A chilly gust swept a sprinkling of snow into the foyer. Winslow set the catch on the front door so he would not be locked out, then stepped on to the rounded brick porch. A bicycle stood leaning against the handrail. A few snowflakes had accumulated on it and more were continuing to do so.
Winslow touched the hole in the door, put his eye to it, and discerned a bullet therein. Apparently the messenger had been shot from behind just as she sounded the knocker. The bullet had penetrated the back of her skull, travelled through her brain, exited via her forehead, and come to rest a half inch deep in the antique polished oak.
A trail of fresh footprints in the new-fallen snow led from the opposite side of the street to the house, and back to the empty space at the curb where the LaSalle had stood. There was also a narrow furrow in the snow, obviously laid down by the bicycle that now leaned against the railing.
It appeared that the shooter had fired from the LaSalle and then walked – or, more likely, run – from the car to the brick porch. Then he had returned to the car and driven away.
Winslow stepped back into the house and closed the door. He could hear the voice of his employer bellowing out a demand. “Come up here, confound you, and tell me what all the abominable racket is about down there!”
Eschewing the small elevator that Foxx had ordered installed for his use, but concealed behind a faux bookcase of Colonial vintage, Winslow sprinted up the broad staircase. He gave Foxx a quick, breathless summary of the occurrence.
Foxx narrowed his eyes, fixing Winslow with a sharp stare. “You have a talent, my boy, for drawing trouble as a bar magnet draws iron filings. All right, phone Dr McClintock. I suppose we’ll have to bring the police into this as well, but let’s get Fergus on the case before those busybodies come snooping around.”
Winslow phoned the doctor and sketched out the situation for him. Fergus McClintock, MD, said that he’d be right over. Andy said, “You’d better drag your carcass out of that bed, Caligula, and put on some clothes before the doc gets here.”
Foxx took a large swallow of coffee, gave out a sound that was a cross between a sigh of pleasure and a grunt of resignation, and began the process of climbing from his four-poster. “You’d better get out of that funny page-outfit yourself,” he growled at Andy Winslow.
Winslow was out of his pyjamas, into street clothes, and back downstairs before Foxx was fully out of his bed. The casualty lay unmoving where she had fallen just inside the front door. Musing that it never hurt to be certain, Winslow laid his fingers on the messenger’s neck, expecting no pulse and cooling, clammy corpse-flesh. Instead, he felt warmth and detected a faint pulse.
He ran to fetch a blanket and laid it over the messenger, leaving only her face uncovered. He lowered his cheek to a point a fraction of an inch from her face and detected a faint susurrus of breath from her nostrils. He ran to the bathroom and brought a damp cloth to lay across her forehead, covering the ugly black circle where the bullet had emerged.
By the time Dr McClintock arrived, Caligula Foxx had completed dressing and arrived on the ground floor via his personal elevator. He strode to the motionless form on the polished wooden floor.
The door knocker sounded. Andy Winslow, who had been kneeling beside the wounded messenger, sprang upright and admitted the iron-haired, red-cheeked doctor. Andy took Dr McClintock’s homburg and winter coat. Reuter had also arrived, emerging from the kitchen. He accepted the doctor’s accoutrements from Winslow and disappeared.
Dr McClintock made a cursory examination of the supine messenger, then rose to his feet. “This is truly amazing. Not unprecedented, but still most unusual.”
Foxx sputtered. “Never mind the commentary, Fergus. What have you found? Is she alive? Dead? Speak up.”
Dr McClintock shook his head in disbelief. “This woman has been shot. Not from very close range – there are no powder burns around the entry wound. I would say that the bullet was a .22 calibre. So small a round punched a hole in her skull. A larger bullet, a .38 or .44, would have smashed the skull at point of entry, but this .22 or whatever it was punched cleanly in.”
Andy Winslow interrupted the doctor’s monologue. “Is she alive, though?”
Dr McClintock nodded emphatically, his steel-wool eyebrows working up and down. “Absolutely. Mr Winslow, summon an ambulance at once.”
The call was made quickly.
