through the door. The inspector walked rapidly up to the front entrance and pulled aside the draught excluder curtain to disclose a bunch of keys hanging from a nail.
‘Oh dear,’ said Muriel feebly. ‘I forgot. The spare set. They’ve been hanging there since the beginning of time. Andrew always kept them by the door in case of –’
‘Catastrophe?’
Conan Doyle paid no heed to the sardonic tone in the remark.
‘Of course. Now the solution is obvious!’ he cried.
‘Is it?’
Nothing in McLevy’s experience was ever obvious. All things had, lurking within them, a subtle subversion.
‘Remove the keys,’ said the young man eagerly. ‘Press them into soft wax, imprint both sides, replace, then make a metal copy from the imprint and no-one is any the wiser.’
The inspector put on what Mulholland would have recognised as his
He did not necessarily suspect the fellow before him of malfeasance but somebody somewhere had something up the sleeve, up their jooks, a secret thought, a notion withheld.
‘Who would do all that?’ he asked.
‘Anyone who knew of the location.’
‘And who might that be?’
‘Someone who was often in the house.’
‘Such as who?’
This stopped the train of deduction in its tracks because the one person present who might qualify for that possibility was Doyle himself. However Muriel, who had been, for her, strangely silent since the revelation of the twitched curtain, suddenly launched forth like someone with a story to tell.
‘Of course, when Andrew died the house was
‘Aye. Nothing like a deid body tae provoke appetite.’
Muriel nodded vigorous agreement.
‘Ellen and I were rushed off our feet; I had to employ extra staff, provide food, whisky – the amount of whisky consumed at a funeral is nothing short of scandalous – and I distraught with grief. That would surely be the time and opportunity.’
Conan Doyle had moved out of the limelight and now watched from the side. Although he had a highly developed sense of chivalry towards the frail vessel of womanhood, he was also trained to observe.
And it struck him with some force that the inspector was playing Muriel like a hooked fish.
Had he, Conan Doyle, man of medicine, acute of sensibility, a student of the great Joseph Bell who taught him to be on constant alert against the assumptions of a lazy mind, to take the contraposition to implication and only deduce from known facts – had he also been played like a fish? For a moment he caught a glimpse of himself in a long mirror that hung by the side of the coat stand in the hall, and with his protruding eyes and droopy moustache, he might well have been mistaken for a large cod.
With an effort he shook off this unflattering comparison to hear the inspector cast another query.
‘But your husband died two years ago. Why wait until now to utilise this presumed copy. What has changed?’
McLevy hauled his notebook out and licked his lips, turning pages, peering down as if to refresh his memory.
‘Ye found a sum of money in his desk. Notes of the realm. Near a hundred pounds, ye said?’
A nod in answer.
Silence is golden.
‘Approximately two weeks ago, ye said?’
Another nod.
‘A deal of money. Ye should have banked it. Bankers aye like to see money coming in at the door.’
‘I didn’t like to…handle such.’
‘Was it tainted?’
‘It was – Andrew’s.’
‘Well, it’s gone now. A fierce amount. What use would he have had for it?’
‘I do not know.’
The garrulous Muriel had suddenly clammed up like a clabbydhu.
A door further up the hall opened quietly and Mulholland slipped out. McLevy had positioned himself so as to have the vantage, looking out past the other two down the corridor.
The constable shook his head to signal that Ellen had tucked in her elbows and given away nothing.
Conan Doyle cleared his throat. His features had altered from cod-like, more towards that of a Chinese Mandarin.
‘Is it your contention, inspector,’ he announced gravely, ‘that there is a connection between the discovery of the cache of money and the larceny?’
‘Possible. Possible. All things are possible.’
This cryptic response galvanised the policeman into sudden action as if what he had just said had unleashed a font of energy in his own being.
‘Who else did ye tell about this treasure trove, eh?’ he demanded fiercely.
‘Only Ellen, of course,’ replied the startled Muriel, ‘And –’
‘Arthur, of course,’ said McLevy. ‘Naebody else?’
A moment, then she shook her head.
A moment. But McLevy registered such slices of time.
He suddenly smacked his hands together, which sounded like a gunshot in the stillness.
‘You’d be surprised the number of folk who leave their spare keys on a nail by the door and anyone who knows the working of a household bereft o’ common sense would, as I did, check their whereabouts.
‘Now!’
He almost jumped up into the air, and Mulholland, who had witnessed this explosion of energy before, often with violent consequences, hoped that nothing untoward was about to happen to Big Arthur and wee Muriel.
‘I examined the keys for traces of wax but found none,’ McLevy continued. ‘That means damn all. They could have been cleaned, and it is my contention they played a part in all this but not in the way, Mister Doyle, that you would have me believe.’
‘I would not have you believe
‘Deduction?’ McLevy gave another little jump. ‘Deduction depends on experience, sir. And experience is hard-earnt!’
Having delivered that pithy aphorism, he strode past, heading towards the rear outside quarters of the house; as they trailed after him, the others were taken aback to see the bold Mulholland looming in the narrow space as if he had materialised out of nowhere.
The constable nodded politely but did not follow. He moved instead towards a small window at the hinder part of the premises and took up his station there as a silent jerk of the head from a passing McLevy had so instructed.
Left alone for a moment, the constable felt a strange lightness enter his being and whipped out his hornbeam stick to brandish it in the air in the manner of
She must have emerged behind him as silently as he had accomplished earlier and regarded him with wary eyes.
‘I’ll away and make some tea,’ she announced.
