The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (54 page)

I found Tom Banks at his post in the lobby, staring moodily out at the rainswept street. “Mr Winsor,” he turned and smiled at me. “Surely you’re not thinking of going out in that downpour without so much as an umbrella?”

I shook my head. “I just came down to pass the time of day. I wanted to ask you about one of my neighbors, a big, gray-haired man in A? What’s he got against Penny?”

“That would be Mr Campbell.” Banks sighed and shook his head. “He’ll be leaving us at the end of the month. Some recent financial setbacks are forcing him to relocate.”

“Why do I have the feeling that Penny is somehow involved in that?” I prodded him.

“Mr Campbell isn’t too good at hiding his feelings,” the doorman nodded. “I guess there isn’t any harm in telling you about it now. Mr Campbell and his partner own a computer company. A few weeks back, the two of them were planning to take over another firm, a small company that unknowingly held a patent that would give Campbell and his partner a virtual lock on a big, upcoming defense contract. Campbell sold off all his assets at a loss to raise the necessary capital, but before he could put in a bid, a rival firm bought the company right out from under them.”

“How does Penny figure into it?”

“Well,” Banks hesitated, “Mr Campbell can’t prove anything, but he and his partner were discussing the takeover when they walked by Penny’s door. They had a longish wait for the elevator, so they pretty well covered it all. No one else knew about the deal, and with Penny’s reputation for spying on his neighbors, he seemed like the only person who could and
would
have alerted the rival company.”

“I could see why Campbell would hate him,” I sympathized. “What about you, Tom? How did you get along, with the admiral?”

“It’s my job to get along with all the tenants,” Banks replied with quiet dignity. “But now that he’s gone, I have to admit that Penny was a hard man, the only one I’ve ever met who would go out of his way to make someone else’s life miserable.”

“You sound as though you might be speaking from personal experience,” I said. The sad, regretful tone of his voice gave him away more than any words could.

“It happened a few months back,” Banks said softly. “Like the admiral, I’m a retired navy man myself. Now, I’m not one to ask for favors, but I have a grandson, a fine boy with all the makings of a naval officer. Ever since he was a lad he’s wanted to go to the Academy. He has all the grades, the qualifications. All he needed was a recommendation, a little pull at the top to get him in. I asked Penny if he’d be willing to put in a word for the boy. All it would have taken was one phone call, a few minutes of his time. Well, first he said yes, then no, then yes again. By the time I realized he never intended to do it, it was too late to ask anyone else. It seemed as though he took a kind of perverse pleasure in keeping me dangling like that.”

Although I’d never met Penny I was beginning to hate the man myself. “What happened to your grandson?” I asked Banks.

“He went into the navy as an enlisted man,” Banks said bitterly. “There’s no shame in that,” he added, “but he would have done the Academy proud. He never had his chance, thanks to Penny.”

There wasn’t anything I could say to that. I left Banks staring out at the rain and went back to the apartment. I was beginning to wonder how Admiral Penny had lived as long as he had. If he hadn’t been murdered, he certainly should have been. I’d never come across anyone who was a more suitable candidate for homicide. I was also beginning to regret my own attempt at amateur sleuthing.
If
Penny had been murdered, his killer almost deserved to get away with it. I say
almost
because I still intended to solve the crime if I could. Penny had done some pretty horrible things in his life, but none of them as terrible as murder itself.

I spent the rest of the day and all that evening at the easel, finishing up my assignment. While my hand wielded the brush, my mind arranged and rearranged all the bits and pieces I had about Penny and his death. I had started out with no suspects, not even a proper murder. None of this would have come about if it hadn’t been for the postcards and Karen’s insistence that I investigate.

Now I had three suspects. Tana Devin and Campbell were the more obvious ones, but Tom Banks was also a possibility. He seemed quiet and friendly enough on the surface, but who could really tell what was going on inside? As for the murder part of it, my cane-through-the-mail-slot theory eliminated the whole locked room element. It should have put Campbell at the head of my suspect list, but it didn’t. Any one of them could have bought a cane and shoved it through the slot. And after Tana Devin’s description of Penny’s “raspy” breathing, any one of them could have easily ascertained if he was at his post on the other side of the door.

