EQMM, November 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Killed?” she repeated. “Who would want to kill Julia?"

  Leaving Gretel and Ives to restrain Veronica, I went to the open window and looked out at ground that appeared too hard to take footprints. The ambulance techs confirmed that Julia was dead and reminded me that the crime scene needed to be secured.

  Maggie had tottered off to make tea. Veronica and Ives were sitting on a sofa in an adjacent room, but Gretel had drifted away. Before the local police took charge, I wanted a word with our client.

  "Gretel,” I said, “did Mrs. Oldfield offer to sell you any other items?"

  "No. I was only interested in the Handel papers."

  "The murder weapon appears to be an old army bayonet. Some of those are extremely valuable."

  "Great. Take it to Antiques Roadshow."

  "Hansel and Gretel saved their family with pearls and precious stones they found in the gingerbread house. Weren't you curious about any other collectibles that might be lying around?"

  "No! I've been telling you—"

  "Why would Julia Oldfield go to her sitting room at that hour? Maybe to meet somebody to offer the bayonet for sale. And you're the only potential buyer in the house."

  Gretel shrugged. “Okay, she did ask me to come and see her. If I'd known it was to show me a bayonet, I could have told her I have no interest in military artifacts. But I wanted to keep her happy, make sure nothing happened to screw up our deal. That lawyer of hers worried me a little. I met her, we talked, she showed me the bayonet, I said no thanks, and I went back up to my room, leaving her still alive. When I left, I heard her lock the door behind me. If you think I murdered her, tell me how I could have got out of a locked room."

  "By the open window. Julia Oldfield pointed me to it before she died."

  "So I go out the window, get back in the house somehow, and dash back upstairs without being seen in the few minutes before you break down the door. How did I manage that?"

  "Who do you work for, Gretel?"

  "You don't need to know that."

  "The police are going to ask you all these things, you know."

  "You're not the police. Look, I represent parties who don't want their interests known, okay? Nothing illegal about it."

  "Why couldn't you just carry the papers back yourself? Why do you need Stanton and Ives? We told you we're not bodyguards."

  "Once we're allowed out of here, you just do your job. The Handel papers will be securely wrapped and placed in an attache case I brought to carry them back. Before you leave, I'll tell you how and where to make the delivery when you get to New York."

  "I thought you were traveling back with us."

  "Change of plans. I have some other errands on the Continent."

  "For these same anonymous interests?"

  "Maybe. What does it matter?"

  I shrugged. Ives was strolling toward us. She wasn't going to like our client any better when I passed along this new information.

  "I'll be up in my room when I'm needed,” Gretel said, and flounced off.

  "How's Veronica doing?” I asked.

  "Acting weird,” Ives said. “Didn't have much to say."

  "What did you talk about?"

  "Nothing really. She's upset, but hardly grief-stricken. If this is a girl who just lost her mother, I'm Paris Hilton. So what were you and Little Orphan Annie chatting about?"

  I told her.

  "That bitch! She never changed her plans. She never meant to go back with us. I think we're being scammed, Stanton."

  "Scammed how?"

  "I'm not sure, but I'll find out.” Ives grinned. “At least if she's been scamming us, somebody else has been scamming her. Look what I found last night. I didn't know what it meant then, but I think I do now."

  She passed over a wrinkled sheet of paper, possibly rescued from a wastepaper basket. At the top was printed “The Gingerbread House” and at the bottom in all capitals THE END. In between was a list of dates, with odd-sounding titles opposite. That the last two dates, yesterday's and today's, had the titles “Irish Potato Pudding” and “Pig's Trotters” gave me a clue to what the other designations must mean.

  "Bubble and squeak,” I read. “Devils on horseback. Jugged hare. Fat rascals. Toad in the hole. Don't tell me this is all food."

  "Yep. Old-fashioned English cooking. I guess they compensated for the blandness when they were naming the dishes."

  "Some of this stuff is borderline obscene. Faggots? Spotted dick?"

