Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #12

by Marvin Kaye

  “Mr Holmes,” Nada protested, rising from the sofa, “you are not suggesting that I—”

  “Allow me to finish, Miss Nada.” Holmes’s words were swift and certain.

  Miss Nada settled back with a defiant look, as Holmes continued.

  “As I said, first Miss Nada arrived here. Second, the Colonel first heard the mysterious, piercing noise. Third, your dog was killed, Miss Warburton. Fourth, the painful noise set in with a vengeance.”

  He paused, then his glance settled on the Warburtons.

  “Colonel Warburton and Miss Warburton, doesn’t that pattern suggest something to you?”

  “No, I cannot say that it does, Mr Holmes,” Miss Warburton said.

  “What are you driving at?” the Colonel asked gruffly.

  “Holmes,” I said. “I wish you would be more specific.”

  “Then I will. I shall conduct my experiment. Watson, I want you to watch Colonel Warburton and the dog, Digby. Excuse me,” Holmes said and turned away so we could only see his back. “Now!”

  The Colonel clapped his hands over both ears. “Oh, please, God. Not again!” The Colonel gave a shriek of pain just as the foxhound lifted his head and howled.

  “The dog!” Wide-eyed, his hands dropping to his lap, the Colonel stared at Digby. “He heard it, too!”

  “Indeed,” I said, rising to my feet. “Holmes, I am quite in the dark. What does it mean?”

  “It is simplicity itself,” Holmes replied, whirling to face us. He held a small wooden object in his hand.

  “This whistle is the answer to the mystery. The sound made by this cunning instrument is above the normal range of pitch. You see, the Colonel is hypersensitive to certain sounds.”

  Miss Warburton clutched at the arms of her chair. “Then Uncle is not mad! Thank God!”

  “But,” I said, “the dog heard it.”

  Holmes smiled. “Perhaps I should have said above the normal human range of pitch.”

  “Has someone deliberately been trying to drive the Colonel mad?” Mary asked.

  “Of course, Mary,” I said. “That’s why the dogs were murdered! Whoever it was knew a dog would give the game away.”

  Miss Warburton rose stiffly from her chair and stared at Nada. “And it’s not hard to guess who that someone is. Nada, this started when you came here. Is this your gratitude for the Colonel’s kindness? Endangering his sanity with your evil black magic?”

  “That is not true!” Nada said.

  Holmes held up a hand. “One moment, Miss Warburton. Please, you must calm yourself.”

  Reluctantly, Miss Warburton took her seat again.

  “Miss Nada,” Holmes continued. “Doctor Watson and I watched you in the carriage house some half-hour ago with Hacker and your woman servant. Were you engaged in practicing a form of black magic?”

  “No, Mr Holmes,” she responded in her soft voice. “I was praying to my old gods to save the Colonel’s sanity.”

  “And what were you doing there, Hacker?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you were praying to the old gods, too?”

  “No. I used to be a chapel-going man.” A flush of embarrassment coloured Hacker’s cheeks. “So…so, I don’t know. There’s no harm in trying something new, I always say.”

  “In any case, why would Miss Nada want to persecute the Colonel?” asked Holmes.

  “Perhaps it’s some form of tribal revenge,” Miss Warburton said, glaring at Nada.

  “That’s ridiculous, Ellen,” said Colonel Warburton. “Her father made me his blood brother.”

  “Exactly, sir.” Holmes was thoroughly enjoying the moment. “No,” he said, “it should be obvious who had a motive for making the Colonel appear mad. His niece—who also happens to be his only heir.”

  “You don’t mean that,” cried Mary.

  “But you will remember Miss Warburton has studied physics and so would know about supersonic research. Possibly she feared the Colonel might leave his estate to Miss Nada and so wished him to appear insane, and thereby invalidate any new will.”

  Holmes’s hard stare fastened on Miss Warburton. “In any case, I found this whistle in a drawer in your room, Miss Warburton.”

