The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  “Not quite,” said Pete. “That’s one alibi we have established—that and Socrates’. From the time Munrooney went upstairs—and it seems like he took off before van Zaam—until they started up to look for him, neither one was out of Denny Wallton’s sight. Neither was Penny Anne. And your Filipino friend—Pambid?—he swears to it too. Of course, Grimwood could still be an accessory, or even the murderer if he really did put that dagger in Lucrece’s hand.”

  “That, Pete, is just about impossible. Has it occurred to you that our little friend Lucrece almost certainly did not stab Lover Boy?”

  “Come again?”

  “Whether she has the strength or not, I just don’t know. But that khanjar is all wrong. It’s a heavy dagger for its type, broad and slightly curved—and the human back is full of bones, the spine and all the ribs, not at all easy for a programmed blow. If anyone were trying even to make the thing look plausible, they’d choose a different type of blade, narrow and straight. No, it just doesn’t wash.”

  “All right, if Lucrece didn’t do the job, who did? I hope you’re right—Grimwood’s much too picturesque to put in jail.”

  “Well, some of his friends aren’t exactly colorless,” said Timuroff. “Hemmet, Baltesar, Voukos, Ledenthal”—he ticked them off—“Kalloch, and Admiral Melmoth, and don’t forget Miranda Gardner. Even Tommy Coulter, though he hardly counts. Remember what I said? They’re all arms collectors, every one of them, and customers of mine. They all know Grimwood, and I understand that most of them have been mixed up in business deals together. But that’s not what’s so odd. The really odd thing is the choice of weapons. Have you questioned Socrates about the khanjar?”

  “Yeah. He really blew his stack. He swore he’d locked it in his safe after his party, before he flew to Greece. He got back only yesterday, he said, and you were a damn liar—it couldn’t be his dagger—and you were jealous because he was so rich he could outbid you on it. Well, then we showed it to him, and he got off his horse but started right in weeping—why hadn’t we cleaned the blood off right away? and how he’d sue us if we got it rusty. Anyhow, he checks out, and Jake and I both think he’s okay. He didn’t even know about Grimwood’s get-together till Penny Anne phoned him this afternoon.”

  “Someone must’ve stolen the khanjar at his party. Did he say who was there?”

  “Several times. Some characters out of the de Young Museum, and a few rich Greeks like him, and every collector you just mentioned, plus what’s-his-name—Guthrie—who came with Ledenthal. Even Grimwood and his Penny Anne were there.”

  “Hemmet collects edged weapons, mostly late Renaissance,” said Timuroff. “Baltesar buys whatever strikes his eye, and doesn’t bother to learn anything about it. The admiral is an armor man, and Kalloch goes in for high-art firearms, like your pistola, though he never keeps anything he can make a buck on. Miranda Gardner is a serious and well-informed collector of kidney daggers, stilettos, and other pretty little things people stick into people. Coulter buys crud mostly—brand-new commemorative Colts and Winchesters, and rusty sawed-off shotguns wicked antique dealers have stamped W.F. and Company. Even Heck owns a few suits of armor, though he really isn’t a collector. The only one who isn’t in on it is Guthrie.”

  “He wasn’t really in on it tonight, either,” said Pete.

  “Jake said he showed up late. Who is he, anyway? Seems like a nice guy—who might be rough to tangle with.”

  “Amos’s partner. Ledenthal started in business with his father years ago, and took the son in when he came back from ’Nam after the old man died.”

  In his mind’s eye, Timuroff reviewed the faces. Hemmet and Baltesar, Voukos, Kalloch, Melmoth, Miranda Gardner. They were the faces of acquaintances, of customers, of people talked to, smiled at. “Most arms collectors,” he said, speaking almost to himself, “tend to be a bit less hostile than the average, perhaps because they take out their aggressions by playing with swords, or duelling pistols, or whatever. But these are different. I had to see them all together to realize it. Except for Amos and young Coulter, and maybe Baltesar, they’re wolves.”

  “I noticed,” Pete replied. “Jake had a lot to say, and there’s plenty of gossip about some of them.”