  "That's suet pudding with currants. I looked it up in an old Mrs. Beeton's household-management manual I found in the library. English cooking is much more adventurous nowadays, but her recipes aren't exactly cutting-edge. Makes me wonder how a show as campy as The Gingerbread House could last on the BBC."

  "You don't think that show we watched yesterday was a fake, do you?"

  "No, too many people would have to be in on it, and what would be the point? The show exists all right, but I think it's been canceled. Veronica did her best, playing it for laughs—I mean, juggling eggs?—but she and her retro recipes must have worn out their welcome. That made the quick money from the sale of the Handel documents all the more urgent."

  "Okay,” I agreed. “But where's the scam?"

  "Use your brain, Stanton. What did you think of that solicitor, Dennis Coxe?"

  "Now that I did pick up on,” I said, tired of being Watson. “He arrived late, then he wanted to hurry his client along. If British lawyers are paid by the billable hour, like they are back home, that's highly unprofessional behavior. And Julia changed her story about why Coxe was there. First it was to be sure we covered everything in the contract. Then when he revealed he didn't even know the terms of the contract, she said he was only there to witness the transaction."

  "Right. Conclusions?"

  "He wasn't really a lawyer and he knew nothing about the deal."

  "And maybe neither did she. Because Gretel negotiated the contract with somebody else. Because the murdered woman was not Julia Oldfield. We both thought she looked awfully young to be Veronica's mother. Why do you think she wore that high turtleneck?"

  "Vanity. To hide an aging neck."

  "That can work two ways. Maybe she was hiding a too-youthful neck."

  A young constable, somewhat out of his depth, had arrived to protect the crime scene. Until someone in authority came to begin the actual investigation, we remained free to talk among ourselves. We found Veronica sitting at the kitchen table staring into a cup of tea.

  "Veronica,” Ives said, “I realize the woman who was murdered tonight may be a close friend—"

  "Close friend?” said Veronica in a monotone. “She was my mother."

  "You can't keep up that pretense. The truth has to come out. The victim will be identified."

  Veronica sighed. “Of course. I know that. I've been sitting here trying to figure out what to do."

  "Tell the truth, to start with,” I said. “Who is the woman who was killed?"

  "Her name's Sarah McCandless. She's an actress friend. Sarah did a fine job for me, but look how it ended, with a bayonet in the back. She knew quite a bit about Handel already, and I filled her in on the house and the documents."

  "And the solicitor, Dennis Coxe?"

  "Her boyfriend, Bill Dunham. He meant well, but he really made a hash of things, didn't he? Sarah, trouper that she is, did her best to cover for him."

  Ives nodded sagely. “I thought that ‘men are all alike’ crack suggested a closer relationship than attorney-client."

  "How many people knew about this impersonation?” I asked Veronica.

  "Maggie knew. No worries about her. Loyal, discreet, close-mouthed. Rod Fine knew Sarah was pretending to be my mother but not why. I told him it was a practical joke on an old school chum, and all he had to do was greet Sarah as if she were Julia."

  "And exactly where is your mother?"

  Veronica smiled faintly. “I really do love her, you know. But she's a bit daft and horribly stubborn. S
he agreed to the sale of the Handel papers, settled the terms with Gretel in a series of e-mails, set the date for Gretel to come and get them. And then she changed her mind, just like that. Said our ancestors would never want us to sell such a valuable family treasure, especially to allow it to leave the country. Said we should donate it to the British Library, if anything. Of course, I pleaded with her. ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘we need money. The BBC is canceling the program.’”

  Ives threw me a smug glance.

  "I'm not really such a creative cook,” Veronica said, “and the old English recipes seemed fresh for a while but quickly reached their sell-by date. Anyway, Mother was adamant. The deal was off. After a few days of arguing, she got fed up and left on a hastily organized skydiving holiday. Once she was out the door, I checked her computer and discovered she had never e-mailed Gretel to cancel the deal. There was just time to arrange our little masquerade."

