Curses!

'It's Howard Bennett,” Gideon said.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 21

* * * *

'What did you say?” Marmolejo asked woodenly.

'It's Howard Bennett.'

Marmolejo took the three-inch stub from his mouth and scowled at it as if hoping to draw strength from it. “Do you think it would be all right,” he asked mildly, “if I smoked now?'

'Go ahead.” Earlier, Abe had asked him not to smoke around the codex, but it was gone now, and the flammable celluloid-acetone fumes had been cleared away as well.

The inspector lit up with unusual thoroughness, taking two long pulls while he held the match to the end of the cigar. The first honest-to-God cloud of smoke Gideon had ever known to emerge from his mouth emerged. He waved the match out, put it in a little box, and slipped the box into a pocket of his guayabera.

'That,” he said quietly, “is not possible.'

'No, it's true, all right.'

'We have had two letters from Howard Bennett,” Marmolejo said patiently, “as you and your colleagues explained to me last night. One in 1982, one last week. Someone has just been murdered with what is almost certainly his revolver, the revolver he took with him five years ago. He was—'

'The fact that some letters were typed on his typewriter hardly proves he typed them.” As Julie had tried to tell them. “And just because a bullet came from his gun doesn't prove he pulled the trigger.'

'Of course not, but—'

'And there hasn't been a reliable sighting of the man since this place caved in. Now we know why.'

Marmolejo grunted, about a quarter convinced.

'Look, Inspector, there are a lot of indicators here. The size is right. So is the age; Howard was pushing fifty. The race, the big-boned build, those are right too. And then Howard was right-handed, as I remember.” He gestured at the skeleton. “So was this guy, apparently.'

Marmolejo frowned at the hand bones and seized on a specific. “How do you know? The right hand is larger than the left?'

'As a matter of fact, no. There are ways to tell, but hand size isn't one of them. For now I'm just going by —'

'The watch,” Marmolejo said. “Obviously, it was on his left wrist. So you conclude that a person who wears a watch on his left wrist must be right-handed?” The cigar end glowed. This was the kind of reasoning he could have confidence in. “I would conclude the same thing.'

'Right.'

'But I would not trust my conclusion absolutely. There is no law that prohibits a left-handed person from wearing his watch on his left hand.'

'Right again. It's a question of probability. But there are some shoulder-girdle measurements that should tell us about handedness for sure, and I'll do them tomorrow.'

Marmolejo drew on his cigar and made an annoyed sound at finding that it was out again. A quarter of an inch shorter than it was before, it was rolled out of the way once more into the left corner of his mouth. “Now, look, Dr. Oliver, this is all very well, but it's hardly proof. You also are Caucasian, you also are large-boned and a little over six feet tall, I think. You also are righthanded, you also are the right age—'

'The right age?” Gideon protested. “I'm only forty-one. “

'Close enough,” Marmolejo decided for himself. “And with it all, does it prove that this is you lying here?'

'The age is wrong,” Gideon maintained, “and anyway, I haven't been missing since this place fell in. And...well, there is one other thing.'

Marmolejo grinned toothily at him, as if he'd known all along that Gideon was eventually going to pull a three- foot rabbit out of the hat.

As indeed he was. But he wasn't showboating, as the inspector thought; he was following the lessons of past experience. When you're going to present something to a policeman that requires more disposition to believe than he's shown so far, it's best to lead gradually up to it, to ready him for it step by progressive step, before hitting him with the clincher. He hoped Marmolejo was prepared.

'Did you know that Howard was a woodwind player?” he asked.

If he was surprised by the question, the policeman's dark face didn't show it. “No, I didn't know.'

'He did, expertly. He used to play jazz clarinet with a group in a Merida nightclub every Saturday.'

'Ah. And the fact that Dr. Bennett played a woodwind, this is in some way relevant?'

'Very. This guy'—Gideon indicated the crushed skeleton—'did too. For years.'