, and he had done that very well indeed. The sole heir, Nathan had netted nearly twenty-three million dollars after taxes. Of course, his inheritance made him the number-one suspect, especially after it was learned that Nathan had only known his wife a scant few months before her unfortunate passing.

A clever fellow, Nathan had seen no way to divert suspicion from himself. Therefore, he did the next best thing – he made sure no one could prove he did it. The game had dragged on for a while, but the final score was L.A.P.D. nothing, Nathan Griever multimillionaire.

The money had bought Nathan his place in the world. Even the suspicion of guilt now worked to his advantage. He was not only wealthy, he had an air of mystery about him that interested the ladies and encouraged people to invite him to dinners and parties. Before, his conversation had been banal and witless; now, though it hadn’t changed in the least, he was considered urbane and clever by his new circle of friends. Nathan Griever belonged.

Smiling, he tipped his bowler over one eye and aimed the other in the direction of his new friend, Sir James Owens Cockeral. That’s me, folks, Nathan thought as he looked his distinguished friend over – that’s Nathan Griever walking down a London street with Sir James Owens Cockeral. Nathan thumbed his Bond Street threads and restrained himself from bursting out with a very ungentlemanly whistle and whoop.

“You seem chipper, Nate. What is it? The spring air?”

“No, Sir James-”

“Call me Jim.”

“Why, certainly, Jim, old boy. As I was about to say, I’m looking forward to joining the club.”

Sir James furrowed his brow and shook his head. “I do wish you’d take this more seriously, Nate. You know I’m going out on a limb by sponsoring you?”

“Not to worry, Jim. I think I can make a real contribution.”

“You know, if any of those fellows guess how you’ve done it, I’m afraid there’s nothing to do but try again at a later date.”

“I understand, and, as I said, not to worry.” Nathan frowned, then looked at Sir James. “I have to admit I’m a little reluctant to spill the story in front of a bunch of strangers.”

Sir James nodded. “As well you should be. However, we are very careful about selecting candidates for membership. And there is also the guarantee, Nate. Once you are accepted, each of us will recount his own story. That way, if any one of us talks, we all suffer. So no one ever talks.

“Did you bring the application fee?” Sir James continued.

Nathan patted his breast pocket. “It’s right here – and in cash, as specified. Why the uneven amount? Instead of $13,107.17, why not just make it thirteen or fourteen thousand?”

“I suppose our customs seem strange to an American.”

“No, no – not at all. I just wondered.”

Sir James aimed his walking stick at the ornate entrance of an ancient greystone structure. “Here we are.”

They turned in the entrance and Sir James pulled a hand-wrought chain extending from the mouth of a brass lion’s head set in the stone to the right of the iron-strapped double-oak doors. The left door opened and a liveried doorman, complete with powdered wig, stood in the entrance.

“Sir James,” he said.

“Yes, Collins. This is my guest, Mr Nathan Griever. Would you announce us?”

“Certainly. If you gentlemen would follow me.”

Nathan followed Sir James through the door and they handed their hats to a second bewigged servant. Dark gilded frames surrounded even darker portraits of distinguished persons in uniforms or high-collared formal wear. The servant opened another set of doors, and inside the room five distinguished gentlemen rose as he announced the pair.

One of the gentlemen, with monocle, three-piece tweed suit, and handlebar moustache, approached Nathan and held out his hand. “Ah, Mr Griever, I am happy to make your acquaintance. Welcome to Slaughterhouse.”

Nathan grasped the outstretched hand and was pleased at the firmness of the fellow’s grip. “Thank you.”

“I am Major Evan Sims-Danton, late of Her Majesty’s Irish Guard.” As Nathan thrilled at the hyphenated name, Sims-Danton turned and held out a hand toward his four companions. “Mr Griever, may I introduce the other members of Slaughterhouse-Wallace Baines, Edward Stepany, Charles Humpheries, and our treasurer, Malcolm Jordon.”

Nathan nodded at each in turn, shaking hands and smiling. After shaking Malcolm Jordon’s hand, Nathan looked at his new friends, bounced a bit on his toes, and grinned. “I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Sims-Danton cleared his throat and leaned his head in Nathan’s direction. “I believe you have something for Mr Jordon?”

“Oh, yes.” Nathan reached into his pocket, withdrew a heavy letter-size envelope, and handed it to the treasurer.

Jordon nodded as he took it. “Thank you. I’m certain it’s all here, Mr Griever, but club policy requires that I count it. I hope you understand.”

“Certainly.”

Jordon opened the envelope, quickly thumbed through the bills, dumped the change into his hand, glanced at it, then nodded at Sims-Danton.”$13,107.17.”

Sims-Danton nodded, took Nathan by the elbow, and held his other hand out toward an imposing marble staircase. “Then shall we be off to the problem room?”

They turned and led the procession up the staircase, followed by Baines, Stepany, Humpheries, Jordon, and, at the very end, Sir James Owens Cockeral. Nathan turned toward Sims-Danton. “If I pass, will I be accepted today?”

“Yes. Of course, you understand that each of us in turn will have a crack at guessing how you did it. If any of us is successful, then I’m afraid you don’t qualify for membership.”

“I see.”

Sims-Danton slapped Nathan on the back as they reached the top of the stairs. “Have faith, my boy. If Sir James sponsors you, I’m certain you’ll give us a run for our money.”

Nathan smiled. “You mean a run for my money, don’t you?”

Sims-Danton frowned, then barked out a sharp laugh. “Yes, a run for your money! Good. Very good, by Jove.” He held out a hand toward a flat white-painted door that stood ajar. The door-jamb was splintered, indicating the doorway had been forced. “Here we are, Mr Griever.”

The procession came to a halt. “Now, according to the police report, this is exactly the way the room was found. As you can see, the door has been forced. The report states that Angela, the maid, heard a single shot as she was sitting in the kitchen downstairs having a cup of coffee. She rushed out of the kitchen, through the dining room, down the main hall, then up the staircase to Mrs Griever’s bedroom.”

Sims-Danton pointed toward a doorway at the other end of the upstairs hall. “As she came to the door, Angela noticed you, Mr Griever, in your robe and slippers, leaving your room. Is that correct?”

Nathan nodded. “This is amazing. The hallway looks just like the one in my house. How did you get copies of the police report?”

Sims-Danton waved his hand. “We try to be thorough here at Slaughterhouse, Mr Griever.” He studied the paper in his hand and rubbed his chin. “Now, Angela stated that you rushed to her side. With both of you standing in front of Mrs Griever’s door, you asked, ‘What was it? Did you hear something?’ Angela replied in the affirmative. Then both of you tried to rouse Mrs Griever by pounding on the door and shouting.”

The Major rapped on the door, producing a clanging sound. “The door to Mrs Griever’s bedroom was made of steel, and the doorjamb was made of wood-filled steel. For these reasons, neither you nor you and Angela together were able to break down the door. Hence, the gardener, Oshiro, was called. Oshiro subsequently broke down the door by bending and splintering the doorjamb. Correct?”

Nathan nodded. “So far, very accurate.”

The Major nodded. “The door was pushed open and Mrs Griever was found in her bed, shot through the right temple, a.32-caliber pistol in her right hand. You, Mr Griever, went to her side, determined she was dead, then ordered Oshiro and Angela from the room. You accompanied them, leaving the door as we find it now. Correct thus far, sir?”

Nathan nodded. “You are thorough, aren’t you?”

The Major nodded. “We try to be.” He pushed against the door. “Gentlemen, you will notice that the door is spring-loaded in the closed position. The only reason it stood ajar is because of the solenoid-controlled deadbolt, in an extended position, leaning against the splintered doorjamb.” He held out a hand toward the open door. “Gentlemen?”

The members, led by Nathan, entered the room. Baines immediately began studying the solenoid lock, while Jordon began tracing the wire from the lock around the room to the push button located on the night stand next to the bed. Nathan walked to the edge of the bed and looked down at the representation of his former wife, gun in hand, staring with sightless eyes at the canopy. In the mannequin’s right temple was a dark hole pocked with powder burns above a slight trickle of reddish-brown blood. Nathan bit his lower lip and felt the cold sweat on his forehead.

