The Bughouse Affair

26

SABINA

In the hack as it rattled away from the Axminster home, Sabina said, “Well, John?”

“Well what?”

“Is what you told Holmes the truth? Do you know the who, why, and how of the Costain homicide?”

“Do you believe he does?” John countered.

“At the least, he has a viable theory. He wouldn’t have suggested a meeting of the principals if he didn’t.”

“Bah. He’s mad as a barn owl.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Of course I know the who, why, and how,” John said testily, but without quite meeting her eye. “Even if that pompous, preening, presumptuous popinjay has a glimmering of the truth, do you suppose I’ll allow him to outshine me in front of our client?”

“Then tell me what you suspect. Who killed Costain and how was the escape from the sealed house managed? And in what way is Clara Wilds’s murder connected?”

“All will become clear tomorrow.”

“You’re being as evasive as Holmes.”

He made grumbling noises in his beard and lapsed into a brooding silence.

Sabina sighed. There were times when her partner was a heavy cross to bear. If he would trust in her, and in turn listen to her suspicions, of which she had more than a few, they could work together to clarify the details of the affair. But no, his pride and his conceit were too great, as was his passion for drama; he was as much a glory hound as the Englishman professed to be. He did not have all the answers now, she was sure of that, but expected to by morning and without any assistance from her. Perhaps he would succeed-he had before. He had also failed before, and if that happened in this case, he would bluster and make excuses and do whatever else he deemed necessary to save face.

Well, she could play the same closemouthed game herself. If the fancied Mr. Holmes had in fact arrived at the truth through observation and deduction, and if John expected to by morning, then there was no reason why she couldn’t do the same.

The coach clattered along the cobblestones, heading downtown. Sabina hadn’t heard the directions John had given the driver, and she broke the silence by asking, “Where are we bound?”

“You’re going home. I have an errand to attend to.”

“What sort of errand?”

“For the nonce that’s my concern.”

The remark roused her ire. She stamped her foot, and said sharply, “I will not be treated like a minion! You refuse to confide in me-very well, that’s your privilege, but only up to a point. I’m as deeply involved as you are, and that means I have a right to know what you’re up to if it’s pertinent. Is it?”

“… Perhaps.”

“Your errand, then?”

“If you must know, a visit to Geary Street.”

“Andrew Costain’s law offices?”

“Yes.”

“In search of what?”

“Proof to support my deductions.”

Or to stimulate them. “The offices will surely be locked. Do you intend to break and enter?”

He patted his waistcoat pocket. “Not exactly.”

“The use of lock picks still constitutes unlawful entry.”

“You needn’t explain the law to me, my dear. Besides, that bloody Englishman committed the same crime at the Costain home this afternoon, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but he has a few screws loose and you don’t. Ostensibly.”

He said, “Hmpf,” and busied himself with his pipe and tobacco pouch.

Sabina said, “I’m coming with you.”

“What’s that? No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. If we’re caught, then we’ll both suffer the consequences.”

He glowered at her.

She glowered back. “I can be just as stubborn as you can,” she said. “More so, if needs be.”

“Of that I have no doubt.”

“It’s settled then. We’ll break the law together.”

They had no difficulty entering the Geary Street building that housed Andrew Costain’s law offices. There was no nightwatchman, and lamplight glowed in the window of an office on the floor above-one of the other attorneys evidently working late.

The first floor hallway was deserted. The door to Costain’s offices was locked, of course, but John’s deft use of his lock picks had it open in less than a minute. He entered first, located a wall switch, and turned it to bring on a pale ceiling globe. John led the way across a neglected anteroom to the closed but unlocked door to Costain’s private office. The mingled odors of dust and the stale residue of cigar smoke and alcohol assailed Sabina as she stepped inside. The whole place wanted a good airing. And a thorough cleaning as well. The amount of dust and dead flies on the floor, furniture, law books, and the helter-skelter of papers strewn about was considerable.

“Not very tidy, was he,” she said.

“Nor as successful as he pretended to be.”

Sabina eyed a nearly empty bottle of rye whiskey standing in plain sight on the desktop. “A fondness for alcohol being one of the reasons.”

“No doubt. I’ll start with the desk.”

She nodded and stepped over to the file cabinets. They were no less neatly kept than the rest of the office. Client files, briefs, court records, correspondence, bills, receipts, and miscellaneous items were all jumbled together, some in labeled and unlabeled folders, others in manila envelopes. Andrew Costain had evidently had packrat tendencies: the dates on some of the accumulation ranged back ten years or more. A few of the names in the client files were familiar to Sabina, but none had any apparent relationship to the murders of Costain or Clara Wilds. The correspondence was likewise worthless. A folder containing bills and invoices, however, appeared more promising.

Behind her at the desk, John exclaimed softly, “Just as I suspected.”

Sabina turned. “What have you found?”

“Costain’s bank book. As I suspected, he was in financial difficulty. Until fifteen months ago he maintained a substantial bank balance of five to six thousand dollars. Since then he made only a few small deposits, none in the past month, and steady withdrawals of a hundred here, two hundred there. His balance as of two days ago, after he wrote his check to me, was one thousand and fifty dollars. As of yesterday, there was only fifty left.”

