The Bags of Tricks Affair

by Bill Pronzini

  The front gates to the Brandywine property were once again open. Philip was not out doing his calisthenics today; the greensward was empty. Nor did the purveyor of fine apparel for the gentleman come out to meet them when they drew to a stop on the turnaround near the front entrance, as he had the day before. He was waiting in the library.

  With him was a gray-haired woman whom he introduced as his wife, Alice. She must have been quite a belle in her youth, Sabina thought, and time had been much kinder to her than it had to her husband; she was still slender, still attractive in her late forties or early fifties. But she carried herself with the kind of matronly, vaguely absent air Sabina had seen before, that of a woman to whom motherhood had been the focal point of her life and who had been vaguely lost since her child left the nest. She no doubt doted on Philip, but he wouldn’t mean the same to her as if he were her own son, and he, too, would soon be gone. Her days then would be entirely taken up with time fillers such as garden parties and women’s club activities.

  Once Whit had been introduced—the client acknowledged him with a curt nod and thereafter ignored him—Mrs. Brandywine said to Sabina, “Joshua has told me of your intention to trample my delphinium beds. Must you do that?”

  “I’m afraid so. We’ll be careful to create as little damage as possible.”

  “And you’ll replace any plants that are damaged?”

  “At our expense, if the task proves to be fruitless.”

  “If it does,” her husband said ominously, “and you fail to solve the dilemma quickly, I will terminate our arrangement without payment of the balance of your fee.”

  “So you informed me yesterday, sir.”

  “Get on with it, then. Grimes is waiting for you at the carriage house. I have canceled an appointment and a luncheon in order to be on hand this morning, and I expect … no, I demand results.”

  Outside, Sabina led the way around toward the carriage house. “Not a very pleasant gent, is he,” Whit said.

  “Pompous is the word.”

  “Well, I hope this business turns out the way you hope it will. He meant what he said inside.”

  “Yes. He did.”

  A tall extension ladder leaned against the wall of the carriage house; Grimes lounged near it, smoking a cigarette that he quickly discarded when he saw them approaching. He eyed Whit, nodded when Sabina gave his name; neither man offered to shake hands. The ladder was some eight feet in length, the extension another four or five, and it looked to be heavy, but Grimes shook his head when Whit offered to help him carry it. As if to demonstrate his strength and agility, he hoisted it under one arm and brought it effortlessly to the side of the house where the antiquities room was located, his dog trotting along at his heels.

  “I’ll set it up,” Grimes said. “Do the least amount of damage that way.”

  He proceeded to lay the ladder in the grass at the edge of the flower beds, after which he spent two or three minutes creating as much space as possible among the close-set delphinium plants. Then, carefully, he picked the ladder up again, extended it, carried it on tiptoe through the flower bed, and leaned it gently at an angle against the house wall. Despite his precautions, he was unable to avoid crushing two or three of the plants. The top of the ladder reached to just below the bottom windowsills.

  Back on the grass, he urged Whit to be careful and then stood back with his arms folded. He and Sabina watched as Whit stepped gingerly to the ladder, managing not to murder more than one additional delphinium on the way, and made short work of the climb up. Balanced at the top he began carrying out Sabina’s instructions, probing the frames, the thick rough-textured pile sealing them, the leaded-glass panes.

  “What’s he looking for anyway?” Grimes asked.

  Sabina sidestepped the question by asking one of her own. “Are you the one who weather stripped the windows?”

  “No. That was done before my time. Professional job.”

  “That small window above the others. What is behind it?”

  “Attic.”

  “For storage or some other purpose?”

  “Storage. Old furniture and the like. Most of it I hauled up there myself—part of my job.”

  After some minutes Whit finished his examination and climbed back down. When he was on the grass, Grimes said, “Didn’t find anything, did you?”

  Whit said nothing.

  The handyman took his silence to mean he hadn’t. “Knew you wouldn’t,” he said, and stepped into the flower bed once again to remove the ladder.

