The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza (18 page)

“I never heard of this Wilkes,” he said, “and I never called him, and I certainly didn’t call the gallery.”

“What’s it matter anyway, Bern?” It was Ray Kirschmann, and I wasn’t sure how much of this he was following. “If Crowe got killed for this nickel, all right, that makes sense, but who cares how the nickel got into the safe? Crowe got killed after it got outta the safe.”

“Ah,” I said. “What’s significant is that nobody knew it was in the safe in the first place. Except for the Third Burglar.”

“The
who?
”

“Rabbit Margate and Harlan Reese didn’t know about the nickel,” I went on. “All they knew was that the Colcannons were going to be out of town overnight. They knew that because Wanda Colcannon got her hair done at a beauty shop called Hair Apparent, where Rabbit’s sister Marilyn was one of the operators. And she was quite an operator. Among her customers in the past year and a half, eight of them got burglarized while they were out of town on vacation. All eight of those burglaries had the same modus operandi. A crude break-in, a completely messy burglary, and a pattern of vandalism that was almost deliberate in nature. Marilyn just kept her ears open when
her customers talked about going out of town, and she passed on the information to her brother, and that was all it took. What good does it do to stop the milk and mail and leave the lights on a timer if the sweet young thing who does your hair has a burglar for a brother?”

I avoided looking in Marilyn’s direction while I said all this. Now I caught Carolyn’s eye. “Wanda used to stop in my bookstore when she brought her dog for grooming at a place down the street.” Might as well keep Carolyn out of it. “The last time I saw her, she happened to mention she was taking the animal out of town to be bred. So, like Rabbit and Harlan, I had inside information. I knew the Colcannons would be away overnight, and they knew the same thing.

“But the Third Burglar knew no such thing. The Third Burglar was waiting for the Colcannons to come home. Ever since I realized there was a third burglar involved, I’ve tended to think of him in capital letters, like the Third Murderer in
Macbeth.
Shakespearean scholars have a lot of fun with the Third Murderer, you know. Shakespeare didn’t give him all that much to say, so the evidence is pretty sketchy, but one school of thought holds that the Third Murderer was actually Macbeth himself.”

A hush went over the room. It was, all things considered, one of your better hushes.

“That was a clue from my subconscious,” I said, “but it took me a while to put it together. No one with
inside information could have been the Third Burglar, because then he’d have known not to expect the Colcannons that night. And for someone to have dropped in through the skylight just by chance and then hanging around to commit homicide—well, it seemed to be stretching coincidence pretty thin. But my subconscious was trying to tell me something, and ultimately I managed to piece it together. Whether or not Shakespeare meant the Third Murderer to be Macbeth, the Third Burglar was Herbert Franklin Colcannon.”

He was on his feet. “You’re crazy,” he said. “You’re a raving maniac. Are you trying to say I staged a burglary of my own house? That I stole this nonexistent coin from myself?”

“No.”

“Then—”

“There was no third burglary,” I said. “Rabbit and Harlan stole everything they could find, and I took the three items from your safe, and that’s as much burglary as you had that night. There was no third burglary and there was no Third Burglar, and there was nobody hanging around to hit you over the head and tie you up. You killed your own wife.”

F
or a moment no one said anything. Then Colcannon told them that I was out of my mind. “Why are we listening to him?” he demanded. “This man is a self-confessed burglar and we’re sitting here while he hands around accusations of larceny and homicide. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had enough of this. I’m leaving.”

“You’ll miss the refreshments if you leave now.”

His nostrils flared and he stepped away from his seat. Then a hand took him by the elbow and he spun around to meet the eyes of Ray Kirschmann.

“Easy,” Ray told him. “Whyn’t we have a listen to what Bern there has to say? Maybe he’ll come up with somethin’ interestin’.”

“Take your hand off me,” Colcannon barked. His
bark was less reminiscent of a Bouvier than, say, a mini-poodle. “Who do you think you are?”

“I think I’m a cop,” Ray said agreeably, “and Bern thinks you’re a murderer, and when he has thoughts along those lines they tend to pan out. Long as he’s got the ball, let’s just see where he runs with it.”

And where would that be? “Mr. Colcannon’s right about one thing,” I said. “I’m a burglar. More accurately, I’m a bookseller who’s trying to break himself of the habit of burglary. But one thing I’m not is a policeman, and it’s going to be the job of the police to put together a case against Colcannon for murdering his wife.

“But maybe I can tell them where to look. His finances wouldn’t be a bad place to start. The Colcannons lived well and they owned a lot of valuable things, but the rich get into financial difficulties the same as the rest of us.

“One thing that made me suspicious was the emptiness of that wall safe when I opened it. One watch, one pair of earrings, one rare coin, plus a handful of papers—people who own wall safes generally utilize them more, especially people with attack dogs who believe their premises are impregnable. I made a few telephone calls yesterday, and I learned that Mr. Colcannon has been selling off some of the coins he’s bought in recent years.”

