“Another hunch, huh. Keep spiking ’em this fast and you’ll run out before the week does.”
“It’s more than a hunch.” I unfolded my legs and curled them under me. My feet were as cold and numb as paving stones. “Answer me this. Why would Ciccone climb a rope to access Belinda’s bedroom from the balcony, then after he strangled her, run hell bent for election down the stairs and out the front door? And knocking over a vase on his way past?”
“He’d just killed a woman,” Jack said. “He panicked.”
“That’s what I thought, too.”
“Makes sense.”
I agreed. “What doesn’t is how Ciccone could knot the climbing rope around the balcony rail from the ground. Remember, there was no hook at the end of it. An amazing job of lassoing, if you ask me.
“Even if by some miracle he managed it, from all accounts Belinda was in the room when he got there. By the dressing gown she wore, she was also awake, not sleeping.”
“She could have been dozing on the bed. Drowsy and unwell, but not quite ready to turn in for the night.”
Papa used to brag that he could whip his weight in wildcats on four hours’ sleep. Snoring to beat Billy Ned for another four or so in the rocking chair before he donned a nightshirt didn’t figure into the equation.
I said, “If Belinda was dozing, the lights must have been on in the room.”
“Couldn’t have been, or the burglar wouldn’t have risked it.”
“Did you ask anyone if the room was dark or lit when Belinda’s body was discovered?”
“Nope. You?”
“Never entered my mind,” I said.
Jack pondered for a full minute. “If he came in and went out the front door, why’d he need a rope? Unless he tied it on to escape, if he was discovered, or the other way was blocked.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Possible,” I admitted, “but if it were me in a panic, I’d have wits enough to climb down from the balcony, not run pellmell through the house.”
From his expression, Jack would, too. He knew without my prompting that the vase wasn’t smashed on the way in. The noise was what had wakened Jules and Pansy, and the front doors were open when he investigated. It was ludicrous to think if the burglar entered that way, he didn’t close them behind him.
“Never mind entrances and exits,” I said. “It’s the pearl necklace that nagged at me from the start. A thief using the only fake strand of pearls Belinda owned is just too convenient.” Continuing with the explanation included a fast-talking account of my second visit to the jail.
“Ah, yes. The pretty Miz Peabody with the jealous fiancé. Waylon Thomas, the turnkey, is still mooning over you.” Jack chuckled. “Not that I blame him.”
“You knew? And you’re not angry?”
“I did and I was, but I’m not anymore.” Even in ambient light, his eyes were a clear, honest blue. “You were wrong to pussyfoot around behind my back. I was wrong in acting like you need my permission to set foot out the door. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have had to pussyfoot.”
“Well…” I held up a hand. “You’re right. No argument. Except there’s a part of me that kind of enjoys finagling my own way of doing things.”
“Do tell.”
“Which I’m trying to, about the pearls. Flat out, I think the robbery was faked to throw blame on the burglar. The real murderer couldn’t bring himself to kill Belinda with a strand of ungodly expensive pearls.”
“Himself. Meaning Hubert Abercrombie.”
“Yes. Belinda was pregnant. I’ll bet every dime I have that the child wasn’t Hubert’s. If it was, why the secrecy? Everybody from Avilla to Pansy said Belinda was nauseous after lunch. Not a soul blamed it on morning sickness, which has naught to do with time of—”
Jack squeezed my wrist. My gaze followed his. I ceased to breathe. We’d been so caught up in conversation that neither of us had seen the French doors to Belinda’s balcony open.
A hooded, black-clad form knelt down to tie a rope to the wrought-iron corner post. Once secured, a coiled length was tossed over the railing.
A tickle tiptoed up my nose. I wiggled it. Pinched the bejesus out of the bridge to dam it. Eyes watery and heavy, I buried my face in Jack’s shoulder.
To my throbbing eardrums, the sneeze sounded as loud as a paddle slapping water, broadside. Jack’s coat must have born the brunt, for when I chanced a peek, the reverse burglar was spidering down the rope.
Jack signaled that he’d follow him, while I stayed put. No, I mouthed and pointed at myself, then him. He shook his head and peeled back his coat, displaying the revolver holstered at his hip. I shrugged and delved my boot top for my derringer. His jaw dropped, eyes slapping open as big as twin blue moons.
