The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 (46 page)

“Aye, so they do. But to what purpose?”

“The obvious answer is to fool someone in close proximity at the time.”

“Who? Not me, surely. No one could have known ahead of time that I would follow Sonderberg from the hotel to Gunpowder Alley.”

“The bluecoat, Maguire, then,” Sabina said. “From your description of him, he's the sort who makes his rounds on a by-the-clock schedule. Still, it seems rather an intricate game just to confuse a simple patrolman.”

“
If
the whole was planned ahead of time, and not a result of circumstance.”

“In either case, there has to be a plausible explanation. Are you certain there was no possible means of escape from Sonderberg's building following the shooting?”

“Front and rear entrances bolted from the inside, the door to his living quarters likewise bolted, the only window both barred and locked. Yes, I'm certain of that much.”

“Doesn't it follow, then, that if escape was impossible, the murderer was never inside the building?”

“It would,” Quincannon said, “except for three facts that indicate otherwise. The missing satchel and greenbacks; the presence of the whiskey bottle and two glasses on the table; the pistol that dispatched Sonderberg lying at a distance from the body. There can be no doubt that both killer and victim were together inside that sealed room.”

“The thump you heard just after the shots were fired. Can you find any significance in that?”

“None so far. It might have been a foot striking a wall—that sort of sound.”

“But loud enough to carry out to Gunpowder Alley. Did you also hear running steps?”

“No. No other sounds at all.” Quincannon stood and began to restlessly pace the office. “The murderer's vanishing act is just as befuddling. Even if he managed to extricate himself from the building, how the devil was he able to disappear so quickly? Not even a cat could have climbed those fences enclosing the rear walkway. Nor the warehouse wall, not that such a scramble would have done him any good with all its windows steel-shuttered.”

“Which leaves only one possible escape route.”

“The rear door to Letitia Carver's house, yes. But it was bolted when I tried it, and she claims not to have had any visitors.”

“She could have been lying.”

Quincannon conceded that she could have been.

“I don't suppose there's any chance that she herself could be the culprit?”

“She's eighty if she's a day,” he said. “Besides, I saw her sitting in her parlor window not two minutes before the shots were fired.”

“Lying to protect the guilty party, possibly. Perhaps a relative. In which case the murderer was hiding in the house while you spoke to her.”

“A galling possibility, if true.” Quincannon paused, glowering, to run fingers through his thick beard. “The crone seemed innocent enough, yet now that I consider it, there was something... odd about her.”

“Furtive, you mean?”

“No. Her actions, her words... I can't quite put my finger on it.”

“Why don't you have another talk with her, John?”

“That,” Quincannon said, “is what I intend to do straightaway.”

 

Gunpowder Alley was no more appealing by daylight than it had been under the cloak of darkness. Heavy rain during the early morning hours had slackened into another dreary drizzle, and the buildings encompassing the alley's short length all had a huddled appearance, bleak and sodden under the wet gray sky.

The cul-de-sac was deserted when Quincannon, dry beneath a newly purchased umbrella, turned into it from Jessie Street. Boards had been nailed across the front entrance to the cigar store and a police seal applied to forestall potential looters. At the house next door, tattered curtains still covered the parlor window.

He stood looking at the window for a few seconds, his mind jostled by memory fragments—words spoken to him by Maguire, others by Letitia Carver. Quickly, then, he climbed to the porch and rapped on the front door. Neither that series of knocks nor two more brought a response.

His resolve, sharpened now, prodded him to action. In his pocket he carried a set of lock picks which he'd purchased from an ex-housebreaker living in Warsaw, Illinois, who manufactured burglar tools, advertised them as novelties in the
Police Gazette
, and sold them for ten dollars the set. He set to work with these on the flimsy door lock and within seconds had the bolt snicked free.

In the foyer inside, he paused to listen. No sounds reached his ears save for the random creaks of old, wet timbers. He called loudly, “Hello! Anyone here?” Faint echoes of his voice were all the answer he received.

