No Police Like Holmes
Page 14
“Isn’t this kind of a narrow specialty?” I asked.
“Oh, I just brought the best of the Holmes stuff for this symposium or whatever it’s called,” he said. “We sell all kinds of mysteries. In fact, Al Kane’s doing a book signing for us tomorrow night. See anything you like?”
Resisting the impulse to calculate the odds on that one, I said, “You have some old books here. There must be a few gems for collectors among them.”
Pinkwater smiled. “Nothing that would excite a Woollcott Chalmers, that’s for sure. I shy away from real rarities. You have to know what you’re doing there or you can get burned. That happened to me once on a copy of The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Ellery Queen and very rare because it was suppressed by the Conan Doyle Estate. It turned out to be a modern bootleg reprint.” He shook his head. “There’s not much margin for that kind of error in this business.”
What was that volume Pinkwater had showed me yesterday about a rare book that turned out to be fake? There it was, still on the table - The Adventure of the Unique ‘Hamlet.’ There was the beginning of an idea there, if only I could put my finger on it.
“I never again bought a so-called rarity and I never will,” Pinkwater concluded. “That’s not the business I’m in.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“But what if you did happen to acquire a book like that?” I pressed. “Say it just fell into your lap, something unique and worth thousands of dollars. Would you know where to resell it?”
“Sure.” That smile again.
Now I was getting somewhere.
“Well, where?”
“Woollcott Chalmers. He’d buy it.”
With a frustration bordering on despair, I thanked Mr. Clean and headed for the President’s Dining Room in hopes of at least getting breakfast out of this deal. On the way I pulled out my notebook and struck a line through the names of Reuben Pinkwater and, now that I thought about it, Renata Chalmers.
For all of Mac’s baloney about not having time to interview the people on his list, several shared his breakfast table - Judge Crocker, Dr. Queensbury, and Woollcott Chalmers. Kate and Renata were there, too, along with Al Kane, Bob Nakamora, and Lynda. So there she was.
As I joined them they were in the midst of an animated discussion that could only have concerned the late Hugh Matheson.
“He was a slickster, a trickster, and a damned womanizer,” Chalmers said with a fire in his blue eyes, as if daring anyone to disagree.
Judge Crocker, seated immediately to Chalmers’s left, concentrated on applying strawberry jam to a biscuit.
“Worst of all,” Chalmers added, “he was a poseur. Most of what he knew about Sherlock Holmes he must have picked up from some old Basil Rathbone films. And the fact that he’s dead doesn’t change any of that.”
“I fear that Hugh, rather like the victim in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, had a more-than-ample share of detractors,” Mac rumbled.
“Somebody must have liked him,” Lynda said, “or he couldn’t have been a womanizer.”
She wore a short-sleeved yellow and blue dress with a bright floral design that was giving me spring fever. I tried not to give her too much eyeball time.
Mac paused from attacking his extremely unhealthful hash browns long enough to praise Lynda for clarity of reasoning “bordering on the Sherlockian.” If she objected to his cheap flattery she didn’t say so, but then she’s always had a soft spot for Mac, regarding him for some mysterious reason as an adorable screwball.
“So who do you think killed Matheson?” Al Kane asked, directing the question at Chalmers.
“Perhaps some narrow-minded husband,” the old collector said acidly.
“One who just happened to be wearing a deerstalker?” Mac said. “Come now, Woollcott, you ask us to believe too much.”
“The way you talk about Matheson,” Kane said to Chalmers, “are you sure you didn’t do it yourself?”
Renata Chalmers sucked in her breath.
“Nonsense,” her husband snapped. “Why would I do a horrible thing like that?”
It was hard to read the look behind Kane’s rimless spectacles. He was either having a great time putting the old man on, or he was back to playing amateur sleuth and assigning Chalmers the role of villain.
“How about revenge?” Kane suggested. “That was a favorite motive of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, if I recall correctly.”
“Watson,” Queensbury corrected under his breath.
Chalmers snorted. “Revenge for what? Revenge is for losers, not winners. If Matheson and I went after the same thing, I’m the one who inevitably walked off with it. Everyone knew that. I built a collection that Matheson would have paid a fortune to get his hands on, then I gave it away.”
“Stop it - stop it, all of you!” Molly Crocker’s voice was strained. Looking weary, she shoved strands of graying hair out of her eyes. “You’re all playing fun and games with the death of a man most of us knew. As a jurist and a human being, I find that distasteful and unconscionable.”
“I didn’t know the victim,” Bob Nakamora said, “but I think the lady’s right.”
“Indubitably,” Mac concurred. “In letting our passion for sleuthing get the best of us, we have been insensitive louts.” Speak for yourself Mac; I wasn’t in this for fun and games.
“Maybe so,” Queensbury said, “but the question remains: Whodunit? We all have a stake in the answer. You heard what Mac said earlier: A witness saw Hugh open his door to somebody wearing a deerstalker. Doesn’t that make it look like one of us?”
In the awkward silence that followed, I wanted to point to the cap lying on the floor between his chair and Molly Crocker’s and say, “You should know, Dr. Queensbury.” But, of course, I politely restrained myself.
