Arsenic and Old Puzzles (6 page)

“Well, it looks like he tied one on this time,” Cora said. “I’m amazed he got the window open.”

Edith and Charlotte bustled over. “What is that man doing in our window seat?” Edith said indignantly.

“At the moment, not much,” Cora said. “He’s passed out.”

“No, I mean, why is he here? That man has no right to sleep in our window seat.”

“I’ll be sure to point that out to him,” Chief Harper said dryly. “Well, as Cora said, it would appear that the break-in is solved. As soon as we get the gentleman out of your way, you can lock up and go back to sleep.”

“You going to carry him?” Cora said.

“Not if I can help it. Let’s see if we can wake him up and get him walking.”

Chief Harper extracted the wine bottle from between the drunk’s fingers, handed it to Cora. “Ned must have been really plastered. It’s not like him to pass out with booze still in the bottle.”

Harper reached down, shook him by the shoulders. “Come on, Ned. Let’s get up.”

Ned didn’t move.

“Come on, buddy. You can sleep anywhere you want, but not here.”

Ned’s head rolled sideways, hung down.

Harper’s face froze. “What the hell?”

“Oh, no,” Cora said. “Don’t tell me.”

“Tell you what?” Charlotte said. “What’s wrong?”

Edith’s eyes widened. “Oh, no! Is he dead?”

“He’s dead, all right,” Harper said. “And that’s not all.”

Harper whipped out a handkerchief and used it to carefully hold up the crumpled paper that had been in Ned’s coat pocket.

It was a sudoku.

Chapter

12

Sam Brogan wasn’t
happy. The cranky officer was seldom happy, but being awakened at four in the morning on a night he wasn’t supposed to be on duty didn’t sit well. Sam had strung the crime scene ribbon as if it were a garrote with which he wished he could strangle someone. But having to fingerprint Cora Felton was the last straw.

“This is stupid,” he said, rolling her fingers in the ink pad.

“You think I like it?” Cora said.

“If you don’t like it, you shouldn’t have touched the bottle.”

“Chief Harper handed me the bottle.”

“Harper handed you the bottle?”

“That’s right.”

“Then I gotta do
his
fingerprints.”

“You don’t have them on file?”

“The chief hasn’t been booked that often. I try to arrest as many people as I can, but when you keep arresting your chief you get a bad reputation.”

“All right, you gotta fingerprint the chief. You gonna grouch at him?”

“No. Your fingerprints are your fault. The chief may not know any better, but you should.”

“Can I quote you on that, Sam? The chief doesn’t know any better than to contaminate crime scenes?”

“You quote me on that and I’ll deny it. It not what I said and you know it.”

Sam rolled the last finger onto the fingerprint card.

“You want a mug shot, too?”

“I want a nap. I want to go home and go to bed.” Sam stroked his moustache. It didn’t stand out so much with his five
A.M.
stubble. He closed the ink pad, stowed the fingerprint card in a plastic envelope. He held up the bottle of wine. “I don’t know how he could drink this stuff.”

“Evidently he couldn’t. You mind if I wash my hands now? I hate to leave such visible prints at a crime scene.”

“Knock yourself out.”

Cora went to the kitchen sink, washed her hands with dish soap, scrubbed away the worst of the ink. The remaining faint traces would take days to wear off. She dried her hands on a paper towel, tossed it in the trash, and followed Sam Brogan out into the hall.

Barney Nathan came in the front door. It had taken the doctor a little while to respond to the call. He was wearing slacks and a white shirt, open at the neck.

Cora blinked. “Oh, my God. Hell must have frozen over. Barney Nathan, without a red bow tie. Sam, get the crime scene camera. Snap off a few shots so I can prove I wasn’t dreaming.”

Barney stopped in midstride, wheeled on Cora. “Do you really give a damn what I wear?”

He turned, stomped into the living room.

“Well,” Cora said. “Look who got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“Four in the morning either side is the wrong side,” Sam said.

