The Plague of Thieves Affair

by Marcia Muller

  “The evidence says he bore plenty. Doesn’t believe he’s Charles Fairchild, got some screws loose and thinks he’s this British detective, Sherlock Holmes. Showed up here at … what time, Hatton?”

  The younger detective consulted his notebook. “Ten-fifteen. Dressed in what he called his ‘true colors’ and carrying a walking stick with a heavy knob.”

  True colors. That meant Inverness cape, deerstalker cap, blackthorn stick—the outfit he’d worn the first time Sabina had met him.

  “Insisted he was this Holmes gent,” McGinn said, “and that he’d never heard of Charles Fairchild, never been to Chicago, and had no intention of going there. Victim tried to talk sense to him, but he wasn’t having any. Started yelling that the victim was trying to … what was the word he used?”

  “Persecute,” Hatton said.

  “Trying to persecute him and he wouldn’t stand for it. Then without warning he up and bashed Mr. Fairchild over the head with his stick.”

  “Kept hitting Roland with it!” Octavia Fairchild cried. “Hitting and hitting him even after he fell!”

  “Skull crushed in four places,” Hatton said.

  “When I screamed he spun around and struck me a glancing blow.” She touched the cut on her cheek. “If I hadn’t ducked away and continued screaming, he would have killed me, too!”

  “Did your husband do anything to provoke the attack?” Sabina asked her. “Push or strike him, perhaps?”

  “Of course not! Roland was not a violent man.”

  “Neither is Charles the Third, in my experience.”

  “You have only had limited dealings with him, you admitted that to me when you were here before. You have no idea what that madman is capable of. I do because I witnessed it!”

  McGinn gave her a look and she subsided, sniffling. “Mrs. Fairchild’s screams drove him out. He managed to get clear of the hotel before any of the staff knew what happened. The house dick searched the neighborhood and so did my men when they arrived. No sign of him.”

  Sabina said slowly, “And you think I might know where he can be found.”

  “Stands to reason. He was with you the past two nights at the art gallery, so you must’ve tracked him down.”

  “But I didn’t. He came to the gallery the first night in answer to a personals advertisement I placed in the newspapers.”

  “He tell you or give you any idea where he’s lodging?”

  Sabina begged the question by saying, “He was questioned by the investigating officers last night. Surely they asked for his present address.”

  “They did, and he gave them one.”

  “Well, then—”

  “This one,” McGinn said. “The Baldwin Hotel.”

  Shrewd and slyly playful, as always. Daft, yes, but a man of keen intelligence not unlike that of the famous detective he believed himself to be—a cerebral individual devoted to solving crimes, not the witless sort who committed them. It seemed out of character, real or fancied, for him to resort to sudden violent behavior. Unless he’d been severely provoked or threatened, as may well have been the case in the death of Artemas Sneed last fall. If he had killed the blackmailer then, the deed had been almost certainly one of self-defense. And Sneed had been skewered with a sword cane, which Charles’s stick likely was, not bashed on the head with it several times in a blind rage …

  “Well, Mrs. Carpenter?” the lieutenant said. “Do you know where we can find the man?”

  All her professional instincts commanded that she give McGinn the names of the Dubliner Hotel and Tam O’Shanter pub in Tar Flat. And yet it seemed almost an act of betrayal to do so without knowing Charles’s side of what had taken place here this morning. It was difficult to imagine him bludgeoning his cousin to death in a homicidal frenzy, but if he had, he must have been driven to it in some way. Would he perhaps attack her in a similar fashion if she questioned him about it? No. Of that much she felt certain; he had never been anything except courtly and respectful to her. Would he admit to the crime and reveal the reason? He might; she had never known him to tell an outright lie. In that event she could and would act accordingly.

  “No, Lieutenant,” she said, one of the few willful lies she’d ever told, “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  * * *

  McGinn finally permitted her to leave. Octavia Fairchild was weeping again by then, saying between sobs, “I can’t bear the thought of that monster escaping punishment for what he did to my poor Roland. You must find him—you must!” The woman’s expressions of grief and outrage seemed genuine enough, but they struck Sabina as exaggerated, overly dramatic. From what she had observed of the Fairchilds’ union, it had been something considerably less than idyllic.