He moved through an archway into the parlor. The room was cold, decidedly musty; no fire had burned in the grate in a long while, certainly not as recently as last night. The furniture was sparse and had the worn look of discards. One arm of the rocking chair set near the curtained window was broken, bent outward at an angle. The lamp on the rickety table next to it was as cold as the air.

Glowering fiercely now, Quincannon set off on a rapid search of the premises upstairs and down. There were scattered pieces of furniture in two other rooms, including a sagging iron bedstead sans mattress in what might have been the master bedroom; the remaining rooms were empty. A closet in the foyer contained a single item that brought forth a blistering, triple-jointed oath.

He left the house, grumbling and growling, and stepped into the side passage for another examination of the barred window to Sonderberg's quarters. Then he moved on to the cross passage at the rear, where a quick study confirmed his judgments of the night before: there was no possible exit at either end, both fences too tall and slippery to be scaled.

Out front again, he embarked on a rapid canvass of the immediate neighborhood. He spoke to two residents of Gunpowder Alley and the bartender at the saloon on the Jessie Street corner, corroborating one fact he already knew and learning another that surprised him not at all.

The first: The house next to the cigar store had been empty for four months, a possibility he should have suspected much sooner from the pair of conflicting statements he'd finally recalled—Maguire's that in the two weeks he'd patrolled Gunpowder Alley the parlor window had always been dark, the woman calling herself Letitia Carver's that she often sat there at night looking out.

And the second fact: Raymond Sonderberg, a man who kept mostly to himself and eked out a meager living selling cigars and sundries, was known to frequent variety houses and melodeons such as the Bella Union on Portsmouth Square.

The mystery surrounding Sonderberg's death was no longer a mystery. And should not have been one as long as it had; Quincannon felt like a damned rattlepate for allowing himself to be duped and fuddled by what was, as Sabina had suggested, a crime with an essentially simple explanation. For he knew now how and why Sonderberg had been murdered in his locked quarters. And was tolerably sure of who had done the deed—the only person, given the circumstances, it could possibly be.

 

Titus Willard was alone in his private office at the Montgomery Street branch of Woolworth National Bank when Quincannon arrived there shortly before noon. And none too pleased to have been kept waiting for word as long as he had.

“Why didn't you contact me last night, as we agreed?” he demanded. “Don't tell me you weren't able to follow and identify the blackmailer?”

“One of the blackmailers, yes, the man you paid. Raymond Sonderberg, proprietor of a cigar store in Gunpowder Alley.”

“
One
of the blackmailers? I don't understand.”

“His accomplice shot him dead in his quarters and made off with the satchel before I could intervene.”

Willard blinked his surprise and consternation. “But who...?”

“I'll have the answer to that question, Mr. Willard, after you've answered a few of mine. Why were you being blackmailed?”

“...I told you before, I'd rather not say.”

“You'll tell me if you want the safe return of your money and the remaining blackmail evidence.”

The banker assumed his habitual pooched rodent look.

“A woman, wasn't it?” Quincannon prompted. “An illicit affair?”

“You're, ah, a man of the world, surely you understand that when one reaches my age—”

“I have no interest in reasons or rationalizations, only in the facts of the matter. The woman's name, to begin with.”

Willard hemmed and hawed and pooched some more before he finally answered in a scratchy voice, “Pauline Dupree.”

“And her profession?”

“Profession? I don't see—oh, very well. She is a stage performer and actress. Yes, and a very good one, I might add.”

“I thought as much. Where does she perform?”

“At the Gaiety Theater. But she aspires to be a serious actress one day, perhaps on the New York stage.”

“Does she now.”

“I, ah, happened to be at the theater one evening two months ago and we chanced to meet—”

Quincannon waved that away. No one “happened to be” at the Gaiety Theater, which was something of a bawdy melodeon on the fringe of the Barbary Coast. The sort of place that catered to middle-aged men with a taste for the exotic, specializing as it did in prurient skits and raucous musical numbers featuring scantily clad young women.

