The 1st Deadly Sin

“Listen, Barbara, there is someone coming here to meet me. Christopher Langley. He’s an ex-curator of the Metropolitan. I told you about him.”

“Oh, yes,” she nodded. “You told me. He’s trying to identify the weapon in the Lombard case.”

“Exactly!” he cried delightedly, and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

“What was that for?” she laughed.

“For being you.”

“Edward, when Eddie was here last week, didn’t you think he looked a little thin?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “I thought he looked a little thin.”

He lurched his chair closer, clasping her hands, and they talked of little things: the drapes in the study, whether or not to draw out accumulated dividends on his insurance policy to help pay hospital costs, what he had for breakfast, a rude attendant in the X-ray lab, a nurse who had unaccountably broken into tears while taking Barbara’s temperature. He told her about Dorfman’s promotion. She told him about a pigeon that came to her windowsill every morning at the same time.

They spoke in low, droning voices, not really hearing each other, but gripping hands and singing a lovely duet.

They came out of it, interrupted by a timid but persistent rapping on the hospital room door. Delaney turned from the waist. “Come in,” he called.

And into the room came dashing the dapper Christopher Langley, beaming. And behind him, like a battle-ship plowing into the wake of a saucy corvette, came the massive Widow Zimmerman, also beaming. Both visitors carried parcels: brown paper bags of curious shape.

Delaney sprang to his feet. He shook Langley’s little hand and bowed to the Widow. He introduced his wife to both. Barbara brightened immediately. She liked people, and she particularly liked people who knew what they were and could live with it.

There was talk, laughter, confusion. Barbara insisted on being moved back to the bed, knowing Edward would want to talk to Langley privately. The Widow Zimmerman planted her monumental butt in a chair alongside the bed and opened her brown paper bag. Gefilte fish! And homemade at that. The two men stood by, nodding and smiling, as the Widow expounded on the nutritive and therapeutic qualities of gefilte fish.

Within moments the good Widow had leaned forward over the bed, grasped one of Barbara’s hands in her own meaty fists, and the two women were deep in a whispered discussion of such physical intimacy that the men hastily withdrew to a corner of the hospital room, pulled up chairs, leaned to each other.

“First of all, Captain,” the little man said, “let me tell you immediately that I have not identified the weapon that killed Frank Lombard. I went through my books, I visited museums, and I saw several weapons-antique weapons-that could have made that skull puncture. But I agree with you: it was a modern weapon or tool. Gosh, I thought about it! Then, last week, I was walking down my street, and a Con Edison crew was tearing up the pavement. To lay a new cable, I suppose. They do it all the time. Anyway, they had a trench dug. There was a man in the trench, a huge black, and even in this weather he was stripped to the waist. A magnificent torso. Heroic. But Captain. An ordinary pick. A wooden handle as long as a woodsman’s ax, and then a steel head with a pick on each side, tapering to a point. Much too large to be the Lombard weapon, of course. And I remembered you felt the killer carried it concealed. Extremely difficult to carry a concealed pick.”

“Yes,” Delaney nodded, “it would be. But the pick idea is interesting.”

“The shape!” Langley said, hunching forward. “That’s what caught my eye. A square spike tapering to a sharp point. More than that, each spike of the pick curved downward, just as your surgeon described the wound. So I began wondering if that pick, customarily used in excavation and construction work, might have a smaller counterpart-a one-handed pick with a handle no longer than that of a hatchet.”

Delaney brooded a moment. “I can’t recall ever seeing a tool like that.”

“I don’t think there is one,” Langley agreed. “At least, I visited six hardware stores and none of them had anything like what I described. But at the seventh hardware store I found this. It was displayed in their window.”

He opened his brown paper bag and withdrew a tool: magician and rabbit. He handed it to Delaney. The Captain took it in his blunt fingers, stared, turned it over and over, hefted it, gripped it, swung it by the handle, peered at the head. He sniffed at the wood handle.

“What the hell is it?” he asked finally.

“It’s a bricklayer’s hammer,” Langley said rapidly. “Handle of seasoned hickory. Head of forged steel. Notice the squared hammer on one side of the head? That’s for tapping bricks into place in the mortar. Now look at the spike. The top surface curves downward, but the bottom side is horizontal. The spike itself doesn’t curve downward. In addition, the spike ends in a sharp, chisel point, used to split bricks. I knew at once it wasn’t the weapon we seek. But it’s a start, don’t you think?”

“Of course it is,” Delaney said promptly. He swung the hammer in short, violent strokes. “My God, I never knew such a tool existed. You could easily split a man’s skull with this.”

“But it isn’t what we want, is it?”

“No,” Delaney acknowledged, “it isn’t. The spike doesn’t curve downward, and the end comes to a chisel edge about-oh, I’d guess an inch across. Mr. Langley, there’s something else I should have mentioned to you. This has a wooden handle. I admit Lombard might well have been killed with a wood-handle weapon, but my experience has been that with wood-handled implements, particularly old ones, the handle breaks. Usually at the point where it’s been compressed into the steel head. I’d feel a lot better if we could find a tool or weapon that was made totally of steel. This is just a feeling I have, and I don’t want to inhibit your investigation, sir.”

“Oh, it won’t, it won’t!” the little man cried, bouncing up and down on his chair in his excitement. “I agree, I agree! Steel would be better. But I haven’t told you everything that happened. In the store where I found this bricklayer’s hammer, I asked the proprietor why he stocked them and how many he sold. After all, Captain, how many bricklayers are there in this world? And how many hammers would they need? Look at that tool. Wouldn’t you judge that an apprentice bricklayer, buying a tool as sturdy as that, would use it for the rest of his professional career?”

Delaney hefted the hammer again, swinging it experimentally.

“Yes,” he nodded, “I think you’re right. The handle might possibly break, but this thing could last fifty, a hundred years.”

“Exactly. Well, the hardware store owner said-and it’s amazing how willing and eager men are to talk about their jobs and specialties-”

“I know,” Delaney smiled.

“Well, he said he stocked those hammers because he sold twenty or thirty a year. And not only to bricklayers! He sold them, he said, to ‘rock hounds’-a term, as he explained it, that applies to the people who search for precious and semiprecious stones-gemmologists and others of their ilk. In addition, he sold a few hammers to amateur archeologists. I then asked if he knew of a similar hammer on which the spike, instead of ending in a wide chisel edge, came to a sharp, tapered point. He said he had heard of such a hammer but had never seen it-a hammer made especially for rock hounds, prospectors, and archeologists. And this hammer had a spike, a pick, that tapered to a sharp point. I asked him where it might be available, but he couldn’t say, except that I might try hobby and outdoor stores. What do you think, Captain?”

Delaney looked at him. “First of all,” he said, “I think you have done remarkably well. Much better than I could have done.” He was rewarded by Langley’s beam of pleasure. “And I hope you will be willing to track this thing down, to try to find the rock hound’s hammer with a spike that curves downward and tapers to a point.”

“Willing?” Christopher Langley shouted delightedly. “Willing?” And the two women at the bed, still speaking softly, broke off their conversation and looked over inquiringly.

“Willing?” Langley asked in a quieter voice. “Captain, I cannot stop now. I never knew detective work could be so fascinating.”

“Oh yes,” Delaney nodded solemnly, “fascinating.”

“Well, I haven’t had so much fun in my life. After we leave here, Myra and I-”

“Myra?” Delaney interrupted.

“The Widow Zimmerman,” the old dandy said, casting his eyes downward and blushing. “She has several admirable qualities.”

“I’m sure.”