City of Light (City of Mystery) (3 page)

“A ragged cut from a
serrated knife,” Tom added. “Normally not enough to kill a strong man.  But as
luck would have it, he nicks the carotid artery, as evidenced by the arched
spray of blood which presumably erupted as our victim turned and fell.  Let’s
see, what then?  Emma reenters the kitchen to find Gage rapidly bleeding to
death and the killer has just finished replacing his knife.  He recognizes that
there was a second witness but, fortunately for her, he has already abandoned
his murder weapon so this time he simply flees.”

“Better,” said
Trevor.  “At least as far as it goes.” He checked his pocketwatch again.  “Now,
Davy, begin your eyewitness interviews. The shock has passed and the young lady
is admirably beginning to regain her memory.  Your task is to retrieve every
shred she can produce about the appearance of this man.”

Davy promptly pulled
out a small leather notebook, an item he had purchased only because he had seen
Trevor use the same type many times, and went to sit opposite Emma at the
fire. 

“Should I take up
the trail of footprints?” Tom asked.

“Footprints?” Trevor
said.  “This case is designed to test wound analysis and blood splatter, not
footprints.”

But Tom was still on
his hands and knees. “They’re small,” he said. “Most likely a woman, judging
by…”

“Geraldine,” Trevor
bellowed, and a head popped through the door of the pantry. 

“I’m sorry,
darlings,” Geraldine said, although she didn’t look particularly so. “But
someone has to see to dinner.”

“I shall do it,
madam,” Gage said, raising his head.

“Nonsense, dear,
you’re dead.  I hope everyone will be content with soup considering the recent
demise of our cook.  How soon do you anticipate finishing up your little game?”

“We are finished,”
Trevor said, struggling to mask his irritation.  “The crime scene has been
contaminated.”

“Our witness has
recalled something else, Sir,” Davy said from the hearth.  “She believes the
assailant was wearing boots in the manner of a soldier.”

“She was closer the
first time,” Trevor said wearily, waving them all out of the kitchen.

Fifty minutes later
the corpse had changed his shirt and served them a light meal of soup and bread
in the breakfast room.  Two glasses of fine claret from Geraldine’s cellar had
left Trevor in far better spirits.

“The Tuesday Night
Murder Games Club is called to order,” Trevor intoned.  He meant the solemnity
as a bit of a joke, but the pronouncement sent silence around the table and
everyone shifted in their seats toward him.  Evidence that the others cared for
these evenings as much as he did was always gratifying to Trevor and was one of
the reasons he found himself constantly looking for ways to intensify the
challenges. 

While planning this
latest game with Gage, Gerry, and the overenthusiastic theater boy, Trevor had
taken great pains in re-creating the crime scene precisely as Rayley had
described it in his letter.  Returning the knife to its block, drawing a jagged
wound on Gage’s throat, positioning him in the proper position, and
meticulously placing drops of pig’s blood on the floor to correspond with the
diagram Rayley had drawn.  The amount undoubtedly seemed excessive to someone
who had never witnessed the explosive force of a ripped artery, and Gage had
even raised his head at one point to look about the scene with dismay,
evidently thinking of the mess he’d be left to contend with once he’d been returned
to the world of the living.  After he had reproduced Rayley’s diagram, Trevor
had opened the parlor door to let the shaken Emma and impatient Tom and Davy
into the crime scene.  But of course the problem with such spectacular violence
is that they would all undoubtedly expect more excitement next week, and Trevor
could only hope the unopened letter in his coat pocket contained an even gorier
and more perplexing crime du jour.     

“At the risk of belaboring
the obvious,” Trevor said.  “Rayley’s last letter was about the analysis of wound
and blood spray patterns. The test of changes in witness memory over time was
my own invention.  Admirable job, each of you.” 

He did not have to
add “At least as much of it as there was,” for Gerry immediately fell to guilt,
as she was apt to do.