  The blood drained from Miss Warburton’s face, and her fingers looked clawlike as they grasped the chair arms.

  The Colonel rose. “Ellen! Ellen how could you?”

  “I did it for your sake, to save you from Nada,” Miss Warburton shouted. “She’s just an adventuress, only you won’t see it.” Miss Warburton collapsed in her chair and burst into tears.

  “My God!” Mary whispered to me. “And she killed her own little dog.”

  “Colonel Warburton,” said Holmes. “What action do you wish me to take regarding your niece?”

  “My niece?” The Colonel’s face hardened as he turned from Miss Warburton and moved next to Nada. “I have no niece, Mr Holmes. Come, Nada, my dear.”

  Miss Warburton shrank deeper into her chair as, arm in arm, Colonel Warburton and Miss Nada left the room.

  * * * *

  NOTE:

  This story is very loosely based on a radio play by Denis Greene and Anthony Boucher of the same title.

  COUNTRY COOKING, by John M. Floyd

  There were twelve ladies knitting in the library conference room when Sheriff Lucy Valentine cracked the door and eased her head inside. She was not at all surprised to see that her mother, retired schoolteacher Fran Valentine, was doing most of the talking.

  “Mother?” she said. “Can I have a minute?”

  It was no more than a loud whisper, but every woman in the room stopped knitting and swiveled to look at the door. Lucy did an embarrassed little finger-wave and focused again on her mom, who gave the other ladies an apologetic look and an eyeroll, rose from her chair, and stomped across the room.

  “What is it?” she said.

  Lucy motioned to her and backed out into the hallway. Fran followed.

  When the two of them were alone Lucy opened her mouth to speak and then paused, studying the huge wad of woolen fabric in her mother’s hands. “What are you making? A blanket?”

  “A sweater. What do you want?—I’m busy.”

  Lucy felt her face heat up. “I’m busy too, Mother. I happen to be trying to catch a fugitive.”

  “Here in the library?”

  She sighed. “No, not here. I just found out Billy Ray Cobb escaped from prison this morning.”

  “Billy Ray?”

  “And stole a car.”

  Fran frowned and shook her head. “Can’t say I’m surprised. He’s an even bigger idiot than his daddy was. But what does Billy Ray Cobb have to do with me?”

  “You know his mother, don’t you? Wilma?”

  “We knew each other in school. She cooks at one of those greasy spoons out on the highway. Why?”

  “I need you to call her, that’s why. Ask her if she’s heard from Billy Ray today.”

  Fran seemed to give that some thought. “You’re right, she might be able to help. Wilma’s told me she loves him—he is her son, after all—but deep down, I think she knows he belongs in jail.”

  “So you’ll phone her?”

  “Sure. We’re almost done here anyway.”

  Lucy checked her watch. “Call me if you find out something, okay? I need to get back to the office.”

  “Anything else?” Fran asked. Lucy tried to keep from smiling; grumpy and stubborn as Fran Valentine was, she loved police work. She especially loved interfering in police work, which was usually the case—but she also like being asked to help.

  “I’ll keep you updated.” Lucy hesitated, looking again at how much material her mother was holding. Sweater? she thought. “That’s not intended for me, is it?”

  Fra
n looked down at her project. “It’s for my neighbor. Why?”

  “Is your neighbor Andre the Giant?”

  “Maybe you better stick to crimefighting,” Fran said, “and leave the knitting to me.”

  * * * *

  An hour later Sheriff Valentine’s office phone rang. She answered it, listened a moment, made a quick reply, hung up, and turned to her deputy, Ed Malone. “That was my mother. We got a break.”

  She dug a map out of a drawer and spread it out on her desktop. Malone joined her. “What kind of break?” he asked.

  “Wilma Cobb was all upset. Said her son called her a while ago. He’s headed in this direction.”

  “Why? A family visit?”

  “No, Mother said he told his ma he’s on his way to fetch the ten grand he stole from that bank a year ago. Said it’s buried at the old Yeager farm.”

