A Study in Sherlock

A TRIUMPH OF LOGIC Gayle Lynds and John Sheldon

Linwood Boothby was catching a smoke outside the Franklin County courthouse. He’d cut down to one cigarette a day, midafternoon, to revive himself during jury trials. There was no courtroom work today, but he was indulging himself anyway.

“Hi, Judge.” I stepped out onto the courthouse portico. “I heard a good one today.”

Boothby raised his red, bushy eyebrows, which contrasted with his bald head and were his most distinctive facial feature.

“What do you call a Maine lawyer who doesn’t know anything?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Artie. What do you call a Maine lawyer who doesn’t know anything?”

“Your Honor.”

He let out something between a chuckle and a growl, inhaled his cigarette, then took it out of his mouth and studied it. “Artie, what do you call a Maine law clerk who’s a wiseass?”

“I don’t know, what?”

“Unemployed.”

“Uh-uh.” I raised my index finger. “Empty threat. You already fired me last week.”

“Yeah, but it felt so good I wanted to do it again.”

“Besides, your eminence, you need a vassal, a Dr. Watson if you will, both to preserve your record for history”—I did a small genuflection—“as well as to announce your visitors, such as the one awaiting you at this very moment, in your chambers above.”

“Who?” He raised the cigarette to his lips again.

“Emmy Holcrofts.”

Boothby looked at me in mid-puff, and the eyebrows shot up again, this time in surprise. Emmy was a court reporter, and court reporters were usually seen only during trials and hearings; they spent the rest of their professional lives cloistered, transcribing their notes.

Boothby looked longingly at his Pall Mall, snubbed it out in the cigarette receptacle, and followed me into the building.

“Hi, Judge Boothby.”

As he mounted the stairs to his office ahead of me, Boothby looked up. Emmy Holcrofts was waiting for him in the hall. Compact, with a halo of gray curls, she wore trifocals on a softly lined face.

“Hi, Emmy. Go on in.” He climbed the final two steps and followed her across the threshold.

Inside the room she turned. “Could Artie stay, too? I’m in a bind, and I’d be grateful if I could bounce some questions off both of you.”

“Sure, if you don’t mind sitting in a confined space with Frank Zappa.” He pointed at me. Boothby loved prodding me about my nonlawyerly—my steadfastly, ardently nonlawyerly—appearance. I rolled my eyes, but when he motioned me in I went gladly, grateful for a reprieve from the law library.

“Grab a seat, Emmy,” Boothby said. “What’s up?”

Emmy sat on the brown leather couch, and I on a matching armchair.

“You probably know I’m Ina Lederer’s executor.” Emmy arranged her skirt.

Boothby had taken the other armchair against the adjoining wall. “I’m not surprised. I’m sorry, Emmy. You and she were close, weren’t you?”

“Yes …” Staring down at her hands, she folded them in her lap. “She was my niece, and I’ve been inventorying her possessions …” She stopped, her eyes brimming with tears.

“Take your time,” Boothby said gently. Emmy had been working with him for more than a decade.

“Thank you.” She gave a weak smile. “Ina was a difficult child. In college she got into drugs, flunked out, and had nowhere to go—her parents were furious. I took her in, and a year later she’d cleaned up. But then she didn’t have anything to do.” She sighed. “She hadn’t liked college, and I didn’t want her flipping burgers because she was so bright. So I showed her the basics of my steno machine. That interested her, and I covered her expenses while she studied stenography. After she was certified, she applied to the court system and they took her. She was just twenty-four, and I thought she was on her way.” She shook her head.

Boothby furrowed his forehead, eyebrows nearly meeting. “What do you think happened?” The newspapers had reported a suicide.

“I don’t know.” She scanned the walls blankly. “The police found a suicide note saying she’d let everybody down. When traces of cocaine were discovered in her system, they concluded she’d been depressed about her addiction.”

He leaned forward. “What can we do?”

“Well, two things. First, I’ve found some of Ina’s steno notes that may need to be transcribed. Is there anything you want quickly?”

Boothby considered. “Yes. A few weeks ago she recorded a discussion I had here, in chambers, about an agreement between the Feds and the state. It was with defense counsel and the persecutor.” Boothby referred to the DA’s prosecutors as the “persecutors” in jest, but also, I think, to remind them of what they weren’t supposed to be. “The defendant’s name was Doak. He agreed to cooperate with the DEA, and if they liked what he disclosed, they’d drop all federal charges and he’d plead to lesser state charges.”

