Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2006

The Dog in the Daytime by John H. Dirckx

The tranquility of a glorious fall afternoon was abruptly shattered by the plaintive bellow of a beagle.

Lamar Cavendish scowled in distaste at the array of tweeters and woofers on the wall opposite him, as if a bagpiper had suddenly begun tweedling along with the string quartet whose impassioned efforts he had just been savoring. Cavendish was an expert at scowling in distaste. He did it well and did it often. That was one of several reasons why the people who worked for him were delighted that he chose to run his business from his home.

He shoved his executive swivel chair back from the computer and marched out through the open french window to the second-story deck. From here he could see over the intervening hedges into the garden next door, where his neighbor Wanda Jansen was weeding.

“Mrs. Jansen.” He rapped out the name like a drill sergeant calling the roll. “Will you please get that obnoxious beast back on your own property?”

“He is on our property,” said Mrs. Jansen, without bothering to look up from her work. “He’s right here beside me, ready to protect me from intruders and other objectionable characters. Aren’t you, Czar?”

“Well, if you think you need a dog for such purposes, you might at least get one that barks. That pathetic creature sounds like a goat drowning in a cistern.”

“And if you have to play that pansy music all the time,” countered Wanda Jansen, “you might at least shut your windows. What is that, Mozart’s ‘Funeral March’?”

Czar emitted another soulful whoop.

Cavendish shuddered. “Have you tried feeding him?” he demanded.

“He just had lunch an hour ago. Didn’t you, Czar?”

“Well, if he doesn’t shut up, I’m going to feed him something. Maybe some nice raw hamburger with a couple of broken lightbulbs well blended in.”

Wanda Jansen put down her trowel and shaded her eyes with her hand as she glowered up at Cavendish. “If anything happens to this dog,” she said, “we’ll see you in court.”

Cavendish snorted and retreated to his study with an eloquent slam of the french window.

The fine weather continued another couple of days, but Wednesday’s forecast called for some rain by afternoon. When Dexter Jansen arrived home at ten that morning, he found Wanda waiting in the entry hall, dressed in the casual outfit she usually wore at the cabin.

“Everything okay at the plant?” she asked.

“Just the usual friction and incompetence. I probably shouldn’t go near that place unless I’m planning to stay there for at least half the day. Have you got the stuff for lunch ready?”

“It’s in the freezer, ready to go. Gerda has the day off. She’ll be back at ten tomorrow.”

“Is Czar in?”

“Of course he’s in. We wouldn’t want him to get our esteemed neighbor upset while we’re away.”

“You mean Cavendish?”

“Uh-huh. He was out there griping about him again Monday afternoon.”

“What did Czar do this time — chase a squirrel up one of his trees?”

“Oh no, something much worse. He barked.”

“Well, you’ve got to admit that when Czar gives forth with one of his foghorn solos, it isn’t pretty.”

“I don’t have to admit anything, Dex. He’s a dog, for heaven’s sake. If Cavendish doesn’t want to hear dogs barking, why doesn’t he move out in the country somewhere?”

“Speaking of out in the country...” Jansen headed upstairs to change clothes.

Wanda followed at his heels. “What did you mean about a foghorn solo? I thought you liked Czar.”

“He’s all right, as beagles go,” conceded Jansen. “But you’ve got to admit—”

“Stop telling me what I’ve got to admit.” She flopped petulantly down on the foot of the bed, drawing anguished noises from the springs. “And watch how you hang up those pants, Dex. You’re making a crease with the hanger. No, the other leg — you’re only making it worse.”

“Look, Wanda, I don’t want to fight with you about Czar. I mean, he’s your dog, right? But who puts the drops in his eyes every morning and gives him his kidney shot twice a week?”

“Since when is he my dog?” Her hair kept falling into her eyes, from which she repeatedly either wiped it with a sweep of her hand or snapped it with a twitch of her head. “That shirt has a stain on the collar that the cleaners can’t get out. I told you that last week. And, by the way, the traffic on the Interstate is getting heavier by the minute.”

The stream of criticism and complaints continued with the dreary monotony of a dripping faucet.

At about five thirty that evening, Chase Witherspoon left his car running in the Jansens’ driveway while he ran nimbly up to the porch with the evening paper. Happening to glance into the side yard, he saw the Jansens’ dog lying motionless near the house. Investigation from a discreet distance convinced him that the dog was dead, apparently the victim of a severe head injury. He rang and knocked at the front door of the house without getting any response. Reluctant to lose any more time from his rounds, he called Public Safety on his cell phone and went on with his work.

The Public Safety dispatcher tried to reach the Jansens by phone and got an answering machine. It was just getting dark when, around six P.M., Patrolmen Fritz Dollinger and Carl Bystrom arrived at the Jansens’. Like Witherspoon, they failed to get a response when they rang and knocked at the front door.

While Bystrom was taking a closer look at the dog, Dollinger made a circuit of the sprawling stone house and found a ground floor sash window standing open. One of its panes had been scientifically taped and broken in.

The officers investigated further without venturing into the house. There were unmistakable traces of blood on the broken pane, presumably left there by an intruder who had been cut while reaching in to release the catch on the window. It had rained heavily from about noon to two P.M., and the rain had entered through the open window and soaked the marble sill and some upholstered furniture inside.

On the assumption that the house had been burglarized in the absence of the owners, the officers reported to headquarters and were instructed to remain at the scene until either an evidence technician or a detective arrived. While they were waiting they made a further search of the grounds and found two jewelry boxes, soaking wet and empty, in the bushes flanking the formal garden.

Sergeant David Kestrel of the forensic lab arrived first. After helping the patrolmen cordon off a rectangular section of the sodden side yard surrounding the dead dog with plastic tape, Kestrel stepped inside the tape and took pictures. When he had repeated that process at the site of the break-in, they went carefully around the house in an unsuccessful search for a way to gain entrance without breaking something else.

Kestrel worked, as usual, in tight-lipped and self-absorbed silence. The others carried on a continual dialogue, pointing out observations, proposing or rejecting deductions, and suggesting courses of action. Eventually they decided to query the nearest neighbors as to where the Jansens might be found, and whether the dog belonged to them.

It was a neighborhood of huge wooded lots. Instead of crashing through hedges and fumbling through underbrush, Dollinger hiked along the twilit road to the closest house. Its resident, Lamar Cavendish, confirmed that the Jansens owned a large beagle and thought they were probably spending the day at their cabin.

He couldn’t tell them where the cabin was, but he did happen to know that it didn’t have a phone. He suggested that Dollinger try to catch somebody working late at Jansen’s business, Jandex Pharmaceuticals, and ask if they knew the whereabouts of the cabin. The Jansens had no children or live-in domestics (Cavendish’s phraseology). No, he hadn’t heard or seen anything unusual, but then he’d been away for most of the day.