  The bluecoat, Dundee, with McGinn’s permission, offered to provide return transport to her lodgings. Under different circumstances, Sabina might have declined. But home was where she needed to go now, and the police van would get her there just as quickly as a cab. As John was fond of saying, why pay for what you can have free of charge?

  When they exited the elevator, she saw to her dismay that the gaggle of newshounds had been permitted to enter the lobby. And naturally the first of them to notice her was Homer Keeps. The nasty little muckraker accosted her before she and Dundee could escape.

  “Ah, Mrs. Carpenter,” he said around the cigar clamped between his yellowing teeth. His piggish little eyes glittered eagerly. “A statement for the press, if you please.”

  “I don’t please.” She attempted to move past him, but he scurried around Dundee to block her way again.

  “Why were you brought here in a police van? What have you to do with the crime that took place here this morning?”

  The bluecoat answered for her. “The lady’s not at liberty to give out any statements to the press.”

  “Does it have anything to do with the attempted theft at the Rayburn Gallery last night?”

  “As the officer just told you,” Sabina said, “I’m not at liberty to comment.”

  The other newshounds were now grouped around Keeps. One of them started to ask a question of his own, but the fat little mudslinger overrode him. “Who is the weirdly outfitted gent who assisted you in the apprehension of the handbag thieves, the one who calls himself Sherlock Holmes? Does he have anything to do with the murder of the hotel guest?”

  “All questions you should be asking Lieutenant McGinn,” Dundee said.

  “That I will. That I will. But now I’m asking them of Mrs. Carpenter, and as a representative of the fourth estate I demand satisfaction.” A long ash fell from his cigar onto the front of his frock coat, joining the residue of numerous others that he hadn’t bothered to brush off. “You and your none too respectable partner have a serious history, serious indeed, of participation in all sorts of scurrilous crimes—”

  “Most of which we’ve solved or helped solve to the satisfaction of all concerned.”

  “Not all. Oh, no, not all. The people have a right to know the truth, the whole truth, of these latest heinous acts of violence and chicanery.”

  “Yes, they do,” Sabina agreed. “These and all others that plague our city. But they’ll never learn the truth of anything whatsoever by reading Homer Keeps’s columns in the Evening Bulletin.”

  The other reporters laughed. Keeps spluttered indignantly, his round face reddening. Dundee shouldered past him, ushered Sabina out of the hotel and into the waiting van with no further harassment.

  In her rooms, she rummaged in the trunk she used for storage of various odds and ends. She couldn’t very well make a sojourn into Tar Flat dressed as she was in her rather expensive Sunday best. Or in any clothing that would make her an object of attention in that neighborhood. Charles the Third may have fled the city by now, but she doubted it. If he was guilty of Roland Fairchild’s murder, he was not the sort of man to panic and Tar Flat was as safe a haven as any. If he was innocent, he would have returned there to continue his mysterious surveillances.

  From the trunk
she took the outfit she wore for outdoor activities such as biking, picnicking, and hiking—a plain skirt and a nondescript shirtwaist. Two other trunk items completed her wardrobe: a cloth handbag into which her derringer fit nicely, and an out-of-date, daisy-decorated bonnet that she had bought on a whim and neglected to discard even though it made her look just a bit dowdy.

  Looking at herself in the full-length bedroom mirror, she decided she would past muster in Tar Flat. She also had the wry thought that the costume amounted to a disguise. Hardly as outlandish as any of those Charles the Third was so fond of, but a disguise nonetheless. In a manner of speaking, she was now employing one of the crackbrain’s favorite gambits.

  19

  SABINA

  Tar Flat had gotten its name from the neighborhood’s main industry, the Donahues’ gas works at the corner of First and Howard streets. The plant had been distilling coal to manufacture illuminating gas since the early fifties, and its originally primitive method of distillation at low temperatures had resulted in great quantities of sludge waste that were disposed of into open tidewater at the eastern edge of the compound. The sludge destroyed shellfish and the industry that harvested them, and the foul, tarry stench that ensued provided the nickname. In recent years better technology had put an end to the dumping, much of the sludge had been removed, and the smell had slowly dissipated. Now, fortunately, it was all but gone.

