Robert Barnard - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, No. 2. Whole No. 822, February 2010

“You mean Madam Spinarossa was a man?” I asked.

“Quite so. I would give a hundred pounds to have seen him play the part. He must have acted quite brilliantly. Having convinced the duchess that he was a spiritualist and could contact her late husband, he arranged a seance in the lady’s sitting room, carefully positioning the participants round a small table before turning out the lights. Then he knocked against the table and repositioned it in the dark, to confuse the geography of the situation, before asking everyone to hold hands. You may imagine how each groped for the nearest hand and, taking it, assumed they were holding on to the person next to them. And so they were. But Barozzi had silently removed himself and his chair from the circle, so that the duchess held her niece’s hand, while both ladies believed themselves linked to the medium. Thus, Doctor, the possession of additional rubber hands was quite unnecessary round such a small table.”

I did my best to smile.

“The actor made appropriate noises with his head placed between that of the duchess and her niece — just where they would expect such noises to emanate from. Then he fell silent, lifted the tiara from the duchess’s head, and moved to the table by the window.”

“But would the duchess not have felt the removal of her tiara?” I asked.

“No. For two reasons. Firstly, she was concentrating upon the seance and anticipating, no doubt with suppressed excitement, communication with her late husband. Secondly, her very splendid head of silver hair is, in fact, entirely false. I observed this during our interview, and Barozzi must have made the same discovery while researching his subject. It was a simple matter for him to unclip the tiara from Her Grace’s hairpiece without detection. Once at the side table by the window he made further sounds and began to impersonate the duke. This was, perhaps, the cleverest part of his deception, since he had evidently discovered something of the manner of His Grace’s speech and the tone of his voice, probably through contact with one or more of the duke’s former servants. In any case, the duchess was all too ready to believe that the voice was that of her beloved George. While he spoke, Barozzi prised the diamonds from the tiara and, I deduce, placed them in a small pocket specially sewn into the front of his gown. At several points during the seance, to maintain the illusion, and no doubt to increase his pleasure at the deception, he returned to the table, shook it about, and again assumed the person of the medium. When all the diamonds were safe in his pocket he returned once more to the table, clipped the tiara back into Her Grace’s hair, and made further groaning and gasping noises, finally inducing himself to vomit, probably by the simple expedient of inserting a finger into his esophagus. He had previously consumed a large meal of some whitish substance, perhaps tapioca or porridge, in order to give an impressive appearance to the result. This regurgitation had a very explicit purpose, which I will shortly come to. Then Barozzi took up his chair, screamed, and, in the voice of Madam Spinarossa, demanded that the circle be broken. Everyone released the hands they were holding and, after a few moments, Colonel Hind stood up and lit the gas. While he did so, Barozzi replaced his chair where it had formerly been and sat down upon it, assuming the appearance of one in a swoon. The rest of that scene you know. The police were called and you, Lestrade, arrived to question those present. No doubt you suspected Madam Spinarossa, but a search of her seemingly unconscious body produced no results. I suggest, Lestrade, that your constable was a little less thorough than he might have been. He naturally did not wish to touch the ejecta which covered the front of the old lady’s dress, so missed the special pocket which was concealed there.

“After a while Barozzi feigned a small recovery, and mumbled something about ectoplasm. Believing him to be a sick, perhaps deranged, old woman, you released him into the care of a constable. Tell me, Lestrade, what became of that constable?”

“Well, Mr. Holmes, he claims that when he and the old lady got down into the hotel lobby she seemed much recovered and asked him to leave her there, saying she would request the manager to call her a cab. He was, I imagine, rather keener to be back on the case with me than to play nursemaid to a filthy old woman.”