  "You'll tell the police everything?” I said.

  She shrugged. “I'll have to, won't I?"

  The official investigation got underway in the person of a chief inspector who didn't appear much sharper than the clueless constable. While I waited my turn to be interrogated, Ives went upstairs for some “girl talk” with our client—considering their barely civil relationship, I didn't see much point. She wasn't gone long but looked smugger than ever when she returned.

  "I was right!” she said.

  "Right about what?"

  "Gretel had brought two identical attache cases in her luggage. I saw them on her bed before she chased me out. My guess is she was going to make a great show of carefully wrapping up the Handel papers, putting them in one of the attaches, turning it over with great ceremony, and then finding a chance to switch the two. Then she'd take the real documents to some European collector, leaving us with blank pages to turn over to whoever it was back in the States that sent her. If we're lucky, it was a legitimate dealer and not some leg-breaking mafioso who collects Handel memorabilia."

  "She admitted this?"

  "No, I said she chased me out. But she knew the significance of what I saw, believe me."

  "Ives,” I said sincerely, “you are a wonder."

  "Yeah, sure,” Ives said, “but we still don't know who killed the faux Julia and why."

  My turn at last. “Don't we?” I said. “If Sarah McCandless was just performing as directed, why would she be trying to arrange other deals with Gretel in the dead of night? Maybe when she was getting the tour of the house in preparation for the masquerade, she saw some other things of value and saw a way to cash in on them. While Gretel was scamming us and Veronica was scamming Gretel, Sarah was all set to steal from Veronica. I think Veronica figured it out somehow. Maybe she couldn't sleep and was wandering around the grounds, saw Sarah with the bayonet through the sitting-room window, and tumbled to what was happening. She confronted Sarah, they quarreled, Veronica stabbed her with the bayonet and left as she had entered, by the window. When Veronica appeared after we knocked down the door, she could easily have come in from outside."

  "How can you be so sure of all this?” Ives said.

  "I never let Veronica enter the room. You didn't talk to her about the crime. No one else had contact with her apart from Gretel and Maggie, who didn't enter the room either. So how could she know a bayonet was the weapon if she didn't wield it herself? I think the police will be glad to hear about this."

  Anxious to reveal my conclusions, I broke in on the interrogation of Veronica, but I was deflated to learn that the chief inspector was sharper than I thought. Veronica, voice raised in emotion, was already confessing to the murder.

  "I should have realized I couldn't trust Sarah when I was showing her around the house. I should have understood that gleam in her eye. When I confronted her, she turned it around on me. I was a fool not to sell off the things of real value, she said. And she claimed the Handel papers were worthless fakes. Why, she wanted to know, would the great composer under commission by the king be stopping at a house as relatively humble as this one? What did that painting with a much older Handel really prove?"

  "Was she right about the Handel papers?” the chief inspector asked.

  "What did it matter? If she could influence Gretel to cancel the sale, everything I'd planned for would be destroyed by a false friend. I was wrong to be so trusting of Sarah. But she was a bit too trusting as well, turning her back on me as she did.” Now Veronica was sobbing. “Mother was right after all. Selling the manuscripts was a terrible idea."

  Stanton and I left for New York on schedule the next day. To our amusement, Gretel flew back on the same plane, empty-handed. When I asked about her travels on the Continent, she merely said her plans had changed and we would be paid our full fee even if we both slept all the way home. And so we did.

  (c)2008 by Edward D. Hoch and Jon L. Breen

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Novelette: A YEAR TO REMEMBER by Robert Barnard

  Scarcely a year goes by without the appearance of a new Robert Barnard mystery. But some of his books have already become classics and this year Felony & Mayhem, dedicated to “bringing the best in bygone mysteries back to life,” reprinted his 1984 novel Corpse in a Gilded Cage.

  "My, how time flies!” wrote Annette Bigsby, as she sat down on December thirteenth to compose the round-robin that, immaculately word-processed, would accompany her Christmas cards to friends and relations all around the world.

