“Yes,” Woollcott Chalmers said, looking at his wife. “Renata brought one of her hairpieces. I never thought...” He licked his lips and fell silent.
“But there wasn’t any hair when Jeff and I searched the room for the book,” Lynda said.
“Of course not,” Mac agreed. “Renata removed it after she knocked you unconscious. Perhaps she secreted it in that large handbag she carries. The question would be easily settled, Renata, if you would care to let us look inside.”
“No!” For a second her eyes were wild, like a cornered animal. “That suggestion is insulting.”
“I did not think you would like it.” Again Mac turned his attention to Lynda and me. “Renata undoubtedly knew that her flimsy alibi would fall apart if you realized that her elaborate Victorian coiffure was the work of a few moments. Hence her need to knock you out, Lynda, and spirit away the wig. However, her primary reason for being in the suite was to plant the Beeton’s in her husband’s drawer so that it would be there to incriminate him when you two looked for it.”
“This is all speculation,” Renata said in a firm voice. “You have no proof for any of it.”
“Perhaps not,” Mac conceded. “What would happen, however, if the police showed your photograph around the Winfield? Is there no one who would remember such a strikingly attractive woman in the hotel around the time of the murder? I suspect you kept the deerstalker in your handbag, not on your head, until you reached the proper floor. And then there is the matter of that cane, which I am quite certain will turn out to be the murder weapon. It was used to throw suspicion on Woollcott, but you had equal access to it, Renata. And Woollcott has an alibi for the murder, which you lack.”
The fight went out of Renata. She stared at the dried flower arrangement in front of the fireplace screen.
“Why?” her husband breathed. “Why, Renata?”
“And how come you had to come back when I was here?” Lynda asked. Unconsciously her right hand stole to the tender part at the back of her head. She winced.
Renata looked at her with a strangely graceful, almost regal movement in which she moved her head but not her body. “I am sorry about that, Lynda. I had intended to slip the book into Woollcott’s dresser this morning, after he and our hosts left for the symposium. But then your friend showed up.” Renata nodded at me. “I thought he was there to search for the book - and I was certain that he’d be back.”
“Nothing could have been better for your plans, of course,” Mac said.
“Of course,” Renata agreed. “It meant I wouldn’t have to somehow maneuver Kate into ‘discovering’ the book as I had planned. The trick was to plant the book in an easily uncovered hiding place before Jeff returned. When I saw him leave the lecture hall with Bob Nakamora, that was my opening. With him out of the way, I didn’t expect any company here. When you showed up, Lynda, that completely unnerved me. That’s why I hit you - not because I was afraid you’d see the wig. Taking the wig was an afterthought. I grabbed it and ran. I must have been running through the kitchen and out the back of the house about the time Jeff was coming in the front.”
“And from there we played right into your hands,” I said with a bitterness I could almost taste.
“Not entirely.” She was a cool one, seemingly unfazed by the collapse of her carefully contrived plans. “You were supposed to find the gun right away. I hid it from Woollcott yesterday when we came back to change our clothes because I knew I was going to use it on Hugh. And I kept it hidden today until Woollcott was out of the house.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What did you think happened to it, Chalmers? I’m sure you don’t just misplace unique objects like that.”
“Actually, he does,” Renata said coldly before he could answer. “His memory is failing along with several functions, except when it comes to his damned Sherlock Holmes. After he was out of the house, I put it where you should have seen it the first time.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Lynda murmured.
“But why?” Kate cried. “Why frame your husband? Why kill your lover?”
“Lover?” Renata repeated, unconsciously forming a fist with her right hand. Her icy coolness was slipping. “He didn’t love me. Neither of them did. I was a possession, a trinket, another collectible for the two of them to squabble over. That’s just what I heard them doing in the bar one night before an Anglo-Indian Club meeting. I decided that this was one battle of male egos they would both lose. I would make them pay. It was only a matter of waiting for the right moment. The moment came and I did it and I’m glad I did it and the only thing I’m sorry about is that Woollcott didn’t suffer enough.”
She sat back, exhausted, but without loosening her posture.
“I am reminded,” said Mac, “of a Persian proverb quoted by Sherlock Holmes in ‘A Case of Identity’ - ‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.’”
Chalmers blinked and fidgeted with his hands, a man who knew something awful had happened to him but didn’t understand quite what. Lynda turned to him.
“You must have known,” she said. “You must have realized Renata killed your old rival, and yet you kept silent.”
“How could I have guessed?” His old eyes darted around the room, pathetic and pleading.
“You knew your air gun was missing and you knew your wife didn’t really have an alibi,” Lynda said. “You’re too shrewd not to have added it all up.”
“We never spoke of it,” he said. I leaned forward to hear. “But I did suspect. I thought she did it for me - because Matheson stole my books, stole my whole life practically.”
Renata stood up, arms folded, and laughed in a way that sent bumps goose-stepping down my spine. “I stole your precious books, you silly old fool, not Hugh. That was part of the setup, to give you a solid motive for killing him. I knew that jealousy over me wasn’t enough.”
She paced in front of the fireplace, no more than a couple of feet in front of me, suddenly overcome with nervous energy.
“It was clear to me early on that you took those books,” Mac said. “‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ There was no forced entrance into the exhibit room. The keys were all accounted for and there were no obvious indications that a duplicate had been made. Ergo, there was no burglary. On Friday afternoon, when you and Woollcott visited the display, you grabbed those three books when you were unobserved and took them away in that immense handbag of yours, didn’t you?”
Mac seemed to take Renata’s stony silence for assent. “I was certain that you didn’t do it out of a simple desire to possess the books. Why, then? I concluded it was an attempt to malign Hugh, the most likely suspect in the theft based on motive. I didn’t know why, however. Hugh didn’t appear to be in any imminent danger of arrest, so I kept my thoughts to myself until I could see what you were up to. Possibly that decision of mine cost a man his life, and I shall have to live with that guilty knowledge for the rest of mine. When Hugh was killed, Renata, I suspected you at once.”
I whirled on my brother-in-law, barely holding myself together as my voice rose. “You knew it was her and you let me run around acting like an amateur detective in a stupid book, making a fool out of myself for nothing?” This was just too much to take without protest.
“By no means was it for nothing, Jefferson! Au contraire, your activities were crucial. I needed to know whether any other explanation was possible. I was hoping with all my heart-”
He was still talking when I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye: Renata coming at me. Before I could react she had snatched the cane/gun from my loose grip.