Detective Duos

by edited by Marcia Muller

  They went downstairs, showing Laura the dressing room that would be hers, the ladder leading to the trap door, the stage where she'd be beheaded five or six times daily, depending on the crowds.

  “Think you can do it?” Toby asked at the conclusion of a quick run–through.

  “Sure,” Laura said bravely. “Why not?”

  A tall redhead wearing too much makeup came by, glancing up at the stage. “Better close that. Another bus just pulled up.”

  “This is our Venus and part–time Medusa,”

  Toby said, making introductions. “Hilda Aarons.”

  Hilda grunted something meant to be a greeting and sauntered off. Laura was rapidly deciding that the Mythology Fair wasn't the friendliest place to work. Sebastian Blue arrived two days after Laura started her chores as Medusa. He came with a group of touring Italians, but managed to separate himself from them, wandering off by himself down one of the side corridors.

  “Can I help you?” a pleasant young man in a black blazer asked.

  “Just looking around,” Sebastian told him.

  “I'm Frederick Braun, one of the tour guides. If you've become separated from your group I'd be glad to show you around.”

  Sebastian thought his blond good looks were strongly Germanic. He was a Hitler Youth, born thirty years too late.

  “I was looking for the director. I believe his name is Dolliman.”

  “Certainly. Right this way.”

  Otto Dolliman greeted Sebastian with a limp handshake and said, “No complaints, I hope.”

  “Not exactly. I represent the International Criminal Police Organization in Paris.”

  If possible, Dolliman's face grew even whiter. “Interpol? Is it about that girl's murder?”

  “Yes, it is,” Sebastian admitted.

  “We've had her under limited surveillance in connection with some gold–smuggling activities.”

  “Gretchen a gold smuggler? I can't believe that!”

  “Nevertheless it seems to have been true. Didn't it ever strike you as strange that she continued working as an airline stewardess even after you hired her for your Mythology Fair?”

  “Not at all, Mr. Blue. Both positions were essentially part–time. She worked charter flights and nonsucheduled trips to the Far East mainly. And of course the bulk of her work here was during the vacation season and on weekends.”

  “Have you replaced her in the Fair?”

  Dolliman nodded. “I hired a French girl just the other day. It's almost time for the next performance. Would you like to see it?”

  “Very much.”

  Sebastian followed him down a hallway to the exhibit proper, where a string of little stages featured recreations of the more spectacular events of mythology. After watching a bearded Zeus hurl a cardboard thunderbolt, they moved on to the Medusa exhibit.

  “That's Toby Marchant. He plays Perseus,” Dolliman explained. The young man in a brief toga carried a sword and shield in proper Medusa–slaying tradition. He moved carefully through the artificial mist that rose from unseen pipes and acted out his search for the serpent–headed monster. Presently she appeared through the mist, up from the trap door. Sebastian thought Laura looked especially lovely in her brief costume. The snakes in her hair writhed with some realism, but otherwise she was hardly a convincing monster.

  Toby Marchant, holding the shield protectively in front of him, swung out wildly with his sword. It was obvious he came nowhere near her, but Laura fell back into the mist with a convincing gasp. Toby reached down and lifted a bloody head for the spectators to gasp at.

  “It was after this that Gretchen was killed,” Dolliman explained in a whisper. “She slipped down through the trap door, and somebody was waiting at the foot of the ladder. Hilda found her about an hour later.”

  “Is it possible that Toby might have actually killed her in full view of the spectators?”

  Dolliman shook his head. “The police have been all through this. The throat wound would have killed her almost instantly. She could never have gone through that trap door and down the ladder. Besides, the people would have seen it. There'd have been blood on the stage. She bled a great deal. Besides, his sword is a fake.”

  “That mist could have washed the blood away.”

  “No. Whoever killed her, it wasn't Toby. It was someone waiting for her below.”

  “The police report says the weapon was probably a sword.”

  “Unfortunately there are nearly fifty swords of various shapes and sizes on the premises. Some are fakes, like Toby's but some are the real thing.”

  “I'd like to speak to your new Medusa if I could,” Sebastian said.

  “Certainly. I'll call her.”

  After a few moments Laura appeared, devoid of snakes and wearing a robe over her Medusa costume. Sebastian motioned her down the corridor, where they could talk in privacy.

  “How's it going?”

  “Terrible,” she confessed. “I've had to do that silly stunt five times a day. Yesterday when I came through the trap door that guide, Frederick, was waiting down below to grab my leg. I thought for a minute I was going to be the next victim.”

  “Oh?”

  “He seems fairly harmless, though. I chased him away and he went. How much longer do I have to be here?”

  “Till we find out something. Has anyone approached you about smuggling gold?”