“Quite realistic, isn’t it?”

Nathan turned to see Sims-Danton standing by his side. He nodded. “Yes, very.”

Sims-Danton clapped his hands. “Very well, gentlemen. Baines, Jordon – you’re jumping the gun.” The two errant members gathered with the others around the Major as he introduced the problem.

“First, gentlemen, we have Martha Griever, the former Mrs Stanton Atwood. When Mr Atwood passed away, he left her a fortune of some eighteen million dollars, which she subsequently doubled. Then-” the Major bowed toward Nathan “- Mr Griever entered the picture.”

Nathan turned away from the still figure on the bed. The Major drew a small notebook from his left breast pocket and continued. “After a brief period of courtship, Nathan Griever was wed to the former Mrs Atwood, who promptly became an alcoholic as well as a raving paranoiac.” He plucked the monocle from his eye and raised an eyebrow in Nathan’s direction. “Forgive me if my description is harsh, Mr Griever.”

Nathan shrugged. “It was more than generous, Major.” He pointed toward the door. “You can see how she rigged up her bedroom. No one could enter or leave unless she pressed the button on her night stand and, even so, you had to stand outside her door and shout for twenty minutes to convince her to press the button. She probably would have had a closed-circuit TV camera put in if she could have allowed a stranger in to do the installation.”

Stepany raised a hand and cleared his throat. “If you please, Mr Griever – how was she able to leave the room herself?”

Nathan shook his head. “Except for two visits to the hospital, she never did. Both of those times, she had me prop the door open with a wooden chock.”

Baines nodded, then rubbed his chin. “That, I think, would give Mr Griever ample opportunity to examine the room undisturbed.” He turned to Nathan. “Correct?”

“Yes.”

Sims-Danton held up a hand. “One moment, gentlemen – I am almost finished.” He flipped a page of his notebook. “After the discovery of the body, the police found the room as you now see it. The pistol in Mrs Griever’s hand was registered to her, and only her own fingerprints were on the weapon. However, the bullet’s entry path aroused suspicion, since for Mrs Griever to have done herself in, she would have had to hold the pistol in a possible, but very awkward, position.” Sims-Danton formed a representation of a gun with his right forefinger and thumb, held the “barrel” next to his right temple, then rotated his wrist until the “gun” was in front of his face. The path at such an angle would enter the right temple and exit behind the left ear.

Humpheries frowned and shook his head. “Sloppy. Very sloppy, Mr Griever.”

The Major held up a hand. “One moment, Charles. The test is whether or not Mr Griever got away with it. As you can see by his presence here, he obviously did. In fact, though his motive was undeniable and Mrs Griever’s death a highly probable murder, our candidate for membership was not even brought to trial. He was held on suspicion for a few days, but they had to release him because they couldn’t figure out how he did it.”

He turned to Nathan. “Mr Griever, before the members begin trying to crack this nut, I would like you to examine the room very closely to make sure everything is as it was when the police entered the room.”

Nathan went to the door and examined the lock, checked the pictures on the walls, noted the absence of windows and air vents, and went to the night stand and checked the objects there. He raised his eyebrows as he checked the labels on the numerous prescription pills, drops, sprays, and powders his wife had always kept handy. Everything was accurate, down to and including the printed name of the pharmacy. The half-filled, open bottle of whiskey – her brand – stood behind the pills next to a pitcher of ice water and a half-filled glass of the whiskey-water mixture she loved so well. The push button that controlled the door lock was in its proper place on the edge of the night stand near the bed, and Nathan would have sworn that even the scratches in the brass cover surrounding the button were identical to the original. He reached out his hand, pushed the button, and heard the lock buzz and click open. He released the button, the buzzing stopped, and the lock’s heavy spring shot the bolt into its extended position.

Nathan nodded and looked at the wiring that led from the back of the night stand, in which the battery was contained. It was stapled around the baseboard behind the bed and around the room, until it came to the door, where it was attached to the solenoid’s contacts. He examined the wire to make certain it hadn’t been disturbed. The wires in the original bedroom had been painted down the last time the room had been decorated. Nathan raised his brows and nodded in admiration. The paint was the identical color.

He faced the members. “As far as I can see, everything is exactly the way it was when the police entered the room.”

Sims-Danton smiled. “Before we begin, gentlemen, I should add that from the time the maid Angela met Mr Griever at the door, he was under constant observation. In addition, the police conducted a thorough search of his room and the rest of the house. Nothing that could have been used in the murder was found – at least, in the opinion of the police. Shall we begin?”

Jordon rubbed his chin and held one hand toward the lock and the other toward the push button. “There seems little doubt that the problem is to keep the lock open long enough for the murderer to escape, but then to allow the lock to close, fastening the door shut.” He turned to Sims-Danton. “I say, Evan, do we have a replica of the door in good condition – before the doorjamb was splintered?”

“Of course.” The Major went to the door, pulled it open, and waved his hand. The doorman and another liveried servant carried in a pre-hung steel door fitted with a stand. They set it upright in the center of the room, bowed, and left.

Baines examined the door, pressed the push button, and nodded as the lock buzzed and clicked open. He pulled the door open and released the push button. “Jolly good.” He pointed at the lock. “Now, gentlemen, I prefer the simple to the complex. Let us say that the murderer gains entrance to the room, uses the wooden block to chock it open-” he smiled “- kills Mrs Griever, then leaves. He holds the door open, removes the chock, takes a credit card thusly-” Baines removed a plastic card from his pocket” – pushes in the lock’s bolt, closes the door, and pulls the card out through the space between the doorjamb and the door.”

Major Sims-Danton nodded. “Is that your choice, Wallace?”

“Yes.”

The Major turned to the others. “Very well, gentlemen – have at it.”

Stepany stepped to the door replica, placed a finger against the lock’s dead bolt, and pushed. “Wallace, old man, I’m afraid this ends your theory.”

Baines stooped over and looked at the lock. “Eh?”

“The bolt doesn’t move. Obviously, the solenoid operates a key of some kind that falls in place when the solenoid is not energized.”

Baines shrugged and the Major nodded at Stepany. “Eddie, are you ready to have a go?”

Stepany nodded. “I agree with Wallace as to the nature of the problem, and even the method – however, the bolt must be held back before the key can fall in place. This means that a clamp must be placed over the lock before Mrs Griever releases the button to let in the murderer. Then the deed is done, the clamp is removed – the bolt still being held in – and then the door is closed, using a credit card in the manner Baines has suggested.”

Jordon examined the door, the lock, and the doorjamb. “I think I see a problem, old fellow. The lip on the doorjamb is at least three quarters of an inch thick, and fitted with a rubber molding. If the door fits snugly, I don’t see how one could pull the card free. Since the lip extends around the entire door, including the bottom, that would appear to exclude using a string on the card and pulling it through in some other place.”

Stepany pushed the button, held the bolt in with his thumb, then released the button. The bolt immediately slammed back into an extended position. “Dear me!” Stepany waved his hand. “The spring driving that bolt is certainly a strong one. I couldn’t hold it.” He smiled. “I suppose that shoots me down, even if the card could be pulled through the doorjamb. If that bolt is to be held open, it would have to be done electrically.”

Jordon nodded. “I agree. And, where something as thick as a credit card might not have made it, a pair of strong thin wires probably could. If the murderer placed a battery on the hall floor, gained entrance to the room, chocked open the door, then did the deed, he could run his wires through the hinged side of the opening, connect into the circuit where the wire jumps the gap between the baseboard and the door, and thus hold the lock open. Then he closes the door and pulls the wires after him, breaking the circuit and thereby closing the bolt.”

Humpheries shook his head, went to the door of the room, and stooped to examine the wire where it jumped the hinge between the baseboard and door. “See here, Malcolm. The insulation on the wire hasn’t been disturbed.” He stood and examined the contacts to the solenoid. “Hmmm. He could have connected here, then pulled the wires out.”