  Most of Tar Flat’s inhabitants lived west of First Street, in the three blocks south of Market. Numerous houses lined the main streets and narrower byways that divided the blocks in half. Most of the dwellings were small, a few taller and larger with balconies and fire escapes, many with single-room backyard units that housed unmarried workers and family relatives. Saloons proliferated, along with dozens of small shops—grocers, fruit-sellers, bakers, barbers, plumbers, tailors, furniture and clothing retailers. Packed in among the commercial buildings were the boardinghouses and residential hotels such as the Dubliner.

  Sabina made her way along Sunday-crowded sidewalks, dodging shrieking children and a horse-car that made a careless turn and nearly mowed her down. Some of the close-packed wooden buildings flanking Stevenson Street showed signs of neglect and decay. If a fire were ever to erupt here, it would spread rapidly, the devastation would be catastrophic, and not a few lives would be lost.

  The Dubliner Hotel was one of the taller buildings, a paint-peeling, two-story clapboard affair with a small sign over the front door. The lobby was not much larger than an alcove, a short reception desk half hidden under a staircase and presided over by a slat-thin elderly man. He put down the newspaper he’d been reading and peered at Sabina through thick-lensed glasses as she crossed to the desk.

  “A good afternoon to you, missus,” he said in a brogue as thick as molasses. His smile revealed the absence of two molars and an incisor.

  “Good afternoon. Would Mr. Seamus O’Leary be in his room?”

  “That he’s not. Went out again, he did, some time ago.”

  “So he’s been in and out more than once today?”

  “Twice. Away early this mornin’, back just past the noon hour, away again a few minutes later.”

  “Did you happen to notice anything unusual about him when he returned at noon?”

  “Unusual, missus?”

  “As if he might have been in a fight or accident. Blood on his hands, face, or clothing.”

  The elderly Irishman cocked an eyebrow. “And why would ye be asking such as that?”

  “He sometimes gets into a scrap when he’s had a wee bit too much to drink. He’s my uncle, you see.”

  “Ah, now I do. Ye needn’t worry. ’Twasn’t a speck of blood on Mr. O’Leary, nor his duds mussed.”

  “Was he carrying his blackthorn stick?”

  “When he first went off? Aye, and wearing his Inverness cape over his Sunday best. Bound for church then, he was, I’m guessin’.”

  If only he had been!

  “Was he dressed the same when he went out again, or had he changed clothing?”

  “Changed. Had on that, ah, peculiar coat of his with the fancy red collars. Ye know the one, surely.”

  Sabina nodded. The same long-tailed broadcloth with the red velvet collars he’d worn at the gallery last night. “Was he carrying anything with him?” she asked.

  “His fiddle.”

  “Fiddle?”

  “Aye. And a fair hand he is with it, too, if a mite squawky at times.” As usual Charles the Third was full of surprises, large and small. Sabina had never heard him play the fiddle, but she had heard him playing the violin at Dr. Axminster’s home during the course of the Bughouse Affair. “A mite squawky” was an apt description of his prowess with stringed instruments.

  “Is that all he carried with him?” she asked. “No carpetbag or other luggage?”

  “Naught but the fiddle. Did ye be expectin’ him to?”

  “Well, he sometimes moves from one place to another on a whim.”

  “’Tisn’t plannin’ to move out so far’s I know.”

  “Did he happen to say where he was off to?”

  “That he didn’t. But like as not you’ll be finding him at the Tam O’Shanter pub two blocks down. Does his fiddling there, I’m told, when he ain’t doing it here in his room.”

  Sabina thanked him and took her leave, her concern somewhat eased. The four crushing blows to Roland Fairchild’s skull would surely have spattered some blood on the wielder of the stick. Still, the elderly clerk’s testimony that Charles the Third was blood-free on his return from the Baldwin Hotel was by no means definite; those thick-lensed glasses he wore testified to poor eyesight. The fact that Charles had departed with fiddle instead of luggage in hand indicated he meant to continue to stay at the Dubliner, but that, too, was open to question.

