“Is he now?” Alex asked with a smirk. Danny had an eye for the ladies and Mary was a real looker. Alex had wondered how long it would take him to ask her out.
“If I get you a list of what was stolen,” Danny said, as if he hadn’t heard Mary, “would you look over it?”
“Sure,” Alex said, standing up and putting on his hat. “Drop it by for Leslie in the morning.” He tossed a dime on the counter, five cents for the coffee and five for Doris, then winked at Mary. “You kids have fun.”
The brownstone where Alex lived belonged to his mentor, Dr. Ignatius Bell. It was a four-story, Mid-Ring building just six blocks from Central Park. When Iggy retired from His Majesty’s Navy and moved to New York, he’d found Alex selling runes on a street corner. Since the Brits only used runewrights for military doctors, Iggy took Alex under his wing and trained him to be a proper runewright.
He’d also trained Alex to be a detective.
Iggy hadn’t been entirely honest with Alex when he took him in. He had been a doctor in the Navy, but he’d retired decades earlier, become a writer, and written the most famous detective in history.
Sherlock Holmes.
Iggy, or rather Arthur, hadn’t wanted to leave his home and his family, but he’d done one other thing while he served in the Navy: he’d found the Archimedean Monograph. Originally written by Archimedes of Syracuse, the Monograph contained some of the most powerful and dangerous runes in history. It was a book many people sought, some of them perfectly willing to murder to get it. So Arthur Conan Ignatius Doyle became Ignatius Bell and moved to New York for the safety of his family.
The brownstone didn’t look any different from its neighbors, just a row house of tan brick, but it was protected by powerful runes and wards. As Alex approached, he pulled out his battered pocket watch and flipped open the cover. As part of his training with Iggy, Alex had written small, delicate runes on the inside of the lid. These allowed him to open the front door by simply twisting the knob. Without the watch and its runes, a whole gang of men couldn’t have opened that door with a battering ram.
“You’re early,” Iggy said when Alex came through the inner door of the brownstone’s vestibule. “Dinner’s not quite done yet.” Cooking was a serious hobby that Iggy had picked up during his navy days.
Alex hung up his hat and moved through the front library to the kitchen. Iggy stood at the range, stirring something in a steaming pot. He was tall and slender with wavy silver hair and a bottle-brush mustache to match. Though he was well into his seventies, Iggy had the energy of a man half his age.
“Don’t mind me,” Alex said, picking up Iggy’s issue of the New York Times from the sideboard and sitting down at the kitchen table. “It’s been a long day.”
“Did you see the story about those robberies all over the city?”
“No,” Alex admitted. “But Danny mentioned them. Supposed to be completely random so it doesn’t sound like the work of a gang, just desperate people.”
“How is Danny?”
“Out dancing with Mary,” Alex said, paging trough the paper as fast as he dared.
“He’d better not break her heart,” Iggy said, taking his pot off the burner. “I’ll never forgive him if she stops cooking at the diner.”
Alex chuckled at that.
“You’re all heart,” he said.
“I eat lunch there almost every day,” Iggy admitted.
“It says here that the government of Spain is suing some American over a museum exhibit,” Alex said, changing the subject.
“Phillip Leland,” Iggy supplied. “The adventurer who found the treasure of the Almiranta. She was part of the 1715 treasure fleet that went down in a hurricane. Only the Almiranta made it out. Leland found it sunk off the coast of North Carolina.”
“Paper says the treasure is worth almost one hundred million dollars.”
“Which is why the Spanish government wants it back. They’re claiming that the Almiranta and everything on it are still the property of Spain.”
Alex flipped back to the article and scanned it.
“What does that have to do with the Museum of American History?” he asked.
“Leland loaned most of the treasure to them,” Iggy said. “It’s been on display there for a month but they’ve had to take it down until the case is settled.”
“Do you think Leland will have to return it?”
“No.” Iggy shook his head. “Salvage laws are hundreds of years old. The Spanish are grasping at straws.”
“So what do you think about this ghost killer?” Alex asked, hiding a grin behind the paper.
Iggy groaned.
“Not you too,” he said in an indignant voice. “Does everyone read that disreputable rag?”
“Doris had a copy,” Alex explained. “How did you see it?”
“I played pinochle with Doctor Anderson down at the coroner’s office this afternoon,” he said. “He always reads that trash. But, since you bring it up, tell me what you think of these deaths while you help me set the table.”
Alex put the paper aside and went to the cupboard for plates and silverware.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say the victims weren’t killed by a ghost,” Alex said, fighting not to grin.
“Please,” Iggy said in a wounded tone as he set out the bread and butter. “Don’t indulge childish fantasy at my dinner table.”
“If the details in the story are correct, the victims were all found alone in locked rooms,” Alex said. “The police had to break in each time.”
“What does that tell you?”
“Locked rooms mean suicide,” Alex said with a shrug.
“You don’t sound sure.”
“According to the story, the victims were all stabbed twice in the chest,” Alex said, filling two glasses with water. “I can’t imagine someone killing themselves that way, let alone three people. Most people just turn on the gas and stick their head in the oven.”
“A graphic, but accurate description,” Iggy said, setting a tureen of stew on the table. “What about the absence of a murder weapon? Wouldn’t that indicate that someone else was there?”
Alex nodded as they both sat down. He waited until Iggy said grace before continuing.
“Well, you’ve always said that if you remove the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” Alex said. “If there’s two stab wounds and no weapon, it has to be murder. Someone is managing to get into and out of those locked rooms.”
“How?” Iggy asked, serving the stew. “Are there secret passages?”
“No,” Alex said. “Two of the murders were in upscale homes, but one was in an outer ring tenement house. Besides, the police would have checked for that; they’re not idiots.”
“Then how is our murderer doing it?”
Alex thought about that while he ate. There were only so many ways a crime like this could have been committed, and without examining the rooms in question, it was hard to draw a conclusion.
“A runewright could do it with an escape rune,” he said at last.
Iggy thought about that for a few moments, then shrugged.
“It’s possible,” he admitted. “But that seems like a long way to go for something as easy as murder. The killer would be shaving months off his own life every time he used a rune to escape the locked room. Not to mention the cost.”
Alex nodded. Escape runes could cost over a hundred dollars when you factored in the exotic inks.
“That would make these murders the most expensive in history,” he said. “In dollars and life.”
They passed ideas back and forth for another half-hour while they ate, but nothing felt right. In the end, Alex suggested that the tabloid had probably got the details wrong and these were three unrelated suicides.
“That paper needs to go out of business,” Iggy said at last. “I hope the mayor’s wife takes them down.”