He asked, “You confided in her when you received the first blackmail demand?”

“Of course,” Willard said. “She had a right to know...”

“Why did she have a right to know?”

“It's... letters I wrote to her that are being held against me.”

Highly indiscreet letters, no doubt. “And how did the blackmailer get possession of them?”

“They were stolen from her rooms last week, along with a small amount of jewelry. This man Sonderberg... a common sneak thief who saw an opportunity for richer gains.”

Stolen? Sonderberg a common sneak thief? What a credulous gent his client was! “Was it Miss Dupree's suggestion that you pay the initial five thousand dollars?”

“Yes, and I agreed. It seemed the most reasonable course of action at the time.”

“But when the second demand arrived two days ago, you didn't tell her you'd decided to hire a detective until
after
you came to me.”

“That's so, yes. Engaging you was a spur-of-the-moment decision—”

“And when you did tell her, you also explained that I'd be present at the second payoff and that I intended to follow and confront the blackmailer afterward?”

“Why shouldn't I have confided in her? She—” Willard broke off, frowning, then once again performed his rodent imitation. “See here, Quincannon. You're not suggesting that Miss Dupree had anything to do with the extortion scheme?”

It was not yet time to answer that question. “I deal in facts, as I told you, not suggestions,” Quincannon hedged. “Where are you keeping her?”

“Her rooms are on Stockton Street,” the banker said stiffly.

“Is she likely to be there or at the Gaiety at this hour?”

“I don't know. One or the other, I suppose.”

“Come along, then, Mr. Willard,” Quincannon said, “and we'll pay a call on the lady. I expect we'll both find it a stimulating rendezvous.”

 

They found Pauline Dupree at the gaudily painted Gaiety Theater, primping in her backstage dressing room. She was more or less what Quincannon had expected—young and rather buxomly attractive, with dark-gold tresses and bold, smoke-hued eyes wise beyond her years. Her high color paled a bit when she saw Quincannon, but she recovered quickly.

“And who is this gentleman, Titus?” she asked Willard.

“John Quincannon, the detective I told you about.” The smile the banker bestowed on her was fatuous as well as apologetic. “I'm sorry to trouble you, my dear, but he insisted on seeing you.”

“Did he? And for what reason?”

“He wouldn't say, precisely. But he seems to have a notion that you are somehow involved in the blackmail scheme.”

There was no need to hold back any longer. Quincannon said, “Not involved in it, the originator of it.”

Pauline Dupree's only reaction was a raised eyebrow and a little moue of dismay. A talented actress, to be sure. But then, he'd already had ample evidence of her skills last night.

“I?” she said. “But that's ridiculous.”

Quincannon's gaze had roamed the small dressing room. Revealing costumes hung on racks and an array of paints and powders and various theatrical accessories were arranged on tables. He walked over to one, picked up and brandished a long-haired white wig. “Is this the wig you wore last night, Mrs. Carver?” he asked her.

There was no slippage of her composure this time, either. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Your portrayal of Letitia Carver was quite good, I admit. The wig, the shawl and black dress and cane, the stooped posture and quavery voice... all very accomplished playacting. And of course the darkness and the candlelight concealed the fact that the old-age wrinkles were a product of theatrical makeup.”

“And where was I supposed to have given this performance?” Pauline Dupree's eyes were cold and hard now, but her voice remained even.

“The abandoned house next to Raymond Sonderberg's cigar store in Gunpowder Alley. Before and after you murdered Sonderberg in his quarters behind the store.”

“Murder?” the banker exclaimed in shocked tones. “See here, Quincannon! An accusation of blackmail is egregious enough, but murder—”

Pauline Dupree said, “It's nonsense, of course. I have no idea where Gunpowder Alley is, nor do I know anyone named Raymond Sonderberg.”

“Ah, but you do. Or rather, did. Like Mr. Willard, Sonderberg was drawn to melodeons such as this one. My guess is you made his acquaintance in much the same way as you did my client, and used your no doubt considerable charms to lure him into your blackmail scheme.”