Sideways In Crime Read online

  My joints were frozen, my fingers clumsy from my long night. I had what I wanted. Could I see myself pounding on Helen Mullody’s door, pistol in my hand? But why else was I there? After a few minutes I was standing at the second floor back, Number 442.

  I rapped with my knuckles. I didn’t make much noise. “Hey,” I whispered. “Spotswood. Hey.”

  He opened the door, he himself, unshaven, with his collar undone and his suspenders down. I gripped the revolver in my pocket and looked up at him. Maybe he also had not been to sleep, I thought, hating him. There was something in his face I had not noticed the other times we’d met, a tiredness. Even so, he smiled. “So, it’s you. The bill collector.”

  Maybe he thought I wasn’t up to it. He stepped aside and let me enter. I kept my hand in the pocket of my coat, counting the seconds under my breath--he gestured toward himself. “You can see I wasn’t expecting visitors. Let me take your things. No? I guess it’s cold outside.”

  There was a Franklin stove. There was a tea-kettle on the hob, and the remains of breakfast on the little table. “You must excuse me,” he said. “Please sit down--no?”

  My spectacles had fogged, and I could hardly see. “You must think I am a terrible host,” he said, mocking me. “But there’s fresh water. I can toast some bread. Have you eaten? I don’t think so, at this hour.”

  I stood with my back to the window. I was grateful for the warmth from the stove, and I could feel my anger coming back. This little room--with its singed wallpaper, its oval photographs of Mum and Pa over the mantel, its stained curtains and tablecloth, its pictures cut from magazines--was as familiar to me as my own self. Everything was dismal and discoloured and scrubbed clean-- Spotswood didn’t belong here. He stood with his head near the ceiling in the center of the room, and he opened his big hands. “God,” he murmured. “What am I supposed to say to you?”

  I told myself a man might act this way, with this kind of cheek, out of nervousness or fear. He turned away from me, busy with the kettle and the toasting fork. After a while, I took off my cap. I stood by the cushioned armchair, hand in my pocket, waiting for my opportunity.

  “One lump or two?” I shook my head. I knew he was laughing at me. But that wasn’t all of it. Maybe also he wanted to persuade me, or part of him did. “Her father kept a store in Dinwiddie County,” he said, finally. “Her name was Kitty Wolff, Katharine Wolff.”

  He spoke as if this wasn’t so important. At first I didn’t understand him. But then I realized he was offering an explanation for what he’d done. “If you could have seen her,” he said. “My God! If you could have seen her in a crowded room.”

  He stood in the center of the rug, a piece of bread on the end of his fork. And maybe he just wanted to say these things aloud. I didn’t think he could have mentioned them to Helen Mullody. “Was it nothing?” he asked. “Was it nothing to be Mrs. Dandridge Spotswood, of Petersburg? Nothing for a Jewish grocer’s daughter?”

  He loomed above me, his head near the dark ceiling. Warmer now, I stared at him. He was a handsome man, I saw--sharp features, thin lips, heavy eyes. I could feel the heat from the fire, and it was easier for me to play his games. “Katarina Rothschild was from Bohemia,” I said. “I read it in the magazine.”

  He was a black-hearted scoundrel. What were these lies he told? I had my hand in my pocket, finger cramped around the trigger of the Colt. We stood looking at each other. Seconds passed. “Now is the time,” I thought.

  But then he smiled at me and turned his back, fussing with the stove. “No trace of her,” he said. “She stole away in the middle of the night. My son was one year old. ‘Bohemian’--that’s what she called herself.”

  “No,” I persisted. “I read about it in the magazine.”

  For the first time I saw a flash of temper, a grimace as he turned his head. “Then I saw the photograph of her,” he said. “She was stepping into a Rolls-Royce. There was a series at a hospital in France.” He grimaced, smiled. “Once she told me she wanted to live in France.”

  It was obvious we’d read the same article. “I had to know for sure,” he said.

  I thought he was pleading with me. Seconds passed. I couldn’t help myself. “And was it her?”

  He shrugged. “She had her hand on the rail, and she turned as I came in. There were some other men--I didn’t notice. You should have seen her!”

  In my mind I saw my sister by the card table, a mixed expression on her face. “And...?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “She didn’t say one word to me. I meant to shoot her pig of a husband. All of them, but her. I swear I didn’t mean her any harm.”

  He held the toasting fork in one hand. He reached out toward me with the other, his palm open, his fingers spread. “Now is the time,” I thought. “Exactly now.”

  He said, “I would have spared her if she’d made a sound. Said my name. No, anything--if I’d seen something in her face. One mark of recognition. Anything at all.”

  I thought he was pleading for forgiveness or else trying to fool me. “So it wasn’t her,” I said.

  He stared at me. The smile faded from his face, and I saw his hand close to a fist. At the same time there was a noise in the street, and I knew what it was. Maybe I’d been waiting.

  I fumbled with the gun, tried to pull it from my pocket. But it caught on a seam of the cloth. He didn’t pay attention. With one long step he crossed the room, threw me aside so he could look out the window.

  I thought the constables must be across the street at Number 429. Unsatisfied with the gold chain, the cabbie must have gone to the police.

