No Police Like Holmes

by Dan Andriacco

  “Don’t leave the wrapper here,” I warned her. “When did you start chewing gum, anyway?”

  “When I gave up smoking,” she said. “I eat too much candy, too, and pretty soon I’m going to get fat. Quit giving orders. And make this fast, will you?”

  This was no time to tell her that she’d probably be okay on the weight because of the running. I got down on my knees in front of the bed closest to the door and flipped up the bedspread. “It would go faster if you’d help,” I said.

  “Then I’ll help.”

  Good girl, I thought but did not say.

  A minute went by while I crawled as far under the bed as I could.

  “Nothing under here,” Lynda reported from beneath the other bed. “Not even dust bunnies.”

  “Same here,” I said.

  Standing up, I stepped around the hideous corpse and looked at the night stand. Bingo. Right next to the hotel phone was a notepad with the fancy Winfield Hotel logo on top. The number 525 was neatly written on it in blue ink. I copied the number into the reporter’s notebook I carry in my back pocket.

  “What’s that?” Lynda asked from the other side of the bed.

  “Probably a hotel room number that Matheson called. Maybe even the person he hoped to meet this afternoon. That could be important.”

  “Well, there’s your clue,” she said. “Now we can leave.”

  “Not yet.” I reached over the bed to look inside the brass posts, then checked under the bedspread. Lynda observed and did likewise. No secrets there.

  While Lynda went into the closet area just inside the door, I attacked the dresser, a reproduction Queen Somebody that was clearly a few cuts above the usual Formica-topped furniture in the motels where I stay during my infrequent road trips for the college. The only thing in the top drawer was a Book, courtesy of the Gideon Society. I paged through to see if maybe it had been hollowed out and something slipped inside. Clever idea, if I do say so myself, but unfruitful.

  “It would help a lot if we knew what we were looking for,” Lynda said from the depths of the closet.

  “I’m hoping we’ll know it when we see it.” Max Cutter always does.

  The next drawer held underwear and socks neatly folded and stacked by the dead man. There was something pathetic about that, something that touched me more than actually seeing Matheson’s bloodied body.

  “Here it is!” Lynda called. “Get over here.”

  In seconds I was at her side. Inside the closet area she had the spare blanket from the overhead rack spread out on the floor, kneeling over it.

  “I just unfolded it and found these tucked inside,” she said, holding up a faded red book and a fat sheaf of handwritten manuscript pages.

  I took the manuscript first, instinctively holding it with respect. At the top of the first page was a chapter heading, “Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” and then the beginning of the story:

  “Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings...”

  What I had in my hands was the opening pages of The Hound of the Baskervilles set down as Arthur Conan Doyle wrote them in his own hand. All of the millions of copies of the book that had been printed in all the languages of the world had started with this. As a writer myself, I was moved by that.

  I set the pages down and picked up the red volume. It, too, was the Hound and I knew what it had to be. Sure enough, there on the title page was an inscription in the same cramped handwriting of the manuscript:

  To my dear Robinson - with thanks for the ripping good idea that put Holmes back in action.

  A.C.D.

  “This seals it,” I said. “Matheson was the thief, all right.”

  “But who killed him?” Lynda said.

  I intended to find out.

  Chapter Seventeen - Going Home Again

  We put the books back where we found them. We were halfway out the door in some haste before I remembered what Max Cutter never would have forgotten - fingerprints. I stepped back in and spent a fast two minutes applying my handkerchief to every surface we had touched.

  Downstairs we unchained my bike from the NO PARKING sign in front of the hotel and tied it on top of the Mustang.

  In the car, I tried to come to grips with the idea of Hugh Matheson as a thief - and such a small-scale thief by the standards of his huge net worth. Valuable as it was, it was a pittance for a guy who owned three homes in different cities and four antique Duesenberg roadsters.

  “It made sense all along in one way, because he was the only big-time Holmes collector on the scene,” I mused aloud. “But he was so rich and successful. Why would he risk all that to steal something that was worth less than his take on just one good lawsuit?”

  “Ego and lust, I guess,” Lynda said. “I was around enough to see both of those.”

  I studied Lynda’s pretty profile. “You really didn’t like him, did you?”

  “No. He was too full of himself. For that I actually felt kind of sorry for him, though. Still do.”

  By this time we were sitting in front of the last pay phone in downtown Erin, which looks like the TARDIS in Doctor Who. I got out of the car and called 911 to report a disturbance at the Winfield. “It was a noise, almost like a shot,” I told the dispatcher who answered, talking in a squeaky voice unlike my own. “It seemed to come out of room 943.”

  “Did you call the hotel desk?”

  “Just check it out.”

  “Where are you calling from, sir?”

  From the TARDIS, lady. Fortunately, I saw a trap in the question. Wouldn’t 911 have industrial strength Caller ID? I hung up.

  Back on the road, mentally going over all that had happened, I was struck by a glaring omission.

  “The third book,” I told Lynda. “What was it? Oh, yeah, that Christmas annual with the first Sherlock Holmes story. Why wasn’t it with the other books?”

  “That’s easy,” Lynda said without taking her eyes off the road. “The killer took it.”

