Trick of the Mind

by Cassandra Chan

  Winterbottom sighed. “She was going to,” he said. “She began to feel guilty, you see, as the collection shrank. She’d put off selling the last of it for years, but finally there was nothing else left to do. The alexandrite necklace was the last to go—she somehow thought if she could just pass that on, not having the rest wouldn’t make so much difference. But after that went, she had to face the fact that there would be nothing for the Colemans to inherit.”

  “Is that why she asked them to come?” said Bethancourt. “To break the news in person?”

  “More or less. Less, really,” said Winterbottom. “To tell the truth, I’m not sure exactly what she had in mind. She was a bit odd in this last year—I’m not certain but what she had some idea of their helping her out. She and Rose were really getting past it, and if it weren’t for the Burdalls, the whole place would have been falling down around their ears. But it was all irrelevant once the Colemans actually showed up.”

  Bethancourt raised his brows. “It was?”

  “Haven’t you met them?” asked Winterbottom, surprised.

  “Yes. Once.”

  “Once should have been enough,” said Winterbottom scornfully. “Rob Coleman is a money-grubbing lowlife who’s out for whatever he can get. Miranda saw that immediately—she began to think that having to sell her jewels was God’s way of making sure Rob Coleman didn’t get his hands on them. In the end, she rather enjoyed playing him for the fool, although I think she felt badly about his wife. She and Lia began to quite like each other before the end, I believe.”

  “You know, of course,” said Bethancourt, “that they’re in line for the insurance money—or would be, if you hadn’t decided to talk to me.”

  Winterbottom shrugged. “What’s the insurance company to me?” he asked. “I dare say they’ve refused to pay out on enough occasions when they should have that this could be considered payback. It all evens out in the end.”

  “Well, I suppose it does at that,” said Bethancourt, willing to be magnanimous on this point. “Just as a matter of curiosity—do you know where the alexandrite necklace ended up? I’d rather have liked to see it.”

  Winterbottom shook his head regretfully. “It was worth seeing,” he said. “But I’m afraid I don’t know. Old Pennycook handled all that end of the business, you see.”

  And Bethancourt, stunned that this connection had not occurred to him, was momentarily speechless.

  “Bloody hell,” he said at last.

  Gibbons leaned back in the armchair, very pleasantly surprised. He had just been returned to his room after his morning bout with physical therapy and for the first time he was not in absolute agony. True, it had not been a comfortable process, and it remained an activity he would do almost anything to avoid, but not wanting to scream in pain was a vast improvement.

  He reached for his notebook—another action only recently possible—and flipped it open to the page he had been scribbling in before the therapist arrived. The news that he had taken the tube from the Camden Town station had disturbed him as being further evidence of James’s possible guilt; Camden was only two stops from the Hampstead station. He had consoled himself with the fact that James had been in his office in the City at the time, but then he remembered that information rested on James’s word alone and had not been corroborated.

  So now he was reviewing the profile James had given him of the kinds of people who committed arts thefts, and there was no doubt both James and Davies fit it. But, he reminded himself, there was also no doubt that neither of them had been the man he had followed to Walworth.

  His train of thought was interrupted by the telephone, which, again, he had to reach for. It still hurt, but the motion no longer left him gasping for breath, and he was quite pleased with the firmness of his voice as he answered.

  “We’ve been utter idiots,” said Bethancourt. “Well, I have, at any rate—you’ve been under the weather.”

  His friend sounded both excited and distraught, and Gibbons’s first instinct was to calm him down in order to get some sense out of him.

  “It won’t have been the first time,” he said soothingly. “What have we been idiots about?”

  “It was obvious from the start they were connected,” went on Bethancourt, clearly unsoothed. “I thought so at the time—I just couldn’t see how. And, Jack, God help us all if we don’t remember to show the elderly some respect.”

  “What?” said Gibbons, utterly confused. “What elderly are you talking about?”

  “All of them,” answered Bethancourt. “I’ve just come from talking with Ned Winterbottom, and if I’d just thought to do that a week ago, we’d have known exactly what happened. But no, he was off in a nursing home, so I didn’t bother. Disrespectful is the only word for it.”