“Okay,” she said, “that shouldn’t take long. The second thing is, I found something the police don’t know about: an account book and thirty-five hundred dollars cash. They were wrapped together in plastic and hidden in the bottom of a garbage can under the trash bag. The account book shows some big transactions, sometimes exceeding two thousand dollars. What do I do? That stuff suggests she might’ve been selling drugs, which is police business, but if I tell them, they may confiscate the cash as evidence. I’m administering the estate, so I’m supposed to protect its assets for the heirs—her two brothers—aren’t I?”

Boothby and I exchanged uncertain glances.

Emmy continued: “If I inventory it and claim it for the estate in my report to the probate court, are the heirs benefiting from what might be her illegal activity? And am I an accomplice after the fact?” She looked at her hands, still clasped in her lap, and awaited an answer.

“Jeez.” Boothby tugged at his left eyebrow. “You put me in a difficult position. Judges can’t give legal advice, you know. You need a lawyer.”

She nodded but said nothing.

He gazed upward and spoke at the ceiling. “On the other hand, it’s okay if Artie and I brainify out loud”—“brainify”: sometimes I think he wants to sound like an idiot—“even though you’re sitting right here.” He cocked his head and glanced at me conspiratorially.

I chuckled.

“So, thinking aloud, Artie, I’d say the police can’t bring a case against Ina because she’s dead. But maybe the greenbacks are evidence against someone else, especially if they’re marked bills, and Emmy doesn’t need an obstruction of justice charge. So she could put the bills in a safety deposit box and file with the probate court an inventory listing the money as an asset. That’s what it is, after all. Artie?”

“Good so far,” I said.

“And maybe I’d put the account book in the same safety deposit box. But before I did any of that, I’d photocopy the bills and the book for the police. That way nobody hid anything from anyone.”

I nodded agreement, but Emmy didn’t look comfortable.

“I don’t want to get Ina’s friends in trouble,” she said. “She mentioned one friend in her diary a lot. Someone named Teenie, but Teenie also shows up in the account book. I can’t betray the people Ina cared about.”

“Her diary?” Boothby scratched his ear. “Think the cops need that, Artie?”

“Judge,” I answered, maintaining the pretense, “if Teenie was really her friend she wouldn’t be in the account book, right? Ina would be sharing whatever it was with her, not selling it.”

“Makes sense,” he answered.

“So it doesn’t compromise a friendship if you make photocopies and give them to the police. At this point, I think it’s CYA.”

Boothby nodded. “And I’d preserve the original diary in the safety deposit box.”

“Yup,” I said.

“Okay.” Boothby poked a finger at Emmy. “My clerk and I think you’d better get a lawyer—you can charge it to the estate. Notwithstanding you overheard us, you ain’t suing us for malpractice ’cause we didn’t give you any legal advice. All we told you is, get a lawyer.”

“Thanks, Judge.” She smiled briefly as she stood up. “I felt so alone. You’ve helped me a lot.”

Boothby and I stood to shake her hand.

“We’re here for you, Emmy,” he told her. “Any time.”

As her eyes became watery again, she turned quickly and walked out of the office.

Boothby considered me. “This young court reporter … Ina … I’d never noticed her.” He took off his glasses and massaged his eyes. “She was like a piece of courtroom furniture to me—fingers attached to a steno machine. A life I never took interest in, Artie, until it was over.”

The Depression-era ditty “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” was just audible over the hubbub. That and other paeans to poverty bespoke the theme of Judge Gibson Watts’s “The Taxman Goeth” party, held annually on the first Saturday after April 15.

The Watts home was a 3,500-square-foot log building, sitting on fifteen acres with six hundred feet of shoreline on Muscongus Bay in Maine. It was built in the 1920s by a New York City physician who wanted to combine the New England experiences of a log home and a view of Maine’s rocky coast. So he ordered a spruce log palace, appropriate for snow country in the northern woods and mountains, to be built overlooking the coastline, where it fit in like a Shinto temple along the Thames. The Watts family had bought it in the fifties, when Maine real estate was dirt cheap by their Baltimore standards and the Spruce Goose, as the locals called it, was even cheaper. Watts and his two sisters inherited it when their mother died in 1971; he bought them out soon thereafter and moved into it when he relocated to Maine from Maryland to practice law. A lifelong bachelor, Watts had the place to himself.

