Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018

Smoke Screen by Bill Pronzini

MWA Grand Master Bill Pronzini has won, or been nominated for, virtually every award in the mystery genre. His latest book, Give-a-Damn Jones (Forge, 2018) is from a field related to the mystery, the Western. Set in 1890s San Francisco, the Carpenter and Quincannon series also contains elements of both mystery and Western. Here’s the latest case.

When Sabina pointed out the news story in Tuesday’s edition of the San Francisco Morning Call, a report of the death of Judge Rupert Shellwin in the locked study of his Rincon Hill home, Quincannon expressed scant interest. Murders committed in seemingly impossible circumstances were his specialty, to be sure, but the prominent jurist’s demise was attributed by his family physician, Dr. Mortimer Phipps, to coronary thrombosis. Nothing in the death by natural causes of a criminal-court magistrate he hardly knew, in or out of a locked room, piqued his interest in the slightest.

He changed his mind later that breezy April day. Or rather, he had it changed for him by the slender woman in black mourning dress, hat, and veil who appeared in the Market Street offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. She identified herself as Margaret Shellwin, the judge’s widow, and announced that she had “serious reservations” about the nature of her husband’s abrupt exit from this world.

“Reservations, Mrs. Shellwin?” Quincannon asked. “Meaning what, exactly?”

“Rupert was only forty-three and in perfect health. He had no history of heart trouble whatsoever.”

Sabina said gently, “Sudden heart failure is not uncommon in seemingly healthy middle-aged men.”

“I know, but I can’t help feeling that Rupert’s death was not... natural.”

“Have you any reason to suspect foul play?”

“Yes. Three days ago he received a letter threatening his life.”

“Signed or anonymous?”

“Anonymous, but he was sure he knew who sent it.”

“And who would that be?”

“A man named Jorgensen. Rupert sentenced him to prison six years ago on a charge of manslaughter. Jorgensen swore his innocence throughout the trial and vowed revenge at the severity of his sentence. He was released from San Quentin nine days ago.”

“Do you have the letter?”

“No. Rupert destroyed it.”

“Did he show it to you? Or tell you exactly what it said?”

“No, he only mentioned it.”

“Was he concerned that the threat might be genuine?”

Mrs. Shellwin shook her head. “He wasn’t a fearful man. But I was concerned, very much so.”

Quincannon asked, “Did he have any other enemies who might want to harm him?”

“None that I know of. But a judge as stem and strict as Rupert was always has enemies...”

“Do you doubt the medical diagnosis?”

“Dr. Phipps was my father’s physician for many years before Rupert and I were married, and his judgment has always been sound.” The widow lifted her veil long enough to dab at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. Quincannon had enough of a glimpse of her face to tell that it was attractive and cameo pale. “Isn’t there some way for a fatal heart attack to be induced?”

“The only means I’m aware of are physical violence and fright.”

“Fright?”

“In one case in my experience, the victim succumbed to the manufactured appearance of what he believed to be a ghost.”

“That would be impossible with Rupert. He wasn’t a fearful man, as I told you. Nor did he believe in the supernatural.”

“He was alone in his study at the time of the seizure, doors and windows all secure?”

“Yes. He went in there for two hours or so almost every evening to work and think. He locked the door out of long habit, because he didn’t wish to be disturbed. Not that I would ever have braved his study except in an emergency.”

“Braved it?” Sabina said. “How do you mean?”

“It was always filled with an unpleasant smoke haze. He smoked his pipes constantly while he worked — he said it helped sharpen his powers of concentration — and he favored very strong tobacco. Out of deference to me he confined the habit to his study or outdoors.”

Quincannon had been about to load his own pipe, a well-used briar. A warning glance from Sabina caused him to set it aside. He fluffed his dark freebooter’s beard instead.

“Did your husband have any visitors the night of his death?” Sabina asked the widow.

“No.”

“Telephone calls?”

