The Belgian and The Beekeeper

by Peter Guttridge

  He popped the gum in his mouth and dropped the wrapper on the floor of the set. Rathbone frowned as he watched it fall.

  “Only it just so happens,” Timlin said, “that both Mrs Neame and Arty Cohen have alibis.”

  “Alibis,” Bruce said absently. He was gazing pop-eyed at the sofa, presumably imagining the scene. “Alibis, indeed.”

  “Murder happened sometime between eight and eight fifteen last night. We got witnesses saw the victims together just before eight sneaking in here. Their bodies were discovered at eight twenty. Mrs Neame was having dinner at the Brown Derby with a bunch of other broads from seven until ten. Never left the restaurant.”

  “And Lisabeth’s husband, Arty Cohen?”

  “Oh, you’ll love his alibi. It’s a dilly.”

  “Indeed?” Rathbone said.

  “Says he was at home listening to the Sherlock Holmes Radio Show.”

  Timlin blew on his coffee before he took a sip.

  “My wife says that’s what Monday night is for. Just think, she says, you know pretty much what everyone in America with a radio is dong come eight o’clock on a Monday evening. All over America people are waiting for that Bill Forman to make his announcement. ‘Petri wine brings you’ – sappy organ riff – ‘Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’ – more sappy organ – ‘in the new adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ – the organist goes nuts. Do ya ever want to clobber that guy on the organ?”

  Bruce chuckled and drained his coffee. Rathbone smiled.

  “You’re clearly a regular listener to our little entertainment, Sergeant Timlin, for you to know the opening so well.”

  Timlin grimaced.

  “My wife, believe me, I got no choice.”

  He glanced around the room. They were in the cafeteria on the lot of Universal Studios, where Rathbone and Bruce were making their series of Sherlock Holmes films. Although the first two films had the correct period setting, once war had broken out the series had been set in contemporary times with the Nazis as villains.

  Timlin’s eyes widened.

  “Isn’t that…?”

  Rathbone followed his look.

  “It is, sergeant. Would you like Willy to introduce you to her? They’re great pals. She’s most delightful.”

  “What’s with the Willy business?” Timlin said as Bruce gave a little smile and waved his pipe at the beautiful blonde sitting by the window. She blew a kiss.

  “It’s my name,” Bruce said, adding a mumbled, “stupid fellow.”

  Rathbone looked at Timlin.

  “Look here, aren’t you taking your investigation of these dreadful murders rather casually? I don’t see how we can help you. We weren’t here after lunchtime yesterday until you saw us this morning.”

  “Now that’s the difference between your American and your Limey detective. You guys go off like bloodhounds searching for clues –“ Timlin put on a dreadful English accent. “- ‘Quick, Watson, not a moment to lose’ – whereas we approach things a little more sideways on. Besides, I already know who did it.”

  “Very interesting, Sergeant. Perhaps you would enlighten us.”

  “All in good time,” Timlin said, taking a big swig of his own coffee. “First tell me about your radio show. It’s live isn’t it?”

  “Indubitably,” Rathbone said. “Which can occasionally require a certain talent for improvisation.”

  Bruce leaned forward.

  “Yesterday evening, for example, the soundman made a blunder. Wilson the notorious canary trainer shot himself and the listener was supposed to hear the sound of the shot and of the body falling into water. Instead, the soundman did a shot and the sound of a glass breaking.”

  Rathbone patted Bruce’s back.

  “And Willy saved the day by declaring ‘Great Scot, his shot smashed that glass of Petri wine’.”

  “That happened, did it?” Timlin said. He shook his head and looked glumly at the table.

  “Sergeant,” Rathbone said with a smile. “Could it be that you actually do need the help of Sherlock Holmes to unravel this? If so, let me reiterate, we are merely actors –“

  “I’ll get it out of him,” Timlin said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

  Rathbone steepled his hands in front of his face.

  “I take it you’re referring to Arty Cohen. You doubt his alibi.”