“Another check or a cash withdrawal?”

“Cash. Now why would a lawyer on the brink of insolvency want that much in greenbacks?”

“Yes,” Sabina said musingly, “why would he?”

John tucked the bank book into his jacket pocket and resumed his rummaging through the desk drawers. Sabina did likewise among the files. She plucked out an unlabeled manila envelope, undid the string clasp. Inside were a sheaf of unpaid bills for both home and office-mortgage, rent, electricity, water, other services. Some were current, others past due and stamped as such. Andrew Costain hadn’t just been insolvent, he’d been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

She opened the bottom file drawer. Inside was a stack of very old case files-and bound together by a rubber band at the back, a dozen small pocket notebooks the size of a billfold. She paged through one, then a second and a third. Each was filled with writing in Andrew Costain’s somewhat crabbed hand. The man had not only been an alcoholic and a packrat, he’d been a compulsive recorder of bits and pieces of his life. The books contained a hodgepodge of jottings-calendar dates, brief chronicles of activities both social and professional, notes concerning clients and points of law, accounts of trips taken and trips planned, comments on sporting and social events, lists of figures in what appeared to be some kind of personal code, doodlings, even fragments of poorly conceived poetry.

John said, “What’s that you have there?” He had finished with the desk and come over to stand behind her.

She showed him the most recent book, which spanned the period from January through August of the current year. He flipped through it until he reached the coded list of figures. Those pages he studied carefully, a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth.

“The figures mean something to you?” she asked.

“A list of gambling wagers, unless I miss my guess, at such establishments as the House of Chance. With far more losses noted than winnings.”

“One of the reasons Costain was in financial straits, then.”

“Yes. The final piece of the puzzle, by Godfrey.”

“Well?”

But he just smiled his well-fed wolf’s smile and refused to elaborate. Instead he ushered her out of the offices, relocking the door behind him. They left the building without incident, and soon parted company at a nearby hack stand.

Her partner’s cryptic behavior would have irritated her more than it did if not for the fact that the search had also provided her with the final pieces of the Clara Wilds puzzle. If John chose to keep his conclusions secret until he deemed it suitable to announce them, then she would do the same with hers.

Sabina let herself into her furnished Russian Hill flat and for a moment leaned wearily against the closed door. A long day, and a productive one, but she was glad to be back in this comfortable nest she’d created for herself. Adam twined around her ankles, making soft burbling sounds that she knew were a plea for food.

“Yes, I know you’re hungry. I am, too.”

She removed her cloak and hung it on the oak hall tree. In the small parlor with its Morris chair and rather ugly Beauchamp settee, she lighted the gas heater to relieve the evening chill, then went into the tiny kitchen. She took chopped chicken livers from the icebox under the sink and served them to the kitten on one of the few remaining pieces of her grandmother’s Sevres china, a delicate floral pattern that had not stood up well to her several moves.

Her larder was not well stocked; she had been too busy to do marketing this week. But the piece of smoked salmon and the bay shrimp she’d purchased from Tony the Fish Monger would be more than enough for her dinner. To go with them she heated a cup of clam broth on the cumbersome black-iron stove, set out crackers to go with the seafood.

Solitary meals did not displease her. She and Stephen had often had differing schedules and frequently ate alone. What she missed was the notes they’d left for each other: little lovers’ missives, often jokingly worded in a fashion calculated to produce smiles and chuckles. Stephen had left one for her the night before he died, its exact wording forever etched in her memory.

My dearest helpmeet,

There is dust on my bureau. If you persist in ignoring your housewifely duties, I will divorce you and marry a fat Cuban lady.

The case I am on being neither a difficult, protracted, nor dangerous one, I look forward to seeing you and my well-dusted bureau tomorrow evening.

Your exasperated but loving husband,

Stephen

She had laughed heartily, with not an inkling that it would be the last laughter to come from her for many months. For when she read the note, her loving husband was already lying dead in a Denver alleyway.

Sighing, she cleared the table and washed the dishes. Usually she spent her post-prandial hours in the parlor writing personal letters or reading Harper’s Bazaar, The Cosmopolitan, and a magazine that most proper ladies of the day avoided as shocking fare, the National Police Gazette. This evening she sat with pad and paper and carefully set down all the information she’d gleaned during her investigation and the conclusions she drew from them. She often did this when a case was nearing its closure. Hers was an orderly mind, unlike her partner’s; creating a careful written outline of facts, observations, and suppositions satisfied her that she hadn’t overlooked anything important and had events detailed in their proper sequence.

The last thing John had said to her before their parting earlier was, “There will be a public unveiling of the facts tomorrow, my dear, just as that blasted Englishman wants. Only I’ll be the one to arrange it. And I’ll be the one to take the credit.”

Given his flair for the dramatic, Sabina thought, he would no doubt put on quite a performance. But he wouldn’t be alone on whatever stage he set, and for once he wouldn’t receive all the applause.