“I knew no such thing.”
“If it’s true,” Pollard said, “how did you find it out?”
“I was suspicious of him from the moment he asked me to stand watch on his property.” That was not quite true, but what harm in a little embellishment? “Two nights ago at Dr. Axminster’s, he seemed to consider me something of an incompetent buffoon for allowing Dodger Brown to escape at the Truesdale home. Why then would he choose me of all people to protect of his property? The answer is that he wanted a detective he considered inept to bear witness to a cleverly staged break-in. Underestimating me was his first mistake.”
“Was that the only thing that made you suspicious?”
“No. Costain admitted it was unlikely that a professional housebreaker, having had a close call the previous night, would risk another crime so soon, yet he would have me believe his fear was so great he was willing to pay dearly for two operatives to stand surveillance on successive nights. An outlay of funds he could ill afford, for it was plain from his habitual drinking and the condition of his office that he had fallen on difficult times. He also made the dubious claim that he had no time to remove valuables from his home and secrete them elsewhere until Dodger Brown was apprehended, and no desire to cancel ‘important engagements’ in order to guard his premises himself.”
Axminster asked, “So you accepted the job in order to find out what he was up to?”
“Yes.” Another embellishment. He had accepted it for the money—no fool, John Quincannon. “Subsequent investigations by Mrs. Carpenter”—he bowed to Sabina—“revealed Costain’s gambling addiction and a string of debts as long as a widowed mother’s clothesline. He was a desperate man.”
“You suspected insurance fraud, then,” Holmes said, “when you asked me to join you in the surveillance.”
“I did,” Quincannon lied.
“Did you also suspect the manner in which the fraud would be perpetrated?”
“The use of an accomplice dressed in the same type of dark clothing as worn by Dodger Brown? Costain’s arrival not more than a minute after the intruder entered the house through the rear door? Not until later. It was a devious plan that no detective could have anticipated in its entirety before the fact. In truth, a bughouse caper from start to finish.”
“Bughouse caper?”
“Crazy scheme. Fool’s game.”
“Ah. Crook’s argot, eh? More of your delightful American idiom.”
Pollard said, “So the accomplice pulled a double cross, is that it? He wanted the spoils all for himself?”
“Just so,” Quincannon agreed.
“Name him.”
“Not just yet. Other explanations are in order first.”
“Such as how Costain was murdered in a locked room? And why he was shot as well as stabbed? Can you answer those questions?”
“I can,” Quincannon said, not to Pollard but to Sherlock Holmes. The alleged world’s greatest detective was about to lose his mantle to a more worthy rival, and Quincannon intended to savor every moment of his triumph.
“Well, then?”
Quincannon produced his pipe and tobacco pouch, allowing suspense to build while he loaded the bowl. Holmes watched him in a rapt way, his hands busy winding a pocket Petrarch, his expression neutral except for the faintest of smiles. The others, Sabina included, were on the edges of their chairs.
When he had the pipe lit and drawing well, he said, “The answer to your first question, Mr. Pollard,” he said to Holmes, “is that Andrew Costain was not murdered in a locked room. Nor was he stabbed and shot by his accomplice.”
“Riddles, Quincannon?” Pollard said irritably.
“Not at all. To begin with, Andrew Costain shot himself.” Quincannon paused for dramatic effect before continuing. “The report was designed to draw me into the house, the superficial wound to support what would have been his claim of a struggle with the thief. The better to bamboozle me, so he reasoned, and the better to ensure that Great Western would pay off his claim quickly and without question or suspicion.”
“How did you deduce the sham?”
“Dodger Brown was known to carry a pistol in the practice of his trade, but only for purposes of intimidation—he had no history of violence. I’ll wager that he carried his weapon unloaded, for it was empty when I found it yesterday in his hideout, and there were no cartridges among his possessions. The revolver that inflicted the wound was bought new that same day in a gunsmith’s shop near Costain’s law offices, by Costain himself. Mrs. Carpenter’s investigation revealed this information and that concerning his financial troubles.”