  “I doubt him,” Timlin said, slapping his hand down on the table. “I’m sure the Bronx brute did it.”

  “Bronx brute?” Bruce said.

  “Big bruiser, speaks with a Noo Yawk accent. Done well for himself. Smart house, fancy car, phones in every room. Think he’d rather be back on the East coast. He’s here because of his wife. She wants to be a movie star. He seems to spend all his time calling his brother Maurice – Morry – back in New York. He was on the phone to him for a good half an hour yesterday, phone records show. Trunk call like that costs a small fortune.”

  “He suspected his wife’s affair?” Rathbone said.

  “He admitted that right off. Know how he figured it out?” Timlin chuckled. “Your radio show again.”

  “Dear me,” Rathbone said. “We do seem to have a lot to answer for, don’t we?”

  “Tell me about doing the show. You just go into the radio studio and read it right off?”

  “It isn’t quite so simple,” Bruce said, making strange noises in the back of his throat.

  “Universal gives us Monday afternoons off from filming to rehearse our radio show over in the sound studios,” Rathbone explained. “Then we do the show in the evening.”

  “See, Arty Cohen is obviously a pretty jealous guy. Kept a close watch on his wife. Never let her out on her own. Arty never listened to the radio. That’s what his wife counted on. So she could spend a little time with Neame she’d say she was filming late with you on Mondays, even though you were across town in front of a radio microphone.”

  Timlin shook his head.

  “Problem was, Arty’s brother Morry does listen to your show. A couple of Mondays ago, Cohen phoned him when his wife was supposedly filming late at the studios with you. His brother is listening to you live on the radio at eight o’ clock. So last Monday, when she said she was working late filming with you he says: ‘He’s on the radio Mondays. He’s not filming. Even Sherlock Holmes can’t be in two places at once’.”

  “Gracious,” Bruce said.

  “But Mrs Cohen was quick. I’ll give her that. According to her husband she told him they tape the radio show. ‘It’s live,’ he says. ‘It’s done live but put onto tape,’ she says. But that’s not the case is it?”

  “No – it’s very definitely live,” Rathbone said. “And you’re sure he listened to it last night?”

  “Had the storyline down pat. Could even tell us about the mistake your soundman made, which nobody else seems to have picked up on.”

  Bruce frowned.

  “But why couldn’t someone else have told him what happened?”

  “No time. We were called from a payphone at 8.15 to be told there has been a double murder on the lot and we should get to Arty Cohen’s house because he is the perpetrator. We send one car here and another to Arty’s house. We’re knocking on his door around 8.27 before the show has even finished. And he’s at home, in his kitchen. He says he’s been there all afternoon and evening. He says he’s been mainly using the telephone – that’s when we check the phone records - but then he’s also been listening to your show on the radio.”

  “How far is his house from the film studios?”

  “Ten minutes drive. Arty could have driven there, killed his wife and lover and got back home before we arrived at his joint, sure enough. You know how security is around the film studios. Easy enough to get in and out without being seen. His house isn’t overlooked. But how could he know the episode so well - down to the last detail – if he was driving down and back to the studio?”

  “Car radio?” Bruce said.

  “Doesn’t have one.”

  Rathbon
e thought for a moment.

  “Knew the story even down to the gaffe with the glass…”

  Suddenly he straightened in his chair, his face alert. “By George – I’ve got it!”

  Bruce cocked his head.

  “Got what, Mr Rathbone?” Timlin said.

  “It’s all as clear as mud to me,” Bruce grumbled.

  Rathbone chuckled and patted Timlin on the back.

  “Come now, Sergeant. All it needs is a little bit of that deductive reasoning the English detective is known for and that you dislike so much.”

  Rathbone sat back in his chair, smiling. Timlin frowned and shook his head.

  “Very well,” Rathbone continued. “Let me suggest a few apposite facts. First your wife’s remarks about our show, Sergeant Timlin. Then the phone call Arty Cohen made to New York yesterday. I would hazard this was at about 5pm?”

  “Correct – how did you guess?”

