The Bughouse Affair

28

SABINA

Sabina was the only other person in the room besides John who was not startled by the would-be Sherlock’s accusation. Simultaneous gasps issued from Pollard and Dr. Axminster, another piggish grunt from the red-faced police inspector. Mrs. Costain’s only reaction was to draw herself up indignantly, her flinty eyes striking sparks.

“I?” she said. “How dare you!”

John stood glowering at Holmes. Sabina supposed she should feel sorry for him, but she didn’t; he had been much too sure of himself and the Englishman’s inability to match wits with him.

He made an effort to regain command by saying, “Holmes’s guess is correct. The burglar was known to be a small man, and Mrs. Costain is a woman of comparable size. It was easy enough for her to pass for Dodger Brown in the darkness, dressed in dark man’s clothing, with a cloth cap covering her hair.”

“Quite so,” Holmes agreed before John could say anything more. “While joined in her husband’s plan, she devised a counter-plan of her own-a double-cross, as you Americans call it-for two reasons. First, to attempt to defraud the Great Western Insurance Company not once but twice by entering claims on both the allegedly stolen jewelry and on her husband’s life insurance policy, of which she is the sole beneficiary. She came to this office yesterday to enter those claims, did she not, Mr. Pollard?”

“She did.”

“Her second motive,” Holmes went on, “was hatred, a virulent and consuming hatred for the man to whom she was married.”

“You can’t possibly know that,” John snapped at him. “You’re guessing again.”

“I do not make guesses. Mrs. Costain’s hatred of her husband was apparent to me at Dr. Axminster’s dinner party Tuesday evening. My eyes are trained to examine faces and not their trimmings-that is to say, their public pose. As for proof of her true feelings, and of her guilt, I discovered the first clue shortly after you and I found Andrew Costain’s corpse.”

“What clue?”

“Face powder, of course.”

“Eh? Face powder?”

“When I examined the wound in Costain’s back through my glass, I discovered a tiny smear of the substance on the cloth of his coat-the same type and shade as worn by Mrs. Costain. Surely you noticed it as well, Quincannon?”

“Yes, yes,” John said. But his tone and the way he fluffed his whiskers told Sabina that if he had noticed the smear, he’d failed to correctly interpret its meaning. “But I don’t see how that proves her guilt. They were married … her face powder might have gotten on his coat at any time, in a dozen different ways.”

“I beg to differ,” the Englishman said. “It was close and to the right of the wound, which indicated that the residue must have adhered to the murderer’s hand when the fatal blow was struck. It was also caked and deeply imbedded in the fibers of the cloth. This fact, combined with the depth of the wound itself, further indicated that the blade was plunged into Costain’s flesh with great force and fury. An act born of hatred as well as greed. The wound itself afforded additional proof. It had been made by a stiletto, hardly the type of weapon a professional pannyman such as Dodger Brown would carry. A stiletto, furthermore, as my researches into crime have borne out, is much more a woman’s weapon than a man’s.”

There was no way in which John could refute this logic, and it was plain that he knew it. He sat down in the chair Holmes had vacated and wisely held his tongue.

Penelope Costain once again claimed coldly outraged innocence. No one except Sabina paid her any attention, least of all John and the Englishman. The woman’s controlled bluster was a marvel to behold.

“Now then,” Holmes continued, “we have the mystery of Mrs. Costain’s actions after striking the death blow. Her evidently miraculous escape from the house, only to reappear later dressed in evening clothes.” He directed a keen look at John. “Of course you know how this bit of flummery was managed.”

“Of course.” But John finger-combed his whiskers again as he spoke.

“Pray elaborate.”

“There is little enough mystery in what she did. She simply hid until you and I were both inside the study and then slipped out through one of the windows. She could easily have prepared one in advance so that it slid up and down noiselessly, and also loosened its latch just enough to allow it to drop back into the locking bracket after she climbed through and lowered the sash. The window would then appear to have been unbreached.”

“Ingenious.”

“She may have thought so.”

“I meant your interpretation,” Holmes said. “Unfortunately, however, you are wrong. That is not what she did.”

“The devil you say!”

“Quite wrong on all counts except that she did, in fact, hide for a length of time. She could not have foreseen that both front and rear doors would be blocked. If simple escape had been the plan, she could reasonably have expected to slip out by either the front or rear door, thus obviating use of a window. Nor could she be certain in advance that a loosened window latch would drop back into its bracket and thus go unnoticed. Nor could she be certain that we would fail to hear her raising and lowering the sash, and capture her before she could vanish into the night.”

John said heavily, “I suppose you have a better theory.”

“Not a theory, the exact truth of the matter. Her hiding place was the very same one she and her husband had decided upon as part of the original scheme. I discovered it yesterday afternoon when I returned to the Costain home while Mrs. Costain was away and conducted a careful search of the premises.”

“Unlawful trespass!” This time, Penelope Costain’s outrage was not feigned. She appealed to the heavyset Prussian policeman. “I caught him there, Inspector, and you heard him admit to the fact. I demand that you arrest him.”