“None. I would have heard the ring.”

“Did he leave the study at any time?”

“Not to my knowledge. He almost never did until he was finished for the evening.”

“According to the newspaper report,” Quincannon said, “you heard him cry out. A cry for help?”

Margaret Shellwin shuddered visibly at the memory. “Not exactly,” she said. “One of sudden distress, then a shouted word. And before either there was an audible thumping noise.”

“What was the shouted word?”

“It sounded like ‘cramps,’ but I’m not sure.”

“And the thumping noise? Could you identify it?”

“As if one hard object had struck against another.”

“Where were you at the time?”

“In the parlor, next to the study. Engaged in a game of three-handed whist with Peter Lehman, Rupert’s half-brother, and Jerome Paxson, our next-door neighbor. As soon as we heard the cries, we all ran to the study door.”

“Did you hear anything more from inside?”

“No. We all called out to Rupert, and when he didn’t answer Jerome and Peter forced the door. He... he was on the floor a short distance inside. His face... the pain must have been terrible...” Mrs. Shellwin shuddered again. “There was nothing any of us could do except telephone Dr. Phipps. He came right over, he doesn’t live far away.”

“Did you notice anything in the study that struck you as unusual?”

“Unusual? I don’t know... my attention was on Rupert.”

“Is everything still as it was that night?”

“Yes, just as it was. I can’t bear to go in there yet...”

There was a short, heavy silence. Mrs. Shellwin had rolled the lace handkerchief into a ball; she squeezed it between her hands, her red-rimmed gaze appealing first to Quincannon, then to Sabina. “I know it all seems like a dreadfully commonplace tragedy, but I simply can’t dismiss my misgivings. Rupert spoke well of your agency after the publicity over that Chinatown scandal last year — he said your reputation as the most reliable investigators in the city is well founded. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

From the expression on Sabina’s slender, high-cheekboned face and the look in her dark blue eyes, Quincannon knew that she was about to regretfully decline. He said before she could speak, “We can undertake an investigation, Mrs. Shellwin, though given the circumstances, we can only guarantee effort, not results.”

“Effort is all I ask.”

“Then we are at your service,” he said, ignoring Sabina’s disapproving glance. “I’ll handle the matter personally, beginning with an examination of your husband’s study, if you have no objection.”

She had none, but it couldn’t be undertaken immediately; she had an imminent appointment with the mortician who was arranging her husband’s funeral. A four-o’clock meeting at the Shellwin home was agreed upon. Once the necessary signing of an agency contract and payment of a standard retainer were completed, she quickly took her leave.

No sooner had she gone than Sabina said peevishly, “What’s the matter with you, John? You’ve gotten that poor woman’s hopes up for no good reason other than a hefty fee!”

“Fees are our bread and butter,” he pointed out, “and not to be treated lightly.”

“Bosh. Do you really expect an investigation to produce even a hint of foul play?”

“It’s possible. We have nothing else on the docket just now, and there are one or two points in the widow’s account that make the matter worth looking into.”

“Such as?”

Quincannon smiled enigmatically. “When and if they prove meaningful, my dear. When and if.”

Dr. Mortimer Phipps conducted his medical practice in the same large white frame house in which he lived, three blocks from the Shellwin residence. Fortunately he was not engaged with a patient when Quincannon arrived in a hansom cab, his usual form of transportation around the city when a client was paying expenses, and requested an audience from a gray-haired nurse.

The doctor was at least seventy years of age, a large man with a liver-spotted bald dome and rheumy gray eyes. He wore thick-lensed glasses through which he peered myopically. His manner was crusty and somewhat pompous, his words snappish after Quincannon explained his reason for the visit.

“Mrs. Shellwin is bereft and not thinking rationally,” he said. “She requires rest, not a foolish private investigation.”

“But she has paid for one, and mine are never foolish.”