  “It was a deduction rather than a guess, Sergeant Timlin. And it was quite elementary, as you will see. Willy, don’t look so bewildered. You know Holmes’s methods. It’s reasonable that Sergeant Timlin hasn’t worked it out but there’s no excuse for you: your ad-lib is the key to the whole business.”

  “Don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Bruce huffed. “As usual.”

  Rathbone laughed and patted him affectionately on the shoulder.

  “Dear old Willy.”

  He turned to Timlin.

  “Sergeant, tell us again what your wife said about our show, will you?”

  “I don’t much care for being cast in the Inspector Lestrade role, Mr Rathbone, and that’s a goddamned fact.”

  “Humour me, I beg of you.”

  Timlin eased his neck in his collar.

  “She says come eight o’ clock on a Monday evening you know that pretty much everyone in America is listening to the Sherlock Holmes Radio Show.”

  “Precisely,” Rathbone said.

  “Precisely what?” Timlin and Bruce said together.

  “You know that the show is live. So how is it possible that listeners in New York can hear our show at exactly the same time as listeners in Los Angeles when New York time is three hours ahead of Los Angeles time?”

  Bruce threw back his head and laughed as Timlin looked from him to Rathbone.

  “Amazing. Quite amazing,” Bruce said. “The thing was staring me right in the face.”

  “Well, I wish it was looking at me,” Timlin said sourly.

  “Sergeant, we do the show twice.” Bruce chortled. “Live both time times. We do a show at 5pm that is broadcast live on the east coast at 8pm Eastern Standard Time. Then we go off for a spot of dinner, come back and do the show for the west coast at 8pm Pacific Standard Time.”

  Timlin looked miffed.

  “Well, how was I supposed to guess that? In your candy-assed English detective shows the audience or listener is supposed to have all the clues in front of them so they have a fair break.”

  “True, Sergeant Timlin,” Rathbone said. “This doesn’t meet the requirements of our classic detective stories – but it’s a pretty little problem all the same. Can you fill in the rest?”

  Timlin nodded.

  “When Arty called Morry in New York yesterday at 5pm LA time it was so he could listen to your radio show down the telephone line on his brother’s radio, 8pm New York time. That then gave him space to kill his wife and her lover when your radio show was airing here on the west coast at 8pm and get home for when the cops come round to check on him.”

  “Exactly so,” Rathbone said. “And I’ll wager he made the call to the police himself about his own culpability because his alibi wouldn’t work if you didn’t get to him before the end of the show. Any later and you could always claim somebody else told him the story.”

  Timlin nodded.

  “Yeah, theories are all very fine - I still have to get him to admit it, though.”

  “Willy knows how you can start demolishing his alibi.”

  Bruce looked startled. He darted a glance from one to the other of them.

  “I do? I mean: of course I do. Now let me see. I – I…”

  “The shot that broke the wine glass,” Rathbone said. “It only happened in the first transmission, the one for New York and the east coast.”

  “By George, you’re right!” Bruce said. “The soundman did it correctly the second time.”

  Timlin got to his feet.

  “I’m obliged to you gentlemen. I’m going to have a long talk with Morry and Arty Cohen. It won’t be pretty but I guarantee I’ll get it out of them. What is it, Mr Rathbone? Why are you smiling?”

  “Something has just occurred to me. Tell me again the names of the two Cohen brothers, I beg you.”

  “Morry. Arty. Why are you both laughing?”

  The End

  His Last Bow

  “Your war wound playing up again, old fellow? I see you have been favouring your right leg as we descend the steps.”

  The tall man with the piercing eyes and prominent nose looked with concern at his companion, who had paused at the bottom of the steep steps leading into the wooded valley.

  His companion – stout, middle-aged, with neatly trimmed white hair and moustache and a gloomy expression on his tanned face – gestured with his walking stick and cleared his throat.

  “Damned steep incline, you know,” he said. “Damned steep. Happy Valley – extraordinary name for this place. In Africa, yes. But a stone’s throw from Tunbridge Wells? Extraordinary.”