  She found her way through the teeming streets to the Tam O’Shanter. Like most of the saloons in Tar Flat, it had a nondescript façade with a half-shaded window next to the entrance to prevent passers-by from peering inside—a typical workingman’s watering hole. The sounds of male voices raised in song came from within. She hesitated at the door. She had never been in a saloon such as this, but she knew what to expect from the patrons when she entered. Respectable ladies shunned such resorts; the few members of her sex who didn’t were either slovenly alcoholics or women of easy virtue whose favors were available to one and all.

  The song that was being lustily sung by a small group of men at the far end of a plain plank bar, something about a Tipperary Bull, continued when Sabina entered, but several other pairs of eyes turned in her direction and remained fixed on her. She stood aloof and expressionless, scanning the bare room with its thick pall of tobacco smoke and strong odors of Irish whiskey and beer. There were some two-score customers seated at a scattering of puncheon tables or spread along the bar. All were men except for a pair of middle-aged slatterns hunched together at a corner table.

  The dim, smoky gaslight made it difficult to see faces clearly. Charles the Third didn’t seem to be among them—

  “And who might you be, darlin’?”

  A young man with a shaggy thatch of red hair had come up beside her, a foaming mug in one hand. He’d drained several before this one, from the look of him and his gold-toothed leer. She ignored him after a quick glance, once more searching the room with her eyes.

  “How’s for company and a glass of lager? Or a wee drop of the crayture?”

  Yes, Charles was here! When the Tipperary Bull song ended, from behind the bunched group a spritely and somewhat squawky fiddling commenced—an Irish jig that spurred three of the men into a foot-stomping dance. Charles the Third in his velvet-collared coat was then visible at the far wall, wielding bow and fiddle in an enthusiastic fashion.

  Sabina started in his direction. The brash young man said something else and petted her arm; she shook him off, threaded her way across the room past the ogling eyes. Charles was intent on his fiddling; he didn’t see her until she was within a few pa
ces of him. His eyes rounded in surprise and he scraped a single false note before recovering and continuing to play until the jig was finished. One of the revelers said something to him, perhaps urging another tune, but Charles shook his head and sidled away along the wall to a table occupied by a ferret-faced individual in a linen cap. An empty chair, the blackthorn stick and empty fiddle case propped against it, and a headless mug of beer indicated this was where he’d been sitting.

  He remained upright behind the chair as Sabina approached. His expression was guarded; it was plain that he was not happy to see her, but she detected neither guilt nor guile in his piercing gaze. The group at the bar began another song, this one with ribald lyrics—the singing loud enough so that she had to raise her voice when she spoke.

  “So here you are, Uncle Seamus,” she said, stressing the word “uncle.”

  The ferret-faced man glanced up at her, but in a uninterested, bleary-eyed fashion before returning his attention to a large glass of whiskey. He and Charles the Third were evidently nothing more than random tablemates in the crowded room.

  “This is no place for you, my lass,” Charles said sternly. His affected Irish brogue was almost as thick as that of the clerk at the Dubliner Hotel. “Why have you come?”

  “It’s urgent that we speak privately, Uncle. Will you please come outside with me?”

  He glanced toward the group of singers, his reluctance apparent. But he didn’t argue. “As you wish,” he said, and proceeded to case his fiddle and bow, tuck the case under his arm. The rounded knob on the blackthorn stick, Sabina noted when he caught it up, bore no telltale signs of blood or damage.

  Once outside on the crowded boardwalk, Charles steered her into the doorway of a closed barbershop. “Explain yourself, Mrs. Carpenter,” he said in peevish, now British-accented tones. “Your presence at the pub not only interrupted my observations but placed my mission in Tar Flat in jeopardy. What is of such urgency?”

  “Roland Fairchild. The Baldwin Hotel.”

  His only reaction was one of annoyance. “Yes, yes, I went to see the fellow this morning, as I promised you I would.”