Rayburn’s thin moustache twitched. “Are you saying the accomplice, if there is one, is one of my employees?”
“Holloway or Eldridge, yes. How long have they worked for you?”
“Eldridge for four years, Holloway for just under one. But—”
Sabina said, “I kept a watchful eye on the storage room door, of course, but not every second. One or the other could easily have slipped through.”
“And hidden and then returned after Mr. Rayburn,” Quincannon said.
“Yes. Not before.”
“Did you notice where Holloway and Eldridge were standing prior to the blackout? My attention was diverted by that dowager bulldog.”
“They were both near the display table, on the side nearest the storeroom door. When the lights came on, Eldridge was in front of the table—apparently the first to notice the Antoinette bag was missing.”
“And Holloway?”
Sabina didn’t answer immediately. She seemed to be cogitating, as if something had just occurred to her. Whatever it was, she chose not to share it. After a few seconds she said, “Holloway? I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”
“I did,” Rayburn said. “He was at my side just after I came in from the storeroom. I remember because he spoke my name.”
The Frenchman confirmed this. “Oui, I heard him as well.”
“Could he have followed you in?” Quincannon asked Rayburn.
“… I suppose he could have, if he’d been hiding somewhere near the door.”
Elias Holloway was summoned to join them. He was about Rayburn’s size, with delicate features and fair hair. He had a habit of clasping his long-fingered hands at his waist; now he stood rubbing them together in a nervous fashion. But his gaze was steady and his posture one of defensive innocence.
He vehemently denied having been in the storeroom. “I was at the wall behind the display table,” he said, “from just before the blackout until light was restored.”
“Who else was near the table before?” Quincannon demanded. “George Eldridge. Moving about in front.”
“Just him?”
“In the immediate vicinity, yes.”
“And you have no idea who snatched the bag?”
“None. None at all.”
Quincannon had a sharp eye for facial expressions and body movements, a sharp ear for nuances of speech; it was the rare miscreant, male or female, who could dupe him successfully. He drew himself up and loomed over the small man, fixing him with a basilic glare.
“You lie, Holloway,” he said. “I know you’re guilty. We all know it. Confess and identify your confederate and perhaps Monsieur LeBeaux will be inclined to be lenient with you.”
“But yes, I will,” the Frenchman said. “My only concern is the recovery of the Marie Antoinette.”
But the clerk foolishly maintained a misguided faith in his partner and the hope for his share of the spoils. “You can’t intimidate me,” he said. “I had nothing to do with the theft. Nothing, do you understand? And you can’t prove I did.”
Quincannon resisted an impulse to hoist up the little man and shake him until his bones rattled. Such action might have the desired effect, but he had built his reputation as a premier sleuth on his mental prowess, not on the use of force in front of witnesses. If Holloway refused to cooperate, so be it. The truth of the matter would be discovered in other ways, and soon. Failure was not a word in Quincannon’s lexicon. He sent Holloway back to wait with the others and summoned George Eldridge, a few years older and several pounds heavier. Eldridge was cooperative, but had nothing of importance to relate. He had stopped near the far corner of the table when the room went dark, he said, and remained there until it was lighted again. He couldn’t recall if Holloway had been in the room or not when he spied the empty blue velvet case; his attention had been riveted on that. Nor could he say who else might have been close enough to the table to snag the chatelaine bag in the darkness.”
“What now, M’sieur Quincannon?” LeBeaux asked when Eldridge had left their company. “What now, eh?”
Quincannon, despite his silent bluster, was nonplussed for one of the few times in his life. He was still struggling for a suitable response when Sabina stirred and put a hand on his arm. She had remained quiet the entire time Holloway and Eldridge were being questioned, evidently lost in thought. Now she seemed more animated than ever, her dark blue eyes bright.
“John,” she said, “there’s another person to be questioned, and without delay.”
“Yes? Who would that be?”
“Mr. Thaddeus Bakker, of the Sacramento Bakkers.”