  “But why just that one book?”

  “Maybe he’d only gotten that far when he heard me starting to come in the door.”

  “Okay, then how did he-”

  “Or she,” Lynda added.

  “-get out of the room. Unless...”

  Lynda darted a glance at me. “Yeah. Unless she or he never left. We didn’t get around to checking out the bathroom.”

  “So for all we know the killer could have been just a few feet away the whole time we were in the hotel room. There’s a creepy thought for you.”

  Right away I had another thought as well: If that scenario had actually happened, then the killer would be as late for the banquet as we were. I wanted to drive straight there and check out the crowd, but Lynda insisted on continuing to her apartment first.

  “I’ve got to change my clothes and redo my hair,” she said. “I’m as eager to get back to Muckerheide as you are, Jeff, but I described my whole outfit for the evening to Kate. If I don’t show up dressed that way, she’ll wonder why. Besides, I need a shower. After what we’ve been through, it’s the only way I’ll feel, I don’t know, clean again.”

  I argued the point all the way to her place, but she was the one driving and I didn’t want to leave her any more than she wanted to leave me.

  Lynda’s apartment is on the second story of a two-family home in a comfortable Erin neighborhood of wide lanes and big trees. I mean comfortable the way your favorite piece of old clothing is comfortable - nothing fancy, it just feels right. The house is brick and stucco, with three gables and a small octagon-shaped room on the first floor. Its owners have lived there since 1974, and they bought it from the wife’s parents.

  While Lynda cleaned up, I sat on her wicker couch and looked around, feeling as if I’d come home again after a long absence. Not that I
was even on first base again with Lynda, but at least I was no longer in the dugout. The room hadn’t changed much in the few weeks of my exile from her life: tall bookcase, overflowing with books; a couple of wicker chairs on either side of the bricked-up fireplace; flat-screen TV above the mantle; brass spittoon with sunflowers poking out of it; wicker and glass coffee table. But the picture of Lynda and me on the mantle was gone, along with the stuffed frog holding a red heart that I’d given her for Valentine’s Day one year.

  Stifling a mad impulse to pick up a sunflower and play “she loves me, she loves me not,” which wouldn’t have worked too well considering that they were artificial, I forced my mind back to what we’d done in Matheson’s hotel room. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time, but now I wasn’t at all sure. First of all, if our actions ever came out, we would look guilty as hell. Plus, we’d been in such a hurry to get out of there we might have left the murderer behind. Not that I was really sorry we hadn’t encountered the armed killer, I admitted to myself gloomily.

  How differently Mac would have reacted, I thought. The big man would have been in his element, playing the role of amateur sleuth to the hilt with never a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. And then at some point he would have pulled a rabbit out of his hat, leaving me feeling like a fool for not even knowing he had a hat, much less a rabbit.

  Mac had known all along that Matheson was the thief. Or at least he’d said he knew the identity of the thief. With him you can never tell when he’s just blowing smoke. Even now I didn’t understand Mac’s hocus-pocus about the keys to Hearth Room C - those questions that he’d asked Decker. Not that it made any difference, of course. Still-

  I pulled out my phone and called Decker’s office. He was gone for the day, so I tapped the home number next to his photo on my contacts list.

  “Cody,” the lieutenant growled by way of greeting. “Don’t you ever quit working, for crap’s sake? It’s nearly seven-thirty.”

  “Thank you, Big Ben. I want to know what you found out about that key to the room where the Holmes books were stolen. Was it shiny?”

  “I already told McCabe that-”

  “Tell me, damn it.”

  “-it wasn’t.”

  Okay. Now I knew the answer to the question, but I still didn’t know what it meant. “So what the...”

  “A real cute idea McCabe had, it just didn’t work out. Phil Oakland - you know, the locksmith over on Spring Street - he tells me that when a key’s been copied it gets shiny on top. Based on that, it looks like neither key to Hearth Room C was copied.”

  And both of them were accounted for on Friday, so they couldn’t have been used by the thief. That was an interesting fact. Maybe it was a semi-good thing that the keying system in Muckerheide was a decade or two overdue for a security update, unlike the one at the Winfield Hotel. Before I had a chance to digest Decker’s information any further, I heard Lynda’s bathroom door open.

  “Thanks, Ed,” I said in a rush. I disconnected and put the phone back in my pocket.

  But it was eternity before Lynda made her appearance. When she did, the sight of her almost made me forget to breathe. She was decked out in a dress with a vaguely Victorian air, creamy satin with lots of white lace, and not even her ankles peaking out at the bottom. It was as feminine a garment as I’d ever seen, accentuating Lynda’s curves - which are considerable - while revealing nothing. The contrast of the dress against her dark complexion was stunning. Lynda paused in the doorway, one hand upon the frame like a countess in a painting.

  “You look great, Lyn,” I said, a catch in my voice. I used to call her that sometimes, but not for a while.

  The painting came to life as she moved out of the doorway. “Sorry it took so long. It was the hair. This isn’t just once-over-lightly. It takes time.”

  “You should wear it like that more often. I mean, if you want to.” See, I’m not bossy.