“That was just as Barozzi planned. What he had not reckoned on, however, was the involvement of a second gang. Somehow his plan had become known to a rival Italian secret society, known as the Fratelli; this was probably an unwanted effect of the meticulous research which Barozzi had undertaken, and which had aroused the curiosity of someone connected with the Fratelli. Perhaps Barozzi saw someone he recognised as he left the hotel, or perhaps he did not know precisely who was following him; but it is clear to me that he knew he was pursued as he fled into Grafton Street and thence into the alley which leads to Barlow Place. He did not wish to be found in possession of the diamonds, so cast round for somewhere to hide them. He had only a minute. But at that moment a brilliant inspiration struck him. He ran to the nearest door and fed the diamonds into the keyhole, where they fell down inside the mechanism of the large lock. Then he ran on, knowing at least that if he was overhauled he could claim innocence; perhaps, in this event, he intended to assume some other character. We shall never know, for he seems to have got clean away. However, his good fortune was spent and, despite his great talent for changing his face and voice, the Fratelli hunted him down.

“What happened next was, I am afraid, most uncivilised. The agents who found Barozzi forced him to reveal what he had done with the precious stones. We may assume that he resisted them as best he could, but the gradual removal of certain pieces of his body was, no doubt, sufficient inducement for him to admit the truth.”

“You mean those fingers and other pieces we found in Bruton Street belonged to this Barozzi?”

“I believe so. His torturers took them away as trophies, and as proof for their criminal masters that they had done their duty by the brotherhood.”

“But where is Barozzi? Is he still alive?”

“I regret, Watson, I cannot yet answer your first question. As for your second, I believe no man could survive the torment Barozzi suffered and, in any case, the agents of the Fratelli would hardly have considered their duty done if they had allowed him to live. It was his death, the death of a great actor, which I lamented when I began my tale.”

“I see... Do please continue.”

“The agents returned to Bruton Street, where they rented an empty apartment at number 38A. I learned this today when I visited the local letting agents to inquire if anyone of Italian appearance had rented property in or near Bruton Street within the last few days.”

“But how did you know they were Italians?” I asked. “And why should they be based near Bruton Street?”

“The use of the name ‘Spinarossa’ by the fake medium betrayed the origins of the crime. And Bruton Street was obvious from the testimony of our friend Hartshorne. The two agents rented their rooms and waited for nightfall. Then they went out armed with tools to find number 98, which was the address given to them by Barozzi. You will have noticed, Watson, that Bruton Street is unusual for having consecutive numbering along each side, so that number one is next to two, and so on. It seems that our Italian friends assumed the usual arrangement of even numbers on one side of the street and odd on the other. Barozzi had told them that number 98 was at the end of the street, so I believe they walked to the end before looking closely at any house numbers. The first they chanced to look at was 97 or 99, so they crossed the road to find 98, and there believed they had found the right house, conveniently far from a streetlamp. By the light of a small lantern they examined the door and its large Chubb’s lever lock, of a sort manufactured some twenty years ago. Now this lock has the peculiar distinction of being relatively simple for an expert to pick, but unusually difficult to remove. So the Italians set to work to unlock the door and, when they had done so, the quickest method of removing the lock was to unscrew the entire door and carry it away. They held it between them and hurried along the pavement, back towards their rented rooms. It was this singular behaviour that led me to the knowledge that they had some bolt-hole nearby. Why else carry the door along the street? Had they possessed a carriage or some other vehicle, they would surely have brought it up to receive the door, and they would hardly have risked carrying their prize any great distance. I reasoned that they must have a den in the same street, or very nearby, which could be reached on foot in a matter of minutes. However, when they passed under a streetlamp one of the robbers glanced at the door and realised they had made an unfortunate mistake. It bore not the number 98 but 9B. Immediately they dropped their prize and hurried back to the end of the street to seek out the right door, which you may be sure they were very careful to identify correctly. They were fortunate too in finding there a very different lock. It was an old Bramah design, much less secure, which could easily be parted from the door by a combination of crude force and the removal of four screws. I noticed as we passed along that side of Bruton Street this morning that the door of number 98 showed signs of recent damage and wore a shining new lock. It was not necessary for our agents to pick the lock or open the door, they simply removed the mechanism and returned with it to their rooms. There they took the lock to pieces and extracted the Caradoc diamonds.