By the time Dollinger got back to the Jansen house, there had been sensational developments. Kestrel had picked the lock on the kitchen door and he and Bystrom had found the dead body of a woman lying in the passage between the kitchen and the formal dining room. She had been struck a savage blow in the right temple, presumably with the bloody hatchet that lay on the floor next to her. There was no one else in the house.

Around seven that evening Detective Sergeant Cyrus Auburn arrived on the scene to take charge of the investigation, parking in the Jansens’ driveway behind the van from the coroner’s office. The Jansen property, like most of those in this very exclusive district, was wooded, landscaped, and formally gardened. The house was an immense and complicated structure of limestone trimmed with brick and wood.

Between the driveway and the house, Nick Stamaty of the coroner’s office crouched on the wet lawn and used a flashlight to examine the slain dog, which was partly covered by a sheet of blue plastic. It was an older animal, overfed and turning gray around the muzzle. Its leather collar had worn a shallow groove in the fur around its neck. The back of its head had been caved in by a violent blow with something heavy and probably sharp.

“You a dog lover, Cy?” asked Stamaty.

“Let me put it this way,” Auburn said. “I’ve been bitten three times in the line of duty — so far.”

Stamaty tucked the plastic sheet carefully around the inert form. “Just a prediction: If the TV cameras get a shot of this dog, the public outcry will be ten times louder than the reaction to what happened inside.”

“So what did happen inside?”

“Come and take a look.”

“Do you have to do the dog?”

“You mean take him in for an autopsy? No. Dr. Stapleton, the vet, does that. I just left him a message, but his clinic is up in Pascoe, and for all I know he may be out on a house call delivering three little pigs.”

They walked around to the front of the house and entered a huge and opulent foyer with carved moldings and hanging lamps. Two leather-covered jewel boxes, still damp, stood open and empty on the ceramic tile floor. Stamaty led Auburn through an arched doorway and along a passage until further progress was barred by festoons of yellow plastic tape.

“You’ll want to stay outside the tape,” Kestrel called out in warning, exactly as if Auburn had been a chance bystander instead of a trained and experienced investigator like himself.

Kestrel was inside the tape on hands and knees, examining the floor around the body of a woman of about forty. She was slightly plump, with brown eyes just showing through half-closed lids, and her hair was the color of a milkshake, with frosted tips. She was wearing designer blue jeans and a sweatshirt. The wound in her right temple was pretty much like the one that had killed the dog. The presumptive weapon, a small hatchet with a narrow blade like a tomahawk and a worn hickory haft, lay on the polished parquet floor next to the body amid gouts and smears of blood.

“Do we have a positive ID?” asked Auburn.

“Wanda Jansen,” said Kestrel. “Her purse is on that fancy desk in the entry hall. She matches the picture on the driver’s license. I guess you saw the jewel cases out there? Dollinger and Bystrom found them in the bushes on the southeast side.”

“Any progress on finding the husband?”

“Dollinger and Bystrom were working on that. They had to leave on a couple of calls, and they asked me to fill you in.” Kestrel stood up and reeled off his message like a schoolchild reciting a lesson learned by rote. “The next-door neighbor figured the husband might be at their cabin, but he didn’t know where it was. Your guys called the husband’s business downtown, drug company called Jandex, and found out the cabin is on the river up near Kerylhake. There’s no phone there, so the sheriff’s office is sending a deputy out to see if Jansen’s there, and bring him in if he is.”

Auburn turned to Stamaty. “Got a guesstimate on time of death?”

“She’s cold — just about room temperature — and rigor is pretty well advanced. Say eight to ten hours.”

“Looks like just one blow from behind, doesn’t it? Any defensive wounds on her hands?”

“I don’t see any. That looks like a blister on the back of her left arm. It’ll be up to the pathologist to decide where it came from.”

Kestrel had again been gyrating on elbows and knees with his nose a few inches from the floor. Now he sat back on his haunches and wordlessly pointed with his magnifying glass at a broad smudge of blood on the floor.

Auburn squatted to examine it at close range. “Crepe-soled shoe?”

“Possibly. But the shape doesn’t look like a shoe to me, and I can’t find any other footmarks from a crepe sole. I think it’s something with a crackle finish, like maybe an attaché case or a camera case.”

“Another jewelry box?”

“Possibly. The point is that a crackle finish isn’t formed with a mold or a dye — it results from a physicochemical reaction, the way a dish of milk curdles.” (Kestrel’s conversation was liberally strewn with words like “physicochemical.”) “So it’s like a fingerprint. No two pieces are identical, and theoretically we should be able to match up this mark with whatever made it.”

“Show me this break-in.”

Kestrel stepped over the tape. Auburn followed him through three rooms garnished with antique furniture, pictures, statuary, gilt-edged mirrors, and tapestries. It was the kind of place where the size of the Persian rugs in each room had been carefully chosen so as to leave a generous border of inlaid wood floor showing.

The house was probably more than a hundred years old, but the windows had been replaced within the past generation. At least the broken one had. The pane nearest the catch had been taped on its outer surface with criss-crossing strips of one-inch-wide, black vinyl adhesive tape and broken inward with a blow from a heavy tool, possibly the murder weapon. The window was wide open, and the rain that had fallen in the early afternoon had drenched the carpet and the back and one arm of an upholstered chair.

“Was the window all the way up like that?”

“Exactly,” said Kestrel, and repeated the word twice as if to abolish forever any suspicion that he would alter anything of evidential significance at a crime scene.

It was now quite dark outside. The broad marble windowsill shone wetly in the light of a lamp, and a few shards of glass from the broken pane glinted here and there. Most of the glass fragments still clung to the lattice of black tape that the burglar had applied before knocking in the pane. Kestrel pointed out smears of blood on the inside of the window near the catch and dribbles on the wall below, where the overhanging sill had protected them from the rain.

“Maybe he wasn’t such a pro if he cut his hand getting in,” suggested Auburn.

“Or getting out again — since all the doors were locked. But it wasn’t his hand. There isn’t a fresh print anywhere here, and you can see traces of brown cotton fluff on the tape.”

“So he was wearing gloves, and we’re probably looking for a guy with a cut on his arm. Anything to see outside?”

“Around the window, no. But somebody rode a bike across the back yard before the rain started. There’s no bike in the garage, and no bike rack on the back of the car in there.” He paused to reflect. “But then, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a bike rack on a Bentley.” Although he seemed to possess absolutely no sense of humor, Kestrel sometimes displayed a flair for unconscious irony.

Two sets of bike tracks — one going, one coming — led between the edge of the driveway and a toolshed that was partly concealed by trees. Auburn traced their course by flashlight. Trimmings from bushes, still green, and a few dead tree branches had been heaped roughly next to the shed. In shady places where the grass was thin, the bike tires had left deep impressions in the soil, and some of these still contained miniature puddles from the rain. But there were no traces of mud at a point where the tires must have passed over the concrete driveway, even in some places where the canopy over the garage doors had protected the concrete from the rain. Hence the tracks in the earth must have been made before the rain started.

