The Bags of Tricks Affair--A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery

by Bill Pronzini

  Thought of food produced hunger pangs, which in turn prodded her out of the office. All she had eaten today was two slices of bread with black currant jam for breakfast, hardly enough to satisfy her until supper. After posting the letter to Miss Lucretia L. Moffit, she crossed the street to Sullivan’s Fish Market. Usually she did her seafood shopping at Tony’s Fish Stand in the open-air California Market, San Francisco’s “entrepôt of foods,” which took up an entire block from Pine to California Streets between Montgomery and Kearney. But there was no time for a trip there today. She would have to make do with Sullivan’s somewhat inferior selection.

  She bought two pieces of fresh cod, the cats’ favorite, and for herself a large crab and shrimp cocktail. These she took back to the office, along with a fresh-baked soft pretzel supplied by one of the sidewalk food vendors outside the market. She seldom ate at her desk—never, when John was present—but time constraints made it necessary today.

  For the remainder of her time in the office she entered the sum received from Joshua Brandywine in the agency’s financial ledger, along with a notation of the amount paid to Whit Slattery for his services, then wrote a report of her investigation for their files. No messengers or other visitors appeared, nor had John when the hands on the Seth Thomas clock reached four-thirty. Either circumstances had forced him to spend another day in Delford, or the Southern Pacific train from the San Joaquin Valley was late arriving. Should it be the latter, he would come straight to the agency. In case he did, she wrote a brief note to let him know all was well and explaining why she was departing early, and placed it on his desk blotter.

  She was fortunate to board a trolley for Russian Hill just as it was about to leave the Market Street station, which gave her a few extra minutes at home to prepare for the evening ahead. Adam and Eve made short work of the cod she’d bought and yowled for more while she changed clothes. She took her time choosing her supper wear, finally settling on a high-necked, floor-length beige dress with leg-o’-mutton sleeves. A beaded purse and a fashionable ivory velvet cartwheel plumed hat completed her ensemble.

  The headquarters of Voting Rights for Women was located on Parrot Street. Sabina arrived twenty-five minutes early, which allowed her sufficient time to meet the honored guests and to have a brief private conversation with Amity. Her friend was more than welcoming, the period of awkwardness between them now a thing of the past; they arranged a resumption of their bicycling in Golden Gate Park on Sunday morning.

  She had a splendid time at the supper. The food, catered by Amity and another wealthy member of the movement, was plentiful and well prepared; Sabina tucked into it with what Callie termed “delicate gusto.” The speeches by the Southern California delegates were spirited and uplifting, though their absolute certainty that the voting rights amendment would pass in the November election struck Sabina as a shade too optimistic. The mostly male opposition to its passage was also well organized, better funded, and unequivocal in its determination to defeat the measure.

  Ten o’clock had come and gone when she left the VRW headquarters. Rather than wait in the hope of hailing a passing hansom to take her home, she boarded a nearby trolley car. This neighborhood was a relatively safe one, as was her own, but it was not always safe for a woman to travel alone on public conveyances at this hour. No one bothered her, however, on the car or when she alighted at her stop half a block from her building.

  Streetlights illuminated the otherwise empty sidewalk as she trudged uphill. It was so quiet at this hour she could hear the heels of her Cromwell high-button shoes clicking softly on the pavement. A single-horse brougham, its side lamps dark, its outside driver’s seat empty, was parked in the shadow of an acacia tree at the curb in front. She took less notice of it as she passed by than she should have.

  Just as she turned onto the path that led to the porch steps, the creaking sound of someone alighting from the brougham came from behind her. Quick footsteps and a familiar medicinal whiff warned her of the presence of danger. She started to pivot around, to reach into her bag for the Remington derringer—too late.

  An arm snaked around her neck, bent her backward, and pinned her against a braced, hard-muscled body. Before she could free the derringer, or make any sort of outcry, a wet cloth slapped over her nose and mouth, its potent reek causing her to gasp and then gag.

  Ether!