  He gave the tall man a sidelong look.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be alright.”

  “Of course you will,” the tall man said, patting him on the back as they walked along a grassy path. It led by a gentle slope to an unusual outcrop of rocks looming some thirty feet out of the trees a hundred yards away to their left. They had gone only a few paces towards the cliffs – for thus they appeared – when the tall man abruptly stopped.

  “I deduce, old friend, that an enormous hound has been here not so very long ago.”

  He said this in a clear if slightly nasal voice, a look of distaste on his intelligent features.

  “Really?” the stout man said, only mildly interested. “How do you deduce that?”

  The tall man raised his right foot behind him so that the sole and heel of his leather shoe was visible. He looked down and laughed pleasantly.

  “Empirical evidence, I’m afraid.” He wiped his shoe against the nearest clump of grass. “Empirical evidence.”

  The stout man’s face lit up with pleasure and he started to guffaw.

  “Empirical evidence. Ha! That’s very good. Empirical evidence. By Jove, I like that.”

  The tall man seemed relieved to see his friend laughing and joined in with gusto. But when their laughter tailed off the stout man burst out.

  “Damn it all. I still don’t understand why you have to throw everything up!”

  The tall man sighed.

  “There now, old fellow. I must bring the curtain down. Hello – what’s this?”

  His attention has been distracted by a metal canister some twelve inches in diameter, trundling towards them on its narrow edge from the direction of the rocky outcrop. He bent to scoop it up as it rolled to a halt before them.

  “A film canister, eh?” he said, casting keen glances around them to find its source. His friend saw his body stiffen and his head suddenly jut forward like a dog that has found the scent.

  “I say, take care there!” the tall man shouted, projecting his powerful voice effortlessly.

  His warning was directed at a man and a woman standing on top of the rocky outcrop. The woman was in her twenties, attractive, wearing a pale blue New Look two piece suit. The man, in deference to the hot August day, was wearing grey flannels and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. He was narrow-shouldered with slicked down black hair. He too was in his twenties.

  The warning had been prompted by the proximit
y of the couple to the low cliff edge. The man was looking over at the two middle-aged men, or more particularly at the film canister they now had in their possession. It seemed likely that he had dropped it in a struggle with the woman, whose arm he had in a firm grip, an insolent expression on his mean, pinched face. The woman seemed relieved to see the two companions.

  “Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson,” she cried. “Please help!”

  “Great Scot, that woman’s in trouble!” the stout man declared, but his tall companion was already running towards the rocks. At sight of his approach, the woman struggled to free herself. She cast off the insolent young man, who fell back a step. He seemed to lunge for her; perhaps he merely lost his footing. The abrupt outcome was that, with a horrible cry, he fell over the cliff edge.

  “Is he-?”

  “Not at all, Mrs Cunliffe,” the tall man said in a soothing voice. “Shrubbery broke his fall. He set off like a hare towards town.”

  “How do you know my name, Mr Holmes – I mean…”

  A look of irritation passed quickly across the man’s patrician features but Mrs Cunliffe’s attention was diverted to the stout man who was standing at the cliff edge peering cautiously over it.

  “Have a care there, Dr Wats - ”

  He looked at her and guffawed.

  “Me have a care! I like that. I’m as nimble as a goat, my dear –“

  He stumbled. He flailed his arms in an attempt to recover his balance. With three quick steps the tall man was beside him and pulling him away from the edge.

  “Thanks, old man,” the stout man said, brushing himself down. “New shoes you know. Slippery soles.”

  “Yes, yes,” the tall man said impatiently. He turned back to the woman.

  “What happened here, Mrs Cunliffe? Did you know this fellow?”

  Mrs Cunliffe abruptly burst into tears.

  “There, there, my dear,” the man she had addressed as Dr Watson said. “He’s not worth your tears, I’m sure.”

  He produced a silver hip flask from his pocket and unscrewed the top.

  “Here, my dear, a spot of brandy to settle your nerves?”