Bill Pronzini - Schemers

“You say you can prove he killed Cullrane,” Yin said. “While he was with you outside in the hallway.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, let’s hear your theory.”

I told them how I had it figured. Method, motives, and what I expected to find in the library. They listened without interruption. When I was done, they weren’t skeptical anymore. Davis said to his partner, “You know, it could’ve been managed that way. Explains why Pollexfen’s been so anxious to get into the library. It’s a better fit, too. No inconsistencies.”

“We’ll find out,” Yin said. “Call the man and tell him we’re on our way with his keys.”

P ollexfen was in a bright, almost smug mood-at first. He must have been surprised to see me with the two inspectors and the patrolman they’d brought along, but he didn’t show it. Still convinced he’d outsmarted and bamboozled everybody concerned. It wasn’t until Yin told him she and Davis and I would be spending some time alone in the library that you could see the arrogance fade a little and the worm of doubt wiggle in.

“What for?” he said. “You’ve already examined the room, you and your forensics experts.”

Yin said, “Some things we want to check on.”

“What things? What are you looking for?”

“We’ll tell you after we’re done.”

“I demand to be present. It’s my library, my house-”

“We’d rather you wait in the living room, Mr. Pollexfen.”

Blood-rush darkened his face; he bounced the ferrule of his cane hard on the floor. “By God, your superiors will hear about this!”

Yin ignored that. She directed the patrolman to stay with Pollexfen, and the three of us went down the hallway to the library. The yellow crime scene tape was in place over the door, the police seal and both bolt locks secure. Yin removed the tape, broke the seal, keyed us in. Davis put on the lights.

The air in there had a stale quality, a faint residue of Wednesday’s violence. Anyone who thinks the odor of death doesn’t linger in a closed space has never been in one. It can and does-for days, even weeks. And you don’t need to be extra sensitive to be aware of it.

This was my show; Yin and Davis stood off, waiting for my lead. I took a long look around, picturing the room as I’d first seen it after the shooting. The eight books were still on the couch, but the stack wasn’t quite as orderly; the inspectors or the techs must have moved them. The same book was still on top, though. The dried mess inside the fireplace had been sampled and dusted and sprayed-the techs again. In the rows of bookshelves alongside, the blood spatters shone dark and crusty, like rust spots, on the Mylar jacket protectors.

I went to those shelves first, donning the pair of white latex gloves Yin had given me, and spent a few minutes examining the authors and titles in the affected rows on each side. “The first time Pollexfen showed me around in here,” I said, “every book was arranged in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. The books on these two shelves were N, O, and part of P. Look at them now.”

Yin and Davis looked. “Out of order,” she said. “Some K ’s, L ’s, other letters mixed in.”

“You’ll have to take my word on this, but none of the replacements are particularly valuable. There’s only one reason a meticulous collector like Pollexfen would’ve switched the books around.”

Davis said, “Get the valuable ones out of the way. Protect them from possible splatter damage.”

“That’s it. The same reason he arranged the killing so that most of the blood and gore ended up inside the fireplace. He cares more about his first editions than anything else. Once he decided to stage the murder in here, protecting the books that can’t be easily replaced was his number-one priority.”

I moved over to the stack on the couch, sat down beside it. The book on top, its Mylar cover coated with a fine film of fingerprint powder, was The Talking Clock by Frank Gruber. I’d noted that on Wednesday because Gruber had been a frequent contributor to the pulp magazines in the ’30s and ’40s and I’d read dozens of his stories, one of them The Talking Clock as a magazine serial. With a forefinger, I lifted the front cover and the first couple of pages. Fine condition, but no author signature or inscription.

I leaned down to look at the spines of the others in the stack. Two were also by Gruber: The Navy Colt and The Hungry Dog. The rest: Bodies Are Where You Find Them, Brett Halliday. Death on the Door Mat, M. V. Heberden. Vivanti, Sydney Horler. The Corpse at the Quill Club, Amelia Reynolds Long. The Mandarin’s Sapphire, Dwight Marfield.

“Eight more books,” I said, “that we were supposed to think were targeted for theft by Cullrane. The first eight are ultrarare, some one-of-a-kind, the authors and titles recognizable to nonbibliophiles, and worth half a million on the collectors’ market. But these eight are just the opposite-more or less obscure titles by relatively minor writers.” I tapped the copy of The Talking Clock. “I looked this one up on the Internet. In fine condition, without an author inscription, it’s worth a maximum of two hundred dollars. The others here by the same writer can’t be worth any more. I don’t know about the other five, but I’d be surprised if their value is even a thousand dollars combined.”

Davis said, “Same purpose as the spatter rows. Protecting his valuables.”

“Right. He figured I wouldn’t notice and that no one on the investigating team would be enough of a bibliophile to tell the difference.”

“That makes two marks against Mr. Pollexfen,” Yin said.

Number three coming up: the eight stolen rarities.

Except that they hadn’t been stolen at all. They were right here in this room and had been all along.

It took the three of us more than an hour to find all of them. I’d told the inspectors what to look for and it was

Yin who made the initial discovery, the inscribed first edition of Ellery Queen’s The Roman Hat Mystery. I found the Doyle, Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, and Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; Davis the other Hammett and Chandler’s The Big Sleep; and Yin, Rex Stout’s Fer-de-Lance and the Cain.

They were scattered throughout the collection, among the A ’s, the E ’s, the G ’s, the R ’s, the T ’s, the V ’s, the W ’s. Mostly on the higher shelves, so they’d be even less easy to spot. Not that there’d been much chance I or anybody else, even a fellow bibliophile, would have found them by accident or on a cursory inspection; you had to know what you were looking for, and you had to examine nearly all of the thousands of books in the library.

Such a simple trick-a neat little variation on Poe’s “Purloined Letter.” All Pollexfen had done was take off the original dust jackets, wrap the books in different jackets of the exact same size from titles by lesser authors, and set them back on the shelves with the lesser authors’ other books. The Maltese Falcon, for instance, was hidden inside the jacket for The Fires at Fitch’s Folly by Kenneth Whipple. After all eight were hidden, it was easy for Pollexfen to slip the rare dust jackets out of the library in a briefcase and hide them in a safe place. The books by Whipple and the others he’d used were right there on his desk in plain sight-unjacketed copies mixed in with jacketed ones that I’d noticed on my first visit and assumed were new acquisitions. To complete the illusion of theft, Pollexfen had left gaps in the shelves where the “missing” valuables had originally stood.

“Three marks against him,” Yin said when we had all eight rarities. “You’ve been right on everything so far.”

Davis said, “Let’s go see if he’s right about the rest of it.”