“Hmpf. An utter waste of your time and her money, nonetheless. There is no question Judge Shellwin died of a massive coronary. I’ve seen dozens of such cases.”

“Neither she nor I doubt you, doctor,” Quincannon said glibly, “but I’ll thank you to answer a few questions that may help to allay her fears and put her mind at ease.”

“Oh, very well. But I’ll thank you not to take up too much of my time.”

“The judge was on the study floor when you arrived, just as he’d been found?”

“Are you asking if he had been moved? No, certainly not.”

“In what position was he lying?”

“Position?”

“Prone? Supine? Body and appendages bent or straightened?”

“Pointless question,” Dr. Phipps said. But he proceeded to answer it, nonetheless. “Foetally convulsed on his right side, both hands pressed to his midsection.”

“His midsection, not his chest?”

“A victim of coronary thrombosis does not always clutch his chest. Death agony produces different physical reactions.”

“Did Mrs. Shellwin or her guests tell you what they heard that drew them to the study? The cry of distress, the shouted word ‘cramps’?”

“I was so informed, yes.”

“You don’t find ‘cramps’ an odd exclamation for a man suffering a sudden coronary?”

“I do not. Didn’t I just tell you that death agony produces different reactions? The pain felt like cramps to him at first.”

“Where would you say he was when stricken? At his desk or elsewhere in the room?”

“Why should that matter? Wherever he was, he cried out and collapsed before he could unlock the door.”

“You examined him where he lay?”

“Naturally. Long enough to ascertain the cause of death.” Dr. Phipps pooched his lips in an expression of distaste. “The study was filled with tobacco smoke, thick as tule fog. Can’t abide it. Reeks and clogs my sinuses.”

“Did you examine the body again later?”

“No. There was no need.” Another lip-pooch. “The fact is, Judge Shellwin smoked far too much. I warned him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Warned him?”

“That continual heavy tobacco use was unhealthy. Might well have been what brought on his coronary.”

“But Mrs. Shellwin told me he was in perfect health.”

“He seemed to be when I last saw him alive, but appearances can be deceiving.”

“Indeed they can,” Quincannon agreed.

The doctor gestured pointedly at the Seth Thomas clock on the wall opposite his desk. “Your time’s up. Are you satisfied now, sir?”

Quincannon said he was. But he wasn’t.

The Shellwin home was a more elaborately designed structure than Dr. Phipps’s, a gabled and turreted pile more in keeping with the neighborhood’s general architectural motif. Rincon Hill, built around an oval-shaped park that was an exact copy of London’s Berkeley Square, was the first of San Francisco’s fashionable residential districts. But it had begun to lose its appeal to the gentry two decades earlier, in the early 1870s, and while many moderately wealthy families such as the Shellwins continued to live there, the richest and most powerful of the city’s society now occupied more fashionable venues such as Nob Hill.

Quincannon expected his ring to be answered by Margaret Shellwin, the time being exactly four o’clock when he twisted the bell, but it was a man who opened the door. A tall, lean gent of some forty years, dressed in an expensive dove-gray broadcloth suit and highly polished shoes with matching gray spats. Black hair sleekly pomaded, saturnine face adorned with a bootlace moustache and a crop of chin whiskers. Neither his manner nor his stiffly toned voice was welcoming.

“John Quincannon, I presume,” he said.

“Correct. Mrs. Shellwin is expecting me.”

“So she told me. But I’ll have a word with you before you go in.”

“Yes? And who would you be?”

“Jerome Paxson.” He stepped forward onto the porch, pulling the door partway closed behind him. “I want you to know that hiring you was a mistake in judgment brought on by extreme grief. Margaret Shellwin is an emotional woman given, it pains me to say, to fearful fancies at the best of times.”

“Indeed? You seem to know her quite well.”

