The World's Finest Mystery...

by Ed Gorman

  "Whitey? Whitey— is that you?"

  An elderly woman, with a posh voice, threadbare clothes, and milky eyes came tottering out of the bungalow next to Marie's. She looked in my direction but didn't seem to see me, so I walked towards her.

  "You've found my cat! Oh, God bless you, you've brought my Whitey back! Please— can you bring him in? My phone's ringing."

  I switched off the mobile.

  "Oh," said the old woman as she reached her front door. "It seems to have stopped."

  I put the mobile in my pocket, thinking: Whitey?

  I followed the woman into her house, thinking: Next door. They stole the cat from their next-door neighbour. That was the bit Marie hadn't told me. That was her final game. That and the damn stupid name.

  I closed the door behind me, put the cat box down, and opened it. Whitey disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

  His owner started asking me who I was, and how, and why, and where, so I gave her one of my cards. She stared at it for a while and then said, "What does it say, young man? I'm afraid my eyes… cataracts, you know."

  For a brief mad moment, it struck me that I could tell her anything I liked. "The bearer of this card is the Prince of Wales. Please give him all your silver and a large chocolate cake."

  Instead, I said, "My name's Charlie. I find lost cats."

  "Charlie? Charlie WFYC? But I was going to call you! I was, my niece saw your advertisement in a newsagent's window. She wrote down the number for me, but—"

  "But your eyes," I guessed. "Cataracts."

  "I didn't hire you, did I?" she said, squinting up at me.

  "No," I sighed.

  "Oh dear. I can't very well pay you for bringing him back then, can I? If you weren't working for me."

  "No," I sighed.

  "Still, it wouldn't be right to let you go empty-handed. Wait there, please, young man."

  A tip, I thought. Well, that went with the posh voice— paying tips instead of wages.

  She scuttled off to the kitchen and came back a minute or so later carrying a jar of homemade gooseberry jam. I knew it was homemade, and gooseberry, because it said so on the label. "Homemade Gooseberry Jam, 1991." The cellophane cover had come loose and there was grey mould around the edge of the jar.

  "There," she said, pressing it into my hands reverently. "Fair exchange is no robbery, isn't that right?"

  "No," I sighed. "Or yes. Or whatever." I saw myself out.

  On a lamppost next to my car there hung a rubbish bin. I put the jam into it and got into my car. As I fiddled with my seat belt, I saw in my wing mirror a flash of white fur scooting across the road and up and over a tall fence. Through the open driver's window, I heard a posh voice calling, "Oh no, he's got out again! Oh please, young man, I say— I say, don't go! Young man, could you possibly…"

  I decided I had cataracts of the ears, closed the window, and drove home.

  It was all rather sad, really, because I like jam, and I like money, and on this job I'd got no money— twice— and the only jam I'd been offered was inedible.

  Life versus Charlie: three-nil to Life. I demand a rematch.

  Jan Burke

  The Man in the Civil Suit

  JAN BURKE'S Irene Kelly novels are among the most critically and commercially blessed of our time. And with each book, their audience grows. There's a breathless, thrillerlike pace to Jan's books that make most mysteries seem sluggish by comparison— a quality that makes them perfect for today's thrill-seeking book buyers. Not that Jan isn't a wily observer of this particular historical moment. Each of her novels is filled with crackling observations about our little particular spin through the galaxy. "The Man in the Civil Suit," first published in Malice Domestic 9, shows her up to her usual high standards.

  The Man in the Civil Suit

  Jan Burke

  I have a bone to pick with the Museum of Natural History. Yes, the very museum in which the peerless Professor Pythagoras Peabody so recently met his sad, if rather spectacular, demise. I understand they are still working on restoring the mastodon. But my grievance does not pertain to prehistoric pachyderms.

  If the administrators of said museum are quoted accurately in the newspapers, they have behaved in a rather unseemly manner in regard to the late Peabody. How speedily they pointed out that he was on the premises in violation of a restraining order! How hastily they added that he had similar orders placed upon him by a number of institutions, including the art museum, the zoo, and Ye Olde Medieval Restaurant & Go-Cart Track! When asked if he was the man named in the civil suit they filed three days ago, how rapidly the administrators proclaimed that Professor Peabody was no professor at all!

  Oh, how quickly they forget! They behave as if the Case of the Carillean Carbuncle never occurred. A balanced account of recent events must be given, and as one who knew the man in the civil suit better than any other— save, perhaps, his sister Persephone— I have taken on the burden of seeing justice done where Pythagoras Peabody is concerned.

  Although Pythag, as his closest friends— well, as I called him, because frankly, few others could tolerate his particular style of genius at close range— although Pythag never taught at a university or other institution, it is widely known that the affectionate name "Professor Peabody" was bestowed upon him by a grateful police force at the close of the Case of the Carillean Carbuncle, or as Pythag liked to call it, 300. (Some of you may need assistance understanding why— I certainly did. Pythag explained that the first letters of Case, Carillean, and Carbuncle are Cs. Three Cs, taken together, form a Roman numeral. I'm certain I need not hint you on from there, but I will say this was typical of his cleverness.