“You gonna photograph the body once it’s out of the window seat?”

“No, but I should photograph the seat.”

“Why?”

“So no one can say I didn’t,” Sam grumbled, and stomped off after the doctor.

Cora followed Sam into the living room.

Barney Nathan was stooped indecorously over the window seat. He stood up, said, “He’s dead,” and brushed off the knees of his pants.

“Any idea when?” Harper said.

The doctor shot a glance at Cora. “Very recent,” he said.

“The sisters were awakened by the sound of someone breaking in around three
A.M.
Anything inconsistent with that was him and he crawled into the window seat and died?”

“It’s a stupid thing to do,” Barney said.

“I meant medically.”

“I know what you meant. He could have done that.”

“What about the cause of death?”

“What about it?”

“You think he was poisoned?”

“I won’t know till I do the autopsy.”

“Any smell of almonds?”

Barney Nathan stiffened. He turned back, bent over the body, stood up. “Yes, there is.”

“So it could be the same guy.”

“Or girl,” Cora said.

The Guilford sisters, relegated to the parlor, were losing their patience. After all, it was their house, and something exciting was going on.

Edith stuck her head in the door. “Excuse me, Chief, but the guests are awake, and we don’t know what to tell them.”

“The guests?” Chief Harper said.

“Yes,” Charlotte said. “A nice young couple checked in yesterday. And a widower who might become a lodger. But no one’s going to want to stay in a place where people keep dropping dead.”

“Now, that’s a fine way to describe it,” Edith said. “I hope you don’t talk that way in front of the guests.”

“Of course not. Chief Harper’s family.” Charlotte smiled. “We do think kindly of you, even if you do keep bringing murders.”

That seemed a rather unfair assessment of the chief’s actions.

“Where are the guests?” Harper said.

“In the foyer. We told them they couldn’t come in and they’re not happy.”

“And you’d like them to be not happy at me instead of at you. Well, I suppose it’s only fair.”

“I’ll give you moral support, Chief.”

Harper followed the sisters out in the foyer with Cora tagging along.

The couple, who appeared to be in their thirties, wore pajamas and robes. Cora wondered if they were married.

The widower was a frail thing, somewhere on the north side of sixty. He was, to Cora’s amusement, dressed in a suit and tie. She wondered whether he slept in it, or simply put it on to come downstairs. She wasn’t sure which was more pathetic.

“Sorry to disturb your sleep,” Harper said. “You people are guests here?”

The woman was indignant. “Yes. What’s going on? All this commotion, and
they
won’t let us go see.”

“I’m the one who won’t let you see. There’s been a break-in, and the perpetrator is dead.”

“They killed him!” the widower said.

“I strongly doubt it. The intruder was a drunk who crawled into the window seat and died. It’s a suspicious death, so we have to treat it as a crime scene, but, trust me, no one suspects your hosts of having helped the man along.”

The widower gasped at the suggestion.

“Well, I don’t know how you expect us to sleep with this going on. We should check out and go to a motel.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Chief Harper said. “This is a potential crime scene. You don’t leave a crime scene until you’ve been cleared by the police.”

The woman was belligerent. “Why not?”

“If it turns out this is a crime scene, we’ll have to take your statements.”

“Why?” the man said. “We didn’t see anything.”

“Wait a minute,” the woman said. “We have to make a formal statement, give our names? Why do we have to do that?”

“I don’t think you do,” Harper said. “Unless you want to check out. If you’re checking out now, I’ll need to see some identification and take down your permanent address. If you’re hanging around, I’ll talk to you if I need you.”

The woman immediately reversed field. “No, no. That won’t be necessary. We’re staying here.”

The EMS team went by with a gurney. The dead man was covered with a sheet; still it had a chilling effect.

“All right,” Harper said. “The show’s over. So, why don’t you go back to your rooms. There’s nothing more to see.”

Harper waited while the guests, chastened, slunk back upstairs.