  “I’m sure it is,” said Gibbons, beginning to be irritated. “Who the devil is Ned Winterbottom?”

  “See?” said Bethancourt. “You didn’t even know his name. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “You’re talking a lot of nonsense is what you’re doing,” said Gibbons. “Are you trying to tell me you know who shot me? Because if so, I wish you’d come out with it.”

  “Not exactly,” replied Bethancourt. “Although, now you mention it, I suppose it follows that—oh, damn. There’s a traffic jam up ahead. Hold on, I’ve got to change down.”

  But after a moment in which there was the sound of several loud clanks, the line went dead.

  “Bother,” muttered Gibbons, quite annoyed. He tried to ring Bethancourt back, but his friend was apparently passing through a no-service zone. “Bugger it,” said Gibbons, ringing off again. “He’d damn well better be on his way here.”

  Bethancourt was. Although it seemed like æons to Gibbons, in fact Bethancourt and Cerberus appeared at the doorway in scarcely ten minutes.

  “I’m abjectly sorry,” said Bethancourt, unzipping his jacket as he came in. “I would have rung back, but I really had to pay attention to the road—the traffic was wild. Dear God, Jack, can you believe it?”

  He flung himself into the second armchair with the air of a man who is flabbergasted by the unexpected course of events.

  “I’d have an easier time believing it if you would tell me what it was,” answered Gibbons testily. “All you’ve said to the point so far is that something is connected and you’ve spoken to some elderly gentleman I’ve never heard of before.”

  Bethancourt had the grace to look ashamed. “I do apologize, Jack,” he said. “I didn’t realize I’d been so incoherent—it’s just that it came at me out of nowhere.”

  “Could you please,” said Gibbons between clenched teeth, “just start at the beginning?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” said Bethancourt hastily, sitting up and making an effort to marshal his thoughts. “The beginning, right. Well, last night—before we got shot at—James told me that one of his contacts had mentioned there being a diamond very like the Golconda one from the Haverford collection for sale several years ago. He also told me that as far as he could tell, the Haverford jewels had vanished into thin air. At the time, I thought he might be covering his own tracks, but later it occurred to me that perhaps the diamond James’s friend had seen all those years ago was the Haverford one.”

  “I see,” said Gibbons, his interest piqued. “It does make sense, Phillip—the house could certainly have used some upkeep, and in my report Grenshaw said there wasn’t really anything left of the estate.”

  “Exactly,” said Bethancourt. “If you’re old and getting desperately hard up and are sitting on a million pounds’ worth of jewelry, well, the answer to your problems is pretty obvious really.”

  “I take it this Winterbottom fellow confirmed this?” asked Gibbons. “Who in blazes is he, anyhow?”

  “An old friend of Miranda Haverford’s, whom she named executor of her will,” replied Bethancourt. “You can’t remember your interview with Grenshaw, and Winterbottom didn’t make it into your report, so you wouldn’t kno
w. But I should have seen him earlier—before the Burdalls, actually. He was the executor, after all.”

  Gibbons ignored this reintroduction into the conversation of Bethancourt’s new Respect for Our Elders cause. “So that means the whole thing has been an insurance scam from the beginning,” he said, thinking it through. “No doubt the Colemans got into the safe early on—possibly even before Miss Haverford died—and realized their inheritance was gone. So they staged the robbery in order to collect the insurance money. It makes perfect sense.” He frowned. “I still can’t see why Coleman would have shot me, though. I expect I—oh, wait.”

  Bethancourt, who had been on the verge of interrupting, paused. “What?” he asked.

  “I forgot,” said Gibbons. “They’ve traced my movements back that night and apparently I got on the tube at Camden Town.”

  “But that’s where the Colemans live,” said Bethancourt excitedly. “You must have gone to see them that night.”

  “It looks like it, doesn’t it?” said Gibbons, grinning broadly. There was something immensely satisfying in knowing where he had been, even if he could not remember it.

