The police inspector interrupted. “There’s what remains of your apple.” He pointed to the apple core under a window. “Didn’t want to stain the valuables, did you?”
Henley stared at the apple core and at the evidence in front of him. He considered asking the police to check his briefcase for fingerprints, but anyone wishing to conceal fingerprints would have easy access to the scholars’ gloves provided by the museum itself.
For a moment he wondered whether the dead man himself might have been stealing the documents, but he immediately dismissed that idea. Anyone who caught Vikram in the act of thievery would have raised the alarm, not killed him. And why put these artifacts into Henley’s briefcase? Were they planning for Henley to serve as an unsuspecting mule, for him to carry the contraband off the premises and then, what? A street crime, a quick grab-and-snatch? Henley would report being mugged, and the thieves would escape with priceless Dickens materials. It would work, he supposed, but it seemed awfully complicated as a way of stealing from the collection.
He recalled the scene in the reading room that afternoon. “The man who collapsed this afternoon. He was evidently faint from not eating breakfast. He could have eaten my apple. Did anyone notice whether he left the performance before intermission?”
“I sat at the door,” said Manette. “No one left.”
“If you were at the door, then you could have slipped out yourself,” said Henley.
“To do what?” asked Manette. “Ravi was alive at the end of the first act. And everyone in the audience exited the room before I did. You were the last to leave, and that’s when I gave you the note.”
Yes, the note. Exactly why would Vikram invite Driscoll Henley, a virtual stranger, to meet him upstairs between acts?
“He wrote a note to me but asked you to deliver it? That’s awfully cumbersome. Why put the invitation in writing? He could have spoken to me directly as he walked past.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps he didn’t want to break character.”
Henley thought about that. There was one logical conclusion.
“Tick tock, Mr. Henley,” said the inspector.
He took a chance. “The note wasn’t for me, was it, Manette?” When she didn’t answer, he knew that he’d guessed right. “It was you that he wanted to meet upstairs, not me. You must have known what was going to happen to him, and you wanted me to find the body.”
Now all stared at him — and at her. Two fat tears slid down her cheeks. “It’s not like that,” she said. “I’m sorry. Ravi wrote that note to me six weeks ago. Tonight I used it to send Mr. Henley to find him.” She looked at the policemen. “I didn’t know Ravi was going to be assaulted. I just wanted to embarrass him. He had to stop.”
“Stop what?” asked Henley.
She gestured at the display cases in the room. “Ravi would open the exhibits. Handle the books, touch the miniatures. He said it helped him stay in character. But of course it was entirely inappropriate.”
“You had the keys to the display cabinets,” Henley prompted her. “And you’d open them up for him.”
She nodded. “But after today, I couldn’t. Not after Mr. Jarvis was sacked and we had a letter missing.”
Henley nodded. “In the process of opening up the display cases to connect directly with Dickens, Vikram must have discovered that some original items had been replaced with replicas. Tonight he came face-to-face with the thief, who killed him and tied my briefcase to his hands after stashing these stolen items inside. It was a literal means of tying me to the murder.”
“But how could the thief get into these locked exhibits?” asked Manette. “Ravi had no keys.”
“And there’s no broken glass,” said Finn. The room fell silent. Finn stared at Manette. “You and I are the only ones with keys to these cases.”
Manette stared back. “What did you do with the keys turned in this morning by Jarvis Dedlock? Someone could have used those.”
Finn pulled two sets of keys from his pocket. “I’ve carried both Jarvis’s and my own all day.”
A long silence, and then Manette spoke. “I know I didn’t kill him, Thatch.”
“I know I didn’t,” said Finn.
“Neither one of you killed him,” said Henley. He recalled the scene from this afternoon. The young woman — the wife of the professor downstairs — had known the boorish young man sitting next to her. Surely they had collaborated on an elaborate scheme to steal from the collection. In the confusion after the young man pretended to faint, somebody could snatch the Dickens letter and stash it in the reading room, perhaps inside the card catalogue. In case of a search, the thief would not be holding incriminating evidence and could return to fetch the letter later. The young man had spent the entire evening downstairs. But couldn’t the young woman be here too, somewhere out of sight? Her husband had loudly proclaimed that she wasn’t attending the performance. That could have been a classic act of misdirection. Could the woman have been hiding in the house all day, waiting for an opportunity to retrieve her stolen goods? Was that possible? For a visitor to lurk unbeknownst to the staff for so many hours after closing time?
Only a couple of minutes had passed between Ravi Vikram’s exit at the end of Act One and Henley’s discovery of the body. No one could have killed the man and then had time to slip down the stairs undetected. There was no fire escape or elevator or laundry chute. Whoever had killed Ravi Vikram must still be on this floor of the house.
“What’s that?” asked Henley, pointing to a door in the corner.
“A cupboard,” said Thatcher Finn.
What Americans call a closet. “It’s locked, I suppose.”
A policeman tried it. The door was unlocked, but the closet was empty.
“That’s odd,” said Thatcher Finn. “That door is supposed to be locked always.”
“That’s where the killer was hiding until Ravi Vikram arrived.”
“But where is this mysterious figure now, Mr. Henley?” asked the inspector. “There are no more cupboards to check. Who is this person, and where?”
The answer came too easily. “The killer is in the room next-door.”
“The other bedroom is empty.”
“Not the other bedroom. The dressing room. Look under the tablecloth of the special exhibit. It’s long enough to conceal someone.”
Two policemen left the room. He heard them enter the dressing room, then the sounds of a brief scuffle. In a moment they reentered the room escorting a handcuffed, writhing prisoner. It was a man Henley had never seen before, a diminutive bald man in a dress shirt, suit trousers, and sneakers.
“Jarvis Dedlock,” said Thatcher Finn, shocked.
The former director of the museum.
“They said I’d just missed you this morning,” said Henley. “But you never left the house, did you? Mrs. Pierce looked the other way when you slipped upstairs. You convinced her that you were innocent and were springing a trap for the real thief.”
“But he turned in his keys,” said Finn.
“Duplicates,” said Henley. He turned to Jarvis Dedlock. “When did you steal the letter?”
Dedlock didn’t even bother to ask who Henley was. He must have overheard the entire conversation from his hiding place next-door. After a moment, he shrugged. “Two days ago. As soon as the authenticators from the British Library left the building.”
“And where did you hide it?”
Dedlock snorted. “I didn’t hide it. I took it home with me.” He paused, as if waiting to see if Henley would work it all out.
“You took a priceless letter home,” said Henley, “but you brought it back with you this morning when you came to turn in your keys. Why would you do that?”