by Laura Briggs
The sergeant motioned for us to be quiet before either of us could protest again. "I have no choice," he said. "Given the circumstances, my superiors have labeled him as a possible flight risk. He has no ties, no reason not to run. Until he's officially cleared, I'm to hold him here to prevent any possible embarrassment."
"A flight risk? Sidney?" I echoed. "Why would he run? His whole life is here. His friends, his things, his dogs." It didn't sound like much when spoken aloud, but I knew how much it all meant to him in reality.
"Of all the nonsense I've heard, this is by far the silliest. Quite honestly, Noel, I thought you had more sense and more decency than this," declared Mrs. Graves. "They're saying 'round the village that a tourist confessed to the crime. How much more proof do you need that Sidney's not guilty?"
He held up his hand again, as if pleading for peace. "It's not my choice, Myra," he said. "Personally, I doubt Sidney ever stole so much as a tenner in his life, but he's still a bit of a dodgy character in these parts nonetheless. If something was to happen, London would be in high dudgeon. Look — it'll only be another day at most before I reckon he's free again. Now that there's another suspect, they won't be laying charges on Sidney for theft so eagerly, leastways."
The look on Mrs. Graves's face proved this wasn't good enough. "You're only fortunate the vicar is still away," she said, glowering at him. "Imagine what he'll say to all this. I've a good mind to send word to him and have him come back from his holiday straightaway."
"No mobile signal," I reminded her, quietly. The vicar was backpacking his way across the rugged northern countryside.
"I'll send some poor lad crawling about the countryside in search of him, then," she retorted, stoutly. "We'll see about this come next Sunday's service, Noel. You'll figure very poorly in the vicar's sermon, or I'm much mistaken." She stormed out with her tin of biscuits — Sidney would be sorry he missed her speech, but not her cookies.
"I'm sorry," MacEntire said to me. "But if Sidney didn't have a bit of reputation already as a bit of a wanderer, this wouldn't be the case. But the police of even the likes of Port Hewer can only trust to a point." Instead of ordering me out, however, he opened the door to the hall leading to the interrogation room.
"Are you letting me go through?" I said.
"Detective Anson's there," he said. "Maybe he'll have a word with you and you'll feel a bit better. Myra would, too," he added. "Go on." As soon as I was on the other side, he closed it behind me.
The insurance company's detective was in conversation with Scotland Yard, just outside the interrogation room. This time, I knew it was probably poor Genevieve Fifer on the other side of its door and not Sidney.
She had looked petrified when the inspector cornered her on the subject of the journal's theft. Something made me feel very certain it wasn't because she had a fortune in diamonds tucked in her cosmetics case. Maybe her photos weren't the ones that revealed Sidney admiring the diamonds — or maybe she was extremely good at playing the role of a woman who hadn't masterminded a jewel heist, then framed an innocent villager.
Probably not the latter one. Only the most clever mystery writers would dream up a master criminal this unlikely.
"Fielding is the legal name on her passport," said the inspector. "She did indeed contact the auction house asking to examine the documents a year ago and was denied on the grounds that only their hired authenticators are allowed access to any and all properties they safeguard."
"It's highly unlikely she's behind this crime, of course," said Anson. "But she was there. She did steal the book. She may know more than she has told us, though I have my doubts."
"Her story certainly explains the security footage," said the inspector. "The mysterious return to the scene of the crime fits nicely with her story, which is more than I could say for the wild personal narrative she's using as an excuse for theft."
Neither investigator had much sympathy for her on this score, but it wasn't impossible for me to find some. Was her dream of emulating Mildred Eccleston so much different from my own of becoming a little like Alistair Davies? She had watched black and white movies of dramatic pantomime with her imagined great-great grandmother, while I had been a dreamy sixteen year-old engrossed in words on a page — that was the only real difference between our fantasies.
I, too, had done something crazy to fulfill mine, too...only in my case, it hadn't been a decision to steal Alistair Davies' typewriter.