  I heard a whistle. They would cordon the entire block, I thought. They would take no chances. They’d go from house to house. They wouldn’t make mistakes.

  But why did I have so much faith in my enemies? Dandridge Spotswood stood at the window with his back to me, the fork in his hand. I had the gun out now, had it in my trembling hands. I had it pointed toward him when he turned to look. He smiled.

  “A little young for this work,” he murmured. “Comrade. Couldn’t do it yourself, I wager?”

  Why did I care if he thought I had betrayed him? I felt a stupid urge to tell him about the cabbie and the chain. But then I imagined the toasting fork at my throat. I imagined Spotswood choking me and breaking my arm, imagined his snarling, dark face as he leapt at me like a savage animal, and I pulled the trigger, fired.

  I heard the noise of the gunshot. It filled the little room. I watched the man stagger forward, collapse to his knee, clutch at his chest, while I stepped back. I watched the window break behind him as he curled onto the rug, his white shirt black with blood.

  No, but that’s what I imagined in my other history, my other memory of that first winter of the war. I imagined it, but then I kept the story to myself--the world can split apart at any moment, what we’ve done, what we might have done. I told my friends I hadn’t found him, that he left the city, which was probably half-right. But I stood with the revolver clasped in front of me and watched him raise his hands, drop his fork, then turn away from me, turn to the door, step toward it, open it, look back at me, close it behind him. I heard him on the landing, heard him climb the stair. He must have escaped over the rooftops. After half an hour I climbed the fence in the back yard and walked up-town toward home.

  The Adventure of the Southsea Trunk:--Jack McDevitt

  Jack McDevitt is a former English teacher, naval officer, Philadelphia taxi driver, customs officer, and motivational trainer. Since adding “writer” to that string of vocations, he has won the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Special Award, the Phoenix Award, and the John W. Campbell Award, and been short-listed for the Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke, Campbell, and many more Nebulas. But I first met Jack through a dinner with my friend Robert J. Sawyer, when we were seated together at the end of a long table and didn’t know each other from Adam. Now I’m a friend and a fan and delighted to add him to the list of wonderful writers in this (and future!) anthologies. />
  Henry Cable was, if anything, true to his word. When he told people he was going to do something, they could, as the saying goes, put it in the bank. So alarm bells went off when he failed to show up for the Victorian Club luncheon, at which he’d been the featured speaker. He not only failed to show up, he didn’t warn anyone. The liaison, Mrs. Agatha Brantley, was left to make apologies as best she could.

  For Cable, it was unheard of.

  He didn’t answer his phone. And when, after the luncheon had staggered to a desultory end and a worried Mrs. Brantley went to his house, she got no answer. At that point she called us. “Something’s terribly wrong,” she told the watch officer. There was of course nothing we could do. So she took charge. She got on the phone, located Cable’s maid service, and persuaded them to come early and open up.

  The place had been ransacked. And there was no sign of Cable. She called us again.

  When I got there, she was visibly upset. “The luncheon was at the Lion’s Inn,” she said in a shaky voice. “We kept waiting for him, and waiting for him, and he never showed up. I knew something was wrong.”

  Cable was a literature professor at the University of Edinburgh. He’d written some books and did guest columns occasionally for the Edinburgh Evening News. He lived in Morningside, in an upmarket mansion with broad lawns and a fountain and a long arcing driveway. A statue of a Greek goddess, or maybe just a naked female, stood in front.

  The senior officer present was Jack Gifford, probably the tallest man in Edinburgh. “Can’t find where they broke in, sir,” he said. “He must have let them in.”

  “How about his car?”

  “There’s no car here.”

  We put out a look-out request for the car and went inside. Drawers had been torn out and cabinets opened, their contents dumped on the floor. With Agatha in tow, I climbed the stairs and looked at the bedrooms. The beds were made. Whatever had happened had apparently occurred the previous day.

  The living room was spacious, with a high ceiling. Packed bookshelves lined the walls, but a lot of the books had been pulled out and thrown on the floor.

  A long leather sofa and matching armchairs were arranged around a coffee table. The table had been pushed onto its side and its two drawers removed.

  There was no sign of Professor Cable. But the good news was there was no blood anywhere. Gifford poked his head out of a side room and motioned me over. The room must have served as Cable’s office. There was a desk and a side table, piled high with books and magazines and note cards. A second table held a keyboard and a display screen.

  “But no computer,” I said.

  Harry nodded. “My thought exactly, Inspector.”

  “It’s not possible.” Mrs. Brantley looked helplessly around at the floor, littered with the contents of desks and drawers. “Things like this just don’t happen.”

  Unfortunately they do.

  We checked his calls. There’d been three early the previous evening: one to Levinson Books in Old Town; one to Madeleine Harper; and one to Christopher McBride. “Madeleine is an old friend,” said Agatha. “He was her mentor.” And McBride, as the whole world knows, was the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

  We found Ms. Harper at her home in a Bruntsfield town house. She was an attractive woman, about forty, with blonde hair, moody blue eyes, and a worried smile. “I do hope nothing’s happened to him,” she said.

