“Were the doors forced?”
“No. They were locked from the outside when I came to work this morning, as usual.”
“Does anyone but you possess a key?”
“My brother does.”
“You walked in and discovered the place empty?” I asked. “You called the police, I imagine. Did they find any fingerprints?”
“They dusted every inch, but even a museum as unfrequented as mine has a lot of fingerprints in it. As soon as I discovered that my life’s work had gone, you can imagine that I was anxious to find any clues that I could. When we couldn’t find anything, and the police seemed not to have the slightest idea, I jumped on the first plane I could get to, to ask your advice, Mr. Holmes, before the trail was cold. Will you come out to Vegas with me?”
“It would give me a great deal of pleasure,” said Holmes. He saw his client out, arranging to meet him at the airport in two hours’ time.
“You will come, Watson? I may need an extra pair of eyes.”
“Ashcroft will be happy to take on my practice for a few days.”
“Excellent. If we put aside the question of the money in the envelope, the chief suspicion falls on the brother. It seems clear that if one Mr. Lowe is forced out of business, the other Mr. Lowe may find himself the recipient of some investment for his time shares. But the twenty thousand dollars changes everything.”
THUS WE FOUND ourselves on the red-eye to Vegas. Lowe and Holmes chose seats in the smoking section, which was, to be honest, trying, even to someone with my iron constitution. “All the latest medical research indicates that smoking is hazardous to your health,” I told Holmes as he puffed away. But he waved aside my objections, choosing to spend the flight quizzing Kevin Lowe about his techniques for modelling from life in wax.
Recalling Holmes’s experiments in this very art, in the adventure of the Abandoned Condominium, I occupied myself with talking to the very pretty stewardess, regaling her with anecdotes of my time in service, until the plane touched down at McCarran Airport.
It was too late that evening to do much more than a cursory inspection of the basement of the Starlight Casino, which had until recently housed Lowe’s House of Stars. Holmes examined the doors and their stout padlock, and the alleyway leading up the side of the building, which was indeed dingy and ill-lit. Inside the museum, all that remained was some furniture which presumably the waxworks had been posed upon, and the forlorn figure of the dog Toto, lying on his side by the wall.
“We won’t get much more tonight,” declared Holmes, straightening from his scrutiny of a footmark that was invisible to the rest of us. “Mr. Lowe, tomorrow we may pursue our own methods. Stay by a phone; we will call you as soon as we have any news.
“Mr. Lowe is a true artist,” he said to me, when we were in the elevator ascending to our rooms in the Starlight Hotel, above the casino. “Look at this leaflet for his museum, Watson. I think you’ll agree that the figures are so lifelike as to defy belief. I made some calls before we left, and all of them confirmed that Mr Kevin Lowe is the foremost waxwork modeller of his generation.”
I turned over the folder in my hands, marveling at the depictions of Reggie Jackson and President Carter. “He’s very good. Do you plan to visit the brother tomorrow? Or track down that mysterious visitor in the Hawaiian shirt?”
“I will be very much mistaken if one does not lead to the other. Goodnight, my friend, and stay away from the roulette table.”
AFTER A BRACING visit to the breakfast buffet the next morning, Holmes and I were ready to go. He spent some more time in the alleyway, pacing its length, once or twice flinging himself onto all fours to examine the tarmac in the daylight. Finally, he straightened. “Most instructive. Let’s hail a taxi to Mr. Louie Lowe’s office.”
The office was a single-storey building near the edge of the desert, with a low-pitched roof and an adobe front. The gold lettering on the glass door informed us that we had called on Mr. Louis Lowe, Travel Agent.
Mr. Louis Lowe himself was a slight, weaselly man, with greased-back hair and a plaid suit. He wore a heavy medallion on his chest, and platform shoes even higher than his brother’s. When we entered his office, he reclined in his leather chair, his hands behind his head, his feet propped on his desk.
“You’ve come about the robbery at Kev’s place, I guess. If you can call it a robbery, since he was paid for what was taken.”
“Your brother mentioned an argument about money,” said Holmes.
“I wanted my half of Uncle Vern’s dough to invest in condos in Reno, fair enough. But you know what? I’ve decided I don’t need it after all. Kev can keep it, for all the good it does him.”
