Bill Pronzini - The Bughouse Affair

Dr. Axminster asked, “So you accepted the job in order to find out what he was up to?”

“Yes.” Another embellishment. He had accepted it for the money-no fool, John Quincannon. “Subsequent investigation revealed Costain’s gambling addiction and a string of debts as long as a widowed mother’s clothesline. He was a desperate man.”

“You suspected insurance fraud, then,” the crackbrain said, “when you asked me to join you in the surveillance?”

“I did,” Quincannon lied.

“Did you suspect the manner in which the fraud would be perpetrated?”

“The use of an accomplice dressed in the same type of dark clothing as worn by Dodger Brown? Costain’s arrival not more than a minute after the intruder entered the house through the rear door? These struck me as suspicious, though not until later. It was a devious plan that no detective could have anticipated in its entirety before the fact.” He added, staring meaningfully at the Englishman, “In truth, a bughouse affair from start to finish.”

“Bughouse affair?”

“Crazy scheme. Fool’s game.”

“Ah. Crook’s argot, eh? More of your delightful American idiom.”

Pollard said, “Enough of that,” and tapped the nib of a pen on his desk blotter after the fashion of a judge wielding a gavel. “So the accomplice pulled a double-cross, is that what you’re saying, Quincannon? He wanted the spoils all for himself.”

“Just so.”

“Name him.”

“Not just yet. Other explanations are in order first. Such as how Costain came to be murdered in a locked room. And why he was shot as well as stabbed.”

“Can you answer those questions?”

“I can.”

“Well, then?”

Quincannon allowed suspense to build by producing his pipe and tobacco pouch. Holmes watched him in a rapt way, his hands busy winding a pocket Petrarch, his expression neutral except for the faintest of smiles. The others, Sabina included, were on the edges of their chairs.

When he had the pipe lit and drawing well, he said, “The answer to your first question,” he said to Pollard, though his gaze was on the crackbrain, “is that Andrew Costain was not murdered in a locked room. Nor was he stabbed and shot by his accomplice.”

“Riddles, Quincannon?” Pollard said, purse-lipped.

“Not at all. To begin with, Andrew Costain shot himself.”

Kleinhoffer exclaimed, “Hogwash!”

Quincannon ignored him. He paused a few seconds for dramatic effect before continuing. “The report was designed to draw me into the house, the superficial wound to support what would have been his claim of a struggle with the thief. The better to bamboozle me and the police, so he reasoned, and the better to insure that Great Western would pay off his claim quickly and without question or suspicion.”

“How did you deduce the sham?” Dr. Axminster asked.

“Dodger Brown was known to carry a pistol in the practice of his trade, but only for purposes of intimidation … he had no history of violence. He himself told me he carried his weapon unloaded at all times and I don’t doubt that this was the truth; it was empty when I found it yesterday and there were no cartridges in his possession. The revolver that inflicted Costain’s wound was new, bought by him that same day, I’ll wager, from a gunsmith near his law offices.”

Sabina spoke for the first time. “But why the locked-room business?” she asked. “Further obfuscation?”

“No. In point of fact, there was no locked-room ploy.”

Pollard growled, “Are you saying it wasn’t part of the plan?”

“Precisely. That part of the misadventure was a mix of illusion and accident, the result of circumstances, not premeditation. There was no intent to gild the lily with such gimmickry. Even if there had been, there was simply not enough time for any sort of locked-room shenanigans to have been arranged once the pistol was fired.”

“Then what did happen?”

“Costain was in the hallway outside the open door to his study, not inside the room, when he discharged the shot into his forearm. That is why the electric light was on in the hall … why the smell of burned powder was strong there, yet all but nonexistent inside the room. The bullet penetrated the armchair because the weapon was aimed in that direction when it was fired, through the open doorway into the study.”

“Why didn’t Costain simply fire the shot in there?”

“I suspect because he met his accomplice in the hallway, perhaps to hand over the jewelry from the valuables case. The empty case was another clue that put me onto the gaff. The time factor again: there was not enough for the phantom burglar to have found his way to the study, located the case, and rifled it before Costain arrived to catch him in the act.”

“And the murder, John?” Sabina asked.

“Within moments of the shot being fired, the accomplice struck. Costain was standing in the open doorway, his back to the hall. The force of the single stab with a long, narrow blade staggered him forward into the study. The blow was not immediately fatal, however. He lived long enough to turn, confront his attacker, observe the bloody weapon in a hand still upraised and-in self-defense-to slam the door shut and twist the key already in the latch. Then he collapsed and died.”

“Why didn’t he shoot the accomplice instead?” Axminster said. “That is what I would have done.”

“Likely because he no longer held the pistol. Either the suddenness of the attack caused him to drop it, or he dropped it in order to lock the door against his betrayer. In my judgment Andrew Costain was a craven coward as well as a thief. I think, if pressed, his wife would confirm this, despite her allegation to Inspector Kleinhoffer that he was a brave man.”

Penelope Costain’s face was the shade of an egg cream. “I agree with nothing you’ve said. Nothing!”

The Englishman said, “Capital, my dear sir. Capital!” and stood to grasp Quincannon’s hand. “I congratulate you on an excellent reconstruction thus far-a most commendable job of interpretating the res gestae. ”

“ Res what?” Kleinhoffer demanded.

“The facts of the case. My learned colleague’s deductions coincide almost exactly with mine.”

Quincannon stiffened. “Bah,” he said.

“My good fellow, you doubt my word that I reached the identical conclusions yesterday afternoon?”

“Then prove it by naming the accomplice and explaining the rest of what took place. Can you do that?”

“I can. Naturally.”

Damn his eyes! Quincannon’s good humor had begun to evaporate. Glaring, he said, “Well, then? Who stabbed Costain?”

“His wife, of course. Penelope Costain.”

SABINA

Sabina was the only other person in the room besides John who was not startled by the would-be Sherlock’s accusation. Simultaneous gasps issued from Pollard and Dr. Axminster, another piggish grunt from the red-faced police inspector. Mrs. Costain’s only reaction was to draw herself up indignantly, her flinty eyes striking sparks.

“I?” she said. “How dare you!”

John stood glowering at Holmes. Sabina supposed she should feel sorry for him, but she didn’t; he had been much too sure of himself and the Englishman’s inability to match wits with him.

He made an effort to regain command by saying, “Holmes’s guess is correct. The burglar was known to be a small man, and Mrs. Costain is a woman of comparable size. It was easy enough for her to pass for Dodger Brown in the darkness, dressed in dark man’s clothing, with a cloth cap covering her hair.”

“Quite so,” Holmes agreed before John could say anything more. “While joined in her husband’s plan, she devised a counter-plan of her own-a double-cross, as you Americans call it-for two reasons. First, to attempt to defraud the Great Western Insurance Company not once but twice by entering claims on both the allegedly stolen jewelry and on her husband’s life insurance policy, of which she is the sole beneficiary. She came to this office yesterday to enter those claims, did she not, Mr. Pollard?”