“But why the locked-room business?” Sabina asked. “Further obfuscation?”
“No. In point of fact, there was no locked-room ploy.”
Pollard growled, “Dammit, Quincannon—”
“That part of the misadventure was a mix of illusion and accident, the result of circumstances, not premeditation. There was no intent to gild the lily with such theatrics. Even if there had been, there was simply not enough time for any sort of locked-room gimmick to have been perpetrated once the pistol was fired.”
“Then what did transpire?”
“Costain was in the hallway outside the open door to his study, not inside the room, when he discharged the shot into his forearm. That is why the electric light was on in the hall; why the smell of burnt powder was strong there, yet all but nonexistent inside the room. The bullet penetrated the armchair because the gun was aimed in that direction when it was fired, through the open doorway into the study.”
“Why didn’t Costain simply fire the shot in there?”
“I suspect he met his accomplice in the hallway, perhaps to hand over the jewelry from the valuables case. That is why the light was on in the hall. The empty case was another clue that put me onto the gaff. The time factor again—there was too little time for the phantom burglar to have found his way to the study, located the case, and rifled it before Costain arrived to catch him in the act.”
“And the murder, John?” Sabina asked.
“Within moments of the shot being fired, the accomplice struck. Costain was standing in the open doorway, his back to the hallway. The force of the single stab with a long, narrow blade staggered him forward into the study. The blow was not immediately fatal, however. He lived long enough to turn, confront his attacker, observe the bloody weapon in a hand still upraised—and in self-defense, to slam the door shut and twist the key already in the latch. Then he collapsed and died.”
“Why didn’t he shoot the accomplice instead?” Axminster said. “That is what I would have done.”
“He may no longer have held the pistol. Either the suddenness of the attack caused him to drop it, or he dropped it in order to lock the door against his betrayer. In my judgment Andrew Costain was a craven coward as well as a thief. I think if pressed his wife would agree, despite her allegation to the city police that he was a brave man.”
Penelope Costain’s face was the shade of egg white. “I agree with nothing you’ve said. Nothing!”
Sherlock Holmes stirred in his chair. The grudging admiration in his eyes brought a warm glow to Quincannon. His gloat, however, was not to last long.
“Capital, Quincannon!” Holmes said. He bounced to his feet and grasped Quincannon’s hand. “I congratulate you on your performance thus far. You’ve done a commendable job of interpreting the res gestae.”
“Res what?” Pollard asked.
“The facts of the case. My learned colleague’s deductions coincide almost exactly with mine.”
Quincannon stiffened. “What’s that? Your deductions?”
“Oh, yes, certainly. I reached the identical conclusions yesterday afternoon.”
“Hogwash!”
“My dear fellow, you doubt my word?”
“I do, unless you can name the accomplice and explain the rest of what took place.”
“I can. Naturally.”
Damn his eyes! “Well? Who stabbed Co
stain?”
“His wife, of course. Penelope Costain.”
A startled noise came from Pollard. Mrs. Costain’s only reaction was to lighten another shade and draw herself up indignantly. “I?” she said with chilly bluster. “How dare you!”
Quincannon said quickly, “Dodger Brown is a small man. It was easy enough for you to pass for him in the darkness, dressed in dark man’s clothing, with a cloth cap covering your hair.”
“Quite so,” Holmes agreed. He relit his pipe before he continued, “While joined in her husband’s plan, she devised a counterplan of her own—her double cross, as you Americans call it—for two reasons. First, to attempt to defraud the Great Western Insurance Company not once but twice, by entering claims on both the allegedly stolen jewelery and on her husband’s twenty-five-thousand-dollar life insurance policy, of which she is the sole beneficiary. She came to this office yesterday to enter those claims, did she not, Mr. Pollard?”
“She did.”