Then Bob Nakamora pointed out, “We still haven’t solved the mystery of the stolen books. Maybe whoever took those books was also stealing something from Matheson, and Matheson caught him. Couldn’t a clever burglar have noticed a lot of deerstalkers around the hotel and put one on so he’d fit in? They’re not hard to buy.”
Mac thumped the table. “Ingenious, Bob! But not, I fear, the truth. You see” - he knitted up his bushy eyebrows in concentration - “the killer demonstrably was not a burglar. A burglar is one who burgles something, a thief in the night, a cowardly creature of stealth. Not even a novice at that dishonorable craft knocks on his victim’s door.
“Nor,” Mac added, leaning forward, “would a man of law be likely to admit a stranger to his hotel room. The implication is clear: It was a friend or, at minimum, an acquaintance who killed Hugh Matheson.”
That much I’d been sure of all along.
And now I was beginning to get a notion about why Matheson had had to die.
Chapter Twenty-Five - “I Think I’m on to Something”
After breakfast, while others drifted toward the Hearth Room for the first talk of the day, Mac followed me into the corridor
“You have something to report?”
“Not much. Just that I wouldn’t put any money on Reuben Pinkwater for the killer if I were you.” Only after I said it did I realize with bitterness the assumption Mac had made - that I would act the Watson (sorry, amanuensis) he expected me to be. “I don’t even know why you want me talk to people on that damned list of yours,” I added. “You could have interrogated most of them yourself right there at your breakfast table.”
“I had no way of knowing that when I formulated the list,” Mac said. “Of course, I did question my breakfast partners to a certain subtle degree before you arrived. However, I would still benefit from your objectivity as a total outsider and your considerable skills as an interviewer. And there are others-”
“All right, all right.” When Mac refers t
o himself as subtle, it’s time to shut him up. Besides, he was spreading on the butter awfully thick. “I’ve already talked to Pinkwater and Renata. I’ll keep working my way down the list, unless I can prove the killer’s identity before I get that far.”
Mac paused with his hand halfway into his breast pocket. “You have been holding out on me, old boy. You have a theory.”
“An idea, anyway. I think I’m on to something, but only an expert could tell me for sure. Who knows more about Sherlock Holmes first editions and stuff like that than anybody else here?”
“Woollcott,” Mac said without hesitation.
“Aside from him.”
Mac pulled a cigar from his pocket, for once without some hocus-pocus or even a dramatic flourish. “Lars Jenson. He can readily describe all five Croatian editions of some obscure Spanish pastiche. He is even adept at certifying the handwriting of several important Sherlockian figures. What are you groaning about, Jefferson?”
“The Swedish Chef. It would have to be him. Even if he tells me what I need to know I’ll never be able to understand it.”
“Admittedly, English is not his best language. He and I mostly communicate in German, sometimes Italian.” Show-off.
I asked Mac to go with Jenson and me to the library as an interpreter, but he shook his head and said it was impossible. In a few minutes he had to acknowledge the tragic death of Hugh Matheson and say a few appropriately kind words. He was also scheduled to introduce Dr. Queensbury’s talk on “Dr. John H. Watson: Conductor of Light” and Bob Nakamora’s on “Sherlock Holmes on Radio,” then speak himself on “Humor in the Canon.” He dared not risk Queensbury or Nakamora coming up short and leaving the audience at a loss for a host, as had happened on one embarrassing occasion already. What, Sebastian McCabe couldn’t bi-locate?
“However,” Mac said, “I would be delighted to use my good offices to persuade Lars to accompany you, should such persuasion prove necessary. Of course” - he cocked an eyebrow as he gestured airily with the unlit cigar - “that would be all the easier if I knew what the bloody hell you have in mind, Jefferson.”
“Are you ready to explain your mumbo-jumbo about Matheson not being the thief? No? I didn’t think so. Well, this time I’m the detective and I get to do mysterious things without explaining.”
Besides, if I told him my idea and it proved wrong, I’d look like the biggest fool outside of Congress.
Mac took my reticence in good humor, promising to pull Jenson out of the Hearth Room where he was awaiting the start of the program. With an aggressive lope, he crossed the hallway and disappeared into the Hearth Room. As I was watching him go, Lynda blindsided me on my right.
“Okay, Jeff,” she said. The greeting, totally unexpected and out of context, made me jump slightly. “You two had your Boys’ Night Out. Now, what gives?”
“You!” I said, investing the syllable with the most accusatory tone I could muster. “You sure didn’t do me any favors with those two stories in the paper this morning.”
“I’m sorry, Jeff, I really am, but doing you favors isn’t part of my job description at the Observer. You never seem to get that.” She ran a hand through her honey-colored hair, a nervous gesture.
“Any more of this crap and I’m going to lose my job. I wish you could have at least quoted Ralph in the - oh, never mind.”
I was overcome by the depressing familiarity of a scene played out so many times before. The conflict between Lynda’s job and mine had been a constant irritant the whole time we had dated. Here it was again, just when I was hoping that what we had been through together yesterday, and the conspiracy of silence about it that still bound us together, meant that our romantic relationship was no longer in the dead letter file. And even before that, she had said she loved me - and then called me an idiot. Confused as well as depressed, I changed the subject.