“It’s a little late for that, Mrs. Costain,” Kleinhoffer said. “Let’s hear the rest of what the limey … what Mr. Holmes has to say.”

“Thank you, Inspector. I expect that under the circumstances, you’ll agree that my actions were justified.”

“Maybe. If you can explain how she got out of the house.”

“She didn’t. She never left it.”

“What’s that? Never left it?”

Holmes paused as John had done earlier, for dramatic effect. “When you have eliminated the impossible,” he said, “whatever is left must, perforce, be the truth. As applied in this case, I concluded-as Mr. Quincannon did-that it was impossible for Andrew Costain’s slayer to have committed murder in and then escape from the locked study. Therefore Costain could not have been locked in when the stiletto was plunged into his body. I further concluded that it was impossible for the slayer to have escaped from the house after the crime was committed. Therefore she did not escape from it. Penelope Costain was hidden on the premises the entire time.”

Kleinhoffer demanded to know where. “You and Quincannon searched the house from top to bottom, and so did my men. Somebody would’ve found her if she was there.”

“But she was and no one did. Consider this: strangers cannot possibly know every nook and cranny in a large old home in which they have never before set foot. The owners, however, are fully intimate with every inch of their property.”

“True enough,” Pollard interjected, “but a place large enough for a woman to hide…”

“Indeed. And the Costain home contains just such a place. During my search, I discovered a tiny nook inside the kitchen pantry where preserves and the like are stored. The entrance is hidden by the stocked pantry shelves in front of it, so that the Costains could be reasonably sure it would be overlooked by strangers. The nook itself is some four feet square, and while it has no ventilation, its door when cracked open permits enough air for normal breathing.”

Sabina remembered the smudge of dirt on the Englishman’s cheek she’d noticed yesterday. Her thought at the time had been correct: he really had been crawling around in dark corners. She couldn’t help but admire his tenacity. And his cunning deductive powers, which really were quite remarkable.

“Mrs. Costain had no trouble remaining hidden for well over an hour,” Holmes went on, “ample time for her to change from the dark male clothing into evening clothes she had placed in the nook earlier. After the arrival of the police, when none of the officers was in the immediate vicinity, she slipped out through the kitchen and dining room to the front hallway and pretended to have just arrived home. The first person to encounter her-Sergeant Mahoney, I believe-had no reason to doubt her story.”

John said moodily, “But you did, I suppose.”

“Oh, quite. When she first entered the study, I observed the remnants of cobwebs and traces of dust on the hem of her skirt, the fur of her wrap, even the ostrich plume in her chapeau. The pantry room contains cobwebs, dust, and dirt of the same sort. I also observed that a fragment had been torn from one of her fingernails, leaving a tiny wound in the cuticle. Earlier, during my studies of the hallway carpet, I found that same tiny piece, stained with a spot of fresh blood-broken off, of course, when she stabbed her husband. Quod erat demonstrandum.”

Penelope Costain said, “There’s no proof of any of this.”

“Ah, but there is. When Inspector Kleinhoffer consults with Sergeant Mahoney and the officers who were stationed outside your home on that fateful night, I have no doubt that all will swear an oath that no conveyance arrived and no one entered the house through the front or rear doors. As for the missing jewelry and coins, and the murder weapon…” He shifted his gaze to Kleinhoffer. “You’ll find them where she hid them, Inspector-in a bag of sugar on a shelf in the pantry nook.”

“What makes you so sure they’re still there? She might’ve moved them after she caught you poking around the house.”

“She would have no reason to move them,” Holmes said. “Surely she examined the pantry room and the sugar sack afterward, but I was quite careful to leave everything exactly as I found it. Her natural conclusion was that I failed to discover the room in my, ah, pokings and thus it was still a safe hiding place.”

A weaker woman would have crumbled at this point. But not Penelope Costain; her glacial calm and her bravado remained intact. She said flatly, “Even if my jewelry and the murder weapon are where you say they are, I deny putting them there just as I deny your other accusations. None of what you claim to be evidence is sufficient to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that I’m guilty.”

Sabina took that statement as her cue. John and the Englishman had had their moments in the limelight; now it was her turn. She cleared her throat, rose to her feet, and said in an excellent imitation of one of John’s dramatic pronouncements, “No, Mrs. Costain, but I can prove beyond any doubt that you’re guilty of the other murder you committed.”

Once again there were exclamations from Pollard, Kleinhoffer, and Dr. Axminster. John merely stared at her.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Penelope Costain said.

“Of course you do. Clara Wilds, your first victim.”

“I don’t know anyone named Clara Wilds.”

“A pickpocket, among other things,” Sabina said for the benefit of the others in the room. She glanced at John as she spoke. He seemed somewhat subdued now, broodingly so, but to his credit he made no attempt to interfere. Nor did Holmes, who appeared a bit miffed that a woman had taken his place center stage, but who nonetheless stood regarding her with full attention. “The woman who robbed your husband a few evenings ago.”

“Why on earth would I want to murder a common thief?”

“Because you were desperate to recover an item she lifted from him.”