Without further ado, I slithered from under the oilcloth. Crouched low, I started after the rapidly disappearing figure. Like him, I ran a zigzag pattern into and out of deep shadow. From the corner of my eye, I saw Jack doing the same, about ten feet to my left.
Neighboring homes were widely separated by weedy, vacant lots. We’d snaked through two back lawns, three, then a fourth, when I lost sight of my quarry. Hands on my knees, I squinted into the drizzly dark, trying to hear something—anything—besides the pound of my own pulse.
Jack kept going, his back hunched nigh vertical to the ground to offset his height. I started up again, praying he wasn’t tracking blind. If we jogged past the burglar, he’d spot us and double back to his house.
Had Jack’s arm not swung in the direction, I’d have never seen the figure climbing an ivy trellis up the wall of the sandstone-block house.
No lights showed in the back or side windows. Assuming the occupants were away, I ran for the front entrance. There was no time for niceties such as knocking. Rousing a servant, then explaining why I was there, would take too blessed long.
Into the door’s keyhole, I inserted a waxed-paper-wrapped cylinder taken from the pouch strung around my neck. The tiny, explosive charge would disable the lock a lot faster than I could pick it open. Striking a match on the stone wall, I lit the short string fuse and backpedaled a safe distance.
The blast knocked me on my butt. The concussion sent me somersaulting across the wet grass, until a sizeable oak tree halted my egress. The doors fluttered by, shearing off limbs as they passed. Glass from the shattered sidelights dappled the ground like sleet.
Scrambling upright, I dashed through the smoldering maw. Acrid smoke obscured my vision. Groping and stumbling, I bashed a shin on a newel post. Screams commenced from all directions as I ran up the stairs. I burst through the door of the corner room. The burglar, silhouetted against the window, was poised to climb back out.
“Stop, thief!” I wrapped my arms around his thighs and jerked backward. We tumbled to the floor, my body bearing the brunt of both our weights. A woman shrieked, “Aaron-n-n!”
Grunting and wriggling, the burglar fought with all his might to free himself. A match flared. A bare foot kicked me in the ribs. Fingernails clawed and pinched my arms. “Let him go, you brute. Stop it, I say.”
The screaming woman’s English accent gave me pause. A peek at the garish, plaid pajamas smothering me from above lent a longer one. Just as I concluded that the person I’d tackled might not be the burglar, Jack bellowed my name from the doorway.
My arms fell to my sides. My captive rolled off me and leapt to his feet. Truth be known, he better resembled Izzy than Hubert Abercrombie.
Confused and mayhaps a tad disoriented by the explosion, I cocked back my head to look up at Jack. If I read his expression correctly in the scant light, he was deliberating whether the revolver he held would be put to better use dispatching me or intimidating the prisoner gripped in his other hand.
My bleary eyes averted to his captive. I blinked. Rubbed the lids with the heels of my hands. Focusing my gaze at floor level, I let it ramble upward at its own pace.
Knee-high, black, top-grain riding boots. Custom-made, judging by their fit. A pair of
black riding breeches. Black silk gloves. A black cashmere sweater…
My eyes roved a soot-blackened face, then met Avilla Abercrombie’s hateful glare.
Sixteen
Hobbling to J. Fulton Shulteis’s office the next morning, it would have taken more than a nasty cold, bruised ribs, and minor burns and cuts from flying glass to dampen my spirits. Not when I’d been right about everything viz the Abercrombie case.
Well, everything except the perpetrator and the motive.
My original and favorite suspects, the elusive Gertrude Hiss and Sam Merck, had been joined in holy wedlock an hour before Belinda Abercrombie’s funeral. When they’d arrived at the manse the night of the murder, Merck was terrified he’d be accused of the crime. He’d served two years in prison for assault and petty larceny and was certain to be a suspect.
Gert guaranteed it by vowing she’d summon a constable to arrest him, then testify for the prosecution if Sam didn’t marry her. A justice of the peace in Salida had officiated the next day.
