Ellery Queen's Eyewitnesses Page 16

  We went down the hotel stairs at a run.

  “There’s not much doubt where Koslov’s going,” Raffles said, as we emerged from the hotel. He hailed the first cab that hove in view and asked the cabbie if he knew where Thamescourt Street was.

  “I works out of a yard just around the corner from it,” said the cabbie. “It’s out by the docks—North Quay.”

  “Drop us at your yard, and there’s a fiver for you if you ginger your nag up,” Raffles said, adding grimly, as we jingled off in the hansom, “Koslov the dancer has about five minutes’ start on us, Bunny, and in the mood he’s in he’s capable of anything!”

  It was quite a long ride out to the maze of dark, depressing streets of the dockland slums, where the cabbie reined his horse at last to a standstill outside a yard where hansoms and four-wheelers stood around haphazard with upflung shafts.

  RAFFLES AND THE UNIQUE BEQUEST 125

  “Thankee, guv’,” said the cabbie, as Raffles tipped him. “Thames-court Street’s a ’undred yards on down—first turn to yer right—you can’t mistake it, there’s a bleedin’ church on the corner. Us ’ackies often gives the priest a free lift when ’e goes up west, Drury Lane way, wiv ‘is basket of an evenin’.”

  Walking on quickly, we turned to the right, around the railings of the corner churchyard. The stifling midnight air reeked of tidal flotsam. A silent flash of heat lightning momentarily illumined the modest spire of the old stone church. Its lychgate faced, across the narrow street, the endless, smoke-blackened brick wall of a riverside warehouse. Fifty yards or so beyond the church stood a stationary four-wheeler cab, its back to us.

  “Koslov’s cab,” Raffles said. “It’s standing in front of a house—almost certainly the priest’s house. There’s a lighted ground-floor window at the side of the house. That’s probably the priest’s study. Let’s see if we can make our way to it through the churchyard and get a look in at what’s happening.”

  The lychgate creaked slightly as Raffles opened it. Our eyes on that square of lighted window, we groped towards it through the churchyard of gravestones, tomb-slabs, weeds, laurel bushes. A ship’s siren bayed distantly. The church clock sounded a single mellow chime. Heat lightning, silent, flashed again over the sky. Raffles jerked me down, crouching, into the shelter of a laurel bush. We were within a few yards of the wide-open window, could see right into the gaslit, book-lined room.

  “The answer to your questions is affirmative, Mr. Koslov,” the priest was saying. His voice clearly audible to us, he was standing, cassocked but hatless now, a slightly rustic figure with his round, ruddy face, behind a desk on which a breviary lay open with a rosary on it. “I didn’t, as it happened, officiate at my late parishioner’s marriage to Lydia, the young dancer of the Royal Nevsky corps-de-ballet. But yes, I knew the man reasonably well. And yes, I’m fully aware of the terms of his bequest to her.”

  “Bequest?” Koslov said harshly. Trim, well knit, capped, and ulstered, his handsome face white to the lips with anger, he stood facing the priest across the flat-topped desk. “Seven hundred and thirty calculated slaps of her face, that was the rejected man’s bequest to Lydia! And now this—these words on this paper! You knew the man. Do you know, then, the motive for this message from his grave? I insist that you answer!”

  “Certainly,” said the priest.

  He ignored the half sheet of notepaper held out to him by Koslov. The priest’s student in theology, the bushy-haired, Porthos-like poet, stick hooked on his arm, ribboned eyeglasses held to his eyes, towered cloaked and huge over both the priest and the dancer and looked thoughtfully from one to the other.

  “I’ve never had the pleasure,” the priest was continuing, “of meeting the young ballerina who’s now your wife, Mr. Koslov. But you must be aware, or you would not be here questioning me, that there came forward this evening a charming claimant to the last—the very last—of the bequest dinners.”

  “I learned of this—this claimant,” Koslov said angrily, “when I arrived in London this evening!”