An eclectic group of the judge’s friends had shown up, including other judges, lawyers, assorted court personnel, lobstermen, the proprietor of the local convenience store, and the chief of the Maine State Police (a former client). Those expecting tax refunds received happy face stickers to wear. Those experiencing “taxectomy” received tin cups with which to solicit charitable donations.

Boothby was filling his tin cup with cashews at the dining room table, and I was at the sideboard sampling the shrimp, when I heard someone rip off a couple of arpeggios on the piano across the hall. A semiskilled pianist, I knew great technique when I heard it. When the pianist started in on Chopin’s D-flat nocturne I headed into the living room. The reprise section has a filigree that’s beyond my skill, and I wanted to see it done up close.

I recognized the pianist as Julia Austrian, a Juilliard-trained concert pianist who had a home in nearby Damariscotta. I pulled up a chair behind her just as she approached the difficult passage: her right hand glided gracefully over the keyboard, her fingers touching the keys with an astonishing combination of speed, precision, and apparent ease.

“How do you do that?” I asked after she had finished.

She turned around and smiled. “Four hundred thousand hours of practice.” We both laughed, and she added, “Are you a pianist?”

“I’m a wish-I-could pianist, but I see I should keep my day job. By the way, I’m Artie Morey.” I extended my hand.

She shook it. “Julia Austrian, Artie. Since you’re a pianist, let me ask you: did you notice anything in the left hand?”

I hesitated, unsure of what to say. “It was as smooth as maple syrup. I’d give my right arm if it made my left hand that silky.”

“Thanks! That means I carried it off.”

“Carried it off?”

“Before starting I noticed that a couple of the low notes were off key,” she explained. “Probably brand-new strings—new strings stretch out of tune—so I had to substitute notes.”

“You improvised on the fly?”

Austrian nodded. My jaw dropped in awe.

She shrugged and smiled. “The best thing I learned at Juilliard was how to fake it.”

“Juilliard trains pianists to fake?”

“Sure. What do you do when you have a memory lapse? You can’t just stop.”

“That was wonderful, Julia.” Judge Watts appeared beside us, smiling broadly, and handed her a glass of white wine. “Better than any concert we ever get around here.”

Watts was a tall, wiry man with wide shoulders, a full head of curly gray hair, and a profile like Basil Rathbone’s. He looked as if he’d been a basketball player—small forward, perhaps—and he was astonishingly smart. When he’d come onto the trial bench a year or so earlier nobody expected him to stay at that level for long. He had an almost magical intuition for law that enabled him to resolve legal issues as quickly as lawyers could state them. Other judges sought him out for help with difficult cases, and he came to be known as the Sherlock Holmes of the judiciary for more than his silhouette. It was said that if the entire Maine Supreme Court bench of seven justices died in a plane crash the governor could replace them all with Gibson Watts.

“Thanks, Judge.” She pointed to the nine-foot Steinway grand. “I rarely find an instrument this superb in a private home. I had to try it.”

“Glad you did!” Taciturn, even dour, around the courthouse—thinking too deeply to be bothered with civility—he was the opposite here, an enthusiastic and warm host.

“Do you play?” she asked him.

He chuckled. “Dumb fingers. I keep the piano tuned because it’s too beautiful to ignore.” He lifted his glass toward me. “Alas, Mr. Morey, I’d have brought you some wine too, but the King of Reversible Error is looking for you and prefers you not slur your words.”

“Thanks, Judge,” I replied. “A pleasure, Ms. Austrian.”

“Thanks, Artie.”

I crossed the hall and found King Boothby in the dining room at the salmon.

I approached semireverently. “Judge Watts delivered your summons.”

He looked up as he was shoving the last of his salmon sandwich into his mouth. Holding his index finger in the air, he chewed for a moment and then gulped it down. “Emmy Holcrofts arrived a few minutes ago. She’s agitated about her niece and wants to talk right away. I asked her to wait in the library. Would you like to join us?”

I followed Boothby to a small, book-lined room. A wood fire in the modest fieldstone fireplace made it cozy—an atmosphere to calm the nerves.

Emmy started to stand, but Boothby waved her back into her seat. “What’s the matter, Emmy?”

He and I took chairs.