While they awaited the arrival of the ambulance, Dr McClintock asked Andy Winslow what had happened and Winslow repeated his story. “I think the driver of that LaSalle automobile shot the messenger. The double set of footprints that you mention would fit with that, Mr Winslow.”
Andy Winslow rubbed his chin, his eyes still fixed on the softly breathing woman. “But you said that the shot was not fired from very close to the victim.”
“I did indeed.” Dr McClintock pursed his lips. “Most likely the miscreant fired from across the street, then ran to the house, performed some brief task, ran back and drove away. Would there have been time for that, do you think? Did you hear the shot fired?”
Andy Winslow said, “No, I was in the lavatory brushing my teeth. I only came to the door when I heard the knocker sound. A .22 fired from across the street might not have been audible even though the door knocker was.”
Caligula Foxx had found a seat in an antique ladder-backed chair, from which he observed the proceedings. Now he gestured Andy Winslow to him, murmured a rapid series of instructions in his ear, and sent him on his way.
Winslow left the house. In moments, the doors of the two-car garage behind the residence – once a Colonial-era carriage house – were opened and a yellow Auburn roadster, its folding top and canvas side-windows in place against the cold, rolled forth. The roadster disappeared up West Adams Place, Andy Winslow at the wheel.
Back in the house Dr McClintock tilted his head questioningly at Caligula Foxx. “Is that correct procedure, Caligula? I imagine Lieutenant Burke will be arriving shortly, along with the ambulance. Shouldn’t Mr Winslow have stayed here?”
But by now Andy Winslow had reached the office of the Postal Telegraph Company not far from Caligula Foxx’s house. He drew his roadster to the curb, leaped from the car, ran up a short flight of terrazzo steps and burst through the door. He demanded to see the manager and was introduced to one Oswald Hicks, a Cuban-looking individual wearing a business suit, a Clark Gable moustache, and wavy black hair.
Andy Winslow identified himself and described the incident at West Adams Place.
Hicks’s eyes widened. He raised a carefully manicured, mahogany-coloured hand to his face. “Come with me!”
He led Andy Winslow back to the public office, asked the clerk on duty to tell him who had carried messages in the past hour and had not returned. The clerk didn’t have to look it up. “Not much business this morning, Mr Hicks. Martha’s the only messenger on duty. Martha Mayhew. She went out” – he checked his log book – “forty minutes ago. Night letter going to a Mr Foxx on West Adams.”
Hicks turned to Andy Winslow. “You’re sure she’s alive?”
Andy grunted an affirmative.
“And you summoned an ambulance?”
Andy repeated the sound.
“They would probably take her to St Ambrose’s. Let’s go there, sir.” He left the clerk in charge of the office and they headed for the street. Andy Winslow led the way to his roadster and piloted the Auburn through quiet, Sunday-morning streets, to pull in at the hospital. Martha Mayhew had been admitted and taken on a rolling gurney to the newly established radiology laboratory, pride of St Ambrose’s medical staff.
There was little for either of them to do at St Ambrose’s.
While Dr McClintock stood by, a young intern explained, they had taken X-rays of the patient’s head. The foreign object – the intern did not refer to it as a bullet – had entered at the rear of the patient’s skull, had passed through the channel between the two lobes of her brain, and had exited through her forehead.
It was a
thousand to one chance, the intern said, then corrected himself, a million to one chance. A fraction to the left or right and severe, possibly fatal, brain damage would have resulted. But, as it was, the only concern was possible infection. The patient would be monitored, the entry and exit wounds kept clean, sulpha drugs applied if necessary. The entry and exit wounds were small enough to heal without further surgery. Barring the unexpected, she should be released in a few days, with only a small round scar on her forehead to show for her near encounter with the grim reaper.
Hicks asked, “How can that be? Thank heaven Miss Mayhew is alive, but as you describe the wound, Doctor – this is incredible.”