Auburn spent a quarter of an hour wandering through the house looking for evidence of damage or theft. He found priceless antiques and works of art in every room, most of them of a size and shape that only a crew of professional movers with a dolly and a van could have removed. A substantial part of the basement had been adapted as living quarters for the dog.

Kestrel was preparing casts of the bike tracks in the back yard when Auburn set off by car to visit the next-door neighbor. The landscaping at Cavendish’s was more austere than at the Jansens’, and the house, instead of sprawling over half an acre of ground, thrust skyward with an eruption of chimneys and turrets. Cavendish himself came to the door and admitted Auburn to a dark and chilly hall that was about as inviting as a burial vault.

Auburn showed identification.

“Another policeman,” mused Cavendish. He was fiftyish and angular, with a stiff, jerky carriage, like something put together with sticks and rubber bands. “What all did they get away with over there?”

“I’m sorry?”

“How much loot did the burglars get? The cop who was here earlier this evening told me they killed the dog, but he didn’t know if anything had been stolen.”

“We still don’t have any definite information on that. But when the first officers on the scene entered the house they found a homicide victim.”

“You mean — somebody was killed?”

“Yes, sir. Do you know the Jansens well?”

“Not well, no.” Cavendish swallowed hard. “Who — who’s dead?”

“Mrs. Jansen.”

“Why don’t we step in here and sit down?” They went into a morning room and sat in leather chairs before an empty stone fireplace.

“How was she killed?”

“Same way as the dog — a blow to the head with a hatchet.”

Cavendish nodded like a man whose worst fears have been confirmed. “It’s just come to me that I know who killed her. I saw him and talked to him myself.”

“Yes, sir?”

“This morning a ragged-looking sort of fellow turned up in my driveway on a bike. Spun me some tale about how he lost his job and his little girl needed an operation — you know the sort of thing. Said he’d trim all my hedges for whatever I wanted to give him. Well, it so happens that my landscaping service just did the hedges a couple of weeks ago, as this chap could have seen for himself if he’d taken the trouble to look at them first.

“So I told him I didn’t have any work for him, and then I—” Cavendish paused as if he were overcome by the recollection of what he had done. “And then I made the mistake of telling him it was no use trying at the Jansens’ because they weren’t home. I mean, I didn’t necessarily swallow his story about his daughter needing surgery, but I never dreamed that he might be an out-and-out criminal.”

“They don’t wear badges,” said Auburn. “Things would be a lot easier for us if they did. The traveling handyman con is a hardy perennial. Sometimes they’re just casing the property, looking for a house with lots of portable loot and not much security. Sometimes they wedge a lock on an exterior door or a catch on a ground floor window so they can come back after dark and walk right in. Sometimes they disable an alarm system... How did you know the Jansens weren’t home?”

“Because I’d just seen them drive away. I work in a study up above here that’s got a lot of windows, and when I feel the need for inspiration I look off to the horizon. Some time around ten this morning I saw their blue van go down the driveway and turn left on Poplar Grove.” He paused reflectively. “Never quite understood how Jansen could run off so often — golfing, tennis, sailing, loafing around that cabin of theirs. His business must practically run itself.”

“Did you see the man with the bicycle going over to their house?”

“No, I can’t say I did. But when I looked over that way a few minutes later, there he was whacking and chopping away at their bushes. He didn’t have any tools of his own with him, so I took it for granted that they must have been home after all, or at least one of them was, and were letting him use their tools. That’s why it didn’t occur to me, when the police officer was here earlier this evening, that this fellow on the bike might have been their burglar.”

“What time was it when you saw him working in their yard?”

“I didn’t look at the clock, but it had to have been before eleven, because that’s when I left for downtown.”

“Did you happen to see their dog over there then, or hear it barking?”

“No.” Cavendish made a face. “But then, it never did bark. Just kind of bleated, like a sheep having its throat cut. If I thought about it at all, I guess I figured they were going to be away overnight and took the dog with them.”

“Did anyone besides yourself see this man?”

“Nobody here did. I’m not married, and the people who do my cleaning and cooking weren’t here today because I always have lunch and dinner downtown on Wednesdays.”

Auburn took out a three-by-five-inch file card and entered Cavendish’s full name and his number on Poplar Grove Drive. “Can I get your business address?” (One didn’t ask residents of this neighborhood where they “worked.”)

“The factory is on Hanover Road, but our offices are in the Lasky Tower downtown. We make mechanical and electronic timers and counters for high-speed production machinery and presses.” He rattled off the information as if he were quoting a stock prospectus. “I usually work here at home except, as I said, on Wednesdays.”

“I’d like you to give me as complete a description as you can of this man with the bike. Approximate age, build, complexion, hair color, what he was wearing, what kind of bike it was.”

Cavendish puckered his brows and closed his eyes. “I’ll tell you about the bike first. It’s old. No gearing, no handbrake levers. And it squeaks.”

“Any idea about color?”

“Somewhere under the mud and rust, I think I saw some maroon or purple trim. Kind of a sporty model when it was new — back in the fifties.”

“Lights, reflectors, cargo carriers, water bottle?”

Cavendish closed his eyes again briefly. “None of the above. Heck, it didn’t even have a kickstand. He left it leaning against a tree.” Auburn made notes, hoping that Cavendish would turn out to be as good an observer of people as he was of machines.

The description he gave of the man with the bike proved equally rich in detail. White, in his early forties, clean shaven one day last week, light brown or sandy hair needing a trim. Fair complexion, but tanned on the cheeks, the back of the neck, and the backs of the hands. Medium height and build, dark blue work clothes, dirty white sneakers. Sunglasses, no jewelry or wristwatch, no backpack. A hangdog manner and a whining, wheedling voice.

“Do you expect to be home for the rest of the evening?” Auburn asked.

“Should be.”

“An evidence technician may come by later to check for bicycle tracks on your property. He’ll get your permission before he does any exploring.”

When Auburn arrived back at the Jansen property he returned to the toolshed for a closer look. He had moved on to the house and was examining the damaged window from outside when a violent uproar commenced somewhere within. “Dead! She’s dead!” screamed a man’s voice, shrill with hysteria. “I did this. This is all my fault. I killed her. Wanda, Wanda!”

Auburn broke into a run. By the light of a pole lamp next to the driveway, he saw a sheriff’s cruiser parked behind his own car. He dashed up the front steps and through the entry hall.

The man was still ranting, “This is all my doing!” and lurching frantically up and down the passage where the body lay under the silent guard of Nick Stamaty.

Deputy Theodore Church stood in a doorway droning “Steady there, sir. Steady,” in his deep bass voice. Like Auburn, Church was African American. Unlike Auburn, he was irascible, chafed under authority, and tended to hassle witnesses with the rude pertinacity of a telemarketer.