  “You know, of course,” said the priest, “that she was a false claimant. But when she was sent on to me from Eighty-Eight, as I’d instructed should be done, I had an open mind about her, though I needed to be quite sure that she was indeed Lydia. I couldn’t test the claimant’s knowledge of Russian, my own linguistic range being more or less limited to liturgical Latin. Nor did I consider it altogether politic to invite the claimant to prove herself a ballerina by performing here in my study, before my friend and myself.”

  “The conventions,” said the large poet regretfully, “rob me of many simple pleasures.”

  “But I knew, Mr. Koslov,” continued the priest, ignoring the interjection, “that the real Lydia is an incorrigible gambler, with a particular passion for roulette. So my friend and I engaged the claimant in a conversation about that costly pastime.”

  “Of which her knowledge,” said the poet, “proved suspiciously flimsy.”

  “Poor Dinah,” Raffles whispered in my ear, “she lacks worldly experience.”

  “Now, Mr. Koslov,” the priest was saying, “many people know of the bequest dinners. There’s always been a possibility that some mischievous young woman might think it quite a lark to present herself at Eighty-Eight one night as the missing ballerina, and eat the late gourmet’s mysterious dinner. I’ve long been prepared for such a possibility. True, the claimant who presented herself here this evening failed the roulette test. But it was not conclusive. There remained a slight chance that she might nevertheless be the real Lydia. I therefore put the claimant to a further test. I gave her a small package. I’d prepared it nearly two years ago—placing a message on it.”

  The priest’s voice rang suddenly loud and clear from the gaslit study.

  “‘I will make darkness light before you, and crooked things straight.’ Are there not, in those eleven words from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah,” said the priest, “both a promise and a warning?”

  “A paradox!” exclaimed his huge student in theology.

  “Paradox, Gilbert, is in the eye of the beholder,” said the priest. “That is the point. If the claimant were genuine, would she not read the promise implicit in the first seven words of that message? Would she not be likely to come back here and ask me if I could explain why my late parishioner, the gourmet, had sent her such a promise?”

  Heat lightning flashed silently, blinding bright over the churchyard.

  “On the other hand,” I heard the priest saying, “if the claimant were false, would she not read the warning implicit in the last four words of that message? Would she not wonder, pondering uneasily on the word ‘crooked,’ if her imposture had been detected? And wouldn’t she, therefore, take very good care not to come back here?”

  “So this,” said the cloaked poet, “is why you said to me, ‘Wait a while, Gilbert, let’s see if she returns.’ Father, you are a subtle man!”

  “Not I,” said the priest, “but Isaiah. I am merely surprised—for the message has brought the unexpected.” He looked at Koslov the dancer. “It’s brought you, Mr. Koslov. And you’ve adequately identified yourself as Lydia’s husband. I accept that. You imply a right to speak on her behalf. Very well, I accept that, too. But, Mr. Koslov, you’ve come a little late.”

  Koslov said, with icy anger, “What do you mean by that?”

  “In terms of the gourmet’s bequest,” said the priest, “I was entrusted with a small package which I was to give to Lydia if, in consequence of her availing herself of any one of the dinners served for her nightly at Eighty-Eight, she should appear before me. The last of the bequest dinners was served for her at table twelve this evening. As you are well aware, Lydia did not eat that dinner. And at midnight tonight the bequest, as far as Lydia is concerned, became null and void.”

  In the gaslit study the priest opened a drawer in his desk. He took out a small, brown paper package tied with string, the knot sealed with blue wax.

  “The late gourmet’
s alternative instructions regarding this package,” said the priest, “became applicable as from midnight. Just now, the clock of my church chimed. The clock is accurate by the chronometers of Greenwich, just across the Thames there. The chime you heard, Mr. Koslov, marked the quarter after midnight.”

  “For two years,” Koslov said tautly, “her first husband’s damnable bequest has haunted Lydia’s imagination. I am determined to exorcise his ghost from her life—and from mine!”

  “Exorcism, Mr. Koslov,” said the huge poet, “is a matter for an ordained priest.”

  But Koslov, ignoring the poet, said harshly to the priest, “Open that package!”

  “You cannot,” the priest said mildly, “demand that as a right, Mr. Koslov—although—”

  “This is my right!” said Koslov, and suddenly, in his hand, was a small revolver.

