No one objected, not even Polly anymore, so Shirley-Ann, who was quite fired up, said, "It was extremely clever, if what the papers say is right, dressing up as a window cleaner and climbing through an upstairs window."
Jessica remarked, "Extremely obvious, I'd have said. What intrigues me is why he did it."
"Or she," put in Shirley-Ann, scoring on the rebound.
"Or she. It's the world's most valuable stamp. They're not going to sell it."
"People steal famous paintings all the time," Miss Chilmark pointed out. "They must have a reason."
"Well, there's the theory that a fanatical collector wants to own them. He doesn't do it to make a profit, just to gloat over what he possesses."
"Do such people exist?" asked Shirley-Ann. "Outside books, I mean."
"I'm sure they do. There are too many works of art that have just vanished over the years. And stamp collecting is a lonely occupation anyway. I don't have any difficulty picturing some middle-aged man with a personality defect poring over his collection."
"Or woman," Sid managed to say, and when everyone had got over the surprise there were smiles.
"Actually, very few women go in for collecting," said Jessica. "This acquisitive impulse is a masculine thing."
"Shoes?" Shirley-Ann reminded everyone.
"Hats, too," said Polly. "I have a cupboard simply stuffed with hats."
"I meant useless things like stamps and beermats."
"I don't think the person who stole it is a collector. I think they're going to demand a ransom," speculated Shirley-Ann. "That's what I'd do. Anyone who owns a stamp like that has oodles of money to spare. I'd ask for fifty thousand."
"How would you collect it?" Milo asked, stroking his beard as if the prospect really beckoned. "That's always the problem."
"Oh, I wouldn't handle the money at all. I'd let the owner know that it had to be transferred through his bank to a secret Swiss account."
"Do you have a secret Swiss account?" Polly asked Shirley-Ann in all seriousness.
"No, but with fifty grand as a deposit, I bet any bank would be only too happy to open one for me. I could afford to fly to Zurich and fill in the forms, or whatever."
"It can't be so simple," said Jessica.
"Can you think of anything better?"
Miss Chilmark interrupted the exchange. "Madam Chairman, this is getting us nowhere. When I suggested this as a topic, I had in mind the much more fascinating problem of the riddles—if that is the word—that were on the radio and in the papers, apparently composed by the person who stole the stamp. Couldn't we address ourselves to those?"
"By all means," said Polly, chastened. "Do you remember how they went?"
"I have them here." Miss Chilmark opened her crocodile-skin handbag and took out two press cuttings.
"There's not much point in discussing the first one," said Jessica. "That's been solved by events. What was it. . . 'J.M.W.T. ...'
" 'Surrounded by security.
Victoria, you challenge me.
I shall shortly come to thee,'"
Miss Chilmark read aloud.
"It's all been explained by the police," said Jessica. "They were tipped off that someone was planning to steal a Turner from the Victoria Gallery, so they doubled the security. But it was a bluff, and the real target was the stamp. Let's look at the latest riddle. That's much more of a challenge. Have you got it there?"
Miss Chilmark obliged:
" 'Whither Victoria and with whom—
The Grand Old Queen?
Look for the lady in the locked room
At seventeen.'"
"Is it by the person who wrote the first riddle?" said Milo. "That's the first thing to ask."
"It sounds similar to me," said Shirley-Ann.
"The styles do have a certain textual affinity," Miss Chilmark said with a donnish air. "There's a touch of the archaic in the word 'thee' in the first riddle that has an echo in the 'whither' in the second."
"Oh, come on. It's only some birdbrained idea of what poetry should sound like," said Jessica. "Straight out of The Golden Treasury."
"Nevertheless," insisted Miss Chilmark.
"You're probably right," Jessica was compelled to admit.
Miss Chilmark was keen to show that she had done her homework. "And of course there are allusions to other phrases. 'The Grand Old Queen' is reminiscent of the epithet by which the Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone was known, the Grand Old Man, often abbreviated to the G.O.M." f
"Or the Grand Old Duke of York," said Polly seriously. She wasn't given to humorous remarks.