Sims-Danton held out a hand. “Gentlemen, the scheme now being pondered requires just the sort of equipment the police were looking for when they searched the rest of the house.”

Humpheries stood. “Yes, Evan, but a battery and two lengths of wire can be made to appear very innocent. For example, the battery could easily be put into a radio or some other appliance. The wires could be tucked into a television set or just hidden in some small niche.”

He smirked. “As we all know, gentlemen, the usual run of police inspector is not terribly bright. Could we send Collins for wires and a battery?”

After a few moments, equipment in hand, Humpheries nodded his thanks and Collins left the room. He removed the insulation from the tips of two lengths of steel bell wire, screwed the ends of the pair to a large dry-cell battery, then carried it to the “outside” of the unbroken door. “Very well – if one of you will play Mrs Griever and push the button, I will show you how it was done.”

Jordon reached out a hand and pushed the button set in the doorjamb. The lock buzzed and clicked open, then Humpheries pushed the door open and turned to Baines. “Wallace, old man, would you play the door chock and hold it open?”

“Yes, of course.” Baines held the door open while Humpheries stepped through, carrying the wired battery.

“Now, gentlemen, I move to the bed, kill the victim, rush back, and attach these leads.” He frowned at Jordon. “Release the button.”

Jordon removed his finger from the button. “Sorry.”

With the bolt extended, Humpheries bent one of the leads around one of the solenoid contacts. “And now, the other.” As soon as he touched the second lead to the second solenoid contact, the lock buzzed, retracting the bolt. He bent the lead around the second contact and, still holding the battery, stepped through the door. “Now I remove the chock and close the door.” The door closed on the wires and the lock controlled by the doorknob caught, while the solenoid lock remained retracted. “Now all I do is pull the wires through-” Humpheries grunted as he tugged at the wires. “Drat! That door does have a snug fit, doesn’t it?” One last grunt and the solenoid de-energized, slamming the bolt home.

Jordon laughed. “Good show! Well done, Humpheries.”

Sims-Danton pointed at the solenoid contacts. The wires were still attached. Humpheries walked around the door, sheepishly holding out the battery.

“I’m afraid I broke the wires.”

Sims-Danton rubbed his chin. “Charles, try it again, but don’t let the door latch. Leave it open just enough to pull the wires through.”

The experiment was repeated, with the door held open a bit. As the wires were pulled from the solenoid, the bolt shot home, forcing the door to shut on the wires. “It’s no use. I pulled them as fast as I could, but it’s just not fast enough.”

Sims-Danton pulled the door open. “Hook it up and try it again – but this time open the door a little further.”

The experiment was repeated but, instead of forcing the door shut, the bolt forced the door open. “Hmmm. That would never do.” Sims-Danton again pressed the button and opened the door. “The taper on the bolt seems to do it. When the door is in an approximate position, the bolt shoots for the bolt hole and either finds its way in, forcing the door closed, or hits the sharp edge of this lip, forcing the door open.” He closed the door, released the button, and shrugged. “I’m afraid that exhausts my theory as well.” He faced Nathan. “In which case, Mr Griever, it looks as though Slaughterhouse has another member.”

Nathan beamed but, feeling reckless, shook his head. “Sir James hasn’t had a crack at it yet.”

Cockeral cleared his throat. “Nate, you must understand that I am your sponsor. It wouldn’t be proper for me to make an attempt against my own candidate.”

Nathan shrugged and held out his hands. “Please – I insist.”

The membership looked at Sir James, who smiled and turned toward Nathan. “Very well, then. I’ll take a crack at it. Most of the solutions thus far appear to take up too much time. How long does it take to run from the kitchen, through the dining room and hall, then up the stairs to the bedroom door?”

Sims-Danton pulled out his notebook. “According to the police investigation, at the most Mr Griever would have fourteen to sixteen seconds from the time of the shooting to place the gun in the victim’s hand, leave the room, and make it into his own bedroom. One of the officers making the run did it in eleven seconds, but he was, I gather, an exceptional athlete.”

Sir James nodded. “That would appear to preclude anything complicated and time-consuming. If he used any extra equipment, I can’t imagine where he could have put it. He would only have time enough to get to his room before he had to turn around and come out to meet Angela, thereby making it appear that he too had been drawn by the sound of the shot.” He turned to Nathan. “Tell me, Nate – what physical shape was Angela in – old, young, slender, obese?”

“She was twenty-nine, but quite plump.”

Sir James nodded. “Then, for the sake of argument, let’s say the sixteen-second run was what she made.” He went to the side of the bed. “Therefore, within sixteen seconds he had to place the gun in the victim’s hand – say four seconds. Then he had to traverse the distance from the bed to the door.” Sir James turned to Jordon. “Give it a try, will you, old man? I’ll keep your time.”

“Of course.” Jordon moved to the side of the bed.

Sir James examined his watch. “Go!”

Jordon ran to the door and opened it, stepped through, and let the door close behind him. He opened the door and looked through. “How did I do?”

Sir James nodded. “Three seconds.” He turned to Sims-Danton. “Do we have the hallway outside the bedroom plotted? I would like to time a run from Mrs Griever’s door to Mr Griever’s door.”

Sims-Danton turned again to his notebook. “We don’t have it plotted, but tests by the police on the scene made the run at about four seconds, which includes opening his bedroom door, entering, and closing the door.” The Major closed the notebook and smiled at Sir James.

“Very well.” Sir James nodded and turned back to the bed. “Very well. On the sixteen-second run, that leaves only five seconds for Mr Griever to do whatever it was that he did to effect his exit. That would leave no time either to use or dispose of batteries, wires, and the like.” Sir James opened the front of the night stand, stooped, and looked inside. He then stood, looked at the back of the night stand, and carefully traced the wire to the solenoid lock. When he was satisfied, he turned and faced the room. “The insulation along the entire length is undisturbed, and I saw no discreet little holes in the wall, which would appear to preclude any sort of timing mechanism prepared in advance.” He rubbed his chin. “Hence, to my mind, it seems that whatever was used should still be in the room.”

Wallace Baines cleared his throat. “Sir James, it really is bad form to work against your own candidate. If you should guess the method, Mr Griever would be disqualified for admission. I would think that would cause bad feeling between you.”

The other members nodded and Sims-Danton stepped forward. “I agree.”

Nathan Griever held out his hands and grinned. “Please, gentlemen. I insist that Jim have his go at it. I’m not worried.” He turned to Sir James. “Go ahead, old boy. Give it your best shot.”

Sir James shrugged and walked to the side of the bed, then turned to the night stand and placed his finger on the push button. He tried it several times and listened as the solenoid energized and clicked back the bolt. Removing his finger from the button, he looked at the articles on the night stand, then lifted up the glass half filled with whiskey and water. He sniffed at it, replaced it, then opened several of the plastic containers of pills, uncapped the three plastic nasal-spray bottles, and unscrewed the tops on a bottle of nose drops and a bottle of eye drops. Then, replacing all the caps, he again lifted the glass of whiskey and water. He turned to Sims-Danton. “Tell me, did the police laboratory find anything unusual in any of these containers?”

Sims-Danton frowned. “Surely, Sir James, you don’t suspect that the victim was poisoned.”

Sir James looked back at the glass. “Oh.” He nodded and replaced the glass. “Of course not. How silly of me.” He turned to Nathan. “Well, Nate, it looks as though you’re a member of Slaughterhouse. We all seem to be baffled. Please accept my congratulations.”

Nathan shook the hands that were extended toward him, his face wreathed in smiles. “Thank you. Should I demonstrate now?”

Sims-Danton patted his forehead with a handkerchief and nodded. “Please do.”

Nathan walked to the side of the bed. “I suppose that all I have to do is to account for those five seconds?”

Sims-Danton replaced his handkerchief. “That is correct.”