Kestrel appeared from somewhere at the back of the house and added to the atmosphere of melodrama by shouting at Church, “Heavens above, man! You don’t just let a suspect wander into a crime scene!” For a fleeting instant Auburn marveled at how differently Kestrel and he were put together. While he was steeling himself for an interview with the bereaved husband, all Kestrel could think about were his precious bloodstains and specimen envelopes full of dirt.

“This is her husband,” Church was growling back at Kestrel. “He lives here.”

Stamaty, who assisted at scenes like this day in and day out, had developed a style of calming overwrought people that was somewhere between the gentle compassion of a clergyman and the more sinewy benevolence of a kids’ camp counselor. He steered Jansen into the kitchen, sat him down, rooted through cupboards, and started brewing coffee.

Meanwhile, Auburn conferred with Deputy Church, who was squatting just outside Kestrel’s tape barrier and examining Wanda Jansen’s fatal wound with professional detachment.

“Where exactly is this cabin?” asked Auburn.

“On County Road LL, which runs up along the river out of Kerylhake. If I hadn’t seen his van there, I would have quit beating on the door long before he ever heard me.”

“What was he doing?”

“Sleeping off a jag. Man, the dude is wasted. After about ten minutes in the car with him I started seeing double myself.”

“What’s his story?”

“Him and her had a fight this morning and he took off for the cabin by himself.”

Subdued sobbing came intermittently from the kitchen.

“Didn’t you tell him she was dead?”

“I told him the dog was dead and his wife was hurt. Per departmental protocol.”

Church suddenly remembered a staff meeting where he was overdue and vanished.

Auburn found Dexter Jansen hunched over the kitchen table, staring bleakly into the steam rising from his coffee cup. He had shaggy blond hair and a craggy, doltish, fashion-model face with a figure to match, wide shouldered and wasp waisted. Auburn thought it highly unlikely that he had murdered his wife with a hatchet, much less broken into his own house to do it, but he took particular note of the fact that Jansen’s arms and forearms, left bare by a rumpled T-shirt, showed no cuts or dressings.

“I’m sorry I have to bother you at a time like this,” said Auburn, “but I’m sure you understand that I’m just trying to do my job. When you first came in, you said—”

“I was out of my head. Still am. I didn’t mean I actually killed her — just that it was my fault she was dead.” His speech was slurred and his manner maudlin, but the shock of seeing his wife dead seemed to be sobering him up fast. “Because if I’d been here, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe they would have got me instead.”

He wanted to castigate himself for leaving this morning, to sing the virtues and glories of his dead wife, to talk himself through the first bleak stages of his grief. Not without considerable effort, Auburn got him to sort out the chronology of the past few hours.

“We were going to close up the cabin for the winter. We always put shutters over the windows to keep out animals and protect the place from vandals. Wanda and I got into a fight — one of those stupid little arguments that just snowball and turn ugly until something has to give. I walked out and headed for the cabin.”

“You say you had a fight—”

“Oh, nothing physical. She was perfectly all right when I left — just furious.”

“About what time would that have been?”

“I don’t know, probably a few minutes after ten. When I got to the cabin I put up one shutter and then I started drinking. Started and couldn’t stop. By noon I was ready to come home, but I was too drunk to drive and not drunk enough to try it anyway. Even if I’d made it here, it would probably have been too late, wouldn’t it? What time did...”

“That’ll be up to the medical examiner to determine. Probably before noon.”

Jansen nodded introspectively. “Anyway, I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew it was getting dark and the sheriff was trying to break the door down.”

“We found two empty jewel cases outside on the grounds.”

Jansen nodded. “I saw them in the hall. Those are Wanda’s.”

“It would help if you could give us an exact description of what’s missing. The sooner we act, the better chance we have of recovering the stolen goods before they’re broken up and dispersed. Do you have an inventory that you or your wife prepared for your insurance company?”

“Probably. But I don’t care about the jewelry any more. It’s not mine — it’s Wanda’s, and she’s...” He shook his head in mute grief.

“One of your neighbors noticed your van leaving this morning.”

Jansen glanced at Auburn quickly and then looked away again. “Cavendish. The neighborhood busybody and tattletale. He sits up there in his ivied tower spying on everybody.”

“He also mentioned seeing a man trimming your bushes.”

“Our bushes? When was this?”

“Probably between ten and eleven, a little after you left.”

“Today? That’s baloney. Our lawn service hasn’t been here since the grass stopped growing a couple of weeks ago. If they turned up unexpectedly, Wanda would have sent them packing.”

“Do you keep your toolshed locked?”

“No. Is something missing from there too?”

“Not necessarily. But Mr. Cavendish saw this man using tools, and he didn’t seem to have any with him when he offered to work for Cavendish a few minutes earlier. I don’t know if you noticed the hatchet...?”

“That’s mine. Is that what they used?”

“That’s how it looks.” Auburn went on with more routine questions about conflicts with neighbors, people at Jansen’s business, other robberies, threats, problems with vandalism in the neighborhood, all of which elicited negative responses.

After producing an inventory of Wanda’s jewelry, Jansen walked through the house with Auburn looking for further evidence of theft or damage. To the list of missing items he added a hand-woven woolen blanket from the master bedroom, which the murderer had probably used to wrap up his loot, and between five and ten dollars’ worth of change that had been taken from a leaded crystal dish on top of Jansen’s bureau. Apparently nothing with a crackle finish had been removed from the house.

Before leaving the Jansens’, Auburn alerted Kestrel to the possibility of finding fingerprints on the leaded crystal dish and bike tracks at Cavendish’s place. He then spent half an hour canvassing the neighborhood in a fruitless search for somebody besides Cavendish who had seen the itinerant handyman on the rusty bicycle.

On his way back to headquarters he started formulating a strategy. Arriving there a little after nine P.M., he reported to the second watch commander, Lieutenant Ryan, who agreed with him that they should make an effort to get a description of the killer on the eleven o’clock news yet that night. Ryan dispatched a police artist to see Cavendish immediately.

“Could the husband have killed her before he left?” asked Ryan.

“And killed the dog and faked the burglary? I guess so.”

“In that case you might want to get a warrant and search that cabin for the missing jewelry.”

Auburn nodded. “But this neighbor, Cavendish, did see a suspicious character in their back yard—”

“Sure, and gave one of the most detailed descriptions I’ve seen in twenty-five years of police work.”

“You think Cavendish invented the handyman? I can’t see him killing a neighbor woman with a hatchet and stealing her jewelry.”

“Maybe he and the husband are in it together. Jansen gets rid of his wife, Cavendish doesn’t have to listen to the dog any more, and they split the payoff on the jewelry from the insurance company.”

Auburn opened a new computer file and entered a narrative of his investigation up to the present moment. He sent an e-mail message to Records incorporating Cavendish’s description of the handyman and asking if the description or the M.O. matched any recent complaints or crime reports. He also requested background probes on Wanda and Dexter Jansen and Lamar Cavendish. The police artist’s sketch of the handyman and another of his bike duly appeared on the news that evening at eleven.

