Mac thumped the table. “Ingenious, Bob! But not, I fear, the truth. You see” - he knitted up his bushy eyebrows in concentration - “the killer demonstrably was not a burglar. A burglar is one who burgles something, a thief in the night, a cowardly creature of stealth. Not even a novice at that dishonorable craft knocks on his victim’s door.
“Nor,” Mac added, leaning forward, “would a man of law be likely to admit a stranger to his hotel room. The implication is clear: It was a friend or, at minimum, an acquaintance who killed Hugh Matheson.”
That much I’d been sure of all along.
And now I was beginning to get a notion about why Matheson had had to die.
Chapter Twenty-Five - “I Think I’m on to Something”
After breakfast, while others drifted toward the Hearth Room for the first talk of the day, Mac followed me into the corridor
“You have something to report?”
“Not much. Just that I wouldn’t put any money on Reuben Pinkwater for the killer if I were you.” Only after I said it did I realize with bitterness the assumption Mac had made - that I would act the Watson (sorry, amanuensis) he expected me to be. “I don’t even know why you want me talk to people on that damned list of yours,” I added. “You could have interrogated most of them yourself right there at your breakfast table.”
“I had no way of knowing that when I formulated the list,” Mac said. “Of course, I did question my breakfast partners to a certain subtle degree before you arrived. However, I would still benefit from your objectivity as a total outsider and your considerable skills as an interviewer. And there are others-”
“All right, all right.” When Mac refers to himself as subtle, it’s time to shut him up. Besides, he was spreading on the butter awfully thick. “I’ve already talked to Pinkwater and Renata. I’ll keep working my way down the list, unless I can prove the killer’s identity before I get that far.”
Mac paused with his hand halfway into his breast pocket. “You have been holding out on me, old boy. You have a theory.”
“An idea, anyway. I think I’m on to something, but only an expert could tell me for sure. Who knows more about Sherlock Holmes first editions and stuff like that than anybody else here?”
“Woollcott,” Mac said without hesitation.
“Aside from him.”
Mac pulled a cigar from his pocket, for once without some hocus-pocus or even a dramatic flourish. “Lars Jenson. He can readily describe all five Croatian editions of some obscure Spanish pastiche. He is even adept at certifying the handwriting of several important Sherlockian figures. What are you groaning about, Jefferson?”
“The Swedish Chef. It would have to be him. Even if he tells me what I need to know I’ll never be able to understand it.”
“Admittedly, English is not his best language. He and I mostly communicate in German, sometimes Italian.” Show-off.
I asked Mac to go with Jenson and me to the library as an interpreter, but he shook his head and said it was impossible. In a few minutes he had to acknowledge the tragic death of Hugh Matheson and say a few appropriately kind words. He was also scheduled to introduce Dr. Queensbury’s talk on “Dr. John H. Watson: Conductor of Light” and Bob Nakamora’s on “Sherlock Holmes on Radio,” then speak himself on “Humor in the Canon.” He dared not risk Queensbury or Nakamora coming up short and leaving the audience at a loss for a host, as had happened on one embarrassing occasion already. What, Sebastian McCabe couldn’t bi-locate?
“However,” Mac said, “I would be delighted to use my good offices to persuade Lars to accompany you, should such persuasion prove necessary. Of course” - he cocked an eyebrow as he gestured airily with the unlit cigar - “that would be all the easier if I knew what the bloody hell you have in mind, Jefferson.”
“Are you ready to explain your mumbo-jumbo about Matheson not being the thief? No? I didn’t think so. Well, this time I’m the detective and I get to do mysterious things without explaining.”
Besides, if I told him my idea and it proved wrong, I’d look like the biggest fool outside of Congress.
Mac took my reticence in good humor, promising to pull Jenson out of the Hearth Room where he was awaiting the start of the program. With an aggressive lope, he crossed the hallway and disappeared into the Hearth Room. As I was watching him go, Lynda blindsided me on my right.
“Okay, Jeff,” she said. The greeting, totally unexpected and out of context, made me jump slightly. “You two had your Boys’ Night Out. Now, what gives?”
“You!” I said, investing the syllable with the most accusatory tone I could muster. “You sure didn’t do me any favors with those two stories in the paper this morning.”
“I’m sorry, Jeff, I really am, but doing you favors isn’t part of my job description at the Observer. You never seem to get that.” She ran a hand through her honey-colored hair, a nervous gesture.
“Any more of this crap and I’m going to lose my job. I wish you could have at least quoted Ralph in the - oh, never mind.”
I was overcome by the depressing familiarity of a scene played out so many times before. The conflict between Lynda’s job and mine had been a constant irritant the whole time we had dated. Here it was again, just when I was hoping that what we had been through together yesterday, and the conspiracy of silence about it that still bound us together, meant that our romantic relationship was no longer in the dead letter file. And even before that, she had said she loved me - and then called me an idiot. Confused as well as depressed, I changed the subject.
“I didn’t expect to see you here this morning,” I said.
“It seemed the place to be. This is where the murderer is.” She gripped her purse with a force that turned her knuckles white. “Look, Jeff, I want to know if you and Mac have any idea who killed Matheson - because Oscar and his crew don’t. They may never find those books in his room if they aren’t even looking for them. And that means they won’t know Matheson was the thief, which could turn out to be the biggest clue of all. I think we screwed up last night by not calling 911 and telling the whole story as soon as we found the body. It would have been a lot easier on my nerves.”
“Not if you were in jail.”
She ignored that. “Unless you have any better ideas, it’s not too late to tell Oscar about the books.”
“Somebody in housekeeping at the hotel will find the books eventually. Besides, Matheson didn’t steal them.”
“What?”
“That’s what Mac said, and I have to admit that he’s right often enough that the other times don’t count.”
Lynda yanked open her purse, pulled out a stick of gum, unwrapped it, and shoved it into her mouth. “If he wasn’t the thief, then why did he have the books?”
“Mac wouldn’t tell me that much. He’s acting mysterious about it. But it could be that Matheson actually recovered the books somehow, only for some reason didn’t find all of them. Anyway, what’s really important is, I have an idea that may explain why Matheson died, if not who-”
I stalled out when I saw Mac coming out of the Hearth Room with Lars Jenson.
“Jefferson,” my brother-in-law called. “Lars is quite amenable to assisting you. Have you met?”
We hadn’t, although I had watched the tall, stooped Swede in the library. Mac introduced him to Lynda and me.
“A great pleasure,” Jenson said in that sing-song voice. He bowed at Lynda, oh-so-Continental and old-fashioned. She stuck out her hand for shaking. After a while Jenson figured out what he was supposed to do with the hand, and he did it. Then he turned to me. “You like to look at some books now, ja?”
“Ja,” I said.
“And Lynda makes three,” she added.