  She shook her head. “And I even mentioned over breakfast yesterday that I'd once been an airline stewardess. I think the gold smugglers have switched to a different gimmick, but I don't know what it is.”

  They'd almost reached Otto Dolliman's office, and suddenly Toby Marchant hurried out. “Have you seen Otto?” he asked Laura. “He's not in his office and I can't find him anywhere.”

  “We left him not five minutes ago, down by the tableaux.”

  “Thanks,” Toby said, and hurried off in that direction.

  “He seemed quite excited,” Sebastian remarked.

  “He usually is,” Laura said. “But he's a good sort.”

  They paused by the open door of Dolliman's office, and he asked, “Do you think Dolliman is the gold smuggler? Is there any way all this could be going on without his knowledge?”

  “It seems unlikely,” she admitted. “But if he's behind it, would he kill Gretchen right on the premises and risk all the bad publicity?”

  “These days bad publicity can be good publicity. I'll wager the crowds have picked up since the killing.”

  At that moment Otto Dolliman himself came into view, hurrying along the corridor. “Excuse me,” he said. “I have to place an important call.”

  Toby came along behind him and seemed about to follow him into the office, but Dolliman slammed the big oak door. Toby glanced at Sebastian and Laura, shrugged, and went on his way.

  “Now what was that all about?” Laura wondered aloud.

  “It's your job to find out, my dear,” Sebastian reminded her.

  They were just moving away from the closed office door when they heard a sound from inside. It was like a gasp, followed by the beginning of a scream.

  “What's that?” Laura asked.

  “Come on, something's happening in there!”

  Sebastian reached the office door and opened it.

  Otto Dolliman was sprawled in the center of the little office, his eyes open and staring at the ceiling. The trident from King Neptune's statue had been driven into his stomach. There was little doubt that he was dead.

  “My God, Sebastian!” Laura gasped.

  He'd drawn the gun from his belt holster.

  “Stay here in the doorway,” he cautioned. “Whoever killed him must be still in the room.”

  His eyes went from the partly open window with its wire–mesh grille to the cluttered desk and the statue of Neptune beside it. Then he stepped carefully back and peered behind the door, but there was no one.

  The room was empty except for Otto Dolliman's body ...

  “The thing is impossib
le,” Sebastian Blue said later, after the police had come again to the Mythology Fair with their cameras and their questions. “We were outside that door all the time and no one entered or left. The killer might have been hiding behind the desk when Dolliman entered the room, but how did he get out?”

  “The window?”

  He walked over to examine it again, but he knew no one could have left that way. Though the window itself had been raised a few inches, the wire–mesh grille was firmly bolted in place and intact. Sebastian could barely fit two fingers through the openings. The window faced the back lawn, with a cobblestone walk about five feet below. Obviously the grille was to keep out thieves.

  “Nothing here,” Sebastian decided. “It's an impossible crime – a locked room, except that the room wasn't actually locked.”

  “You must have had those at Scotland Yard all the time.”

  “Only in books, my dear.” He frowned at the floor where the body had rested, then looked up at the mocking statue of Neptune.

  “An arrow could pass through this grillework,” Laura remarked, still studying the window. “And they use arrows in the Ulysses skit.”

  “But he wasn't killed with an arrow,” Sebastian reminded her. “He was killed with a trident, and it was right here in the room with him.” He'd examined the weapon at some length before the police took it away, and had found nothing except a slight scratch along its shaft. There were no fingerprints, which ruled out the remote possibility of suicide.

  “A device of some sort,” she suggested next. “An infernal machine rigged up to kill him as soon as he entered the office.”

  “A giant rubber band?” Sebastian said with a dry chuckle. “But he was in there for a few minutes before the murderer struck, remember? And besides, what happened to this machine of yours? There's no trace of it now.”

  “A secret passage? We know there are trap doors in the floors around here.”

  “The police went over every square inch. No, it's nothing like that.”

  “Then how was it done?”

  Sebastian was staring up at Neptune's placid face. “Unless that statue came alive long enough to kill him, I don't see any solution.” He turned and headed for the door. “But one person I intend to speak to is Toby Marchant.”

  They found Toby talking with Frederick and Hilda and some of the others in a downstairs dressing room. While Laura still tried to keep up the pretense that Sebastian Blue had merely been questioning her, he turned his attention to Toby, calling him aside.

  “All right, Toby, it's time to quit playing games. Two people are dead now, and with Dolliman gone chances are you'll be out of a job anyway. What do you know about this?”

  “Nothing, I swear!”

  “But you were looking for Dolliman just before he was killed. You told him something that sent him hurrying to his office to make a phone call.”

  Toby Marchant hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally. “I suppose I'll have to tell you about that, Mr. Blue. You see, I came across some information regarding Gretchen's death – information

  I thought he should know.”