On arriving at the office next day, Auburn found answers to most of his inquiries waiting on his desk. Cavendish owned a thriving manufacturing firm called Marketyme. Jansen’s company, Jandex Pharmaceuticals, dealt in wholesale vaccines and biologicals, supplying local pharmacies, physicians, and hospitals. Neither had any criminal records, except that four years ago Jansen had been fined heavily for his involvement in a drug scam. His firm and three others had been found guilty of triggering a local meningitis scare in the media in order to ensure that a manufacturer’s overrun of pediatric vaccine would be bought and used before its expiration date.

Wanda Jansen had died between nine and eleven A.M. — hence quite possibly before Jansen’s departure for the cabin. The cause of death was cerebral laceration and hemorrhage resulting from one or maybe two blows to the right temple from a heavy tool with a cutting edge. The blister on her left arm was of unknown cause, and had occurred either after death or immediately before, since there was no microscopic evidence of inflammatory reaction in the surrounding tissues.

The hatchet found near the body contained traces of Wanda’s blood and hair. It also contained traces of blood and fur from the dog. The stains on and around the broken window matched neither Wanda’s nor Czar’s blood. Eventually Jansen’s blood type would need to be determined, but there was no hurry about that. According to the Weather Bureau, it had rained almost continuously from 11:50 A.M. to 2:10 P.M. yesterday.

While Auburn was importing this new data into the Jansen file, the dispatcher called to tell him that he had two visitors downstairs.

“Any idea what it’s about?”

“They said the break-in and homicide on Poplar Grove.”

“Send them up.” He put the finishing touches to the file, saved it, and had blanked his monitor screen by the time the visitors arrived.

Auburn’s heart sank when he saw the two people who walked into his office. Whether they were journalists, psychics, or amateur sleuths, they clearly didn’t belong to the mainstream of civilized society. Maybe this was the first wave of the public reaction to the killing of the dog that Stamaty had predicted.

The man bustled in first, a chunky little creature in tweeds with a face like a squirrel, curly sideburns, and a cloth cap rolled up and stuffed in a side pocket. “Thank you for seeing us so promptly,” he said. “I’m Tibor Preene and this is Elsie Fascinato.”

His companion slithered into the office and closed the door behind her with a gesture and a roll of the eyes borrowed from some spy movie of the 1960s. She had a round pasty face like a dumpling that tapered gradually down into her neck, with only a reddish nubbin showing where her chin should be. Auburn couldn’t be sure whether her outfit represented high fashion or sheer lunacy. Her blouse looked like a worn-out mail bag and her toreador pants might have been painted on her legs.

They both presented business cards, identical except for the names. Above an unmistakable silhouette of Sherlock Holmes with deerstalker cap and calabash pipe, each card bore the embossed inscription, THE ARTIFICIAL KNEE-CAPS OF WILMOT, and beneath it the quotation, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. — The Boscombe Valley Mystery.” Auburn studied the cards and glanced up in bewilderment.

“As you can see,” said Preene, “we’re Sherlockians — devotees of the immortal Holmes. Our group is the newest branch of an international organization called The Baker Street Irregulars. Each branch takes its name from some person or thing mentioned in one of the Holmes tales.” He gave a little snorting laugh. “Well, in all candor, by the time we formed our unit a few months ago, we were scraping the bottom of the proverbial. Artificial knee-caps come up in ‘The Red-Headed League,’ so there we were.”

They seated themselves opposite Auburn’s desk and the woman produced papers from a very thin attaché case of purple plastic. Were they about to ask him to join their club, sign a petition against Sunday liquor, buy chances on a Christmas goose...?

“I understood you wanted to see me about the Jansen burglary and homicide?” he asked.

“Correct,” said Ms. Fascinato. “In one of the tales in the canon, Holmes draws the attention of a police inspector ‘to the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.’ After our monthly meeting last night, we were sitting around watching the news and we got to talking about this murder case of yours where the dog was also killed, and we drew up a list of points about that dog that we think need your attention.”

“Every little bit helps,” Auburn remarked, striving to maintain an amiable tone and manner, even though people like these were on his list of models that urgently needed to be recalled by the Manufacturer.

“According to the news,” said Elsie Fascinato, “Wanda Jansen died about noon. When did the dog die?”

Auburn opened his mouth to tell her that that information was still pending from the veterinarian who had performed an autopsy on the dog, but she plunged right on to her next question, and the next, running her left thumb down the margin of the list as she read them off.

“Where did the dog die? Why was it roaming around loose? It wasn’t on a chain, and in that neighborhood people don’t put up with such things. Could it have been killed indoors and the body moved outside?”

When she stopped for breath, Preene immediately took over, skewing himself sideways in his chair to read over her shoulder. “Where was the dog while the mysterious man with the bicycle was trimming the bushes? Did the dog bite the burglar, and is that why he bled on the window? If the burglar killed the dog to silence it, he must have at least suspected there was somebody in the house. Then why did he let himself be surprised by the woman, and why did he kill her with such a clumsy weapon as a hatchet?”

Preene sat back in his chair and smiled pontifically to indicate that that exhausted the list.

“Those are some interesting questions,” agreed Auburn. “We have answers to some of them already. Others we may never be able to answer.”

“I can see that you’re a right-brainer,” said Elsie Fascinato. Her eyes kept sweeping the room like twin searchlights, never quite meeting Auburn’s. “Get the big picture — wait for inspiration — not much of a head for intricate details. But as the master said, ‘To a great mind, nothing is little.’ ” She handed him the list of questions and they rose to depart.

Auburn thanked them with forced cordiality.

“Only our civic duty,” Preene assured him suavely. “Because, you see, it’s an article of faith with us that official police detectives are just a bunch of blundering fools, loitering with intent to commit detection but utterly clueless — Had you going there for a moment, didn’t I, Officer?”

Niles Webster parked his car on a cul-de-sac off Wade Avenue, lifted his rusty one-speed off the rack mounted on the trunk lid, and pedaled four blocks west along Wade before starting to pay serious attention to the houses. Turning onto Lynn Circle, he passed up the first property on the left because of the burglar alarm warning prominently displayed at the front gate. The second house was small and in poor repair and its side yard was cluttered with toys, all of which suggested a shortage of negotiable valuables within. The third had no yard to speak of, much less any trees or bushes to trim.

The fourth house looked more promising: two luxury cars in the driveway and a deep back yard completely surrounded by exuberantly unkempt shrubbery. The mailbox bore the name COSSANIC. Just as Webster braked to a squawking halt in the driveway, a woman in her middle thirties opened a side door and tossed some table scraps to a pair of cats.

“Morning, ma’am,” said Webster, bowing his head and hunching his shoulders in a gesture of respect and servility that had cost him much effort to perfect. “I was wondering if you’d like me to trim your bushes around the back.”