“I’ve been going through Ina’s steno tapes to find her notes of the Doak case—the one you asked me to transcribe?” When he nodded, she continued. “I found them and was preparing a transcript when I got a visit from a federal drug enforcement investigator. She asked if I had information about Ina’s relationship with Harold Doak—the same man. Doak had named Ina as a customer.”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Ina was the court reporter who took notes of a plea bargain, for her very own supplier?”

“And the Feds wanted to keep the plea bargain secret,” Boothby added, “so neither Doak’s suppliers nor his customers would know. Christ. Ina had to realize DEA agents would be on her doorstep soon. Maybe that explains her suicide.”

“No, I think you’re wrong,” said Emmy. “I read her diary again. That’s where she put her emotional entries—happy, sad, angry, all kinds of feelings. What the police are calling her ‘suicide note’ was on the tape in her steno machine. Why there and not in her diary? I spent the last two days reviewing all the tapes of all the hearings she attended for the last year. The only personal entry is that single note the police found.”

“So that was unusual for her—but so is suicide,” Boothby said. “She must have been distraught.”

“I brought the police report.” She reached into her large handbag, pulled out a document. “Here’s her note. It says, ‘I can’t face my family anymore. They believed in me, and I betrayed them.’ Ina wouldn’t have said that. I was the only person she considered family, the only family member she’d mentioned in her journal for the past year. I’m one person, not ‘them.’ The only time she referred to family plural was this single entry on the steno tape—where she would never have put it.”

“What about the brothers?” I asked.

“She wasn’t close to them. They were lucky: the law designates them her heirs.”

Boothby’s eyebrows descended in a frown. “So you think someone else wrote the suicide note.”

I scroonched forward on the couch. “Maybe it was written after Ina died, to make it look like a suicide?”

Eyebrows up, then down again, thinking.

“Someone who knew steno machines,” I continued, “and felt safer typing the note than faking Ina’s handwriting.”

Boothby picked up the thread: “Assuming Ina’d been selling the stuff she got from Doak and told a customer about Doak’s plea agreement, that customer wouldn’t want Ina doing to him—or her—what Doak would likely do to Ina. Killing Ina prevents her from revealing anyone to the cops.”

All this theorizing ignited my suspicion: “What else about Ina’s death, Emmy, suggests murder?”

“Read the police report.” She handed it to me. “They found her in the basement of her apartment building, hanging by a wire wrapped around her neck, the other end around a hook in a ceiling rafter. Near her was a stool, an aerosol can of cold-start ether, and a rag. The investigators concluded she strung herself up, then used the ether to anesthetize herself so she’d fall off the stool but not suffer while she was strangling to death.” Emmy looked away. “This is so awful. Poor Ina.”

It was awful, I thought, then pointed to the report. “Says here no signs of struggle. Suppose there were no signs of struggle because Ina was already unconscious when she was strung up?”

“No struggle because she trusted the other person and wasn’t expecting a faceful of ether.” Boothby cocked his right eyebrow up, pointed at me, and turned to Emmy. “Let’s take a look at Ina’s basement. Before suggesting the police got it wrong, let’s see whether what we’re brainifying about makes sense. Tomorrow afternoon?”

“And just what are you three desperadoes conspiring about here?” We all looked up to find Judge Watts leaning against the doorjamb and munching on some grapes, an eyebrow raised in mock suspicion.

“Hi, Gibson,” said Boothby. “Great party! We’re talking to Emmy here about Ina Lederer. Ina was Emmy’s niece.”

He turned to her. “I’m so sorry about what happened, Emmy. Losing a loved one to suicide is the worst kind of loss.”

“I don’t believe it was suicide,” Emmy said. Watts moved into the room and furrowed his brow. “What else could it be then—except … murder?”

“Bingo.” Boothby nodded.

Watts looked incredulous. “Who’d want to murder her?”

Boothby shrugged. “No idea. We’re just brainifying.”

“Wow—murder,” Watts said. “Linwood,” he said to Boothby, “this is both horrifying and intriguing. I’d like to hear your, uh, brainifying when you have a chance—and when I don’t have a party to conduct.” He nodded toward the people in the adjoining room. “Got to go. Again, Emmy, my condolences.”

After Watts left, Boothby stood and held up his glass. “Time to refuel. Emmy, you need to try some of Gibson’s lobster dip. You too, Artie—let’s mingle.”

Ina’s apartment was on the ground floor of a four-story tenement in Lewiston, a dingy nineteenth-century mill town that had been dying for eighty years. Emmy let us in. Ina’s place was neat, but dust on the furniture indicated no one had been there in a while.

