The Bughouse Affair (26 page)

“Your husband was an habitual chronicler of his personal and professional life, wasn’t he? Names, dates, events, gambling debts—and future plans. You must have been furious with him when he told you he’d committed the details of your scheme to paper and that the notebook had been stolen. And even more furious when you learned Clara Wilds had read his notes and acted on the blackmail opportunity by contacting your husband and demanding one thousand dollars for the notebook’s return—the sum he withdrew in cash from his bank shortly before Wilds was killed.”

The Costain woman said nothing, her pointy eyes piercing Sabina like stilettos. Or hatpins.

“You were afraid that Clara Wilds would continue to bleed you if you went through with the insurance fraud and your plan to kill your husband. That might even have been her intention from the start, by holding back some of the incriminating pages. So it was imperative that she be stopped and the entire notebook recovered immediately.

“Clara Wilds was too clever to meet your husband anywhere but in a public place, which left you with only one alternative. Once the time and place of the meeting were arranged, you drove a buggy there early, dressed in the same man’s clothing you later wore to impersonate the burglar, and waited until the blackmail exchange was completed. Then you followed Wilds to her lodging house near Washington Square. You left the rig in the carriageway behind the house while you killed Wilds, regained the thousand dollars, and searched her rooms until you found the notebook. One of the neighbors noticed the parked buggy, as did another witness when you left the area—”

“It wasn’t my buggy! No one can swear it was!”

“No, not your Studebaker—you’re too clever to have used your own equipage. A Concord you rented for the purpose.”

“That’s a lie. I did no such thing.” She pointed a finger at Sabina as if she were aiming a pistol. “Can your witnesses describe the driver? State with certainty that it wasn’t a man? I doubt it. Anyone could have driven the buggy—anyone could have stabbed the woman.”

“How did you know she was stabbed?”

“What? Why … you said so…”

“No, I didn’t. I said only that she was murdered.”

“I … I assumed it, that’s all. All that talk about Andrew being stabbed with a stiletto…”

“Clara Wilds was stabbed with her own hatpin, not a stiletto—the very same hatpin she jabbed into your husband when she picked his pocket. A woman’s weapon as well, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Holmes?”

“Without question,” he said approvingly. “Splendid detective work, my dear Mrs. Carpenter. Capital!”

Penelope Costain stamped her foot. “How do you know so much unless you were there in her rooms?
You
could have killed her!”

“I had no reason to,” Sabina said. “You did.”

“You can’t prove it in a court of law, any more than these two so-called detectives”—she glared at John and the Englishman in turn—“can prove I killed my husband.”

“Oh, yes—beyond any doubt, as I said earlier. For two reasons. One is the rented buggy. This morning I visited half a dozen stables in the downtown and South Park areas until I located the one you patronized. The hostler looked closely at you because he thought it was odd that an attractive woman should be wearing man’s clothing. He can identify you. As for the second and most damning reason—”

Sabina shifted her attention to Dr. Axminster, who was in the process of eating another horehound drop. “I understand Mrs. Costain had an appointment with you yesterday, Doctor.”

Axminster blinked, swallowed, and cleared his throat. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“For what reason?”

“To request a prescription for laudanum. Her husband’s death had made her quite anxious, she said.”

“A strong enough dosage that could also be used for the relief of severe pain?”

“Why, yes. She specifically asked for the maximum strength.”

“I thought as much. When I spoke to Mrs. Costain at her home yesterday, the pupils of her eyes were as small as arrow points. As they are now and have been since her arrival here. One of the primary ingredients of laudanum, as we all know, is opium, a drug which constricts the pupils of the eyes when taken in a moderately large dosage.”

Sabina turned again to Penelope Costain. “Clara Wilds struggled with her attacker before she died, and in that struggle she marked the person—deeply, judging from the amount of blood, skin, and hair under her fingernails. Brown, curly hair of the sort found at the nape of the neck. Yesterday at your home you were wearing a high-collared taffeta dress—an odd choice for a mourning garment—and you held your head at a careful angle the entire time, wincing now and then when you moved, as a woman does when a collar chafes at a painful wound. Would you mind undoing the high collar of the dress you’re wearing today, Mrs. Costain?”