Jennifer Cossanic looked him over a little dubiously. “My nephew usually does them, but he’s been so busy with his first year of high school, and soccer practice—”

“It wouldn’t have to be the bushes,” said Webster. “I’ll chop and stack firewood, do your gutters and downspouts, clean out your attic or basement — any kind of work really, and I’ll do it for whatever you want to give me.” He hung his head a bit lower and injected a tearful note into his voice. “See, when I got laid off about eight weeks ago I lost my health insurance. My little girl has this spinal condition, and they want to operate, but—” He swallowed a sob. “I’m telling you, it just about breaks my heart to see her lying there on the couch every day...”

“Well,” said Mrs. Cossanic, “our bushes are certainly overdue for a pruning. Why don’t you start with them, and then we’ll see what else we can find to keep you busy? You don’t have any tools with you, do you?”

“No, ma’am,” admitted Webster with a pathetic little laugh. “I’m traveling kind of light.”

“That’s all right. I’m sure we can find whatever you need in the garage. If you’ll just go along the driveway and around to the back, I’ll meet you there.”

It was three or four minutes before Mrs. Cossanic put up the overhead door from inside and pointed out the gardening tools hanging on brackets along one wall of the garage. In the meantime, she had dialed 911 and been instructed not to allow the man inside the house but to make every reasonable effort to keep him there until a squad car arrived. She noticed that, while waiting for her to open the garage, Webster had donned a pair of brown cotton work gloves.

Patrolmen Terry Krasnoy and Jake Schottel made a silent approach — so silent that Webster didn’t know they had come up behind him until Krasnoy said, “Excuse me, sir.”

Krasnoy kept his distance in case the man decided to use the pruning shears in his hands as an offensive weapon. But he proved perfectly docile. When asked to show identification, he produced an expired Delaware driver’s license bearing the name of Niles Webster, age thirty-seven.

“You’re a long way from home, Mr. Webster,” said Krasnoy. “How long you been on the road?”

“Sir?” Webster hung his head in an attitude of abject humility like a Sunday school pupil who can only remember half of the Commandments.

“You didn’t come very far on that bike. Where’s your car?”

“I parked her a few streets back. She’s got a hole in the muffler, and that kind of turns folks off.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Been kind of living in the car.”

“Let’s go take a look at it.”

“Well, I’ve kind of got a job to finish here.”

“Sir, I’m going to ask you to turn around, step away from the fence, and put your hands up against it while Officer Schottel goes over your pockets.”

Schottel discovered a bulge up Webster’s right sleeve. On investigation, this proved to consist of several layers of facial tissue stained with dried blood and held in place with strips of one-inch-wide black vinyl adhesive tape. “What happened to your arm?”

“Cut it on that muffler.”

Webster made no difficulty about directing them to his car, a battered relic held together with odd scraps of wire and more black tape. In the back seat they found containers of food in various stages of decomposition and a rat’s nest of rumpled clothing and wadded blankets, including a hand-woven woolen one that matched the description of the coverlet missing from the Jansens’ bedroom.

The trunk yielded a well-worn stock of jimmies, wrecking bars, sledgehammers, and other housebreaking tools. Stashed in jars and bottles in a tackle box were thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry.

Webster was arrested and booked on charges of murder and grand larceny. By the time Cyrus Auburn, returning from lunch, first learned of Webster’s existence, he was already represented by C. J. Pulfresh, Esq., a defense attorney with a penchant for sordid cases that got maximum press. Pulfresh was clamoring for an immediate court appearance so he could post bail and get his client back on the street.

Auburn discussed the evidence against Webster with the arresting officers in great detail. Webster’s car and bicycle were on their way to the police garage, where Kestrel would go over them as soon as he finished going over the black plastic tape and the brown cotton gloves found on Webster’s person.

Auburn decided to review the case with Rick McEwen of the city prosecutor’s office before even attempting to interview Webster in the presence of his attorney. McEwen was young and energetic and hadn’t been at the game long enough yet to have had the idealism wholly burned out of him by the exorbitant percentage of felony arrests that never came to trial. He agreed to let Auburn conduct the interview with Webster. They met with the prisoner and his lawyer in an interrogation room.

Niles Webster impressed Auburn as a man who had got himself knocked around a great deal through either bad luck or bad judgment. His long wavy hair, brushed back over his ears, was just turning gray, and there was a grayish cast as well to his stubbly cheeks. His brows were heavy and the bridge of his nose was so broad that he looked cross-eyed. He held his jaw sharply to one side and stared straight ahead at nothing with an expression of sullen resentment, as if Fate had just played him yet another dirty trick.

“Mr. Webster, I’m Sergeant Auburn. I’m going to ask you a few questions. You’ve already been cautioned that anything you say may be taken down in writing and introduced as evidence during court proceedings, but if you have any doubts about anything, you can confer privately with Mr. Pulfresh before answering.”

Pulfresh, whose complexion was exactly the color of a boiled lobster, scowled vigilantly at his client’s elbow. Pouches of skin under his eyes stuck out like windowsills. “Do you understand that?”

Webster bobbed his head to signify his comprehension and fingered a heavy brass cross suspended from his neck on a leather thong.

“Were you aware that your driver’s license expired about eight months ago?”

“It must have slipped my mind,” said Webster. “I haven’t been back home for a while.”

“The police in Middletown are still wondering what you did with that—”

“Let’s let the police back in Middletown take care of things that happen in their jurisdiction,” said Pulfresh, in his usual noisy and abrasive fashion.

“Where were you yesterday, Mr. Webster?”

“I don’t know, working someplace. I do mostly yard work this time of year.”

“Do you remember doing some yard work at a big house on Poplar Grove Drive?”

“Street names I wouldn’t remember. I did some trees and bushes at a big house, yes.”

“Was that where you picked up the jewelry we found in your trunk?”

Pulfresh put his hand on Webster’s arm to enjoin silence. He threw Auburn and McEwen a derisive grimace. “It’s not going to be that easy,” he said.

Every time Auburn had just about decided to sign up for the Law School Admission Test, he had an encounter with an attorney like Pulfresh and scrapped the whole idea. It wasn’t so much what Pulfresh was doing. That, after all, was his professional duty to his client. It was the attitude he conveyed — as if he and his colleagues at the Bar were the duly appointed custodians of the Law, whereas in fact they did everything they could to bend, sidestep, misrepresent, and subvert that Law, which it was Auburn’s sworn duty to preserve and enforce.

“Did you work at just that one house yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember who you talked to there?”

Webster gazed at the grimy table before him and ran his thumb back and forth over the brass cross as if it were a talisman. “A woman, I think.”

“Where did you talk to this woman? Inside the house or outside?”

“In the back yard.”

“Do you remember how much you got paid?”

“Yes, sir, I remember that. Twenty dollars. And by the time I put half a tank of gas in the car and had some lunch, every penny of it was gone.”

“Around what time did you leave there, would you say?”

“Couldn’t say for sure. Maybe about eleven.”

“Do you think it’s possible you might have cut your arm on a broken window at that house?”

