No Police Like Holmes (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three
-
The Adventure of the Empty House

Even with Oscar long gone from the game room, I lowered my voice before I asked Lynda, “Where's the key?”

“In the mail,” she said, scooping everything back into her purse. “I sent it back to the hotel this morning when I realized how incriminating it could be.”

“Very clever. You're not only smart, which I always knew, you have the makings of a great criminal. I just wish you'd told me that before. The information would have added years to my life.”

“Sorry. We were always talking about other things. How long do you think it'll take for Oscar to realize he should still parade us before his star witness?”

I gulped the last of my caffeine-free Diet Coke, barely thinking about what the acid in soda can do to a nail. “Only as long as it takes him to stop being so peeved that it clouds his judgment. But maybe after we look at the DVD in my office it won't matter.”

We walked across the campus, hand in hand once more, and we fell to talking about the Chalmerses' marital mess.

“I believe in marriage and I believe in forever,” Lynda said. “And when I get married I want to make sure it
is
forever. For that, love is essential but not sufficient. It's not nearly enough. I saw that close up. I think my parents loved each other in their own way, but that didn't keep them married. I don't want to screw up the way they did.”

This was not new conversational territory for us, but the circumstances were somewhat different than in the past given that - so far as I knew - we were no longer dating. We were, however, holding hands. What was she trying to tell me by bringing this up? More importantly, what was I supposed to say?

One thing for sure, this conversation was not about Lynda's parents, who had met in the Army and had divorced years ago. I didn't know much about them, not even their names, because the subject didn't come up much, except in negative contexts like this one. Theirs was not a close family.

With the wisdom of age, I decided that the safest course was to ask a question and not venture any opinions.

“Well, then, theoretically,” I said, backing slowly into a delicate subject, “other than love, what would you be looking for in a husband?”

“A partner,” she said without hesitation.
That word again!
“And you can't have a partnership without two strong parties. So I'd have to be able to hold up my end of the deal. I mean, I'd want to be far enough along in my own life and career to have a strong sense of my personal identity.”

“Whew,” I said, “I'm glad to hear you're not planning on marrying for money. That means I'm still in the running.”

“Don't get ahead of yourself.”

We shared a nervous laugh as we entered my little office on the first floor of Carey Hall, but I filed the conversation away for future reflection.

My office is crammed with books and binders, file cabinets, campus publications, newspapers, and a television with a DVD player/recorder. Every day I record the Cincinnati news programs in case they have an item on St. Benignus. Most of the stories show up on their websites, of course, but if they slander us I don't want to count on that.

“Now are you going to tell me what this is all about?” Lynda asked as I fast-forwarded through the TV4 Action News weather and the opening segment of Mandy Petrowski's report about the thefts and the colloquium.

“I don't think I'll have to tell you. Just watch.”

I pushed the remote to slow down the action just after the exterior shots of me talking outside the library gave way to video of Woollcott Chalmers pointing with his cane to a bust of Sherlock Holmes.

“Moran had planned to shoot the detective at night from across the street, using an air gun specially manufactured by the blind mechanic Von Herder,” Chalmers was saying.

I punched the stop-action button, freezing the old collector's image on the screen. “That's it,” I said.

Lynda shook her head. “Sorry. Maybe my brain is out of whack from that knock on the head, but I don't get it. What did he say that's so important?”

“Just two words: Air gun. Look, Chalmers has a real bust of Sherlock Holmes in his collection, why not a real air gun to go with it? That's the real reason why the coroner's report said there was no powder burns or ‘tattooing' on the victim's body, and also why nobody heard the shots. No wonder Mac found this TV report ‘highly suggestive' about the weapon.”

She looked skeptical. “Do air guns shoot .32 bullets?”

“You know I don't know anything about guns, except what I research for my mystery writing. But even if they don't, Chalmers could have had it specially built - that's what Chalmers said Colonel Sebastian Moran did in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House.'”

“That's a little far-fetched, isn't it?”