She led us to the back of the apartment, then through a door and down steps to the basement. It was a large, open area with brick columns evenly spaced along the length of the room to support carrying timbers. Clotheslines drooped between the columns; a bicycle was chained to one of them; a stool stood next to another. A decrepit upright piano occupied what had probably been the coal bin.

Emmy showed us the hook, embedded in one of the joists, from which Ina was found hanging, and pointed out the stool that Ina was supposed to have used.

“How big was Ina?” Boothby asked Emmy.

“Five-three, a hundred and ten pounds maybe.”

“So how would someone be able to lift her and hold her aloft long enough to hang her off that hook?” Boothby asked me.

“Had to be strong,” I said, “so I’m guessing a man. Maybe he wrapped the wire around her neck, boosted her onto his shoulder, climbed onto the stool, wrapped the other end of the wire around the hook, and let her go.”

“Next question: Why use a wire? Why not some of that clothesline?”

“Clothesline’s fragile, might break. The police report says it was a piano wire, probably from that wrecked piano.”

We walked over to it. Its keyboard resembled a mouthful of rotted teeth, and it lacked its upper and lower front panels. Several strings dangled free of their pins, and some were missing altogether.

Boothby studied it. “Using a piano wire supports the idea of suicide because the means of death is right here.”

Emmy spoke up: “Ina’s apartment is the only one in the building with direct access to the basement. That other door”—she pointed to the rear—“leads to a common stairway for the other apartments. Someone in Ina’s apartment could get down here and back up without much risk of being seen.”

Boothby nodded. “What’s going to happen to her apartment?”

“I’ve got to sublet it. Ina’s lease has another six months to run and doesn’t have a clause that terminates it upon death. So if you’re done, why don’t I show you out? I need to clean it to get it ready.”

As we got into Boothby’s vehicle of choice, a gray 1980s four-door Citroën—another of his iconoclasms—I said, “Judge, the wire didn’t come from that piano.”

“Why not?”

“I know that the longest bass string on an upright is about three feet. To do the job right—sorry—with a stool as short as the one we saw, you need something long enough to wrap around the hook, wrap around her neck, and still leave slack. Like a string from a grand piano.”

“Okay, so?”

“Bear with me. What do you know about cocaine?”

“Between you and me and this gear shift, I did a line once when I was in the army. I felt great for an hour and instantly understood why it’s so popular. And also why I should avoid it.”

“Cocaine makes you feel like a million bucks, doesn’t it? But besides dependence, overuse produces nosebleeds. Snorting too much burns out your nose tissue, which renders the blood vessels fragile.”

“Another reason to avoid it. What’s your point?”

“Judge Watts’s law clerk told me the judge had been suffering nosebleeds. Recently one was bad enough he had to recess a jury trial for forty-five minutes.”

Boothby hit the brakes. The driver behind us blared his horn angrily and swept around us. Boothby ignored him and narrowed his eyes at me: “You’re calling Gibson Watts a cocaine addict?” Eyebrows down, he was incredulous. “More likely he’s Clark Kent and suffering exposure to kryptonite.”

“I’m not calling him anything, but please hear me out. He also has a grand piano. And some of its bass strings were recently replaced, or at least that’s what Julia Austrian thought. The investigation report said Ina was hanged on a bass piano string.”

Boothby was glowering at me, but at least he seemed to be listening.

“This is probably a coincidence,” I continued, “but coincidences always get my antennae quivering. Suppose Judge Watts had been buying cocaine from Ina, and someone told him about Doak’s plea bargain. He had to have been worried Ina would report him in exchange for a plea bargain, too.”

Boothby was silent. Then he checked the outside mirror and resumed driving. “Watts knows about the plea bargain. I mentioned it at lunch the next day.”

We drove in silence. I looked at him. Eyebrows down: trouble coming.

He stopped for a red light. “A couple of years ago I ran into one of Watts’s law school classmates at a bar meeting in Vermont. He asked how ‘Tini’ Watts was doing. In law school they called him ‘Martini,’ a play on his name, Gibson. It also reflected his love affair with gin.”

“T-i-n-i. As in T-e-e-n-i-e from the diary? Holy shit.” I thought about it. “Are you going to tell the police?”

The light turned green, and he continued driving. “Gibson Watts is a friend of mine, and he’s a wonderful judge. Report this and I’m jeopardizing his career—just try to get renominated to another judicial term after you’ve been suspected of drug use, let alone murder. Right now all we’ve got are some unconnected dots.”

