Robert Barnard: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 805 & 806, September/October 2008

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Very well, Inspector. Yes, I helped Darryl put Hugh’s mask on that statue.”

“What?” said Hugh.

“It was a joke, Hugh. He said you were acting just like those selfish men who wouldn’t let the goddess drink — muddying the trip like they were muddying the water. He couldn’t understand why you were behaving so badly.”

Jensen started to speak, then clamped his mouth shut and sat back, shaking his head.

“Mr. Jensen, do any of these people benefit by your death?”

“Benefit?” he asked bitterly. “Other than getting rid of the person who seems to have wrecked this tour? I can’t believe Darryl hated me that much.”

“He didn’t hate you,” Alexa said. “He just thought you were too full of yourself and he wanted to tease you a little.”

“You and your cousin,” said Giordano. “You say that you both had trusts from your grandmother. Who inherits if you die?”

“As I told you this morning, the Reedy Foundation gets it. Same for Darryl. After our deaths, the trusts dissolve and the principal returns to the foundation.” He glared at the others. “No, Inspector. Whoever wants me dead, it’s not for my money.”

“No? What about your cousin’s money?” After the long hot June day, Giordano’s brown suit was a mass of untidy wrinkles. He drank from a liter-sized bottle of cold water, then unfolded a sheet of typescript. “Miss Harald received this message from her attorney. According to his discreet inquiries, the terms of your grandmother’s trust are not quite as you would have me believe.”

“What?” He glared at both of them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The terms are exactly as I told you.”

“After your deaths, the principal does indeed revert to the foundation,” Giordano said. “Both your deaths. Whoever survives gets the interest from both trusts until his death. With him gone—”

As Giordano’s words sank in, Hugh bristled indignantly. “Me? You’re accusing me? You’re crazy! We were like brothers.” His angry denials dwindled into sudden sobs. “Brothers,” he whimpered.

“Jacob and Esau were brothers, yet Jacob stole Esau’s inheritance,” Giordano said implacably. “You had the motive. You had the opportunity.” He stood up and towered over the small man. “I must ask you to come with us, Mr. Jensen.”

Protesting his innocence, Hugh Jensen was led away. While the others dispersed in stunned dismay, Jim Olson left to call the American consulate in Florence and Sigrid walked across the courtyard with Inspector Giordano. At the castle’s gate, he paused to thank her for her help.

“You would have reached the same conclusion without me,” Sigrid said.

“Probably,” he agreed complacently. “His was the only real motive. He was the one who conveniently gave you a tour of the apartment and then made his cousin change bedrooms. He stole the key earlier and he had the whole night to set that stage.”

“Why now, though?” she wondered aloud.

“Who knows the logic of a killer? I myself think that he began to plan this murder when Darryl bought that cheap mask in Venice. It could have been the final straw in a camel-load of resentment.”

“The zanni?”

He nodded. “From the Commedia dell’arte. Everyone says Darryl Jensen had a trickster sense of humor. Maybe that mask was a way of telling his cousin that he might be the subordinate clown, but that he — Hugh Jensen — was the greater clown and bigger fool.” Inspector Giordano took her hand. “So! La commedia é finita,” he said; and even though she did not speak Italian, Sigrid needed no translation.

Swallows and bats swooped and soared together in the cool evening air as twilight settled across the beautiful Tuscan landscape and the first bright stars pricked through the dark blue sky overhead. The others had gone downstairs to the castle’s outdoor restaurant, but Elliott and Sigrid remained seated with their wine at one of the terrace tables to keep Jim Olson company.

“Poor Darryl,” Olson said again. It had been a long tiring day and he looked almost haggard with fatigue. “Will Hugh be convicted, do you think?”

Sigrid turned the stem of her wineglass in her slender fingers. “Realistically?” she said at last. “I seriously doubt it. The evidence is all circumstantial and the Reedy Foundation will surely come to his rescue with extradition papers and clever attorneys.”

“So he not only gets off,” Olson said bleakly, “he gets to profit by Darryl’s death.”

“He may get off in court,” Sigrid said, turning her wineglass more slowly now, “but I imagine public opinion will find him guilty.”

“She’s right,” said Elliott. “He’ll be asked to resign from all the boards he sits on now, and decent people will shun him. So don’t worry, Jim. He’ll be punished for his sins.”

Sigrid carefully set her glass atop the wrought-iron table. “Unless, of course, you decide to confess.”

Both men stared at her.

“He’s stayed here before, Elliott. He knows where the key is kept and how the office is often left unattended. He knew where to place the body that he thought was Hugh’s before he realized he’d killed the wrong cousin.”

Elliott’s protest died in his throat when he saw the guilt and shame on his friend’s face. “You, Jim? Why?”

“The woman you asked about last night,” Sigrid told him. “The suicide.”

“Lynn Palmour?” Elliott was shocked. “Was it Jensen that blocked her one-man show?”

“At a time when she was still shattered by her brother’s death.” Olson’s voice was heavy with grief. “Then he told her he’d get it reinstated if she’d have sex with him. She was like the daughter I never had and that bastard killed her, Elliott. He killed that sweet kid as surely as if he’d given her the overdose himself. I could say he killed Darryl, too, making him change bedrooms like that, but...” He buried his head in his hands. “God help me.”

Distressed, Elliott turned to Sigrid.

She pushed back her chair and stood up. Without a confession, there was no more evidence against Olson than there was against Jensen. Less, even. And as Inspector Giordano had reminded her, she had no official standing here.

“Sigrid?”

She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I’m not a cop anymore, remember? Whatever happens is up to him,” she said. “Not me.”

© 2008 by Loren D. Estleman

Mystery without murder features in Loren D. Estleman’s Claudius Lyon series. Lyon’s first outing ( EQMM June 2008) involved apparent fraud in the literary world; this time out he takes a case for a boy in search of his father. But Mr. Estleman has another side. His new hard-boiled thriller, Gas City , got starred reviews from PW, Booklist , and Kirkus , and Entertainment Weekly said: “He’s been called the heir to Chandler — and it’s easy to see why.”

The bomb dropped while I was card-indexing Claudius Lyon’s latest contribution to horticultural science, a hybrid tomato plant that comprised all the disadvantages of a beefsteak and none of the advantages of a roma, and Lyon, foundering up to his chins, as usual, behind his preposterously enormous desk, was pretending to read The Portable Schopenhauer. It was actually Carolyn Keene’s The Clue of the Dancing Puppet inside the drab dust jacket, and he’d read it twice before in my tenure.

“Arnie,” he said, “how long have you been working for me?”