I had suspects, motives, and method. I had everything I needed except for the most important thing: a solution to the crime.

It was still raining when I turned in at midnight. The rumble of thunder and the crack of lightning punctuated my futile attempt to sleep. When I finally did doze off, I had the craziest dream. I was being chased through Gramercy Park by a giant postcard. And it would have caught me, too, if it hadn’t been for the lifesized chessman. He was a white knight who poked a hole through the postcard with his uptilted lance. The postcard fell to the ground, but then the knight started bearing down on me, with his lance aimed straight at my heart.

That’s when I woke up. Not only had I escaped the sinister pursuers of my dream but I’d come up with the solution to the mystery. And it was so simple that I should have seen it right away. I still had some checking to do, though, just to make absolutely certain I was right.

The rain tapered off around six, the last of it disappearing with the dawn of a bright, autumn day. After an early breakfast I went downstairs for another talk with our friendly doorman.

“Who plays chess around here?” I asked after we’d exchanged good morning pleasantries.

The question seemed to take him by surprise. “Well now,” he hesitated. “I play a little chess. Strictly amateur stuff. Drayton, the postman, and I often have a game on Sundays. Then there’s Mr Campbell. He’s won a couple of local championships, and I know he spends a lot of his free time over at the Marshal Chess Club.”

“What about Tana Devin?”

Banks frowned thoughtfully and nodded. “Now that you mention it, I believe she’s a player, too. She once starred in an off-Broadway show called
The Chess Match.
So she must know at least the rudiments of the game, though I don’t think she has much time for it. Are you looking for a game?”

“No,” I said smiling. “I’m looking to
end
one.”

Leaving Banks more confused than ever, I paid a brief visit to a local shop. After that I returned to the apartment where I spent the rest of the morning experimenting at the scene of the crime.

When the postcard slid through the mail slot at a little past twelve, I was ready and waiting. I didn’t bother to bend down and pick it up. I swung the door open instead, startling the mailman so much that he stumbled back, nearly losing his balance.

“Mr Winsor,” Drayton grinned. “I’m sorry but there’s nothing for you today.”

“That’s okay,” I told him. “I was wondering if you could mail this for me,” I asked, handing him a postcard.

“No problem,” he said eagerly. “I used to mail cards for the admiral all the time.”

“I know you did.”

He must have sensed something, either in my face or in the tone of my voice. “Now, what do you mean by that?” he asked quietly. He wasn’t grinning any more.

“I figured it all out last night. The whole thing started with the postcards, but I got side-tracked for a while, never realizing that the answer was right there under my nose.”

Drayton forced a smile. “You’re talking in riddles, Mr Winsor. I still can’t figure out what you’re trying to say.”

“You’re the perfect postman, right?”

“The best in the business,” Drayton agreed.

I shook my head. “When I asked you what I should do with the admiral’s mail, you listed several options, all of them dependent on the mail’s being delivered
here.
You never once mentioned the routine procedure of having the post office
hold
it or putting in a change of address that would have sent it directly to Penny’s next of kin. It would have been easier on both of us, but you never said a word. Because you wouldn’t have seen the postcards any more. After all that time on the sidelines, you were finally in the game. You just couldn’t bear to give it up, could you?”

“Are you accusing me of tampering with the U.S. mail?” Drayton bristled.

“I’m accusing you of reading some postcards,” I said softly. “The ones Penny gave you to mail for him and the ones you delivered from his friend, Charles. You’re a chess player yourself. It’s only natural that you’d become interested in a game, especially if it were a good one. I didn’t suspect you at first. But last night I realized that somebody else must be carrying on the game with Penny’s friend Charles. You were the only one besides me with access to all the incoming postcards. And since Penny was an elderly man who spent most of his time eavesdropping from behind the door, it seemed only logical that he’d give the outgoing cards to you to mail for him. It all came down to your being the one, the
only
person who could keep the chess game going after Penny’s death. Charles must be a worthy opponent,” I suggested. “Are you enjoying the game?”