  This last year has been one of all sorts. Some of the usual, which my correspondents will recognise: holidays in Majorca and Las Vegas, visits to Brighton, London, and Morocco. And then some of the unusual to balance them.

  One highspot of the unusual occurred in May. What could be nicer and more heartwarming than opening the door to a relative unseen for more than fifteen years? And how lovely that we could immediately strike up a rapport! That's what happened with my second cousin Malcolm Watts—only a teenager, but wise and generous beyond his years.

  Annette put down her pen. She would have to say more of Malcolm, but she wanted to strike the right note from the beginning. On reading it through she thought she already had struck a nice balance (as she would have put it) between the true and the misleading.

  When she opened the door on that memorable day in May 2008 her main emotion was not the surprise which her letter, quite cleverly, led her readers to assume she felt. She had already had contact with Malcolm through the Families United Web site. She had responded unwillingly to his appeal, and in fact had only done so because it had been made clear that if he did not get the facts of his birth from the Web site he would get them from his adoptive mother, who was obviously as weak and indiscreet as Annette had always feared.

  "More than fifteen” was also true but misleading. It was over seventeen years since mother and baby had been allowed home from hospital, three days after Malcolm's birth. After overnighting at Cousin Caroline's home she had kissed the boy goodbye (Cousin Caroline seemed to insist on it) and gone back to her own home in Peterborough.

  "Am I what you expected?” asked Malcolm in his eager-puppy way.

  "I'm not sure ... I don't think I expected anything."

  "I thought I might remind you of my father."

  "Oh dear—that's so long ago. He was dead before you were born.” And in truth, Annette could hardly remember anything about him.

  "Dead? He must have been very young. How did he die?"

  "It was a car crash. Tragic. Absolutely tragic."

  "But you've married since?"

  "Been married. At the moment I'm in a relationship. We're planning to marry, but we've just not got around to it yet."

  "And you'd rather he and I didn't meet."

  Annette flounced a little.

  "I don't know why you say that."

  "Because you specified times when I could come so exactly. They were obviously when he was at work."

  "Well ... well, yes. I didn't think Grant was quite ready yet."

  "Ready?"
<
br />   "Ready to be told."

  * * * *

  Annette licked the tip of her Uniball pen and continued writing.

  Professionally—on the job front, I mean—everything has gone like a dream. I am now well entrenched as head buyer at the Peterborough M & S, and enjoying enormously the work and the challenge. So much has been done in the last year or two to improve and brighten the store's women's clothing, and I am happy and proud to have been part of this. Grant, in his challenging and demanding job in securities, goes from strength to strength, and both of us seem to be on a steep upward curve.

  "Who was round here today?” Grant asked, when he got in in the early hours.

  "Round here?"

  "There were two cups and saucers on the draining board."

  "Oh that. That was Peggy Hartley from marketing. She's been on to me to see the house, because she'd love to move to this area."

  "What's so bloody special about these houses?” Grant asked. He had never so much as nodded to any of the neighbours, or shown any consciousness that they lived in a desirable neighbourhood. “It's just a freaking house."

  "Well, it's two or three steps up from anything Peggy Hartley can afford. We do very nicely, Grant."

  Grant grunted, and got down to what he did very nicely.

  * * * *

  Annette nearly swallowed her Uniball before she got down to the first crux in her account of 2008. This needed careful handling.

  So those are the main outlines of my year. One of the joys has been the way the two strands have meshed. No sooner did Malcolm and Grant meet than they seemed to form a partnership—both taking enormous pleasure in each other's company. Grant has no family to speak of, unlike most Londoners. He has lost them through emigration, death, and some spending long periods away. (She thought, then crossed out the last six words and inserted an “or” before “death.") So it was a particular joy to see how one of my few remaining relatives got on with the man who will be my husband. Goodness! We must make arrangements for the wedding soon!