  The voice that said harshly in her ear, “I’ve been waiting for you, Mrs. Carpenter,” belonged to Jeffrey Gaunt.

  She struggled desperately, trying and failing to claw the cloth away so she could breathe, to pull loose of his grasp by kicking at his shins. Her senses reeled from the ether; her strength swiftly ebbed. Waves of dizziness overcame her.

  Her last memory was of being dragged backward into the darkened brougham.

  18

  QUINCANNON

  The reply to his Chicago wire had finally come through when Quincannon stopped again at the telegraph office at nine-thirty Saturday morning, on his way back from a brief visit with the railroad station agent and a private consultation with Marshal Tom Boxhardt. The answers to his questions were all just as he had expected. Now he had all the necessary information he needed to support his deductions.

  Two drawbacks prevented him from fully relishing what was about to take place. The delay in receiving the wire was one; the fact that Sheriff Beadle and his deputies still had yet to arrive from Fresno was the other. These annoyances made it all but impossible for him to be finished with business in time to board the day’s one Stockton–San Francisco passenger train when it passed through Delford.

  He crossed the street to the bank to collect Aram Kasabian. “An unveiling is about to take place at the jail,” he said, “that you and Mayor Parnell will want to witness.”

  “What unveiling? I thought that with the two fugitives and O. H. Goodland in custody awaiting Sheriff Beadle’s arrival, everything about the recent unpleasantness was settled.”

  “Not quite yet, though it soon will be,” Quincannon said. “I’ll explain in full once all parties are gathered in the marshal’s office.”

  He made a similar statement to James Parnell at the mayor’s mercantile store, after which the three of them went to the hotel where Cora Lee Johnson was being held under guard. When the deputy on duty unlocked her door, they found her dressed once again in the green-and-blue outfit she’d worn at the mortar launching. She was as sullen as the night before, and except for another angry claim of innocence, uncommunicative. The party then proceeded to the jail.

  The marshal’s office and the two adjoining prisoner cells were all housed in the same large room. Mortimer Rollins and O. H. Goodland were glowering and glaring at each other through the bars between their respective cells. The party’s entrance turned their attention, brought them to their cell doors. Quincannon and the others spread out in a ragged half circle between them and a pair of cluttered desks.

  Boxhardt said wearily, “They’ve been jawing for the past hour, throwing accusations back and forth.”

  The wheat farmer was in a barely controlled rage, exacerbated by a blotchy skinned hangover. He growled, “You can’t keep me locked up in here, dammit. Get me Sam Haskins like I been asking you to.”

  “Mr. Quincannon says you won’t be needing a lawyer.”

  “No? Then let me out.”

  “In good time.”

  Goodland appealed to Parnell. “James? You’re the mayor, make Tom set me loose right now.”

  “Mrs. Daks and myself as well,” Rollins said before Parnell could answer. “This is all an intolerable misunderstanding. We are legitimate pluviculturists—obviously the victims of mistaken identity. We have committed no crimes in the Midwest or in Delford.” His voice trembled with injured innocence and righteous indignation. Bluff and bluster to the very end.

  “You tried to make off in the middle of the night with the coalition’s two thousand dollars,” Boxhardt reminded him.

  “I’ve told you and told you. We had no idea
the money was hidden on the wagon trace.”

  Quincannon said, “Fraud and theft are the least of your crimes in this community.”

  “Now what are you accusing us of?”

  “Willful homicide.”

  The pronouncement caused a stir of surprise.

  “You can’t mean the murder of poor Leonide,” Rollins said. “The man who shot him is right here in the cell next to mine.”

  “That’s a damn lie!” Goodland shouted. “I didn’t kill that phony rainmaker and you and that woman there know it!”

  “Of course you did. No one else could have.”

  “Liar!”

  “That he is,” Quincannon agreed. “Mr. Goodland did no shooting last night.”

  “By God,” the wheat farmer said, “it’s about time somebody believed me.”

  Rollins caught hold of the bars of his cell and poked his face between them. “How can you make such a statement?” he demanded of Quincannon. “You were at the shack, you know what happened as well as I do. Goodland and Leonide were together inside. I repeat: no one else could have done it.”