"It also corroborates Miss Kinnan's story," said Anson. "She was the person whom Miss Fifer heard approaching, obviously."
"Yes, but —" the inspector stopped speaking, noticing me there. "May I help you, Miss Kinnan?" he asked.
"I was waiting for Detective Anson," I said. "I wanted to speak with him."
"You may. We were finished with our discussion." The inspector went back inside the interrogation room. Anson turned to me as soon as its door closed.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I think if it wasn't for your friend having such a reputation and pockets which were conveniently located for slippery jewel thieves, it wouldn't be taking quite so long to prove him innocent. But we are much closer, thanks to Miss Fifer's confession."
"I think she's telling the truth," I said, with a sigh. "I don't think she's the real thief. Everything about her story makes sense. I know she's an actress and probably trained in being convincing, but I think she would've come up with a better explanation and alibi than what she gave you."
"Agreed," said Anson. "But it still gives us time. The jewels are not on the black market yet, but time is running out. I think we have only one chance left to find them and stop the real thief. And there is only one question that remains unanswered in my book now — the tools of the thief's trade."
"You mean — 'tools' in the literal sense of the word?" I remembered that the evidence regarding the vicar's tools had proven those weren't the ones used in the robbery.
Anson drew me aside and lowered his voice. "The real thief was carrying them when he fled, according to Miss Fifer," he said. "He had to hide them somewhere, and quickly. Where? Not in his room, if he is a guest. Wherever he hid the jewels, there wouldn't be room for a pair of sturdy metal cutters the size she described. So he found a place to hide them where they would be in plain sight, and would be carried away for him."
I was puzzled. "Where?" I said "Not in the big ferns in the lobby. Or under his bed, clearly."
"I'm saying that — hypothetically, if your friend had done this, he did not use his own tools, nor did he leave the village reportedly in the days before the robbery in order to obtain ones that could not be traced to him," said the detective. "So we all agree that the tools in the robbery belonged to someone who either stole them or obtained them recently by purchase for this purpose."
"Like someone going to London by train and coming back with a pair of bolt cutters?" I said, lifting an eyebrow. That would include several people on the guest list, including most of the high bidders awaiting the auction.
"Exactly," answered the detective. "Only I believe the thief was more clever and more practical than we realize. I think he took them from a place where tools could be easily obtained, and would be completely untraceable to himself — but a place that only gave him opportunity within a limited window of time to sneak them away."
"So not Sidney's shed, obviously," I said.
"How often is the shed used by the hotel gardener unlocked?" he asked.
"Only a few times a day," I said. "Norman has the keys, and no one else ever goes in there, except if there's a desperate need for tools, I suppose." I glanced at him. "You think the tools were the hotel's? That a guest was watching the shed — waiting for a chance to borrow them for the crime?"
"Right again," said Anson. "It would be easy for a guest pretending to stroll about the grounds to catch your gardener with his back turned — or to open the shed locks himself with a simple lock pick kit, like the one the thief used. The work of an amateur compared to La Fleur himself, but st
ill skilled enough that a lock on a shed would be mere child's play."
"La Fleur?" I repeated. I had heard this name mentioned a time or two before.
"The person whom our thief is trying cleverly to beat at his own game," said Anson, with a cunning smile. "But I intend to stand in his or her way. Once again, however, I will require your help to do it."
"If it helps Sidney, you know that I'll do it," I said. If Sergeant MacEntire had no choice but to keep Sidney in custody until his name was cleared, then I had no choice, either. Especially not if the detective was right and our chance was nearly gone.
***
"La Fleur is a master of the art. Sixteen robberies in fewer than one third the number of years — he is truly a nemesis for any detective," said Anson. "His first documented crime was at a gallery in Venice, where he took the engagement diamonds of a seventeenth-century countess from a case surrounded by motion-sensitive alarms. All he left behind was a little spotted yellow orchid on its cushion."