Sam might not have been a beaming bridegroom, but if he enjoyed German cuisine, starvation would be the least of his worries.
After being startled by the explosion and fall from the trellis into Jack’s arms, Avilla had little choice but to confess. That, and him finding the pillow slip full of Belinda’s jewels tucked in the hollow posts of Avilla’s canopy bed.
The child her stepmother was carrying was Hubert’s. Belinda had suffered two previous miscarriages, thus had sworn her husband to secrecy until such time she felt the pregnancy was enough advanced to announce it. Naturally, Hubert had told Avilla, then extracted a promise that she’d act surprised when Belinda disclosed the happy news.
Jack and I shared our suspicions about the earlier miscarriages, but Avilla denied doing anything to cause them. Perhaps she hadn’t. She was dead-bang guilty of one murder, and like Papa always said, “You can only hang once.”
Money was the motive. With the fifty-fifty chance that Avilla’s half sibling would be male, upon Belinda’s death the child would inherit the entire estate, as Hubert ascribed to the old-fashioned notion that daughters should marry well and sons should carry on the family name and business.
Had the baby been female, Avilla’s inheritance would have been halved—assuming, as she didn’t, that Belinda didn’t fritter away every nickel before Avilla got a crack at it. Ridding herself of Belinda and unborn brother or sister ensured Avilla’s future as a very wealthy young woman.
The modus operandi was simple, although it required patience, then near-perfect timing. When Belinda was too queasy for dinner at the Estabrooks, Avilla slipped a sleeping draught into Hubert’s drink before they went upstairs for the reading.
When Hubert nodded off, Avilla went to Belinda’s room and told her Hubert was ill. When Belinda rose to check on him, Avilla strangled her with the imitation pearls taken in advance from the jewel case. Avilla emptied the case into a pillow slip, stashed it temporarily in the back of her wardrobe, returned to affix the rope to the balcony rail, then hastened downstairs to open the doors and knock the vase off the table to waken the servants.
I’d also been slightly mistaken about the nature of the bruise on Hubert’s hand. I thought he’d barked it on the railing while tying the “burglar’s” rope. In reality, it was the mark left by Avilla’s thumb when she pressured the same point on Hubert’s hand to rouse him as Won Li did to banish my headaches.
Such was an example of yin and yang. Gentle pressure on specific points all over the body had curative properties. A hard gouge effected pain ranging from mild discomfort to excruciating.
Avilla’s sole mistake, which murderers almost always make, was to gild the lily. Bumping into a scraggly stranger on the street—namely, Vittorio Ciccone—and dropping the bar-pin in his pocket was brilliant. What down-on-his-luck drifter wouldn’t believe it to be manna from heaven and cash in on his luck?
Avilla must have danced a merry jig when she heard that the postmaster had identified Ciccone as having mailed a mystery parcel before he attempted to pawn the jewelry.
When the constables delivered Ciccone to his door notan hour after Garret McCoyne’s assistant posted the reward flyer, greed entrapped the postmaster. A share of the bounty offered for information and ridding the city of a derelict non-Caucasian appealed to his bigoted attitude. He was subsequently arrested for bearing false witness in a homicide investigation.
When Avilla later heard that Ciccone had been released from jail, she decided the Ladykiller Thief must strike again. In doing so, she overplayed what might well have been a pat hand.
Like liars parlay too much information, criminals of all kinds tend to cover and recover their tracks with boulders when laying low would hide them sufficiently.
Because she had, I manufactured a reasonably fair excuse to explain to Aaron and Geneva Wilhelm-Oglethorpe why I’d blown the doors off their house and wrestled Aaron to the floor when he’d gone to the window to investigate the presumed earthquake.
“I think you’ll agree that Avilla Abercrombie is not of sound mind,” I’d said.
The Wilhelm-Oglethorpes had exchanged a glance I’d interpreted as meaning my sanity was equally fragile. “We’ll never know whether Avilla’s scheme to re-frame Vittorio Ciccone would have extended to another murder.”
Geneva gasped. “You mean…”
“It’s possible.” I splayed my hands. “I’m not saying this to frighten you after the fact. It just seems common sense that if Belinda Abercrombie was thought to have been killed during the commission of a burglary, Avilla would not have deviated from that theory.”
