Nathan beamed. “You see, when my wife was in the hospital, I was able to try out a variety of liquids and numbers of drops. As chance would have it, four drops of her favorite drink did the trick. All I had to do was wait for the maid to be settled down in the kitchen. My wife always had a drink on the night stand.”
Jordon nodded. “Excellent.”
“Four drops is just enough to short out the push button. Between the short, evaporation opens the circuit in just a little-”
Malcolm Jordon slapped Nathan on the back, took his elbow, and steered him toward the door. “Come, we must celebrate!”
Stepany, Humpheries, and Baines followed the pair through the door and down the stairs.
Sir James turned to his companion. “I almost muffed it, didn’t I, Lieutenant Danton?”
Danton nodded as he removed his handlebar moustache. “You had me worried, Inspector Cockeral, no doubt about that.”
Cockeral nodded. “Of course your laboratory found nose drops in the glass and whiskey in the nose drops.”
“Yes. As soon as we got the results, we knew how he had done it. The problem was getting him to admit it. The District Attorney was certain he’d never be able to convince a jury that Nathan Griever could be that imaginative. The defense could easily produce a thousand bits of evidence that his client is about as sharp as a pound of wet silage.”
“Still, it is rather imaginative.”
Danton nodded. “Twenty-three million dollars can mother a lot of invention.”
Cockeral nodded his head toward the door. “What happens to him now?”
“First, a party welcoming him to the club. Then, an epic pub crawl will begin that will end with his delivery back at the Los Angeles airport, where he will be arrested.”
Cockeral shook his head. “Pity. The fellow did so want to belong.”
“Oh, he’ll belong – and wait till he gets a load of his new clubhouse.” Danton turned and walked toward the door. Cockeral followed.
“You must have been awfully certain he would fall for your charade.”
Danton smiled. “I studied Nathan Griever very carefully. He’s nothing but a small-time grifter who only made one clever score in his entire life. Can you imagine how frustrated he must have felt not being able to tell his story? All we did was provide an audience worthy of his confidence.”
“Danton, what about the strange amount for the initiation fee? The $13,107.17?”
Danton shrugged. “Proposition Thirteen.”
“Eh?”
“Proposition Thirteen. Money is very, very tight, and the only way I could get my superiors to go along with this was if it didn’t cost us anything. $13,107.17 was the exact cost of the charade. We could have gotten more from him, of course, but it wouldn’t have been sporting to make profit, don’t you agree?”
The Birdman of Tonypandy by Bernard Knight
He laid his binoculars on the window ledge and decided that it was time that he murdered his wife.
Pondering for a few minutes, Lewis Lloyd reviewed the various methods that had been going through his mind for the past few weeks. He had more or less decided on one, the prime considera tion being that he should never be convicted of the crime. There was no doubt that he would be strongly suspected – and if his luck was out, he might even be brought to trial, given their past record of domestic discord.
But found guilty – never!
Having made the decision, Lloyd gave a sigh of relief and turned his attention back to the window. Picking up his glasses again, he trained them at the line of scraggy rowan trees and stunted oaks that rimmed the top of the mountain, high above his hut. He watched a group of magpies strutting about under the trees, until his attention was diverted by a pair of buzzards soaring high over the old coal tip, beyond the ruined lime-kiln.
Lewis Lloyd loved birds and this ramshackle hut was his only refuge from the nagging and abuse that he suffered down in the valley bottom. He often came up early in the morning, or when the pub was shut in the afternoon. Sometimes he even stayed overnight, in winter huddled over the little pot-bellied stove, blissful in his solitude.
Lewis smiled complacently behind his binoculars, thinking that when the deed was done, he could come up even more often, with no Rita to screech objections at him.
Yes, it was high time to put Plan A into action.
“Bloody nonsense!” growled Mordecai Evans, tossing the letter on to his cluttered desk. “We’ve got enough aggravation already without daft women writing us letters.”
“Mind you, boss, that family’s got a bit of previous,” murmured his sergeant, peeved that Mordecai had dismissed his offering in such a cavalier fashion. The detective-inspector, a squat bruiser who could have doubled for John Prescott, scowled up at Willy Williams.
“What previous? A bit of form for couple of domestics?”
“Lloyd broke her arm once – and another time she got a couple of busted ribs,” said Willy defensively. “The beak gave him six months, suspended on account of provocation.”
“Big deal!” sneered the DI. “So we’re supposed to take her seriously, are we?”
He hauled himself to his feet and grabbed the crumpled letter from the desk, going to the window for better light. Though he was reluctant to admit it, he couldn’t see so well these days and a visit to Specsavers was on the cards soon. Peering at the cheap notepaper in the grey light that managed to percolate through the dark clouds looming over Pontypridd, he glowered at the unwelcome message.
“How did you come by this, Willy?”
“Eddie Morgan, the desk sergeant at the nick up in Ton Pentre gave it me yesterday, when I was up there about the break-in at the Co-op.”
“And where did he get it?” grumbled Mordecai, slumping back into his chair.
“Rita Lloyd brought it in a few days ago. Apparently, she bent his ear something terrible, saying her old man was threatening to kill her, so she was making an official complaint.” The detective-sergeant delivered this with some relish. “Eddie said he forgot all about it, knowing what a nutter Rita was – but as I was there, he said he thought he’d better pass it on to us.”
“Oh, Gawd!” sighed Mordecai. “Was she battered and bruised this time?”
“No sign of it, he said. But half-pissed, as usual.”
Wearily, the DI pulled a stack of case folders across the desk towards him. “Well, I haven’t got bloody time to waste on that now. If she comes in with two black eyes, we’ll have a word with her, otherwise it goes in my