  “And now he's dead, so should I know it.”

  Another hesitation. “It's about Hilda Aarons. I caught her going through some of Gretchen's things, apparently looking for something.”

  Sebastian glanced past his shoulder toward the tall redhead. She was watching them intently. “And you told Otto Dolliman about this?”

  Toby nodded. “He asked us to watch out for anything suspicious. What I told him about Hilda seemed to confirm some information he already had. He said he had to make a phone call at once.”

  “But not to the police, apparently. He walked right by me and went into his office.”

  “He may not have trusted an outsider. Sometimes he acted as if he trusted only his wife.”

  “Have you seen Helen Dolliman recently?” Sebastian asked. He'd had only a few words with her before the police arrived.

  “She's probably up in her room. Second floor, the far wing.”

  Sebastian found Helen Dolliman alone in her room, busy packing a single suitcase. Her eyes were red, as if from tears.

  “You're leaving?”

  “Do I have anything to stay here for?” she countered. “The police will shut us down now. And even if they don't, I have no intention of spending another night in the same house with a double murderer. He killed Otto and I'm probably next on his list.”

  “Do you have any idea why your husband was murdered?”

  The little woman swept a wisp of hair from her eyes. “I suppose for the same reason the girl was.”

  “Which was?”

  “The gold.”

  “Yes, the gold. What do you know about it?”

  “About a year ago Otto caught a man with some small gold bars. He fired him on the spot, but we've always suspected there were others involved.”

  “Gretchen Spengler?”

  “Yes. Before she died she told Otto she was getting out of it.”

  “Toby says he caught Hilda Aarons going through Gretchen's things after she was killed. He told Otto about it.”

  She nodded. “My husband discussed it with me. We were going to fire Hilda.”

  “Might that have caused her to kill him?”

  “It might have, if she's a desperate person.”

  “Apparently he was trying to call someone about it just before he was killed.”

  “Perhaps,” she said with a shrug, subsiding into a sort of willing acceptance. He could see there was no more to be learned from her. He excused himself and went back down in search of Laura.

  She was talking with Frederick Braun at the foot of the stairs, but the blond tour guide excused himself as Sebastian approached. “What was all that?”

  “He's still after me,” she said with a shrug. “I really think he's a frustrated Pan, speaking in mythological terms.”

  Sebastian frowned at the young man's retreating back, watching him go out the rear door of the house. Then he said, “We're going to have to move fast. Helen Dolliman is preparing to close the place and leave. Once everybody scatters we'll never get to the bottom of this thing.”

  “How can we get to the bottom of it anyway, Sebastian? We've got two murders, one of them an impossibility.”

  “But we've got a lead, too. Gretchen was killed and the smuggling by aircraft apparently ended. Yet the murderer has stayed on here at the Mythology Fair. We know that because he killed Dolliman, too. I reject for the moment the idea of two independent killers. So what have we? The gold smugglers still at work, but not using aircraft. They have found a new route for their gold, and we must find it, too.”

  “Let me work on it,” Laura Charme said. Staring at an approaching group of tourists, she suddenly got an idea.

  Night came early at this time of year, with the evening sun vanishing behind the distant Alps by a little after six. One of the tour groups was still inside the big house when Laura slipped out the rear door and moved around the cobblestone walk past the window to Dolliman's office. She came out at the far end of the paved parking area, near the single green tour bus that still waited there.

  If the Mythology Fair was really closing down, she knew the smuggler should have to move fast to dispose of any remaining gold. And if she'd guessed right about these tour buses, she might see something very interesting as darkness fell.

  She'd been standing in the shadows for about twenty minutes when the bus driver appeared from the corner of the building, carrying something heavy in both hands. He paused by the side of the vehicle and opened one of the luggage compartments. But he wasn't stowing luggage. Instead he seemed to be lifting up a portion of the compartment floor, shifting baggage out of the way.

  Laura stepped quickly from the shadows and moved up behind him. “What do you have there?” she asked.

  The man whirled at the sound of her voice. He cursed softly and grabbed an iron bar that was holding open the luggage compartment door. As the door slammed sh
ut she saw him coming at her with the bar, raising it high overhead. She dipped, butting him in the stomach, and grabbed his wrist for a quick judo topple that sent him into the bushes by the house.

  As he tried to untangle himself and catch his breath, she ripped the wrapper from the object he'd been carrying. Even in the near–darkness she could see the glint of gold.

  Then she heard footsteps, and another man rounded the corner of the building. It was Toby Marchant. She rose to her feet and hurried to meet him. “Toby, that bus driver had a bar of gold. He was trying to hide it beneath the luggage compartment.”