The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Page 6

  “Yes, sir. I have. If we’re to go by motive alone, there is a good deal of suspicion attaching to the Hon. Mr Peter Flaxman. And with the confusion there was in the tent as they all left after lunch, which my inquiries have shown must have been when the poisoned lozenge must have somehow put there for Mr Boultbee to take, it looks as if we may well have to rely simply on what motives the – er – suspects might have.”

  “Young Flaxman, eh? Then spit it out, Inspector, spit it out. May as well hear the worst.”

  “Mr Flaxman is a gentleman of limited means, sir, but considerable expectations, as I learnt from the late Mr Boultbee’s junior partner. It seems Mr Boultbee was one of the trustees of a considerable fund which will come to the two beneficiaries, the cousins Peter Flaxman and Vyvyan Andrews, only when they attain the age of thirty. Neither will, in fact, do that for some five years yet.”

  “Ha, the root of all evil.”

  “Yes, sir. So we are told. And at Mr Boultbee’s office I managed to gather that both gentlemen have applied since the Armistice for advances on their expectations, something which their trustees are permitted to make. However, it seems the three other trustees relied entirely on the advice of the late Mr Boultbee. And that advice has consistently been that no disbursements should be made.”

  “I hope, Inspector, that you brought no improper pressure on to Mr Boultbee’s junior partner. You seem to have acquired a good deal of information which I should have thought was confidential.”

  Inspector Thompson looked steadily at the Commissioner.

  “No, sir,” he said, “there could, of course, be no question of that.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. So we appear to have arrived at a point where two of the people, and perhaps their ladies, who could have placed a poisoned lozenge into the cachou-box in which Mr Boultbee kept his supply of soda-mints were—”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Inspector Thompson broke in, with not a little daring, “but it is as well perhaps to have things entirely clear. Mr Boultbee, so his partner happened to mention, lost several years ago the silver box he carried his lozenges in, and – his partner indicated that he had, what shall I say, a certain mean streak – he refused to replace it but used instead a battered little tobacconist’s tin that had once contained snuff. My informant indicated that people used to joke about that.”

  “Rather poor taste on his part, Inspector, if I may venture to say so.”

  “Perhaps it was, sir. However, it may be helpful to know about it if it comes down to trying to discover exactly what happened at that table when the lunch party set off for a stroll.”

  “No. No, wait, Inspector, you’ve forgotten something. Important, you know, to keep every thread in your hands.”

  A little frown gave added force to the rebuke.

  “The French gentleman, sir? The Conte de Charvey. I have made inquiries about him. It seems he was a slight acquaintance of Mr Flaxman’s and had put him in the position of being unable to withhold an invitation to the match.”

  “Had he indeed? A trifle suspicious that, eh? French fellow wanting to watch cricket. Unless, of course, he’s one of those froggies who seem to think the game is one of the secrets of British power. As I suppose it is, come to think of it.”

  “Yes, sir. However, I also learn from the late Mr Boultbee’s partner that Mr Boultbee knew something to the Count’s disadvantage. I have had a word with Fraud, and apparently they’ve been keeping a sharp eye on him.”

  “Fraud, eh? Why haven’t they informed me that a character of this sort has come to our shores? Eh? Eh?”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir.”

  “No. I dare say not. But . . . But do you think the fellow may have needed to get rid of someone who had come to learn too much about some underhand business of his? That sort of thing?”

  “It always could be, sir. But one ought perhaps to bear in mind that the murderer would need to have known Mr Boultbee’s habit of taking one of those soda-mint lozenges shortly after his every meal. But while all of the other four persons under consideration might well have been aware of that, it’s scarcely likely that a stranger such as the Count would be.”

  “Yes. Yes, Inspector, I take your point. Good man, good man. Yet, let me remind you, we shouldn’t put our French bad hat altogether out of the picture.”

  “No, sir. No, of course not. I will bear him in mind throughout the investigation.”

