The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries Page 5

  When Hathaway had rung, Lewis had only just got back from hearing Papadopoulos conducting the Oxford Philomusica at the Sheldonian. He felt pleasingly tired, and would have welcomed an earlyish night. But he knew he would have little chance of sleep with Hathaway’s clever findings topmost in his mind, and with the idea that had begun to dawn on him that morning still undeveloped and unexamined. Unusually for him, he was aware of a strongly competitive urge to come up with something that could complement his sergeant’s discovery. But who was that one crook on the committee? One of the four – or perhaps one of the three – for he (like Hathaway) felt prepared to pass over the President.

  Think, Lewis! Think!

  How would Morse have looked at the letter? Probably looked at it the wrong way round, say? How do you do that, though? Read it back to front? Ridiculous. Read the PS before the salutation? But where had he read the PS’s “what I tell you three times is true” before? From Lewis Carroll, wasn’t it? He located the words immediately in The Oxford Book of Quotations, from “The Hunting of the Snark”. So what? What had that got to do with anything? Just a minute. Three suspects . . . but Keating hadn’t mentioned any single one of the suspects three times. He hadn’t mentioned anything three times.

  Or had he?

  Well, even if he had, it was past midnight, and he was walking up the stairs when he remembered what Hathaway had said about punctuation. Morse had once told him that Oscar Wilde had spent two hours one morning looking through one of his poems before removing a comma; and then spent a further two hours the same afternoon before deciding to re-instate the said comma. And after standing motionless on the third step from the top of the staircase, Lewis finally retraced his steps downstairs and looked at the letter for the umpteenth time, now paying no attention whatsoever to what things were being said, but how they were being said.

  And suddenly, in a flash, eureka.

  Thank you, Hathaway! Thank you, Morse!

  Lewis took a can of beer from the fridge and drank it before finally completing his ascent of the staircase. Hathaway may have fallen asleep that night with a look of deep satisfaction on his face, but with Lewis it was one bordering on the beatific.

  It was three days after the aforementioned events that Mr HRF Keating received a letter at his London address with the envelope marked “Thames Valley Police HQ, Kidlington, Oxon”.

  13 April 2006

  Dear Mr Keating,

  I write to thank you for your letter of 10 April 2006. You asked for my help.

  Between us, my sergeant and I finally fathomed the anagrammatized names of the committee quorum; and leaving aside yourself, and giving the benefit of the doubt to your successor as President, we were left with three names from the list you gave us: Messrs Barnard, Hill, Lovesey. The clues were there and we spotted them. But this didn’t get us very far. Which of the three men was it?

  It was more difficult for us to spot the vital clue, but in reality you had made it quite complex. The three names we had, as well as the President’s, were each signposted by two items of punctuation: the long em dash and the exclamation mark. It was cleverly done. But we were a bit slow to notice the full implication of this. These two punctuation marks were each used, always closely together, not four times, but seven times, and used nowhere else in your letter. Why had our suspect-list suddenly grown so much longer? The reason eventually became clear. The name of the perpetrator of the “crime” was not included in the list of club-members. But there he was, three times: “frank—eight”; “King-Father”; “thing—faker”, and each of the three is a perfect anagram of the man responsible for the alleged theft of the chequebook: a man, as I say, who was not listed among the suspects. A man named HRF Keating. You, sir!

  Only one problem remains, a more difficult one than that posed by your letter. Why on earth did you go in for all that rigmarole? What was the point of it? If, as we suspect, it was for sheer amusement, please remember that irresponsible wasting of police time is liable to be interpreted as a crime, and as such be liable for prosecution.

  Please satisfy our curiosity about your motive, although we trust that your reply can be rather shorter than your original communication.

  Yours sincerely,

  R Lewis (Detective Inspector)

  16 April 2006

  Dear Inspector Lewis,

  Thank you so much for your letter, and heartiest congratulations on your cleverness.