“Well enough, having been her neighbor and friend for some time. Rupert’s death was tragic, of course, but the cause was unquestionably coronary thrombosis. I was here the night it happened, as Mrs. Shellwin must have told you, and I can attest to the fact. So can her brother-in-law, Peter Lehman. And the physician who examined the body and signed the death certificate, Dr. Mortimer Phipps, will tell you so in no uncertain terms.”

“He already has,” Quincannon said, “a short while ago.”

“You’ve already spoken to him, then. Good. Then you must realize how unnecessary, how potentially damaging to Margaret’s mental health a purposeless investigation is, and you will be so good as to discontinue your efforts.”

“Not before and until my client herself requests it.”

Paxson produced a scowl, the bunching of facial muscles lifting his moustache so as to create the impression that it was about to crawl up into his flared nostrils. “You’re rather an impertinent fellow, aren’t you.”

“When the situation calls for it. I’ll see Mrs. Shellwin now.”

Paxson seemed about to say something more, changed his mind, and turned abruptly to push open the door. Quincannon followed him inside, down a short hallway into a good-sized parlor stuffed with carved mahogany furniture and, somewhat incongruously, a large round card table with four matching chairs. Card playing must have been a regular activity in the Shellwin household.

Margaret Shellwin was seated on an uncomfortable-looking sofa, her hands clasped in her lap. She still wore the black mourning dress but not the hat and veil. She was younger, no more than thirty-five, and even more attractive than he’d thought from his glimpse at the agency; her nose and mouth were small and symmetrical, her eyes a luminous brown, her hair, drawn into a coiled bun atop her head, a rich chestnut color.

She acknowledged Quincannon’s bow with a nod and a wan smile. Paxson, his scowl gone and the moustache back in place on his upper lip, sat down beside her.

“There is no point in wasting time on small talk, Mrs. Shellwin,” Quincannon said, “as I’m sure you’ll agree. So I’ll have my look at your husband’s study straightaway.”

“Yes, of course.” She gestured toward a closed door in the inner wall opposite, beyond a white marble fireplace. “You’ll do so alone, please. I still can’t bear to go in there.”

“As you wish.” He would have requested a solitary search if she hadn’t.

Paxson said, “See that you don’t disturb anything while you’re wasting your time in the study.”

Quincannon swallowed a rude retort, head-bowed to his client, and went over to the study door. Opened it and stepped inside. Window drapes were drawn, the room cloaked in shadows. He located a wall switch, turned it to light a pair of electric ceiling globes.

The door latch and jamb showed evidence of the forced entry, but he examined them to satisfy himself that the door had in fact been secured from within. It had; a large brass key was still in the lock and the bolt had been turned. Then he shut the door and stood for a few seconds surveying the room.

Large, somewhat austerely masculine. Dark wood paneling, one wall covered by bookcases packed with a set of Blackstone and other legal tomes, two oil paintings depicting courtroom scenes on another wall. Furnishings of heavy mahogany similar to those in the parlor — large desk set equidistant between two windows, filing cabinet, a pair of armchairs, end tables. Deep-pile, royal-blue carpeting. The acrid scent of Judge Shellwin’s strong tobacco still lingered; would in fact have permeated all surfaces here over the years so that it would continue to be detectable even after the windows were opened and the study aired out.

Quincannon’s first impression was of orderliness. The judge may have spent a good deal of time working, reading, thinking in here, but he’d done so without disarranging anything. The chairs and tables were all perfectly aligned, as were the law books and a stack of legal journals on one of the tables. Nothing out of place. He had been a tidy man, perhaps even fussily so.

Quincannon went to the windows, drew aside the drapes covering each long enough to inspect the latches. Both were tightly secure; no one could have gotten in or out through either window. He turned then to the desk.