“That’s ridiculous. Andrew’s silver money clip, in which he carried very little cash? You yourself returned it to me yesterday.”

“Not the money clip. An item even more valuable to a woman who was an extortionist before she became a pickpocket. A leather-bound notebook that resembled a billfold and contained incriminating information about your scheme to defraud Great Western Insurance.”

The last statement was a guess, but a calculated one-the only credible explanation based on the evidence Sabina possessed. The way in which Penelope Costain twitched in her chair, her lips thinning back against her teeth, confirmed that it was the correct one.

“Your husband was an habitual chronicler of his personal and professional life, wasn’t he? Names, dates, events, gambling debts-and future plans. You must have been furious with him when he told you he’d committed the details of your scheme to paper and that the notebook had been stolen. And even more furious when you learned Clara Wilds had read his notes and acted on the blackmail opportunity by contacting your husband and demanding one thousand dollars for the notebook’s return-the sum he withdrew in cash from his bank shortly before Wilds was killed.”

The Costain woman said nothing, her pointy eyes piercing Sabina like stilettos. Or hatpins.

“You were afraid that Clara Wilds would continue to bleed you if you went through with the insurance fraud and your plan to kill your husband. That might even have been her intention from the start, by holding back some of the incriminating pages. So it was imperative that she be stopped and the entire notebook recovered immediately.

“Clara Wilds was too clever to meet your husband anywhere but in a public place, which left you with only one alternative. Once the time and place of the meeting were arranged, you drove a buggy there early, dressed in the same man’s clothing you later wore to impersonate the burglar, and waited until the blackmail exchange was completed. Then you followed Wilds to her lodging house near Washington Square. You left the rig in the carriageway behind the house while you killed Wilds, regained the thousand dollars, and searched her rooms until you found the notebook. One of the neighbors noticed the parked buggy, as did another witness when you left the area-”

“It wasn’t my buggy! No one can swear it was!”

“No, not your Studebaker-you’re too clever to have used your own equipage. A Concord you rented for the purpose.”

“That’s a lie. I did no such thing.” She pointed a finger at Sabina as if she were aiming a pistol. “Can your witnesses describe the driver? State with certainty that it wasn’t a man? I doubt it. Anyone could have driven the buggy-anyone could have stabbed the woman.”

“How did you know she was stabbed?”

“What? Why … you said so…”

“No, I didn’t. I said only that she was murdered.”

“I … I assumed it, that’s all. All that talk about Andrew being stabbed with a stiletto…”

“Clara Wilds was stabbed with her own hatpin, not a stiletto-the very same hatpin she jabbed into your husband when she picked his pocket. A woman’s weapon as well, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Holmes?”

“Without question,” he said approvingly. “Splendid detective work, my dear Mrs. Carpenter. Capital!”

Penelope Costain stamped her foot. “How do you know so much unless you were there in her rooms? You could have killed her!”

“I had no reason to,” Sabina said. “You did.”

“You can’t prove it in a court of law, any more than these two so-called detectives”-she glared at John and the Englishman in turn-“can prove I killed my husband.”

“Oh, yes-beyond any doubt, as I said earlier. For two reasons. One is the rented buggy. This morning I visited half a dozen stables in the downtown and South Park areas until I located the one you patronized. The hostler looked closely at you because he thought it was odd that an attractive woman should be wearing man’s clothing. He can identify you. As for the second and most damning reason-”

Sabina shifted her attention to Dr. Axminster, who was in the process of eating another horehound drop. “I understand Mrs. Costain had an appointment with you yesterday, Doctor.”

Axminster blinked, swallowed, and cleared his throat. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“For what reason?”

“To request a prescription for laudanum. Her husband’s death had made her quite anxious, she said.”

“A strong enough dosage that could also be used for the relief of severe pain?”

“Why, yes. She specifically asked for the maximum strength.”

“I thought as much. When I spoke to Mrs. Costain at her home yesterday, the pupils of her eyes were as small as arrow points. As they are now and have been since her arrival here. One of the primary ingredients of laudanum, as we all know, is opium, a drug which constricts the pupils of the eyes when taken in a moderately large dosage.”

Sabina turned again to Penelope Costain. “Clara Wilds struggled with her attacker before she died, and in that struggle she marked the person-deeply, judging from the amount of blood, skin, and hair under her fingernails. Brown, curly hair of the sort found at the nape of the neck. Yesterday at your home you were wearing a high-collared taffeta dress-an odd choice for a mourning garment-and you held your head at a careful angle the entire time, wincing now and then when you moved, as a woman does when a collar chafes at a painful wound. Would you mind undoing the high collar of the dress you’re wearing today, Mrs. Costain?”

“No! I won’t!”

“Would you like me to do it? If not, Inspector Kleinhoffer can summon a police matron.”

Penelope Costain raised a hand to the left side of her neck, an involuntary gesture that produced a grimace of pain when she touched it. Her calm and her bluster deserted her, and her expression turned frantic. She bounced to her feet and made a panicked attempt to flee-straight into Inspector Kleinhoffer’s waiting arms.