“That proves nothing,” Colcannon said. “One’s interest changes. One sells one article to buy another.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think you took a couple of major gambles recently—your safe contains some stock certificates that represent securities you’ve taken a heavy loss on. And I think you paid a damn sight more for the 1913 V-Nickel than the twenty grand Mr. Pitterman received for it. You probably couldn’t afford that nickel when it came available, but you had to have it because you’re an avaricious man, and unless Spinoza was off base, avarice is a species of madness, and not an endangered one, either.

“You bought the nickel, shelled out for it at a time when you were trying to raise cash to meet your other obligations. Then you took your dog to be bred—another damned expense, although it would pay off when Astrid had her pups—and you rushed back to New York rather than stay overnight in Pennsylvania, and maybe you and your wife had an argument at the theater or during dinner afterward. That’s something the police can find out if they do a little legwork.

“It hardly matters. The two of you walked into your house to find the unmistakable evidence of a burglary. Maybe you’d been planning on selling various valuables that they’d walked off with. Maybe you were underinsured. You probably didn’t ever think to raise the insurance coverage on your silver, hardly anybody
does, and now the nice windfall you’d had during the sharp rise in silver was wiped out by thieves in the night.

“And maybe your wife made some smartass remark right about then, and maybe it was the last straw. Or did it just remind you that one of the few things remaining in your wall safe was an insurance policy on both your lives? If either of you died, the other collected half a million dollars. And there’s a double indemnity clause for accidental death, and the companies consider murder an accident, although it’s generally undertaken on purpose, which is a contradiction, don’t you think? Maybe the first time you hit her was out of rage, and then the possibility of gain suggested itself to you. Maybe you took one look at the looted rooms of your house and saw instantly that the burglary would make a good smoke screen for murder. We probably won’t know the answer to that one until you confess, and you probably
will
confess, Mr. Colcannon, because amateurs generally do. And you’re an amateur. You’re an absolute pro at avarice, sir, but you’re an amateur at homicide.”

I meant he’d most likely confess at the police station, not in front of the lot of us. But a shadow passed over his face right about then and I decided to shut up for a minute and give him room. Or rope, if you like.

His lip quivered. Then a muscle worked in his temple. “I didn’t mean to kill her,” he said.

I looked at Ray and Ray looked at me, and a smile blossomed on Ray’s lips.

“I hit her once. It was an accident, really. She was railing at me, nagging me. She could be such a shrew. She’d married me for my money, of course. That was no secret. But now that money was tight—” He sighed. “I swung at her. I could never have done that if the dog had been around. The bitch would have taken my arm off. I swung and she fell and she must have hit her head on something when she reached the floor.”

It was nice embroidery. I’d seen those pictures, and the woman had been systematically beaten to death, but let Colcannon put the best face on it for the time being. This was the opening wedge. Later on they’d crack him like a coconut.

“Then I tried to find her pulse and she was dead,” he went on, “and I thought that my life was over, too, and then I thought, well, let the burglars take the blame for this one. So I tied her up and I struck myself over the head, it was hard to make myself do that hard enough to inflict damage but I steeled myself, and then after I’d set the stage I called the police. I thought they’d question me and break me down, but they took one look around and knew the house had been looted by burglars, and that evidently satisfied them.”

Ray rolled his eyes at the ceiling. Some members of the department, I suspected, were going to hear about this one.

“But I never killed Abel Crowe!” Colcannon was bristling suddenly with righteous indignation. “That’s what all this was supposed to be about, isn’t it? The murder of a receiver of stolen goods? I never met Abel Crowe, I never even
heard
of Abel Crowe, and I certainly didn’t kill him.”

“No,” I agreed. “You didn’t.”

“I didn’t know he had my coin. I thought
you
had my coin.”

“So you did.”

“I thought you still had it. That’s why I came here today in the first place, God damn it to hell. So how can you accuse me of killing Crowe?”

“I can’t.”

“But—”

I sent my eyes on a tour of my audience. I had their attention, all right. I looked straight at the murderer and saw nothing there but the same rapt interest that was evident on all their faces.

“I think you would have killed Abel,” I told Colcannon, “if you had thought it would get you the coin back. For all I know you were planning to kill me this afternoon rather than pay me the twelve thousand dollars for the coin. But you didn’t know he had the coin, and there was no way you could know.”

“Unless Abel told him,” Carolyn piped up. “Maybe Abel tried to sell the coin back to him.”

I shook my head. “Not at that stage,” I said. “He
might have tried to work a deal with the insurance company, after the loss was reported. But it was too early for Abel to know that the loss wasn’t covered by insurance, and far too early for him to think about selling the coin back to its presumptive owner.

“My first thought was that Abel had invited a prospective buyer to view the coin, and that he’d sufficiently misjudged the man’s character to get murdered for his troubles. But was that the first thing Abel would do?”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t,” I answered myself. “Abel had just received a coin with a six-figure price tag. It had come from the hands of a thief who in turn had taken it from the house of a man who was not known to have possession of it. Before Abel did anything with the coin he had to determine whether or not it was genuine. Even though he could approach certainty by examining it closely, one doesn’t take chances. Mr. Ruslander obtained the coin from a reputable museum, but even so he took the normal precaution of having it x-rayed to determine its authenticity, and Abel would do no less when dealing with a coin of doubtful provenance.

