No Police Like Holmes

by Dan Andriacco

  “But that would mean that Chalmers himself is the killer,” Lynda said.

  Jenson murmured over a faded red volume.

  I shook my head. “That’s where truth has to depart from fiction. Chalmers never would have donated fraudulent books to begin with. He’d know that at the college they’d be available to scholars who could expose them.”

  “Then if the Chalmers Collection was the real stuff when it got here, parts of it must have been stolen and replaced later,” Lynda said. “That little librarian must have done it, or at least been involved.”

  “Yeah,” I said miserably. “Gene wouldn’t be the first academic librarian who peddled rare books, as Queensbury reminded me yesterday. I don’t want to believe it, but that’s where my logic leads me.”

  “Well, I’m not sure your logic is so logical. If your scenario is correct, then the two books we found in Matheson’s room must be phonies. Why would the killer leave those behind where somebody else could see the fakery?”

  “Because the killer couldn’t find them - he wasn’t as clever at searching as you were. The other book, the one that’s still missing, was hidden somewhere else and he found that one.”

  She took a wad of gum out of her mouth and wrapped it in foil. “Back up a minute, Jeff. How could Matheson spot these books for phonies? He was no expert on Sherlockiana. He was a guy with a collection and a lot of bucks to spend on it.”

  “That’s what Chalmers said - talking about his bitter rival. We don’t know whether that’s true or he was just dissing the competition.”

  I think I had her there, because she said, “All right, then, this gets me back to where I was before: The cops need to know that Matheson had those books.”

  Before I had a chance to answer, Jenson poked his soulful gray eyes up over the book in his hands. Three Problems for Solar Pons, the title read. What in the world could that be?

  “Excuse me please,” the Swede said. “Your theory is most intriguing, Jefferson,” - Yefferson - “but I do not believe it is so very likely.”

  “Why not?” I demanded.

  “You expect lots of fakes, ja? Not the missing books only.” He shook his head vigorously. “I have look at ten, fifteen books here. I find no fakes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six - I’ve Got Your Number

  Outside the library, in the fresh air of a beautiful spring Sunday, I pulled out my notebook.

  “Now what?” Lynda said.

  “Just crossing names off Mac’s list.”

  When the truth hits you in the face, there’s no point in trying to smack back. I didn’t kid myself that there were another ten or fifteen phony books that Jenson had missed.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Jeff. It wasn’t a bad idea, really.”

  “I know. In fact, it was as swell idea. I’m going to write it down and use it in a Max Cutter story.”

  I flipped through the notebook, looking for a blank page, until I saw something that brought me back from the fictional world of my Philadelphia private eye with a jerk.

  “What are you staring at?” Lynda asked. It’s that journalistic DNA of hers; she’s always full of questions.

  “Something I’d forgotten all about,” I told her.

  I showed her a page containing nothing but three digits - 525. It was the number I’d copied off the notepad in Matheson’s room, presumably a hotel room number that the lawyer had called or intended to call the day he died.

  Jenson looked on with a mixture of interest and puzzlement, clearly curious but too polite to ask what was going on. When we reached the Hearth Room we shook hands with him again, thanked him, and let him get back to the lunacy at hand.

  I pulled out my phone, tapped on the number for the Winfield from my contacts list, and asked for room 525.

  Five rings, six rings, seven...

  What are there, ten rings to a minute? I’d given up counting by the time a generic hotel voicemail message kicked in. I disconnected in disgust.

  “We should have expected that, you know,” Lynda said. “Whoever has that room isn’t going to be just sitting around waiting for us to call. He’s going to be in there.” She pointed at the Hearth Room across the way. “I mean, it’s got to be one of the Sherlockians. Unless Graham Bentley Post-”

  “No, it’s not his room number.”

  Although the popular culture maven was staying at the Winfield, I had a clear recollection that the room number he’d written on his business card began with a seven. I pulled it out of my wallet for a quick confirmation: room 718.

  “I bet the hotel won’t tell us who’s in that room if we just call them out of nowhere,” Lynda said, “but there must be some way to find out.”

  “Yeah. Mac would find a way.”

  I cracked open the door at the front of the Hearth Room about four inches. Noah Queensbury was talking but with the air of a man winding down, while Mac looked on benignly from his throne-like chair across the room. I opened the door wider and signaled my brother-in-law with all the agitated movement of a spasmodic semaphore operator. Finally I caught his eye and he caught my meaning. He shook his head no. I shook my head yes. Glowering, he stalked behind Queensbury and over to the door.

  “Jefferson,” he said heavily, “eager as I am for another progress report, this is a most infelicitous time. Couldn’t you tell me about your adventures after the Sherlockian auction?”

  “Fine, fine.” For what I had to report so far, I was in no hurry. “But we need some help right now.”

  “We’re trying to learn the occupant of a certain room at the Winfield,” Lynda said. “It’s probably one of your colloquium people. Can you help us put a name to the number?”

  “Of what possible interest-”

  “I thought you were in a hurry,” I said. This was my show, and this time Mac was my assistant.

