“Rather impressive for our first colloquium, eh, Jefferson?”
I whirled around, nearly spilling my coffee, just in time to see my brother-in-law bite into a pastry with some sort of white filling that oozed out of both sides of his mouth.
“That wasn’t really the word I had in mind,” I said.
I was spared elaboration by the arrival of Al Kane, who appeared behind Mac looking like a hung-over CPA. He must have made a few too many assaults on the liquid provisions at Mac’s house last night. His mustache was crooked, the evident result of an unsteady hand with the razor, and his breath smelled like cigarettes.
“I hear somebody made a big score yesterday,” he rasped.
“You refer, of course, to the raid on the Chalmers Collection?” Mac said. We hadn’t mentioned it last night upon sneaking back into his house because Mac didn’t want to put a damper on what remained of the party.
Kane nodded. “Sure.”
“Is everybody talking about it already?” I asked, exasperated.
“Everyone,” Mac assured me happily.
Great.
“It’s in the Erin newspaper this morning,” Dr. Queensbury said unnecessarily, joining us. “‘The press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if only you know how to use it.’ - ‘The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.’ It is rather exciting, don’t you think? A real Sherlock Holmes mystery.”
Queensbury had “BSI” after his name on the colloquium program, the same as Mac, meaning that he was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars. That’s a big deal for American Sherlockians, and maybe why he felt compelled to quote the Sacred Writings of the cult. At least the “BS” part fits.
I looked around, straining my eyeballs for a familiar face. Surely the Observer would send somebody to follow up on Ben’s story, probably Maggie Barton. The old gal covers the college most of the time, except for the occasional campus crime story that went to Ben Silverstein, and she’d written a couple of advance stories about the colloquium and the donation of the Chalmers Collection. But I didn’t catch a glimpse of her.
“Certainly this is a prime opportunity for a display of Sherlockian deduction,” Mac said. “Or induction, to be accurate but uncanonical.”
Al Kane snorted. “Play Holmes, you mean? Solve the crime like an amateur sleuth in some book? Forget it, Mac. It’s never happened and it never will. Put the whole lot of you against one professional police officer with a crime lab behind him and it’s no contest.”
“He’s right, you know,” I said for the benefit of Mac and Queensbury and a few others hanging at the periphery of the conversation. “Maybe Max Cutter or Red Maddox could use force to find out a few things the cops can’t because the boys in blue are hemmed in by Miranda rules and the rights of criminals. But a modern-day Sherlock Holmes just wouldn’t cut it.”
“Cynics,” Mac said.
“Okay, then,” Kane said, “just how would you use Sherlockian methods to solve this adventure of the rare book thefts?”
“Holmes would never be called in,” Queensbury asserted, not waiting for Mac to answer. “The case isn’t unusual enough. No red-headed league, no apparent madman destroying statues of Napoleon, no mysterious speckled band-”
“That,” said Mac, “begs the issue. The real question is, what are the methods of Sherlock Holmes? Holmes always observed the trifles, of course, and deduced - or induced - from them. He also employed street urchins, special knowledge, instinct, logic, legwork, disguise, burglary, subterfuge, process of elimination, science, dogs, advertising, analogy to similar cases and - oh, yes - prodigious amounts of tobacco.”
He pulled out a cigar. “Personally, I intend to rely heavily upon the latter.”
“You intend?” With dismay I heard my own voice came out as an incredulous screech.
“Of course, Jefferson. It can hardly have escaped you that I intend to solve this case. I will, of course, use Damon Devlin’s techniques as well as those of Sherlock Holmes.”
He snapped his fingers, creating a flame he used to light his cigar seemingly right off his fingertips. It was just the sort of stunt his damned magician-sleuth was always pulling in Mac’s books. How long, I wondered, had he waited for just the right moment to do that?
“Are you serious?” Kane asked before I could lodge a protest that this was a non-smoking public building (not that he really intended to smoke - he was just showing off).
“Why should I be otherwise?” Mac asked. “If I can create fictional mysteries in such abundance, surely I can solve a real one. You well know that mysteries, whether physical or metaphysical, are my métier, my forte, my meat and-”
“Yeah, yeah,” I agreed, shutting off the Roget’s Thesaurus monologue. “But I still say my Max Cutter could beat the pants off Sherlock Holmes.”
“We shall see,” Mac said, eyeing his Sherlock Holmes watch. “Not at the moment, however. The time has come to begin the colloquium.”
He moved like a cruise liner toward the front of the room while I seated myself on a couch near the rear, with Kane next to me. Kane pointed toward Chalmers, who was taking a chair in the front row, the radiant Renata at his side.
“If this were my book, he’d be my man,” Kane confided in a low voice.
“You mean the old insurance scam?” I said. “That wouldn’t work - he’s already signed over the whole collection to St. Benignus. You can’t insure something you don’t own anymore.”
“That’s not what I had in mind, Cody. Look, Chalmers picked up a sweet tax deduction by donating all that stuff to your college. But suppose he realized afterward there were a few precious items he just couldn’t live without. He could have stolen them back to gloat over in private. Best of all possible worlds for him - tax deduction and he still keeps the books. That’s how Red Maddox would figure it, anyway.”
This wasn’t a Red Maddox mystery story by a long shot.
But that didn’t mean Red’s creator wasn’t on to something.
Chapter Seven - “We Have to Talk”
I stared at Chalmers for a while, musing over Kane’s idea. Then my eyes slid over and I was looking at his wife. It was hard not to. She was dressed in a gray pinstriped double-breasted suit, pants included, and a white blouse. The outfit could have been stolen from Al Capone. I don’t know whether it was out of style or so old it was new again, but she certainly filled it out nicely. Her black hair was gathered behind her head in a simple red ribbon.
“I see Renata’s charms aren’t lost on you,” came a feminine whisper in my ear.
I gave a guilty start and turned around to see my sister, Kate, sitting in a chair next to the couch I occupied. Just like her to sneak up on me like that.
“I was looking at her leather handbag,” I lied. “Look at how big that baby is. I’ve seen suitcases smaller.”
“R-i-g-h-t. That lady is strong medicine. Better watch yourself, T.J.”
“I’d rather watch her.”
Actually, I’m old enough to have figured out a long time ago that it’s not a good idea to covet thy neighbor’s wife - or anybody else’s. I’d seen too many people lose too much that way. I was a free agent, not by choice, but Mrs. Chalmers wasn’t. I didn’t give Big Sister the satisfaction of verbalizing that to her, however.
“Tell me about her,” I said. “Who is she, besides Mrs. Woollcott Chalmers?”
“She’s a very smart lady, and very talented - a classical violinist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She also runs an arts center, which is where she met Woollcott. He was a board member and a widower.”
“Did he pursue her or did she pursue him?” Idle curiosity.
“Shhhh,” said Kate, the person who had initiated the whole conversation. Mac was at the lectern now, in his element. Except for his beard, he looked almost Churchillian: stout, a few inches below my height, dressed in a tweed suit and bow tie, master of all he surveyed. He winked at my sister, put on his glasses to read his notes, and bellowed: