A Study in Amber

by Phyllis Humphrey

  Her gaze bouncing between my face and a spot near the fireplace, Tessa hurried on. “What’s he saying now?”

  “That he intends to come.”

  “Then there will be three of us.”

  “No, Tessa. Your continued ability to climb stairs notwithstanding, I think three of us is too many for this caper.”

  “But no one can see him. To anyone else, there’ll just be the two of us. Besides, we live in this neighborhood and won’t attract attention.”

  By that time, Holmes had opened the door to the hallway and seemed headed for the stairs. I grabbed my poncho and bag from the hook near the door and went after him. When I got to the landing, I found a strange sight. Holmes leaned against the wall, his head hanging forward onto his chest. He was asleep.

  “Omigod.” I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Tessa, right behind me, bumped into my back. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s Holmes,” I managed to say.

  “What about him? Did he go downstairs? Has he gone on without us?”

  “No.” I stood at the side of the sleeping detective and shook his shoulder. No response. Louder. “Mr. Holmes.” I shook him harder and, happily, he didn’t fall over.

  “Is he still here?” Tessa asked. “Why are you staring at the wall like that? Where is Sherlock Holmes?”

  “He’s right beside me. He’s asleep.”

  “Asleep?” She paused. “All right, Sherry. If you really don’t want me to come along, just say so. I can handle rejection. God knows I suffered enough of that thirty years ago trying to get my first books published.”

  “It’s not that. I’m telling you the truth. Holmes suddenly fell asleep.” I straightened up, pushed Tessa back out of the way, and grabbed both of Holmes’s hands. Slowly, I pulled him away from the wall. He shuffled. Good, his feet could move. Slowly, I led him back into the flat and toward a chair.

  His eyes snapped open. “Why are you just standing there. Let us be on our way. The game’s afoot.”

  He tried to push past me to go to the door again, but I managed to stop him. “You can’t go outside.”

  “What do you mean? Is there some danger?”

  “Please sit down for a moment while I tell you.”

  “If you insist.“

  I thought it best to get the truth out at once. “You fell asleep. The moment you stepped out of this apartment you went into a deep slumber. Standing up.”

  He stared at me for a long moment. His agile mind apparently not only understood what I’d said but its implications.

  He slumped into the armchair. “It’s true then. I’m only conscious when in my familiar surroundings.” He sighed so deeply I shivered.

  He glared up at me with a strange look on his face. “Do you have a pistol?”

  “No. Why?”

  “If you did, I would suggest you shoot me at once and put me out of my misery.”

  It took me a moment to decide how to answer. “But if I were to do that, we’d have no one at all to solve the case we planned to check out.”

  His head drooped forward again, but then he shrugged and a light smile turned up his lips. “You’re right. I am only good for solving crimes, but I am very good indeed at that, so, as long as I am awake, I must continue to do so.”

  Once more he removed his hat and turned his head when Tessa reentered the room.

  “Tell your grandmother I shall not be accompanying you this evening, and she will have to be my eyes and ears.”

  Since I planned to do that very thing myself, I didn’t repeat it, but I told Tessa Holmes would stay behind sitting by the fireplace and I’d let her go with me just this once.

  After stopping at her apartment, where Tessa pulled on a woollen jacket, we left the building and walked to the corner of the street. There we turned right, crossed and went to the following corner and made a left turn.

  It didn’t take long before I recognized the building which I assumed had been the site of the discovery of the dead body. To my surprise, no yellow police tape surrounded the area, nor did any police cars wait at the curb. Three pedestrians stood nearby talking quietly among themselves. Occasionally one would point or glance up at the building in question.

  Doing my own glancing upward, I saw light shining from two second-story windows. Inasmuch as the windows bore no curtains, I could see the upper part of a room, but the view consisted merely of bare walls dimly lighted by a trio of naked bulbs in a ceiling fixture. No doubt 25-watt bulbs, the landlord trying to lower his electric bill.