“All right, ladies,” Harper said. “Assuming Ned hadn’t crawled into the window seat and died, what would he have found to steal?”

“Nothing,” Edith said.

“There’s the brass candlesticks,” Charlotte said.

“Oh, who cares about the brass candlesticks.”

“Well, I like them, and they’ve been in the family.”

“Been in the family. Now there’s an expression. They belonged to Uncle Edward, who was as nutty as a jaybird.”

“Are the candlesticks valuable?” Harper said.

“Not in the least,” Edith said. “They appear to have sentimental value for Charlotte, but you couldn’t get a dime for them.”

“What about the grandfather clock?” Charlotte said.

“A little hard to carry, even for someone sober,” Chief Harper observed.

“Yes, of course. That’s not what he means, Charlotte. He means, do we have any money or jewelry?”

“Do you?”

“Certainly not,” Charlotte said.

Harper could have assumed that. The bed-and-breakfast, though neat and tidy, had not been painted in years, and probably could use a new roof. The sisters, by reputation, were frugal to a fault, with the exception of the afternoon tea.

“There’s no money in the house?”

“Of course not,” Edith said. “It’s in the bank.”

“You have money in the bank?”

“Doesn’t everyone? We have a checking account and a savings account.”

“And a safety deposit box,” Charlotte added.

“You have a safety deposit box?” Harper said.

“For the jewelry,” Edith explained. “We certainly don’t keep jewelry around the house. Anyone could break in. Not that we blame the police department. But you see.”

“You have expensive jewelry?”

“Just a little costume jewelry. For dress up. But we feel safer if it’s not in the house.”

“Does anyone know you have a safety deposit box?”

“Well, you do now. I’d prefer you didn’t tell. Then people will think we’re rich.”

“What about your nephew. Does he know?”

“Of course. But he’s family.”

“I see.”

Cora followed Chief Harper back to the living room.

“Well, that seemed promising for a while,” Harper said.

“Yes. Very promising. I thought you were onto something. A drunk climbs through the sisters’ window, hoping to poison them and steal the key to their safety deposit box. Unlucky for him, he can’t resist sipping the poisoned rotgut and winds up in the window seat.”

“Sarcasm? At four in the morning? Isn’t that a little harsh?”

“Murder is a little harsh. If Ned turns out to be poisoned, it would appear you have a serial killer who targets elderly men associated with the Guilford house. If I were that lodger, I’d make a statement right now and check out just as fast as I could call a cab.”

“There’s no cabs in Bakerhaven.”

“Then I’d walk. Seriously, Chief, do you have the faintest idea what’s going on here?”

“Do you?”

“Not at all. But then, I’m not the chief of police. Did Barney Nathan really miss the smell of almonds?”

“No, he got it.”

“After a little prompting. And his tie wasn’t tied. What’s that all about?”

“It’s four in the morning, Cora.”

“And did you hear the way he snapped at me? No, I guess it was Sam who was with me then. Anyway, he was downright rude.”

“Well, if you’re going to accuse a man of incompetence…”

“I never said he was incompetent. I said he was careless and made a lot of mistakes.”

“That’s sure to win his heart.”

“Yeah.” Cora took a look around. “Well, it would appear my work here is done.”

“What?”

“Well, I solved your break-in. What more do you want?”

“There is the sudoku.”

“Which I will be perfectly happy to solve. But I don’t know what you expect it to tell you.”

Sam Brogan came in carrying a plastic evidence bag. “You’re not going to like this, Chief.”

“That’s not surprising. I haven’t liked anything so far.”

“I found this in the bush outside. Just a piece of garbage. I nearly threw it away.”

“You
handled
it?” Cora said.

“Just an old newspaper. Old, faded, discolored junk. Just the type of thing you keep from cluttering up your crime scene.”

“So?” Harper said.

“So, I turned it over, and, here, take a look.”

Sam held up the evidence bag with the newspaper.

It was open to the crossword puzzle.