“Not with the kind of people we're dealing with here, Lynda - people who have little drawings of Sherlock Holmes on their checks and 221B on their license plates. And Chalmers put a Stradivarius in his Holmes collection - a violin worth as much as the stolen books or more, for crap's sake. The man has the money to feed his obsession.”

“But we didn't find anything like an air gun in Mac's guest suite,” Lynda protested.

“We weren't looking for it.” I turned off the DVD player/recorder and the TV. “And as soon as we found the
Beeton's Christmas Annual
we stopped searching. It'll be different this time.”

Lynda touched my arm as we neared the door to the suite at Mac's house. “I still don't like this.”

“I guess not,” I said, “considering what happened the last time you were here. How's your head?”

“Huge. Let's get this over with.”

We started with the sitting room, figuring that Lynda had had little time to explore it earlier before she'd been lured away by a noise. It was a small, sparsely furnished room which, like the bedroom, featured a picture window with a glorious view of the Ohio River below us. The window was framed by bookcases full of old detective novels. We moved the bookcases and checked behind them, but no dice. A closet-cum-dressing area ran the length of the wall opposite, and we gave that close attention with the same result. The love seat was rattan, so there was no place to hide anything under it. Feeling the pillows revealed no suspicious lumps.

“Bedroom next,” I said with more hope than faith.

We spent five minutes revisiting the familiar territory of the dressers and bed. I was standing on a captain's chair peering into the box at the top of the red and black curtains when Lynda called, “Over here.”

She stood between the bed and a clothes tree draped with what I took to be Chalmers's jacket, a deerstalker cap and a pair of Renata's slacks. I focused on the cap, partially hidden by the jacket so that neither of us had noticed it earlier. But that wasn't what Lynda wanted me to see. She held up Chalmers's cane.

“It was leaning there, in the umbrella stand at the bottom of the clothes tree where you could hardly see it,” she said. “Why would Chalmers leave it behind and go limping around the way he has since yesterday evening?”

I got down from the captain's chair and took the cane to look it over. “This damned thing is heavier than my car. I bet it's what he brained you with.”

It looked like solid wood, except for an inch-wide band of silver running around the neck just below the handle. The band was inscribed: “To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.H.H. 1884.” The words were out of Sherlock Holmes, I was pretty sure. So I ignored them and looked over the length of the cane for evidence that it had been hollowed out and filled with lead or something equally suitable for skull-bashing.

“Take the tip off,” Lynda suggested, pointing to a bit of dirty beige rubber at the bottom of the cane. When I did, I found myself looking down the barrel of something wicked.

“We can quit looking for the air gun,” I said. “This answers your question of why Chalmers quit carrying the cane: Some of his Sherlockian friends must know about this little beauty. He was afraid that, seeing him with it, they'd put two and two together.”

Lynda might have said something then but for the horrible sound that erupted, like a volcano, coming down Half Moon Street. It was Mac's Chevy. The awful racket reached a peak and then cut out altogether as Mac killed the engine in his driveway. I held on to the cane with one hand and Lynda with the other and we went to the front of the house.

Kate came through the front door first and immediately saw us in the hallway. But her face had barely registered surprise before her husband and the Chalmerses appeared behind her.

“Well, well,” Mac said mildly, waving an unlit cigar. “What's this, a welcoming committee in my own home?”

Chalmers, holding Renata's arm for support, focused his clear blue eyes on the cane in my hand. “What are you doing with that?” he snapped.

“Holding it for the police,” I said. “They're generally interested in murder weapons.”

Renata sucked in her breath.

“Jeff!” my sister exclaimed.

Chalmers looked appropriately murderous. “This is intolerable! Outrageous! And possibly actionable! Didn't you learn anything from your earlier embarrassment, young man? Maybe I
should
withdraw my gift to your college.”

Only Mac remained unruffled through all this. My brother-in-law's face, as much as I could see through the beard, showed only a weary sadness.

“Just in case there's anybody here who doesn't know it,” Lynda said, “let me point out that there's an air gun concealed in that cane, and I'm pretty sure Mr. Chalmers used it to kill Hugh Matheson.”