Nothing out of place? Not quite so. The swivel chair behind the desk had been drawn or thrust back at an angle so only two of its metal casters rested on an oriental throw rug laid down to protect the carpet underneath. And the rug was a foot or so to the right of the desk’s kneehole, not squarely centered in front of it. The items atop the desk’s polished surface and blotter were all neatly arranged, however — candlestick telephone, combination pipe rack and tobacco canister, deep glass ashtray partly filled with blackened dottle and burnt matches, brass-bound wooden box, onyx pen-and-ink set, a stack of papers, and a book of California law precedents. Despite the positioning of the chair and rug, it seemed that the judge hadn’t been stricken while seated here...

Ah, but there were indications to the contrary. A closer look at the desktop revealed two significant things: a small, fresh-looking gouge near the right-hand edge, and a few flecks of tobacco ash adhering to the blotter’s lower right-hand corner. Recently smoked ash, judging from the smear of black on Quincannon’s fingertip when he touched the residue.

He found no more ash on the desktop, but there was a sprinkling of blackened dottle in a metal wastebasket alongside. And when he lowered himself onto hands and knees and dipped his head, he spied several additional flecks caught in the nap directly below the gouge mark. Not only that, but a small scorch mark of the sort made by a burning ember. The off-center positioning of the rug caught his eye again; he pushed the chair off and lifted it to peer at the carpet underneath. Another, larger burn mark had been concealed there.

All of this added up to the fact that the judge had been seated at the desk, and implied that his death hadn’t been of natural causes.

A fastidious individual such as he would never have permitted hot ashes to fall onto the expensive carpet, a fact testified to by the lack of burn marks elsewhere on the carpet or on the mg. Nor would he carelessly drop an object onto the desk that would scar its pristine surface — an object such as a lighted pipe. It would take a sudden, severe attack for both of those things to happen.

The intensity of the attack must have jerked him upright onto his feet, likely thrusting the chair farther back and at least partially disarraying whatever he had been working on. The pipe he’d been smoking had fallen from his mouth, spraying burning embers when it struck the desk edge — the thumping noise Mrs. Shellwin and the others had heard. He had then cried out, shouted as he staggered away, and collapsed and died before reaching the door.

That part of it seemed clear. But there was no pipe, and only those remaining flecks of ash on blotter and carpet and dottle in the wastebasket; the law book and papers had been reordered, the rug moved to hide the large burn mark, the chair pushed closer to the desk. A deliberate cleaning and rearranging, therefore, neither done nor authorized by Margaret Shellwin.

Murderer’s work.

To cover up... what, precisely?

Quincannon gave his attention to the rack of pipes. There were half a dozen altogether, three on each side of the canister. Four were briars of different shapes and sizes — a full-bent and a half-bent billiard, a Dublin, a square-shank apple; there were also a calabash, and a meerschaum with a bowl carved in the image of a bewigged English magistrate. Was the pipe Shellwin had been smoking one of these, or had it been carried off? In either case, why had it been picked up?

A notion began to form in the back of Quincannon’s mind. On impulse, he lifted the canister’s lid, reached inside for a pinch of tobacco which he proceeded to sniff. Latakia and fire-cured Virginia, not to his taste at all; his preference was Navy-cut and shag. He rolled the flakes between thumb and forefinger, then touched his tongue to them. Ordinary if pungent scent, ordinary feel, ordinary taste.

He opened the brassbound box. It contained wooden matches and several chicken feathers, a commonly used tool for clearing out the tar and nicotine moisture that collected in pipe stems. He kept a supply on hand himself, at his flat and at the office.

As he closed the box, he noticed the upturned pipe bowls in the rack. A scowl creased his whiskers when he found that not just one but all six had thick carbon cakes inside. The judge had been a careless smoker. He may have cleaned his pipes’ stems with some regularity, but he had neglected to periodically ream out the bowls. Such buildups of carbon not only resulted in poor flavor, but if left unattended to, would eventually render the pipes unsmokable.

Quincannon stood for a time revising his notion. Then he went back out into the parlor. Margaret Shellwin and Jerome Paxson were still seated on the sofa, the neighbor a little closer beside her than he had been earlier. He did not draw away under Quincannon’s scrutiny, and his eyes challenged comment.