Nathan nodded. “Jim, old boy, if you would time what I do, I’d like someone else to time how long the lock on the door is open.”

Sims-Danton pushed back his sleeve, uncovering the watch on his left wrist. “Any time, Mr Griever.”

Nathan smiled, rubbed his hands together, and nodded. “Go!” Nathan turned from the bed, uncapped the bottle of nose drops, put the end of the dropper into the water and whiskey, and sucked up barely enough to fill it past the tapered tip. Then he held the dropper over the push button, squeezed out four drops, and replaced the cap on the bottle as the liquid seeped into the space between the button and case, and shorted out the circuit. Nathan replaced the bottle as the solenoid buzzed and clicked open. “Of course the timing might be a bit off since I am using a different push button,” he said.

A moment later the buzzing stopped and the bolt shot back out. Sims-Danton looked up from his watch. “Seven seconds. That would enable him to get through the door with time to spare.”

Sir James nodded. “I have five seconds on the nose, Nate. Bravo! That accounts for the missing time, lets you absent the premises, baffles the police – and gets you into Slaughterhouse.”

Nathan beamed. “You see, when my wife was in the hospital, I was able to try out a variety of liquids and numbers of drops. As chance would have it, four drops of her favorite drink did the trick. All I had to do was wait for the maid to be settled down in the kitchen. My wife always had a drink on the night stand.”

Jordon nodded. “Excellent.”

“Four drops is just enough to short out the push button. Between the short, evaporation opens the circuit in just a little-”

Malcolm Jordon slapped Nathan on the back, took his elbow, and steered him toward the door. “Come, we must celebrate!”

Stepany, Humpheries, and Baines followed the pair through the door and down the stairs.

Sir James turned to his companion. “I almost muffed it, didn’t I, Lieutenant Danton?”

Danton nodded as he removed his handlebar moustache. “You had me worried, Inspector Cockeral, no doubt about that.”

Cockeral nodded. “Of course your laboratory found nose drops in the glass and whiskey in the nose drops.”

“Yes. As soon as we got the results, we knew how he had done it. The problem was getting him to admit it. The District Attorney was certain he’d never be able to convince a jury that Nathan Griever could be that imaginative. The defense could easily produce a thousand bits of evidence that his client is about as sharp as a pound of wet silage.”

“Still, it is rather imaginative.”

Danton nodded. “Twenty-three million dollars can mother a lot of invention.”

Cockeral nodded his head toward the door. “What happens to him now?”

“First, a party welcoming him to the club. Then, an epic pub crawl will begin that will end with his delivery back at the Los Angeles airport, where he will be arrested.”

Cockeral shook his head. “Pity. The fellow did so want to belong.”

“Oh, he’ll belong – and wait till he gets a load of his new clubhouse.” Danton turned and walked toward the door. Cockeral followed.

“You must have been awfully certain he would fall for your charade.”

Danton smiled. “I studied Nathan Griever very carefully. He’s nothing but a small-time grifter who only made one clever score in his entire life. Can you imagine how frustrated he must have felt not being able to tell his story? All we did was provide an audience worthy of his confidence.”

“Danton, what about the strange amount for the initiation fee? The $13,107.17?”

Danton shrugged. “Proposition Thirteen.”

“Eh?”

“Proposition Thirteen. Money is very, very tight, and the only way I could get my superiors to go along with this was if it didn’t cost us anything. $13,107.17 was the exact cost of the charade. We could have gotten more from him, of course, but it wouldn’t have been sporting to make profit, don’t you agree?”

He laid his binoculars on the window ledge and decided that it was time that he murdered his wife.

Pondering for a few minutes, Lewis Lloyd reviewed the various methods that had been going through his mind for the past few weeks. He had more or less decided on one, the prime considera tion being that he should never be convicted of the crime. There was no doubt that he would be strongly suspected – and if his luck was out, he might even be brought to trial, given their past record of domestic discord.

But found guilty – never!

Having made the decision, Lloyd gave a sigh of relief and turned his attention back to the window. Picking up his glasses again, he trained them at the line of scraggy rowan trees and stunted oaks that rimmed the top of the mountain, high above his hut. He watched a group of magpies strutting about under the trees, until his attention was diverted by a pair of buzzards soaring high over the old coal tip, beyond the ruined lime-kiln.

Lewis Lloyd loved birds and this ramshackle hut was his only refuge from the nagging and abuse that he suffered down in the valley bottom. He often came up early in the morning, or when the pub was shut in the afternoon. Sometimes he even stayed overnight, in winter huddled over the little pot-bellied stove, blissful in his solitude.

Lewis smiled complacently behind his binoculars, thinking that when the deed was done, he could come up even more often, with no Rita to screech objections at him.

Yes, it was high time to put Plan A into action.

“Bloody nonsense!” growled Mordecai Evans, tossing the letter on to his cluttered desk. “We’ve got enough aggravation already without daft women writing us letters.”

“Mind you, boss, that family’s got a bit of previous,” murmured his sergeant, peeved that Mordecai had dismissed his offering in such a cavalier fashion. The detective-inspector, a squat bruiser who could have doubled for John Prescott, scowled up at Willy Williams.

“What previous? A bit of form for couple of domestics?”

“Lloyd broke her arm once – and another time she got a couple of busted ribs,” said Willy defensively. “The beak gave him six months, suspended on account of provocation.”

“Big deal!” sneered the DI. “So we’re supposed to take her seriously, are we?”

He hauled himself to his feet and grabbed the crumpled letter from the desk, going to the window for better light. Though he was reluctant to admit it, he couldn’t see so well these days and a visit to Specsavers was on the cards soon. Peering at the cheap notepaper in the grey light that managed to percolate through the dark clouds looming over Pontypridd, he glowered at the unwelcome message.

“How did you come by this, Willy?”

“Eddie Morgan, the desk sergeant at the nick up in Ton Pentre gave it me yesterday, when I was up there about the break-in at the Co-op.”

“And where did he get it?” grumbled Mordecai, slumping back into his chair.

“Rita Lloyd brought it in a few days ago. Apparently, she bent his ear something terrible, saying her old man was threatening to kill her, so she was making an official complaint.” The detective-sergeant delivered this with some relish. “Eddie said he forgot all about it, knowing what a nutter Rita was – but as I was there, he said he thought he’d better pass it on to us.”

“Oh, Gawd!” sighed Mordecai. “Was she battered and bruised this time?”

“No sign of it, he said. But half-pissed, as usual.”

Wearily, the DI pulled a stack of case folders across the desk towards him. “Well, I haven’t got bloody time to waste on that now. If she comes in with two black eyes, we’ll have a word with her, otherwise it goes in my ‘pending’ file.” He opened the top folder and peered myopically at the first page of endless police bumf, so his sergeant took the hint and sloped off to the canteen for his refreshments.

Ten minutes later, his lanky ginger-haired figure slid back through the door and he came to stand in front of the desk, his knuckles resting on the edge.

“I think you’d better have another read of that letter, boss,” he said in sepulchral tones. “I just had a cup of tea with the coroner’s officer. He happened to mention that Rita Lloyd was found dead yesterday morning!”

“Nothing! What d’you mean, nothing?” demanded Mordecai Evans. “There must be something, for God’s sake!”

On hearing his sergeant’s news, the DI had gone storming downstairs to the little room where the coroner’s officer presided, Willy trailing in his wake. He stood over Jimmy Armstrong, a large, placid man who had been a police officer before he returned after retirement to the same job as a civilian.

Jimmy shook his head sadly. “Sorry, guv, we got nothing. There was a post-mortem this morning and the doc found nothing that could have killed her. He’s kept some samples for analysis, just in case.”

Mordecai brandished Rita’s letter under Armstrong’s nose. “She wrote to us, saying her husband was threatening to kill her, man! Now she’s dead!”

The coroner’s officer shrugged. “Don’t blame me, I’m just the dogsbody round here. Perhaps you’d better have a word with the coroner.”