  Tessa pointed. “That’s it.”

  I grabbed her hand and pulled it down. I repeated something she herself told me a couple of decades before. “It’s not polite to point.” I resorted to a whisper. “Let’s not let everyone else know what we’re doing.” She winked and grinned.

  We walked slowly down the sidewalk, turned the corner and stopped. Slightly concealing myself behind a bush, I looked back at the watchers, wishing they’d soon go away.

  Tessa hovered next to me. “What do you see?”

  “I’m hoping those people will go back home. They look as if they might.”

  “Do you want me to get rid of them?”

  I stared at her. “And just how do you propose to do that?”

  “I can pretend to try to sell them something. Or give them a flyer like those religious people hand out.”

  “You aren’t carrying any religious flyers.”

  “But if I did... I’m just saying, that sort of thing always works to get rid of people. Once in nineteen-sixty...”

  I didn’t hear what she said next, because I turned back to the street and, sure enough, the people had gone. “You’re off the hook, Tessa. They went away.”

  Keeping a wary eye out for any other onlookers, we strolled back to the house I’d already begun to think of as the “murder house.” It was tall and narrow, like most of the old houses in that neighborhood, but not covered, like Tessa’s, in any overhangs, ledges, designs, or fancy scrollwork.

  “They’ve taken the gingerbread off.” Her tone made it clear she disapproved of the building’s straight, modern look.

  “They did that a lot back in the fifties,” she added. “In fact, back then they not only took off all the fancy wood trim, some owners painted them battleship gray.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t imagine solid gray when I could see colorful blue, red, and yellow trim on so many houses these days. “Why?”

  “It was cheap. They bought up surplus navy department paint from World War Two.” She walked in time to her commentary. “Then in the sixties, people began to appreciate all that beautiful wood carving and preferred houses that still had it. Some owners of modern ones actually hired companies to put the gingerbread back on.”

  I tried to ignore Tessa and stared at the house. The second floor windows revealed the lights still blazed.

  The history lesson apparently over temporarily, Tessa came forward and grabbed the handle of the door at street level. “Look, the door’s not locked.”

  “Tessa,” I stage-whispered, “don’t do that.”

  “Why not? We want to go inside, don’t we?”

  “Yes, but we can’t just barge in.”

  “Well, the lights are on, so someone’s up there, and we can ask permission when we arrive.”

  Holding tightly to the banister, she preceded me and we left the narrow, empty vestibule and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Next to the stairs which continued their rise to the third floor, I saw a tiny hallway with two doors. The larger one on the right wasn’t locked and, in spite of a diagonal band of yellow police tape, it stood open and a man came through it.

  Needlessly tall, quite bald, and wearing over-sized black-rimmed glasses, he was so skinny he looked like a lamp post with eyes. When he spied us, he stopped and stared.

  “Mr. Kostitch.” Tessa craned her neck to look up at him. She loses an inch in height every year. “How are you?”

  He squinted before givin
g us a blank look.

  “Tessa Reynolds.” She tried to stretch herself taller but to no avail. “Remember me? I own a building like this on Baker Street.”

  He only adjusted the glasses perched on his nose, which magnified his sight, and stared some more.

  “We met at a neighborhood meeting a few months ago. The one about allowing a Starbucks coffee shop to open up on the next corner.”

  Kostitch’s stony face broke a little and exhibited what might pass for a smile. “Yes, I remember now. Good evening.”

  “This is my granddaughter, Sheridan Holmes.” Then, getting right to the point, she grinned and patted the man’s arm. “We heard you had a commotion here today. A dead body found in your vacant apartment.” She gave him a playful scold. “You naughty boy. What have you been up to?”

  He protested in a strong voice. “It’s none of my doing. Flat’s been empty for weeks. Went in because the tenant upstairs claimed he heard a gunshot. Didn’t believe him of course. But I went in and there’s this... this man lying there.”