“Of course, it doesn’t do him much good if he’s lost his life’s work,” said I.
Louie Lowe shrugged.
“You noticed, of course,” said Holmes as we left, “the map on the wall?”
“Of all of Nevada. But Holmes, the area is vast.”
“It’s slightly less vast when one has a greasy fingerprint for guidance.”
There was a Hertz office nearby, and within half an hour we were heading out into the desert in a rented Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.
“Mr. Louis Lowe wanted money,” explained Holmes as I drove. “He wanted it badly enough to argue with his brother on Wednesday. And yet by Friday morning, he is no longer looking for investment in his Reno time shares. What do you suppose has changed his circumstances?”
“The possession of a key to Lowe’s House of Stars, and the ability to look the other way.”
“So much seems obvious. The question is why, Watson? Who would pay Mr. Louie Lowe to betray his brother?”
“A jealous waxwork museum owner, who wants to steal Kevin Lowe’s masterpieces?”
“Possibly. And yet why would they give Kevin Lowe twenty thousand dollars?” Holmes tailed off into silence, breaking it only to direct me. His memory was photographic, and he recalled the location marked by the greasy fingerprint without having to consult another map, although it took us nearly three hours’ driving to reach it. It was a featureless expanse of desert next to Route 267. The sand and gravel baked in the midday sun when we stopped. The air wavered with heat, and as soon as I opened the door of the air-conditioned car and stepped outside, sweat sprang onto my skin. Sherlock Holmes, however, looked cool as ever as he pointed at the ground.
“Observe, Watson, the same Goodyear tread with the wearing on the back offside tire as in the alleyway.” He set off at a pace over the sand and I followed, wiping perspiration from my brow.
The ground was cracked from the sun, uniformly flat and bare other than the very occasional scrub. Although the tire tracks were invisible to my untrained eye, Holmes followed them with the skill of a bloodhound. When he stopped short, however, I didn’t need his superior senses to know why.
I let out a cry of dismay. The light-coloured ground before us was blackened with soot in a radius of about fifteen feet. Clearly there had been a large fire here, and in the centre was a grey substance that was neither ash nor sand. Holmes stooped and put his hand into it.
“It’s wax,” he said sadly. “The figures have been melted down.”
I touched it. It was unmistakably wax; the ash that lay around it in clumps was undoubtedly the remains of the mannequins’ clothing and hair. With a sickening thrill, I spotted a glass eye gazing at me out of the mess. It was bright blue.
“So much for a jealous waxwork owner,” I said, straightening. “Do you think it’s revenge, Holmes? Or some sort of spite?”
“I think it’s...”
Holmes trailed off again, but this time it was not because he was thinking. He had spotted something. He took off at a run across the baked earth, and I followed.
It was a scrap of fabric, fluttering from the branches of one of the rare scrubby bushes. Holmes caught it up, but he only glanced at it for a moment before he was again scanning the featureless landscape around us.
“What do you make of it?
” He passed me the fabric. It was white, a sort of scarf or bandana, still crisp from an iron. Otherwise pristine, it had been speckled with ash from the fire.
“Left behind by one of the thieves?”
“Dropped as he was climbing into the plane.”
“Holmes!”
“Can you not see the airstrip, Watson?”
I had to squint, but I saw it eventually: the ground had been packed down in a wide strip. We stood near the foot of it, and it stretched past the melted wax into the distance.
“The sequence is clear from the marks on the ground. There were two thieves, one over six feet in height and a shorter one who was heavier and less active than the other—most likely our man in the Hawaiian shirt. They drove a van packed with mannequins to this spot. They were met by a small plane; I’d say a Piper Cherokee Arrow, from the tire marks. The man in the Hawaiian shirt boarded the plane and left, and the remaining thief unloaded his cargo and burnt it. The fire was set after the plane took off; otherwise it would have driven straight through the flames.”
“If we know the make of the plane, perhaps we can trace it from yesterday’s flight records.”
“It would be an arduous job, Watson, and uncertain to succeed if the plane embarked from a private or remote airstrip like this one. No, I already know the destination of the plane. It is clear from this speckled bandana.” He turned abruptly. “Let’s go, Watson. We have some unwelcome news for Mr. Lowe.”