  “And then Coleman shot you because you’d caught on to his involvement with the Pennycook murder,” said Bethancourt. “I thought it must be that, since—”

  “What?” demanded Gibbons. “How do you make that out? I swear, Phillip, you’re enough to try a saint’s patience sometimes. What had Pennycook to do with any of it?”

  “It’s what Winterbottom told me,” said Bethancourt. “I was just getting to it. It was he, you see, who arranged for the sale of Miss Haverford’s jewels through an old connection of his—a fence named Pennycook.”

  Gibbons’s eyes went very wide. “No,” he breathed. “And Pennycook liked to indulge in a spot of blackmail.”

  Bethancourt nodded. “That’s how Winterbottom and I figured it,” he said. “When Miranda’s obituary appeared and mentioned the jewels, Pennycook would have known it was pure bunk. It may even have been he who informed the Colemans that there were no jewels, and suggested the faked robbery in return for a share of the insurance money. But instead of giving him a nice juicy cut of the loot, Coleman gave him a whack over the head.”

  “Dear God,” said Gibbons.

  “I don’t know how you twigged it,” continued Bethancourt, “but you’d just finished hearing all about the Pennycook case from O’Leary before you went up to speak to the Colemans. Perhaps you made a reference to it, or perhaps Coleman did.”

  “I’ve got to ring Carmichael,” said Gibbons, reaching for the phone. “Unless,” he added, pausing, “you’ve already told him?”

  Bethancourt looked indignant. “Of course I haven’t,” he said. “I always tell you everything first, even when you haven’t been shot.”

  “Right,” said Gibbons, picking up the phone and dialing.

  But Carmichael, when he picked up, sounded surprised.

  “Gibbons?” he said. “I’m just on my way up to see you, lad. There’s been some developments.”

  “There’s been some here, too,” answered Gibbons. “But it can wait till you’re out of the elevator—if you’re literally on your way up?”

  “I am,” answered Carmichael. “I’ll be with you in two ticks.”

  Gibbons rang off.

  “He’s here?” asked Bethancourt happily. “Great minds think alike.”

  Carmichael, when he came in a few seconds later, was armed with a photograph.

  “There you are, sir,” said Gibbons. “Phillip’s solved the whole thing—”

  “Just a moment,” said Carmichael, holding up a hand. “I want to know one thing first: do either of you recognize this man?”

  And he held out the photo.

  Gibbons frowned at it. “Yes, I’ve seen him somewhere.”

  “It’s Rob Coleman,” said Bethancourt.

  “Of course!” said Gibbons. “I remember now—yes, that’s him.”

  Bethancourt raised his eyes from the photograph to meet Carmichael’s gaze. “How did you know, sir?”

  Carmichael cocked his head.

  “Know what?” he asked.

  “That Coleman was the one who shot Jack,” said Bethancourt, and Carmichael frowned.

  “I still don’t know it for certain,” he answered. “This photograph is of the man who followed Gibbons to Walworth on Tuesday night. Constable Lemmy identified him as Coleman, but I hadn’t got as far as pinning the shooting on him. How did the two of you come up with that?”

  “Stop a bit,” said Gibbons. “He followed me? Not the other way round?”

  “That’s right,” said Carmichael. “I told you there had been developments.”

  “Here, sir,” said Bethancourt. “Do take my chair—I’ll be perfectly comfortable on the bed—and then we can all share our stories. It seems to have been an eventful day.”

  “That it has,” said Carmichael, settling himself gratefully in the chair. “Now, tell me exactly how you came to the conclusion that Rob Coleman shot Gibbons here.”

  They explained, the words tumbling over each other in their haste to fill the chief inspector in on all they had learned. Carmichael, leaning back in his chair and sipping thoughtfully at the coffee he had brought with him, sorted out the jumble of words with the ease of long experience, letting the two younger men go on without any interruption beyond the astonished reaction of his bushy eyebrows.

  “Good Lord,” he muttered when they seemed to have run dry. “That’s a remarkable piece of detective work.”

  Bethancourt beamed.

  Carmichael sat silent for a moment, turning it all over in his mind while the others watched him respectfully. Then a wolfish smile spread slowly over the chief inspector’s face.