“Her second motive,” Holmes went on, “was hatred, a virulent and consuming hatred for the man to whom she was married.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Quincannon objected. “You’re guessing.”
“I do not make guesses. Mrs. Costain’s hatred of her husband was apparent to me at Dr. Axminster’s dinner party. My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings—their ‘public disguise,’ as it were. As for proof of her true feelings, and of her guilt, I discovered the first clue shortly after we found Andrew Costain’s corpse.”
“What clue?”
“Face powder,” Holmes said.
“Face powder?”
“When I examined the wound in Andrew Costain’s back through my glass, I discovered a tiny smear of the substance on the cloth of his cheviot—the same type and shade as that worn by Mrs. Costain.”
“How could that prove her guilt? They were married … her face powder might have gotten on his coat at any time, in a dozen different ways.”
“I beg to differ. It was close and to the right of the wound, which indicated that the residue must have adhered to the edge of the murderer’s hand when the fatal blow was struck. It was also caked and deeply imbedded in the fibers of the cloth. This fact, combined with the depth of the wound itself, further indicated that the blade was plunged into Costain’s flesh with great force and fury. An act born of hatred as well as greed. The depth and size of the wound afforded additional proof. It had been made by a stiletto, hardly the type of weapon a professional pannyman such as Dodger Brown would carry. A stiletto, furthermore, as my researches into crime have borne out, is much more a woman’s weapon than a man’s.”
Quincannon sought a way to refute this logic and found none. He glowered and held his tongue.
Penelope Costain once again protested outraged innocence. No one paid her any attention, least of all Quincannon and Holmes.
“Now then,” Holmes continued, “we have the mystery of Mrs. Costain’s actions after striking the death blow. Her evidently miraculous escape from the house, only to reappear later dressed in evening clothes. Of course you know how this bit of flummery was managed, Quincannon.”
Quincannon hesitated. Hell and damn! This was the one point about which he was not absolutely certain.
“Of course,” he said.
“Pray elaborate.”
He drew a breath and plunged ahead authoritatively. “There is little enough mystery in what she did. She simply hid until you and I were both inside the study, then slipped out. Through one of the windows, no doubt. She could easily have prepared one in advance so that it slid up and down noiselessly, and also loosened its latch just enough to allow it to drop back into the locking slot after she climbed through and lowered the sash. The window would then appear to be unbreached.”
“Ingenious.”
“She may have thought so.”
“I meant your interpretation,” Holmes said. “Unfortunately, however, you are wrong. That is not what she did.”
“The devil you say!”
“Quite wrong on all counts except that she did, in fact, hide for a length of time. She could not have foreseen that both front and rear doors would be blocked so as to impede egress; if simple escape had been the plan, she could reasonably have expected to slip out one or the other door, thus obviating use of a window. Nor could she could be certain in advance that a loosened window latch would drop back into its slot and thus go unnoticed. Nor could she be certain that we would fail to hear her raising and lowering the sash, and capture her before she could flee.”
Quincannon said, “I suppose you have a better theory?”
“Not a theory—the exact truth of the matter. Her hiding place was the very same one she and her husband had decided upon as part of the original scheme. I confirmed it yesterday afternoon, when I returned to the Costain home while Mrs. Costain was here with Mr. Pollard and spent two hours in an exhaustive search of the premises.”
“You illegally entered my home?” This time, Penelope Costain’s outrage was not feigned. “I’ll have you arrested for trespassing!”
“I think not. Under the circumstances, I’m sure even the police would consider my actions fully justified. Dr. Axminister accompanied me, incidentally, at my request. He will confirm all that I am about to reveal.”
“Indeed I will,” the doctor said.
Quincannon asked testily, “Then how did she escape from the blasted house?”