KEVIN LOWE DIDN’T take the news well. He turned white and staggered to a chair. “But why, Mr. Holmes?” he gasped. “Why would someone steal my entire life’s work, only to burn it?”
“Do you have any enemies?” I asked, but Holmes shook his head.
“It’s not revenge,” he said. “In fact, I don’t think this was done for malicious motives at all; rather out of kindness, though perhaps not from your perspective. Tell me, Mr Lowe, the elderly man who acted so strangely the day before your theft: was he overweight and bald, with an eggshaped head?”
“Yes. Was he the thief? Can you find him?”
“He was the mastermind behind the theft,” said Holmes. “I know where to find him, and most likely his accomplices, too. But I will not.”
Lowe leapt from his chair, his face suffused with anger. “I hired you! Why won’t you catch the man who’s ruined me?”
“While I feel sorry for your loss, and pained that you are the innocent victim, you aren’t ruined, Mr. Lowe. You have the funds and the skill to replace the waxworks you’ve lost. You said yourself that you wanted to start afresh somewhere else. It means hard work for you, yes. But for a person close to the man who stole your mannequins, it means life or death.”
“How could it possibly be so important?”
As an answer, Holmes held up the white bandana, speckled with ash. Lowe’s eyes widened.
“Him?”
Holmes passed a cigarette to Lowe; the modeller’s fine hands shook as he lit it.
“I believe we will have an answer in the national news in a day or two, perhaps a week,” said Holmes. “Meanwhile, Watson and I will return to New York. We’ll be in touch when events come to a head. If you’re looking for a way to pass the time, I suggest you begin a new collection of waxworks. Perhaps starting with Chewbacca.”
Holmes was silent for the journey back to Bleecker Street. Although I called in on him several times in the days that followed, eager to find out if there had been any developments in the case, he remained taciturn, refusing to answer any of my questions relating to Mr. Lowe or the speckled bandana. Indeed, he seemed almost melancholy, as if he had been saddened by the events in Las Vegas.
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, August 17th, I looked in on Holmes just after sunrise. He was sunk deep into his armchair, his brows drawn down over his eyes, surrounded by smoke so thick it made me cough. He looked as if he hadn’t moved all night.
“Holmes,” I said, “this is no good, man. You’ve got to get out. Take up jogging, or something. These moods aren’t healthy.”
“Have you listened to the radio this morning? Seen any papers or the TV?”
“I’ve been with a patient.”
Holmes passed me that morning’s New York Times. In the headline, in the photo, I saw the news that he had been expecting, although until that moment, I had had no idea what it could be.
“Good God, Holmes,” I gasped. “Not—”
He nodded. “We must call Kevin Lowe and get him on a plane to Tennessee.”
Although we started early in the morning, Holmes had several phone calls to make, and we didn’t arrive in Memphis until nearly noon. Lowe arrived half an hour later. He was drawn and worried; even his paisley polyester shirt added no colour to his features.
I knew that Holmes had called in favours from his local contacts, but I didn’t know how powerful those contacts were until we stepped out of the airport into the crushing southern heat, and straight into a snow-white Cadillac.
Even from the airport, the roads were crowded with cars and pedestrians, and the crowds grew and grew as we approached our destination. Lowe gazed out the tinted window at the people sobbing, clutching flowers and records.
“Mr Holmes,” he began, but Holmes just shook his head. The car parted the throng of people, waved through by the policemen in their helmets and sunglasses. The white iron gates opened for us, and we proceeded up the drive to the columned entry of the mansion. A suited guard opened the car door and we walked in solemn silence, past the flowers arranged into bouquets and guitars, into the marbled-floored foyer of the house.
The coffin lay under a crystal chandelier. The man lying inside it wore a white suit and a blue shirt. His hair was as dark and gleaming as it had ever been in life. To my left, I heard Kevin Lowe gasp. I sensed rather than saw him stagger and I caught him and offered him the support of my arm as we were ushered from the house. Hardly a single minute had passed since we had been admitted.
Holmes did not speak until we were back in the car, driving out the gates of the mansion, with the glass panel closed between us and the driver.
“Was it yours inside the coffin?” he asked.
Beside me, Lowe was trembling. “It was mine,” he said. “That was my waxwork, sure as anything.”