“Damn right I will,” muttered the detective. “And a few words with the flaming husband as well.” His irritation subsided as the possible consequences of this affair began to sink in. He sat on one of the hard chairs provided for grieving relatives when being interviewed by Armstrong and stared pensively at the coroner’s officer.

“You live in Tonypandy, Jimmy. What’s the gossip on these Lloyds these days?”

Armstrong, whose tweed suit and tidy grey hair made him look like everyone’s favourite uncle, clasped his hands as if in prayer.

“Queer pair, a disaster waiting to happen, I reckon.”

“He still runs the pub? I thought he’d have had the sack, after his run-in with the law,” growled the DI.

“It’s a Free House, he’s not just a manager,” cut in the sergeant. “The Elliot Arms is a bit of a dump, but we don’t get much trouble there. It’s too old-fashioned to attract the yobs, no strippers or live music, just a quiz-night once a week.”

“Why were he and his missus at each other’s throats then?” demanded Mordecai.

Armstrong shrugged his big shoulders. “Incompatible, they are! He’s a quiet sort of bloke, until he gets his rag out, then he’s got a terrible temper. She’s an old slag-booze, bingo and blokes. Rita’ll go for anything in trousers – at least, when she’s sober enough to stand up.”

The DI grunted and hauled himself to his feet. He tapped the letter. “So there might be something in this, eh?”

The coroner’s officer held up his hands defensively. “Don’t ask me, that’s your job. But I’d have a word with my boss first.”

The coroner was a local solicitor who conducted his business from his offices above a shoe shop in Pontypridd’s Taff Street, a few hundred yards from the Divisional Police Headquarters. Mordecai Evans and his sergeant took a walk there, pushing impatiently through the ambling throng in the narrow road, which was the town’s main shopping street.

They turned in at a door on which a worn brass plate declared “Thomas, Evans and Rees – Solicitors” though these gentlemen were long dead and the present senior partner was Mr David Mostyn, Her Majesty’s Coroner for East Glamorgan.

In a seedy reception area at the top of a narrow flight of stairs, a girl with a bad head-cold showed them into his office. Mostyn was a rotund man with a shiny bald head and a round, pink face that always seemed to have a smile on it, even when he was discussing death in all its often horrible forms. He ushered the two detectives to hard chairs and sat down again behind his paper – infested desk.

“My officer has told me about the situation over the phone,” he began, picking up a form from a pile in front of him. “We already had a bit of a problem in that Doctor Carlton hasn’t yet been able to give me a cause of death.” He gave them a cheery grin, as if he had just won the Lottery.

“Surely that’s unusual in itself, sir?” muttered Mordecai, picking at a pimple on his neck.

The coroner shook his head happily. “Not that unusual, Inspector. Especially if tablets or alcohol are involved, nothing may be found at the post-mortem, but the answer may come later from laboratory tests.”

The DI delved into his inside pocket and pulled out Rita Lloyd’s letter, now encased in a clear plastic envelope. He handed it across the desk.

“You see our problem, sir. I get this this morning, then I’m told she’s already dead!”

David Mostyn scanned through the single page of writing, then handed it back and rubbed his bald head as an aid to thought.

“It certainly requires us to proceed with caution, officer. What do you know about this pair?”

Mordecai motioned with his head towards his sergeant. “Williams here knows them best, he comes from that part of the valley.”

Willy cleared his throat and began to speak as if he was in the witness box, though he managed to avoid phrases like, “I was proceeding in a northerly direction.”

“Sir, Lewis and Rita Lloyd have been known to me for a long while. In fact, I arrested him some time ago for assaulting his wife. He is the owner and licensee of the Elliot Arms in Tonypandy, a free house where he lives with the now deceased.”

The coroner nodded, his benign smile still firmly in place. “Have you spoken to him about this yet?”

Mordecai shook his head. “We’ve only known about this for an hour, sir. It was only by chance that Lewis Armstrong mentioned to my sergeant that she was dead.”

The coroner stared down at the paper he held in his hand.

“All I’ve got is Lewis’s daily notification to me. It just says that the family doctor was called to the house-Dr Battachirya, that would be – who then phoned in to say he was reporting a death, as he couldn’t give a certificate. The woman was found dead in bed by the husband at seven-thirty yesterday morning.”

Mordecai Evans’s pugnacious face stared at David Mostyn.

“That’s all you have, sir?” he demanded, as if he suspected that the coroner was holding out on him.

“At this stage, yes. If the p.m. had shown a natural cause of death, like a coronary or a stroke, I would have issued a disposal certificate and that would be an end of it. As it is, I have to wait for the pathologist, Dr Carlton, to come back to me eventually with an update based on the results of the tests he sent away.”

“How long will that take, sir?” ventured Willy Williams.

Mostyn beamed back at him. “Varies a lot, sergeant. Some things, like alcohol and carbon monoxide, he can have done in his own hospital the same day. More complicated tests for drugs have to be sent away and can take weeks.”

The inspector glowered at the coroner as if it was his fault. “We may not be able to wait that long, sir. I’ve spoken to my Superintendent and he’s told me to see the husband and if I feel there’s any doubt, to proceed as if it’s a criminal investigation.”

David Mostyn’s smile faded a little. “And what would that entail in this case?”

Mordecai shrugged his bull-like shoulders. “We may have to call in the Scenes-of-Crime team to the pub, sir. And possibly ask the Home Office pathologist to carry out a second autopsy-with your consent, of course.”

He could almost see the figures ringing up like a cash register in the coroner’s eyes, as Mostyn calculated the extra cost to the budget he received from the local authority. However, he rallied and with his grin at maximum rictus, he agreed with good grace.

“Well, have a talk with this Lloyd chap, Inspector – and keep me informed as to what’s happening.”

The Elliot Arms was an ugly red-brick building on the main road through the Rhondda Valley, a twisting, congested route lined with terraced houses, betting shops and Chinese take-aways. Built in 1900 to wash the coal-dust from the throats of thousands of miners, the public house had fallen on hard times, now that not a single pit remained in the valley. Lewis Lloyd had managed to survive by accepting a frugal life-style, most of his custom coming from the old colliers whom came to the Elliot mainly out of habit. There was also a hard core of pigeon fanciers, whose Club met once a week in the barren room above the Public Bar. Lewis was himself a pigeon man, with a large loft out in the backyard where he kept a dozen cherished Fantails. He also had a moderate lunch-time trade in ham-rolls and pasties bought mainly by the workers from a small plastics factory further up Mafeking Terrace, the side street on the corner of which his pub was situated.

Just past the factory, the road angled up at almost forty-five degrees, climbing out of the valley bottom to the green heights five hundred feet above, where his bird-watching retreat lay beyond the last houses and then the allotments.

This Wednesday, the day after his wife had been carried out feet first by Caradoc Builders and Undertakers, Lewis Lloyd drew back the bolts on the doors to the Public Bar on the dot of twelve. He did this every day, closing up at three and opening again from six until eleven.

Yesterday was an exception, not because of overwhelming grief, but because he had had to go down to the coroner’s office and the undertaker’s to sign forms, which threw his usual routine out of kilter. The loss of his wife made little difference to his staffing problems, as Rita rarely appeared in the bar, except when she wanted a fresh bottle of gin or when the fancy took her for a flirtatious gossip with some of the less geriatric patrons.

At lunch times, Sharon, a fat adenoidal girl from Mafeking Street, helped behind the bar, mainly employed in inserting a lettuce leaf and a slice of reconstituted ham into bread rolls. She also removed the cellophane from cloned Cornish pasties and popped them into the microwave, to satiate the appetites of the workers from Panda Plastics. On alternate evenings, the gloomy mahogany bar was manned by either Wayne or Alvis. The first of these two young men was a deserter from the Army, the other on bail awaiting trial for burglary.