  But Whit had found something, just the sort of tampering Sabina had expected he might. In a lowered voice he told her about it in detail on their way back to the front entrance. Now she knew beyond any doubt how the antiquities room had been breached. The question now was how the thief had gotten to the windows without use of a ladder, and she was fairly sure she knew the answer to that, too.

  Joshua Brandywine was alone in the library, puffing on a cigar and paging through one of his tomes on Chinese curios, when Mrs. Endicott showed them in. He put the book down and popped to his feet. “All finished with that ladder business, I take it. Did you or didn’t you find anything?”

  “We did.”

  “Well? What?”

  “Patience, Mr. Brandywine.”

  “Patience, my eye. I told you before, I am not a patient man.” As if to validate the fact, he stamped his foot in a manner that reminded Sabina of a temperamental horse.

  “Rather than explain,” Sabina said, “Mr. Slattery and I will demonstrate in the antiquities room. But we’ve somewhere else to go first.”

  “What’s that? Where?”

  “The attic.”

  “The— What for?”

  “You’ll soon see.”

  Muttering to himself, Brandywine led them up the curving staircase to the second floor and then a straight staircase behind a closed door and into the attic. The low-ceilinged space had not been wired for electricity; he lit a pair of gas wall lamps that provided just enough feeble light to see and navigate by.

  The attic was dusty, decorated with cobwebs and cluttered with the usual jumble of castoffs. Sabina made her way through the maze to the far wall, moving aside a heavy iron bedstead in order to reach the small grit-streaked window directly above the antiquities room. The window was held shut by a simple catch. When she flipped it and nudged the glass, the window opened outward soundlessly on oiled hinges.

  She looked closely at the bedstead. Dust coated it, except for a section on one of the thick frame supports that had been rubbed more or less clean. Now she had the rest of the solution.

  Turning to Mr. Brandywine, she asked, “I take it your nephew is not home at present?”

  “Philip? No, he left for some sort of sports activity just after breakfast. Why are you asking about him?”

  “Yesterday you told me you don’t approve of his interest in sports. And he told me later that he aspires to participate in the Olympic Games in Paris in nineteen hundred, and that he plans to attend even if he is unable to compete.”

  “The boy is much too young to go gallivanting halfway round the world on a foolish whim.”

  “So you’ve told him you refuse to finance such a journey?”

  “Yes, I— What are you getting at, young woman?”

  “That it was Philip who stole your artifacts. In order to finance such a trip himself.”

  “That … that is preposterous!”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but it’s the only possible explanation.”

  “How the devil could he have gotten into the antiquities room?”

  “By utilizing one of his gymnastic skills.”

  “Skill? What skill?”

  “A newspaper article about the Olympic Games I reread yesterday identified the gymnastic events in detail. They include synchronized team floor calisthenics, running, and high jumping. And one other.”

  “Well?”

  “Rope climbing,” Sabina said.

  Mr. Brandywine wagged h
is head in dismay.

  “It was a simple matter,” Sabina went on, “for Philip to slip up here in the middle of the night, open this window, secure one end of a strong rope to this iron bedframe, then climb out and shinny down the side wall to the antiquities-room windows below. I suspect a more careful search of the attic will uncover the rope.”

  Brandywine still didn’t quite believe it. “How in heaven’s name could the boy get through latched and sealed windows while dangling at the end of a rope?”

  “Easily enough, for a lad as fit and agile as Philip. We’ll go downstairs now for the demonstration.”

  On the second floor, Sabina and Whit waited while Brandywine fetched his keys from the study safe, then the three of them proceeded to the antiquities room. With a hand that was not quite steady, the menswear tycoon opened the double locks and led them inside.