Miss Chilmark chose to ignore that. "Then 'Look for the lady' carries the idea of that card trick 'Find the Lady,' just as 'in the locked room' suggests another piece of trickery, the locked room mystery—that Milo happened to mention only last week. The undertone of hocus-pocus is inescapable."
"So what do you think it means?" asked Shirley-Ann.
If there was an answer, it wasn't communicated, because this was the moment when the door opened and the dog Marlowe padded in, headed straight for the circle of chairs, leaped onto the one beside Miss Chilmark and demonstrated affection for that horrified lady by lifting a large paw to her chest. In backing away, she tipped the chair backward. Rupert, who had come in behind his boisterous pet, was quick to react. He darted forward and caught the back of the chair before it hit the floor. An unseemly accident was averted. Nothing worse had resulted than a display of rather more of Miss Chilmark's legs than she or her companions desired. She was wearing popsocks. As if to apologize for startling her, Marlowe jumped down and licked her lily-white left knee.
This was unfortunate. The dog had been much on Miss Chilmark's mind all week, there was no doubt of that. "Get it away from me!" she cried out hysterically. "It's going to bite me."
Clearly Rupert hadn't trained Marlowe to respond to voice commands, so he grabbed him by the scruff and hauled him to the other side of the circle. Marlowe gave a growl of protest. "He's frustrated now. He was only showing you affection," Rupert told Miss Chilmark.
Jessica suddenly said, "Does anyone have a paper bag?"
"What for?" said Polly.
"She's hyperventilating."
"Oh, what next?"
Miss Chilmark was taking deep, rapid breaths and going ominously pink. Her eyes had a glazed look.
Sid reached under his chair for a plastic carrier bag. He rummaged inside and took out a brown paper bag containing something that proved to be a secondhand novel by John Dickson Carr. After removing the book he handed the empty bag to Jessica, who placed the open end over Miss Chilmark's mouth and nose.
"She'll suffocate," said Polly.
"No," said Jessica calmly. "It forces her to rebreathe her own air. It should bring the acid-alkali balance of the blood back to normal and relieve the symptoms. Take the dog out of her sight, Rupert. You know it upsets her."
The usually ungovernable Rupert responded to the unmistakable note of authority and led Marlowe to the door without a murmur on his part or a whimper on Marlowe's.
The others watched in fascination as the bag expanded and contracted against Miss Chilmark's face, making her appear uncannily like a tropical frog. After a short time the remedy produced an improvement in the breathing. Jessica spoke some calming words, mainly to reassure Miss Chilmark that the dog was no longer in the room. The bag was removed from her face. Polly offered to drive her home.
Miss Chilmark said in a small voice, "I'd like to stay if you're quite sure the dog isn't coming back. I'm not entirely clear what happened."
It was decided that Miss Chilmark would benefit from a cup of coffee, so the break was taken early.
Shirley-Ann told Jessica she was awfully clever knowing how to deal with the hyperventilation.
"Not at all. I had an aunt who was prone to it. She always had a spare paper bag with her."
"Do you think Miss Chilmark is well enough to stay?"
Jessica smiled. "She wouldn't dream of
leaving. She's won her point, hasn't she? The dog has been outlawed. Now she wants to enjoy her triumph."
This interpretation struck Shirley-Ann first of all as callous, later as discerning.
Presently Rupert returned, looking forlorn. "I left Marlowe with some old chums in the Saracen's Head," he informed everyone, and added pointedly, "He'll fit in anywhere if he's allowed to."
They resumed the meeting, and when Shirley-Ann offered to speak about Stanley Ellin's short stories she was warmly received. The group were better informed about Ellin than Shirley-Ann expected. Rupert and Jessica had each read the famous and gruesome story The Specialty of the House, and Polly, never to be underestimated, said she had copies of The Eighth Circle and Stronghold on her shelves at home. Fortunately no one had read The Blessington Method.
