The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (33 page)

Vanderbilt nodded. “You may be right, young man. That's why I brought Hargreave along. He looks into things for me.”

A man in a greatcoat and battered bowler hat nodded briefly to me. “What else d'ye think, younker?” he asked.

“It strikes me as odd that a man should rob the house with so many people about. Besides yourself, Mr. Vanderbilt, and your brother's wife, Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt, who else was present?”

The millionaire considered for a moment. “My own wife was out paying calls. Alva came to see me about some matters pertaining to the new house she's building near mine on Fifth Avenue. I mentioned that the locksmith was in the house, and she asked to see his work, thinking, I suppose, that she might have him do the locks on the new house. It would be a step up for you, Magill. I truly thought that you had taken the Bible-classes to heart, and were reformed.”

“But I am!” Magill wailed.

Vanderbilt sighed. “Hargreave, look into it,” he ordered. Then he turned to the fourth man, a wispy-looking individual in a shabby overcoat. “I will pay his bail. I'll give you one more chance, Magill!”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Vanderbilt, sir!” Magill called out, as the millionaire stalked out of the cell.

The lawyer sneezed heartily, as well he might, for the cell was totally unheated. “You'll have to spend the night in jail, Magill, but I've got the writs all signed. Mr. Vanderbilt thinks you didn't do it, and that should be good enough, but it looks very black for you, very black indeed.”

“Time's up!” the guard announced. Magill and Maggie kissed tenderly, and he was led away. Hargreave and I were left alone to size each other up, as the sporting men have it.

“Well, Escott,” he said at last. “So you think Magill didn't do it. Would you like to tell me why? Just because his sister says so?”

“No,” I said slowly. “Because the scene is so improbable. To commit a robbery in a house where the family is still in residence requires great daring, and a certain
panache
, which is certainly lacking in our yeggman. In fact, when I spoke with him, he seemed
most upset at the treatment dealt out to the safe. Whoever broke into it apparently did damage, which infuriated Magill.”

“Not bad, for a Limey,” Hargreave said. “Educated at their University, too. A real toff. Well, I'm no toff, younker. I've been around the block a few times, and I tell you it smells fishy to me, too. A yeggman like Magill doesn't pull off a quick job like this. It's not his style. Crooks get into habits, see; that's how they get nabbed in the end.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “but . . . you are not with the police, are you?”

Hargreave smiled. “Private inquiry agent,” he said. “Not Pinkerton . . . at least, not yet! But Pinkerton's too big. I take on one case at a time, just me. Mr. Vanderbilt back there is one of my best customers. I work quietly, and I get the goods. Watch, and learn, younker.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I have been of assistance in several small problems in England, and I should like to observe a professional consulting detective at work. May I join you?”

Hargreave laughed heartily. “You've got brass, kid. Okay, you meet me at Mr. Vanderbilt's house tomorrow morning, nine sharp, and we'll take a look at the scene of the crime, so to speak.”

With a touch of his hat to Miss Magill, he left. Miss Magill and I were very late getting back to our boarding-house, incurring the wrath of the landlady for “carrying on after hours!”

Nevertheless, I was up early the next morning and made my way north on Fifth Avenue to the brownstone mansion inhabited by Mr. William Henry Vanderbilt and his large family. The previous day's sleet had changed to ice, and the city was covered with a glittering sheet that sparkled like crystal, lending a magical air to the drabbest of tenements, and causing the streets to become treacherous as skating-ponds. Just beyond Mr. Vanderbilt's house I could see a construction site, with workmen swarming about like ants erecting a new hill. This, presumably, was the much-talked-about palace being constructed at the whim of Mrs. William Kissam Vanderbilt, the imperious Alva, who had accused Mike Magill of theft.

Hargreave was waiting for me. He boldly went up to the front door, instead of walking around to the servants' entrance in the areaway behind the house. He and I were let in by a maid, who passed us on to an imposing footman in antiquated livery. The footman, in turn, showed us into Mr. William Henry Vanderbilt's study, the scene of the crime, as Hargreave had put it.

If a room takes on the character of the man who lives in it, then this study proved once again that Mr. William Henry Vanderbilt was the most modest of millionaires. The walls were panelled, not with expensive mahogany or elaborate tracery, but with honest oak. The few paintings were of bucolic landscapes, not particularly impressive, but pleasing to the eye. The furnishings were solid, armchairs and a sofa, upholstered in sombre but serviceable style, and a massive carved desk, where Vanderbilt presumably did his business.

Mr. Vanderbilt, dressed in morning coat and silk vest, was overseeing the repair of his safe, with the assistance of a young lady in fashionable attire. She looked the two of us over and apparently dismissed us as not worthy of her attention. Mr. Vanderbilt, however, stood up and nodded to us.

Hargreave stepped forward. “We're here, Mr. Vanderbilt, like you asked,” he said. “You asked us to clear up a few points.”