  For a block or two, nothing more was said. Timuroff suddenly was tired and tense, and he could sense that Pete was too. Finally, as they turned into Van Ness, he said, “I wonder. I wonder if any of them did engineer it?”

  “Well, your sword-collecting friend Ledenthal isn’t wondering. He knows.”

  “What the devil do you mean?”

  “You haven’t heard? He yelled at Chiefy that by God it must’ve been Hemmet and the Gardner woman—that with friends like them Munrooney had no room for honest enemies.”

  “Amos must’ve been hysterical. Hemmet and Munrooney were like Siamese twins.”

  Pete laughed a little wildly. “Don’t you envy me?” he cried. “Maybe I should’ve been a Jesuit, like my cousin Austin. By God, I don’t know what keeps me from joining them right now.”

  “I can think of at least two things,” declared Timuroff. “The first, as Mrs. Hanson wisely pointed out, is probably waiting up for you. The second is too little Latin and less Greek.”

  He turned the car into the garage, and Pete stepped out into its concrete stillness. “Tim,” he said, “sometime today could you sit down and tape what you remember about tonight? Everything—people, things, gossip, hunches. I’d appreciate it. I’ll be in touch, probably around Olivia’s quitting time.”

  Timuroff agreed, saying he’d do his best. Then, trying to shake off the remembered grisliness of the night’s events, he drove the Rover home through the still almost empty streets.

  CHAPTER V

  A History of the Eighteenth Century

  Timuroff’s shop occupies the third floor of a very old, very narrow stone business building on Battery Street, one which has survived simply because, in today’s economy, it could not be replaced profitably. Huddled against an insurance company’s structural display of wealth in glass and steel, it never is really noticed by the weighty businessmen and hurrying young executives and attractive secretaries who pass its door.

  That, of course, is how its tenants like it, for none of them is anxious to attract casual passers-by. The ground floor consists, at least visibly, of nothing but a tiled hall containing a wall directory, an elevator, and the locked door to a staircase; the rest—warehouse space, boiler room, and a garage opening on Magruder Alley—is out of sight. The first floor has for decades accommodated a changing congeries of petty steamship companies, busily engaged in moving cargoes of dubious origin and smelliness between unlikely ports. The second floor houses a discreetly prosperous firm of Dutch exporters and importers. The third, according to the wall directory, belongs to A. A. Timuroff—by appointment only, which is adequately uninformative.

  Olivia Cominazzo came down at her usual hour, 9:30—for Timuroff almost always opens on Saturdays. She was not quite her usual bright and cheerful self. Pete had not wakened her when he came in, and she had carefully not disturbed him when she left. However, she had turned the news on very softly during breakfast, and had heard enough to understand that he was having problems. Very promptly, she had forgiven him, and a little later, feeling magnanimous, had forgiven her employer for contributing, even if involuntarily, to his delinquency. Now she was worried, as she always was when the media cascaded news of death and danger into her life.

  She walked into the elevator hard on the heels of two large Levantines who were conversing emotionally in a tongue she did not understand. “Good morning, Mr. Karazoglu,” she said to one of them, glad for the little touch of normalcy. “How is everything?”

  Mr. Karazoglu, who had been deploring the effect of cheap air transport on the once-rich trade of carrying Moslem pilgrims through the Red Sea to Mecca, broke into an olive-oi
l smile, bristled his moustache, and said that, yes, yes, everything was wonderful, such a nice day! and such a pretty lady, yes. He thought of how profitable a little property she would have been, installed in an establishment his brother had once operated—though only for a most exclusive clientele—in Marrakech.

  “And how is Mrs. Karazoglu?” inquired the pretty lady. “And the kids?”

  Mr. Karazoglu sighed a little wistfully, and replied in a deflated voice that they were, thank you, thank you, very well. He then introduced his friend, who spoke no English, and whose name sounded like Mr. Asterisk. They escorted her to her floor, exchanging several private comments on the way. As they said good-bye, Mr. Karazoglu informed her that Mr. Asterisk had asked what business Mr. Timuroff was in. “I have told him, because he is a very fierce man from Anatolia, who has fought in Korea. Now I speak to you what he says.” Laughing heartily, Mr. Karazoglu made a swift and graphic gesture of throat-cutting. “He says that with all these guns and swords this fine city could kill one mayor every day. He is pleased. That is sometimes what they do in Anatolia.”