“She didn’t. She never left it.” Holmes paused as Quincannon had done earlier, for dramatic effect. “When you have eliminated the impossible,” he said, “whatever is left must, perforce, be the truth. As applied to this case, I concluded as you did that it was impossible for Andrew Costain’s slayer to have committed murder in and then escaped from the locked study; therefore, Costain could not have been slain inside the study, and the study could not have been locked when the stiletto was plunged into his body. I concluded further that it was impossible for the slayer to have escaped the locked house after commission of the crime; therefore, she did not escape from it. Penelope Costain was hidden on the premises the entire time.”
“Where? We searched the house from top to bottom.”
“Indeed. But consider this: Two strangers cannot possibily know every nook and cranny of a home in which they have never before set foot. The owners, on the other hand, are fully intimate with every detail of the premises.”
A flush began to creep out of Quincannon’s now rather tight collar. The light of knowledge had begun to dawn in the nooks and crannies of his nimble brain. He cursed himself for his failure to see what the bloody Englishman had seen much sooner.
“During my search this afternoon,” Holmes continued, “I discovered a small adjunct to the kitchen pantry—a tiny room where preserves and the like are stored. The entrance to this room is concealed behind a pantry shelf. Those who knew of it could be reasonably sure that the entrance would be overlooked by strangers. The room itself is some four feet square, and while it has no ventilation, its door when cracked open permits normal breathing. Mrs. Costain had no trouble remaining hidden there for well over an hour—ample time for her to change from the dark man’s clothing into evening clothes she had secreted there earlier. After the arrival of the city police, when none of the officers was in the immediate vicinity, she slipped out through the kitchen and dining room to the front hallway and pretended to have just arrived home. The first person to encounter her, Sergeant Mahoney, had no reason to doubt this.”
“But you did, I suppose.”
“Oh, quite. When she first entered the study I observed the remnants of cobwebs and traces of dust on the hem of her skirt, the fur of her wrap, even the ostrich plume in her hat. The pantry room contains cobwebs, dust, and dirt of the same type. I also observed that a piece had been torn from one of her fingernails, leaving a tiny wound in the cuticle. Earlier, during my studies of the carpet in the hallway, I discovered that same tiny piece, stained with a spot of fresh bloo
d—broken off, of course, when she stabbed her husband. Quod erat demonstrandum.”
Penelope Costain said, “You can’t prove any of this.”
“Ah, but I can,” Holmes told her. “After I left your home yesterday, I visited city police headquarters and spoke to Sergeant Mahoney and one of the officers who were stationed outside your home on that fateful night. Both swore an oath that no conveyance arrived and no one entered the house through either the front or rear door. The inescapable conclusion is that you were concealed inside the entire time. As for the missing jewelry and coins, and the murder weapon …” He produced a cloth from his coat pocket, which he proceeded to unfold on Pollard’s desk. Inside was a bloodstained stiletto and the “stolen” valuables. “As you see, Mrs. Costain, they are no longer where you hid them in the pantry room.”
Both her icy calm and her bluster vanished at once; she sagged in her chair, lowered her head into her hands.
The others, Quincannon excepted, gazed at Holmes with open admiration. Even Sabina seemed more impressed by his performance than that of her doting partner. Holmes placed his hand over his heart and bowed as if responding to applause—a damned theatrical gesture if ever there was one. Then he faced Quincannon again, smiling indulgently.
“Have you any other questions, my good fellow?” he asked.
Questions? Quincannon had a brace of them, as a matter of fact. One: How soon will you be leaving San Francisco? Two: Will I be able to stop myself from strangling, bludgeoning, stabbing, or shooting you before you do?
15
“The man is infuriating!” Quincannon ranted. “Insufferable, insulting, exasperating!”
“John, for heaven’s sake …”
“Thinks he’s a blasted oracle. Sees all, knows all. He’s an expert on every arcane subject under the sun. He’s full of—”
“John.”
“—hot air. Enough to fill a balloon and carry it from here to the Sandwich Islands. Rattlepate! Braggart! Conceited popinjay!”
“Lower your voice,” Sabina said warningly. “The other diners are starting to stare at us.”
Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years Page 24