by Jamie Probin
‘It’s a good job you weren’t any later,’ exclaimed Hollingsworth.
‘Charles was never in danger,’ said Sir Oliver confidently. ‘But he was brave nevertheless.’
‘I suppose that takes care of everything. No wait, what about the blackmail? Asbury as well, I suppose?’
Harris nodded. ‘He must have discovered the secrets of Samantha McKinley and Joseph Hollins whilst doing research for one of his articles. Hollins’ CO record was in the War Office files, and the doctor who treated Mrs McKinley must have recorded the loss of her child. Who knows, maybe there were more blackmail notes that we still don’t know about?
‘By this point I think his strategy was just to make the whole thing as complicated as possible, plus it gave some credence to the idea that Sidney Carter had been blackmailing Ronald Asbury, which the trail left behind in the Metropole certainly suggested.’
‘I don’t know I’ve ever heard of a murderer complicating matters so much.’
‘Yes, and if they had just kept things a bit simpler they might actually have gotten away with everything. But you can see why they did it. The basic crime, sans embellishments as it were, would have appeared thus: Charles and Andrea marry; Sir George killed; Charles killed; Andrea, now sole owner of the Wentworth estate, marries Ronald. It was always going to take a lot to disguise such a massive plan.
‘Even so they might have pulled it off. If the murder at the Metropole hadn’t been connected with Upper Wentham so fast we may never have pulled the various strands together. That was another careless mistake on their part. Ronald must have given Andrea some of the notes he withdrew from the bank, and she used one in Mrs Wall’s shop.’
‘Even that needed a huge slice of luck on our part,’ added Hollingsworth. ‘If the redoubtable Mr Greenspan from the Bath and Avon Bank had not been so meticulous in his duties we would never have made the connection.’
‘And more credit where it is due, that itself would not have happened without Hollingsworth’s bloody-minded perseverance and dedication, sending out letters to the banks. Lesser inspectors may have given up the ghost before then.’
‘Oh,’ commented Hollingsworth in an archly patronised voice, ‘so I’ve gone from causing all the trouble to solving the entire thing, have I?’
‘Don’t be daft Hollingsworth,’ shot back Harris, ‘I did all the solving. But without the plodding attention to detail of the police it might have taken me longer...’
Harris suddenly sensed that he had lost the sympathies of his audience, and offered to buy another round. By the time he had returned bearing gifts, the comment had been overlooked.
‘You know, Shakespeare wouldn’t be happy with this case.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because the murderer was supposedly dead. The most obvious suspect in the attempts to kill Charles Wentworth was ignored because he was just a phantom.’
Hollingsworth smiled. ‘The sleeping and the dead are as but pictures.’
‘Exactly. But Charles Wentworth really should have feared a painted devil.’
READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT OF THE NEXT DR. HARRIS MYSTERY, THE THIRTEENTH APOSTLE, COMING SOON.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jamie Probin was born in Lancashire, England. He enjoyed an awkward childhood of loving school far too much to be cool, devouring mystery novels, performing in church pantomimes and the inevitable crushing disappointment of supporting Preston North End. He received his B.Sc. in Mathematical Physics and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Liverpool.
He surprised everyone, including himself, when he moved to the USA in 2001 to teach “math” (there’s only one of them in America, apparently) at a liberal arts university.
He now lives in Charleston, SC with his wife and two – soon to be three – children, and wishes the summers weren’t so hot.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The only reason this book exists is the love and inspiration of my parents, who have always encouraged me and believed in me whatever I tried to do.
Special thanks to my mum for recommending I read Agatha Christie in my early teens, and thus initiating my lifelong love of golden era detective fiction.
A mathematician probably has no business trying to write novels; in response all I can claim is a love of the English language and even more of solving problems. And since, to a university professor, the only thing more fun than solving maths problems is writing them for others to solve, there came a point where I had to try writing a mystery of my own.
Like everything else in my life, I could not have done this without the encouragement of my wife, who mysteriously has a much higher opinion of me than I do myself. She has constantly pushed me to try publishing this, and she rarely takes no for an answer, so here we are. I love you Amy!
Thanks are also due to the amazing Katherine Martinez for producing the cover. I’m grateful she patiently ignored all my rubbish ideas before creating what she knew from the start would be much better. More of her great work can be seen at www.hellokatemars.com.
Thank you to anyone reading this. I’m extremely grateful you gave this book a try and I hope you enjoyed it.
Finally, in the unlikely event that any members of Urban-D are reading, well, you know which character was for you. This is just one more step…
THE THIRTEENTH APOSTLE
A MYSTERY OF THREE IMPOSSIBLE CRIMES
Prologue
In the end it is hard to say exactly what the affair of the Thirteenth Apostle really was.
Was it the extraordinary duel of wits between France’s greatest policeman and his criminal archnemesis, the flamboyant and ingenious master of disguise known as Le Fantôme? Was it the inexplicable murder at the top of the Eiffel Tower? Or the impossible murder in the Chambre de Justice? Maybe, in truth, all of this was merely a prelude to the final, spectacular incident in Le Fantôme’s criminal career, what many still call the most baffling crime of all time: the murder in the Oglethorpe Crypt.
