All three of us tensed; we heard, dimly, footsteps in the hall. I had my gun out again. This time it might do me some good. The woman locked her fingers on her gun and raised it. I steadied my.38 on my left arm. This had to be perfect.
Pederson clamped onto my wrist. I pointed with the gun barrel towards the door, and he understood. He nodded, raised his gun and aimed faster than I could when I was already set, then fired. My own shot was barely behind his.
The shots were a foot apart, three inches from the top of the door. Mine was too far to the side; Pederson’s must have gone right over Roy’s head, if Roy was in front of the door. He was-we heard him drop to the floor; a second later Mary’s gun jumped in her hand, nearly knocking her chair over backwards. The bullet went through the center of the door.
Then we dropped below the sill while she turned, spitting fury, and fired four shots out the window at us. One bullet hit the window frame; it ripped the board loose and powdered an already crumbling brick. Then the door burst open and the spitting sound got louder.
Pederson shoved up the broken window and vaulted over the sill, a virile fifty-odd. I hobbled after him, a doddering old gent of thirty-one. Cartley had her around the waist with one arm and had pinned her arms to her body with the other.
He had lifted her off the floor, turning his hip between her legs to spread them and keep her from kicking backwards. Pederson reached for the handcuffs. I reached for a chair, and sat in it, emptying her handbag on the table.
Inside were matchbooks, still unused, from all the restaurants Gillis had written checks to, plus a receipt-dated two days back-from the store where he had done his previous buying. I looked up.
“Playing detective, Mary? Did you find out who she was?”
She clammed up, then. Pederson looked at her with interest. “Aren’t you even waiting to shut up till I read your rights? You are an amateur.” That stung, but she stayed quiet.
Roy was looking back and forth. He tossed his gun on the table and said, looking tired, “All right, what is it I don’t know?”
I gestured at Mary. “Only what she finally knew. I’m not the only one with an invisible lady friend.”
“Lady friend?” Pederson stared at me. “You? You never even shave-” He shut his mouth as Roy began chuckling.
“I’ve had a busy day-I put off shaving.” I turned to Mary. “One thing I can’t put off, Mary-what’s the name of the girl that aced you out?” I wanted her to make a scene and keep Pederson occupied.
“If I’d ’a known,” Mary said, “the cops’d know by now.”
Roy looked back at me helplessly, then suddenly understood. “The bills?”
I nodded. “If you hadn’t been so worried, you’d have seen it, too. Gam must have been a real bastard, borrowing from Mary to take out some other woman. Mary found out, convinced him to break into your house-probably by saying you had evidence against him-” I glanced at her, but she wasn’t reacting, so I went on- “and stabbed him after backing him up to the fireplace with her gun.
“He did the breaking in. That’s why that was professional, but everything else-the bomb, the bolted doors, the red herring to Petlovich-was amateur. Deadly amateur, but amateur.” Still no reaction-Pederson was looking at me strangely.
I tried my last shot. “He really wiped the floor with her before she got him, though. What a rotten, low-life-”
She tried to swing at me, ignoring Pederson, Roy and her own cuffed wrists. “You wouldn’t dare talk that way if he was here!” she snapped.
Pederson grabbed her. I sidled over quietly, picked Roy’s gun off the table and said politely to him, “Roy, I’d like to shake your hand. We made it.”
Roy still had one hand in his coat. He looked at me narrowly, then grinned and stuck out his empty hand. His pocket hung limp. “Thanks for trying, Nate, but the other gun’s in the glove compartment. I cooled down on the way over here. One of the kids tipped you off?”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling silly. “That Howie is growing up fast; he and Amy make a hell of a team. She’s sharper than he is, but he’s trying to turn pro.”
Roy glanced at Mary Jordon. She was sobbing in frustration as Pederson edged her towards the door. “Tell him not to try too hard, will you?”
THE PROBLEM OF THE CHRISTMAS STEEPLE by Edward D. Hoch
A full-time writer since 1968, Ed Hoch is certainly one of the two or three most prolific fiction writers in the United States, with some six hundred stories in the mystery genre. He is best known for four series detectives: Rand, a British cipher expert; Nick Velvet, a most original thief; Simon Ark, a mystical detective; and Captain Leopold, perhaps the best-known of his creations. Mr. Hoch is a winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s highest award, the Edgar.
“Like I was sayin’ last time,” Dr. Sam Hawthorne began, getting down the brandy from the top shelf, “the year 1925 was a bad one for murder and other violent crimes. And just about the worst one o’ them all came on Christmas Day, when the year was almost over. Here, let me pour you a small-ah-libation before I start…”
It had been a quiet fall in Northmont since the kidnapping and recovery of little Tommy Belmont. In fact, about the biggest news around town was that the new Ford dealer over in Middle Creek would soon be selling dark green and maroon cars along with the traditional black ones.
“You see, Dr. Sam,” my nurse April said, “pretty soon you won’t be the only one round these parts with a bright yellow car.”
“Dark green and maroon are a long way from yellow,” I reminded her. Kidding me about my 1921 Pierce-Arrow Runabout was one of her favorite sports. My first winter in Northmont I’d put the Runabout up on blocks and driven a horse and buggy on my calls, but now I was gettin’ a bit more venturesome. As long as the roads were clear I drove the car.
This day, which was just two weeks before Christmas, April and I were drivin’ out to visit a small gypsy encampment at the edge of town. The traditionally cold New England winter hadn’t yet settled in, and except for the bareness of the tree limbs it might have been a pleasant September afternoon.
The gypsies were another matter, and there wasn’t much pleasant about their encampment. They’d arrived a month earlier, drivin’ a half-dozen horse-drawn wagons, and pitched their tents on some unused meadowland at the old Haskins farm. Minnie Haskins, widowed and into her seventies, had given them permission to stay there, but that didn’t make Sheriff Lens and the townsfolks any happier about it. On the few occasions when gypsies had appeared at the general store to buy provisions, they’d been treated in a right unfriendly manner.
I’d gone out to the encampment once before to examine a sick child, and I decided this day it was time for a return visit. I knew there wasn’t much chance of gettin’ paid, unless I was willin’ to settle for a gypsy woman tellin’ April’s fortune, but still it was somethin’ I felt bound to do.
“Look, Dr. Sam!” April said as the gypsy wagons came into view. “Isn’t that Parson Wigger’s buggy?”
“Sure looks like it.” I wasn’t really surprised to find Parson Wigger visiting the gypsies. Ever since coming to town last spring as pastor of the First New England Church he’d been a controversial figure. He’d started by reopening the old Baptist church in the center of town and announcin’ regular services there. He seemed like a good man who led a simple life and looked for simple solutions-which was why so many people disliked him. New Englanders, contrary to some opinions, are not a simple folk.
“Mornin’, Dr. Sam,” he called out as he saw us drive up. He was s tan din’ by one of the gypsy wagons, talkin’ to a couple of dark-haired children. “Mornin’, April. What brings you two out here?”