The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries (6 page)
But suddenly something clicked in his mind and his eyes were gleaming as he wrote out the letters of “arrant robber” and crossed them off one by one against a name on the
members’ list. One letter short, agreed. But there it was, immediately before those two words: the letter “d—”, which he’d assumed to have been the way some people
who’d never sworn in their lives expressed “damned”.
“Wow!”
It was 8.45 pm and he rang Lewis immediately. Almost. But if one of the four names was hidden there in the text, in “anagrammatic” form (the very word Keating had used), yes! If one
of the names was nestling there, what about the other three?
Lewis was watching the 10 o’clock news on BBC1 when Hathaway rang.
“I went through that letter line by line, sir, letter by letter, and I’ve found them, found all of them. All four: ‘d—arrant robber’ is an anagram of Robert
Barnard. Next one: ‘monster – bit’ is an anagram of Simon Brett, our honourable President. Then we’ve got ‘grill – he’, not quite so clear, but it must be Reg
Hill. The last, near the end, is ‘eye – let’s prove’, which works out as Peter Lovesey. I checked all the other names on the list, but there’s no one
else
lurking there. No one!”
After finally replacing the receiver, Hathaway felt an inner glow of forgivable pride. Yet he realised that four names didn’t help all that much when the problem was deciding on just
one
name. But the other four would go down to three if the President (surely) could be shunted along with Caesar’s wife into the above-suspicion bracker. Which left him with Barnard,
Hill, Lovesey . . .
When Hathaway had rung, Lewis had only just got back from hearing Papadopoulos conducting the Oxford Philomusica at the Sheldonian. He felt pleasingly tired, and would have welcomed an earlyish
night. But he knew he would have little chance of sleep with Hathaway’s clever findings topmost in his mind, and with the idea that had begun to dawn on him that morning still undeveloped and
unexamined. Unusually for him, he was aware of a strongly competitive urge to come up with something that could complement his sergeant’s discovery. But who
was
that one crook on the
committee? One of the four – or perhaps one of the three – for he (like Hathaway) felt prepared to pass over the President.
Think, Lewis! Think!
How would Morse have looked at the letter? Probably looked at it the wrong way round, say? How do you do that, though? Read it back to front? Ridiculous. Read the PS before the salutation? But
where had he read the PS’s “what I tell you three times is true” before? From Lewis Carroll, wasn’t it? He located the words immediately in
The Oxford Book of
Quotations
, from “The Hunting of the Snark”. So what? What had
that
got to do with anything? Just a minute. Three suspects . . . but Keating hadn’t mentioned any single
one of the suspects three times. He hadn’t mentioned
anything
three times.
Or had he?
Well, even if he had, it was past midnight, and he was walking up the stairs when he remembered what Hathaway had said about punctuation. Morse had once told him that Oscar Wilde had spent two
hours one morning looking through one of his poems before removing a comma; and then spent a further two hours the same afternoon before deciding to re-instate the said comma. And after standing
motionless on the third step from the top of the staircase, Lewis finally retraced his steps downstairs and looked at the letter for the umpteenth time, now paying no attention whatsoever to what
things were being said, but
how
they were being said.
And suddenly, in a flash, eureka.
Thank you, Hathaway! Thank you, Morse!
Lewis took a can of beer from the fridge and drank it before finally completing his ascent of the staircase. Hathaway may have fallen asleep that night with a look of deep satisfaction on his
face, but with Lewis it was one bordering on the beatific.
It was three days after the aforementioned events that Mr HRF Keating received a letter at his London address with the envelope marked “Thames Valley Police HQ,
Kidlington, Oxon”.
13 April 2006
Dear Mr Keating,
I write to thank you for your letter of 10 April 2006. You asked for my help.
Between us, my sergeant and I finally fathomed the anagrammatized names of the committee quorum; and leaving aside yourself, and giving the benefit of the doubt to your successor as
President, we were left with three names from the list you gave us: Messrs Barnard, Hill, Lovesey. The clues were there and we spotted them. But this didn’t get us very far. Which of the
three men was it?
