The Bughouse Affair

27

QUINCANNON

It took him most of the following morning to contact the principals in the Costain case and arrange for them to assemble in the offices of Great Western Insurance at one o’clock that afternoon. All were already present when he and Sabina entered the anteroom on the stroke of one. Penelope Costain, the crackbrain Sherlock in the company of Dr. Caleb Axminster, and the doltish Prussian, Kleinhoffer. He had invited Kleinhoffer not so much in his official capacity but to bask in the copper’s reaction to a demonstration of genuine detective work.

Quincannon was in fine fettle. He had slept well, as he normally did when he was about to bring a case to a successful conclusion, breakfasted well, and was eager for the proceedings to unfold. Sabina, too, seemed to have spent a restful night and was in good spirits. He had expected her to ask questions and demand answers, as she had before their sojourn to Andrew Costain’s law offices last night. But she had remained curiously silent, a small, private smile lurking at the corners of her mouth, before departing on an unrevealed errand that kept her away from the agency for more than two hours.

In a body they were shown into Jackson Pollard’s private sanctum, a large but spartan room with no permanent fixtures beyond a desk, a telephone, and a bank of filing cabinets. Chairs had been brought in to accommodate the group. Pollard wore his usual brusque expression, and behind his spectacles his bugged eyes issued a mute warning when he regarded Quincannon. The little claims adjustor had not been pleased when he’d been refused any advance knowledge of the meeting’s purpose.

Everyone sat down except Quincannon. Holmes lit his oily clay pipe and sat in a relaxed posture, his eyes bright with anticipation. Sabina sat quietly with hands clasped in her lap; patience was one of her many virtues. Penelope Costain was like a statue in her chair, her small black eyes unblinking and her head stiffly tipped, fingers toying with a tigereye and agate locket at the throat of a high-collared black dress. Dr. Axminster sucked on horehound drops, wearing the bright-eyed, expectant look of a small boy on Christmas morning. Kleinhoffer’s red face was bent into a sneer, as if he considered this business a waste of his time.

Pollard said, “Well, Quincannon? Get on with it. And what you have to say had better be worthwhile.”

“It will be,” Quincannon assured him. “First of all, Dodger Brown is in custody awaiting formal charges. I tracked him down late yesterday and handed him over to the authorities.”

Kleinhoffer stirred and said gruffly, “Not to me, you didn’t.”

“No, to Sergeant Percy at the city jail. You hadn’t come on duty yet.”

“Nobody told me about it today.”

“The sergeant’s fault, not mine.”

“You didn’t inform me, either,” Pollard said. “Not last night and not earlier today. Why not?”

“I came straight here from the Hall of Justice last evening, but you’d already gone.”

“You could have told me this morning. Why didn’t you?”

“I had my reasons.”

“Yes? Well, what about all the valuables Brown stole? I don’t suppose you recovered any of them?”

“Ah, but I did.”

Quincannon drew out the sack of valuables, which he’d removed from the office safe before coming to Great Western, and with a flourish, placed it on Pollard’s desk blotter. The little claims adjustor seemed pacified as he spread the contents out in front of him, but once he’d sifted through the lot some of his ill temper returned. “All present and accounted for from the first three burglaries,” he said. “But none of Mrs. Costain’s losses is here.”

“I haven’t recovered those items as yet.”

“Well? Do you have any idea what Brown did with them?”

“He did nothing with them. He never had them.”

“Never had them, you say?”

“Dodger Brown didn’t burgle the Costain home,” Quincannon said. “Nor is he the murderer of Andrew Costain.”

Kleinhoffer made a noise not unlike the grunt of a rooting shoat. Pollard blinked owlishly behind his spectacles. “Then who did burgle it?”

“No one.”

“Come, come, man, speak plainly, say what you mean.”

“It was Andrew Costain who planned the theft, with the aid of an accomplice, and it was the accomplice who punctured him and made off with the contents of the valuables case.”

This announcement brought an “Ahh!” from Dr. Axminster. Sabina arched one of her fine eyebrows, but not as if she were surprised. Even Kleinhoffer and the bughouse Sherlock sat up straight in their chairs. The reactions fueled Quincannon’s ardor. He was in his element now, and enjoying himself immensely.

Penelope Costain said icily, “That is a ridiculous accusation. Why on earth would my husband conspire to rob his own home?”

“To defraud the Great Western Insurance Company. For monetary gain, so he could pay off his substantial gambling debts. You knew he was a compulsive gambler, didn’t you, Mrs. Costain? And that his finances had been severely depleted and his practice had suffered setbacks as a result of his addiction?”

“I knew of no such thing.”

“If what you say is true,” Pollard said to Quincannon, “how did you find it out?”

“I was suspicious of the man from the moment he asked me to stand watch on his property.” This was not quite true, but what harm in a little embellishment? “Two nights ago at Dr. Axminster’s home, Costain seemed to consider me incompetent for allowing Dodger Brown to escape from the Truesdales’. Why then would he choose me of all people to protect his property? The answer is that he wanted a detective he considered inept to bear witness to a cleverly staged break-in. Underestimating me was his first mistake.”

“Was that the only thing that made you suspicious?”

“No. Costain admitted it was unlikely that a professional housebreaker, having had a close call the previous night, would risk another crime so soon, yet he would have me believe his fear was so great, he was willing to pay dear for not one but two operatives to stand surveillance on one or two nights. An outlay of funds he could ill afford, for it was plain from his heavy drinking and the condition of his office that he had fallen on difficult times. He also made two dubious claims-that he had no time to remove valuables from his home and hide them elsewhere until the burglar was apprehended, and that he had no desire to cancel ‘important engagements’ in order to guard the premises himself.”