“No, I did that trying to patch a hole in the muffler on my car.”

“Would you mind if we had a technician draw some blood so we could run some tests?”

“We certainly would mind,” said Pulfresh. “We’ll tolerate no such bodily assault or invasion of privacy. Unless you have a court order.”

“Until we have a court order,” said McEwen.

“Did you have any trouble with the dog?” asked Auburn.

Pulfresh put up both hands as if to ward off a blow. “Okay, that’s it,” he said. He pointed one index finger at Auburn and the other at McEwen. “We need to have a conference. Just the three of us.”

They left Webster in the custody of the stenographer and went next door to talk. “I want a lie detector test right now,” said Pulfresh.

“Before the hearing?” asked McEwen.

“Before you talk to him any more. Because, little by little, you’re going to feed this mug most of the evidence you’ve got against him. And at the hearing you’re going to spill all of it. And the less Webster knows, the better chance he has of passing a polygraph test. This guy is functionally illiterate and he’s got the morals of a maggot, but I don’t think he killed that dog, much less the woman. He didn’t even know there was a murder charge against him until I got here.”

“Has he got you conned, C. J.,” asked McEwen, “or are you trying to con us?”

“Neither one. I’m ready to do some serious plea bargaining here, but I need that polygraph test first. You may be able to place him at the scene, but I don’t believe you can prove the murder.”

McEwen looked at Auburn. “Sure, we can run a polygraph. But don’t blame us if it hangs your client.”

Sergeant Sandra Moffat, a licensed polygraph technician, was summoned back early from lunch to perform the examination. “That’s okay,” she said, smiling with characteristic joviality, “I didn’t need that pie anyway,” and she went right on smiling even when nobody contradicted her.

Pulfresh wanted to dictate the questions Moffat would ask, and he wanted to be present during the test, but both requests were denied. They did let him sit in on the selection of the questions, and scrapped one or two of them to placate him. Webster, who saw the handwriting on the wall, answered as frankly as was possible for an inveterate liar. Although he dodged and twisted when replying to queries about the break-in and burglary, it was perfectly evident that he really didn’t know anything about the killing of the woman and the dog.

He now denied ever having talked to anybody at the Jansens’, much less having been paid anything for working there. The story he told Moffat was that, although he had found no one home at the Jansens’, he had started working on their bushes, with tools borrowed from their unlocked shed, in hopes of receiving some recompense when they came home — which they never did. He admitted eventually breaking a window and lifting some jewelry boxes. The dog, which he had found shut in the house, had fled from his presence and made its escape through the open window.

Webster and his lawyer agreed to plead guilty to charges of breaking and entering and grand larceny if the charges of homicide and killing the dog were dropped. McEwen bought the deal but added the proviso that Webster must submit to having a blood sample drawn immediately instead of waiting for a court order.

The case had received so much media attention that it was a simple matter for McEwen to squeeze a preliminary hearing onto Judge Middlefield’s schedule before the end of the day. The judge denied Pulfresh’s application for bail and bound Webster over to the grand jury on the burglary charges. This was all very well for the cause of justice, but it left Auburn without a murder suspect.

By Friday morning the notion that Dexter Jansen might have killed his wife before driving off to the cabin seemed a little more compelling than before. According to Jansen, he’d left his wife alone at the house around ten o’clock Wednesday morning. Yet Webster insisted that at approximately the same time there was no one there, and the polygraph, for what it was worth, backed up that statement.

Auburn looked up The Artificial Knee-Caps of Wilmot and learned that Fascinato was a paralegal and that Preene sold pianos and organs. He got out their list of questions and read it over again.

He didn’t call Jansen before visiting Poplar Grove Drive again. His ring at the door was answered by Gerda Schlegel, the cook-housekeeper. Jansen was fidgeting in the foyer while waiting for a taxi to take him to the cabin so that he could retrieve his van.

“I’ve been up to my ears all morning in people,” he said. “Funeral director, insurance investigator, reporters...”

“I won’t keep you long. I just had a couple more questions.”

“I’ve got some for you. I hear this creep Webster isn’t being charged with murder.”

“That’s correct, sir. There’s no doubt he burgled your house and took your wife’s jewelry, and we think we can prove those charges in court. But we really have no case against him for the murder.”

“That I don’t understand.” Jansen stood toying with papers and unopened mail on the ornamental escritoire in the entry hall. “I mean, who else could have killed her? He was here, Wanda was here, he broke in, he killed the dog—”

“We don’t know about the dog. That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about. Where was the dog when you left yesterday morning?”

“Here in the house. We never let him out unless one of us was right there with him. The neighbors would have lynched us — one of them, anyway.” Score a point for The Artificial Knee-Caps. “Why the interest in Czar?”

“My interest in your dog is only indirect. If we knew a little more about when or why he was killed, it might help to clear up your wife’s death. You say he would have been indoors, yet apparently he was killed outside.”

“Sure, because the burglar had just opened a window.”

“Would the dog have gone after the burglar?”

“Not Czar. He was anything but a watchdog. He ran away from strangers.”

“Then what would have been the point of killing him?”

“Well, for that matter, what was the point of killing Wanda?”

“You’re starting to see my problem. I have to wonder if the dog was killed to give the false impression that your wife had been killed by a stranger.”

Jansen didn’t pretend he couldn’t see where this was leading. “You’re practically accusing me of killing Wanda myself,” he said.

“Just bear with me, sir. Please understand that catching criminals is only half of my job. The other half is helping to clear the innocent. Now, whether we like it or not, as the husband of the victim, you’re on the list of suspects.”

“Sure, I understand that. Except at the time Wanda was killed, I was blind drunk and twenty-two miles away.”

“We don’t know exactly when she was killed,” Auburn reminded him, putting a slight emphasis on the “we.”

“Well, she had to be alive long after I left here, because she called Gerda to tell her she was going to be home that afternoon after all — something about grocery shopping.”

They went to the kitchen to consult Gerda, who had a face like everybody’s favorite grandmother and the shoulders of a linebacker. She readily confirmed that she’d received a brief phone call from Wanda Jansen late on Wednesday morning, the day she died.

“She said there’d been a change of plans, and she wanted me to know she’d be home Wednesday evening. That’s the day we usually do our grocery shopping, but I told her I couldn’t make it because I’d already made other plans. She sounded... upset.” Gerda cast a glance of mild reproach at Jansen, but it was evident that she didn’t entertain the faintest suspicion that he had done Wanda in.

“And this was at what time on Wednesday?”

“A little after noon. She said she called twice. The first time I must not have heard her because it had started raining and I was bringing in some things I had airing out in my back yard.”

Jansen waited till they were back in the entry hall to resume his defense, which he did with a certain amount of bravado. “I guess it’s pretty obvious now that I couldn’t have killed Wanda. Because long before it started raining, I had knocked off work at the cabin and settled down to some serious drinking.”

“You may know that, sir, but my superiors and I don’t. Did anyone see you at the cabin?”