“Judge, let me find out who tunes Judge Watts’s piano; perhaps the strings weren’t changed, or if they were, they can be accounted for.”

“Good idea. Meanwhile, we’d better interrupt Emmy’s cleaning. Best to preserve any DNA evidence the forensics people might find. Suspecting suicide, they might not have scoured the place as thoroughly as they would if they were thinking murder.” He made a sudden, swooping U-turn that would have earned him a ticket if any of Lewiston’s finest had seen it.

A couple of days later I was standing at the sidewalk hot dog stand in front of the courthouse when Boothby came up to me and suggested a walk in the park. I slapped some mustard on my dog and followed him across the street and onto a bricked walkway leading to a large pond in the middle.

“I got your note,” he said. “Fill me in.”

“I located the person who tuned Judge Watts’s piano. She replaced three bass strings a week before the party. She wanted to retune the piano after the strings had ‘matured’—her term—and before the party, but didn’t have a chance. She said those strings were about eight feet long. She left the old ones in Judge Watts’s metal recycling receptacle.”

I glanced at him. Eyebrows amidship: he was listening closely.

“According to the police report, one end of the wire that killed Ina had been cut,” I continued. “The investigators found several bass strings on that old upright piano had been cut off, so that’s where they thought the wire came from. By cutting the wire short you can disguise its origin.”

We walked on until we reached the pond, where several Canada geese were gliding around. We stopped to admire them.

Finally he said, “Well, shit, piss, and corruption.” A pause, followed by a sigh. “I’ve been doing some investigating too. Guess what Watts did before he went to law school.”

“Other than college?”

Boothby rubbed his hands. “I called up that law school classmate of his I’d met in Vermont, and I lied.” He shrugged, a small mea culpa. “I said I was preparing a roast for Watts and needed some dirt about his background.” Brief pause. “Watts was a court reporter in Maryland. His college GPA hadn’t been strong, but he wanted to become a lawyer so to get his nose into the legal community’s tent he chose stenography. A few years later he applied to law school. I guess his experience in the courtroom overcame his college record.”

“So Tini knew how to use a steno machine?”

“Yup.”

So we had the Big Three: opportunity, means, and motive. Opportunity because Watts knew Ina and, if “Teenie” was the same person as “Tini,” Ina considered him a friend. Means because of the piano wire and his steno experience. Motive because of the risk that Ina would turn state’s evidence. If Watts had been using cocaine, it all fit together.

“What now?” I asked.

“Gibson called, inviting me over to discuss Ina. He says he’s shocked to think she was murdered. I think I’ll go. Want to come?”

“Me? Sounds like it ought to be private.”

He turned to face me. “I’m being cautious: it’s harder to, uh, ‘silence’ two of us than just one.”

It was Saturday afternoon, and we were at Gibson Watts’s front door. I rang the bell.

The door opened, and Watts stood there in his baggy day-off clothes. He greeted us with a warm “Welcome, guys.”

“Hi, Martini!” Boothby sounded as enthusiastic as a kid at a circus. He moved forward to give Watts an energetic handshake.

Watts seemed startled, but pleasantly so. “Who hit you with the happy stick? And where’d you learn that nickname?”

“Friends in low places. Your reputation has finally caught up with you.” Boothby was being as affable as possible.

Not me. The Glock Model 26 between my waistband and the small of my back reminded me of the potential downside of this meeting. Boothby wanted to keep it “at a personal and judicial level, in case we’re wrong,” but I didn’t care about judicial levels. I was worried about getting “silenced.” I’d spent some time in Baghdad before law school, and I’d learned not to go unarmed into what could be hostile territory. So I’d borrowed the pistol from an NRA-nut friend. I didn’t have a license to carry it. I hadn’t told Boothby.

Watts ushered us in and directed us to the same study where we’d met Emmy. All of us grabbed armchairs.

“Okay, Linwood, how come the tag team?” He pointed at me.

“We’ve been thinking about Ina. And we need your help. I want to squeeze your nose.”

Watts looked as if he’d been hit with a water balloon. He closed his eyes tight and then shook his head once, violently, opened his eyes, and peered at Boothby. “You want to what?”

“Squeeze your nose. It’s what cops do sometimes when they encounter a coke suspect.”

“What the Christ have you been smoking?”