  “Well,” he said, pulling his mobile out of his pocket, “I think I’d best have a bit of a chat with our Mr. Coleman.”

  “I wish I could be there,” said Gibbons, looking frustrated.

  “Don’t worry, lad, I’ll do you proud,” promised Carmichael. “O’Leary,” he said into the phone, “is that you? Yes, Gibbons and Bethancourt both recognized him—it’s Rob Coleman, the Haverford heir. Run out and pick him up, will you? Take Davies if you can—and you’d better bring the wife along, too, but don’t put them in the same room … . No, there’s more, but I’ll fill you in when I get back. I won’t be long, I’ll probably be there before you … . Good man, I’ll see you there.”

  “But you’re not leaving at once, are you, sir?” asked Gibbons when Carmichael had rung off. “I’d still like to know how you found out I was being followed instead of doing the following.”

  “So would I,” chimed in Bethancourt.

  “It was getting all the witnesses together that did it,” answered Carmichael. “The second taxi driver came forward this morning, and it became obvious in short order that the man he’d had in his cab that night was you, Gibbons, and not somebody you were following. Which meant that the first driver’s fare—who had instructed him to follow the taxi in front of them—must have been tailing Gibbons, and not the other way around.”

  “I see,” said Bethancourt. “And then Lemmy identified Coleman.”

  “I didn’t realize he’d ever seen the Colemans,” said Gibbons. “I didn’t think you’d been to talk to them, sir.”

  “I haven’t,” said Carmichael. He was smiling ruefully. “It turns out our Lemmy has a photographic memory—he recognized Coleman from the photo in the Haverford case file. It’s the entire reason he decided to become a detective.”

  “A photographic memory would certainly come in handy,” said Gibbons, a little dubiously, “but, well, it’s not much to build a career on, really.”

  Carmichael sighed. “A great deal more is needed to make a good detective,” he agreed. “On the other hand, the lad is to be commended for wanting to use his rather unique ability for the greater good. I’m going to stick Superintendent Evans with him.”

  Gibbons grinned. “That ought to suit.”


  “Superintendent Evans?” asked Bethancourt.

  “He’s in charge of CCTV footage,” explained Gibbons.

  “Oh, I see,” said Bethancourt, nodding wisely despite never having had to deal with incompetent subordinates. “Then the one thing that’s still a mystery,” he said, going on, “is why Coleman popped off at me and James last night. I don’t know about James, but I certainly had not the least suspicion of the man.”

  “And the answer to that,” said Carmichael, smiling a little, “is that he didn’t.”

  “Excuse me?” asked Bethancourt politely. “Who didn’t what?”

  “Coleman didn’t shoot at you,” replied Carmichael. “I did think at the time it was damned odd that a fellow who possessed a perfectly good handgun would go to the trouble of packing up a rifle in a bass case and toting it around the Heath.”

  “It is odd, now you mention it,” said Gibbons.

  “But if it wasn’t Coleman, who did shoot at us?” demanded Bethancourt.

  “A man with a grudge against Colin James,” Carmichael told him. “The idiot was actually aiming for the dogs, but that’s by the way. He’s in custody now and busy pouring out his soul at the Hampstead nick.”

  “That was quick work, sir,” said Gibbons.

  Carmichael shrugged. “All according to the book,” he said.

  “Was it his own rifle?” asked Bethancourt.

  “No,” answered Carmichael. “Denby—that’s the fellow’s name—mostly makes a living from doing odd jobs for those wealthier than he, including a fair amount of house-sitting and dog-walking. The McSweeneys had hired him to look after their place while they were away, and Denby found a rifle in one of the closets. Pure luck, really—he’d been wanting to attack James for months, but just hadn’t had the means.”

  “Well, thank heavens it hadn’t anything to do with me,” said Bethancourt. “Do you know, I was feeling quite alarmed by the idea that someone thought it worth their while to shoot me.”

  “Natural enough,” said Carmichael, but he was smiling broadly.

  “I quite often want to shoot you,” offered Gibbons.

  “But you obviously haven’t thought it worth your while,” pointed out Bethancourt, “as you’ve never done it.”