Aaron clutched his wife’s arm. “Did you hear that, Geneva? Great God, we came a whisker from being slain in our beds tonight.”
“True enough, but…” Geneva frowned up at me. “Was it necessary to dynamite a huge, smoldering hole in the front of our house to prevent it?”
Dynamite was not the pyrotechnic I’d used, but I refrained from correcting her. “I really can’t say for certain, Mrs. Wilhelm-Oglethorpe. I am sincerely sorry for the damage, but might I point out, it was the concussion that prevented Avilla from entering through the window.”
“Yes, yes ’twas,” Aaron said. “The constable caught her on the way down.”
“From my position at the front of the house,” I went on, “I had no idea that she was already in custody. An argument could be waged that she wouldn’t have time to murder both of you, before your butler answered my knock, but…”
Aaron said, “If she’d only got one of us, it would have been you, pet. You sleep nearer the window.”
“I beg your pardon. You snore so loudly, surely she’d have slit your throat first for the tranquility it afforded.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say. Positively macabre.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Not.”
“ ’Tis, too.”
Before the spat escalated further, I apologized again for the damages. Thinking it would enhance my sincerity, I then offered to pay for them.
Geneva accepted with alacrity. Aaron argued that their lives were more valuable than a couple of doors and sidelights, even though they’d been imported from Wales at no small expense.
Geneva suggested I reimburse their cost and leave the balance of the repairs to them. “Five thousand will cover it, I should think.”
“Dollars?”
“That is a bit excessive, love, don’t you think? After all, we do owe our lives to Miss Sawyer.” He beamed up at me.
“Make it two thousand and we’ll call it square.”
The air whooshed from my lungs. I grabbed the edge of a console to keep from fainting dead away.
“Four thousand,” Geneva yelped.
“Three!”
“Twenty-five hundred,” she said. “That’s my final offer, Aaron. Take it or leave it.”
Two hours later, we settled on five hundred, payable in installments for the rest of my natural life.
&nb
sp; Won Li said I’d gotten off easy. I told him if I heard another word about it, I’d cut off his pigtail and put it where the sun don’t shine.
Percy wasn’t at his desk when I entered J. Fulton Shulteis’s office to collect the much-needed fee for the LeBruton case. In a peculiar way, the clerk’s absence was a disappointment. I made a mental note to make up for it, next visit.
The enthusiasm with which Fulton greeted me had me glancing over my shoulder to see if, say, Queen Victoria herself were standing in my shadow.
“Allow me to add my congratulations to the multitudes for a job well done.” He grinned around a fat cigar that looked entirely too much like a similarly brown, elongated object. The other hand held up the newspaper. Just like the copy I bought that morning, the headline read “Joe B. Sawyer Captures Killer.”
Jack was quoted as crediting me and Sawyer Investigations with contributing to Avilla Abercrombie’s arrest. Alas, the tin-eared reporter heard the name as “Joe B.,” not Joby. A correction was to be printed in tomorrow’s edition, but the squib would likely appear between advertisements for magnetized trusses and bunion pads.
Shulteis said, “According to the account, your father couldn’t have solved Belinda Abercrombie’s murder without your help. Nor dispensing with LeBruton, for that matter.”
On the surface, they were true statements. But criminitlies, was I weary of Papa’s posthumous reputation eclipsing mine.
Fulton said, “So, the police think the real thief must have skipped town, when news of the murder got out, eh?”
“They do?”
“That’s what the paper says. Took the loot from the McCoynes and Whitelaws and vamoosed.” Pages rustled, then he pointed at a small piece below the third’s fold.
“Wouldn’t have done him much good to stay in the city. To risk apprehension while burgling another house was an invitation to a murder charge.”
The thief getting away scot-free irked my sense of justice and destroyed my bank account. Refunding the victims’ retainer would be my next errand. Wise of me not to spend any of the advance, but I’d had hopes of earning a goodly piece of it. All told, between the damages incurred, expenses unretrievable, and returning the hundred-dollar bank draft, I’d need a loan to buy a bottle of red ink with which to update the agency’s ledger.
A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves Page 16