“I’d like to speak with you, Mrs. Shellwin,” Quincannon said, ignoring the unspoken challenge. He added meaningfully, “In private.”

“Have you found something?”

“There is nothing for him to find,” Paxson said. “His poking about to no good end is only upsetting you, Margaret.”

“You don’t mind if I consult with my client in private, do you, sir?”

“I certainly do mind—”

“Please, Jerome,” she said. “I’d rather speak to Mr. Quincannon alone. Really, there is no need for you to stay any longer.”

“I don’t like the idea of you being here by yourself. After he leaves, I mean, which I trust will be soon.”

“I’ll be fine. You needn’t worry.”

“But I do worry. Your welfare is important to me.”

Her only response to that was a half smile.

Paxson put up no further argument. He stood, aimed a glower at Quincannon that she couldn’t see, said to her, “Call me if you should want company, I’ll be home all evening,” and made his exit.

When he was gone, Quincannon said, “Your neighbor seems to hold you in high regard.”

“I suppose so. He has been very kind and attentive.”

“A good friend of your husband’s too, was he?”

“Yes, of course. To both of us.”

“Married?”

“No, Jerome is a bachelor. He inherited the house next door from his aunt three years ago.”

“He appears to be a man of means. What does he do for a living?”

“He’s an executive with Jackson and Langley Manufacturing.” She drew a shuddery breath, as if to dismiss the subject of Jerome Paxson. “You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Quincannon. Did you find something important in Rupert’s study?”

He hedged by saying, “It’s too soon to be sure.” Then, “Tell me, did your husband have a favorite among his pipes, one he smoked most often?”

The question puzzled her, but she answered without asking why he wanted to know. “Yes, I think so. An unusual yellow-white one carved in the image of a judge — a gift from a political acquaintance.”

“Was that the only one he smoked daily?”

“As far as I know it was. I didn’t often see him smoking, except now and then when we were outside together.” Quincannon asked another question that puzzled her. “Who else besides you has access to the study?”

“Access to it? I don’t understand.”

“I’ll put it another way. Does anyone other than you and your husband have a key to this house? Your brother-in-law, for instance.”

“Yes, Peter has a key.”

“Anyone else?”

“Jerome. We exchanged keys in case one of us should lose or misplace our own. But that’s all. Not even the woman who cleans for us twice a week has one.” She paused, frowning openly now. “Surely you don’t think—”

Quincannon shared his suspicions with no one, not even Sabina, until he was certain of their validity. He said quickly, as if he had just remembered something important, “Excuse me, please, I need to make another brief visit to the study.”

“As you wish.”

He returned to the study, again shutting the door behind him. At the judge’s desk he removed the carved meerschaum from the pipe rack. Its bowl was heavy, and there was a scraped indentation on its underside — from contact with the desk edge when dropped, no doubt. He sniffed the bowl, then wrapped the pipe in his handkerchief and slipped it into the pocket of his sack coat. He allowed another minute to pass before rejoining his client in the parlor.

“I’m through for now, Mrs. Shellwin,” he said. “A few more questions before I depart. What is your brother-in-law’s profession?”

“Peter buys and sells rare books and manuscripts.”

“From his residence or a shop?”

“He has a shop downtown.”

“Located where?”

“At Sutter and Mason. He lives on Telegraph Hill.”

“May I ask when your husband’s funeral will be?”

“At noon on Friday.”

Two days hence. Good. A visit to Peter Lehman at his shop tomorrow should suffice. As well as another to his client, if she would be available during the afternoon. He asked if she had any plans for the day.

“None other than fending off well-wishers,” she said.

“Then I’ll call again in the afternoon, if that is convenient.”

“Of course. Do you expect to have something definite to tell me then?”

He said evasively, “No guarantees other than my best effort, as I told you yesterday.”

“But you may have?”