“Not at the cabin, no. But I stopped at the grocery in Kerylhake to pick up a couple of bottles of wine. Lambert’s Market. The wife waited on me, and I talked to the husband too as I was leaving. They’ll remember when I was there, if you ask them soon enough.”

Jansen’s persistent and determined efforts to establish an alibi intensified Auburn’s suspicions instead of allaying them. When the taxi arrived they sent it away, and Auburn drove Jansen to the cabin. First they stopped at Lambert’s Market in the township of Kerylhake, where the proprietors both confirmed Jansen’s statement that he had been in the store shortly after opening time at eleven A.M.

A graveled track led off County Road LL through the woods to the cabin, which was perched practically on the bank of the river. Jansen’s van stood out in front.

“Am I off the hook now?” he wanted to know.

“Not really. The coroner’s estimate of the time of death is just that — an estimate. It could be a couple of hours off one way or the other. And we don’t know that you didn’t go back later in the morning—”

“Listen, Officer,” snarled Jansen, bristling with anger, “I drove in here at about a quarter after eleven on Wednesday, and I didn’t budge until that deputy sheriff shook me out of a drunken stupor at six or seven that evening.”

Auburn was silent.

“Am I under arrest?”

“No, sir.”

The cabin proved to be more primitive than Auburn had expected, considering the size and appointments of the palace the Jansens occupied on Poplar Grove Drive. It consisted of a single room about twelve feet square. Not only was there no telephone, there was no gas or electricity either, and the only plumbing facilities were contained in a small building at the rear. A rustic fireplace served for both heating and cooking. A shutter had been fixed over one of the three windows. Two other shutters stood in a corner.

Jansen retrieved a few personal articles from a cupboard and locked the cabin. “Maybe I’ll come back and put up the other shutters, and maybe I won’t,” he said. “Doesn’t seem to matter much one way or the other now.”

He unlocked the van and slid in behind the wheel. Auburn, who was just starting his own car, noticed that the van’s windshield wipers began working as soon as Jansen turned on the ignition. His mouth got a little dry and his heart stumbled over the next few beats. He pulled his car forward quickly so as to block Jansen’s exit from the driveway. He got back out of his car, stepped up beside the van, and motioned for Jansen to roll down the window.

“You just told me you got here a little after eleven o’clock Wednesday morning,” he said, “and that you didn’t leave until the sheriff’s deputy picked you up that evening. But it looks like it must have been raining the last time you drove this van, and according to the Weather Bureau, the only rain we had in the county on Wednesday was from right before noon to right after two o’clock.

While Jansen was mulling over his reply, Auburn leaned forward and looked into the interior of the van. “What’s in that box on the floor in front of the other seat?”

“It’s empty,” said Jansen quickly, and he picked it up and lifted the lid to prove it.

It was an insulated metal case, roughly cubical, with a crackle finish.

“How does it happen to be here in the van?”

“We use it to bring food up to the cabin.”

“What kind of food?”

“Perishables. Meat, milk...”

“Perishables. Because you don’t have a refrigerator here.” Auburn took the case from Jansen and examined it more closely. “Even if this were half full of ice,” he said, “it would all melt overnight. But dry ice would keep in an insulated box like this for two or three days. And since you’re in pharmaceuticals, you probably have dry ice at your plant to ship drugs and vaccines.”

Jansen was looking off in the distance and holding his breath like a condemned criminal in the gas chamber.

“Now I see why you made such a big deal about what time your wife died. If you packed dry ice around her body to make it look like she died a lot earlier than she did, that could explain the blister on her arm, couldn’t it? Okay, Mr. Jansen, now you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent...”

In his confession, Jansen stated that he and Wanda had arrived together at the cabin on Wednesday around ten thirty A.M., as planned, to close it up for the winter. He dropped her off at the cabin to start cleaning and went to the grocery to get wine. When it was time to start fixing lunch, Wanda discovered that the insulated box contained only dry ice, the meat and other food items for their lunch at the cabin having been accidentally left at home.

She created such a scene that Jansen had to drive her home again. During the drive she tried twice to call Gerda from her cell phone, reaching her on the second try and advising her that she would be back from the cabin much earlier than expected. Arriving back home around noon, they discovered that in their absence the house had been burglarized and the dog killed.

That only aggravated Wanda’s frenzy and added to the shrillness and bitterness of her haranguing. She’d been after him for years to install an alarm system. The catches on the downstairs windows were a joke. It was a foolish economy to save a few hundred by skimping on security for articles that had cost tens of thousands, et cetera, et cetera.

At length Jansen had heard enough. Standing next to his wife, holding the hatchet he’d found beside the dog’s body in a handkerchief so as not to obscure any fingerprints left by Czar’s killer, he suddenly realized how easy it would be to kill her and make it look as if she had fallen victim to the burglar.

Pure rage and resentment swung the hatchet; then cold reason got into the act. If Jansen had gone straight back to the cabin and started in on the wine, he might have defied all the Auburns and Kestrels in the world to prove that he was involved in any way in his wife’s death. But after striking the fatal blow he felt compelled to doctor the evidence.

He didn’t know Cavendish had seen the van leaving the first time that morning, but he was sure he hadn’t seen it returning and leaving again around noon, because Cavendish was never home at that time of day on Wednesday. The Lamberts hadn’t seen Wanda when Jansen bought the wine, and had no particular reason to believe she was with him. And having overheard Wanda’s half of her terse phone call to Gerda, he knew Gerda would assume that the call had come from home.

While packing dry ice around Wanda’s body so that her temperature would fall rapidly and give the illusion that she had died much earlier, Jansen had rested the insulated case on the floor, where it had left a “fingerprint” of its crackle finish in a drip of blood.

He drove back to the cabin in a downpour of rain and started working on the first bottle of wine. He had planned to return home by late afternoon and pretend to discover the break-in, burglary, and murder, and remove any remaining residue of dry ice. But, whether out of remorse for his crime or from anxiety about being caught, he went through most of the wine and really did drink himself into a stupor.

Although Jansen admitted he’d killed Wanda “in a blind fury,” he steadfastly denied having harmed the dog. Inevitably, Auburn’s suspicions turned to Cavendish. Probably the neighbor had heard the dog outside bellowing “like a sheep having its throat cut,” after he had seen, or thought he had seen, both Jansens driving away. On his way downtown he had very likely stopped in the Jansens’ driveway, discovered the break-in, realized that it was the work of the man on the bike, and used the hatchet he found near the broken window to silence the dog forever.

But Auburn saw no point in pursuing the matter. He couldn’t prove Cavendish’s guilt, and anyway, there was no one to lodge a complaint: Wanda Jansen was dead and Dexter Jansen would be moving into a state-operated housing facility where the only pets permitted were birds and hamsters.

And, then again, dogs — all of them — were on Auburn’s list of models needing to be recalled by the Manufacturer.

Copyright 2006 John H. Dirckx