“Abel said at the time that such a determination was his first order of business. ‘At a more favorable hour,’ he said, he could verify the coin’s legitimacy without leaving the building. I took this to mean that he could have an expert numismatist drop by to look at the coin
and authenticate it, but experts of that sort don’t habitually make house calls in the middle of the night.

“But that wasn’t what he meant at all.

“He meant that there was someone in his building who could provide verification of the coin’s bona fides. I thought there might be a numismatic expert in residence, and then I stopped to think about it and realized that Abel wouldn’t want an expert to know that he had the coin. The 1913 V-Nickel’s too rare and too celebrated, and the real experts in the coin field are highly ethical men who would balk at authenticating a stolen coin and being expected to keep quiet about it.

“No, what Abel required was not an opinion. He wanted an X ray.”

I scanned my audience. The murderer remained quite expressionless, so much so that I almost doubted my conclusion. But not really. I glanced at Carolyn and saw her nodding intently. She had it figured now.

“Where do you go for an X ray? A lab? A hospital emergency room? A radiologist? You couldn’t manage that without leaving Abel’s building. A dentist? There’s a dentist in the building, a Dr. Grieg. I believe he specializes in root canal work.”

“He does,” Mrs. Pomerance confirmed. “He doesn’t hurt you, either, but he charges a fortune.”

“They all charge a fortune,” someone else said. “Grieg’s no worse than the rest of them.”

“Abel had false teeth,” I said, “so I doubt he’d have
needed Dr. Grieg’s services, reasonable or otherwise. He might have become friendly with the man regardless and have used his X-ray equipment for examining rare coins and jewelry, but he wasn’t a patient, and Abel doesn’t seem to have developed intimate relationships with his neighbors.

“Anyway, Abel had a professional relationship with someone in the building who also had X-ray equipment. You see, Abel had trouble with his feet. I don’t know if he had Morton’s Foot or not, let alone chondromalacia, but he had bad feet and the weight he carried put an extra load on them. The shoes in his closet are all prescription items, with built-up arches and various oddities you can’t buy in your friendly neighborhood Florsheims.”

I looked at the murderer. His face was no longer expressionless. I saw something in his eyes that looked like alarm. The goatee and mustache kept me from seeing if he was keeping a stiff upper lip, but I tended to doubt it.

“Abel was a frequent patient of Murray Feinsinger’s,” I went on. “He must have been quite a contrast to all those runners and dancers, but his chart shows that he turned up in that office a great deal. He had an appointment the morning of the day he was killed.”

“That’s crazy!” Feinsinger was outraged. “He had no such appointment. He was my patient, it’s true, and he was also my friend. That is why I am here at what I
was told was to be a service for him, not an inquisition. He had no appointment with me on the day of his death.”

“Funny. It’s listed in your appointment book and on his chart.” It hadn’t been until early that morning, but why stress the point? “It wasn’t the first time he used your X-ray equipment for nonpodiatric purposes, was it?”

Feinsinger shrugged. “Perhaps not. He would drop in occasionally and ask if he could use the machine. What did I care? He was a friend and a patient, so I let him use it. But he didn’t come in that morning, or if he did I paid no attention. I certainly didn’t kill him.”

“Not then, no. You waited until your waiting room was clear during your lunch break. Then you went upstairs, and of course he let you in without a second thought. You asked for a look at the coin, and he showed it to you, and you killed him and took it.”

“Why would I do that? I don’t need money. My practice is better than it’s ever been. I’m no coin collector, either. Why would I kill the man?”

“Avarice,” I said. “No more and no less. You’re no coin collector but you don’t have to be one to know about the 1913 V-Nickel. Everybody knows about it. And the improvement in your practice just served to give you a taste for the good life—you told me that much yourself when you measured me for orthotics.” And what would become of those orthotics now, I wondered. They’d already been ordered from the lab,
but how could they find their way to me if my podiatrist was booked for homicide and jugged like a hare?

Never mind. “Spinoza had the answer,” I said, opening the book to a place I’d marked. “‘From the mere fact of our conceiving that another person takes delight in a thing, we shall ourselves love that thing and desire to take delight therein. But we assumed that the pleasure in question would be prevented by another’s delight in its object; we shall, therefore, endeavor to prevent his possession thereof.’” I closed the book. “In other words, you saw how much Abel appreciated the coin and that made you hot for it yourself. You killed him and you took it, which is endeavoring to prevent his possession thereof if I ever heard of it.”

“You can’t prove this,” he said. “You can’t prove a thing.”

“It’s up to the police to prove things. But I don’t think they’ll have much trouble in this instance. You didn’t just take the nickel. You also took the other articles I stole from Colcannon’s safe—the emerald earrings and the Piaget watch. I wouldn’t be surprised if they turn up somewhere in your office. In the locked center drawer of your desk, for instance.”

He stared. “You put them there.”

“How could I do a thing like that? That’s not all you took from Abel. You also took his keys so that you could lock up after you left. That delayed the discovery of the body and helped you cover your tracks. I
would have thought you’d have the sense to get rid of the keys.”