  The sound of applause came from inside the Hearth Room, magnified by the speakers in the corridor. Mac looked toward the room and tugged at his beard. “Blast it, nobody ever did this to Nero Wolfe! I do not have access to the colloquium participants’ room numbers. You will have to call Sandy Roeder at the Winfield and ask her who is registered for that room. Mention my name. Sandy is a former student of mine.”

  “R-O-E-D-E-R?” Lynda asked. “Doesn’t she own the Winfield?”

  “Not yet. Her mother has that distinction. You shall owe me dearly for this.”

  Without further farewell, he slipped back into the Hearth Room (if an elephant can slip).

  “He means he was happy to be of help,” I told Lynda, who was already pulling out her Android.

  Sandy Roeder wasn’t an easy sell. I could tell that from Lynda’s hand gestures, and never mind what they were. But finally she disconnected and stuck the phone back in her purse with a satisfied look on her face.

  “I’m not going to try to guess,” I told her, “so just give. Whose room is it?”

  “Molly Crocker.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - Here Comes the Judge

  I don’t know that I expected to hear, but not that.

  “Molly Crocker doesn’t seem like his type, does she?” Lynda said, noting the shock on my face.

  “Come to think of it,” I said, “why not? She’s female.” In fact, she was an attractive, albeit mature, female. “She’s married, but that wouldn’t even slow Matheson down, much less stop him. There must have been some sort of relationship between them - her room number on the writing pad shows that - and romance is certainly one of the possibilities.”

  “Certainly. I withdraw what I said about his type. How would I even know, really?”

  “And maybe she went to his room at the Winfield yesterday with her hair tucked up in a deerstalker cap. Somebody who saw her from behind might not have been able to tell she was a woman. In fact, now that I think abou
t it, are we sure the witness said anything about gender? I think Oscar used the pronoun ‘he,’ but maybe he was just making an assumption. We should press him on that.”

  “But Crocker was wearing a dress every time I saw her yesterday,” Lynda objected.

  She stopped talking as a female student walked by, one of the lost souls from the dorm who hadn’t gone home for spring break. The girl was tall with platinum blond hair reaching down the middle of her back. She wore very short red shorts (at least two months ahead of season) over long, muscular legs, a white T-shirt with no bra underneath, and Nike gym shoes. I barely noticed her.

  “Besides,” Lynda said when the student had passed, “what about motive? What do you figure Molly Crocker had to do with the stolen books?”

  “I don’t know, maybe nothing at all. This could be a simple crime of passion. It could have been her, not you, that Matheson referred to when he told Queensbury he had business with a lady. We ought to at least talk to her, find out if she knows anything. Her name is on my list from Mac anyway.”

  Lynda had to admit it couldn’t hurt.

  I went into the back of the Hearth Room, where Bob Nakamora was now holding forth on the subject of Sherlock Holmes on the radio.

  “Orson Welles played Holmes in his own radio adaptation of William Gillette’s famous melodrama Sherlock Holmes when The Mercury Theater on the Air...”

  After looking around for a minute from the doorway, I spotted Judge Crocker sitting next to Queensbury on a comfortable couch along the far wall. Even in the harsh fluorescent light of the Hearth Room she was a handsome woman. The blue jumper she was wearing seemed casual, comfortable and un-judgelike. Once again I noticed the mound of her tummy, big enough to make me wonder if she were pregnant but not big enough that I’d risk asking her about it.

  Feeling conspicuous, I crossed the room and whispered in her ear. “Could you come with me for a minute?”

  Molly Crocker looked at me, then at Queensbury, who seemed engrossed in the talk. She rose and picked up her purse, a dark leather contraption with a drawstring top. Not until we were walking toward the door did she speak in a low voice.

  “Has something happened?”

  There were a million ways to answer that. I settled on, “Nothing new. We just want to ask you a few questions.”

  “‘We?’”

  The presence of Lynda Teal right outside the door answered for me. Molly had met Lynda at breakfast, and apparently she thought I’d set her up for an exercise in ambush journalism.

  “If you want to talk to me about Hugh’s death, I must tell you that I have no interest in being interviewed for your newspaper,” she told Lynda.

  “I’m really the one who wants to talk to you,” I said. “Off the record. You could help us solve Matheson’s murder.”

  “Mr. Cody, I think I made it quite clear earlier this morning that I highly disapprove of playing games with murder.”

  “This is no game.”

  “Then if you actually have any pertinent information about this homicide or any other crime you’re legally bound to tell the police.”

  “So are you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Her tone of voice would have cut through diamonds.

  While I was making a mental note to never do anything that might land me in Maximum Molly’s courtroom, the girl in red shorts walked by again. “I don’t think the hallway is the right place to discuss this,” I said.

  After a token protest that there was no right place, Molly went with us to the Study Lounge on the same floor of Muckerheide. With its stuffed chairs and fifty-watt bulbs, the place is about as conducive to study as the drive-in theaters of my father’s youth, and occasionally is the site of similar activities. Not today, though. We had the lounge all to ourselves, thanks to spring break.