“And so now you have your answer,” Holmes said. “They burned the other waxworks so that no one would suspect that the goal of the robbery was to take only one. It was unfortunate for you, to be sure. But I think you can see, Mr. Lowe, and appreciate, the need for confidentiality in this matter. If it is to work—if such a man, hounded by the press and his fans, is to find peace in this world—no one must know he is still in it.”
“I understand, Mr. Holmes,” said Kevin Lowe in a hoarse voice. “I won’t tell anyone. He... he deserves some rest, after all he’s given the world. But all these people...” He wiped his eyes as we drove through the crowds, even larger now than they had been on our way in.
“It’s a necessary path, but one which may give one’s friends pain,” said Holmes, and he caught my eye.
I nodded, remembering my own pain, and understanding at last the reason for my friend’s melancholy over the past several days. At times, Sherlock Holmes appeared to be no more than a calculating, deducing machine. In moments like this, I knew otherwise.
“Still,” resumed Holmes, “take heart, Mr. Lowe. Your work was chosen because of its quality, because of its absolute adherence to current fact. You’re an artist, and you were chosen by an artist, in his last, most desperate hour. I hope you will remember that.”
“I will,” Mr. Lowe said. “I will never forget.”
In the silence, I could dimly hear the car’s radio playing Heartbreak Hotel.
The Rich Man’s Hand
Joan De La Haye
“Alright,” said Joan to me, when I cornered her at a convention, “but it’s apt to be a bit... twisted.” Joan de la Haye’s a razor-sharp, brutal young South African horror author, and she wasn’t kidding. ‘The Rich Man’s Hand’ is a ble
ak, sun-baked glimpse of life in one of the tougher corners of her native Pretoria that nudges at the boundary of the impossible.
SHERLOCK HOLMES WAS on the verge of a relapse and needed a distraction. The Nigerians would be showing up on our doorstep soon to collect on the debt he accrued on his last bender. I’d already searched his office and flat for the little packets containing crack and found one hidden in the toilet cistern. He’d glowered at me while I emptied the rocks into the toilet bowl and flushed it. Thankfully, we’d received several emails asking for help since the success of our last case was smeared across the Pretoria News and on News 24.
The sensationalised case of the farmer and the lion had originally been thought of as an average farm murder by the local police, but had turned out to be a murderous love triangle. Detective Lestrade had, in his usual bungling manner, overlooked most of the pertinent facts. Holmes, while sucking on his electronic cigarette—its LED tip shining blue with each intake of nicotine—took great pleasure in pointing out his main error. The farmer, a Mr. Petrous Marais, had been described as a brutal man by his wife and farm workers. They’d claimed that he’d tormented his labourers with threats of feeding them to his pet lion, which apparently was the only creature the man had shown any affection to. His wife had insisted that he’d beaten her and the workforce on a regular basis, but the lack of bruises on her person, or any other evidence of spousal abuse, like medical records, and the comfort in which the workers lived had given Holmes pause. Surely a man who beat his workers and threatened to feed them to his lion wouldn’t house them quite so well. The workers had indoor plumbing and didn’t live in tin shanties like some workers on other farms across the country. The atrocious living conditions of South African farm labourers was a familiar plight, but it was not the case on that particular farm.
Mr Marais, while a hard man, was not brutal or cruel. He’d treated his workers fairly and paid them what he could afford. His wife, on the other hand, while attractive in the conventional and obvious sense, was not a fair woman. She piqued Holmes’s interest when he noticed the tennis bracelet she wore on her right wrist showed no scratches on the clasp, and was obviously—to him—brand new. The wrapping from the jeweller’s shop and the credit card slip in the rubbish bin backed up his premise. She’d bought it the day after her husband’s death, as though to reward herself for a deed well done. It was not the act of a woman in shock over the brutal murder of her husband. He also noticed traces of lint on her blouse, which matched the fibres from the farm foreman’s shirt, and traces of lipstick on the foreman’s collar that matched the shade of lipstick Mrs Marais favoured. Holmes deduced that they had been having an affair and that the foreman had riled up the workers against Mr. Marais and convinced them to feed him to his outsized pet. Once confronted, the lovers had turned on each other in a rush to secure a plea bargain. The farm labourers had felt contrite and come clean on all the details. The poor animal had been put down and Mrs. Marais and her lover were charged with conspiracy to commit murder and sundry other charges.
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