“Why? Do you think he knows something useful?”
“Fetch him, please.”
“I repeat, why?”
“Because he ate nothing from the food buffet prior to the blackout. Because his neck is slender and so are his arms and legs. And because of his frilly white shirt. Now will you please fetch him?”
For a moment Quincannon wondered if she had gone daft. But Sabina’s tone was commanding, and when she spoke in such a fashion it was usually for a well-considered reason. Without further comment he went and fetched the corpulent gent, who seemed as puzzled as he was by the summons.
“I don’t know what I can tell you,” he said. “I know nothing at all about the theft.”
Sabina studied him for several seconds, then nodded crisply as if in confirmation of what she was thinking. “Don’t you, Mr. Bakker?”
“I’ve just said so, haven’t I?”
“Where were you when the blackout ended?”
“Why … I don’t recall exactly. By the liquor buffet, I believe.”
“No, you were standing near the wall beyond the Reticules Through
the Ages display.”
“Was I?”
“You were,” Quincannon said. “I saw you there myself when the lights came on, just turning around and fussing with your shirtfront.”
“Not exactly fussing,” Sabina said. “What he was actually doing was
refastening one of the buttons.”
“What of it?” Bakker drew himself up. “Are you suggesting I stole the Marie Antoinette reticule and hid it inside my shirt?”
“Stole it, yes. Hid it, yes. But not inside your shirt.”
“The accusation is preposterous. Mr. Quincannon here searched
me himself. If, the bag was in my clothing, he would have found it.”
“It wasn’t and isn’t in your clothing, Mr. Bakker.”
“Then what do you—”
To Quincannon’s open-mouthed astonishment, Sabina suddenly punched Thaddeus Bakker in the stomach with all her might.
Sabina
Her closed fist must have sunk two inches into Bakker’s midriff, yet the man’s only reaction was a small startled grunt. Thus confirming her suspicion and justifying her bold action. No genuinely fat man could have absorbed such a violent blow without indications of hurt.
Rayburn gasped and LeBeaux exclaimed, “Mon Dieu!” But John understood immediately.
“False, by Godfrey! A false corporation!”
Bakker realized the game was up and made a clumsy attempt to flee. John tripped him, pounced on top, and tore open the man’s shirt to reveal a padded convex mound wrapped in an elasticized garment resembling a woman’s corset—a false corporation cunningly made so it would look and feel genuine when the clothing that covered it was searched. The corset-like garment fit tightly, but not so tightly it couldn’t be pulled up along one side. Which John quickly proceeded to do. A moment later he removed the chatelaine bag from among wads of cotton padding inside and held it up for all to see.
A good deal of confusion followed. Monsieur LeBeaux seized the bag, examined it, and then, with a Gallic flourish, he threw his arms around Sabina and bestowed a kiss on each cheek. John glowered at this but said nothing; he and Rayburn were busy lifting a weakly struggling Thaddeus Bakker to his feet. Some of the guests had spilled out of the storeroom to look on, chatteri
ng in excited voices. Holloway, realizing his partner had been caught, made a foolish attempt to escape through the rear door; Eldridge and the man with the pince-nez halted and held him until he could be locked away in Rayburn’s office with Bakker. Eldridge was then sent to summon the police.
It was two hours before the bluecoats finished their officious duties and allowed everyone to leave. Two facts resulted from their interrogation of the culprits. Thaddeus Bakker’s real name was Horace Bean and he was indeed from Sacramento, where he had twice been arrested on suspicion of jewel theft. And Elias Holloway was his brother-in-law.
John remained uncharacteristically silent the entire time, speaking only when spoken to and avoiding Sabina’s eye. She knew why, of course. He was pouting because she had upstaged him by solving the puzzle before he could.