  “Anyone you knew?” I asked.

  “Of course not. The police came at once. They’ve taken him away now, thank goodness.”

  Tessa used her wiles on the man again. “May we go inside and see? I’ve never been in a place where a murder happened.” As she spoke, she moved toward the door, almost elbowing the landlord out of the way.

  “No, I don’t think you should.” He leaned into the room and apparently hit the light switch because the lights went out.

  “Just for a minute, dearie,” Tessa said.

  After a shrug, Kostitch moved aside and let us enter before him.He flipped the switch again and the large empty room became only slightly brighter, even though the bulbs in the ceiling fixture had no shade or other covering. At least it made searching the place a little easier.

  Not that one could see very much. I’d previously decided the room was empty, and then I realized there were not only no window coverings, but no furniture of any kind. The walls—no doubt the current shade of apartment white—were also bare, although a few nails protruded to indicate where a picture or two might have hung. A fireplace took up space on the end wall, fronted by a fake-marble fender about two feet high. A large rug lay on the floor in front of the fireplace, making a dingy area of color on the dark brown of the hardwood floor. Scanning further, I saw two doors, one to the small entry hall we’d just used and one to the rest of the flat.

  I decided to ask the landlord the questions that raced through my mind. “So you found the body?”

  “Yes, miss. Right in the middle of the floor.”

  “Is there blood on the carpet? I should think a gunshot wound that killed someone would leave a lot of blood.” I bent over to examine a place close to the hearth. “This damp spot might have been a blood stain, and it looks as if someone tested it for blood. Is that true?”

  “I don’t know. The policemen didn’t tell me.”

  I pulled out my detecting kit and used the pencil inside to make notes. “Police or detectives?”

  “Well, first a policeman in a uniform came, and then two detectives followed. They showed me their identification. After that a lot of other men came and also a woman. They examined the body, I guess. I couldn’t really see what they did.”

  “Did you stay in the room?”

  He pointed. “In the corner. No one asked me to leave so I stayed. The woman took a lot of pictures.”

  I paused, wondering if Mr. Kostitch might have learned something useful. “How old a man do you think he was?”

  “The dead man? Forties, I guess. Don’t know his height, but he wasn’t fat.”

  “Did he wear a coat?”

  “No, just a suit coat, shirt, tie, you know.”

  “Did you hear what the detectives or the other examiners said?”

  “Sometimes.” He hurried on. “I didn’t eavesdrop, but, like I said, I stayed in the corner. So many going in and out, I wanted to keep out of their way.”

  “Did they find any identification on the dead man?”

  “Yes, they pulled out a wallet from his pocket, said there was money still in it, so he hadn’t been robbed.”

  “Did you hear his name or address?”

  He scratched his head. “Andrew. I think I heard Andrew. But maybe it was a last name, Andrews.”

  I scribbled the name on my notepad. “No address?”

  “They said he didn’t live in San Francisco.”

  “Any idea where he did live?”

  “No, but he had a suitcase, so maybe he stayed in a hotel.”

  My voice rose. “He had a suitcase? You saw that? What did it look like?”

  “It wasn’t close to the body but in the corner of the room. One of those black ones with handles and wheels. Everybody has them. The detectives took it away when they left.”

  Kostitch frowned, looking as if he were tired of answering my questions and regretted he’d let us enter. Had there been a chair in the room, Tessa might have camped there to get off her feet. Instead, she sat on the marble fender. She pulled Kostitch down next to her.

  While Tessa kept up a running stream of conversation with the landlord, I went through the second door and found a short hall leading to one bedroom, a kitchen and bathroom, all just as empty as the living room except for attached fixtures. The rooms smelled of ammonia or some other cleaning product, and I left quickly. What a disappointment. Even the great Sherlock Holmes would have trouble finding clues in such a place.