“Wrong question, Gibson. The question is, what have you been sniffing? We need to know you’re not on cocaine.”

“Cocaine?” Watts moved forward in his chair. “Are you fucking nuts?”

“Gibson, please listen. There are reasons to suspect you of murder.”

Watts started to rise out of his chair.

“Please listen, please don’t take offense.” Boothby motioned him back into his seat. “We’re here because we’re worried about you, not suspicious.”

Watts sat down but squinted at Boothby. His eyes were dark, and his face so tense that he looked ready to explode.

Boothby continued: “Ina was apparently dealing cocaine, and one of the names of her possible customers was Teenie—T-e-e-n-i-e. Ina died hanging from a bass piano string, just like one of those you had replaced. The old strings remained in your possession.”

Watts leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and turned halfway to his left to look out a window. He said nothing.

“A supposed suicide note was found on a steno tape. You know how to use steno machines. And you’ve been suffering nosebleeds, a symptom of many things, including cocaine use.”

Watts continued to stare out the window.

“Ina took down the plea agreement involving her own supplier, so she knew her days were numbered. You knew about that plea agreement. So what does all of this amount to? Nothing, I hope. Teenie could be someone else. I’m here because I’m both your friend and a judge. The Rules of Judicial Conduct say because I don’t know you’ve done anything wrong, I don’t have to report anything to anyone. The only person I’ve been talking to about this is Artie. The Rules say I’m supposed to ‘take appropriate action,’ so here I am.”

His upper body still facing the window, Watts glared at Boothby. “You call accusing me of murder ‘appropriate action’?”

“You bet.” Boothby nodded vigorously. “I want to be wrong. I’m risking our friendship because I’m worried. If you’re not using cocaine, I’ve misled myself and Artie, and I’ll get on my knees and beg your forgiveness.”

Watts looked at me for the first time, as icy a glare as I’ve ever experienced. He focused on Boothby again: “Ina was probably dealing to a court reporter acquaintance, or to someone who learned how to type a suicide note on a steno machine for the occasion. And Teenie as you spell it is a common nickname.”

Boothby nodded. “You’re absolutely right. So here’s the next issue. Ina’s apartment hasn’t been vacuumed or swept since her death. If you’re not clean, or if I’m unsure, I take what I have to the cops and they’ll start checking it—and you—for DNA evidence.”

Watts stared at Boothby. Boothby stared back. I looked from one to the other and back again. No one said anything. The tension was like ozone before a lightning strike: I could smell it.

Boothby stirred. “If you’ve been seriously snorting and I squeeze your nose—damn, squeeze your own nose—it’ll hurt like hell and you’ll get a nosebleed. If you haven’t, you won’t. Please help us both.”

Watts looked out the window again, put his left elbow on the arm of the chair, and rested his chin in his palm. There was silence. The longer the silence lasted the more my suspicion grew.

Finally Watts gazed at Boothby. “You ain’t squeezing my nose, Linwood.” His voice rose. “Nobody’s squeezing my nose. This whole conversation abuses my integrity, and nobody’s abusing my person as well.” His face got bright red. “You were just leaving, weren’t you?” He spat the last two words.

Boothby seemed ready for it. “Not unless you physically throw me out. Maybe you’re mad because I’ve offended a sensitive and innocent person, or maybe you’re mad because I’ve cornered a less-than-innocent person. I need to know it’s the former. Please, Gibson.”

Watts jumped to his feet. “You’re out, Boothby! Get out of here, and take your lackey with you!” he roared.

It was intimidating how he towered over us as he raged, but neither Boothby nor I moved. The arteries in his neck stood out, throbbing. He was breathing quickly and heavily, and trembling as he glared at Boothby, practically gasping for breath. A drop of blood slid from one nostril. His hand shot into his pocket and produced a handkerchief. More blood dripped from his nose. He wiped it and stared at the handkerchief, then at Boothby, then back at the handkerchief. A moment later his eyes seemed to get wet. He kept staring at the handkerchief. Tears slid down his cheeks, and blood flowed freely from his nostrils. He pressed the handkerchief to his nose and dropped back into his armchair, the handkerchief covering his face, shaking and weeping uncontrollably.

Boothby slowly got to his feet. He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Gibson, get a lawyer. Please.” He motioned to me and I followed him out.

The next Tuesday afternoon I was in the law library thrilling at Maine’s case law on easements by prescription when the court clerk told me Boothby wanted me to meet him in the park again. It took a while, but finally I found him by the pond. He looked grumpy, so I decided to try to lighten his mood.