“I will say only that it’s possible.”

During his ten years as an operative for the San Francisco branch of the Secret Service, and his subsequent six years in private partnership with Sabina, Quincannon had cultivated contacts with individuals in all walks of life, from Barbary Coast denizens to high-level city officials. One such individual was Arthur Scott, an analytical chemist whose office cum laboratory was on Battery Street not far from the Custom House.

Quincannon made the chemist’s his first stop after leaving Rincon Hill, and found him in residence. After some mild haggling over an acceptable fee for his services, Scott agreed to do Quincannon’s bidding and to have the results available in the morning.

It was well past seven o’clock by the time the business arrangement was concluded. Peter Lehman’s bookshop would surely be closed by this time. And Sabina would long since have closed the agency for the day and gone home to her Russian Hill flat. Which left Quincannon to his own devices for the evening. So before proceeding to his own flat on Leavenworth, he hied himself to Hoolihan’s Saloon, his favorite watering hole in his drinking days, to trade good-natured insults with the head bartender and dine on the best free lunch in the city.

Art Scott, true to his word, had the test results on Judge Shellwin’s meerschaum ready when Quincannon arrived at his office shortly past nine A.M.. They were as he’d expected, a boost, if a grim one, to his spirits and his ego.

Onward, then, to Lehman’s Bookshop. Lehman, an accommodating middle-aged gent with a flowing mane of silver hair, supplied the remaining few answers Quincannon required. The last pieces of the puzzle were now firmly in place.

It was just noon when he entered Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. Sabina was at her desk, fetchingly garbed today in a fashionable flared skirt and tailored jacket of sea green. Sunlight slanting through the window at her back created glistening highlights in her seal-black hair and the jade comb that held it in place. In lieu of answering her greeting with words, he went to her and bestowed a kiss on her cheek — a liberty he would not dared have taken prior to six months ago, when their relationship had (finally!) become personal as well as professional.

“Well, John,” she said, “you seem to be in fine fettle today. Quite pleased with yourself, if that Cheshire cat’s smile is an indication.”

“With good cause, my dear. The death of Judge Rupert Shellwin is no longer a mystery. It was, in fact, murder most foul.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Oh? You’re certain of that?”

“Positive. I know who committed the crime, the motive, and how it was done.”

“Then you were right to take her on as client and I owe you an apology. Was it Jorgensen, the ex-convict who wrote the threatening letter?”

“No. He had nothing to do with it, except as the catalyst that brought Mrs. Shellwin to our doorstep.”

“Then who—?”

“Jerome Paxson, the man next door.”

“And his motive?”

“One of the oldest. The breaking of the Tenth Commandment.”

“ ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife’?”

“Just so. Obsessive love and lust then drove him into breaking the Sixth Commandment.”

Sabina considered for a few moments before saying, “But he was with Mrs. Shellwin and her brother-in-law at the time of the fatal coronary. How could he have induced it?”

“He didn’t,” Quincannon said. “The judge did not die of coronary thrombosis. Dr. Phipps misdiagnosed the cause because the symptoms of what he called ‘death agony* were similar to those of the actual cause, and because the judge’s study was thick with tobacco smoke that clogged his sinuses when he conducted his examination.”

“For heaven’s sake, John, don’t indulge your flair for the dramatic by speaking in riddles. How did Judge Shellwin die?”

“He was poisoned.”

“Poisoned. With what?”

“Nicotine. Pure nicotine.”

“You mean it was put into his tobacco?”

“No. Raw nicotine has a strong odor and the amount necessary to toxicize the judge’s supply of tobacco would have caused a reek he’d have noticed the instant he opened the canister. Paxson’s method required only a drop or two, and relied on his victim’s smoking habits and Dr. Phipps’s sinuses.”

“There you go again,” Sabina said with a touch of exasperation this time. “Can’t you simply explain in a straightforward manner?”