  “Hah. Yes. Yes, Inspector, you speak blithely enough of throughout the investigation, but let me tell you once again: this is a matter which has got to be cleared up in the very shortest of times. All right, this PC Wilkins, Watson, whatever, whom you seem to have such faith in, would appear, thank goodness, to have eliminated the hundreds of extremely distinguished persons who might conceivably have committed this appalling crime. But nevertheless the yellow press will, if they get half a chance, hope to draw public attention to – Well, to even the highest in the land. So action, Inspector, action.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Inspector Thompson left the Commissioner’s office he had little hope that any amount of action would see the case concluded quickly enough to suit his chief. But, in the end, action proved to be what was needed. Directed more or less to go back to Lord’s, where by night and day a police watch had been kept, he made his way into the luncheon tent, everything there still preserved just as it had been when PC Williams had entered. Though convinced that it was only in the motives of the four people most likely to have committed the deed that the solution must lie, he nevertheless stood looking down at the stained white cloth of the table. A blank sheet.

  Or was it?

  Wasn’t there something there that somehow differed from Williams’ minutely accurate description?

  For more than a few minutes he stood there puzzling. What was it that seemed somehow wrong?

  Is it, he asked himself, the mere absence of that little tobacconist’s snuff tin from which the one deadly lozenge had, by chance surely, been plucked by that tight-fisted City solicitor? Nothing more than that? The tin itself, of course, had been sent to the fingerprint bureau at the Yard, and within an hour a report had come back to say that someone had scrupulously wiped the little shabby article clean of any possible clue as to who had flipped it open, taken out one lozenge – Wilfred Boultbee, so careful of other people’s money, was very likely to have kept count of his supply of the miraculous means of combating the intolerable pangs of indigestion – and added that one deadly other.

  No help there.

  And then . . . Then it came to him. What was missing from the scene as he looked at it now was an object PC Williams had described well, if with a touch of honest Welsh hyperbole. In the dead man’s hand, he had said, there had been a soiled white table-napkin clutched with demonic force. It had been, almost certainly, taken away with the body when it had gone for medical examination. But why had it been there on the table at all? It must have been left when the guests had risen from their places to go and stroll outside.

  But – could this be what had happened? – had someone still had it, perhaps in their hand, after all the debris had been cleared away by the waiters? And had they then let it fall on the table in such a way that it covered up Wilfred Boultbee’s little battered old tobacconist’s tin? That could, if what Williams quoted to me from his notebook had it right, have accounted for the unusual circumstance of the dead man forgetting to take a lozenge immediately after eating.

  But which of them was it? Who had picked up that napkin, dropped it so as to hide the little tin, and then, of course, subtly urged Wilfred Boultbee out of the tent before he had gathered himself together enough to remember he had not taken a lozenge?

  Well, if that is what happened, one thing is clear. It’s very unlikely to have been one of the women. I can hardly see either of them – I can hardly see any lady – taking that rigid man by the arm and laughingly leading him off. So it must come down to one of the two cousins, each with motive enough. Because, as
I tried to make clear to the Commissioner, the French count, whatever he’s up to in England, could not possibly have known about Wilfred Boultbee’s poor digestion. So which of the two is it? Which?

  Captain Andrews, the ruined man? The victim of the carnage which the civilized nations of the world have inflicted on one another? A man, you might say, with nothing to live for. Had he, as a last wild bid to acquire a decent income, murdered his tight-fisted, implacable trustee? A bid to free his wife from the daily toil of grubbing together enough to make their lives possible? Easy enough to feel sympathy for a man who had done more than give his life for his country, a soldier who had given all that made life bearable, had been left with the prospect of years ahead carrying round with him the body that the War had gassed out? Yet, if he has been driven to the last extreme of murder, he has to be brought to trial for it. Let judge and jury find what extenuating factors they can.