  Involuntarily, Raffles and I started half up from our crouch among the laurels, but there in the gaslit study a swordblade flashed from the walking-stick of Porthos the poet and he would have struck violently at the leveled revolver had not the priest’s shout of “Stop!” rung out with an authority that held both poet and dancer momentarily immobile.

  “Gilbert,” the priest said, “sheathe your romantic sword. Your pen becomes you better. Mr. Koslov, put away your firearm. These wild gestures are quite uncalled for. You cannot demand, as a right, that I open this package, Mr. Koslov, although—as I was about to say when I was so immoderately interrupted—I have no objection whatever to opening it. In fact, the late gourmet’s instructions entitle me—since midnight—to do precisely that.”

  Raffles’ grip on my arm had drawn me down again and my heart was thumping as I saw the priest don a pair of small-lensed, steel-rimmed spectacles and take from a drawer of his desk a pair of scissors.

  “Mr. Koslov,” he said, “while I’m opening this package, let me ask you a question. What is your wife’s favorite flower?”

  “Camellias,” said the dancer, perplexed.

  “And when a man uses a woman’s favorite flower to speak to her for him,” said the priest, “what is he probably trying to tell her?”

  Koslov did not answer.

  “By the expressed desire of the testator,” said the priest, looking over his lenses at Koslov, “camellias have appeared nightly on the table reserved for Lydia.”

  Koslov stood rigid.

  “In hearing confessions,” said the priest, “one comes to realize that almost every human action of seeming irrationality is prompted by confused motives. Lydia deserted her first husband, and his dinner bequest to her was the act of an emotionally disturbed man. We can’t know all that he felt of bitterness, regret, self-blame—for he was more than twice her age, yet had rushed her into marriage—but no doubt something of all this is implicit in his bequest. Yet, surely, the camellias on table twelve cry aloud the strongest of his motives—his very real concern for her, believing as he did that her passion for gambling would soon so reduce her circumstances that a time would come when she would be glad to eat the dinner she had scorned.”

  Raffles’ grip was iron-hard on my arm as we saw the priest, unwrapping the package, disclose a small cardboard box.

  “And if that time should indeed come,” the priest continued, “then it might well be that Lydia would have learned the folly of her gambling and would be grateful, at last, not only for the dinner, but for something else she had scorned to accept from him that now might provide her with the means to make a fresh start.”

  Lifting the lid from the box, the priest removed from it a wad of cotton-wool, then took out and laid on his desk a gold bracelet set with gems, a necklace of sapphires, a pair of diamond earrings.

  “When she left him, she left behind not only his dinner, but these, his other gifts to her. Mr. Koslov, Lydia took nothing from her first husband—nothing,” the priest said quietly, “but his heart.”

  Mellowly, the clock of the adjoining church chimed twice.

  “At midnight,” said the priest, “the disposal of these articles became a matter for my discretion. I could use the proceeds of them to help subsidize a soup kitchen and night refuge for the needy of many nationalities who teem in this polyglot dockside parish. But these jewels were originally gifts to Lydia. I therefore, in the spirit if not in the letter of the gourmet’s bequest, exercise my discretion when I say to you now, Mr. Koslov—take them to her.”

  “Never!” said Igor Koslov. “Even if she would accept them, which is unthinkable, she would merely gamble them away! No, no! One experience of hunger has no more cured Lydia of gambling than ruin at the card tables of Homburg Spa and exile to the tundras of Siberia cured our great Russian novelist Dostoievski! It’s in the blood.”

  He drew in his breath, deeply.

  “For me,” he said to the priest, “you have exorcised the ghost of Lydia’s first husband. But—for Lydia herself? I wonder! Father, what should I tell her?”

  “As a celibate,” said the priest, with a smile, “I am no more an authority on the feminine mind than the late gourmet seems to have been when he imagined there was anything on earth that could make a woman eat a dinner she had set her mind against. So I can only say to you, Mr. Koslov, tell Lydia what your heart tells you to tell her.”

  “Sound advice, Mr. Koslov,” said the priest’s companion, the huge, cloaked poet. “By the way, if you’re going in the West End direction, may I share your cab? I’d like to hear more about the novelist Dostoievski you mentioned. I don’t think his works have been translated into English yet.”