It was more difficult for us to spot the vital clue, but in reality you had made it quite complex. The three names we had, as well as the President’s, were each signposted by two
items of punctuation: the long em dash and the exclamation mark. It was cleverly done. But we were a bit slow to notice the full implication of this. These two punctuation marks were each used,
always closely together, not four times, but seven times, and used nowhere else in your letter. Why had our suspect-list suddenly grown so much longer? The reason eventually became clear. The
name of the perpetrator of the “crime” was not included in the list of club-members. But there he was, three times: “frank—eight”; “King-Father”;
“thing—faker”, and each of the three is a perfect anagram of the man responsible for the alleged theft of the chequebook: a man, as I say, who was not listed among the
suspects. A man named HRF Keating. You, sir!
Only one problem remains, a more difficult one than that posed by your letter. Why on earth did you go in for all that rigmarole? What was the point of it? If, as we suspect, it was for
sheer amusement, please remember that irresponsible wasting of police time is liable to be interpreted as a crime, and as such be liable for prosecution.
Please satisfy our curiosity about your motive, although we trust that your reply can be rather shorter than your original communication.
Yours sincerely,
R Lewis (Detective Inspector)
16 April 2006
Dear Inspector Lewis,
Thank you so much for your letter, and heartiest congratulations on your cleverness.
An American philanthropist was one of our guests when Morse spoke to us, and the two of them got on finely. This same person revisited us a month ago, and was naturally saddened to hear
of Morse’s death. He remembered Morse mentioning to him the work of the Police Service of Northern Ireland Benevolent Fund, and expressed the wish to make some donation to this fund. But
on one specific condition. Together we amused ourselves by jointly composing the letter I originally sent to you. The agreed condition was that the police should prove themselves still able to
exhibit the high degree of mental acumen and flexibility that Morse himself had shown with crossword puzzles, and with criminal cases.
It was also agreed that I should write to you to explain the whole thing should you have shown no interest, or have been utterly flummoxed by our letter. Had such been the case, we had
decided to consider the merits of the next two charities on my friend’s giftlist: the Salvation Army, and the Donkey Sanctuary. I rang him immediately on receipt of your wonderfully
welcome letter, and a cheque is now on its transatlantic flight to the police charity: a cheque for $25,000. This I hope should compensate in some degree for the time you and your colleague
spent on the puzzle, and perhaps you can now cross my own name off the list of those potentially liable for prosecution. It remains for me only to subscribe this letter, which I now do.
A right nerk?—Ay!
PS Please note the punctuation.
Martin Edwards
As Joly closed his book, he was conscious of someone watching him. A feeling he relished, warm as the sun burning high above Campo Santi Apostoli. Leaning back, he stretched
his arms, a languorous movement that allowed his eyes to roam behind dark wrap-around Gucci glasses.
A tall, stooped man in a straw hat and white suit was limping towards the row of red benches, tapping a long wooden walking stick against the paving slabs, somehow avoiding a collision with the
small, whooping children on scooters and tricycles. Joly sighed. He wasn’t unaccustomed to the attentions of older men, but soon they became tedious. Yet the impeccable manners instilled at
one of England’s minor public schools never deserted him; and besides, he was thirsty; a drink would be nice, provided someone else was paying. The benches were crowded with mothers talking
while their offspring scrambled and shouted over the covered well and a group of sweaty tourists listening to their guide’s machine-gun description of the frescoes within the church. As the
man drew near, Joly squeezed up on the bench to make a small place beside him.
“Why, thank you.” American accent, a courtly drawl. “It is good to rest one’s feet in the middle of the day.”
Joly guessed the man had been studying him from the small bridge over the canal, in front of the row of shops. He smiled, didn’t not speak. In a casual encounter, his rule was not to give
anything away too soon.
The man considered the book on Joly’s lap. “
Death in Venice.
Fascinating.”
“He writes well,” Joly allowed.
“I meant the volume itself, not the words within it.” The man waved towards the green kiosk in front of them. Jostling in the window with the magazines and panoramic views of the
Canal Grande were the gaudy covers of translated Georgette Heyer and Conan the Barbarian. “Though your taste in reading matter is plainly more sophisticated than the common herd’s. But
it is the book as
objet d’art
that fascinates me most these days, I must confess. May I take a closer look?”