Mac sighed. “He most certainly did not. Tell them, Renata.”

She shook her head. “I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't. If you want me to be the loyal wife, to say that Woollcott couldn't have committed the murder, I can't do that.”

“What I want,” Mac said, “is for you to tell the truth. That you yourself killed Hugh.”

Chapter Thirty-Four
-
End of the Game

In the deep silence that followed, Renata looked around as if trying to read our faces. The hallway grew smaller.

“You can't be serious,” she told Mac in a choked voice.

“How fervently I wish that I were not!” Mac said. “We had better sit down, all of us. This will not come easy or quick.”

Chalmers and Renata exchanged looks that nobody but them would understand, then followed Kate into the McCabes' long living room. Lynda and I came next, with Mac hanging back as if uneager.

Once in the room, my brother-in-law enthroned himself in his favorite fireside chair. Kate flanked him on the other side of the bar in a matching wingback, while Lynda and I sat in two other chairs and the Chalmerses shared the couch.

“It was all perfectly obvious from the first,” Mac said, looking longingly at his cigar. “Obvious, that is, that Woollcott was supposed to be guilty of killing Hugh. He apparently had not just one motive for revenge but two - books and Renata. You all know the sordid details of the latter, as did I and several others.

“What I did not know, but soon began to suspect, was that Woollcott's cane is actually a specially machined air gun, probably powered by a CO
2
cartridge.”

Mac motioned with the cigar at the cane/gun, which I held loosely between the legs in front of me.

“It was designed, of course, to emulate the one made for Colonel Sebastian Moran,” Mac said. “Cane guns were quite popular in those days. We know from ‘The Adventure of the Empty House' that Moran's air gun fired soft revolver bullets, although the caliber was unspecified. Woollcott's weapon here fires standard .32 bullets, not the customary air rifle pellets. It was very custom-made indeed.”

“Not a very powerful weapon, however,” Chalmers said. “Or so I was warned.”

“That's why the bullet didn't go all the way through, not because it was fired from a distance,” Mac said. “The gun was fired at close range into Hugh Matheson's carotid artery. High power wasn't needed. Of far more importance was that the gun was virtually silent, which is helpful if you plan to shoot someone in a hotel room.”

I let go of the cane for a moment and rubbed my sweating hands on my pants leg.

“Yet another strong indication that Woollcott had murdered Hugh was the missing
Beeton's Christmas Annual
which Lynda and Jefferson found in his room here. Obviously, Woollcott retrieved the book after killing the one who had stolen it from Muckerheide Center.

“Unfortunately” - Mac allowed himself an ironic smile - “I have a penchant for rejecting the obvious. Perhaps that reflects too many years of writing mystery stories and even more years of reading them, but it has served me well. Woollcott was altogether too convenient a killer. Additionally, I knew that he had been in my sight virtually from the moment we left this house last night until Jefferson and Lynda entered the President's Dining Room. And I knew that he had been in the audience all through my talk this morning when Lynda was struck. Jefferson and Lynda were free to suspect that I was mistaken on both counts, but I knew that I was not.”

Lynda paused in the middle of unwrapping a stick of gum. “We figured it didn't have to be the killer who hit me. It could have been another Sherlockian who wanted the
Beeton's
.”

“And left without it?” Mac's voice was rich with skepticism. “A thief who failed to find the book himself would have waited for Lynda to find it before he knocked her out. No, the killer assaulted Lynda and the killer left that book behind because the killer wanted it found. Why? To frame Woollcott Chalmers. And who could comfortably enter this house and do that? Eliminating myself and those in this room with no conceivable motive, I was left with an unpleasant but inescapable confirmation of a conclusion I had already reached: Renata Chalmers was that killer.”

Renata flinched. She was sitting up straight on the couch, about a foot from her husband. The old man stared at her, but she gave Mac her full attention. “Go on,” she said. “Play your game.”

