Нэнси Пикард - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006

“I hear Baron Waldteufel wandered off and Jerome’s gone back to find him,” said the policeman. “When he does I intend to arrest the baron for murder. He was killing off his rivals for the Persian air force job. He had the motive and the opportunity to siphon off Commissar Ivanov’s gasoline. And I have proof positive he killed Wing Commander Timmons. During my careful examination of the broken glass in Timmons’s room I found this, the baron’s monocle.” Flanel opened his hand triumphantly to reveal the crystal from Timmons’s watch.

Just then Jerome emerged from the forest darkness. He was alone. “I went as far back as the last spot I remembered seeing Waldteufel with the procession. No baron.”

Examining the night, Flanel decided it was too late to start a search. He promised to return in the morning.

Ganelon walked Khalila back to the retreat house. “Flanel’s a very lucky man, being right for so wrong a reason,” he said. “He may make Chief Inspector yet.” Then he added, “We have to ask ourselves, what’s so important about the Persian air force job to make it worth killing two people?”

“Three, counting Shypoke,” said Khalila.

“Shypoke was a mistake all round. The man wanted to eavesdrop on the Anglo-Persian Oil people’s meeting but got the wrong window. The baron thought Shypoke was listening in on his telephone call to England. That’s why he killed him. Know the name Dorian Fong-Smythe?”

When Khalila shook her head, Ganelon told himself she soon would if she came into partnership with him. Then he said, “He’s Waldteufel’s employer. So why’s it so important to Fong-Smythe that the baron gets the Persian job?”

Early the next morning Ganelon and Khalila led Flanel on the route the procession had taken and described the events of the night before. On the way the inspector looked for traces of the baron’s wandering off. They had not expected to get as far as the hollow oak. But that was where they discovered Waldteufel dead next to the tree, the blade of a scythe driven through his body.

Flanel waved them behind him and studied the scene, stroking his chin.

As Ganelon looked at the wooden-handled scythe he suddenly remembered Father Sylvanus’s remark about what the trees had said about the woodman’s axe: “Look, look, part of it is one of us.”

After a bit Flanel said, “Here’s what happened. On the way back to the retreat house the Baron got separated from the procession. In the dark and half blind — for let us not forget, I found his monocle at the crime scene — he was beset by his guilty conscience and panicked. He started to run. As often happens in these cases, he went around in a circle and came back to the hollow oak, plowing headlong into a lower limb. See the mark of a blow to his head. Stunned, he accidentally fell on the scythe a careless monk left behind after clearing the bramble around the tree. Case closed.”

“A wound toward the back of the head is tough to come by running full tilt into a tree limb,” observed Ganelon.

Flanel gave a dismissive laugh. “As he ran he heard one of the owls you spoke of. Wild-eyed, Waldteufel looked back over his shoulder toward the sound. Bang!”

Ganelon and Khalila exchanged glances. Then, promising to send two monks back with the wheelbarrow, they left Flanel hunkered down examining the scene of the crime.

They walked in silence for a long distance, neither wanting to bring up the terrible murder. At last Khalila said, “I can’t imagine Jerome a killer.”

“That scythe sure didn’t walk back there on its own,” said Ganelon. “I saw it at the crash site on our way to the tree. It was right where the monks left it when they emptied their wheelbarrow to load up Ivanov’s body. Look, when the procession started back Jerome got Waldteufel to hang back on some pretext and hit him a good one, leaving him for dead. On the way back Jerome had second thoughts about whether he’d killed him or not. He volunteered to find the baron so he could finish the job, picking up the scythe on the way.”

“Still—” protested Khalila.

“Waldteufel and Jerome spent the entire war trying to kill each other off. Those are things you can set aside in peacetime. But it’s something else when an old enemy kills your best friend.”

Later that morning Ganelon was waiting, suitcase in hand, beside the blue roadster when Khalila came out of the retreat house dressed for travel in a cloche hat and a coat with a fur collar. A monk followed behind carrying her suitcases.

She was surprised to see him. “I thought we’d said our goodbyes,” she said while her baggage was being loaded.

They had. But Ganelon had something he couldn’t ask her until he’d gotten his Hrosco back from Father Boniface. He gave his cockeyed grin. Would she, as a professional courtesy, one private detective to another, give him a lift back to San Sebastiano? “I promise you a good lunch, a tour of our little city, and a business proposition you might find interesting.”

“But what about your big white car?” she asked.

“I’m leaving it here,” said Ganelon. “Tomorrow’s the feast of Saint Fiacre, patron saint of taxi drivers, when the monks do the Blessing of the Automobiles. Afterward Father Carlus will drive the Terrapin into town for me. His assistant will follow in the touring car to make the Imperial Airways pickup. Carlus will go back with him.”

“Isn’t Saint Fiacre patron of gardeners?” asked Khalila suspiciously.

Ganelon grinned again, a bit more urgently this time. “Some saints wear two halos,” he said. “So is it a deal?”

She raised an amused eyebrow. “A deal,” she said and slid behind the steering wheel. Ganelon got in on the passenger side, stowing his suitcase behind the seat.

As they sped off toward San Sebastiano, Ganelon said, “By the way, I spoke to Jerome just now. He asked General Massoudi to let him put together the Shah’s air force using the San Sebastiano pilots he’d led during the war. Massoudi agreed.”

Talk of Jerome still bothered Khalila. But Ganelon knew that any army coming out of China on the Cairo to Cathay Railroad would need control of Persian airspace. Intentionally or not, Jerome had frustrated Fong-Smythe’s grand design. And anyone who could do that, Ganelon considered his friend.

As the roadster passed the new orchard an old man working among the trees waved a brown arm at them. When Khalila pretended not to see him and smiled down into her fur collar, Ganelon leaned over and gave the horn a smart beep-beep.

Copyright © 2006 James Powell