He managed not to grin at her. “I was about to. Judge Shellwin was a careless pipe smoker in that he allowed a thick carbon cake to build up in each of his pipe bowls, instead of scraping them out with a penknife as you’ve seen me do with mine. Paxson, as much time as he spent in the Shellwins’ company, observed this trait and so developed his plan.”

“Which was what, exactly?”

“He had access to the Shellwin house because he and Mrs. Shellwin had traded keys, as neighbors sometimes do. He simply slipped in sometime during that day while the house was unoccupied and put the pure nicotine on the carbon cake in the judge’s favorite pipe, a meerschaum. When I sniffed the bowl, my nose told me it must have been doctored; I took the pipe to Art Scott yesterday, and this morning he confirmed from a quantitative analysis of cake scrapings that the poison had been absorbed into the porous carbon. When the judge charged and lighted it at his desk, his first few puffs of the volatilized nicotine were enough to bring about the fatal seizure.”

“I see. A fiendishly clever murder method.”

“And an excruciatingly painful one. Severe abdominal cramps is one of the symptoms of nicotine poisoning, which is why he shouted the word ‘cramps’ after being stricken. And why, in conjunction with another symptom, nausea, he was found with both hands clutching his midsection. The raw nicotine odor would have been pungent on the judge’s mouth, but Dr. Phipps failed to smell it because of weak sinuses — a condition of which Paxson was also likely aware. Not that the doctor would have realized its significance if he had smelled it, given how much strong tobacco the dead man regularly smoked. Otherwise, there was no physical evidence on his one superficial examination of the body to alert him to the true cause of death.”

“But how did Paxson obtain pure nicotine? It can hardly be bought commercially.”

“He had no need to buy it,” Quincannon said. “Mrs. Shellwin told me yesterday that he is an executive with Jackson and Langley Manufacturing. And Peter Lehman told me this morning that Jackson and Langley is a chemical company that produces, among other things, nicotine sulfate — a botanical pesticide used to kill aphids and spider mites.”

Sabina asked, “And what was it that put you on to Paxson and his ploy?” He couldn’t resist a wink. “Careful observation, knowledge of pipes and poisons, small clues, and deduction. In other words, stellar detective work.”

“John...”

“A combination of facts, to be specific,” he said, and went on to explain about the judge’s fastidiousness, the gouge in the desk edge, the burn marks and overlooked pipe ash on the carpet, and Paxson’s overly attentive attitude toward the widow. He finished by saying, “Paxson reentered the Shellwin house, likely yesterday while Mrs. Shellwin was out visiting this office and the funeral parlor, cleaned up most of the spilled dottle, and replaced the meerschaum in the rack with the other pipes. He couldn’t just remove and dispose of it, and substitute another in its place, because of the meerschaum’s distinctive carved design; Mrs. Shellwin surely would have realized it was missing.”

Sabina had no more questions. But she did have one cogent observation. “You realize, of course, that all the evidence you’ve gathered is circumstantial. You haven’t any legal proof that Paxson is the one who administered the nicotine drops.”

“I know it,” he agreed. “But I have no intention of either confronting him — he’s not the sort to be bullied into a confession — or of going to the police. I will be meeting later today with Mrs. Shellwin and Peter Lehman, at which time I’ll tell them everything I’ve told you. What they do with the information is entirely up to them. A proper course of action, would you agree?”

“I would.”

Quincannon smiled fondly at her, and reached for his briar and tobacco pouch.

“Must you, after all you’ve just recounted?” she said, wrinkling her nose. “It’s warm in here and too cold and damp outside to open the window.”

“Just one pipeful, my dear. To celebrate the successful closing of yet another case in the annals of John Frederick Quincannon, sleuth extraordinaire.”

She sighed. “You know what it is about you, John, that I find most amazing and unparalleled?”

“My ratiocinative powers?”

“No. Your abiding humility.”

© 2018 by Bill Pronzini