“All right,” Drayton said with a sheepish grin. “You caught me at it. Charles Fairfield is a top-ranked player just like the admiral was. I couldn’t resist the challenge. After all these years of trying to second-guess them, I had to see if I could beat Fairfield myself.” The heavyset postman shrugged. “All I did was write a few postcards and sign Penny’s name to them. No harm in that, right?”

“No harm if the admiral hadn’t caught you reading the cards in the first place,” I corrected him. “These past few days I’ve learned just what kind of man he was. What you did was only a minor infraction of the rules. After all, postcards aren’t
meant
to be private. But Penny would have complained just the same, ruining your standing as the ‘perfect postman,’ spoiling your chance to be named mail carrier of the year. But first he would have let you dangle for a while, enjoying the prolonged agony. The sight of you sweating it out, never knowing exactly when your spotless reputation would be shattered beyond repair. He waited too long this time,” I said quietly. “Long enough for you to kill him.”

“Are you crazy?” Drayton sputtered. “Penny tripped on a rug behind a locked door. No way that could be murder.”

I shook my head. “There are a couple of ways, but I didn’t figure out the right one until last night.” I dug the little loop of nylon cord out of my pocket and held it out for Drayton to see. “I found this knotted through the rug. The rug Penny tripped on when he fractured his skull.” Involuntarily both of us glanced down at the faded Oriental. “At first I thought the loop was left over from a cleaners’ tag. But then I remembered Tom Banks’s comment that the cleaners had spent ‘all afternoon’ on them. They’d done the work right here. No reason to tag them if the rugs weren’t leaving the apartment.”

I prodded the nylon loop in my open palm. “I took this over to a sporting goods store this morning. The man in the fishing department identified it as a piece of deep sea fishing line, strong enough to withstand the pull of a fighting marlin. And I know you’re a fisherman. You told me as much yourself when you talked about not being able to afford a rod and reel from the Pitt catalogue.”

“What does that prove?” Drayton demanded. Behind his thick glasses his eyes had taken on a narrow, almost glowing intensity. Casually he slipped his mailbag off his shoulder and put it down on the floor. “It’s real interesting,” he said with a slow smile. “But it still doesn’t add up to murder.”

“Sure it does,” I insisted. “I spent a lot of time this morning standing on that little rug with the door closed. Right off I noticed how the rug gets bunched up from shifting your feet around. It gets pushed up against the door and a little edge of it gets shoved
between
the door and the bottom of the frame. Not much,” I emphasized. “Just enough to knot a line in it.”

“Go on,” Drayton prompted me. He was still smiling, but there was no pleasure at all in his voice.

“You must have done that part of it quietly,” I continued. “Keeping well below the sightline of the peephole. It would have been easy. Most of the tenants aren’t around this time of day. Then you make your normal appearance, dropping the mail through the slot. When you hear Penny picking it up, you hurry away. The other end of the line was secured to something heavy and tough. Your mailbag is my best guess. It’s perfect for the job. The sudden pull on the line yanks the rug against the door and Penny with it. It was a pretty sure bet that something like that would fracture an old man’s brittle skull. After you hear the crash, you just walk back and cut the line with scissors or a knife.”

“You mean a knife like this?” The short but lethal looking blade suddenly appeared in Drayton’s hand.

“Just like it,” I gulped.

“I thought he was my friend,” he continued with quiet intensity. “He used to meet me at the door every day. I’d hand him his mail and he’d give me the cards to post for him. Then one day he caught me reading one of Charles’s postcards. I guess he must have been suspecting it for a while. He wouldn’t open the door after that. He’d just stand on the other side and taunt me, telling me over and over again that everyone would find out that I really wasn’t perfect. I had to kill him. Don’t you see? I
am
perfect. The perfect postman!”