  “Fran got Ms. Cobb to tell her this?”

  “Mother can get almost anyone to tell her anything. Do you know where it is—the Yeager place?”

  Malone leaned over, squinted, and pointed to a spot on the map. “Right about there. A mile or so off the highway.” He looked up at Lucy. “What else did she find out?”

  “Well, Billy Ray told Wilma the money’s hidden under the kitchen floorboards, three feet behind the cookstove.”

  Malone frowned. “I don’t get it. Why would Billy Ray tell her all that?”

  Lucy stood up and rubbed her eyes. “He said he wants her to know where to find it in case he’s caught before he makes it that far.” She picked up her hat and car keys. “Come on—we’ll call for backup on the way.”

  “What about Fran?”

  “Are you kidding? Believe me, she’ll be there too. Probably before we are.”

  * * * *

  The two of them arrived at the scene only minutes behind four state cops in two cruisers and—sure enough—Fran Valentine. Their cars were parked on a gravel side-road two hundred yards west of the abandoned Yeager place, and they were all crouched like bandits in the thick woods a hundred yards closer in. From that position, they could see the huge main house and a smaller building out back. The farm, Lucy knew, had been a working plantation in the early- to mid-1800s, and had never been modernized. For a time it had even been a tourist attraction. Now it was just another forgotten cluster of buildings in disrepair, with weeds and broomsedge three feet high surrounding it in all directions.

  “I like your hat,” Deputy Malone said to Fran. She was wearing aviator sunglasses and an Atlanta Braves baseball cap turned backwards. She grinned at him like a little kid.

  Lucy waded past them into the assembled group. “What do you think?” she asked the oldest-looking of the men.

  “We saw a car parked in the trees way over there,” he said, pointing east. “Must be the one he stole—who else would be out here?”

  All of them except Fran took a moment to check their weapons, and one of the state troopers made a cell phone call, probably a situation report. After a quick and grim-faced strategy session, Ed Malone was dispatched to the area where the car had been spotted, to cut off any possible road escape, and the four patrolmen sprinted across the field to the house. They edged along the front wall, drew their guns, and—at a signal from their leader—crept inside the building’s two open doors. The sheriff and her mother had been told to stay put, in order to watch and report in. Lucy found herself wondering if it was because they were the only two women. She hoped not, but when dealing with state cops in the rural South one never knew for sure.

  Suddenly Fran gasped. “I just thought of something,” she said. She rose to her feet and, without another word, took off running toward the farm.

  “Mother? Wait a minute!”

  Lucy had no choice but to follow her. A minute later they were standing outside the door of the small building behind the main house, sweating and breathing hard. Thorns had ripped one of the legs of Lucy’s uniform from knee to ankle. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she blurted.

  “I’m doing what the others should’ve done,” Fran said. “Billy Ray’s not over there in the big house. He never was.”

  “Then where is he?”

  “He’s in here,” Fran whispered, nodding at the door.

  “What?!”

  Fran pointed to Lucy’s holstered revolver. “Get that out and get it ready.”

  Lucy drew the pistol. “It’s ready.”

  “Just make sure you don’t shoot me with it.”

  Fran held up one finger, then two, then three—and she and Sheriff Valentine surged together through the door. And sure enough, there stood Billy Ray Cobb, dirty from head to toe, half in and half out of a hole in the wooden floor near an old stove. In his hands were a shovel and a filthy canvas bank bag and on his face was the most surprised expression Lucy had ever seen. “Freeze!” she shouted—something she had always wanted to say—and leveled her gun at an already frozen Billy Ray.

  She held her pistol on him while Fran summoned the troops, and five minutes later the hapless fugitive was handcuffed and arrested and escorted through the weeds and brambles toward the waiting patrol cars. Deputy Malone followed the parade, carrying the bag of stolen cash.

  Lucy and Fran stood outside the small house, watching. Lucy had taken her hat off; her hair was sticking out in every direction. “I can’t believe it,” she said finally.

