Marcia Muller - The Plague of Thieves Affair

“Corby was quick-witted, I’ll give him that. He had less than five minutes to formulate and implement his plan and he must have used every second. His first act would have been to lock the utility room door; the key that operates the storeroom door lock works on that one as well. The purpose being to create more confusion and solidify the impression that Lansing had committed suicide. He then entered the room containing the sacks of malt and hops and established his hiding place.”

“Where?” Sabina asked. “You said you looked into that room immediately after the door was unlocked and there was no place for a man to hide.”

“No obvious place. Corby counted on the fact that the first inspection would be cursory, and he was quite right, it was. If there had been time for a careful search then, I would have found him quickly enough. But I and the others were intent on finding out what had happened to Lansing.”

“Well? Where was he?”

“When I first looked into the storage area, I registered a single sack of hops propped against the end wall. When I returned later, the sack was no longer there; it had been moved back into the tightly wedged row along the side wall. That and the pile of empty sacks gave me the answer.”

“Ah! Corby hid inside one of the empty sacks.”

“Just so,” Quincannon said. “He dragged a full sack from the end of the row, climbed into an empty one or pulled it down over him, and wedged himself into the space. When he heard the locked door being opened and the group of us rushing in, he held himself in such a motionless position that he resembled the other sacks in the row. Now you see what I meant by his stature being an essential clue to his guilt. Only a pint-sized man could have fit inside a fifty-pound hop sack.”

“And while you and the other men were huddled around Lansing’s body, Corby quickly stepped out of the sack, replaced it on the pile of empties, returned the full sack to its proper place, and pretended to have just arrived.”

“Precisely. It struck me as odd at the time that he should have shown up when and where he did. A brewery’s bookkeeper has little business in the storerooms.”

“The lupulin you found in his office came from the hideout sack?”

“From inside it, yes. Residue clung to the twill of his trousers and perhaps inside the cuffs. Golden State buys its hops from a farm in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The flowers are picked, dried, and sacked there, and now and then dried hops are put into bags previously used by pickers. In such cases, a residue of the yellow powder clings to the interior of the burlap.”

“Well done, John, I must say. Your usual excellent detective work.”

“No more so,” Quincannon said magnanimously, “than yours in uncovering the hiding place of the stolen Marie Antoinette handbag.”

They smiled at each other across the candlelit table.

The arrival of their dinners broke the pleasant spell of the moment. The food was superb, as always at the Tadich Grill, and they spoke little as they tucked into it. Quincannon finished his Hangtown Fry in short order and was in the process of loading his briar from his oilskin pouch when he saw that Sabina had paused and was gazing off into the middle distance, an oddly wistful expression on her face.

“What are you thinking about, my dear?”

“Oh,” she said, blinking and focusing on him again, “I couldn’t help wondering if we would ever see Charles the Third again.”

Quincannon repressed a scowl. “If the pompous rattlepate knows what’s good for him, he’ll never again darken either of our doors.”

“Yes, he’s pompous, and meddlesome and annoying, but he can also be charming and helpful and... well, even endearing at times.”

“Endearing! Faugh!”

“You’re not forgetting, are you, that he saved my life?”

“Of course not. For that, he has my undying gratitude.”

“That, if nothing else, endears him to me,” Sabina said. “And you must admit that in spite of his clownish disguises and his addled ways, he really is a very good detective. The genuine Sherlock Holmes, even though it’s his identity that has been usurped, might even have been proud of the manner in which Charles adroitly adopted his methods.”

“By Jove, you sound as though you’re going to miss him.”

“In a curious way, I think I shall.”

Quincannon stared at her as if she’d temporarily taken leave of her senses. She caught the look, smiled, and reached across the table to lay her hand on his. “Don’t be jealous, John. Of course you’re the better detective, by far.”

At some other time he might have responded to her praise, but with her hand resting warmly on his in this intimate atmosphere he barely even heard the words. Her touch, the twining of her fingers around his, thrilled him. Impulsively he placed his other hand on top of hers, and when she made no move to end the joining, he applied a gentle squeeze which she then returned. This thrilled him even more, and not, by Godfrey, in a sexual way. All he felt in that moment was an acute and gentle tenderness, which, if her expression was a proper indicator, she was feeling as well.

At last, he thought.

Ah, at last!