  Lynda had swept her hair off her face, clipped it with pins, and supplemented it at the back by a chignon bun tied with a lace bow. Curly tendrils framed her face. She wore a cameo on a black ribbon around her throat, which I found quite fetching.

  I stood up and moved close enough to hear her heart beat - or maybe it was mine, pounding in my ears. To my surprise she put her arms around me and hugged me, not in passion but in search of comfort. In heels, she was almost my height. The seductive scent of Cleopatra VII, Lynda’s favorite fragrance and mine, made my legs weak.

  “How do you feel?” I whispered.

  “Better,” she said. “Not good, but better. I could really use a stiff bourbon on the rocks, though.” One of her favorite blogs is called Bourbon Babe.

  “Sorry. No time for Knob Creek. Besides, you’re driving.”

  “I keep remembering-”

  “Try not to,” I said.

  Session Three

  The President’s Dining Room

  6:30

  Reception

  Hors d’oeuvres and cash bar

  7:30

  Banquet

  Sherlockian sing-along

  Traditional toasts

  Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding

  Awards for best costumes - Kate McCabe

  9:00

  Reader’s Theatre

  “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton” - Directed by Dr. Sebastian McCabe, BSI

  Chapter Eighteen - Costume Party

  We captured the last two seats open at Mac’s table in the President’s Dining Room. It was as if he had been waiting for us.

  My brother-in-law was dressed in a brown and tan checked suit with short lapels, a buff-colored waistcoat, an old-fashioned stiff collar and a big tie. The only thing missing was a bowler hat, and he probably had that on his lap or someplace close. He looked up from tucking into his roast beef as we pulled out our chairs.

  “Jefferson! Lynda!” he said. “What a delight to see you. I am afraid, however, that you have entirely missed the Sherlockian sing-along and the traditional toasts.”

  “I’ll get over it,” I murmured.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Lynda said.

  Renata Chalmers leaned over to her. “The hair always takes longer than you think, doesn’t it?”

  Lynda answered with a polite and meaningless affirmative, never mind that homicide had a lot more to do with her tardiness than did hair care. Renata herself was wearing her hair in fancy ringlets, the creation of which, she informed us, had caused her to miss the entire cocktail hour.

  “Still,” she said, “dressing up was fun.”

  The rest of Renata’s outfit, like Mac’s, was suitably Victorian - a dark blue-green dress with a short fitted jacket on top. The sleeves of the jacket were puffed at the shoulders and tapered at the wrists where they ended in a frilly, cream-colored cloth. The blouse was also cream, topped with a black bow around the neck.

  Lynda complimented her on it, generating a lively discussion of Victorian fashion. But while most of the table was talking bustles and bowlers, Mac whispered in my ear, “Please report on your discussion with Mr. Post.”

  “The hell I will,” I whispered back. “I’m not your errand boy.”

  “Jefferson, I said ‘please.’”

  “Oh, all right. There’s not much to tell, anyway. Post is an arrogant stuffed shirt, but I’m convinced he had nothing to do with the theft either before or after the fact. That interview was a wash-out, just like your cute idea about duplicating the key to the room where the books were stolen.”

  Mac looked at me with infinite sadness in his brown eyes. “The key was only a hope; I never really believed it would prove to be the solutio
n.”

  A waitress hustled by with my roast beef, and the mood was broken. By the time she disappeared again Mac was engaged in the general conversation and I’d lost him. I picked at my dinner - I try not to eat too much red meat - and looked around the room getting a fix on familiar faces. Kate was at our table, of course, dressed in an enchanting black velvet dress with a high collar and silver buttons up to the top. I was only vaguely aware of two other couples next to her, people who were unfamiliar to me. Around the room I saw that Judge Crocker and Dr. Queensbury were in costume, but Al Kane and Bob Nakamora weren’t. And Woollcott Chalmers...

  Dressed in tails, Chalmers was just now coming toward our table, limping badly without his cane.

  I kicked my brother-in-law under the table. He grunted and inclined his head in my direction.

  “Has Chalmers been out of the picture since this banquet business started?” I asked in an urgent whisper.

  Mac guffawed, causing Lynda to visibly strain her ears our way. “By no means, Jefferson. We spent the entire cocktail hour together in a spirited discussion of chronological problems in ‘The Red-Headed League.’ He is merely returning from a short hiatus, undoubtedly provoked by the demands of personal biology. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m taking a census.” Max Cutter could play mysterious sleuth as well as any amateur. For once I knew something Mac didn’t know, and I was going to play that out as long as I could. “Is there somebody else here who wasn’t here at the beginning, somebody who came in late?” The killer didn’t have to be one of the Sherlockians, but it was a good bet.

  Mac pulled on his beard, as if stimulating his hair follicles would do the same for his brain cells.

  “There is at least one person,” he decided. “Hugh Matheson. I haven’t encountered him for hours, not even at the bar.”

  Others around the table heard the comment and nodded their agreement. Nobody had run into Matheson since just after the last session of the colloquium - except, of course, Lynda and me, and we weren’t saying.

  “I am quite certain that the last time I saw Hugh was during his set-to with Noah,” Mac said just as Chalmers rejoined the table.