The intern, looking almost like a child costumed to play doctors, looked from Hicks to Winslow and back. “You know the brain is composed of two hemispheres. They’re quite separate from each other, connected only by a sort of bridge or highway, the corpus calossum. It seems that the object passed between the hemispheres and above the, ah, bridge. It’s not unprecedented, sir. We studied a far worse case in med school. Back in 1848 a poor fellow named Phineas Gage was tamping down an explosive for a construction project. The dynamite went off and drove the tamping rod through his cheek, up through one eye, through his brain, and out the top of his skull. You’d think he was a goner for sure but he recovered and lived a normal life.”
*
Shortly, the patient was in a private room. She had regained consciousness but had no recollection of being shot. “I parked my bike and climbed the steps. I remember I had the knocker in one hand and Mr Foxx’s night letter in the other. Then I – I don’t remember anything until I woke up in this bed.”
“You had the night letter in your hand?” Andy Winslow asked.
“Yes, I remember distinctly. I had it in my hand and—”
At this point the door of the hospital room swung open and Lieutenant Adam Burke strode into the room, followed by a couple of uniformed officers. He glared at Andy Winslow. “You left the scene of a crime, Winslow.”
Andy looked innocently at the cop. “I did?”
“You know damned well you did. Who the hell do you think you are, letting a corpse into the house and then leaving her there on the floor to die.”
Andy grinned. “What corpse would that be, Lieutenant?”
“This one!” Burke jabbed a thumb at the slight figure on the bed.
“You mean Miss Mayhew, Lieutenant? I don’t think Miss Mayhew is dead. Are you dead, Miss Mayhew?”
The slim woman managed a wan, tiny smile. “I don’t think I’m dead. I don’t even feel sick. I do have a dreadful headache, though.”
Andy Winslow grinned, “You’re entitled to that.” Then, to the cop, “It’s true that Miss Mayhew was shot at Caligula Foxx’s house. I thought it was more important to make sure that she was all right, than to wait around for New York’s Slowest— er, pardon me, I mean New York’s Finest – to arrive.”
Burke frowned. “You rode in the ambulance with her?”
“No, I took my car.” He didn’t mention his detour via the Postal Telegraph office, but then he hadn’t exactly lied, either.
“And you, sir?” Burke whirled towards Oswald Hicks.
Hicks identified himself.
“The victim worked for you?” Burke asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“What was she doing at Mr Foxx’s house on a Sunday morning?”
“Postal Telegraph prides itself on its service, Lieutenant, seven days a week. A night letter came in from London, England, and Miss Mayhew was despatched to deliver it to the addressee.”
Burke stared at the slim figure beneath the bedclothes, then turned back to Hicks. “You always use girls for this kind of work? Isn’t it dangerous?”
Hicks said, “Would that bullet have bounced off the messenger’s skull if he’d been a boy instead of a girl?”
Burke growled. “All right, never mind. We’ll need statements from all concerned. That’s all for now.”
He strode from the hospital room, followed by his retinue. As soon as the police detachment was out of earshot, Andy Winslow asked Martha Mayhew if she’d mind his looking through her Postal Telegraph uniform, hanging now in the closet. Martha Mayhew managed a barely audible assent.
Winslow checked out the clothing, then turned back to her and to Oswald Hicks. “It isn’t there.”
“What isn’t there?” Hicks asked.
“The night letter. The message that Miss Mayhew was attempting to deliver to Caligula Foxx.”
“Could she have dropped it at the house?”
“I would have found it when I answered the door.”
Hicks rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose she would have left it in the basket of her bicycle.”
Winslow said, “I’ll check on that when I get back to the house but I doubt it.” He hadn’t told Hicks specifically about the LaSalle coupé that had pulled away from the house just as he answered Martha Mayhew’s knock, but that had been part of his narrative to Lieutenant Burke. “I have a feeling that whoever shot Miss Mayhew escaped in that LaSalle car. And I have a feeling that he committed the crime in order to prevent her from delivering it to Foxx. Most likely, he has the night letter now.”
Oswald Hicks said, “In any case, I think I’d best get back to my office. There will be paperwork to do, both for the company and for the police.”
Andy Winslow offered him a ride back to his office. As they made their way through the quiet streets, Hicks volunteered, “We’ll still deliver the night letter, you know. Postal Telegraph takes pride in its reliable performance.”