“Next time I promise
I won’t step in all your lovely splatters,” she said. “I know I made a muddle
–“

“Never fear,
Geraldine. You open your home to us each week, providing superior food and
wine, as well as your own very pleasing brand of hospitality.  You could waltz
your way through a hundred bloodstains and your honorary standing in the Murder
Club would not be in jeopardy.”

“I’m the one who
should be sorry,” Emma said.  “I was a proper fool of a girl, wasn’t I?  Screaming
and fleeing and unable to remember a thing.”

“You were startled,
dear,” Gerry said, patting her hand.

“But crime strikes
unexpectedly, Gerry, that’s Trevor’s whole point,” Emma said.  It was clear she
was still somewhat agitated by the manner in which she gripped her teacup and
the way her eyes darted around the table, settling on no one.  “A suspect does
not walk towards you slowly in broad daylight wearing a placard that reads ‘Criminal.’ 
They come in the dark, moving fast, often having taken pains to conceal their
identity.  Is that why he was wearing makeup?”

“I’m sorry to say
that particular fantastical touch wasn’t my idea,” Trevor told her.  He smiled
with what he hoped was assurance, but her eyes had already moved on to Tom.

“But you’ve left us
guessing,” Tom was saying.   “Why did the criminal wipe the knife and place it
so carefully back into the block?”

“I haven’t the
slightest idea,” Trevor said, dabbing up the last bit of soup with a crust.  “I
was hoping one of you could tell me.  The scene is precisely as Rayley
described it.  A respectable French family in a better part of town, a cook and
a maid in the kitchen just after six in the evening.  The maid moves into the
pantry to retrieve some item or another, and while she is gone a man rushes
into the kitchen, uses the knife on the cutting board to kill the cook, wipes
it clean, and replaces it with the other cutlery.  She reenters just as he is
leaving but she doesn’t recognize the man.  Question one:  why would a thief
enter a kitchen at an hour when he would almost certainly encounter people in
the process of preparing the evening meal?”

“Perhaps he was not
a thief,” Davy said promptly.  “We went straight to that assumption, without
much evidence to support it.”

“Then what was the
motive?” Trevor asked.

“Could have been
someone from the cook’s past,” Davy said, his voice a little more speculative.  “A
man who bore him a personal grudge.”

“If confrontation
was his aim then why would he show up without a weapon?” Emma asked.  “He
seemed to grab the bread knife on impulse, and, as you say, it’s hardly a
weapon of first choice for someone bent on murder.”

“And why wipe it
down after he used it?” Tom said, putting his elbows on the table and leaning
in. “I’m sorry to sound redundant but I find that the most puzzling part of our
little experiment. The knife was already out, being used to slice bread.  Why
not simply return it to the cutting board?”

“He feared the
police could find fingerprints on the weapon?” Emma guessed.

“Your average
criminal doesn’t know anything about fingerprinting,” Tom said skeptically. “The
concept is in its infancy and seems to mislead as often as it solves.”

“But the French are
very proud of it, are they not?” Emma said.  “No doubt any crime stories
reported in the Parisian papers are those in which fingerprinting proved
successful. The criminal element may be more frightened of the notion than they
should be.  Or consider this.  By bragging about their new forensics
techniques, the police may not be scaring off potential criminals at all,
merely teaching them to wipe down any objects they touch.  Especially murder
weapons.”

“Which exonerates
the maid,” Tom said.

Emma frowned. “I
don’t follow.”

“Her fingerprints
should be all over the knife.  It would be suspicious if they weren’t.  So she
had no reason to wipe it clean.”

“You’re making the
rather daring assumption that she was rational,” Emma said. “Or that anyone is
can be rational in the middle of a murder scene.  She’s a maid.  Perhaps she
just cleans things compulsively, as a matter of course, and has never heard the
word ‘fingerprint’ in her whole life.”

“What do the French
have?” Davy asked.

Trevor picked up the
letter.  “From the blood splatter they conclude that the victim was struck from
behind, spun and fell.  Just as you suggested, Tom, so bully there. They agree
with our interpretation that the killer entered without a weapon and grabbed
whatever was close at hand.”