  An American philanthropist was one of our guests when Morse spoke to us, and the two of them got on finely. This same person revisited us a month ago, and was naturally saddened to hear of Morse’s death. He remembered Morse mentioning to him the work of the Police Service of Northern Ireland Benevolent Fund, and expressed the wish to make some donation to this fund. But on one specific condition. Together we amused ourselves by jointly composing the letter I originally sent to you. The agreed condition was that the police should prove themselves still able to exhibit the high degree of mental acumen and flexibility that Morse himself had shown with crossword puzzles, and with criminal cases.

  It was also agreed that I should write to you to explain the whole thing should you have shown no interest, or have been utterly flummoxed by our letter. Had such been the case, we had decided to consider the merits of the next two charities on my friend’s giftlist: the Salvation Army, and the Donkey Sanctuary. I rang him immediately on receipt of your wonderfully welcome letter, and a cheque is now on its transatlantic flight to the police charity: a cheque for $25,000. This I hope should compensate in some degree for the time you and your colleague spent on the puzzle, and perhaps you can now cross my own name off the list of those potentially liable for prosecution. It remains for me only to subscribe this letter, which I now do.

  A right nerk?—Ay!

  PS Please note the punctuation.

  THE BOOKBINDER’S APPRENTICE

  Martin Edwards

  As Joly closed his book, he was conscious of someone watching him. A feeling he relished, warm as the sun burning high above Campo Santi Apostoli. Leaning back, he stretched his arms, a languorous movement that allowed his eyes to roam behind dark wrap-around Gucci glasses.

  A tall, stooped man in a straw hat and white suit was limping towards the row of red benches, tapping a long wooden walking stick against the paving slabs, somehow avoiding a collision with the small, whooping children on scooters and tricycles. Joly sighed. He wasn’t unaccustomed to the attentions of older men, but soon they became tedious. Yet the impeccable manners instilled at one of England’s minor public schools never deserted him; and besides, he was thirsty; a drink would be nice, provided someone else was paying. The benches were crowded with mothers talking while their offspring scrambled and shouted over the covered well and a group of sweaty tourists listening to their guide’s machine-gun description of the frescoes within the church. As the man drew near, Joly squeezed up on the bench to make a small place beside him.

  “Why, thank you.” American accent, a courtly drawl. “It is good to rest one’s feet in the middle of the day.”

  Joly guessed the man had been studying him from the small bridge over the canal, in front of the row of shops. He smiled, didn’t not speak. In a casual encounter, his rule was not to give anything away too soon.

  The man considered the book on Joly’s lap. “Death in Venice. Fascinating.”

  “He writes well,” Joly allowed.

  “I meant the volume itself, not the words within it.” The man waved towards the green kiosk in front of them. Jostling in the window with the magazines and panoramic views of the Canal Grande were the gaudy covers of translated Georgette Heyer and Conan the Barbarian. “Though your taste in reading matter is plainly more sophisticated than the common herd’s. But it is the book as objet d’art that fascinates me most these days, I must confess. May I take a closer look?”

  Without awaiting a reply, he picked up the novel, weighing it in his hand with the fond assurance of a Manhattan jeweller caressing a heavy diamond.
The book was bound in green cloth, with faded gilt lettering on the grubby spine. Someone had spilled ink on the front cover and an insect had nibbled at the early pages.

  “Ah, the first English edition by Secker. I cannot help but he impressed by your discernment. Most young fellows wishing to read Thomas Mann would content themselves with a cheap paperback.”

  “It is a little out of the ordinary, that accounts for its appeal. I like unusual things, certainly.” Joly let the words hang in the air for several seconds. “As for cost, I fear I don’t have deep pockets. I picked the copy up from a second hand dealer’s stall on the Embankment for rather less than I would have paid in a paperback shop. It’s worth rather more than the few pence I spent, but it’s hardly valuable, I’m afraid. The condition is poor, as you can see. All the same, I’d rather own a first edition than a modern reprint without a trace of character.”

  The man proffered a thin, weathered hand. “You are a fellow after my own heart, then! A love of rare books, it represents a bond between us. My name is Sanborn, by the way, Darius Sanborn.”

  “Joly Maddox.”

  “Joly? Not short for Jolyon, by any chance?”

