Фредерик Браун - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 37, No. 6. Whole No. 211, June 1961

“Aha, but what a cover! No one suspects the earnest, the scientific psychologist with a medical degree and spectacles. She can smuggle in drugs, and induce her rich patients to form the habit, and put up the money for a night club and arrange that it shall be run by someone with — shall we say, a little weakness in her past! But she despises Hercule Poirot, she thinks she can deceive him with her talk of nursery governesses and vests!

“Eh bien, I am ready for her. The lights go off. Quickly I rise from my table and go to stand by Cerberus. In the darkness I hear her come. She opens his mouth and forces in the package, and I — delicately, unfelt by her, I snip with a tiny pair of scissors a little piece of her sleeve.”

Dramatically he produced a sliver of material.

“You observe — the identical checked tweed — and I will give it to Japp to fit it back where it belongs — and make the arrest — and say how clever once more has been Scotland Yard.”

The Countess Rossakoff stared at him. Suddenly she let out a wail like a foghorn.

“But my Niki — my Niki. This will be terrible for him—” She paused. “Or do you think not?”

“There are a lot of other girls in America,” said Hercule Poirot.

“And but for you his mother would be in prison — in prison — with her hair cut off — sitting in a cell — and smelling of disinfectant! Ah, but you are wonderful — wonderful.”

Surging forward, she clasped Poirot in her arms.

A week later Miss Lemon brought a bill for the flowers to her employer.

“Excuse me, Monsieur Poirot. Is it in order for me to pay this? ‘Leonora, Florist. Red roses. Eleven pounds, eight shillings. Sent to Countess Vera Rossakoff, Hell.”

As the hue of red roses so were the cheeks of Hercule Poirot.

“Perfectly in order, Miss Lemon. A little — er — tribute to an occasion. The Countess’s son has just become engaged in America — to the daughter of his employer, a steel magnate. Red roses are — I seem to remember — her favorite flower.”

“Quite,” said Miss Lemon. “They’re very expensive tins time of year.”

Hercule Poirot drew himself up. “There are moments,” he said, “when one does not economize.”

Humming a little tune, he went out of the door. His step was light, almost sprightly. Miss Lemon stared after him. Her filing system was forgotten. All her feminine instincts were aroused.

“Good gracious,” she murmured. “I wonder... Really — at his age!”

Fire marshal Ed Manning sported the State Penitentiary envelope in the morning mail. Slitting it open, he glanced at the clock. In half an hour he was due at Grammar School Six to speak on fire prevention. Funny how he, a bachelor, could always reach the kids. Maybe because they reached him too.

The envelope contained a bulletin, the usual notice to Police and Fire Departments, announcing the release of habitual felons, deviates, and pyromaniacs. The Fire Marshal scanned it until the name Fischer shot a chill up his spine to his red head.

“The Parole Board’s done it again,” he snapped to Chick Sims, his assistant investigator who kept his gray hair long in an effort to cover scar tissue. “This time it’s Fischer. Only one-quarter of his sentence, right on the nose.”

“Our noses,” Sims said dourly. “Well, here we go again.”

Manning shot his gaze to the calendar, seeking the next phase of full moon. That was when Ray Fischer, a compulsive pyromaniac. always made his touch-offs. Manning too vividly remembered the last time. He’d been prowling a tenement neighborhood, seeking Fischer’s trail after losing him while trampling out a blaze he’d caught the pyro setting. Searching, he’d been only a half block from sudden shouts and screams fringing a second fire. Radioing an alarm, he assisted the escape of hysterical women, shrilling children, panicky men until the stairway became a roaring chimney. The rest waited for ladders, or morgue canvases, and he could still hear the sound of the woman who jumped from the fifth floor and hit the pavement beside him.

Fischer should have got life, but in court Manning didn’t have enough conclusive evidence — not even a flicker of admission — for the big touch-off. So Fischer got five years for the minor blaze and now, after serving fifteen months, he was out again.

Manning turned from the calendar. His thoughts grappled, angry, scared. Sims scowled, stretching his game leg.

“They ought to let us carry guns,” he said bitterly.

Manning gave him a look. Sims was hard to hold down sometimes, hating the only job the department could give him and taking it out on fire ordinance violators.

“You’re going soft on me, looking for an easy way out,” said Manning, cringing at the thought of explaining to crying mothers and widowed husbands why a firebug was on the loose. It couldn’t happen again with Fischer. He picked up the phone. “Get me the parole office,” he told the headquarters operator. A secretary finally answered. “Put Officer Redfield on,” Manning demanded. “I don’t care what he’s doing. Get him on the line.”

“Mr. Redfield is on leave of absence. I’m handling his cases. I’m Julia Worden. May I assist you? I didn’t get your name.”

“Manning,” he said, frowning. “Marshal, Fire Department, Arson Bureau. Who’s assigned to that pyromaniac, Ray Fischer, just released from the state pen?”

“I told you, Marshall. / am covering Mr. Redfield’s cases.”

“I thought women were confined to juveniles and females.”

“As you know, Marshal,” she said firmly, “we’re always short-handed. I’ve come down from the capital to fill in. Ray Fischer is my case. Just what is it you wanted to know? I can tell you he has a family and a job awaiting him. He has been rehabilitated.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Manning snapped, picturing her as a cold fish. A tailor-suited, prim-rodded spinster who did no good for the enforcement guys who had to take the hell of running them down again.

“You sound prejudiced, Marshal,” she began.

“That’s right,” said Manning. “Me and a lot of people in the cemetery. Stay in your office. I’m coming over.” Hanging up, he turned to Sims. “Does the name Worden ring a bell with you?”

“I’ll find out,” Sims growled. “Let me see her while you give the little monsters of Grammar School Six some words of wisdom. I won’t have to watch my language talking to her.”

“I’ll handle both,” said Manning. “You stay on deck for calls. Get an alert okayed by the Old Man for a mimeo to all station commanders. I want it to include a complete description of Fischer. Tell them to pass the word around their districts to all building superintendents and managers. Get to it. Full moon’s coming in three days.”

Too mad to take the stairs, he slid the brass to the garage adjoining the headquarters apparatus floor. In his coupe he wished it were the sort of emergency where he could use red light and siren. This was one of those times when he wondered if the state had been wise in abolishing capital punishment. He had to admit it hadn’t been much of a deterrent, but neither were stiff sentences when the Parole Board went soft.

As he expected when he entered Julia Worden’s office, she sat very erect, was tailor-suited, but she was about thirty years younger than he’d imagined. Her dark eyes, matching wavy hair, looked a little tired, but friendly despite a faint flush on the set cheeks. A prim-rodder with interesting curves — not a cover girl, but good enough for somewhere inside the book. Plenty good. His angry words vanished, but he cut off her greeting.