  Finally, I stepped into the tiny hall on the landing and glanced up the stairs leading to the upper floor. I wondered if I ought to talk to those tenants. After all, they had heard the gunshot and called the police.

  I decided Holmes expected me to interrogate people, so I trudged up the stairs and knocked on the apartment door. A thirty-something blonde woman opened it almost at once. She wore jeans and a baggy sweatshirt that read, “Speak When I’m Listening to You.”

  I obeyed, although I fibbed. “I’m a friend of Mr. Kostitch,” I began, but she interrupted me.

  “Oh, I’m glad you came up.” She reached for something behind her. “Would you give this to him?” She held out a backpack and kept going. “My husband found it on the stairs when he went down after we heard the gunshot.”

  Staring at the backpack in her outstretched hands, I asked my most important question. “Did you hear only one gunshot, or more?”

  “Only one. I didn’t even think ‘gunshot’ at first, but Eli... that’s my husband... said it was right away. He yelled, ‘Call the police,’ and started down the stairs and I dialed nine-one-one.”

  I could tell she didn’t like talking about the murder, probably had to answer a lot of questions by police and reporters earlier, so I quickly took the backpack from her.

  “Later, Eli handed that to me because he thought it was mine.”

  “Are you sure it isn’t yours?”

  “Yes, mine is smaller and a different color, but Eli, like a lot of men, isn’t good with colors.”

  What I now held in my hands was a man-sized dark gray backpack, and I deduced immediately that the person who fired the shot must have dropped it when he ran out of the building. I couldn’t wait to see what was in it.

  “Will you give it to Mr. Kostitch for me? Tell him I’m sorry.” She gave me a tiny smile and closed the door firmly, as if glad to see the end of that whole episode.

  Since Kostitch and Tessa still sat in the living room, I headed for the kitchen which, thanks to a fluorescent fixture in the ceiling, held sufficient light.

  Grateful Tessa kept the landlord busy, I placed the backpack on the kitchen counter, unzipped it and found men’s clothing and a toiletries kit. The smaller pocket held a few items, including a newspaper clipping and a small photograph. I pulled my cell phone from my purse and took pictures of them. I finished and was replacing all the things inside, when Kostitch found me.

  “Here, what’re you doing?” He came forward and grabbed the ba
ckpack. “Where did you get this? You didn’t bring it in.”

  “I... the lady upstairs gave it to me just now. She said her husband found it on the stairs. Is it yours?”

  “No. It must have belonged to the dead man, and the police didn’t see it. I’ll have to give it to the officers tomorrow.”

  While Kostitch finished replacing the items into the sack, I returned to the living room and took some pictures of the stain on the rug, in case it was blood. I also used my scissors to snip a few rug fibers and put them in one of my envelopes. The landlord glared at me and herded us to the exit.

  I thanked him and helped Tessa down the stairs. As we said goodbyes on the sidewalk, Kostitch locked the outer door and frowned some more. “Don’t tell anyone I let you up there.”

  “No, of course not. Thank you again.”

  Tessa and I retraced our steps to the corner and returned to Baker Street. As we walked, she told me about how, in the mid-seventies or thereabout, the city offered to sell old houses for three hundred dollars each and move them to a different site.

  I stopped walking and turned to her. “Only three hundred dollars for an entire three-story Victorian house? And they would move it and install it somewhere else besides?”

  “Not exactly. They stipulated you had to prove you had thirty thousand dollars available in order to bring the building up to code.”

  She continued to walk, and I followed. “That’s still a bargain.”

  “It was more money in those days. Thirty thousand hardly buys an old garage today. Besides, that didn’t include whatever the buyer might need to spend to restore the place. Some of those old houses were in terrible shape.”

  “However, it seems to me—“ I stopped mid-sentence because we’d reached Tessa’s house and, standing at the front door, stood a policeman.

  Chapter 4

  I climbed the steps and, apparently hearing or seeing me, the policeman turned around.

  “Excuse me, officer, is something the matter?”