  “What can’t you believe?”

  “How’d you know Billy Ray wasn’t in the main house? Are you a mind reader?”

  “No,” Fran said, smiling. “I’m a history reader.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I should’ve thought of it earlier. Plantation homes in the nineteenth century never had their cookstoves in the main residence. The kitchen was always in a separate building.”

  Lucy blinked. “You’re kidding.”

  “It’s a fact. There was too much danger of fire to do otherwise.”

  Lucy was quiet a moment, watching her mother watch the others trudge away across the weed-choked field. Fran had turned her ball cap around the right way, but she still looked ridiculous standing there in the sun, in the cap and sunglasses and a lime-green pant suit.

  “That was good work, Mother,” Lucy said.

  Fran shrugged. “They’d have caught him anyway. Especially since Malone was out there watching the getaway car.”

  “But this way nobody got hurt.” For a moment Lucy pictured a shootout between her deputy and Billy Ray, and shivered. “That was clever thinking.”

  “Elementary, my dear sheriff,” Fran said. She turned then to look hard at her daughter. “By the way, one of those troopers was giving you the eye. And I didn’t see any wedding ring.”

  “I didn’t see anybody giving me the eye.” Lucy put her hat back on, tucked her torn trouser-leg into her boot, and started walking toward the cars. “Maybe you better stick to knitting,” she said, “and leave the husband-hunting to me.”

  Fran snorted and followed her. “That’d be two lost causes.”

  “I thought you liked knitting,” Lucy said, over her shoulder.

  “I’m having second thoughts.” Fran looked up at the cloudless sky and adjusted her sunglasses as they walked. “You really think the sweater’s too big?”

  “The one you showed me, that you’re making?”

  “Right.”

  “Yeah, it’s too big.”

  Fran thought that over and nodded. “Maybe I better stick to crimefighting,” she said.

  FOOT PATROL, by Laird Long

  Officers George Hutchins and Tracy Garza were on routine night foot patrol near the waterfront when a man suddenly staggered out of the mouth of an alley and bumped into them.

  “Officers! Police officers! Thank goodness!” he gushed. “I’ve been robbed!
I was just robbed!”

  Garza steadied the swaying man, then wrinkled her nose. “Have you been drinking, sir?”

  “Yes! I’ve been drinking! But I was just robbed!”

  “What happened?” Hutchins asked.

  “Well, like I told your partner, I had a few at the Crown and Anchor. Then I left, and walked down to the ATM at the bank branch over there.” He waved vaguely behind him. “I withdrew five hundred dollars. In twenties. That’s…”

  “Twenty-five twenties,” Garza said helpfully.

  “Right! And I rolled them like I do—into a big roll held tight together with an elastic band. Stuffed it into my pants’s pocket. And then, when I was walking down this alley—not more than a minute ago!—I felt a hand reach into my pocket. I grabbed at the hand, and someone pushed me down, made off with my roll!”

  “Just now?”

  “Just…Yes! Now!”

  Hutchins gestured at his patrol partner, and Officer Garza took off running up the alley.

  “You stay right here, sir,” Hutchins said, guiding the man backwards until he was propped up against the brick wall of a store, “while we check it out.”

  Hutchins jogged up the alley, out the other side. He was the senior officer, almost thirty years Garza’s senior, so he let her handle the fast-pursuits. It was good experience for a rookie.

  He’d trotted two blocks along the darkened city sidewalk when he heard a shout, saw someone waving way up ahead. He caught up with his partner another two blocks over.

  Garza had stopped a woman for questioning—a tall, lean, blond woman wearing a tight, pink crop-top and tight, white short-shorts, a pair of white sneakers with pink shoelaces.

  “This is Britney Womack, isn’t it, George?” Officer Garza asked her partner. “Known drunk-roller with an arrest record as long as her arms?”

  “You were listening and watching at the briefing this morning, Tracy—about all the muggings in this area lately, and the possible suspects. Nice work.”