Sometimes working with him was akin to walking a tightwire. His pride and his conceit were considerable, and often justified, but also easily bruised; he was far more vulnerable and insecure than he would ever admit. He would also never admit she was his equal as a detective, which of course she was, and on the occasions when she out-sleuthed him he found ways to rationalize her success. As he did in the hansom cab on the way from Post Street to her flat on Russian Hill, when he finally broke his brooding silence.
“A woman’s eye,” he said. “Pardon?”
“A woman has an eye for such details as whether or not a man eats from a buffet and the size of his neck and if one of his shirt buttons has been opened. That’s why you were able to deduce the hiding place of the bag before I did.”
“I’m sure that’s so.” She tried not to smile.
“I would have come to the same conclusion eventually.”
“I’m sure you would have.”
“As a matter of fact, my mind had already begun to work along those lines.”
“And such a nimble mind it is. We both know there is no better detective west of the Mississippi than John Quincannon.”
He said nothing, but in the glow from the side lamp she could see that he was his old preening self again.
A woman’s work is never done, she thought. And smiled her secret smile.
THE TEST
by HRF Keating
What writer would not want to be associated with a publishing house with the inspirational name of Crippen & Landru? Certainly HRF (Harry) Keating was no exception and was delighted to work, on many occasions, with Douglas Greene.
Contributions to anthologies were made, over the years, before C & L undertook to do the American edition of Harry’s own collection, published in the UK by Flambard Press, of In Kensington Gardens Once.
Subsequent to that Doug was asked by Malice Domestic to do an in-depth interview when Harry was being honoured at their convention and such was the obvious rapport between them that Sheila (Harry’s wife) asked Doug if he would be prepared to publish a book in conjunction with The Detection Club to commemorate Harry’s fairly imminent 80th birthday. The result was The Verdict of Us All, an astonishing collection of short stories and tributes edited by Peter Lovesey.
As always it was not only the content that was superlative but the whole arresting presentation. The sheer pleasure of holding a Crippen & Landru publication in the hand make them the standard bearers in any crusade to keep the printed word alive.
From the very beginning Inspector Ghote had doubts about Anil Divekar and the Test Match. Cricket and Divekar did not really mix. Divekar’s sport was something quite different: he was a daylight entry ace. Excitement for him lay not in perfectly timing a stroke with the bat that would send the ball skimming along the grass to the boundary, but in the patient sizing up of a big Bombay house, the layout of its rooms, the routine of its servants, and then choosing the right moment to slip in and out carrying away the best of the portable loot.
But here Divekar was, as Ghote on a free day stood with his little son Ved outside the high walls of Brabourne Stadium, ticketless and enviously watching the crowds pouring in for the start of the day’s play. He even came up to them, smiling broadly.
“Inspector, you would like seats?”
At Ghote’s side, clutching his hand, little Ved’s face lit up as from a sudden inward glow. And Ghote nearly accepted the offer. Ved deserved the treat. He was well-behaved and already working hard at school—and it was only a question of a pair of tickets. Some of his own colleagues would have taken them as a right.
But Ghote knew all along that he could not do it. Whatever the others did, he had always kept his integrity. No criminal could ever reproach him with past favours.
Angrily he tugged Ved off. But, marching away from the stadium, he could not help speculating as to why Divekar should have been there at all. Of course, when every two years or so a team from England or Australia or the West Indies came to Bombay, Test Match fever suddenly gripped the most unexpected people. But all the same …
The crowd outside the stadium had not been all college students and the excited schoolboys you might expect. Smart business executives had jostled with simple shopkeepers and grain merchants. The film stars’ huge cars had nosed their way past anxious, basket-clutching housewives, their best saris already looking crumpled and dusty.
Fifty thousand people, ready to roast all day in the sun to watch a sedate game that most of them hardly understood. Waiting for someone to “hit a sixer” so that they could launch into frenzied clapping, or for someone to drop a catch and give them a chance to indulge in some vigorous booing, or—the height of heights—for a home player to get a century and permit them to invade the pitch with garlands held high to drape their hero.