Without awaiting a reply, he picked up the novel, weighing it in his hand with the fond assurance of a Manhattan jeweller caressing a heavy diamond. The book was bound in green cloth, with faded
gilt lettering on the grubby spine. Someone had spilled ink on the front cover and an insect had nibbled at the early pages.
“Ah, the first English edition by Secker. I cannot help but he impressed by your discernment. Most young fellows wishing to read Thomas Mann would content themselves with a cheap
paperback.”
“It is a little out of the ordinary, that accounts for its appeal. I like unusual things, certainly.” Joly let the words hang in the air for several seconds. “As for cost, I
fear I don’t have deep pockets. I picked the copy up from a second hand dealer’s stall on the Embankment for rather less than I would have paid in a paperback shop. It’s worth
rather more than the few pence I spent, but it’s hardly valuable, I’m afraid. The condition is poor, as you can see. All the same, I’d rather own a first edition than a modern
reprint without a trace of character.”
The man proffered a thin, weathered hand. “You are a fellow after my own heart, then! A love of rare books, it represents a bond between us. My name is Sanborn, by the way, Darius
Sanborn.”
“Joly Maddox.”
“Joly? Not short for Jolyon, by any chance?”
“You guessed it. My mother loved
The Forsyte Saga.
”
“Ah, so the fondness for good books is inherited. Joly, it is splendid to make your acquaintance.”
Joly ventured an apologetic cough and made a show of consulting his fake Rolex as the church bell chimed the hour. “Well, I suppose I’d better be running along.”
Sanborn murmured, “Oh, but do you have to go so soon? It is a hot day, would you care to have a drink with me?”
A pantomime of hesitation. “Well, I’m tempted. I’m not due to meet up with my girlfriend till she finishes work in another hour . . .”
A tactical move, to mention Lucia. Get the message over to Sanborn, just so there was no misunderstanding. The American did not seem in the least put out, as his leathery face creased into a
broad smile. Joly thought he was like one of the pigeons in the square, swooping the moment it glimpsed the tiniest crumb.
“Then you have time aplenty. Come with me, I know a little spot a few metres away where the wine is as fine as the skin of a priceless first edition.”
There was no harm in it. Adjusting his pace to the old man’s halting gait, he followed him over the bridge, past the shop with all the cacti outside. Their weird shapes always amused him.
Sanborn noticed his sideways glance. He was sharp, Joly thought, he wasn’t a fool.
“As you say, the unusual intrigues you.”
Joly nodded. He wouldn’t have been startled if the old man had suggested going to a hotel instead of for a drink, but thankfully the dilemma of how to respond to a proposition never arose.
After half a dozen twists and turns through a maze of alley ways, they reached an ill-lit bar and stepped inside. After the noise and bustle of the
campo
, the place was as quiet as a church
in the Ghetto. No one stood behind the counter and, straining his eyes to adjust from the glare outside, Joly spied only a single customer. In a corner at the back, where no beam from the sun could
reach, a small wizened man in a corduroy jacket sat at a table, a half-empty wine glass in front of him. Sanborn limped up to the man and indicated his guest with a wave of the stick.
“Zuichini, meet Joly Maddox. A fellow connoisseur of the unusual. Including rare books.”
The man at the table had a hooked nose and small dark cruel eyes. His face resembled a carnival mask, with a plague doctor’s beak, long enough to keep disease at bay. He extended his hand.
It was more like a claw, Joly thought. And it was trembling, although not from nerves – for his toothless smile conveyed a strange, almost malevolent glee. Zuichini must suffer from some form
of palsy, perhaps Parkinson’s disease. Joly, young and fit, knew little of sickness.
“You wonder why I make specific mention of books, Joly?” Sanborn asked with a rhetorical flourish. “It is because my good friend here is the finest bookbinder in Italy.
Zuichini is not a household name, not even here in Venice, but his mastery of his craft, I assure you, is second to none. As a collector of unique treasures, few appreciate his talents more than
I.”