  Sabina took the lead here, crossing among the glittering displays to open the velvet drapes. “To begin with,” she said then, “Philip would have committed his burglaries well after midnight, when he was certain everyone was fast asleep. What he did after climbing down from the attic was this: he braced both feet—likely bare to avoid leaving marks—against the wall to hold himself in place next to the windows. Hanging onto the rope with one hand, he then unsealed and unlatched the windows—”

  “You make an apparent impossibility seem like child’s play. How did he open the sealed windows?”

  She lifted the curved latch bar that held the two window halves together, and then nodded to Whit. He grasped the handle on the right half and pushed outward with considerably more force than Sabina had used the previous afternoon. Even so, he had to shove hard a second time before there came a faint ripping sound and the windows half swung open.

  Mr. Brandywine gawked at the opening, amazement written plain on his florid countenance. “But … but I don’t understand. The weather stripping—”

  “Was sliced through along the three sides of this half, and up the middle where it joined the other half,” Whit said, speaking for the first time. “With a knife that had a long, thin, flexible blade. He maneuvered the blade into the crack between the two halves, then upward to free the latch inside here. Easy enough, then, for him to swing through.”

  “And with the aid of matches or a small candle,” Sabina added, “he was able to pick and choose artifacts small enough to carry in his pockets. Doubtless making his selections based on the reading of one or more of your books on Chinese curios left in the library.”

  The menswear mogul was still incredulous. “But I tested those windows myself. So did you, Mrs. Carpenter. They held fast both times.”

  “The reason for that is also easily explained, as Mr. Slattery discovered in his examination of the weather stripping. Each time Philip was done with his pilfering, he positioned the latch bar so it could be manipulated back into place with the knife blade. After which he swung out on the rope, braced himself, and drew the window shut. Once that was accomplished, and before climbing back up to the attic, he inserted clear, fast-drying glue—squirted from a tube, probably—into the slits in the weather stripping, thus creating an effective temporary bond. He counted on the fact that there would be no attempt to use excessive force to open the window half from within because of the potential damage to the weather stripping. To carry out his second theft, he simply reslit the glued sections in order to enter, then reglued them after exiting. With the two window halves tightly joined, the thin slits and the clear dried glue were invisible when viewed through the glass from inside and at a distance from outside. The refastened latch completed the illusion that the windows had not been tampered with. Only upon close inspection was the tampering evident.”

  Mr. Brandywine believed it now. Only a dolt confronted with irrefutable proof could have denied the truth, and whatever else her client might be, he was not a dolt. His color had darkened again to the dangerously purple hue; his mouth was set in angry lines. “That young whelp,” he said. “If he has already sold those antiquities—”

  “My guess is he hasn’t, that they are also hidden somewhere in the attic. But in the event he has sold them, what do you intend to do?”

  “That is none of your concern.”

  “Perhaps not. But I wouldn’t be too hard on him, sir. Lads with passionate dreams often make foolish mistakes.”

  “Don’t tell me how to discipline a member of my family,” he snapped. “You have done an acceptable job of sleuthing, I won’t deny that, but your job here is finished now and I’ll thank you to permit me to deal with my nephew as I see fit. And to remove yourself and your associate from my house forthwith.”

  Whit frowned at him, though he kept silent; it was plain that he did not care one bit for Joshua Brandywine or the man’s pompous, imperious ways. Sabina felt the same. It was not in her nature to make this fact known to him, as John might well have done if he were here, but neither did she have to meekly suffer his insolence.

  “Gladly,” she said, “once you have made out a check payable to Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.”

  “A check will be mailed to you in due course—”

  “I prefer to have it now. In full payment of the balance of the agreed-upon fee, plus an additional five hundred dollars.”

  “Eh? Another five hundred?”

  “The amount of the bonus you promised if the solution was achieved within forty-eight hours. According to my calculations, it has been approximately forty-two hours since you first retained my services.”

  “A temporary whim on my part. No such promise was put in writing—”

  Whit stepped forward. “You heard Mrs. Carpenter,” he said in a not quite threatening voice. “A check in the full amount including the bonus and then we’ll leave.”