Perhaps if you know the details of this last crime you will see exactly why it has perplexed everyone who has tried to solve it to this day.
The crypt of the Oglethorpe family is a large underground space in the graveyard of St Stephen’s parish church in the village of Four Oaks, Cambridgeshire, topped with a large granite sculpture. Much of this edifice is given over to elaborate carvings of angels, but set in the centre is a large, thick granite door, which opens outwards to reveal several stone steps down into the mausoleum. This door slab is, for curious reasons irrelevant to the murder, equipped with two thick iron brackets on the inside, through which a wooden beam, fully six inches thick, can be slid horizontally.
The victim was discovered inside this tomb, with the door sealed in place and the beam engaged. This beam extended well beyond the edges of the slab and overlapped the edges of the granite doorframe, thus locking the door securely in place. This, of course, could only have been done from inside the crypt. When the police were called to the graveyard they spent ten minutes trying in vain to open the door, before eventually taking a sledgehammer to the stone as a last resort.
Inside they found the victim dead at least eight hours, an ugly wound below his left ribcage with copious amounts of blood pooled around it. Of the weapon, however, there was no sign.
The tomb was completely empty, save for some decaying coffins, and a quick search established they contained only the remains of the Oglethorpe ancestors. One thing all those present agreed upon was that it was utterly impossible for any person or object to have been secreted inside the tomb without their knowledge when they broke in.
The immediate conclusion to be made from discovering a body in such a hermetically sealed tomb was death by suicide, but the circumstances quickly ruled out that possibility.
The police surgeon was positive the wound had been inflicted by a fairly large knife or dagger with a smooth blade, but no item remotely like that was in the crypt. In fact only three objects were discovered inside, apart from th
e body itself: a candle; a long, slender and intricately carved piece of ivory, smooth all over except at one end where it was rough and jagged; and a single liqueur glass. The ivory seemed, at best guess, to be the handle of an object that had been broken away, and was assumed to have been part of the mysterious missing dagger; the glass ultimately proved to contain the remnants of a raspberry liqueur, in which was dissolved a significant quantity of chloral hydrate. Subsequent tests showed that the victim consumed this potent cocktail before death and that he had been unconscious when the injury finally claimed him. According to the coroner this was a blessing for the victim, since the nature of the wound meant death, although inevitable, would not have come for an hour, possibly longer, after he was stabbed, and the protracted end would have been unpleasant.
The final twist in the tale came the day after the body was discovered. A parcel was delivered in person to Scotland Yard, marked for the attention of the chief of the Sûreté. Inside, wrapped in a full copy of that day’s Times, was a smooth blade stained with blood, and a note bearing a brief message: With the death in the Oglethorpe Crypt I bring my career to a close. Le Fantôme.
When tested, the blade and the handle from the crypt matched perfectly. Furthermore, experts confirmed that the dagger was Persian, eighth century, stolen the previous year by Le Fantôme and almost certainly unique.
There was no question that anyone could have left the tomb after killing the victim and sealed the door in place with the wooden beam from the outside. But there was equally no question that the blade with which the murder was committed was wrapped in a newspaper not even printed when the body was discovered, and delivered by hand to Scotland Yard twenty four hours later.
Countless police and amateur detectives from all over Europe tried their hand at solving the mystery of the Oglethorpe Crypt but one after another eventually admitted defeat in the face of the sheer impossibility of the crime.
For some reason Le Fantôme had drugged his victim and then inflicted a fatal blow to the abdomen, before taking the dagger – or, at least, the business half of it – and leaving the crypt. Then from outside the closed door he somehow slid a thirty pound wooden beam horizontally through two brackets, leaving a sealed tomb without so much as a peephole to connect it with the outside. A day later he walked into Scotland Yard without anyone noticing and left the murder weapon on the commissioner’s desk.
To this day no one knows how the crime was done. Perhaps when you read the full account of the affair of the Thirteenth Apostle, you might finally piece together the truth behind history’s most famous and most impossible crime.
(Excerpts from “Ghost in the Machine: the extraordinary career of Le Fantôme” by Marie Sauton)
The 1930s was a remarkable era for Paris in a variety of ways, but perhaps none more so than crime. It was during this time that criminal endeavour moved beyond mere functionality, becoming elevated to almost a performance art. Successful repeat perpetrators of crime became famous, as news of their exploits spread. Once newspapers had generated enough interest in their works, some memorable epithet would be conferred on the criminal – or, in later years, actually adopted by him – at which point they attained the highest reaches of celebrity. In the Paris of the 1930s, the names on the lips of the populace were not those of singers, actors, novelists, poets or painters – but the mysterious criminals who taunted the law as a matter of sport. Provided these men and women kept their actions confined, so that no general threat of terror was perceived, they stood to garner the status of folk hero.