Winslow was startled. “How can you do that?”
“Oh, we have a copy of the message on file at the office. Two, in fact. It’s standard practice. And if we didn’t have it, there would be the original in London. They’d have to retransmit it to us, but that wouldn’t take very long.”
At the Postal Telegraph office Hicks located the night letter. It had been typed out and a flimsy sheet remained in the overnight file folder.
Winslow stared at it. The message was a lengthy one. “I’ll need to take this with me.”
Oswald Hicks assented.
By the time Winslow pulled his yellow Auburn into the garage at West Adams Place and entered the house, a police evidence team had removed the .22 calibre bullet from the front door. The ever-competent Reuter had filled the hole with quick-hardening putty. He was already at work staining the putty to match the surrounding wood.
Caligula Foxx, resplendent in his usual glaring aquamarine silk shirt, flannel trousers and foulard-pattern dressing gown, was seated behind his gigantic glass-covered desk, reading the Sunday funny pages. A bottle of Teplitz-Schonau ale stood at his elbow.
He lowered the colourful newsprint, tipped the bottle of ale into a tall glass and sipped judiciously. He wiped his lips with a bandanna and looked at Winslow.
“Tell me everything.”
Winslow repeated his story, reporting on the condition of Miss Mayhew.
Foxx nodded approvingly. “She is an innocent child, Andy. Whatever deviltry is afoot, she did not deserve to be attacked in this manner. It almost gives one to believe in divine intervention to learn that she could take a bullet through the skull and suffer nothing worse than a headache.”
“Almost,” Winslow said. “But, if God got into the act, he could have made the gun misfire and blow off the shooter’s hand, couldn’t he?”
Foxx grinned sardonically. “I should know better than to engage in theological speculation with you, my boy. And Lieutenant Burke’s man said that it was a steel-jacketed bullet, so it didn’t break apart in the victim’s brain. And it must have had an extra load of propellant to make it punch its way out and penetrate into our door.”
He leaned back in his oversized chair and drew a breath. “All right then; I detect from your manner that you are holding something back. Spill it, Andy, spill it.”
Winslow reached into his pocket and withdrew a large envelope. It bor
e the Postal Telegraph logotype – the company’s name set in large, jagged letters that suggested bolts of electricity – in the corner. “This is the message that Miss Mayhew was attempting to deliver when she was shot. I couldn’t find the original in her clothing. I even searched her messenger’s bicycle. I’ve asked Reuter to put it in the garage. They’ll have to come for it themselves if Lieutenant Burke doesn’t want it.”
Foxx nodded and made a humming sound.
Winslow said, “Oswald Hicks, the manager at Postal Telegraph, gave me this copy. I guess the shooter didn’t realize that Postal Telegraph keeps copies.”
Foxx nodded impatiently. “All right, Andy, all right. Read it to me.”
He took a sip of ale, lowered the glass to his desktop, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and laced his fingers behind his neck, his elbows extending like the antennae of a giant butterfly. To any casual observer, it would appear that Caligula Foxx was treating himself to a nap, but Andy Winslow knew that the rotund detective’s incisive brain was fully on the alert.
“‘Dear Cousin,’” Winslow read, starting on the night letter. “‘I apologize for my dilatory response to your previous communication, but I have been deeply immersed in sensitive work for the crown and for the government of this nation. A personage has asked me to convey his gratitude for the assistance you so brilliantly provided, even from the distance of three thousand miles. The crown and sceptre have been recovered and restored to their proper resting place, and the scoundrels involved in their temporary abduction are in custody.’”
A smile played around the lips of the detective.
Andy Winslow continued to read. “‘You are surely aware that the situation on the Continent continues to deteriorate, as madmen and villains vie for the title of Most Evil Man in Europe. You own country has, to date, escaped involvement but I assure you, cousin, that this will not be the case for very much longer.’”
Winslow paused for breath. Foxx unlaced his fingers and without opening his eyes gestured for Winslow to read further.
The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction Page 50