  “You’ve just made my day,” remarked Olivia through set teeth.

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Karazoglu, as the elevator parted them.

  Olivia paused for a moment, breathing heavily. Then she took out her keys, deactivated one burglar alarm, unlocked the door, deactivated another, picked up the mail, and went in. The shop consisted of one large salesroom, with armor and long arms arranged along its walls, and horizontal cases filled with smaller weapons in between. Surprisingly, it also had a dozen tall and glittering mirrors, three crystal chandeliers, and, in Timuroff’s own office at its end, a vast and antique safe—all inherited from a previous occupant, an expensive and fashionable, but unfortunately dishonest, furrier.

  Olivia subconsciously inventoried everything, and was happy to find everything as it should be, including Timuroff’s martial painting and engravings and his bronze bust of Prince Kutuzov chuckling over the dismal fate of la Grande Armee. She went on into the office, where again all was well—the two First Empire cabinets, two desks, filing cases, bookshelves, the little bar with its refrigerator, all under still another chandelier.

  There were newly arrived sales catalogues to be sorted, from Christie’s, from the Hotel Drouot in Paris, from auction houses great and small. She leafed quickly through them, looking for special goodies to which Timuroff’s attention should be called. Then she turned to the first-class correspondence. A letter from Major Hugh Drummond-Mowbrey, a Hallamshire cousin, she set aside unopened; the rest went into her Action tray. She called the answering service and learned that there had been no calls. Finally she got up, made sure that the shop door was locked and bolted, returned, opened her desk drawer, checked out the 9 mm Colt Commander that lived there, and settled down to her typewriter. The fact of murder frightened Olivia, but it did not dismay her.

  Timuroff showed up at eleven thirty, having walked from the Golden Gateway tower where he and Liselotte lived together decorously in adjoining apartments. She had not forgiven him as quickly as Olivia had forgiven Pete, but eventually she allowed him a late Australian breakfast of eggs and bacon and a small filet, garnished with biting comments on faithless lovers bemused by gadgetry to the point of preferring it to the real McCoy; and he had given her a blow-by-blow account of the events at Dr. Grimwood’s, only toning down the gruesome details of the discovery of the hanged van Zaam. Afterward she had kissed him tenderly, cautioned him against unnecessary risks, and promised to let him take her out to dinner. Then he had gone forth into one of those rare San Francisco autumn days when the sun shines brightly on all men and all women are beautiful.

  It was the sort of day when it is hard even to believe in the existence of people like van Zaam, let alone that one may find them murdered; and Timuroff, enjoying it, greeted Olivia with his usual cheerfulness.

  She glared at him. “Isn’t it bad enough having my husband messing around with murders all the time, without my boss having to get in on the act? Why can’t you be satisfied with ‘humbly selling antique arms in San Francisco,’ unquote?”

  “I’m being an involved citizen,” he answered.

  “That’s what I’m scared of. Believe me, I have enough of it at home without its following me to work. Now, how about telling the hired help what happened? I left Pete snoring like a hibernating bear, so all I’ve heard was what the radio told me.”

  Timuroff frowned. He sat down, turning his chair to face her. “I’m afraid someone is involving me, whether I want to be or not. I promised Pete I’d tape everything I could remember about last night. Why don’t you listen in and ask me questions? That’ll keep me from forgetting anything important.”

  She checked the tape deck in her desk’s upper-left-hand drawer. “Your secret microphone is ready, Oh-Oh-Seven.” His account was militarily concise, precisely factual, and extremely vivid. It took about twenty minutes, and he was only interrupted four times: when the phone rang to ask whether he cared to discuss business with the M.C. of a midnight quiz show called What’s Your Murder?, again when Lieutenant Kielty tried vainly to get through to him, once more as Olivia cried out involuntarily at the finding of van Zaam, and finally when, having heard of the bowstring by which the body hung suspended, she felt compelled to tell him nervously of her encounter with Mr. Karazoglu in the elevator.