With the doors opened, the landlord walked across the cavernous room, its half-panelled walls and ceiling yellowed with decades of cigarette smoke. He sat on a stool at the end of the bar, next to the hinged panel that gave access to the serving area and his sitting room and kitchen beyond. Picking up the Western Mail, he began reading the sports pages, ignoring the sympathetic looks from Sharon, who having been nurtured on television soap-operas from the age of three, was convinced that his nonchalant manner concealed abject grief. In fact, Lewis’s mind was not on the current aberrations of the Welsh Rugby Union, but was busy reviewing the likely consequences of his recent homicidal behaviour.

Jim Armstrong, the coroner’s officer, had offered nothing more than gruff sympathy and efficient form-filling, when he had gone down to the police station to give him details about his lately deceased wife. Then he had phoned Lloyd about an hour ago, to tell him that there had been a hitch in the proceedings and that he should not make any arrangements for the funeral until he heard again from the coroner’s office. For form’s sake, the publican tried to sound concerned and asked what the problem was, but the officer was evasive.

From previous less serious brushes with the law and from some research in the Public Library at Porth, he was aware of what would be the likely sequence of events. The post-mortem would show nothing and there would most probably be an adjournment of an inquest until further futile tests were done. With luck, the coroner would then throw in the towel, hold a resumed inquest with an “open” verdict and let burial go ahead. If he was less fortunate, the rozzers would come sniffing round, given that he had had some domestic trouble with Rita in the past. As long as he stonewalled them, there was nothing to fear, as they had absolutely nothing to go on, even though there was a large insurance policy riding on the death.

Though Lewis Lloyd was relatively uneducated, having left school at sixteen, he was intelligent and cunning and had worked out all the possible permutations of what may happen after he had done the deed. He had no remorse, as the drunken, unfaithful, vituperative Rita had it coming and all that now remained was to weather any stormy passages that might be in store.

There was only one aspect that Lloyd had been unable to factor into his equations – and that was because he had known nothing about the letter that his wife had sent the police.

Willy Williams parked the CID car in Mafeking Terrace an hour later and as they walked back to the drab building on the corner, Mordecai asked him what sort of chap this Lewis Lloyd was.

“Bloke about forty-five, ordinary enough, I suppose. Used to be on the railway, but got run over by an engine, still limps a bit. Had a nice bit of ‘compo’, so he bought the pub with it, they say. Mad keen on birds, he is – the feathered sort.”

“What’s all this with his missus, then?”

“Rita? Frizzy blonde, quite a looker in her time, but she got too fond of the bottle. Used to be a hairdresser, but I reckon she was too lazy to make anything of it.”

“So why would she marry a bird-watching wimp like Lloyd?”

“Probably the compensation he had-keep her in gin for life, that would! Though I hear the pub’s not doing too well these days, so Lloyd’s probably a bit skint.”

They reached the corner and Willy’s proffered curriculum vitae was curtailed as they pushed open the door of the pub. Inside the bar, an old man slumped in one corner, reading a racing paper. Half a dozen younger men and women were crowded round a couple of tables in the centre, chattering, drinking lager and eating Sharon’s offerings off paper plates.

A dark-haired man was sitting at the bar reading a newspaper, but when he saw Willy, he folded it up and came towards them.

“Mr Lloyd?” said Mordecai Evans, managing to make the simple words sound menacing.

Lewis nodded a greeting to Willy, who he had good cause to recognise and then nodded at the DI to agree that he was indeed Mr Lloyd.

“Detective Inspector Evans from Ponty,” grated Mordecai. “Can we go somewhere more private?”

In the gloomy back room, which had a worn three-piece suite, a dining table and a small television set, Lloyd motioned the police officers to sit and perched himself on the edge of a dining chair.

“This is just where we come when we’re serving in the bar,” he said apologetically. “Our proper living quarters are upstairs.”

Mordecai ran a finger round his thick neck, jammed into a tight collar. It was hot in here and he suddenly fancied one of his suspect’s pints.

“Your wife died yesterday, Mr Lloyd. I’m sorry to disturb you at a time like this, but we need to ask a few questions.” He didn’t sound in the least sorry, thought Willy.

“I found her dead in bed, officer. I can’t understand it, it was a terrible shock. She hadn’t been ill – at least, no more than usual.”

“What do you mean by that?” grunted the DI, suspiciously.

Lloyd’s rather swarthy face looked down at his fingernails. “Well, it’s no great secret round here that she was too fond of the sauce, if you get my meaning, especially living on licensed premises. Dr Battachirya warned her about it many times. He sent some tests away last year, but we didn’t hear any more.”

“But the doctor said he couldn’t give a certificate, so it couldn’t be that,” chipped in Willy.

“I don’t know, then,” replied Lloyd, shrugging his shoulders. “I expect the hospital will find something.”

“You had a conviction for assaulting her not long ago? What do you say to that?” demanded Mordecai, accusingly.

The publican’s dark eyebrows rose in surprise. “I don’t see why you bring that up! She wasn’t beaten to death, was she?”

“I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind,” snapped the detective. “Have you caused any further physical harm since then?”

Lloyd bridled at this. His indignation was genuine, as he knew perfectly well that Rita would not have so much as a scratch on her at the post-mortem.

“Of course not! And I resent you even suggesting such a thing.”

Unperturbed, Mordecai dipped into his pocket and brought out the plastic-covered letter, which he held out to Lloyd.

“Your wife handed this in to the police only a few days ago. What do you say to that?”

The publican had never played poker, but he might have been a great success at the game, for as he read the letter, his face betrayed none of the concern that flooded through him. Stupid bitch, he thought, what did she want to go and do this for, just before he saw her off! But confidence in his plan soon overcame the shock of her accusing him to the police. Whatever they thought, nothing could ever be proved.

He handed the letter back to Mordecai. “She was hardly compos mentis much of the time, inspector. Tipsy most of the day. Emotional and dramatic, I think she imagined she lived in Coronation Street or Emmerdale!”

“What d’you mean by that?” snapped the inspector, suspiciously.

Lewis Lloyd shrugged and turned up his hands, continental-fashion.

“Out of touch with reality, I think they call it. She spent all her time accusing me of something, very often ranting and raving, usually about money. No wonder she drove me to giving her a slap now and then.”

Willy Williams decided to join the debate.

“Well, she tells the police she’s in fear of her life from you – and then turns up dead within a day or two. What about that?”

Lloyd turned a dead-pan face towards the sergeant. “What about it, then? You tell me what she died of? What makes you think I could have killed her?”

There was no answer to that and the two officers turned in some frustration to routine questions about where and when.

“She was found dead in bed, so where were you?” grated Mordecai.

“In the back bedroom, we hadn’t slept together for a couple of years,” said Lewis. “I might have caught something, she went with so many other blokes,” he added bitterly.

After a number of further questions and getting unrewarding answers, DI Evans got up and hovered menacingly over Lewis.

“I’m not satisfied, Mr Lloyd, so while we’re waiting for more information from the hospital, I’d like to search your premises. Do you consent or shall I have to get a warrant?”

“No, you carry on, lad!” said Lewis affably. “I’ve got nothing to hide, so help yourself!”

Willy tried to look menacing, but he didn’t have the face for it like Mordecai. “You’ve got a hut up the mountain, too, haven’t you?” he said.

The landlord nodded. “Just an old shanty, it used to be for the fitters at the top end of the slag hoist when the colliery was working. I rent it from a farmer now, somewhere to watch the birds from and get a bit of peace from Rita.”

“Well, we’ll want to search that too, so I’ll be sending some officers up here later today.”

With that feeble threat, the detectives marched out, leaving Lloyd to once again carefully review all his actions, to check that they had been foolproof.

The rest of the day saw a lot of action, with little result. After reporting back to his Detective-Superintendent at Headquarters in Bridgend, Mordecai Evans got his blessing to crank up the investigation and by mid-afternoon, a white Scenes-of-Crime van pulled up in Mafeking Street, followed by a Ford Focus carrying a civilian photographer. Three SOCOs delighted the gawping inhabitants of the street by ostentatiously standing at the back of their van to pull on their white paper suits and then trooping into the pub, carrying an assortment of metal cases.