  So, the Hon. Peter Flaxman? What about that typical example of the new, pleasure-devoted, careless world that seems to have come into being in the wake of all the horrors and deprivations of the years between 1914 and 1918? Is he a new breed, and a by no means pleasant one? A breed of self-seeking, hedonistic young people, uncaring of all below them in the social hierarchy? And is that, when you come down to it, what brought about the demise of a man altogether opposed to such a way of life? An old man who, you could say, represented all the virtues, all the strict morality, of an age on the verge of extinction?

  Which of those two men is it – all but certain that one or the other of them put that deadly lozenge into Wilfred Boultbee’s little tin – who in truth conceived that deadly scheme? Isn’t the balance, however unfairly it might seem, equal between them? Each with the same obvious motive, each with opportunity enough, each offered the same easy means of finding a solution to their problems?

  So which?

  And only one answer. Startlingly plain, once one ceases to look at the human complexities and turns a steady gaze on the simple facts.

  Captain Andrews, poor devil, has hands that constantly tremble, shake to the point, as Williams vividly recalled for me, of hardly being able even to hold a cigarette when he desperately wants to inhale the tranquillizing smoke. I cannot for a moment see Captain Andrews carrying out that little necessary piece of legerdemain under the starched white table-napkin.

  So, if it isn’t the one, it must be the other. Simple. Appallingly simple.

  Right, I’m off to see the Hon. Peter Flaxman in his rooms in the Albany.

  Or do they insist you have to say just Albany?

  Whichever. It’s there that I’ll arrest the murderer of Mr Wilfred Boultbee, City solicitor, repository of a thousand secrets and tight-fisted representative of an age that’s going, going, gone.

  So Beautiful, So Dead

  ROBERT J. RANDISI

  Robert Randisi is disarmingly prolific with over 350 novels to his credit. Most of these are westerns but he has also written many private-eye novels, starting with his series featuring ex-boxer turned P.I. Miles “Kid” Jacoby, who first appeared in Eye in the Ring (1982). Randisi founded the organisation the Private Eye Writers of America in 1981 and, with Ed Gorman, co-founded the magazine of the mystery field, Mystery Scene, in 1985. He also finds time to edit anthologies whilst with his partner, Christine Matthews (who also appears in this volume), he has started a series about husband-and-wife sleuths Gil and Claire Hunt.

  Occasionally Randisi will cross over his western and detective enthusiasms. The Ham Reporter (1986), set in 1911, teams up Bat Masterson with Damon Runyon to solve a mystery. Masterson also appears in the following story, which is based around real events. Randisi tells me, “The facts about the Miss America Pageant are true. Val O’Farrell was real. He was described in two Bat Masterson biographies as a police detective, and as one of the top private detectives of his day. Bat Masterson died about 5 weeks after the events at the Pageant, sitting at his typewriter. The gangster Johnny Torrio is also mentioned. He had a young apprentice he later sent to Chicago – Al Capone.”

  1

  Val O’Farrell looked down at the dead girl with a gut wrenching sadness. So beautiful, so dead.

  “What a body, huh? Why would anyone want to cancel the ticket of a babe like that? And pluggin’ her in the head, too. Jeez, how you gonna figure that?”

  O’Farrell turned to look at Detective Sam McKeever.

  “What?” McKeever asked. “She’s a babe. Hey, she’s lyin’ there naked under a sheet, what am I supposed to do, not look?”

  “No,” O’Farrell said, “she’s used to bein’ looked at.”

  “Like most beautiful young dames, huh?”

  “This one more than some,” O’Farrell said. “She’s supposed to be one of the contestants at that new Beauty Pageant out in Jersey.”

  “Yeah? No kiddin’?” McKeever said. “I heard they was gonna let them wear these new skin tight bathing suit things.”

  “Tight and skimpy.”

  “You seen ’em?”

  “Not yet.”

  During the beauty pageant in Washington D.C. last year the contestants had worn long stockings and tunic bathing suits. However, Atlantic City’s first contest was going to be something really different and special because the censors had seen fit to lift their bans on bare knees and skin tight suits. It remained to be seen if the idea would fly.