  Timuroff soothed her. “I don’t know about his fierce friend, but if Karazoglu ever had a bowstring he’d have sold it long ago, probably to buy rock-’n’-roll records for his offspring. He is a distressingly bourgeois Turk, not at all like those my family used to run into in the good old days.”

  “I hope so,” said Olivia fervently. “My blood can stand just so much curdling.”

  Timuroff ended the recording at Pete’s arrival in the poker parlor. Then, out of courtesy, he filled her in on how Pete had checked the secret passages, on Mrs. Short and her relation to Evangeline, and on the matters he and Pete had discussed on the way home.

  “So you see,” he told her cheerfully, “it looks as though someone’s been weaving a very tangled web indeed—perhaps more so than he originally intended. We’ll take whatever precautions we can think of, and play the thing by ear.”

  For a few seconds, Olivia simply stared at him. “I do admire you, Tim,” she finally said. “I-I’m awfully fond of you. And you know how I love Pete. I just wish—I just wish you two stupid bastards weren’t en-enjoying all of this so much! Please pass the Kleenex.”

  For half an hour or so, the answering service kept them busy. There were a couple of legitimate long-distance calls, and one or two that smelled as though someone were trying to run interference for some columnist. Judge Faraday phoned to tell Timuroff how much he had enjoyed Don Giovanni, and remarked that, according to the morning news, it was just as well he hadn’t come with them after the show; he sounded definitely concerned, and made a luncheon date for Tuesday, the first time he’d be free.

  Then Pete called. “You want the latest on van Zaam?” he asked. “We’ve got the autopsy report.”

  “He now can be officially considered dead?” said Timuroff.

  Pete snorted. “They found out how he died. He wasn’t strangled.”

  “What do you mean? He looked about as strangled as anyone can get.”

  “Well, the examiner thinks that was just an added touch. Technically, he may still have been alive, soil of, when it happened, but what really killed him—or would have anyhow—was getting stabbed, at the back of the skull, right up into the brain.”

  Timuroff was astonished. “My God, what did the murderer use this time—a skene dhu, a nice sharp golok, an aikuchi?”

  “Guess again, Expert Witness. As near as anyone can tell, he used an ice pick.”

  “Well, that lets me out. I don’t know any ice-pick collectors.”

  “Any day now,” Pete
said dismally. “It’ll probably start a trend—like Avon bottles. Anyhow, we also got some poop out of the federal boys about the guy. It goes back when he was only about twenty, the last year the Nazis were in Holland. The gossip was they had him working for them, but nobody proved anything. After that, he drifted here and there: first Italy and somewhere in the Near East, then South America till a few years ago, when he came over here. Suspicions, questionings, even an arrest or two, but no convictions. He keeps just enough contacts with foreign companies for his ‘industrial liaison’ to look plausible, but everybody’s sure it’s a cover—only for what? Here in the Bay Area, they say he’s been working with the Hanno Agency, and they’re as crooked as they come. Their specialty is what they call industrial intelligence—which means they snoop and steal. Now, are you all set for the rest of the bad news?”

  Timuroff replied that he had braced himself.

  “All right, Kielty’s making trouble. He’s been getting under foot all day. This morning he was over to the Hansons’ quarters, and she let him paw over everything—because he’s a policeman, she said. I hear he came out looking like he’d made the jackpot. Has he been pestering you?”

  Timuroff told him of Kielty’s calls, and assured him that, if by some miracle the lieutenant did get through, nothing would be discussed except khanjars and Turkish bowstrings. “And while we’re on that subject,” he inquired, “have you learned any more about what happened to the khanjar?”

  “Yeah,” grunted Pete disgustedly. “Socrates opened up his safe, and it wasn’t in the leather case he keeps it in. All there was was a big, cheap hunting knife. It weighed about the same. I guess somebody swapped it at his party, but nobody saw anything. All everybody says is what a swell host Socrates was, and what terrific drinks he poured—which could explain how the knife-swapper got away with it”