“Hi, Judge.” I pointed to the three Canada geese paddling across the pond. “You know how to tell a male Canada goose from a female Canada goose?”

“I don’t know, Artie. How do you tell a male Canada goose from a female Canada goose?”

“Simple: the males are white and gray and black, whereas the females are black and gray and white.”

Boothby raised his left eyebrow and looked at me, snorted with the tiniest smile, and shook his head.

“Artie,” he said, “how the fuck did you ever pass the bar exam?”

Well, it worked, sort of. He watched the geese for a while, then pulled out his Pall Malls for his afternoon treat. His movements were unhurried, and he didn’t say anything. Nor did I.

Finally: “I just learned—don’t tell anyone—that Gibson Watts has taken leave to attend a four-week rehab program.” He put a cigarette to his mouth and lit it.

I nodded. This would end Watts’s judicial career and maybe bring him beyond the tipping point for reasonable doubt about murder.

“After dropping you off on Saturday,” he said, “I called the State Police. I told their investigator everything we’d learned. And I’ve hardly gotten any sleep since.” An inhale followed by a smoke ring. “What did you learn from this experience, Artie?”

“It’s good to be suspicious of coincidences.”

“Right. And it’s good to exercise logic. Over the past few days you and I analyzed the evidence logically, so we probably solved the crime—in fact, an especially odious one because, if I may paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, when a judge goes wrong he’s the worst of criminals. And we’re just like Holmes, aren’t we? We achieved a triumph of logic. And that’s what we lawyers are trained for. So I should feel triumphant, shouldn’t I? So why do I feel like dogshit?”

I couldn’t resist; nobody was going to out-Conan-Doyle me: “Because,” I said, “as Moriarty once told Holmes, the situation had become an impossible one. In other words, there was no satisfactory outcome.”

“That’s true.” He flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette. “But that’s not what’s bothering me.” Another inhale. “Now that we’re in Sherlock Holmes mode, do you remember ‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches’?”

Well, he had me there. “No,” I admitted.

“Then let me enlighten you with my favorite Holmesian quotation.” He smiled at me unenthusiastically. “ ‘Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.’ What do you think of that, Artie?”

I didn’t have a clue, so I shrugged.

“It’s as fictitious as Holmes himself.” He paused and looked toward the geese again. He was gathering himself.

“Ina was murdered, Artie. Murdered. The closest I’d ever been to murder was in the courtroom, where all I do is control the proceedings so the defendant gets a proper trial. A purely formal process, the less emotional the better. I’d never known someone who was murdered, let alone someone who did it, so I’d never experienced its horror personally. No triumph of logic, no intellectual grand slam, can tame my reaction to such hideousness. It can’t lessen my outrage over Ina’s death, or my sympathy for Emmy, or, for that matter, my anguish for Gibson, a great friend, and what he’s become.”

He turned to me. “So here’s what I learned: that’s how it should be. It’s emotion that fulfills us, Artie, not intellect. Pure logic is sterile, an emotionless refuge for incomplete people. In the end, what’s important isn’t how capably we think, it’s how capably we feel.”

I realized something: “Sherlock Holmes was a cocaine addict, wasn’t he?”

He stared at me for a moment. The eyebrows went up.

“And a bachelor.”

He dropped his cigarette on the ground and smushed it slowly with his shoe. When he’d finished he looked up and poked me in the arm. “Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.”

Longtime admirers of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, John Sheldon and Gayle Lynds are also partners in crime and life. They live together in rural Maine, where “A Triumph of Logic” is set. The story’s hero, Judge Linwood Boothby, comes from John’s experience as a Maine prosecutor, defense attorney, and judge, and a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Law School. He’s working on his first suspense novel featuring, of course, Judge Boothby and Artie Morey. The pianist in the story, Julia Austrian, is the heroine of Gayle’s book Mosaic. Gayle is a New York Times bestselling spy thriller author. Her new novel is The Book of Spies, named one of the best thrillers of the year by Library Journal. She is cofounder (with David Morrell) of International Thriller Writers and is a member of the Association for Intelligence Officers.

Readers are invited to search this story for clues to a subplot: Dr. Watson has murdered Sherlock Holmes’s love, Irene Adler, and his crime has been solved by the combined efforts of Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, and, of all people, Holmes’s archenemy Moriarty.