Meanwhile, after a number of phone calls to the coroner and to the Forensic Pathology department in Cardiff, Mordecai and Willy made their way up to the new Abercynon General Hospital, a few miles away.

This was a large concrete edifice, looking like a grain-silo with windows. It had been built on the site of a former colliery and on the bulldozed slag at the back, the mortuary occupied the exact spot where the winding-house had once stood. The detectives found the consultant pathologist, Dr Archie Carlton, waiting for them in the little office, looking somewhat disgruntled. He was a thin, gangling man, with a lock of mousey hair flopping over his forehead and was a born pessimist.

“Don’t see why you want that Home Office chap coming up here,” he said peevishly. “I had a word with him on the phone, when he rang to say he was coming. If I say there’s nothing to be found, then no one else is going to be able to say anything different.”

After the usual ritual of cups of dark-brown tea being supplied by the mortuary attendant, Mordecai attempted to be diplomatic.

“It’s the coroner and my chief, doc. They insisted, as there’s some dodgy background to this death.” He explained the circumstances and managed to placate the hospital pathologist’s wounded pride before a screech of rubber on gravel outside heralded the arrival of Professor Peter Porteous from Cardiff.

The forensic pathologist was rather like a rubber ball on legs, a bouncy little man of fifty, with receding hair and a toothbrush moustache. He affected a yellow waistcoat and a drooping bow tie and was always in a hurry, inevitably having to be somewhere else before he even arrived.

Grabbing a mug of tea, he went straight into a discussion with Archie Carlton.

“Didn’t find a thing, eh?” he gabbled. “All the stuff gone off for histology and toxicology?”

The hospital doctor nodded mournfully. “Asked for everything, even insulin. Blood, urine, bile, stomach contents, CSF, vitreous fluid, the lot.”

“She was forty, I gather. No problem in her coronaries?”

“Clean as a whistle, could drive a bus down them. Normal sized heart, no pulmonary embolism, damn all.”

“She was bit cyanosed, you said on the phone?”

Carlton shrugged. “Just a bit blue round the lips by the time she got here. Nothing specific about that, no petechiae in the eyes or any other signs of asphyxia.”

Porteous nodded briskly. “Don’t believe in the signs of asphyxia myself. Lot of bullshit, used as an excuse by people who should know better.”

Mordecai decided to add his pennyworth. “She was a heavy drinker, professor. Rarely sober!”

Porteous took a mouthful of tea. “Liver look all right?” he asked Carlton.

“Touch of fat, nothing out of the way,” grunted the other pathologist.

“I’ve seen a few boozers throw a double-six with not much to show for it at post-mortem,” commented the forensic man. “But it’s a diagnosis of despair to suggest that.” He put his mug down and looked at his watch.

“Right, let’s get to it. I should have been in Swansea ten minutes ago.”

Five days after the second autopsy, Lewis Lloyd was sitting in his hut on the mountain, wondering what was happening to the investigation.

Both Willy Williams and Mordecai Evans had been back twice, first with another SOCO team to turn the pub over once again – and then to grill him once more. As there was nothing significant to be found or said, they went away with their tails between their legs, Mordecai again muttering empty threats.

Lewis sat in an old armchair, thinking over recent events. He blessed the foresight with which, soon after they were married, he had insured Rita for forty thousand pounds, being flush with his compensation money at the time. She had done her best to go through his windfall with her extravagance on clothes, drink and dubious “shopping trips” to Bristol and London, a thin cover for her numerous brief affairs. Now the money from the Prudential would come in very nicely to clear his debts and let him build a brand-new pigeon loft in the back-yard.

The thought of birds made him get up and scan the mountain-top for feathered friends, but the light was already failing. The autumn was well advanced and even at five in the afternoon, it was getting dusk. It was a poor time of year for bird-watchers and he decided to have a day off next Monday and drive up to Llangorse Lake to see what water-fowl were about. It was cold in the old hut and he contemplated lighting the stove for the first time since last Spring, but as he had to be back for opening time, it seemed hardly worth it, so he subsided into his chair again.

As he sat there wondering when they would release Rita’s body for the funeral, another conference was going on in the CID office in Pontypridd.

The coroner, his officer, and an inspector in charge of the SOCOs were crowded into Mordecai’s cluttered office, along with the DI and his sergeant.

“So what are we going to do about it, Mr Evans?” asked the coroner, with a cheery smile.

“We’re stumped, that’s what we are, sir,” growled Mordecai. “Can’t get a thing out of Lloyd, though my gut tells me the bugger did it!”

“All the investigations have turned out negative,” put in Willy. “At least, unless you’ve got anything new?” He looked enquiringly at the SOCO.

Albert Whistler, a tall, grizzled man nearing retirement, shook his head.

“Sweet Fanny Adams, I’m afraid. We went over that pub with a fine-tooth-comb, as well as that hut up on the mountain.”

“Nothing at all?” queried David Mostyn, with a leer.

“She had no injuries, sir, so there would be no blood. We checked everywhere for poison containers or pills, but nothing but cough medicine and aspirin.”

Jimmy Armstrong, the coroner’s officer, waved a thin file of papers.

“We’ve had both post-mortem reports now, the one from Doctor Carlton and another from the Prof in Cardiff. No help at all.”

The coroner nodded. “I read them before I came across here, they both agree that there was no anatomical cause of death whatsoever. Heart, brain, lungs-everything all normal.”

“What about something like suffocation?” asked Mordecai, still grasping at straws.

“I spoke to Professor Porteous on the phone this morning,” said Mostyn. “He was very helpful, but of no help, if you know what I mean. He said there are some forms of suffocation which can leave no signs at all, but that’s just a negative finding, of no legal use whatsoever.”

“What about that thing with a syringe-full of air that Dorothy L. Sayers got wrong in one of her books?” asked Willy, an avid reader of thrillers.

“The Professor mentioned that as well, actually,” said the coroner cheerfully. “He said it would be impossible, there were no needle marks on the body and Dr Carlton had found no bubbles anywhere in the circulation.”

The Detective-Inspector now glared at the Scenes-of-Crime Officer. ‘Isn’t there something that bloody forensic lab can do to help? What about all those samples that were sent up to them? It’s already cost us a fortune to fast-track the tests.”

Whistler hefted his own file of reports. “They’ve done all they can, Mordecai. All negative results, apart from a fair whack of alcohol. But not enough to kill her, especially as she was used to the juice.”

“How high was it?” asked Willy Williams.

“A hundred and sixty-five milligrams per hundred mill,” answered Whistler. “Over twice the legal limit for driving, but nothing like dangerous to life, according to the lab. Put her to sleep, most likely, but with a hardened drinker like Rita Lloyd, perhaps not even that.”

There was a thoughtful silence. “And nothing else?” demanded Mordecai, eventually.

The SOCO shook his head again. “No drugs, no aspirin, no insulin, nothing.”

“I asked Professor Porteous if he had any further suggestions,” offered the coroner. “He mentioned a few things, but the lab had already excluded them. Another possibility was potassium chloride poisoning, but that can’t be analysed after death, apparently, as it’s a natural constituent of the body. And it has to be injected directly into a vein.”

Mordecai Evans glowered. “Can’t see Lewis Lloyd knowing about that stuff. And where the hell would he get it from, anyway.”

“And the body showed no injection marks at all,” reminded Lewis Armstrong. “The second post-mortem was very thorough. The Prof looked particularly for any needle marks, even in the feet.”

There was another bitter silence.

“So where are we?” asked the coroner, with a bland smile. “If you’re not going to charge Lloyd, then I’ve got to get on with my inquest and draw a line under this matter.”

Mordecai ground his teeth. “I hate to see the bastard getting away with it! I even had a word with the Crown Prosecutor, but he laughed down the phone at me. He said the CPS wouldn’t touch it with a barge-pole, unless we came up with something definite.”

The coroner rose to his feet and motioned with his head at his officer.