“Hugh's mysterious visitor in the deerstalker must have been someone he knew, for he chose to open the door,” Mac said. “Renata certainly qualifies on that score. And the cap - Woollcott's, of course - would make a good disguise for a woman with long hair, à la Irene Adler dressing as a man in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia.' You will recall that Renata was already wearing a suit with slacks yesterday.”

“Hold it, Mac,” Lynda interrupted. “You mentioned long hair. Renata may not have been with her husband at the time of the murder, but we know she was putting her hair into ringlets to go with her Victorian outfit for the evening. I saw her earlier in the day and I saw her later with her hair fixed up and I know from experience how long that work can take.”

Renata flashed her a look of gratitude. But Kate said, “Not if you just put on a wig with the ringlets already on it.” My sister sat forward in her chair. “Mac, is that why you asked me this morning whether Renata's hair-''

“Exactly. Now Jefferson, think back to your first visit to the guest suite this morning. Undoubtedly you looked around at the dressers before Renata stopped you. Did you see a curling iron? No? I thought not. How about a wig?”

I closed my eyes and tried to bring it all back. Yes, in my mental image there was a lump of hair sitting with the jewelry box and the makeup and the hair brush. But was it just the power of Mac's suggestion that had put it there? Unsure, I shook my head. “Sorry, Mac, I can't-”

“Yes,” Woollcott Chalmers said, looking at his wife. “Renata brought one of her hairpieces. I never thought...” He licked his lips and fell silent.

“But there wasn't any hair when Jeff and I searched the room for the book,” Lynda said.

“Of course not,” Mac agreed. “Renata removed it after she knocked you unconscious. Perhaps she secreted it in that large handbag she carries. The question would be easily settled, Renata, if you would care to let us look inside.”

“No!” For a second her eyes were wild, like a cornered animal. “That suggestion is insulting.”

“I did not think you would like it.” Again Mac turned his attention to Lynda and me. “Renata undoubtedly knew that her flimsy alibi would fall apart if you realized that her elaborate Victorian coiffure was the work of a few moments. Hence her need to knock you out, Lynda, and spirit away the wig. However, her primary reason for being in the suite was to plant the
Beeton's
in her husband's drawer so that it would be there to incriminate him when you two looked for it.”

“This is all speculation,” Renata said in a firm voice. “You have no proof for any of it.”

“Perhaps not,” Mac conceded. “What would happen, however, if the police showed your photograph around the Winfield? Is there no one who would remember such a strikingly attractive woman in the hotel around the time of the murder? I suspect you kept the deerstalker in your handbag, not on your head, until you reached the proper floor. And then there is the matter of that cane, which I am quite certain will turn out to be the murder weapon. It was used to throw suspicion on Woollcott, but you had equal access to it, Renata. And Woollcott has an alibi for the murder, which you lack.”

The fight went out of Renata. She stared at the dried flower arrangement in front of the fireplace screen.

“Why?” her husband breathed. “Why, Renata?”

“And how come you had to come back when I was here?” Lynda asked. Unconsciously her right hand stole to the tender part at the back of her head. She winced.

Renata looked at her with a strangely graceful, almost regal movement in which she moved her head but not her body. “I am sorry about that, Lynda. I had intended to slip the book into Woollcott's dresser this morning, after he and our hosts left for the symposium. But then your friend showed up.” Renata nodded at me. “I thought he was there to search for the book - and I was certain that he'd be back.”

“Nothing could have been better for your plans, of course,” Mac said.

“Of course,” Renata agreed. “It meant I wouldn't have to somehow maneuver Kate into ‘discovering' the book as I had planned. The trick was to plant the book in an easily uncovered hiding place before Jeff returned. When I saw him leave the lecture hall with Bob Nakamora, that was my opening. With him out of the way, I didn't expect any company here. When you showed up, Lynda, that completely unnerved me. That's why I hit you - not because I was afraid you'd see the wig. Taking the wig was an afterthought. I grabbed it and ran. I must have been running through the kitchen and out the back of the house about the time Jeff was coming in the front.”

“And from there we played right into your hands,” I said with a bitterness I could almost taste.