"An orchid." I paused in the midst of searching the shrubbery along the hotel's perimeter, as if not quite sure I had heard this properly.
"His trademark," said Anson. "He leaves one at every crime scene. That, of course, is why Tiller and the others doubted immediately it could be him, of course. But the obvious clumsiness of the scene was proof enough it was unlikely. He is an artist with lock picks — he would never have needed to scissor through a steel plate the way our thief labored to do."
Anson pulled aside the tall leaves of one of Norm's potted cannas. "La Fleur's last known robbery you've heard mentioned, of course," he said. "A little more than four years ago, he vanished from the international scene. Crown jewels and legendary diamonds, gold and silver antiquities, the occasional canvas by an Old Master — stolen from museums as far away as Russia, as close as Paris — from this to nothing at all for the nemesis of international galleries. No one knows if he became bored, or simply decided to retire. But I was convinced that the actress's jewels would lure him back to the game if anything would."
"He sounds like quite the Raffles," I said. "And you're playing Sherlock Holmes to his act. Trying to catch the master thief red handed?" I parted the branches of a very thorny rose and regretted it as the thorns retaliated. I sucked the tip of a pricked finger. "Only it turned out this time the master thief was an imposter."
"A poor one, though he tried hard to stage the master crime professionally," said Anson. "I think he has some skill in the trade — possibly he thought he was good enough to fool people into believing that La Fleur was still behind it. The spotted orchid's information has been leaked by some of the international authorities who investigated his crimes. I suspect that our thief meant to leave a similar token, and was interrupted either by the shortness of his remaining time or by the sound of Miss Fifer's movements ... provided she is not the thief herself."
"Do you think she is? Really?" I challenged him.
He smiled for this suggestion. "Of course not," he said. "But one must never forget these possibilities, unlikely as they seem. Even that La Fleur may not be a non-factor in this case himself." He laid a finger against his lips as if cautioning me to keep it secret, though he was still smiling just a little.
I withdrew my arms from the next sticker-y rose hedge. "Here," I said, holding it back with a stick as I pointed. "There are scratches along the sandstone." I could see fresh marks in the stone that could have been made by Norman's shovel, except that nothing had been planted here recently.
"That is precisely what we are looking for." Anson hovered as closely as possible, ascertaining that the marks were not merely flaws in the hotel's foundation stones. "More above, which were made by the blades as they fell. See?" He pointed to the pinkish-red brick of the hotel's wall, which had a scuff mark about twelve feet above our heads. "Fortunately for us, the blades of the clippers struck here instead of merely burying themselves in the decorative gravel."
"That tells us they were dropped from above, but why?" I said. "Wouldn't the thief have escaped through the terrace doors and simply tossed them as he ran?"
Anson shook his head. "Run across the grounds? He would be seen, possibly. But a hotel guest who was quiet and careful could creep back into his room before anyone noticed him. He was moving quickly — probably because he knew Miss Fifer had already seen him."
He squatted back on his heels. "To land here, it was tossed by a strong arm. It could only be one of two windows above. The others — it would have missed entirely and broken your gardener's pots, or landed among these bulbs." He whistled softly to himself. "Whose rooms would those be, I wonder?"
"One of them is the American from Hollywood," I said.
He glanced at me. "How do you know?" he asked.
"I know the view from his window," I said. "I was standing there two days ago, closing his window while he was out. If you look down, you're looking almost in this exact spot, only a little to the right."
"And who is to the left?"
"I don't know. Katy cleaned that suite," I said. I brushed my hand over the gravel, some of which was broken and white-chipped, my arm holding itself away from the tricky thorns. "But why toss the tools under your own window?" I asked.
"The first thing the local constabulary did was lock down the hotel, yes? Question everyone, rouse them from their beds? Question the staff?" said Anson. "How long was it before they began searching the grounds?"
"A few hours," I said. "Reinforcements didn't arrive immediately. There's only PCs Pringle and Jones, and PC Hammersmith from over at Knob Rock — they were closing down the roads first."