“He came to see the
maid,” Emma ventured.  “Entered at a time he knew she would be in the kitchen,
but the cook was there too – which makes no sense.  It’s dinner hour, of course
the cook would be in the kitchen.”

“No, I like where
you’re going with that, Emma,” Trevor said, twisting in his seat to look at
her. “I shall write and ask Rayley if anyone thought to inquire if there had
been a change of plans.  Perhaps this was the cook’s normal night of leisure
and our killer believed he would encounter the maid alone.  But he stumbles
upon the cook instead.”

“A tryst gone bad,”
Tom said.  “Possible.”

“So he’s dismayed to
find the cook instead of his lover,” Emma said.  “That’s a disappointment to
his romantic plans, but scarcely incentive to murder.”

“Besides,” Davy
said, leaning forward to put his elbows on the table too, in a mimic of Tom’s
casual posture.  He’s becoming more comfortable in Geraldine’s home, Trevor
noted with silent satisfaction.  Emma, who lived here, and Tom, who was a
member of the family, walked through these large and elegant rooms with
confidence, but the first time Davy visited he had been clearly intimidated by
his surroundings, standing at attention like a schoolboy until Gerry had insisted
he take a seat. They all came from such different walks of life, his three
young charges, and yet the Murder Games were proving to be a great equalizer.

“Besides,” Davy was
saying.  “If he was her lover, why would the maid tell the French police that
she didn’t know him?”

This brought an
explosion of laughter from around the table, Tom doubling over so far in mirth
that he nearly tumbled from his seat.  “Davy, I hate to be the one to deliver
the news,” Tom said, when he could finally talk.  “But sometimes the fairer sex
is also the more devious one.  Women lie.”

“Well, in this case
it would be rather warranted, wouldn’t it?” Emma said sharply, although she was
wiping tears away too. “I can’t imagine telling your employer, much less the
police, that your lover had killed the family cook.  Good cooks are too hard to
find.”

“Presumably they are
more plentiful in Paris,” Tom said.  “But Emma is quite right.  Perhaps the
maid and the killer were in cahoots of some kind and when the caper went awry,
she dared not confess.”

“Or perhaps they’re
all just mad,” Davy said, showing great equanimity even after having been the
butt of the latest joke.  “The French, you know.”

“The most likely
theory yet, in my opinion,” Gerry said, with such a broad smile at Davy that
the boy actually blushed. “They’re French and thus barking mad and that’s the
whole of it.”

“Did she scream?”
Emma asked.

“Letter doesn’t
say,” Trevor says.

“You certainly let
out a bellow, old girl,” Tom said, with a little wink that Trevor was the only
one to notice.  “First the murderer yells out, then Gage, but your shriek was
the one that startled Davy and me half out of our chairs.”

“My point
precisely,” Emma said.  “Mine was the only one that was genuine. It’s a natural
reaction to cry out when surprised, but if she knew the man in the kitchen she’d
be less likely to scream.”

“Perhaps a spurned
lover,” Tom said. “Bent on revenge.”

“Perhaps she threw
him over for the cook,” Davy said.  “So when he enters – “  

“Perhaps, perhaps,
perhaps,” Trevor said.  “You two should be writing penny dreadfuls, not working
for Scotland Yard.  You raise an interesting point about the scream, Emma, but
we must stick to what we can prove, or at least what we can deduce from the
evidence.”

“I know,” Tom said
cheerfully, leaning back to prop his boots on the seat of an unoccupied chair. 
“Our concern is the how of murder, and not the why.  You’ve schooled us so
thoroughly that I believe I mutter those words in my sleep.  But if all we have
are the hows we’ve come to a bit of a dead end with this case, have we not? 
Such a pity.  You won’t be able to write Rayley that the Tuesday Night Murder
club has succeeded in solving a crime that stumped the Parisian police.” 

Trevor laughed and
folded up the letter.  “I do fantasize that someday I’ll provide Rayley with a tidy
little solution, I’ll confess.  Well, we’re all new at this forensics business. 
Perhaps we aren’t meant to understand everything yet.”