  “But someone else did. You, Rollins.”

  “My name is not Rollins—”

  “Mortimer Rollins. Confidence man, thief, murderer.”

  “You must have taken leave of your senses. I was outside with you when the shot was fired. How could I possibly be guilty?”

  “By means of clever planning, careful timing, and the help of your accomplice. Or rather, your paramour.”

  Cora Lee roused herself and said scornfully, “I suppose you mean me. A ridiculous accusation.”

  “No more ridiculous than the fact that your real name is Cora Lee Johnson and you were not the wife of the dead man, true name Leopold Saxe, but his paramour as well.”

  Kasabian asked, “But if they conspired to kill Saxe, what was their motive?”

  “Revenge. Lust. Greed.”

  “Revenge?”

  “Saxe was a womanizer. I suspect Cora Lee had had enough of his illicit affairs and out of spite took his partner as her lover. His advances to Mr. Goodland’s daughter, successful or not, were the final straw.”

  “Preposterous!” Rollins cried. “Nefarious!”

  “Fact,” Quincannon said. “As for your motives, you’d grown to hate Saxe for a different reason. He’d taken over control of your swindles, reduced you to a subservient role by the force of his will. With him dead, you could have Cora Lee and the money stolen from the coalition, and be your own master again.”

  “Utter rot, I say.”

  “Mr. Goodland’s rash behavior two days ago gave you the perfect foil for your scheme. And the scheme itself worked smoothly enough. If I hadn’t come to Delford, you might well have gotten away with it.”

  “What scheme?” Parnell said. “How did they work it?”

  This was the moment Quincannon had been waiting for. He drew it out by producing his already charged pipe, setting a match flame to it, and puffing until he had a good draw. He fancied he could feel the crackling of suspense among the gathered.

  “Well, sir? How did they work it?”

  Quincannon exhaled a haze of smoke. Instead of answering the mayor directly, he turned to Cora Lee and asked, “Why did you fire the mortar last night?”

  The question caught her off guard. “Why … I was the only person on the platform. Leonide and Ben were inside the shack with Goodland.”

  “Why didn’t you wait for them to come out?”

  “The launching was scheduled for seven. Rather than delay, I went ahead on my own.”

  “But you’d never fired the mortar before.”

  “Not here, but elsewhere—”

  “Nowhere else. Your frightened actions after lighting the fuse prove last night was your first time and that it was done by prearrangement. Rollins loaded the mortar while I was talking to Saxe so it would be ready for you. Properly loading such a device is more difficult and dangerous than firing it.”

  Quincannon shifted his gaze to O. H. Goodland. “Mr. Goodland, why did you go to the shack after being warned to stay away?”

  “A message was slipped under the door of my room. Asking me to come there promptly at seven to settle our differences and signed with Daks’ name. The word ‘promptly’ was underlined.”

  “Leonide did write such a note,” Cora Lee lied. “He told me he had, which is why I wasn’t concerned when I saw Goodland arrive.”

  “No, the note was written by you or Rollins—a careful forgery.”

  She started to deny it, changed her mind, and said nothing.

  Quincannon produced the Colt New Pocket revolver, which Boxhardt had let him have earlier. He showed it to the wheat farmer. “Did you take this weapon with you last night, Mr. Goodland?”

  “I did not. I had no weapon when I went to the shack and Daks had no idea what I was doing there. He was telling me that when somebody—this bird Rollins—clubbed me from behind.”

  “When did you last have the gun in your possession?”

  “Friday afternoon, after I made the mistake of threatening Daks or Saxe with it. The marshal took it away from me.”

  Boxhardt said, “I emptied it and put it in his saddlebag at the hotel livery. Rollins was there at the time; he must’ve seen me do it, and come back later and swiped it.”

  “That he did.”