Dr. Axminster asked, “So you accepted the job in order to find out what he was up to?”

“Yes.” Another embellishment. He had accepted it for the money-no fool, John Quincannon. “Subsequent investigation revealed Costain’s gambling addiction and a string of debts as long as a widowed mother’s clothesline. He was a desperate man.”

“You suspected insurance fraud, then,” the crackbrain said, “when you asked me to join you in the surveillance?”

“I did,” Quincannon lied.

“Did you suspect the manner in which the fraud would be perpetrated?”

“The use of an accomplice dressed in the same type of dark clothing as worn by Dodger Brown? Costain’s arrival not more than a minute after the intruder entered the house through the rear door? These struck me as suspicious, though not until later. It was a devious plan that no detective could have anticipated in its entirety before the fact.” He added, staring meaningfully at the Englishman, “In truth, a bughouse affair from start to finish.”

“Bughouse affair?”

“Crazy scheme. Fool’s game.”

“Ah. Crook’s argot, eh? More of your delightful American idiom.”

Pollard said, “Enough of that,” and tapped the nib of a pen on his desk blotter after the fashion of a judge wielding a gavel. “So the accomplice pulled a double-cross, is that what you’re saying, Quincannon? He wanted the spoils all for himself.”

“Just so.”

“Name him.”

“Not just yet. Other explanations are in order first. Such as how Costain came to be murdered in a locked room. And why he was shot as well as stabbed.”

“Can you answer those questions?”

“I can.”

“Well, then?”

Quincannon allowed suspense to build by producing his pipe and tobacco pouch. Holmes watched him in a rapt way, his hands busy winding a pocket Petrarch, his expression neutral except for the faintest of smiles. The others, Sabina included, were on the edges of their chairs.

When he had the pipe lit and drawing well, he said, “The answer to your first question,” he said to Pollard, though his gaze was on the crackbrain, “is that Andrew Costain was not murdered in a locked room. Nor was he stabbed and shot by his accomplice.”

“Riddles, Quincannon?” Pollard said, purse-lipped.

“Not at all. To begin with, Andrew Costain shot himself.”

Kleinhoffer exclaimed, “Hogwash!”

Quincannon ignored him. He paused a few seconds for dramatic effect before continuing. “The report was designed to draw me into the house, the superficial wound to support what would have been his claim of a struggle with the thief. The better to bamboozle me and the police, so he reasoned, and the better to insure that Great Western would pay off his claim quickly and without question or suspicion.”

“How did you deduce the sham?” Dr. Axminster asked.

“Dodger Brown was known to carry a pistol in the practice of his trade, but only for purposes of intimidation … he had no history of violence. He himself told me he carried his weapon unloaded at all times and I don’t doubt that this was the truth; it was empty when I found it yesterday and there were no cartridges in his possession. The revolver that inflicted Costain’s wound was new, bought by him that same day, I’ll wager, from a gunsmith near his law offices.”

Sabina spoke for the first time. “But why the locked-room business?” she asked. “Further obfuscation?”

“No. In point of fact, there was no locked-room ploy.”

Pollard growled, “Are you saying it wasn’t part of the plan?”

“Precisely. That part of the misadventure was a mix of illusion and accident, the result of circumstances, not premeditation. There was no intent to gild the lily with such gimmickry. Even if there had been, there was simply not enough time for any sort of locked-room shenanigans to have been arranged once the pistol was fired.”

“Then what did happen?”

“Costain was in the hallway outside the open door to his study, not inside the room, when he discharged the shot into his forearm. That is why the electric light was on in the hall … why the smell of burned powder was strong there, yet all but nonexistent inside the room. The bullet penetrated the armchair because the weapon was aimed in that direction when it was fired, through the open doorway into the study.”

“Why didn’t Costain simply fire the shot in there?”

“I suspect because he met his accomplice in the hallway, perhaps to hand over the jewelry from the valuables case. The empty case was another clue that put me onto the gaff. The time factor again: there was not enough for the phantom burglar to have found his way to the study, located the case, and rifled it before Costain arrived to catch him in the act.”

“And the murder, John?” Sabina asked.

“Within moments of the shot being fired, the accomplice struck. Costain was standing in the open doorway, his back to the hall. The force of the single stab with a long, narrow blade staggered him forward into the study. The blow was not immediately fatal, however. He lived long enough to turn, confront his attacker, observe the bloody weapon in a hand still upraised and-in self-defense-to slam the door shut and twist the key already in the latch. Then he collapsed and died.”

“Why didn’t he shoot the accomplice instead?” Axminster said. “That is what I would have done.”

“Likely because he no longer held the pistol. Either the suddenness of the attack caused him to drop it, or he dropped it in order to lock the door against his betrayer. In my judgment Andrew Costain was a craven coward as well as a thief. I think, if pressed, his wife would confirm this, despite her allegation to Inspector Kleinhoffer that he was a brave man.”

Penelope Costain’s face was the shade of an egg cream. “I agree with nothing you’ve said. Nothing!”

The Englishman said, “Capital, my dear sir. Capital!” and stood to grasp Quincannon’s hand. “I congratulate you on an excellent reconstruction thus far-a most commendable job of interpretating the res gestae.”

“Res what?” Kleinhoffer demanded.

“The facts of the case. My learned colleague’s deductions coincide almost exactly with mine.”

Quincannon stiffened. “Bah,” he said.

“My good fellow, you doubt my word that I reached the identical conclusions yesterday afternoon?”

“Then prove it by naming the accomplice and explaining the rest of what took place. Can you do that?”

“I can. Naturally.”

Damn his eyes! Quincannon’s good humor had begun to evaporate. Glaring, he said, “Well, then? Who stabbed Costain?”

“His wife, of course. Penelope Costain.”