"This is most interesting," he said.
"I don't see anything unusual."
"Exactly. The lock is in perfect working order. No wear or scratches outside of normal key operation. If this lock had been picked, we would see scratches in the soft
brass here on the fittings and lockplates. They are perfectly clean."
"Meaning it hasn't been picked."
"It has not."
"What about that locksmith, Mr. Featherstone? He must have picked the lock the other night."
"No, Mr. Featherstone used his master skeleton. He's the one who installed the lock in the first place." He refastened the lockplate.
"Where does that leave us?"
"It means we are looking for some other means of entering the room." He walked to the fireplace and stuck his head up the massive chimney. "Too narrow," he said. He walked to the edge of the elaborate Oriental rug and dropped to his knees. "Help me with this, will you?"
"Praying for inspiration?"
"I want to roll this carpet back and see if there's a trap door beneath."
I joined him on the floor and we took up some twelve feet of rug. "Just as a point of interest, Harry," I said, waving away a cloud of dust, "why would anyone have a trap door in his study, apart from making life easier for a potential murderer?"
"Mr. Wintour had this house built himself," Harry said, "to his own specifications. He strikes me as a man who might have wished to slip out of the house occasionally, without his wife's knowledge."
I had to agree that this was not entirely out of the question. Harry and I crawled over the oak flooring on our hands and knees, pulling and prying wherever there seemed to be a loose joint or an ill-fitting board. When this yielded no results, we began moving pieces of furniture and some of the statuary for spots we had missed.
Harry crawled beneath the oblong platform that held the model train set, while I wriggled under the marble-inlay desk where Wintour had died. We finished by tapping at the marble tiles surrounding the fireplace.
"No trap door," I said at length.
"It would seem not."
"What's next?"
"The walls, of course. If there's no trap door, surely there must be a sliding panel!" He began rapping at the back of the fireplace. "Check behind the tapestry," he called over his shoulder. "There has to be a reason why that entire wall is covered."
I walked to the corner of the room and carefully burrowed behind the hanging tapestry. It felt heavy and stifling, and I moved carefully for fear of pulling the entire thing down on top of me. I spent perhaps fifteen minutes making a slow progress from one end to the other, checking the bare wall for any suspicious-looking cracks or seams. It appeared to be entirely solid.
When I finally emerged, I found Harry sprawled on one of the arm chairs. "Give up?" I asked.
He was staring at the tall bookshelves which I had so admired on our first visit to the Wintour mansion. They gave the dead man's study a leathery opulence that I associated with the ruling families of Europe. Every time I looked at them, I imagined myself reclining in one of the stuffed chairs in my dressing gown, a snifter of fine cognac in one hand, perusing one of my custom-bound first editions.
"Dash? Are you paying attention?"
I looked away from the books. "Sure."
"You notice the doors on the bookcases?"
"Of course." Each case was fitted with a latch-frame
door. Instead of glass panels in the frames, there was an open lattice-work of hammered brass.
"It strikes me that the doors may have been designed to conceal an entry way of some sort," Harry explained, "but I have examined each one and can find nothing. The cases themselves are firmly anchored to the floor and ceiling, and there is no sign of a sliding mechanism of any description." He looked over at me. "Dash? You seem most distracted."
"I'm just admiring the books, Harry. I suppose I'm wondering how long it would take to read them all."
Harry lifted his head, as if seeing the books for the first time, rather than the shelves. "I have read some of them," he said, gesturing at one of the cases. "Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. A fine book." He peered intently. "The Master of Ballantrae, also by Mr. Stevenson. I have not read that one. Perhaps I shall."
I squinted at the shelves. "Can you really read those titles from here?"
"Of course! Can't you? Our friend at the ten-in-one is not the only one with telescope eyes." He pointed to a row of books near the ceiling. "There is a complete set of Shakespeare. The green volume on the shelf below is Thackeray's Henry Esmond. Next to it is Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott."
"Hold it," I said. "Harry, I know perfectly well how the 'human telescope' act is done. You memorized those titles while I was flailing away under the wall hanging. Now you're trying to impress me by calling them off as if you're reading them with your telescope eyes. I'm not some boardwalk mark, Harry."
He folded his arms, grinning widely. "You do not believe me?"
"No, Harry. No one has eyes that sharp. Not even you."
"Try me."
I walked to the case and pointed to a leather spine. "What's this?"
"Tristram Shandy," he answered.
"Lucky guess. This?"
"The Vicar of Wakefield."
"This one?"
"The Peregrine Pickle. Perhaps you need spectacles, Dash, you really should be-all right. That one is Clarissa Harlowe, by Samuel Richardson. There is Martin Chuzzlewit. That one is Guy Mannering. That one is…" His voice trailed off. "Extraordinary," he said.
"I should say so. You have the eyes of a hawk."
"No, not that." He stood up and joined me at the center bookshelf. "Guy Mannering," he said, pulling the volume off the shelf. "By Sir Walter Scott."
"Yes, looks as if there's a complete set of Scott here."
"But that belongs over here." He walked to a row of shelves at the other side of the case and threw open the latticework doors. "I saw a copy of Ivanhoe on this shelf. I wonder if-yes! Two sets of Scott! Two copies of Ivanhoe\ Two copies of Guy Mannering!"
"Harry, books are just another form of property to a man like Wintour. He probably bought the second set as an investment. Or as part of a collection. How many copies of Discoverie of Witchcraft do you have?''
"No, Dash. Look-this second set is very high off the ground, so as to discourage the casual browser. Only Houdini, with his sharp eyes and uncanny powers of observation, would even have noticed it." He darted to the corner of the room and seized a rolling library ladder. "Do you not see, Dash? This second set of Scott novels is a mere facade. We are certain to discover that the spine of each volume has been sliced from its binding and fastened together to form a false layer. We often see illusions of this sort in our profession. It appears to be a row of books, but in reality it is a hiding place!"
Harry climbed to the top of the ladder and reached for the suspect volumes. "Behold! Now we shall see what is hidden behind these shelves!"
Harry gave a sharp tug, expecting to uncover a spring-panel, trip-switch, or some other means of concealment. Instead, an entire set of the collected works of Sir Walter Scott cascaded onto the floor. I believe The Bride of Lammermoor hit him on the head. At the top of the ladder, Harry stared at the now-empty shelf in disbelief. "Is it possible?" he asked. "Can it really be perfectly innocent? I simply cannot credit it. Why should the man have two sets of Scott if one of them is not concealing a passageway or a secret compartment?"