“No! I won’t!”

“Would you like me to do it? If not, Inspector Kleinhoffer can summon a police matron.”

Penelope Costain raised a hand to the left side of her neck, an involuntary gesture that produced a grimace of pain when she touched it. Her calm and her bluster deserted her, and her expression turned frantic. She bounced to her feet and made a panicked attempt to flee—straight into Inspector Kleinhoffer’s waiting arms.

29

QUINCANNON

“The man is infuriating!” Quincannon ranted. “Insufferable, insulting, exasperating!”

“John, for heaven’s sake…”

“Thinks he’s a blasted oracle. Sees all, knows all, an expert on every arcane subject under the sun. He’s full of—”

“John.”

“—hot air. Enough to fill a balloon and carry it from here to the Sandwich Islands. Crackbrain! Braggart! Conceited popinjay!”

“Lower your voice,” Sabina said warningly. “The other diners are starting to stare at us.”

Quincannon subsided. She was right, he was calling attention to himself. The Cobweb Palace, Abe Warner’s eccentric eatery on Meiggs Wharf in North Beach, was a noisily convivial place at the dinner hour, and to draw scrutiny here was no mean feat. The ramshackle building was packed to its creaking rafters on this Saturday evening—with customers partaking of the finest seafood fare in the city, and with the usual complement of monkeys, roaming cats and dogs, and such exotic birds as the parrot that was capable of hurling curses in four languages. Warner had a benevolent passion for all creatures large and small, including spiders; his collection of rare and sundry souvenirs, everything from Eskimo artifacts to a complete set of dentures that had once belonged to a sperm whale to rude paintings of nude women, were draped floor to ceiling in an undisturbed mosaic of cobwebs.

At length Sabina ventured to say, “I don’t know why you carry on so about the Englishman. You didn’t have to spend all of yesterday trekking through the Barbary Coast and Chinatown with him.”

“It was only to get rid of the confounded pest. Besides, I gave him my word that I would, to my everlasting regret.” Quincannon’s ire began to rise again, and his voice along with it. “The day was interminable. He insisted on seeing every squalid nook and cranny. Opium dens, gambling hells, wine dumps, half the pestholes from Dupont Street to the waterfront. Yes, and the Fiddle Dee Dee and the Hotel Nymphomania, among other parlor houses. He even stopped half a dozen street prostitutes to ask the prices for their services, not only for comparison here but with streetwalkers in London’s Limehouse. Faugh! I had half a mind to bribe Ezra Bluefield to feed him a Mickey Finn and turn him over to the shanghaiers—”

“Hush!”

Quincannon subsided again, but not before muttering, “Blasted addlepate.”

“Yes, but there’s no gainsaying the fact that he has a rare talent for detective work.”

“Rare talent! Bah! Just because he happened to stumble upon the correct solution to the Costain murder?”

“Be honest, John. He not only matched your deductive skill, but bettered it in more than one respect.”

“I would have come to the same conclusions,” Quincannon grumbled, “if I hadn’t been out chasing after Dodger Brown.”

“I’m sure you would have. But you’re still being too harsh on the man. After all, he could have gone directly to the police with his discoveries, in which case you’d have gotten little or none of the credit. Instead he gave us both advance warning of his intentions.”

She had a point, but he wasn’t about to say so. “Only so he could brag about his alleged genius. He’d have gone ahead with his arrangements if I hadn’t stopped him. I still say he had no business poking his nose into my investigation, even if I did unwittingly give him the opportunity.”

“I suppose you feel the same about
my
nose.”

“Eh? No, of course not. You’re my partner.”

“But not your equal as a detective?”

“Yes, that, too,” he admitted grudgingly. “That was an admirable piece of sleuthing you did on the Clara Wilds matter.”

“Well! A professional compliment from the master himself. So you hold no grudge against
me
for what took place in Pollard’s office?”

“None. Besides, your investigation and mine were essentially separate.”

“So much for compliments,” Sabina said.

“You know, you should have told me you suspected Penelope Costain of Wilds’s murder, and why. It would have made my job easier.”

