“I was the judge in the case.”
I dropped the banana. “Obviously you know a lot more about Matheson than what you read in People magazine.”
Judge Crocker pushed away her salad, half eaten. “That’s a valid deduction. What’s your interest, Jeff?”
My main interest was in showing up Mac in the sleuthing department, with getting Ralph off my back a close second. But total candor was not called for in this situation.
“I’m fascinated with the collector mentality,” I replied. “Chalmers spent - what, forty years? - building his collection, then today I heard that Matheson is a Holmes collector as well.”
She nodded. “You’ve hit on a good phrase there. I know both of those men and they do share a certain ‘collector mentality.’ It isn’t restricted to Sherlock Holmes, either, especially not with Hugh.”
“What do you mean?” I looked across the room at Matheson and Lynda. He gestured with his hands, the classic motion signaling a slit throat. Lynda laughed.
“I mean,” Judge Crocker said, “that he also collects women.”
* * *
I took my cup of decaffeinated coffee and plunked myself down next to Lynda.
“Jeff!” said she, so startled she almost knocked her camera off the table.
“Sorry to intrude,” I lied.
“Then why did you?” Lynda said. I noticed she was chewing gum, apparently a new vice acquired in the past month.
“Because I wanted to meet Mr. Matheson. Won’t you introduce us?”
In a rather graceless fashion (“Jeff does PR for the local college”), she complied.
“What’s your theory about the Great Sherlock Holmes Theft?” I asked.
Matheson raised his tailored eyebrows. “Do I have to have a theory?”
“Maybe not,” I said, “but everybody else seems to.” Actually, I hadn’t talked to everybody else, but that’s what came out of my mouth.
“As a matter of fact, Lynda and I were just talking about that.” I bet you were, pal. “The obvious guess is that some collector did it or, more likely, paid to have it done. You hear about things like that with art masterpieces. Maybe what was stolen isn’t worth as much as a minor Dali, but it would be priceless to a Sherlockian collector. Woollcott managed to assemble about a hundred pages of The Hound of the Baskervilles in Conan Doyle’s own hand - more than anyone else has ever owned since the manuscript was broken up. The other Hound that was stolen, the first edition, was inscribed by Conan Doyle to his friend Fletcher Robinson, who inspired the story. And the Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887, with the first Sherlock Holmes story, is one of only about a dozen known to exist. That alone would make it worth thousands, but this one was the presentation copy inscribed to the author’s mother. That sends its value off the charts.”
“You sound like you know those books almost as well as Chalmers does,” I said.
“That’s because Woollcott outbid me on the Beeton’s nine years ago, screwed me out of the Fletcher Robinson Hound, and beat me to the punch more times than I have fingers and toes while he was scooping up all those manuscript pages.”
“That nice old man?” Lynda said.
Matheson snorted. “He’s done me the dirty more than a few times over the years, and every time that nice old man went further than I ever thought a person would go just to beat me out.”
He rattled off a few examples - Chalmers bribing a taxi driver to get Matheson lost on the way to an important auction, Chalmers arriving at the home of a famous but impoverished Sherlockian just a few hours after his death to make the grieving widow a seemingly generous offer for his entire collection, Chalmers canceling Matheson’s wake-up call at his hotel in Sussex, England, on the morning of an estate sale featuring some Conan Doyle letters.
It was a fascinating insight into the questionable methods of my college’s benefactor, if true, but that wasn’t getting the stolen goods back.
“Do you know a man named Graham Bentley Post?” I asked Matheson.
“I’ve certainly heard of him,” Matheson said. He explained to Lynda about the Library of Popular Culture. “Post has a reputation for being a tiger once he goes after something.”
“He’s after the Chalmers Collection,” I said.
“Really? But that would be for public exhibit. Stolen books wouldn’t do him any good. You want to look for a private collector.”
“Makes sense,” I conceded, looking at the collector. “Who do you know who would be that devious and determined?”
“Only one person,” Matheson said. “Woollcott Chalmers.”
“Isn’t there anybody else you can think of?” Lynda said. “Maybe somebody who resented Chalmers’s hardball tactics?”
“If you put it that say,” Matheson said with a smile, “I suppose I’d make a pretty good suspect myself.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Chapter Twelve - Talking in the Library
The rare book room of the Lee J. Bennish Memorial Library looked smaller with Sebastian McCabe on the loose in there.
He dominated the place, not so much by his physical bulk - although Mac has a triple helping of that - but by the force of his energy as he moved from person to person. My brother-in-law was in his element, as buoyant as I’d ever seen him.
Finally I managed to pull him to one side.
“This morning I worked with a TV crew, almost got plowed into by Dr. Queensbury, visited Decker, talked with Judge Crocker and Matheson, and came up with a couple of good candidates for our thief,” I said. “How’s your day going?”
“I,” declared Mac, “have been thinking.”
“Now there’s a stunning announcement.”
“The unknown means of entry continues to interest me greatly. And I find it instructive that only a few books were taken - a handful.”
“What do you think it means?”
“I am not ready to say.”
“The creator of the great Damon Devlin can’t do any better than that?” I jeered. “I thought you’d know whodunit by now.”
Mac stroked his beard. “I could enumerate suspects aplenty, if that is what you crave. My friend Woollcott, for example, could have stolen those books out of simple avarice, though one is hard pressed to explain why he would not have simply held back the books from his donation. I don’t believe he is in that dire a need of a tax deduction.”
“Scratch him,” I agreed.
“We must turn then to other collectors, for surely it was someone of bibliographic sophistication who did this deed. The name of Hugh Matheson springs instantly to mind.” He nodded toward the attorney, who was talking with Renata while Lynda took their picture. “Not for greed so much as for revenge. Even wealthy and famous individuals such as he have been known to avenge repeated slights or insults.”
“Well, Matheson has suffered plenty of those, according to his own account.”
Mac nodded. “If cupidity is the motive, however, the director of the Library of Popular Culture warrants a hard look.”
“Graham Bentley Post?” I said.
The surprise was mutual.
“You know about him, then?” Mac said. “I do not suggest it is likely that he himself is involved. However, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that some less scrupulous person, hearing of his late-blooming interest in Sherlockiana, looted the Chalmers Collection with the hope of peddling the materials to the Library of Popular Culture. Might I suggest an interview-”
“I’m already on it. Gene gave me Post’s cell phone number and his hotel. No answer yet, but I’ll get him eventually. I’ll interview this dude, like any good PI would, while you’re sitting on your fat rump listening to people talk about Sherlock Holmes. And I’ll do it for myself, not for you.”
Mac shrugged his mountainous shoulders. “Not for me the rushing to and fro of the peripatetic private investigator, Jefferson. I intend to unravel this puzzle without incurring physical exhaustion. Besides, I have other responsibilities today, one of which is to get this presentation moving now that the reprehensible Ralph has arrived.”