  “You guessed it. My mother loved The Forsyte Saga.”

  “Ah, so the fondness for good books is inherited. Joly, it is splendid to make your acquaintance.”

  Joly ventured an apologetic cough and made a show of consulting his fake Rolex as the church bell chimed the hour. “Well, I suppose I’d better be running along.”

  Sanborn murmured, “Oh, but do you have to go so soon? It is a hot day, would you care to have a drink with me?”

  A pantomime of hesitation. “Well, I’m tempted. I’m not due to meet up with my girlfriend till she finishes work in another hour . . .”

  A tactical move, to mention Lucia. Get the message over to Sanborn, just so there was no misunderstanding. The American did not seem in the least put out, as his leathery face creased into a broad smile. Joly thought he was like one of the pigeons in the square, swooping the moment it glimpsed the tiniest crumb.

  “Then you have time aplenty. Come with me, I know a little spot a few metres away where the wine is as fine as the skin of a priceless first edition.”

  There was no harm in it. Adjusting his pace to the old man’s halting gait, he followed him over the bridge, past the shop with all the cacti outside. Their weird shapes always amused him. Sanborn noticed his sideways glance. He was sharp, Joly thought, he wasn’t a fool.

  “As you say, the unusual intrigues you.”

  Joly nodded. He wouldn’t have been startled if the old man had suggested going to a hotel instead of for a drink, but thankfully the dilemma of how to respond to a proposition never arose. After half a dozen twists and turns through a maze of alley ways, they reached an ill-lit bar and stepped inside. After the noise and bustle of the campo, the place was as quiet as a church in the Ghetto. No one stood behind the counter and, straining his eyes to adjust from the glare outside, Joly spied only a single customer. In a corner at the back, where no beam from the sun could reach, a small wizened man in a corduroy jacket sat at a table, a half-empty wine glass in front of him. Sanborn limped up to the man and indicated his guest with a wave of the stick.

  “Zuichini, meet Joly Maddox. A fellow connoisseur of the unusual. Including rare books.”

  The man at the table had a hooked nose and small dark cruel eyes. His face resembled a carnival mask, with a plague doctor’s beak, long enough to keep disease at bay. He extended his hand. It was more like a claw, Joly thought. And it was trembling, although not from nerves – for his toothless smile conveyed a strange, almost malevolent glee. Zuichini must suffer from some form of palsy, perhaps Parkinson’s disease. Joly, young and fit, knew little of sickness.

  “You wonder why I make specific mention of books, Joly?” Sanborn asked with a rhetorical flourish. “It is because my good friend here is the finest bookbinder in Italy. Zuichini is not a household name, not even here in Venice, but his mastery of his craft, I assure you, is second to none. As a collector of unique treasures, few appreciate his talents more than I.”

  A simian waiter shuffled out from a doorway, bearing wine and three large glasses. He did not utter a word, but plainly Sanborn and Zuichini were familiar customers. Sanborn did not spare the man’s retreating back a glance as he poured.

  “You will taste nothing finer in Italy, I assure you. Liquid silk.”

  Joly took a sip and savoured the bouquet. Sanborn was right about the wine, but what did he want? Everyone wanted something.

  “You are here as a tourist?” the American asked. “Who knows, you might follow my example. I first came to this city for a week. That was nineteen years ago and now I could not tear myself away if my life depended on it.”

  Joly explained that he’d arrived in Venice a month earlier. He had no money, but he knew how to blag. For a few days he’d dressed himself up as Charlie Chaplin and become a living statue, miming for tourists in the vicinity of San Zaccaria and earning enough from the coins they threw into his tin to keep himself fed and watered. But he’d hated standing still and after a few hours even the narcissistic pleasure of posing for photographs began to pall. One afternoon, taking a break in a cheap pizzeria, he’d fallen into conversation with Lucia when she served him with a capuccino. She was a stranger in the city as well; she’d left her native Taormina after the death of her parents and drifted around the country ever since. What they had in common was that neither of them could settle to anything. That night she’d taken him to her room in Dorsoduro and he’d stayed with her ever since.