"What is the Blessington Method?" Jessica asked.
"That's what someone in the story asks. I'd better not say."
"Is it a long story? Why don't you read it to us? There's time, I'm sure. We've often had things read out, but never a whole story."
Fortunately Shirley-Ann rather enjoyed reading aloud. At school she'd won the Miss Cranwell Prize for Bible Reading two years in a row. So the Bloodhounds learned the sinister secret of the Blessington Method as practiced by the Society for Gerontology.
"You read it beautifully, but it's not to my taste at all," said Polly when Shirley-Ann had finished. "I found it chilling."
Jessica said, "His stories are chilling. That's the whole point."
"I know, dear. I have read some of his novels. This one struck home rather more forcibly. I'm not so far from being an elderly relative myself."
"It's not only about elderly people," said Jessica. "The principle behind it could be applied to any other potential misfits— the mentally ill, the unemployed, sexual deviants, racial minorities."
Rupert fairly sizzled with approval. "Have I discovered an ally at last? You're absolutely right, of course. Crime writers have a duty to bring the complacent middle classes face to face with the festering sores in our society."
"I didn't say that."
He gave one of his gummy laughs. "I said it for you, ducky."
Jessica was incensed. She pointed a finger at him. "Ducky, I am not—you patronizing old fart. And I don't need you as a mouthpiece. I'll say what I want myself."
Rupert turned to Milo and said, "Hark at her."
Someone needed quickly to defuse the tension. Milo glanced across at Polly. "Is it time, I wonder, for my contribution on the locked room mystery? I brought my copy of The Hollow Man."
"What a splendid suggestion," said Polly.
"And then we'll all sing 'Jesus Wants Me for a Sun-beam,' " said Rupert.
"What on earth makes you say that?" asked Polly.
"Darling, you've missed the point. If you're going to run this like a Sunday school, we might as well sing hymns."
"Don't you patronize me either," said Polly, taking her cue from Jessica.
"I wouldn't dare, ma'am, after what you did to my dog. I couldn't bear to be banished to the Saracen's Head for the rest of the evening."
Polly conceded a smile. "Milo, why don't you begin? We've heard more than enough from Rupert."
Milo took a deep breath that threatened a lengthy dissertation. Some of the smiles around the circle froze. He began: "A crime is committed in a sealed, locked room. Nobody except the victim is found there when the door is unlocked. A mystery par excellence. None applied more energy and brain-power to it than John Dickson Carr."
Shirley-Ann noticed that Sid nodded in support, and she recalled that he was one of the three people present who had claimed to have read The Hollow Man. Remarkably, his eyes were fixed on Milo, and his hands were rotating the flat cap on his knees. She had not seen him so animated before.
Milo was saying, "Some of you have criticized the classic detective novel for being unrealistic. At our last meeting I heard the word preposterous."
"From me. I'll repeat it this week if you like," said Jessica.
"No need. Improbability, John Dickson Carr boldly tells us in The Hollow Man, is not to be despised. It isn't a fatal flaw. On the contrary, it is the chief glory of the detective story— and that is as true of the books you people espouse as of those I prefer to read. We are drawn irresistibly to the improbable. Does anyone deny it? Rupert's mean streets and Jessica's lady sleuths are never more engaging than when some crime is committed in bizarre, unaccountable circumstances. And the supreme situation, the purest challenge to probability any writer has devised is the locked room puzzle."
Rupert couldn't resist saying, "Absolute piffle."
Milo glared at him. "You're going to tell us that no locked room murder ever really happened, no doubt. You'd be wrong. Before The Hollow Man was published, a Chinese laundryman was found murdered in New York in a locked room, and there have been other cases since. But I won't be sidetracked. My words may not impress you, but I fancy that Dickson Carr's might."
He brandished his copy of The Hollow Man like an evangelist preacher and Shirley-Ann secretly thought back to Rupert's remark about the Sunday school.