  As soon as we’d settled into chairs I told Molly, “The number of your room at the Winfield was written on a notepad by the side of Matheson’s body.”

  “Good grief, is that what this is about? I already know that. Your police chief - what’s his name, Hummel? - he told me this morning.”

  Lynda, sitting where Molly Crocker couldn’t see it, rolled her eyes in the back of her head.

  “Oscar talked to you as part of his investigation?” I asked Molly.

  “Yes. I found him a rather unpolished personality.”

  That was Oscar, all right.

  I should have expected this. We’d left the notepad where we’d found it, like good citizens. Any idiot would have tried to find out whose number that was, and Oscar is no idiot. He just acts like it sometimes.

  “Do you have any idea why Matheson had your number?” Lynda asked.

  The judge turned to her. “I know exactly why, but I see no reason to tell you - on or off the record. As an officer of the court I’ve already told the proper authorities.”

  “It’s really not that hard to figure out,” I said. “Matheson was a notorious womanizer. That’s an old-fashioned word that Chalmers used, but I don’t know of a better one. The two of you must have had a liaison at the hotel. The only real question is whether you left his room before or after the murder.”

  Molly stood up, her body trembling. “That accusation is totally baseless.”

  Fortunately, I wasn’t within slapping range.

  “Jeff isn’t accusing you of anything,” Lynda said in a soothing tone. “He just got carried away for a minute. What he means is, did you go to Matheson’s room yesterday afternoon? And if you did, did he give you any indication that he was expecting another visitor?”

  “Those are questions quite proper for the police to ask, Ms. Teal, and they already did.”

  I gave up. “If you choose to stonewall us, Judge, I know there’s nothing we can do about it. Legally, whatever you had going with the victim is none of our business.”

  “I had nothing ‘going’ with Hugh Matheson.”

  Unexpectedly, she sat back down and went on in a more collected voice. “I’ve known Hugh for years, since law school. Apparently he tried to call me at the hotel a couple of times Friday night, but I was at Mac’s party. Anyway, on Saturday he missed me again because I was out to an early breakfast, so he followed me into the corridor after Kate McCabe’s presentation.”

  “He just wanted to talk to you?” I said.

  She nodded. “It was about a case he was involved in, a case that’s going to reach my court.”

  “But that isn’t ethical, is it?” Lynda objected.

  “Totally inappropriate,” the judge agreed with a shake of her head. “I told Hugh in the strongest terms possible that it was only our long friendship that kept me from reporting him to the ethics committee of the Cincinnati Bar Association.”

  It was as neat an explanation for an embarrassing circumstance as I’d ever seen, maybe too neat.

  “I find it hard to believe that a man with a five-speed libido like Matheson could resist putting the moves on an attractive woman like you,” I told Molly.

  She laughed. “Thanks, I guess, but I never said he didn’t try. I turned him down years ago, before I even had my first gray hair. I wasn’t interested in being added to his list of conquests. And these days he prefers - preferred - younger women, so I was safe from his attentions.”

  Lynda must have read something significant in that - is that a woman thing? - because she said, “How young?”

  “How young is Renata Chalmers?”

  It took a second or two for that to penetrate. But when it did, it hit hard. I gripped the arm of my chair. “Are you telling us that Renata and Matheson-”

  Molly Crocker rose to her feet, looking away from me as I stood up at the same time. “I’m sorry. I’ve already said far more than I had any business saying.”

  “Maybe so, but you did say it,” Lynda point
ed out, leaving her chair as well. “Now you at least have a responsibility to make sure we don’t misinterpret and imagine the situation as any worse than it is.”

  “The situation is bad enough,” the judge said, “at least by my rather traditional standards of morality. I really don’t feel comfortable talking about it.”

  Talk about shutting the barn door after the cow’s escaped...

  “We’re not gossips or voyeurs looking for cheap thrills,” Lynda said. “We’re asking for a reason. This could have a bearing on the murder motive.”

  “I - I never thought-”

  I pressed the issue hard. “Was Renata Chalmers having an affair with Hugh Matheson or wasn’t she?”

  Molly closed her eyes. “Yes. Yes, damn it, she was.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I had the ill-fortune to wander into the bar just before a meeting of the Anglo-Indian Club some months ago. Hugh and Woollcott were in there, arguing so intently they didn’t notice anyone else. It was an ugly scene - Hugh bragging that he’d been bedding Woollcott’s wife right under his nose for six months. He was like... like some hunter holding up a prize catch.”

  “Or maybe a collector who’d bested a rival,” I murmured.

  “The whole thing was so dehumanizing that I only wanted to run out of there and forget about it. I turned around and bumped smack into Renata. She’d heard it all; I could tell by the look on her face.”

  “So her husband knew and she knew that he knew,” Lynda said.

  I hadn’t observed any great strain between the Chalmerses and I said so.

  “Woollcott is nothing if not a pragmatist,” the judge said. “I suspect he could tolerate the situation as long as he maintained bragging rights in public. Renata is the perfect trophy wife, isn’t she? Beautiful, talented, and intelligent. And her last name is Chalmers. Woollcott wasn’t going to give that up over a little infidelity.”