“And if you’d confided your suspicions to me, it would have made
mine
easier. Why must you always play your cards so close to the vest?”

“My father’s teachings, and a dozen years with the Secret Service.”

“And a colossal conceit.”

Quincannon pretended to be hurt. “You wound me deeply.”

“Oh, bosh. You’ll never change, will you?”

“I might, if you’ll agree to accompany me to dinner more often.”

“I will—the day you learn the meaning of the word humility.”

He wasn’t offended. Nothing she said tonight could offend him. He reached over to touch her hand, half expecting her to move it away. When she didn’t, at least not immediately, it stirred his tender feelings. He gazed wistfully at her across the table, reflecting again that she had dressed well for him. Beneath her lamb’s wool coat, she wore a brocade jacket over a snowy shirtwaist and a wine-colored skirt. Pendant ruby earrings, a gift from her late husband, made a fiery complement to her sleek dark hair and creamy complexion.

“Have I told you how captivating you look this evening, my dear?”

“Three times now. Personal compliments are also well taken, but you needn’t overdo it.”

“I could tell you fifty times a day how attractive you are and still not be overdoing it.”

“You ought to know by now that flattery will get you nowhere.”

Flattery—sincere flattery—might get him nowhere tonight, but his ardor and his hopeful determination remained undampened. There would be other evenings such as this. And on one of them … ah, surely on one of them …

SABINA

Once John settled down and gave his attention to his abalone steak, attacking the succulent shellfish with gusto, the dinner progressed well and she was not sorry she had accepted his invitation. The crab cakes were delicious, the wine well chilled, and his personal compliments, if not his professional ones, well taken despite their underlying intent. He was pleasant company when he had reined in his emotions and allowed his gentle and vulnerable side to dominate. Charming, even. Yes, and handsome, too, with his dark eyes and thick but well-groomed beard, and the gray sack coat, matching waistcoat, and striped trousers he wore.

Not that having dinner with him tonight meant she’d changed her mind about their relationship. But there was no harm in giving in to a minor temptation. But it was there that she drew the line and would continue to draw it. Still … she was young and healthy, and while she could never love any man except Stephen, she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like if she succumbed, just once, to John’s advances.…

She felt herself starting to blush and quickly put the thought out of her mind.

If only John weren’t so persistent in his designs on her virtue. And so jealous of his prowess as a detective. His self-esteem was justified up to a point—he was almost as good as he believed he was—but it sometimes blinded him to the long view of things. Their recent investigations, for instance. It didn’t matter a whit that he’d had to share the limelight with her and a daft poseur. All that mattered was that a cold-blooded double murderess had been apprehended, all the stolen property had been recovered, Jackson Pollard was pleased that his company was not liable for any of the insurance claims, and Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, had been well compensated and were assured of Great Western Insurance’s continued patronage. But there was no use in trying to tell John any of this, at least not tonight, his feelings toward the Englishman running as hot as they were. She had no doubt that he would indulge in more grumbling before the evening came to an end.

And of course he did.

He was a jovial companion until they were finishing an excellent rum cake dessert. Then, after a short interval during which his face turned cloudy again, he muttered, “He wouldn’t tell me when he plans to leave San Francisco.”

Sabina sighed. “I don’t suppose I need to ask who you mean.”

“The crackbrain, of course. He likes it here, he said. Finds the city stimulating. Might stay on awhile.”

“Well? That’s his privilege, isn’t it?”

“It is as long as he doesn’t bother me again with his infernal presence. Why doesn’t he go back to England? That’s where he belongs—an asylum in England.”

The imp in Sabina made her say, “Does he really? We could be wrong about him, you know.”

“What do you mean, wrong?”

“Suppose he isn’t an impostor. Suppose he really is Sherlock Holmes, the world-famous detective.”

John stared at her as if a fiddler crab had suddenly crawled out of the collar of her dress. “You’re not serious?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“No! The real Holmes is dead. It’s folly to think that scrawny, gibbering imitation presuming on Dr. Axminster’s hospitality is the genuine article. You know that as well as I do.”