"And what do you think your hotel's gardener did when he arrived at work?" Anson smiled archly. "Had a cup of tea?"
"Not Norman. He brings a thermos," I said. "Usually he just shows up and starts working wherever he left off ..." I paused, noticing the bulbs in the flower bed beside me. Summer plants newly-installed, the earth still fresh around them, a sprinkle of mulch with no groundcover yet in Norman's usual fashion.
"Where is your gardener?" said Anson. "I think we need to ask him if it's possible he found one or two of his tools lying close by his work site."
Norm was outside the garden shed, sitting on an overturned ceramic urn, an overturned hand cart of compost materials nearby. He was smoking a cigarette and — though I surely imagined it — reading a paperback novel with romantic font akin to Eternally Yours until he hid it aside beneath some old burlap bags. "What're you doing here?" he demanded, after he stubbed the cigarette out fiercely in the gravel. "Guests aren't supposed to come 'round these parts. Strictly off limits," he informed the detective.
"I would like to examine your tools," announced the detective.
Norm's gaze narrowed. "What for?" he asked.
"For a police matter," said the detective. "Specifically, your bolt cutters."
The gardener studied him suspiciously. "Wait here." He unlocked the shed and went inside. A moment later, he returned with a pair of long-handled cutters that looked stout, sturdy, and extremely heavy. "Here," he declared. "This is all I've got. Not used for much 'cept cutting old chains. I've a hand pair with better blades, what's used for cutting light metal."
Anson examined them. "As I suspected," he said. "Deep groves in the blades — they've been cutting something stronger than their craftsmanship warrants. And look — this little chip here."
"From the foundation?" I surmised.
The detective turned to Norm again. "Did you find these in your flower bed by chance the morning of the robbery?" he asked.
"Robbery? I don't know nothing about it," Norm snapped. "I was in the village fast asleep when it happened."
"But what about your shears?" the detective asked, patiently.
Norm eyed them. "S'pose maybe I forgot to lock 'em in the shed the night before," he said. "Reckon I misplace a tool now and then. No crime to have a poor memory, is it? And I always find 'em again. Nobody can claim I've cost the hotel a penny by bein' a bit absentminded when
I've a long day and me arthritis to consider afterwards."
"Did you find anything else, Norm?" I asked. Maybe a better clue had been dropped as well — not that I expected a receipt to have fluttered to the ground with the suspect's name on it.
"Bits of metal," he grunted. "Reckon they broke off one of me rakes awhile back."
"Where are they?" asked Anson, sounding interested.
"They were garbage. Tossed 'em in the rubbish heap." He jerked his head towards the trash heap beside the compost pile — old sticks, bits of paper, and other debris swept from the hotel lawn, shrubbery, and car park by Norm's daily labors.
Anson glanced at me. Without saying anything, we both began searching through the remnants. Norm made a face. "Likely enough you'll both end up with tetanus or some other disease from that thing," he said. "I wouldn't go poking about in there for love nor money."
Old bits of pastry, a stray paper cup, old cigarettes that were probably Riley's. "Yuck," I said, albeit quietly, as my hand made contact with a soggy old newspaper. But Anson had found two odd-looking pieces of dark metal that reminded me a little of short, thick hatpins.
"Here we are," he said. "These made the primitive marks I saw on the locks. Blunted ends — very poorly used. Our nemesis is not very professional at his work." He shook his head. "He cut the lock from the panel, then picked the ones which belonged to your hotel. He was in a hurry for the last one, and damaged the antique door handle significantly."
He wrapped the picks in his handkerchief, then pointed to the cutters. "I will need to borrow those," said Anson.
"Borrow 'em?" Norm looked disbelieving.
"That's right." Anson handed them to me. They were as heavy as they looked, giving me serious doubts that Genevieve Fifer had been rushing around the Penmarrow with these in her grip. "I think they'll prove my theory nicely."