“Not entirely.” She was a cool one, seemingly unfazed by the collapse of her carefully contrived plans. “You were supposed to find the gun right away. I hid it from Woollcott yesterday when we came back to change our clothes because I knew I was going to use it on Hugh. And I kept it hidden today until Woollcott was out of the house.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What did you think happened to it, Chalmers? I'm sure you don't just misplace unique objects like that.”

“Actually, he does,” Renata said coldly before he could answer. “His memory is failing along with several functions, except when it comes to his damned Sherlock Holmes. After he was out of the house, I put it where you should have seen it the first time.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Lynda murmured.

“But why?” Kate cried. “Why frame your husband? Why kill your lover?”

“Lover?” Renata repeated, unconsciously forming a fist with her right hand. Her icy coolness was slipping. “He didn't love me. Neither of them did. I was a possession, a trinket, another collectible for the two of them to squabble over. That's just what I heard them doing in the bar one night before an Anglo-Indian Club meeting. I decided that this was one battle of male egos they would both lose. I would make them pay. It was only a matter of waiting for the right moment. The moment came and I did it and I'm glad I did it and the only thing I'm sorry about is that Woollcott didn't suffer enough.”

She sat back, exhausted, but without loosening her posture.

“I am reminded,” said Mac, “of a Persian proverb quoted by Sherlock Holmes in ‘A Case of Identity' - ‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.'”

Chalmers blinked and fidgeted with his hands, a man who knew something awful had happened to him but didn't understand quite what. Lynda turned to him.

“You must have known,” she said. “You must have realized Renata killed your old rival, and yet you kept silent.”

“How could I have guessed?” His old eyes darted around the room, pathetic and pleading.

“You knew your air gun was missing and you knew your wife didn't really have an alibi,” Lynda said. “You're too shrewd not to have added it all up.”

“We never spoke of it,” he said. I leaned forward to hear. “But I did suspect. I thought she did it for me - because Matheson stole my books, stole my whole life practically.”

Renata stood up, arms folded, and laughed in a way that sent bumps goose-stepping down my spine. “I stole your precious books, you silly old fool, not Hugh. That was part of the setup, to give you a solid motive for killing him. I knew that jealousy over
me
wasn't enough.”

She paced in front of the fireplace, no more than a couple of feet in front of me, suddenly overcome with nervous energy.

“It was clear to me early on that you took those books,” Mac said. “‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' There was no forced entrance into the exhibit room. The keys were all accounted for and there were no obvious indications that a duplicate had been made. Ergo,
there was no burglary
. On Friday afternoon, when you and Woollcott visited the display, you grabbed those three books when you were unobserved and took them away in that immense handbag of yours, didn't you?”

Mac seemed to take Renata's stony silence for assent. “I was certain that you didn't do it out of a simple desire to possess the books. Why, then? I concluded it was an attempt to malign Hugh, the most likely suspect in the theft based on motive. I didn't know why, however. Hugh didn't appear to be in any imminent danger of arrest, so I kept my thoughts to myself until I could see what you were up to. Possibly that decision of mine cost a man his life, and I shall have to live with that guilty knowledge for the rest of mine. When Hugh was killed, Renata, I suspected you at once.”

I whirled on my brother-in-law, barely holding myself together as my voice rose. “You knew it was her and you let me run around acting like an amateur detective in a stupid book, making a fool out of myself for nothing?” This was just too much to take without protest.

“By no means was it for nothing, Jefferson!
Au contraire
, your activities were crucial. I needed to know whether any other explanation was possible. I was hoping with all my heart-”

He was still talking when I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye: Renata coming at me. Before I could react she had snatched the cane/gun from my loose grip.

She held the stick in her left hand, the handle in her right, jamming the wicked device up against her husband's ear. Immobilized by panic, Chalmers's eyes widened and his skin turned a color I'd most recently seen on the corpse of Hugh Matheson.

It was all I could do to keep from losing control of my bladder, but Mac barely raised an eyebrow. “Framing your husband was never the end game of the plan, was it, Renata?” he said. “That wouldn't have been enough.”