  Brandywine, hemming, hawing, and sputtering, produced and peered at his gold watch, as if to verify the all too obvious claim. Sabina seized the opportunity to offer an appropriate goad.

  “Make haste, Mr. Brandywine,” she said. “Tempus fidgets.”

  17

  SABINA

  It was early afternoon by the time she deposited Joshua Brandywine’s check in the agency account at the Miner’s Bank, paid Whit for his service, stopped in at the Western Union office, and returned to the offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. There had been no further wires regarding Jeffrey Gaunt or his sister—or any concerning the Delford matter—nor had any messages pertaining to Gaunt been slipped through the mail slot in the office door.

  The outcome of the Brandywine affair had been quite satisfying, the more so because it had presented her with the sort of knotty problem John took considerable pride in addressing, and she had resolved it with dispatch and earned a substantial fee. Few enough of their cases could be marked closed in less than forty-eight hours. He took delight in recounting the details of his triumphs; she looked forward to regaling him with hers, though with considerably less bombast, when he returned.

  It was axiomatic in their business that there were periods when they were besieged with investigative work and periods when there was little or none. This summer thus far was proving to be one of the fertile stretches. The Grass Valley case, the felonious rainmakers in the San Joaquin Valley, the Brandywine conundrum, and now two more prospective clients via the afternoon mail. Well, just one, actually: a consultation request from Jackson Pollard, chief claims adjuster at Great Western Insurance, regarding a suspected fraudulent injury claim. They had done a number of jobs for Pollard and Great Western, the most notable of which was the Bughouse Affair last year—their introduction to the shrewdly daft Charles the Third, who in his Sherlock Holmes guise had been as responsible as she and John for bringing three interrelated cases to successful conclusions.

  The second letter, written in a spidery and rather shaky hand, was from a woman who signed herself Miss Lucretia L. Moffit. Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, received its share of oddball inquiries, some amusing,
some disconcerting, some—like this one—rather pathetic. It seemed Miss Moffit was being plagued by a serial prowler who had slipped into her home on at least three separate occasions in the middle of the night. But he was no ordinary prowler, she wrote; instead of stealing items from her substantial collection of buttonhooks, thimbles, and other sewing-related material, he brought in and left more of each. As a result she now had almost twice as many as before. She had no idea why anyone would do such a thing. The police refused to believe her; could Mrs. Carpenter or Mr. Quincannon track down the culprit and put an end to this outrage?

  Sabina sighed. A dotty old lady likely starved for attention. In the kindest terms possible she penned a reply to Miss Moffit stating that previous commitments made it impossible for them to undertake an investigation on her behalf. She added her sincere hope that the intruder would soon tire of his nocturnal trespasses and bring no more unwanted gifts.

  When the letter was finished, she reread Jackson Pollard’s missive. There was a certain urgency in the injury claim, he’d written, so if they were available, a consultation at their earliest convenience was required. Sabina cranked the handle on the wall telephone, gave the Exchange operator the number of Great Western Insurance. It took five minutes for a connection to be made, as sometimes happened with Mr. Alexander Graham Bell’s invention, still in its infancy. She spoke to Pollard’s secretary; he had already left for the day, but he had left word that he would be in his office until noon tomorrow. She scheduled a meeting with him for ten o’clock. If John had yet to return by then, she would keep the appointment herself.

  She wondered what the situation was in Delford. Obviously it had taken longer than he’d anticipated to expose and arrest Leopold Saxe and his cohorts. Whatever the reason for the delay, he wouldn’t remain there a minute longer than absolutely necessary. If he returned on this afternoon’s train, there would be little enough if any time for a lengthy discussion. In order to attend tonight’s supper meeting at the offices of Voting Rights for Women, she would have to leave the agency no later than four-thirty. Home first to feed Adam and Eve and change clothes, then an early arrival at VRW so as to spend time with Amity before the meal and the speeches by the Southern California suffragist delegates.