“I didn’t expect to see you here this morning,” I said.
“It seemed the place to be. This is where the murderer is.” She gripped her purse with a force that turned her knuckles white. “Look, Jeff, I want to know if you and Mac have any idea who killed Matheson - because Oscar and his crew don’t. They may never find those books in his room if they aren’t even looking for them. And that means they won’t know Matheson was the thief, which could turn out to be the biggest clue of all. I think we screwed up last night by not calling 911 and telling the whole story as soon as we found the body. It would have been a lot easier on my nerves.”
“Not if you were in jail.”
She ignored that. “Unless you have any better ideas, it’s not too late to tell Oscar about the books.”
“Somebody in housekeeping at the hotel will find the books eventually. Besides, Matheson didn’t steal them.”
“What?”
“That’s what Mac said, and I have to admit that he’s right often enough that the other times don’t count.”
Lynda yanked open her purse, pulled out a stick of gum, unwrapped it, and shoved it into her mouth. “If he wasn’t the thief, then why did he have the books?”
“Mac wouldn’t tell me that much. He’s acting mysterious about it. But it could be that Matheson actually recovered the books somehow, only for some reason didn’t find all of them. Anyway, what’s really important is, I have an idea that may explain why Matheson died, if not who-”
I stalled out when I saw Mac coming out of the Hearth Room with Lars Jenson.
“Jefferson,” my brother-in-law called. “Lars is quite amenable to assisting you. Have you met?”
We hadn’t, although I had watched the tall, stooped Swede in the library. Mac introduced him to Lynda and me.
“A great pleasure,” Jenson said in that sing-song voice. He bowed at Lynda, oh-so-Continental and old-fashioned. She stuck out her hand for shaking. After a while Jenson figured out what he was supposed to do with the hand, and he did it. Then he turned to me. “You like to look at some books now, ja?”
“Ja,” I said.
“And Lynda makes three,” she added.
You may think we’d have trouble getting into the Lee J. Bennish Memorial Library on a Sunday during spring break, and normally you’d be right. But things weren’t normal. Guards were all over the place, inside and out. The Campus Security people knew me. And even if they hadn’t, my staff ID card would have been at a high enough level to get me past them.
Gene Pfannenstiel’s office, full of ancient books spilling out of bookcases, looked almost Dickensian except for the laptop computer open on his roll-top desk. The gnome looked up from it in surprise when we entered.
“Oh, hi,” he said. “What are you folks doing here? It’s Sunday, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but we have a distinguished visitor all the way from Sweden and we wanted to take him on a quick tour of the Chalmers Collection.”
Jenson smiled. “Ja, ja.”
Gene regarded Jenson shrewdly. “Didn’t I see you yesterday during-”
“We’ll only be a few minutes,” Lynda interrupted. “He can’t stay long.”
“Right,” Gene said, reaching down to tie a lace on his right gym shoe. “I’m knee-deep in cataloguing right now, but go ahead and look. The guards won’t stop you. They’ll just watch you real closely if you touch any books.”
“Actually, that might happen,” I said. “Dr. Jenson is a serious scholar. Can you unlock the cases where the best stuff is on display?”
He agreed without complaint.
While we were walking from his office to the rare book room, where the Chalmers Collection was on display, I asked Gene whether he’d heard anything from Decker about the books that were stolen.
“Nothing, I’m afraid.”
“Did you know Hugh Matheson, the man who was murdered?” I didn’t expect an affirmative answer, and I didn’t get one.
I tried to think of more questions Mac might ask, since Gene was on his infamous little list, but I drew a blank. So did Lynda.
When we reached the Chalmers Collection, I could practically hear Larsen’s pulse race faster as he shoved his glasses against his nose and bent down to read the titles in the foreign section. He talked to himself in Swedish as he pulled out a book called Sherlock Holmes aventyr.
I tugged on his sleeve and led him to where Gene was unlocking the cases holding the rarest remaining gems of the Chalmers Collection.
“Mr. Jenson,” I said, “I want you to look at as many of these books as you can with extreme care and tell me if each of them is exactly what it’s supposed to be. Are the first editions really first editions and are any inscriptions inside genuine? Understand?”
“Ja. Just like a mystery. I am sleuth.”
Gene’s eyes widened. “It’s just a wild idea,” I assured him. “There’s probably nothing to it. Relax. Go back to your cataloguing. The guards will keep an eye on us.” I wanted him gone. He was a suspect.
“Okay. Call me if you need me.”
When Gene was out of earshot, Lynda said, “That’s your brilliant idea?” Her tone lacked the admiration I would have hoped for. “You think the books in the Chalmers Collection might be fakes?”
“I didn’t say it was brilliant; I said it could explain why Matheson was murdered. I got the idea from a Sherlock Holmes story that was described to me. It’s about a collector who steals his own book to keep a rival from finding out that it’s a phony. Now maybe somebody killed Matheson for the same reason - because when he got his hands on those missing books they turned out to be frauds. And if that’s true, other books in the Chalmers Collection could be just as spurious.”