  “As do I.” I would have liked to be reassuring, but the circumstances didn’t look promising.

  Her living room could have been right out of Cable’s place, but on a smaller scale. Two bookcases were filled to overflowing. Books and magazines were on every flat surface. She had to move a few to make room for us to sit. “Tell me what you can about him,” I said.

  “Henry’s a good man.” Her voice trembled. “He spent thirty years at the university. He’s published half-a-dozen major biographies. He’s--” Her voice broke and she fought back tears. “Inspector, please do what you can for him. If anything’s happened to him--”

  “I understand. Is he still teaching?”

  “He retired three years ago.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “No, I think it’s more like five.”

  “Very good.”

  “Time goes by so quickly.”

  “I know. So now he just writes books?”

  “And does speaking engagements. Lately he’s been working on a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson.”

  That sounded rousing. I wondered briefly how many Stevenson biographies were already in existence. “Ms. Harper, do you have any idea what might have happened to him today? Have you ever known him to disappear like this before?”

  “No.” She shook her head and tears rolled down her cheeks. “Never. I don’t believe it yet.”

  “Does he have any enemies?”

  “There’s no way he could avoid it, Inspector.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He’s a literary critic. Sometimes he says things that upset people. But I can’t believe any of them would resort to something like this.”

  “Did he ever write about the Holmes stories?”

  “Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Very good. Ms. Harper, I’m going to ask you to provide me with a list of people who might have harbored resentment against him. Will you do that for me?”

  “I can try.”

  “Good.” Outside, a child ran by with a kite. “He called you Friday evening.”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask what you talked about?”

  “We’re going to the Royal Lyceum next weekend. To see King Lear.”

  “I see. Anything else?”

  “Not really. He asked me to try to be ready when he got here. He always claims I’m slow getting out the door. It’s sort of a running joke.”

  “And that’s all you talked about?”

  She started to say yes, but stopped. “As a matter of fact, there was something more. He mentioned a surprise.”

  “A surprise?”

  “Yes. He said he had a surprise for me. Big news of some kind.”

  “Have you any idea what he was referring to?”

  “None whatever.”

  “Had you been planning anything?”

  “Other than King Lear? No.”

  “Did it sound as if he was talking about good news? Something personal between you, perhaps? If you’ll forgive me.”

  “It’s quite all right, Inspector. But no, I didn’t get the impression it was about us. It was something else.” She sat for a long moment, gazing wistfully through the window at the cluster of trees in her front garden. “He sounded, not angry...”

  “But...”

  “He gets on a horse sometimes. A crusade, if you understand what I mean. Henry Cable off to right the wrongs of the world.”

  It was as far as we got. I asked her to call me if she thought of anything further.

  There was a picture of Cable on a side table. He looked amiable, with white hair and spectacles and an easy smile. He almost resembled Eliot Korman, who was playing Dr. Watson in the Holmes film that had just arrived in theatres.

  I got up to leave and gave her my card. “If he contacts you, I’d be grateful if you’d inform me. And let him know we’re looking for him.”

  “Of course.”

  I stopped at the front door. “One more thing: Do you know Christopher McBride?”

  “Christopher McBride?” Her eyes widened. “I met him once. At a party. But that was long before Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Do you know of a connection between him and Professor Cable?”

  “No,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “He called McBride Friday night. Just before he called you.”

  “Really?” She looked surprised. “I can’t imagine he’d have been talking to Christopher McBride and then not mention it to me.”

  “Maybe it had something to do with the surprise?”

 
She shook her head. “Amazing,” she said.

  I wandered over to Levinson’s Books, in Old Town. The store manager, Sandra Hopkins, was there when I walked in the door. Sandra and I went back a long way. “I wasn’t here when he called, Jerry,” she said, consulting the computer, “But I’ve got the order right here.”

  “Okay. What did he want?”

  “Catastrophe Well in Hand: The Collected Letters of James Payn, edited by Gabriel Truett.”

  “James Payn? Who’s he?”

  “Victorian era novelist and editor.” She looked inside. “It’s just been released,”

  “Any idea why Cable would have been interested in it?”

  “Cable was interested in anything having to do with the Victorians.”

  I was leaving Levinson’s when a call came through: Cable was dead. A patrol vehicle had located his body in a patch of woodland off the car park at the Newbury Shopping Center outside Portobello.

  I drove over. His Prius was on the edge of the car park near the trees where his body had been found. He’d been beaten and robbed.

  There was no wallet or watch. Nor any car keys.

  A lab team was on the scene when I got there. “He’s been dead between eighteen and twenty-four hours,” the medic said. “Skull fractured. Multiple blows.”

  A path cut through the area from the car park to the street. The body lay off to one side of the path, and wouldn’t have been visible to anyone walking casually through. It had been found by one of the attendants doing a cleanup. He was lying face down. The back of his skull had been caved in, and the murder weapon, a broken branch, lay beside him.

  It looked as if he’d been ambushed and forced off the lot. Then they’d killed him, taken his keys, driven to his house, and robbed the place.

  “Pretty cold-blooded,” said one of the officers. I’d seen it before.