“Well, there’s nothing more to be gained by sitting here, Inspector. Unless you can get a confession out of this man by tomorrow-or come up with some solid evidence, I’m going to have to complete the inquest. We can’t keep the poor woman above ground for much longer.”

When all the others had left his office, Mordecai Evans glowered at his sergeant.

“Confession be damned! That crafty bugger Lloyd wouldn’t confess to giving short weight in a packet of his crisps!”

A week later, Lewis Lloyd attended the coroner’s inquest, held in a vacant room in the Magistrate’s Court. He wore a dark suit and a black tie as he sat avoiding the poisonous looks thrown across the court at him by Mordecai Evans. Apart from the police and a couple of bored young reporters from the local papers, the only other people present were three nosey old men, whiling away their retirement in the warmth of the court, as the weather had turned frosty outside.

As prophesied, the proceedings were short and unproductive. Doctor Carlton appeared in person to give his post-mortem findings, but the coroner had accepted the written report of the Home Office man, which contributed nothing more useful. With the Detective-Inspector glowering at every word, David Mostyn rattled through the evidence and rapidly summed up the negative findings. There was no jury and he wisely made no comments about any suspicious circumstances, as this was outside a coroner’s jurisdiction. After asking Lloyd if he wanted to ask any questions, which Lewis mutely declined, Mostyn brought in a “open verdict”, leaving the cause of death unascertained. Even the fact that he had refused a cremation certificate was not mentioned in open court, leaving the option open for an exhumation at a later date if any further evidence came to light, unlikely though that seemed.

As Lewis Lloyd walked out into the cold street, Mordecai “accidentally” stumbled against him, making the publican stagger.

“Think you’re such a clever bastard, don’t you, Lloyd! But I’ll have you one of these days!” he snarled.

Ignoring the empty threat, Lewis drove back to Tonypandy just in time for lunchtime opening and a plea from Sharon.

“The lager’s off, Mr Lloyd. Can you put another one on, please?”

He opened the trap in the floor behind the bar and went down the steps to the cellar, switching on the lights as he went. For a few minutes, he trundled aluminium kegs about and connected pipes with the ease born of long familiarity.

“All right, girl, try it now!” he called up the steps. When all was working again, he prepared to climb up to the bar, but took a moment with his hand on the light switch to look around the large cellar. Apart from the row of metal casks and cylinders with their complex piping connected to the bar above, there were racks and cases of bottles, boxes of crisps and peanuts and a collection of oddments which made part of the chamber look like a jumble sale.

As his eyes roved over the old wooden barrels, off-cuts of carpet, plastic bags, broken table lamps, discarded chairs, a dilapidated wardrobe and two bicycles, he grinned to himself. Those silly buggers of policemen had searched this place several times and had seen and even handled the instruments of Rita’s death without the faintest notion of recognizing them as such.

Satisfied that he was now safe for ever, he clicked the switch and went up to check that the lager was flowing properly.

Early that evening, he decided to celebrate by staying the night in his cabin high above the valley. Leaving Wayne to look after the bar, he climbed up Mafeking Street to reach the hut that used to shelter the men maintaining the cable hoist that once brought the black waste up from the colliery. It was almost dark when he unlocked the door. Inside, the cabin felt cold and damp and he shivered for the first time that autumn. Looking though the window to see if there were any birds about, there was just enough light to see as far as the old lime kiln, which had given him the idea in the first place.

As he crumpled up some newspaper and pushed it into his stove with a handful of firewood, he recalled reading about those kilns, which burned endlessly in the old days, turning lumps of limestone into quick-lime for farmers and builders. On winter nights, tramps used to sleep huddled near them for warmth – and quite a few never woke up. The heavy carbon dioxide gas produced by the kilns used to settle over them and, though not poisonous in itself, displaced all the oxygen and peacefully extinguished their dismal lives.

Intrigued, Lewis had pursued his researches in the Reference Library and discovered that such deaths left no physical signs whatsoever, the explanation being derived only from the circumstances. He also read that not only lime-kilns, but wells dug deeply into chalk and even grain silos on farms could produce this fatal heavy vapour that killed so silently.

He put more wood and coal on the fire and lit a butane camping-lamp to give him enough light to read his latest bird-watching magazine, for there was no electricity in the hut. Sitting in the tattered but comfortable arm-chair, he leafed through the pages, with a can of Boddington’s Bitter and a Cornish pasty for sustenance. As the room warmed up, Lewis became comfortably drowsy but, before falling asleep, he went over yet again in his mind, the details of the plot which had defeated the best brains of the police and the forensic experts.

That memorable night, Rita had been out for the evening, allegedly at a hen-party, but Lewis was well aware that she had gone out to a club in Merthyr with her latest chap, a used-car dealer from Aberdare. She had returned at one in the morning, reeling drunk and this had decided him that tonight was the night-or, rather, morning. After giving him some semi-coherent abuse, Rita tottered off to her bed and within minutes was flat on her back, snoring like a hog.

Lewis Lloyd had swung into action, going down to the cellar for his equipment. From the old wardrobe, he took four wire coat-hangers saved from the dry-cleaners and bent them at right-angles. He took them upstairs with a few black plastic rubbish bags and carefully constructed a kind of open-topped well around his wife’s head. By sliding one end of each hanger under the pillow and the duvet, he erected four supports around which he arranged the plastic bags, securing them with sellotape.

At this stage, he checked that she was undisturbed, but as expected, Rita was out cold and, even if she had woken up, would have been too confused to know what was going on. Satisfied, he went downstairs again and humped up one of the gas cylinders that was used to pressurize the metal beer kegs. Propping it against the bedside cabinet, he used a length of spare tubing to fill his improvised gas chamber with carbon dioxide. He left the end of the tube inside, keeping a slow but steady flow to displace all the air from inside his little tent. Lewis was well aware that it would overflow, but the heavy gas would sink to the floor and was no danger to himself. He checked at intervals with a cigarette lighter to make sure that the chamber was full, the flame going out from lack of oxygen as soon as he dipped it below the top edge of the plastic bags.

“Worked like a dream!” he murmured, as he slumped in his armchair, then giggled as he wondered if Rita had had any last dreams that night. Her breathing changed after a few minutes from noisy snoring to a rasping hiss, and quickened in rate. Then it began to diminish, both in volume and speed, and after another five or six minutes appeared to cease altogether. By the light of his little flame, he could see that her face and lips had become faintly violet and he suspected that she was already dead. To be on the safe side, he left the gas running and went outside for half an hour, to avoid any possible effects upon himself. When he came back, he knew she had gone, but checked the absence of a pulse in her neck just to make sure.

Turning off the gas, he opened the window to dissipate any remaining vapour. Then he dismantled his apparatus and returned the cylinder to the cellar, where he reconnected it to the barrel of lager, ready for business when they opened. He straightened out the hangers and hung them back in the wardrobe, then filled the plastic bags with old papers and other rubbish and dumped them out in the yard, ready for the bin-men. His work done, he made one last check to make sure that Rita had not managed some kind of resurrection, then he went to bed himself and slept soundly with no twinge of guilt or conscience until it was time to “discover” her body.

Now with a sigh of satisfaction, Lewis sleepily finished his beer and putting aside his birdy magazine, slid further down in his chair for a doze and to think about a trip he had planned to Mid-Wales next month to look for red kites.

“Now we’ll never bloody know what happened to his missus!” grumbled Mordecai Evans, as they left the coroner’s court a week later.

“It certainly wasn’t carbon monoxide poisoning, that’s for sure!” said Willy Williams. “Did you see the colour of his skin in the mortuary? Now I know what they mean by ‘being in the pink’!”

The Detective-Inspector ignored his sergeant’s feeble attempt at witticism. “The SOCOs say the flue-pipe of that stove must have been blocked since last Spring. Bloody ironic, really!”

Willy nodded sagely. “Lewis Lloyd would have appreciated that, if he’d known. A jackdaw’s nest, of all things!”

“Serve the bugger right,” grunted Mordecai.