"Chapter seventeen is entitled 'The Locked-Room Lecture.' Ideally, fellow Bloodhounds, I should have liked to read it in the kind of setting Dickson Carr describes, after dinner, around the glow of a table lamp, with the wine bottles empty and coffee on the table and snowflakes drifting past the windows. But I suppose a church crypt is not a bad alternative."
With his audience well primed for the treat in store, Milo opened the book and glanced first at the Contents page. He turned to the right chapter. Then he blinked, frowned, and said, "How odd. I don't remember using this as a book-mark." He picked an envelope from between the pages and glanced at it.
He went silent. The envelope was yellow with age, the address in fine copperplate so faded that it was barely legible. In the top right corner was a single postage stamp with the head of Queen Victoria on a black background and the words ONE PENNY along the lower border. The stamp was overprinted with a cancellation mark saying PAID. Just below and to the right was the postmark, remarkably even and clear:
BATH
MY 2
1840
Chapter Twelve
"It's impossible," said Milo, blushing deeply. He stared at the flimsy envelope lying across the open book. "Impossible."
Miss Chilmark, seated on his left, had her hand pressed to her mouth. She swayed away from Milo as if he were contagious. A second bout of hyperventilation could not be ruled out.
On Milo's other side, Jessica took a long look and then raised her eyebrows across the circle at the others seated opposite.
"What is it?" Polly asked. "What have you got there, Milo?"
Rupert, having leaned across Jessica to see for himself, said, "Hey ho. What a turnup!"
"Somebody tell me," said Polly, becoming petulant.
"It would appear to be the missing Penny Black," said Rupert. "Milo, my old fruit, I salute you. I wouldn't have dreamed that you of all people would turn out to be the most wanted man in Bath."
"But I didn't steal it," Milo blurted out. "I'm no thief."
"You're among friends." Rupert went on as if he hadn't heard. "If we're honest, most of us have a sneaking admiration for you. This was brilliantly worked out. You don't need to say any more. Just shut the book, and we'll all behave as if nothing happened."
Milo's hands were shaking. He fumbled with the book and practically knocked the envelope to the floor.
"Careful!" said Jessica. "It's worth a fortune."
"I didn't take it," Milo insisted. "I don't know anything about this."
"You can be frank with us," said Jessica. "Rupert's right. We'll stand by you if you promise to give it back and say no more about it. We can keep a secret. That's a fair offer, isn't it?" She appealed to the rest of the circle.
"But I've done nothing wrong," Milo shrilled. "This is the first time I've ever laid eyes on the thing. Really."
"How
did it get into your book?" asked Shirley-Ann.
"I haven't the faintest idea."
"None of us could have slipped it between the pages," said Polly, and then undermined the statement by adding, "Could we?"
"It's been here on my lap all the time," said Milo. "I'm not accusing any of you, but someone planted it on me, and I'd like to know how."
"What about when Marlowe came in and upset Miss Chilmark?" Shirley-Ann suggested. "In the confusion—"
"No," Milo interrupted her. "I kept hold of the book. I didn't leave my chair. It must have been done before I got here, but I can't fathom how. Someone must have broken into my boat. Oh dear, this is so distressing."
Shirley-Ann recalled being told that Milo lived on a narrowboat on the canal. "Have you had any visitors lately? Anyone you left alone for a few minutes?"
"Not for weeks."
"Do you lock the boat when you're not there?"
"Of course. I have a damned great padlock. I carry the key on my key ring." He produced it from his pocket. "This one. You see? I bought it from Foxton's. You get a guarantee that no other lock with a similar key has been sold from the same shop—and they're the only people who sell them in the west of England." He sighed heavily. "What am I going to do?"
"Go to the police," said Polly.
"They're going to give me a bad time, aren't they? They're not going to believe this."
Nobody said so, but Milo's reading of events was probably right. His camp manner wasn't likely to help him at the police station.
Shirley-Ann said, "Couldn't you just send it back to the Postal Museum in an envelope?"
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