  “I’ll see you out, gentlemen,” said the priest.

  The two theologians and Koslov left the study. In the book-lined room, now unoccupied, the jewels on the priest’s deck glittered invitingly in the gaslight. The window stood wide open. To have nipped into the room, seized the jewels, and slipped away unseen through the churchyard would have been so easy that, knowing Raffles’ intention of amassing a dowry for his young sister Dinah, I was seized by a terrible surmise. My heart pounded and the hair stirred on my scalp, as I peered at his keen profile here in the darkling shrubbery.

  But I should have known him better.

  “No, Bunny,” he muttered, as though he had sensed my fear, “theft has its limits. Those jewels are not for us. They’re strictly the priest’s swag now—the last of the manna.”

  His grip tightened on my arm.

  “Listen!” he said.

  Out of sight at the front door of the house, the theologians were talking. Their voices were clearly audible.

  “You know, Father,” I heard his friend Chesterton saying, “I feel in my bones that one day I shall write about a priest-detective. I shall base the character on what I know of you and on things I’ve learned from you.”

  “Go home,” said the priest. “That poor cabbie’s been waiting a long time. Goodnight, Mr. Koslov. Goodnight, Gilbert.”

  “Goodnight, Father O’Connor,” said the poet.

  I heard the cab rumble away. The hoofbeats of the horse, receding, echoed from the bleak warehouse walls of Thamescourt Street. I heard the front door of the priest’s house close.

  He came slowly into his study. He was taking off his spectacles.

  His expression thoughtful, he put them into their case and pocketed it under his cassock.

  Thunder clapped across the midnight sky. Raindrops began to tap on the leaves of the laurels. The priest came to the window, stood for a moment looking out, then closed and latched it and drew together the curtains, shutting in the light and the sparkle of the dead man’s jewels.

  “Let’s go, Bunny,” said Raffles.

  As we stole away empty-handed through the churchyard, a tugboat hooted vibrantly, not far off, surging down London river on the tide.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Mr. Manders’ narrative, found recently among his clandestine records of criminal experience, inevitably raises the question of his credibility factor. In this connection, the following points, established by latter-day resear
ch, may perhaps be of interest:

  Mr. G. K. Chesterton did indeed state, when later he wrote his great series of tales of a priest-detective, that he had based the character on certain attributes of his friend, the late Father O’Connor.

  Biographers of Mr. Chesterton are agreed that for many years he carried a swordstick. He is known to have set great store by it, though research has failed to discover any occasion—other than that allegedly observed by Mr. Manders—when the blade was bared in anger.

  Mr. Manders mentions in his narrative a promise made by Mr. Chesterton to write nothing about the affair of the gourmet’s bequest. Possibly corroborative of Mr. Manders’ account of the matter is the fact that there is no mention whatever of it in Mr. Chesterton’s monumental and most enduring literary achievement, The Father Brown Stories.

  John Lutz

  Something Like Murder

  I was leaning slightly from my fifteenth-floor window in the Norwood Arms watering my geraniums when Mrs. Vixton passed by wearing a pink flower-print kimono of shimmering silk. She passed by vertically, you understand, not horizontally, which would have been much more conducive to her health, though not nearly so remarkable.

  She saw me, I believe, though to her I was of only passing interest. Still, I’m sure I saw a slight inclination of her head in my direction. Whatever else might be said of Mrs. Vixton, she was never a snob. She was descending face down, her arms spread incredibly wide, a frozen, determined expression on her face, as if she might yet have time to catch the knack of flying. Startled, I overwatered the geraniums. I didn’t look down; there was no doubt of the outcome.

  My name, incidentally, is Cy Cryptic. Not my real name, of course. I’m a movie reviewer for one of the larger papers here in town, and Cy Cryptic sounds and looks more like show biz than Marvin Haupt.

  I’d have forgotten completely about Mrs. Vixton’s death, except that cinematically it might have been effective, when a week later in the lobby I overheard a chance remark between Mrs. Fattier of the third floor and Gates the doorman.