  Need I remind the museum administrators of the details of 300? This most unusual garnet was on display in their own Gems and Mineralogy Department when it was stolen by a heartless villain. True, the museum guards were in pursuit long before the ten-year-old boy left the grounds, and after several hours of chasing him through the halls, exhibits, and displays— including a dinosaur diorama, the planetarium, and the newly opened "Arctic and Antarctica: Poles Apart" exhibit— while conducting what amounted to an elaborate game of hide-and-seek, they caught their thief.

  Unfortunately, the Carillean Carbuncle was no longer on his person, and he refused to give any clue as to its location. This was, apparently, a way of continuing the jollification he had enjoyed with these fellows. Not amused, the museum called the police. The boy called in his own reinforcements, and his parents, in the time-honored tradition of raisers of rogues, defended their son unequivocally and threatened all sorts of nastiness if he were not released immediately. The boy went home, and the Carillean Carbuncle remained missing.

  Enter Peabody. Actually, he had already entered. It was Pythag's habit to be the first guest to walk through the museum doors in the morning, and the last to leave at closing. He made himself at home in the Natural History Museum, just as he once had in the art museum, and in the zoo. (The trouble at Ye Olde Medieval Restaurant & Go-Cart Track occurred before we were acquainted, but Pythag once hinted that it had something to do with giving the waiters' lances to the young drivers and encouraging them to "joust.")

  I have said I will give a fair accounting, and I will. Pythag was a man who knew no boundaries. His was a genius, he often reminded me, that could not be confined to the paths that others were pleased to follow. I know some stiff-rumped bureaucrats will not agree, but if he were here to defend himself, Pythag would undoubtedly say, "If you don't want a gentleman born with an enviable amount of curiosity to climb into an elephants' compound, for goodness sakes, rely on more than a waist-high fence and a silly excuse for a moat to keep him out."

  Likewise, he would tell you that if your art museum docent becomes rattled when a gentleman with a carrying voice follows along with a second group of unsuspecting art lovers, telling them a thing or two the docent failed to mention to his own group, well then, the docent stands in need of better training. Pythag enjoyed himself imme
nsely on these "tour" occasions, tapping on glass cases and reading aloud from wall plaques to begin his speeches.

  He soon varied from the information in these written guides, however. He often told visitors that when x-rayed, the canvases beneath the museum's most famous oil paintings were shown to be covered with little blue numbers, a number one being a red, two a blue, and so forth. This, he claimed, was how the museum's restoration department could make a perfect match when repairing a damaged work of art. He also claimed to be such an expert as to be able to see the numbers with his naked eye, which, he said, "Has quite spoiled most of these for me."

  The art museum director, Pythag declared, would soon be under arrest for the murder of Elvis— the director's supposed motive for the killing being to increase the value of his secret, private collection of velvet portraits of The King. (I understand the We Tip Hotline, tiring of Pythag's relentless pursuit of this idea, blocked calls from the Peabody home number.)

  I'll wager a tour with Pythag was much more interesting, if less enlightening, than one taken with the regular docents. The art museum, however, was unwilling to offer this alternative. It seemed a little harsh to tell him that he, and not the director, risked arrest if he returned. As Persephone argued when she came to fetch him home, how could anyone in his right mind fault a person for being creative in an art museum?

  Please don't bother to mention Pythag's exile from the Museum of Transportation. Pythag would tell you that a velvet rope may be seen by a man with panache (and if he could have withstood one more P in his moniker, panache would have been Pythag's middle name) as less a barrier than an invitation to step over it and into the past. He went into the past by way of an eighteenth-century carriage, as it happened, and ever seeking the most realistic experience possible, Pythag had to bounce in it a bit. "I promise you," Pythag told the irate curator, "the King of Spain bounced when he rode in the dratted thing."

  Perhaps you have already seen from these examples that Pythag was the perfect man to consult on the matter of the missing carbuncle. Who was more qualified to determine what a clever boy, let loose in a museum, might do? Indeed, I readily admit that for all his genius, Pythag's enthusiasm sometimes led him into rather childish behavior. I concede that he was subject to bouts of stubbornness over silly things, bouts that made him not much more than a child himself at times.

  On the very afternoon the carbuncle was stolen, for example, he insisted on staring into the penguins' eyes in the Antarctic exhibit, convinced that each penguin retained on his retina a memory of its last moments. If he could catch the reflection of this last recollection, he decided, he could experience the thing itself— it would be, he said, "Bird's eye deja vu." This was one of those times when, were I not courting Persephone, I would have been tempted to leave the exhibit without him. Nothing I said would convince him that memory resides in the brain rather than the eye. He utterly rejected my claim that these were not the penguins' actual eyes, but glass reproductions, and rebuked me loudly and in horrified accents for suggesting such a thing.

  But as Persephone was most appreciative of my willingness to watch over her brother and accompany him to public venues, I did my best to overlook his occasionally irritating behaviors. Persephone, brilliant and far less given to acting on impulse than her brother, told me that restraining orders were a small price for Pythag's genius, but she'd just as soon not be asked to pay any larger prices for it.

