With a nod Kern continued his confession. “Young Queen Victoria’s portrait on Sweeney Todd’s wall is a trimmed and framed penny postage stamp and, if the truth be known, Lizzie Borden’s axes come from a manufacturer of holiday charms for bracelets. They’re supposed to represent George Washington’s birthday.”
“Quite terrible, of course,” said Wallis drily. “But hardly a reason for murder.”
Kern bowed his agreement and added, “No, this room isn’t one of mine. It arrived in yesterday’s mail. Since I was coming to see Dr. Muir, I brought it along to show you.”
“No message? No return address?” asked Wallis.
“Oh, I know who sent it,” said Kern. “His name is Frederick Chapman, and he bestrides the world of dollhouses and miniature furniture like a colossus.”
“Doesn’t everybody?” asked Polly.
Kern gave her a stern look. “Chapman’s miniature furniture sells for thousands and you won’t find a complete room for under fifty thousand,” he said, perhaps hoping prices would set the conversation back in a more serious direction. “Chapman and I used to meet now and then at conventions and trade shows. He is a large, dark, brooding man. Two things seemed to drive his engine: perfection in his craftsmanship and the desire for money. When I first knew him he talked crackpot stuff, like alchemy and magic and selling his soul to the devil for a team of tiny mannikin craftsmen to produce miniature furniture under his direction.”
Kern shook his head sadly. “Don’t laugh,” he said. Then he laughed himself. “I’m in a weird business, that’s for sure. Sometimes after working in a world that’s one-twelfth scale you step out into the street and the size of things startles you, the towering buildings, the giant pedestrians. Come home to an empty apartment and go from room to room and you sometimes feel you’re being watched. (And, believe me, I’ve been feeling a lot of that recently.) You swing around quickly expecting to find an immense eye at the window. But it’s only the moon. All the switching back and forth from Lilliput to Brobdingnag can unhinge the mind.
“More recently, Chapman’s ravings turned electronic. One day he wrote to ask to borrow this very Belter table. Using some special optical scanning device he claimed he would create what he called an electronic template of the Belter which, by a holographic process, would allow him to reproduce the table in miniature at half the cost.”
Kern shrugged at the very idea. “Chapman wasn’t the kind of man you’d want as an enemy,” he explained. “So I loaned him the table, which, in due course, he returned. A few weeks later Chapman’s miniature furniture catalog arrived, showing my Belter table and many other fine pieces offered at half his usual price. Chapman did specify that payment must accompany each order, which was not unusual for a craftsman of his caliber. I imagined the orders pouring in from rich collectors and museums.
“Even these new prices were too much for me. Still, I thought, perhaps a less detailed piece like Sweeney Todd’s barber chair, ordered in quantity, might reduce the price to within my reach. I decided to put the proposition to Chapman on my next visit to Hoboken, where he lived.
“His car was out front. When I rang the bell and no one came, I went out back to his workshop and peered in the window. Standing in the middle of the workshop floor was what I took to be a steel garbage can surfaced with small bumps like the inside had been worked over with a peen-ball hammer and, leaning against it, a silver plaque of the god Mercury. Suddenly I realized I was looking at large reproductions of a thimble and a Mercury dime, the same items Chapman used in his catalog to establish scale.
“Then a car door slammed. There was Chapman. He’d just put two suitcases on the front passenger seat of his car. As he started around to the driver’s side he looked over and saw me standing there by the window and read the look on my face. Without a word he jumped in the car and roared away.
“An hour later he was arrested trying to get on a plane to Tahiti carrying close to a million dollars in cash. Apparently the government had been keeping him under surveillance on suspicion of mail fraud. But Chapman has always blamed me for his arrest and has sworn to kill me.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Polly. “This Chapman guy borrowed antiques like your Belter table and photographed them with garbage-can-sized thimbles and immense dimes to make them look small?”
Kern nodded. “The whole thing was a swindle. He’d planned to make this one big killing and skip the country. Anyway, since it was his first offense he got off with a suspended sentence on condition he give back the money. But the legal fees and the damage to his professional reputation bankrupted him.
“Already something of a crackpot, Chapman now became completely paranoid, claiming little people and giants were out to kill him. One day he shot an unlucky midget who happened to be walking behind him in the street. Chapman was put into an institution for the criminally insane from which he escaped several years ago. Then...”
Rubbing his high forehead in wonderment, Wallis interrupted to ask, “Mr. Kern, I don’t understand. Why come to us? You’ve enough here to go right to the police.”
Kern sighed. “I’m afraid Chapman did a job on me there. You see, last month he sent me a letter that read, ‘Kern, you bastard, get ready. I mean to kill you. First, I’ll show you a real scene of the crime. After that you’ll have a week to live. Yours truly, Frederick Chapman.’
“Oh, the police took a letter from an escaped homicidal maniac very seriously. Until they made three discoveries. One, the letter had been typed on the portable typewriter I keep in my study. Two, the stationery matched my own. And three...” Kern paused to give them a baffled look. “Three, Chapman’s signature was in my handwriting. I’d thought it looked oddly familiar.
“The police decided it was all a publicity stunt for my new fictional line of Murders in Miniature. They would’ve charged me if my lawyer hadn’t smoothed things over. But I’m hardly in a position to go back to the police. Besides, I’m sure my apartment is secure.” He tapped the miniature room. “If Chapman murders me it won’t be like that.”
Taking off the deerstalker with his thumb and forefinger on the visor, Kern scratched his head with the other fingers. “We wrote about the Belter table, so Chapman knew my stationery. And I recently sent the typewriter out for repair. Maybe he got his hands on it. But how could Chapman’s signature be in my handwriting?”
The question floated there in the long silence. Polly’s mind raced, for something told her she knew the answer.
Then Wallis asked, “Did you have any communication with Chapman in the asylum?”
Kern started to shake his head, then brightened. “His first month there he wrote to regret the intemperate things he’d said and asking me to think well of him. It was Christmas so I wrote the poor devil a few lines on a card, Scottie dogs in the snow, I recall it...” Kern stopped. “Ah,” he said.
Wallis nodded. “I’ll bet Chapman treasured the envelope more than the card. And the warders would find it quite the usual thing, a madman copying his name out over and over again.” Here Wallis cocked an eyebrow at Polly and mouthed the name Cornelia Otis Skinner.
Polly blushed and glared back. So that was how he’d figured it out. A mere week ago she’d read to him from her library book that when Cornelia Otis Skinner was away at school and received a letter from Otis Skinner, her famous stage-actor father, she would cut off the “Cornelia” on the envelope and sell the “Otis Skinner” part to her schoolmates as her father’s autograph.
“You also said the letter opener went missing,” said Wallis.
“And the cat,” added Polly.
“And the cat,” repeated her husband. “So the easiest explanation for the writing paper and the typewriter is that Chapman has access to your apartment.”