Where did they all get the entrance money, Ghote wondered. With even eighteen-rupee seats selling for a hundred, getting in was way beyond his own means. Little Ved’s treat would have to be, once more, a visit to the Hanging Gardens.
But when they reached this mildly pleasurable—and free—spot, everywhere they went transistor radios were tuned teasingly to the Test Match commentary. Nothing Ghote offered his son was in the least successful.
He bought coconuts, but Ved would not even watch the squatting naralwallah dexterously chop off the tops of the dark fruit. He held out the gruesome spectacle of the vultures that hovered over the Towers of Silence where the Parsis laid out their dead, but Ved just shrugged. He purchased various bottled drinks, each more hectically coloured and more expensive than the previous one, but Ved drank them with increasing apathy.
He even attempted to enliven things by starting a game of hide-and-seek. Disastrously. After he had twice prolonged finding Ved— whose idea of hiding did not seem to stretch beyond standing sideways behind rather too narrow trees—as long as he possibly could, he decided that the game might go better if he himself were to be the one to go into hiding. So while Ved was temporarily absorbed in examining a cicada which, in a moment of aberration, had mistaken day for night and emitted its shrill squeak, he dropped to the ground behind a nicely sturdy bush and crouched there, keeping a paternal eye on his small son through the leaves.
For some time Ved stayed deeply engaged with the cicada, squatting beside it and turning it over with one delicate finger in an effort to see how such a small stick of a creature could produce that single extraordinarily loud squeak. But then he looked up, as if he were going to consult the parental oracle. For an instant he looked round merely puzzled. But then …
Then it was plain that the end of the world had come, the end of his small safe world. He lifted up his head and gave vent to a howl of pure, desolate anguish.
In a flash Ghote was beside him, hugging, patting, reassuring. But nothing seemed to restore that confidence there had been before. Not another offer of a cold drink. Not pointing out half a dozen “funny men”, though none of them was in fact particularly odd. Not promises of future treats, not stern injunctions to “be a little man”. Ved’s face remained tear-stained and immovable.
At last Ghote gave up in a spasm of irritation. “If that is all you care, we will go
home.”
Ved made no reply.
They set off, Ghote walking fast and getting unnecessarily hot. And still, going down Malabar Hill with its huge garden-surrounded mansions and great shady trees, there were passers-by with transistors and the unwearying commentator’s voice. “What a pity for India. A glorious captain’s knock by the Rajah of Bolkpur ends in a doubtful decision by Umpire Khan.”
Ved swung round on him with an outraged glare.Whether this was because of the umpire’s perfidy or because of simply not being there it was hard to tell.
And at that moment Ghote saw him. Anil Divekar. At least the figure that he half glimpsed ahead, sneaking out of a narrow gate and cradling in his arms a heavy-looking sack looked remarkably like Divekar. Ghote launched himself into the chase.
But the sound of running steps alerted the distant figure and in moments the fellow had disappeared altogether.
Ghote went quickly back to the house from whose side entrance he had seen the suspicious figure emerge. And there things began to add up. The big house had been rented temporarily to none other than the Rajah of Bolkpur himself, and a few minutes’ search revealed that all the Rajah’s silver trophies and personal jewellery had just been neatly spirited away.
Ghote got through to CID Headquarters on the telephone and reported. Then he and Ved endured a long wait till a squad arrived to take over. But they did get away in time to go down to the stadium again to see if Ved could catch a glimpse of the departing players.
And no sooner had they arrived at the stadium, just as the crowds were beginning to stream out, when there was Anil Divekar right in front of them. He made no attempt to run. On the contrary, he came pushing his way through the throng, smiling broadly.
No doubt he thought he had fixed himself a neat alibi. But Ghote saw in an instant how he could trap Divekar if he had slipped away from the game just long enough to commit the robbery. Because it so happened that he himself knew exactly what had been occurring in the stadium at the moment the thief had slipped out of that house on Malabar Hill.
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