  Thus I made an effort to distract him from the penguins by mentioning his beloved mastodon. (Pythag had a fondness for all things the names of which begin with the letter P. His attachment to the mastodon puzzled me, and I wondered if he was taking on the letter M as well, until I noticed that he constantly referred to it as the "proboscidean mammal.") Pretending to be struck by a sudden inspiration, I muttered something to the effect of, "an elephant's ancestors might also 'never forget,' " then asked Pythag if he thought there might be some memory retained in the eye socket of the mastodon. The ruse worked, and soon we were off to the Prehistoric Hall.

  Here he was again distracted, this time by the sight of several policemen carefully searching for the carbuncle. Pythag managed, in his inimitable way, to quickly convince a detective that he was an official at the museum. He induced the fellow to follow him to the planetarium— not a bad notion, for the young thief had most certainly visited this facility during his flight.

  The carbuncle being ruby in color, Pythag's theory was based on meteorology. "Red sky at night is a young rogue's delight!" he shouted as we ran after him. He believed the boy might have been planning to alter the color of the light in the planetarium projector. With the help of the policeman, he hastily disassembled the rather costly mechanism, but alas, it was not the hiding place.

  At my suggestion that they both might want to quickly take themselves as far away from the results of their work as possible, Pythag made one of his lightning-like leaps of logic, and announced that "Polaris was beckoning." We sped back to the polar exhibits.

  Here Pythag had another brainstorm, saying that there was something not quite right about the Eskimos, and delved his hand into an Inuit mannequin's hide game bag. In triumph, Pythag removed the carbuncle.

  On that day, you will remember, he was the museum's darling. Pythag's new policeman friend, perhaps distracting his fellows from the disassembled projector, extolled Pythag's genius in solving the mystery of the missing gem, and proclaimed him "Professor Peabody," by which address the world would know him during the brief remaining span of his lifetime.

  Not many days later, tragedy struck. Having dissuaded him from climbing atop the mastodon skeleton's back, and seeing that he was again entranced by the penguins, I felt that it was reasonably safe for me to answer the call of nature at the Natural History Museum. But when I returned from the gents, Pythag was nowhere to be found.

  I heard a commotion at the entrance to the exhibit, and rushed toward it, certain he would be at the center of any disturbance. But this hubbub was caused by the bright lights and cameras of a cable television crew from the Museum Channel. The crew was taping another fascinating episode of Naturally, at the Natural. This particular segment focused on a visit by the museum's newest patron, Mrs. Ethylene Farthington. Mrs. Farthington was possessed of all the right extremes, as far as the museum was concerned: extremely elderly, extremely wealthy, and extremely generous. Add to this the fact that she did not choose to meddle in the specifics of how her donations would be spent, and you see why the director of the museum thought her to be perfection itself.

  Her progress through the polar exhibits was regally (if not dodderingly) slow, but none dared complain. For reasons that do not concern us or any other right-thinking person, Mrs. Farthington was fond of places made of ice, and her sponsorship of this exhibit was but the beginning of the largesse she was to bestow on the museum. That day, she was on her way to sign papers which would finalize her gift of a staggering sum to the museum. She would also sign a new will, supplanting the one that currently left the remainder of her enormous estate to her pet tortoise, and establishing in its stead a bequest for the museum. Apparently, there had been a falling out with the tortoise.

  So taken was I by the sight of the frail Mrs. Farthington gazing at the faux glaciers, I nearly forgot to continue my search for Pythag. If I had not chanced to glance at the opposite display, where I saw a familiar face among the penguins, I might not have known where to look for him. The face was not Pythag's, although the clothes were those of the man who now asked me to address him as "Professor." No, the face was that of an Inuit mannequin. How careless of Pythag! Everyone knows Inuits and penguins do not belong in the same display!

  I did not for a moment imagine that Pythag was cavorting about the museum in the altogether. He had decided, undoubtedly, to expand upon his experience with the hide bag, and bedeck himself in the clothing and gear of the Inuit.

  I was a little frightened to realize that I knew his mind so well, even if gratified to see that there was one r
ather unusual member of the Inuit family represented in the display. I had no difficulty in discerning which of the still figures was Pythag, and had I never met him before that day, I doubt I would have failed to notice the one apple which seemed to have fallen rather far from the Inuit family tree. There are, undoubtedly, few blond Inuits. Besides, none of the other mannequins blinked.

  Otherwise, he was remarkably doll-like, clad in all his furs, and I was unable to fight a terribly strong urge to enjoy a few moments of seeing Pythag forced to be still and silent. How many times since that day have I told myself that had I foregone this bit of pleasure, disaster might have been avoided!

  When I turned to see if anyone was watching before bidding him to hurry away, I was vexed to espy Mrs. Farthington and entourage approaching the display. There was nothing for it now but to wait until the group had passed on to the next display. But as if taking a page from her tortoise's book, Mrs. Farthington was not to be hurried, and stood transfixed, perhaps on some subconscious level perceiving what Pythag had perceived so recently— that something was not quite right about the Eskimos.