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

Another indignity! Damn the man’s eyes!

Corby spun, raced out a side entrance. Quincannon, unslowed by the hurled oysters, shoved his way through a clutch of startled customers and emerged into a wide cobbled alley. The scoundrel’s lead was less than twenty rods now. He threw a look over his shoulder, saw Quincannon gaining on him, and veered sideways across a short yard and through a pair of open doors into a ramshackle wooden building. A sign above the doors proclaimed: Thomas Vail and Sons, Cooperage.

Quincannon pounded inside in Corby’s wake. The interior was weakly lighted, inhabited by a trio of men in leather aprons working with hammer, saw, and lathe. Barrels and kegs of various types and sizes rose in stacks along one wall. The rest of the space was cluttered with tools, lumber, staves, forged metal rings. Corby was at the far end, hopping back and forth, searching desperately for a nonexistent rear exit. One of the coopers shouted something that Quincannon paid no attention to. He advanced implacably.

Another “Awk!” came out of the little man. He dodged sideways, quick but not quick enough. Quincannon clamped fingers around one arm, brought him up short. Corby struggled, managed to tear loose, but in doing so he fell backwards against a stack of barrels; the barrels toppled over on him with a great clatter, knocked him flat to the sawdusted wooden floor. Quincannon danced out of the way just in time to avoid a similar fate.

Corby wasn’t badly hurt. He moaned and tried to regain his feet. An extra-solid thump on the cranium changed the little scruff’s mind. And a second thump stretched him out cold.

Quincannon was on one knee beside his prisoner, transferring to his own pockets the greenbacks and gold double eagles Corby had taken from Lansing’s rooms, when one of the coopers came rushing up. “Here, what’s the meaning of all this?” the man demanded in irate tones. “Look what you’ve done to these barrels!”

Straightening, Quincannon pressed one of the double eagles into his palm.

“This will pay for the damage.”

The cooper gawped at the coin, then at him. “Who are you, mister?”

“John Quincannon, of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. At your service.”

“A detective?”

“The finest in San Francisco,” Quincannon said virtuously, “if not in the nation and the entire world.”

It was not often that he could persuade Sabina to dine with him, but he managed it the next day by promising her a full accounting of his prowess in the devil’s-brew case. Generally his thrifty Scot’s nature limited his restaurant meals to the less expensive establishments, but on this evening he surprised Sabina by calling for her in a rented carriage and taking her to Maison Riche — one of the city’s tonier French bistros, at Dupont and Geary streets, whose specialties included such epicurean delights as caviar sur canane and poulet de grain aux cresson. There were two dining rooms on the ground floor; he requested seating in the smaller, more intimate one with individual tables. He would have preferred one of the discreet dining cubicles on the upper floor, whose amenities included a velvet couch and a door that could be locked from the inside. But Sabina, of course, would have had none of that and he didn’t bother to suggest it.

She had dressed well for him, he was heartened to note. Beneath her lamb’s-wool coat, she wore a brocade jacket over a snowy shirtwaist and a wine-colored skirt. Pendant ruby earrings, a gift from her late husband, made a fiery complement to her sleek dark hair. Even more to his liking was the shell brooch at her breast — a gift from her doting partner, bought for her while he’d been away on a case in the Hawaiian islands the previous year.

When they were seated and their drink orders placed — French wine for Sabina, clam juice for him — Quincannon took one of her small hands in his. “You look particularly lovely tonight, my dear,” he said.

She permitted him to hold her hand while she thanked him for the compliment, and then gently withdrew it. “Now then, John,” she said. “Let’s have your explanation.”

“Explanation?”

“Of the devil’s-brew case, as you promised.”

“Business before we dine?”

“We both know you’ve been eager to glory in your latest triumph. You’ve worn your preening look all day.”

“I do not have a preening look.”

“Yes, you do. Like a peacock about to crow. Well, go ahead and spread your feathers.”

Quincannon pretended to be wounded. “You do me a grave injustice.”

“Oh, bosh,” she said. “How did you know Adam Corby was guilty of murdering his partner?”

“Lupulin,” he said.

“...I beg your pardon?”

“Yellow glands between the petals of hop flowers. A fine powdery dust clings to them, some of which is released when the flowers are picked.” He added sententiously, courtesy of Jack Malloy, that it was this dust, not the hop buds themselves, that offset the sweetness of malt and gave beer its sedative and digestive qualities.

“Amazing,” Sabina said, not without irony.

“There was a smudge of the powder on the leg of Corby’s office chair. And two dried hop flowers on the floor under his desk.”

“Dried? I thought you said the powder comes from freshly picked flowers.”

“It does.”

“John...”

“Those were the essential clues. Along with two others.”

“And what were they?”

“The fact that Corby appeared in the storerooms so soon after we discovered Lansing’s body. And the man’s stature.”

“What do you mean, his stature?”

“Just that. He was the only Golden Gate employee who could have been guilty.”

Sabina nudged him with the toe of her shoe, not lightly. “You’re being deliberately cryptic. Come now — how did these clues identify Corby as the murderer and his method of perpetrating the crime?”

Quincannon fluffed his well-groomed whiskers and adopted a brisk professional air. Sabina was not a woman to be trifled with when it came to business matters; she had been a Pinkerton operative in Denver before he met her, with a record every bit as exemplary, if not more so, than his own. She was not to be trifled with as a woman, either, as he had learned to his frustration and chagrin. Both qualities made her all the more desirable.

“The short and sweet of it, then,” he said, and began by relating the same facts and suppositions he had presented to James Carreaux after the murder. “Corby intended to shoot Lansing at their prearranged meeting in the utility room, had brought the pistol with him for that reason. His motives being self-protection and Lansing’s share of the West Star payoff money. Once Lansing told him that I had accosted and chased him, he wasted no time firing the fatal shot. He placed the revolver near Lansing’s hand, rifled his pocket for both the storeroom key and the key to Lansing’s rooms. In different circumstances he would have simply unlocked the storeroom door and slipped out at the first opportunity. But he’d heard the sounds I made at the door, knew the shot had been heard and the passage was blocked. He was trapped there with a dead man. What could he do?”

“What did he do?”

“He had two options,” Quincannon said. “Hold fast and bluff it out, claim that he’d tried and failed to stop Lansing from shooting himself. But he had no way of knowing how much I knew and he was afraid such a story wouldn’t be believed. His second option was to hide and hope his hiding place would be overlooked in the first rush.

“Corby was quick-witted, I’ll give him that. He had less than five minutes to formulate and implement a plan and he used every second. The first thing he did was to lock the utility-room door; the key that operates the storeroom door lock works on that one as well. The idea of that was to create more confusion and solidify the false impression of suicide. Then he entered the room containing the sacks of malt and hops and established his clever hiding place.”