  “Hey,” McKeever said, “you better get out of here before the boss shows up. You ain’t a cop no more, you know.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  O’Farrell had retired from the force two years ago, in 1919, and had opened his own detective agency. He’d been on the “inside” so often, though, while on the job that he catered to a pretty high class clientele, these days. He went from being the best dressed cop in town to the best dressed shamus.

  “How’d you know to come up here, anyway?” McKeever asked.

  “I was supposed to pick her up and take her out to Jersey.”

  “You knew her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe you better tell me about it, Val,” McKeever said, folding his arms, and O’Farrell did. He laid it out for the detective just as it had happened . . .

  2

  Vincent Balducci had come into his office two days before with flash and confidence bordering on arrogance. Most of the flash came from the sparks he was wearing in a couple of rings.

  “I’ve got a job for you, Mr O’Farrell,” he’d said, after introducing himself. He said his name like O’Farrell was supposed to know who he was. He did, but he didn’t tip his hand – not yet.

  “How did you get my name, Mr Balducci?”

  “You were referred to me by a mutual acquaintance,” Balducci said. “His name is not important. He said you used to be a cop, an honest cop – or as honest as they get around here. He said you were thorough and you wouldn’t gouge me on your fee just because I’m rich.” Balducci looked around O’Farrell’s well furnished office. “I’m thinkin’ the last part is probably right.”

  “All the parts are right, Mr Balducci,” O’Farrell said. “Why don’t we get to the point of the visit?” O’Farrell motioned him to his visitor’s chair.

  “All right.” Vincent Balducci said, seating himself. He laid his coat over his lap. O’Farrell noticed it had a velvet collar. He laid a matching hat atop it. His hair was dark – too dark to be natural – and shiny, combed straight back. “Yes, why don’t we. Do you know who I am?”

  “I read the newspaper,” O’Farrell said. The year old New York Times already had an archive of stories on Vincent Balducci, a millionaire “philanthropist”. What that generally meant to O’Farrell was that the man had a lot of money and didn’t know what to do with it.

  “That will save us some time, then,” Balducci said.

  That was when Balducci told O’Farrell about Georgie Taylor. He was married, he said, but it was a loveless, sexless marriage that was entered into for convenience. Naturally he needed a friend outside his marria
ge. When he met Georgie he knew she was the one.

  “But she’s younger, right?” O’Farrell asked.

  “Uh, well, yes,” Balducci said, “quite a bit younger. I am sixty-five and she is, uh, twenty-five.”

  “You look good,” O’Farrell said. “I had you pegged for fifty-five.”

  “Thank you,” Balducci said, “I try to keep myself in shape.”

  And he did a fine job. Except for his obviously dyed hair and some lines on his face, he did look younger than he was. He was tall, fit, and he moved like a younger man. O’Farrell sneaked a look at his own growing paunch. He was fifteen years younger than the millionaire, but they probably looked the same age. He decided not to think about that.

  “Lots of married men have dames on the side, Mr Balducci,” he said to the man. “Where do I come in?”

  “Have you heard about this beauty pageant in Atlantic City this weekend?”

  “I heard something about it,” O’Farrell said. “Is that the one with the new bathing suits?”

  “Yes,” Balducci said. “One of the major sponsors is the Atlantic City Businessman’s League, of which I am a member.”

  O’Farrell was starting to get the drift, but he let the man go on.

  “I’ve entered Georgie in the pageant.”

  “You didn’t guarantee she’d win, did you?” O’Farrell asked. “You’re not going to tell me that the fix is in, are you?”

  “Uh, no,” Balducci said, “that, uh, that part is not your concern.”

  So maybe the fix was in. But okay, the client is always right. That wasn’t his concern.

  “Fine.”

  “Georgie is very beautiful, and talented, and she has a big career ahead of her.”

  O’Farrell almost asked, “As what?” but bit his tongue.

  “But I think she might be in danger.”

  “From who?”

  “Well . . . an old boyfriend, other contestants . . . my wife . . .”