In polite company, the names “L’esprit”, “Le Chat”, “Flamande” and others were uttered in tones which were ostensibly disapproving, yet usually tinged with a hint of admiration. But the name heard most frequently, and with the greatest sense of thrilled awe, was that of “Le Fantôme”.
No other criminal had the audacity or panache of the one who made the Baudry Tapestry disappear from the Palace of Versailles under the eyes of fifteen heads of state and countless security guards; who spirited a priceless sculpture of Peter from Chartres Cathedral while hundreds of worshippers celebrated mass; and who stole a sapphire necklace reputed to have belonged to Marie Antoinette from around the neck of its owner as she sat in a box at l’Opéra watching a performance of Verdi’s Otello.
He (for, of course, it was assumed only a man could so thoroughly outwit the authorities at every turn) was among the first to attain celebrity, and without doubt the most flamboyant. It was he who recognised the potential in using the newspapers to his own ends, regularly writing to the general public or the police through this medium. The law tried to quash this appropriation of such a mouthpiece, saying that it was irresponsible to encourage hero worship for a common criminal; but with the public anxiously awaiting these missives – sometimes announcing the intention of committing a crime, other times explaining how an earlier act, which had completely baffled the police, had been accomplished – the newspaper lucky enough to receive Le Fantôme’s letter was unlikely to turn down the chance to dramatically boost its circulation.
Le Fantôme’s ingenuity and eye for flamboyance undoubtedly helped thrust him to the forefront of his class; in hindsight one suspects several of his crimes were crafted purely for their dramatic flair, rather than any material gain. Many suspected he must be wealthy, and that he did what he did simply for the thrill. But the defining characteristic that elevated Le Fantôme to unique heights was his astonishing talent for disguise. To those supercilious few who derided Le Fantôme as a cheap craver of fame it was rightly pointed out that, not only were there far safer ways for someone of such intelligence to achieve notoriety, but also that it was a very peculiar kind of fame; for not one person in France knew what Le Fantôme looked like. He could have walked past his biggest fan on the Boulevard Haussmann without them ever knowing.
It was commonly said that no one had ever seen Le Fantôme’s face, but, as some commentators pointed out, it was in fact likely that most Parisians had seen his face at one time or another, and yet never knew it.
What was true was that the reconstruction of several crimes showed that Le Fantôme had a remarkable gift for impersonation. After the fact it was deduced he had imitated bank managers, policemen, shopkeepers, newspaper editors, even the deputy curator of the British Museum (for his career extended beyond France’s borders), but wisely never in front of people who knew the real person well. However letters from Le Fantôme revealed that he considered this a gaudy and clichéd use of his gift; his preference was not for imitation, but for blending seamlessly into any environment he chose. In most cases it was subsequently realised that he had been present at the scene of the crime, not as an important player, but as a guard, or assistant, or taxi driver who drew no attention at all. As many other criminals, who attempted to copy the modus operandi of their hero, found to their cost, this talent was nowhere near as simple as it sounded. Many Parisian cells were filled with aspiring villains whose attempts to blend in as a passing priest (or, even more disastrously, to impersonate the owner of a shop in front of staff who saw that owner every day) stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb.
Le Fantôme’s anonymity was his greatest asset, and one that might be assumed to lead him to be increasingly careful as his fame grew, along with the Sûreté’s determination to bring him to justice. Instead he seemed to grow ever more reckless, openly taunting the police with detailed information about his next crime, and still escaping undetected.
Not all of his escapades were unqualified successes. Early in his career a small number of episodes were foiled by the new chief of the Sûreté, M. Henri Toussante. Of course Toussante never apprehended le Fantôme, but he did thwart several of his schemes. Some commentators maintained that these apparent defeats were a deliberate ploy by Le Fantôme, who had astutely realised that not only do all heroes need a nemesis, but the reverse was equally true for villains. By creating for himself an antagonist, he gave a name and face to his opponent and allowed his schemes to be
followed in a more personal way by the public. Le Fantôme versus the law was not as gripping a narrative as Le Fantôme versus Toussante. By giving a face to the law and making the battle more personal, and more importantly allowing the newspapers to thrust photographic images of at least one side of the conflict in the public’s face, the reports were elevated from distant, dry facts to a soap opera in which the everyday person could invest. By staging some apparent victories for the Sûreté, these commentators said, Le Fantôme was actually crafting the exact narrative he had planned.
The majority of observers considered this unlikely, as M. Toussante was a brilliant detective, surely destined for greatness even without his new-found archenemy; nevertheless, his involvement in these events which so grabbed the public’s attention did indeed thrust him squarely into the public eye. The letters of Le Fantôme were often addressed personally to Toussante, and the public began to see this policeman as their protector, replacing the featureless, amorphous entity of the law with a personality. His celebrity soon rivalled that of Le Fantôme, and by the middle of the decade all of France, and most of Western Europe, anxiously followed the ongoing battle of wits between these two titans.