  “Excellent!” Sanborn applauded as he refilled his new young friend’s glass. “What is your profession?”

  Joly said he was still searching for something to which he would care to devote himself, body and soul. After uni, he’d drifted around. His degree was in English, but a career in teaching or the civil service struck him as akin to living death. He liked to think of himself as a free spirit, but he enjoyed working with his hands and for six months he’d amused himself as a puppeteer, performing for children’s parties and at municipal fun days. When that became wearisome, he’d drifted across the Channel. He’d spent three months in France, twice as long in Spain, soon he planned to try his luck in Rome.

  “I wondered about learning a trade as a boat-builder, I spent a day in the squero talking to a man who builds gondolas.” He risked a cheeky glance at Zuichini’s profile. “I even thought about making masks . . .”

  “An over-subscribed profession in this city,” Sanborn interrupted. “I understand why you didn’t pursue it.”

  “Well, who knows? One of these days, I may come back here to try my luck.”

  “You have family?”

  “My parents are dead, my sister emigrated to Australia where she married some layabout who looked like a surf god. So I have no ties, I can please myself.”

  “And your girlfriend?” Sanborn asked. “Any chance of wedding bells?”

  Joly couldn’t help laughing. Not the effect of the wine, heady though it was, but the very idea that he and Lucia might have a future together. She was a pretty prima donna, only good for one thing, and although he didn’t say it, the contemplative look in Sanborn’s pale grey eyes made it clear that he’d got the message.

  “You and she must join us for dinner, be my guests, it would be a pleasure.”

  “Oh, no, really, we couldn’t impose . . .”

  Sanborn dismissed the protestations with a flick of his hand. He was old and deliberate and yet Joly recognized this was a man accustomed to getting his own way. “Please. I insist. I know a little seafood restaurant, they serve food so wonderful you will never forget it. Am I right, Zuichini?”

  The wizened man cackled and nodded. A wicked gleam lit his small eyes.

  “Well, I’m not sure . . .”

  But within a couple of minutes it was agreed and Joly stumbled out into the glare of the sun with the American’s good wishes ringing in hi
s ears. Zuichini’s small, plague-mask head merely nodded farewell; he’d uttered no more than two dozen words in the space of half an hour. Joly blinked, unaccustomed to wine that hit so hard; but the pleasure was worth the pain.

  When he met up with Lucia, she made a fuss about the dinner. It was in her nature to complain; she regarded it as a duty not to agree to anything he suggested without making him struggle.

  “With two old men? Why would we wish to do this? After tomorrow we will be apart, perhaps for ever. Are you tired with me already?”

  Exaggeration was her stock-in-trade, but he supposed she was right and that they would not see each other again after he left the city. The plan was for him to travel to Rome and for her to join him there in a fortnight’s time when she’d received her month’s pay from the restaurant. He’d arranged it like that so there was an opportunity for their relationship to die a natural death. He hated break-up scenes. It would be so easy for them not to get together again in the Eternal City. If he wanted to return to Venice, he would rather do so free from encumbrances; there were plenty more fish in the sea. As for their argument, in truth she found the prospect of a slap-up meal at a rich man’s expense as appealing as he did and after twenty minutes she stopped grumbling and started to deliberate about what she might wear.

  They went back to her place and made love and by the time she’d dressed up for the evening, he could tell she was relishing the prospect of meeting someone new. Even if the men were old, she would love parading before them; admiration turned her on more than anything exotic he tried with her in bed. At first he’d found her delightful, he’d even managed to persuade himself that she might have hidden depths. But in truth Lucia was as shallow as the meanest canal in the city.

  Against his expectations, the dinner was a success, early awkwardness and stilted conversation soon smoothed by a rich, full-blooded and frighteningly expensive red wine. Sanborn, in a fresh white suit, did most of the talking. Zuichini remained content to let his patron speak for him, occupying himself with a lascivious scrutiny of the ample stretches of flesh displayed by Lucia’s little black dress. Her ankle tattoo, a small blue heart, had caught the American’s eye.