Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

“I couldn’t take it,” said Golbourne.

And Brinsley, like a wise man, didn’t press the matter, but tore the cheque up, and after a pause the silence was broken by Crimp, the little journalist.

“What about that piece of red tape round Sir George’s finger?” he said. “We’ve forgotten all about that.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Bowen, with a faint smile – the first that evening, “I can explain that! While I was chatting with him at the Athelonian Club the night before his death, he took it out of his pocket, and with a joke about red tape being appropriate for a lawyer, he tied it round his finger to remind him to buy a certain book he wanted for reference the next day. ‘My memory’s shockingly short for trifles,’ he said. ‘I shall go to bed with that on my finger, and wear it again in the morning, and I shall remember.’”

“Oh, so that was all!” said Crimp.

And at his disappointed tone a real laugh went round the table.

A few weeks later England was startled by the authentic and guaranteed story of the brutalities in early life of Sir George Borgham, which had lain hidden for so many years.

Frank M. Robinson (b.1926) is probably best known today as the coauthor (with Thomas Scortia) of The Glass Inferno (1974), one of the books from which the blockbuster film The Towering Inferno (1974) was made. Robinson’s first novel was The Power (1956), about a malignant superman, which was filmed in 1967. Most of Robinson’s work is either science fiction or technothriller, though he has also written more straightforward thrillers as with Death of a Marionette (1995), with Paul Hull. The following story was specially written for this anthology.

Maxwell Harrison sat at his teakwood desk wearing a ratty cotton bathrobe, his scrawny hands hanging limply at his side. His head was face down on the leather-trimmed blotter, a loose strand of silver hair moving slightly in the breeze from an unseen air-conditioner. A morning newspaper had been opened to the financial section and was lying on top of the desk, carefully aligned to the left edge. A rolodex in a leather holder kept it company. The phone was carefully aligned on the right side of the desk. In the middle a tablet of ruled yellow paper served as a pillow for Harrison’s head. So far as I could see, the tablet was blank.

There were no stab or bullet wounds – again, that I could see, no purple bruise marks on his throat, no pudding of matted hair, blood, and brains covering the back of his head.

Nevertheless, Harrison was quite dead.

O’Brien, the fat little coroner, fussed around the body, making absolutely sure of what was already obvious. He shifted the chair back slightly and tilted Harrison’s torso so that his head lolled against the back of the chair.

We both stared.

Harrison had died with a smile on his face. Quite a broad one, as a matter of fact, with just a suggestion of having been startled. Death had caught him unaware.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Heart attack.”

“Probably,” O’Brien said. “Maybe poison, but unlikely. Not with that smile.” He stared a moment longer, then reached over and closed the eyes.

“He had a history,” the secretary said casually. “He kept some pills in the top middle drawer – I had it refilled yesterday.”

I reached around the body, located the small plastic bottle and passed it over to O’Brien without comment. The secretary and the chauffeur were standing by the huge mahogany entrance doors to the library, trying hard to hide their nervousness. The secretary’s name was Sally – how long had it been since “Sally” was a popular name? – Fitzgerald. She was blondish, mid-thirties, just beginning to plump up though the formal cut of her suit hid it well. Not too much makeup, hair coiled at the back of her head. I guessed “Efficiency” was her middle name.

Mike Breall, the chauffeur, was in his mid-twenties, dark haired with a thin, handsome face. Cut his hair right and he might have modelled for Calvin Klein underwear, or maybe perfume. I guessed he didn’t like being there, but then who would? I was there as insurance against rumours. San Joselito – little San Jose – is in the heart of Silicon Valley where there are more millionaires than plumbers. Somebody from homicide always teams up with the coroner to make sure “no signs of foul play” is prominent in news stories when somebody rich bites it.

Property values are very important in San Joselito.

“When did you find him, Miss Fitzgerald?”

“Around eleven, he usually gave me instructions for his brokers then. I called in Mike – Mr Breall – immediately. Then we phoned you people.” She hesitated. “Mr Harrison was… just like that.”

“Neither of you touched him?”

They shook their heads in unison.

“You didn’t see him earlier?”

“Matty – she’s the cook – brought him his orange juice and toast at nine and I came in with her to get the servant assignments for the day. Mr Breall usually goes out to the driveway to pick up the morning paper and he came in about the same time.”

I couldn’t get over the smile.

“And between nine and eleven?”

“We met in the kitchen right after nine and had a little brunch and I passed out the assignments for the day.”

“And all of the servants were there?”

She nodded, only slightly curious.

“So nobody else came in between nine and eleven?”

“I don’t see how they could have. All the servants were in the kitchen and there are dogs on the grounds. We would have known if anybody had come to the door… or if there were prowlers.”

“I should send in the crew,” O’Brien said. “You through?” I nodded. Miss Harrison and Breall started for the door and I said, “Please don’t leave – wait for me in the living room. And tell the cook to wait as well. It won’t take long.”

I paused at the door for one last look before the coroner’s men with the gurney showed up. Maxwell Harrison was an anomaly in town. Early eighties – far older than the young computer mavens who had struck it rich and settled there. Harrison was the Old Money in town and could probably have bought and sold any two or three of the youngsters. Wife had died years before; he lived alone except for the servants. So far as anybody knew, he kept busy clipping coupons and watching over his investments – and there were a lot of them.

I walked back to the desk and took another look at the broad smile on his face. Smiles have classifications and the one I would have compared his to was the smile on a football coach when his team has just made it to one of the bowl games. Or that of a stockbroker who just sold short and made another million or two.

It was a fleck of white that caught my eye, something I had missed the first time. I pried the small piece of folded paper from his stiffening fingers, glanced at it and slipped it in my pocket. No help there, just a scrawled bunch of numbers. Then I picked up the newspaper and stuck it under my arm – save the trouble of buying one on the way home.

It turned out they were all the evidence there was. And all the evidence that was needed. At least for justice, if not for law.

The cook was in her sixties, slightly deaf, and had worked for Harrison less than six months. Yes, all the servants had met in the kitchen after nine and yes, it had turned into something of a kaffeklatsch that had lasted until eleven. Had she liked Mr Harrison as an employer? She shrugged and I gathered he was no better nor worse than a dozen others she’d worked for. I took down her address and phone number, asked her to keep in touch and to let the department know if she moved from the area.