“But what about the twin brother?”
“When I put the Guarneri into his hands, Peter,” I said, “he was rather like a person in ecstasy. That was all he cared about after the shock of losing Václav: that the violin, at least, had survived. He’d helped his brother smuggle it out of the country, and he was very well aware of its value and importance. What he intends to do with it, of course, isn’t altogether clear at this point, but it will be something far better, I’m sure, than shamefully gloating over its secret possession the way Byron Davis was doing, displaying it in plain view as something else with the maker’s label removed and hidden, half cleverly, in the same case.”
“Uh-huh. Only, you know what? You never did tell me how you and R. J. figured out about the violin and the label in the first place.”
R. J. and I looked at each other. “Well—” I said.
“Well, what?”
R. J. shrugged. “In a way it actually starts off with you, Peter, that’s all — since you’re the one who hooked me up with the Huceks. If I ever get around to writing the Carr Detective Handbook, I’m going to make Axiom Number Three the fact that clients almost always lie to detectives — mostly by leaving out parts of the truth.”
“You mean that that couple of innocents—”
“Well, yeah, Peter — that couple of innocents. It struck me right off the bat, you see, that ten thousand dollars didn’t make a lot of sense as a fee for what they wanted me to do unless there was some additional incentive that they weren’t talking about. So even though the violin was never mentioned, I was looking for something like it from the very beginning. And as it turned out, facts and inferences I picked up along the way pointed very strongly to its existence. Václav’s obsession with Paganini was a big one, of course, and the rumor of his bringing state-owned instruments with him when he defected, and the other obsession he had after his wife died of always carrying his violin around...” R. J. shrugged again. “It just made a lot more sense to think that my clients wanted me to find Václav’s violin as well as his remains even though they didn’t say it.”
“So we hypothesized,” I continued, “that the violin might be a virtually priceless Guarneri and that Byron Davis might have it unlawfully in his possession.”
“Which meant by extension,” R. J. said, “that the reason Václav and his car hadn’t been found might simply be because they were submerged all winter in the deep pool of Mansion Lake under three feet of ice. Ginny was the one who read up on violins and spotted the business about the labels, especially Giuseppe Guarneri’s labels—”
“And so we, or really R. J., went looking for the label removed from the instrument, because it seemed likely that Davis, if he did have the violin, wouldn’t want to advertise the fact.”
“When we found the label, which was pretty valuable in itself, we knew that Hucek had made it to Davis’s place the night of the storm, which meant that the car with Hucek in it almost had to be in the lake along with a replacement violin, probably the Amati that Davis claimed to own. So the only question left, to my mind, was whether Davis’s greed for the much more valuable Guarneri was triggered before or after Hucek died.”
“And you really think it was after?”
“Oh, it was after, all right. And I think we did Davis a big service by airing the whole thing. Maybe now he won’t think he sees the ghost of Václav Hucek every time he turns around.”
Akitada’s First Case
by I. J. Parker
HEIAN-KYO (KYOTO), ELEVENTH CENTURY JAPAN SOMETIME DURING POEM-COMPOSING MONTH (AUGUST).
The sun had been up only a few hours but the archives of the ministry were already stifling in the summer heat. A murky, oppressive air hung about the shelves of document boxes and settled across the low desks. These were normally occupied by scribes and junior clerks, but at the moment they were empty.
Akitada, having celebrated his twentieth birthday with friends the night before — an occasion that involved emptying a cup of wine each time one failed to compose an acceptable poem — had overslept and crept in the back way. Now he knelt at his desk, feeling sick and staring blindly at a dossier he was supposed to be copying. He winced when two of his fellow clerks, Hirosawa and Sanekana, walked in chattering loudly.
“Sugawara!” Hirosawa stopped in surprise. “Where did you come from? The minister’s been asking for you. I wouldn’t give much for your chances of keeping your position this time.”
Sanekana, a pimply fat fellow, sniggered. “You should have seen his face,” he announced gleefully. “He was positively gloating at the thought of getting rid of you. Better go to him quick!”
Akitada blanched. He could not afford to lose his clerkship in the Ministry of Justice. It had been the only position offered to him when he graduated from the university. If only the minister had not formed such an instant dislike of him: inexplicably, His Excellency, Soga Ietada, had found fault with everything Akitada had done until he had become too nervous to answer the simplest question. As a result the minister had banished him to the archives to do copy work alongside the scribes. To make matters worse, his fellow clerks had recognized Akitada as a marked man and had quickly disassociated themselves from him. Akitada eyed Sanekana and Hirosawa dubiously. “I don’t suppose you would cover for me?” he asked. “I might have stepped outside when you looked for me.”
They burst into laughter.
With a sigh, Akitada rose.
His heart was beating wildly and his palms were sweating when he was shown into the great man’s office with the painted screens of waterfowl, the lacquered document boxes, and the broad desk of polished cryptomeria wood. On the desk stood the porcelain planter with a perfect miniature maple tree, the bronze brazier with its enameled wine flask, and the ministerial seal carved from pale jade — all of them witnesses to Akitada’s prior humiliations.
The minister was not alone. A thin, elderly man in a neat, dark grey silk robe was kneeling on the cushion before the great man’s table. “It is a matter of honor, Excellency, no, of life and death to me,” he said, his voice uneven with suppressed emotion. “I have, as I explained, exhausted all other possibilities. Your Excellency is my last hope.”
“Nonsense!” barked Soga Ietada. Being stout, he was sitting cross-legged at his ease, tapping impatient fingers on the polished surface of his desk. “You take it too seriously. Young women run away all the time. She’ll show up one of these days, presenting you with a grandchild, no doubt.”
The old man’s back stiffened. He did not glance at Akitada, who hovered, greatly embarrassed, near the door. “You are mistaken,” the man said. “My daughter left my home to enter the household of a nobleman. She would never engage in a fleeting, clandestine affair.”
Soga raised his eyes to heaven, caught a glimpse of Akitada, and glared, saying coldly to his guest, “As you say. I can only repeat that it is not in my power to assist you. I suggest you seek out this, er, nobleman. Now you must excuse me. My clerk is waiting to consult me on an urgent case.”
Akitada’s heart skipped a beat. Maybe it was not another reprimand after all. A case? Would he finally be given a case?
The older man bowed and rose. He left quickly, with only a passing glance at Akitada.
When the door closed, the minister’s expression changed to one of cold fury.
“And where were you this morning?” he barked.
Akitada fell to his knees and touched his forehead to the floor. “I... I was feeling ill,” he stuttered. Well, that was the truth at least. His stomach was heaving, and he swallowed hard, waiting for the storm to break over his head.