  “I won’t stand for any more of this calumny.” Rollins’ voice had risen. He had finally begun to lose his composure. “How dare you accuse me when you know it’s impossible for me to be guilty of shooting Leonide. I’ll say it again: I was outside when he was killed. You saw me, Marshal. And you, Quincannon, you heard him beg for his life and you heard the fatal shot. You can’t deny the truth of that.”

  “I can’t and won’t deny what I seemed to hear.”

  “Seemed? What do you mean, seemed?”

  Quincannon removed another object from his pocket. “I found this on the floor shortly after we broke into the shack. When I picked it up it was hot to the touch.”

  They all looked at the shell casing displayed in the upturned palm of his hand.

  “Couldn’t have come from Mr. Goodland’s gun,” Boxhardt said. “Revolvers don’t eject spent shells. Only one bullet was fired from that Colt’s, and the empty was in the cylinder.”

  Kasabian asked, “Then where did that one come from?”

  “The fire inside the boiler,” Quincannon said, “where Rollins placed it after he clubbed Mr. Goodland, shot Saxe, and put the revolver in Mr. Goodland’s hand. A blank cartridge. The heat exploded the powder, simulating a gunshot, and the explosion kicked the casing out through the open fire door. Rollins had used the trick before—I’ll explain where and how shortly—and so he was able to gauge within a minute or so when it would go off.”

  “So that’s what happened, and with me as the goat.” Goodland glared sideways at Rollins, reached a hand through into the other’s cell. “By Christ, if these bars weren’t between us—”

  Rollins quickly backed away.

  “The shot that actually killed Saxe,” Boxhardt said. “How was that done?”

  “Fired when Cora Lee launched the rocket when she saw Mr. Goodland arrive promptly at seven. The boom of the mortar drowned the sound of the report. Timing, you see?”

  “But what about the locked door?”

  “It wasn’t locked. Rollins created the illusion that it was locked by gripping the knob and rattling it while he blocked the doorway with his body. The bolt wasn’t damaged, a fact that was overlooked in the excitement.”

  “By everyone except you.”

  “The eyes of a trained detective,” Quincannon said.

  Rollins had to know he was caught, but in desperation he played his last card. “Leonide was still alive when we were all outside. You know he was, you heard him beg for his life—you and the others heard him!”

  “No,” Quincannon said, “we didn’t.”

  Once again he paused dramatically and then asked the banker,
“Mr. Kasabian, do you remember my telling you that Saxe and Rollins were once variety performers in Chicago?”

  “Yes. Low comedy and specialty acts, you said.”

  “I didn’t know for certain what the specialty acts were until a short while ago, when I received a wire from the Chicago office of the Pinkerton agency. One act the pair performed was a magic show in which a pistol was supposedly fired on command. Saxe was the magician, Rollins the one who invented and staged the trick. Rollins was also a performer with his own specialty. One he performed quite well, by all accounts.”

  “What specialty, for heaven’s sake?”

  Quincannon said, “Ventriloquism.”

  * * *

  Sheriff Beadle and his deputies finally rattled into Delford aboard a prison wagon, anticlimactically, a few minutes shy of noon. By this time, even though Rollins once more lapsed into churlish silence, Cora Lee Johnson had admitted her part in the murder scheme. She claimed the entire plan had been Rollins’ and that he had coerced her into going along with it—a falsehood, to be sure, but one she had already begun to play well with lamentations and tears of bogus remorse. She was a comely woman; Quincannon had little doubt that she would be able to convince a male jury to be lenient.

  Ordinarily he would have basked in the approbation heaped upon him by his client, the marshal, the mayor, O. H. Goodland, and Sheriff A. Beadle, but now that the case had been resolved, Sabina’s welfare was uppermost in his mind and he was anxious to return to San Francisco. Even though he’d missed the daily passenger train, another night in Delford would have been intolerable. With the assistance of Parnell and Boxhardt, he arranged with the station agent for the special privilege of departing on the next train through Delford, a slow freight leaving at three o’clock. According to the Southern Pacific timetable, the freight would put him in Stockton in time to catch the evening passenger train westbound from Sacramento. If the latter were on schedule, he would arrive back in the city at eight-thirty.