“There is nothing to clear up,” the woman snapped, before Mr. Vanderbilt could utter a word. “The locksmith was there. The money was found in his tool-kit. He is a convicted criminal. Surely, that is enough?” She smiled sweetly, her voice suddenly turning to honey, and her accent assuming the liquid slur of the Southerner.

“I don't like to think I was mistaken in Magill,” Vanderbilt said. “Alva, are you sure you saw the money in his tool-kit?”

I looked closer at Mrs. Alva. On inspection, she did not appear to be particularly daunting; she had a round face made remarkable only by her penetrating eyes, which seemed to mesmerize anyone who gazed into them too long. For the rest, she was a well-formed woman verging on thirty, with dark hair, dressed in the height of the most elaborate fashions of that year of extravagance.

“May I inspect the safe?” I asked, stepping forward. The safe
was little more than a square box set into the fabric of the wall, closed with an old-fashioned key, rather than one of the newer combination locks. The handle had been wrenched away bodily, and the door to the safe sagged on its hinges. I nodded to Hargreave, as if to tell him to note this fact.

“What was usually kept in this safe?” I asked.

“Household money. Private papers,” Mr. Vanderbilt said.

“Private . . . ?”

“Some letters, which dealt with family matters. My Will. Leases on family property.”

Hargreave nodded. “And how much money was taken?”

“We're not sure,” Alva put in. “Mr. Vanderbilt usually keeps ten thousand in the safe, for household expenses. There was money all over the floor.” She made a sweeping gesture.

“I see. Where was Magill when all this was going on?”

Alva turned her expressive dark eyes on us. “Why . . . here, of course!”

“I meant to say, ma'am, where was he supposed to be?”

Vanderbilt spoke up. “I told him to do the conservatory locks first. A burglar might get in through the garden, you see.”

“The conservatory it is, then,” Hargreave said.

“Charles, show these men the conservatory,” Alva ordered.

The huge footman marched us through the house, from the study to the conservatory, both on the ground floor. Once inside the glass-roofed extension to the mansion, I felt as if I were hacking my way through an exotic jungle, even in the middle of January. The cold air was whistling through a broken pane of glass, and the conservatory attendant was moving his precious charges away from the draught as if they had been children, while a glazier was fitting a new pane into the door.

“Why was the glass broken?” I asked.

“According to Mrs. Vanderbilt—that's Mrs. William Kissam Vanderbilt, Alva, who we just met—the yeggman must have got in this way.”

“But that's absurd,” I said. “Magill was already in the house. Besides . . .” I stooped down and checked the flagged floor of the conservatory. “If he had broken the glass from the outside, there would be shards of it here, whereas”—I opened the door and stepped outside, stooped, and found what I thought I would find—“the glass was broken from the inside. Here is the proof.” I held up a shard of glass. I also noted some red-brown stains on the snow outside the window.

“I believe our thief may have scratched himself on this glass,” I said.

“So, who are we looking for, younker? You want to tell the Old Man?”

“I should think we are looking for someone fairly large, with very strong hands,” I said. “Which Mike Magill is emphatically not.”

“Right you are,” Hargreave said. “And why should he bother to tear the safe apart when he had the keys? That's his M.O., kid; put in the safe, then visit it when the family's away and lift a few bills, neat and clean. All that mess. . . papers all over the place? That's not like Magill. Not like any yeggman I know, either. They like to leave things real tidy. Takes the marks longer to figure that something's missing, you see!”

“But . . . if Magill didn't do it, who did?” I wondered, as Charles showed us back to the Vanderbilt study.

Hargreave smiled and tapped the side of his nose. Alva Vanderbilt was still in the study, sorting through Mr. Vanderbilt's papers.

“What a dreadful mess that criminal made,” she said, as she examined each of the documents. “Why look, Mr. Vanderbilt, here's your Will! How ever do you suppose it got across the room like that?” She fanned the papers out, as if to put them in order, then laid the papers together in front of her father-in-law, who took them up and placed them into one of the drawers in his desk. She looked up and saw Hargreave and myself.

“Well?” she asked snappishly. I was forcibly reminded of a Pekingese dog disputing the ownership of a bone.

“Magill is innocent,” Hargreave pronounced. “I'll go his bail myself. He couldn't have done it, ma'am; his hands are too small.”

“Then who . . .” Mr. Vanderbilt asked in confusion.

I noticed the footman, who had been hovering nearby. “Mr. Hargreave,” I said, in a conversational tone, “have you noticed the size of this footman's hands?”

“Good-size feller, too,” Hargreave remarked. “Been in the ring? Let me see them hands.” He seized the footman's wrists, before the servant could move. “Looky here, Mr. Escott. You were right; the thief did cut himself on the glass. Why'd you do it, Charley?”

The footman seemed to sag, then wrenched himself away and landed a perfect uppercut on Hargreave's jaw that laid the big man out on the floor. I launched myself after him, conscious of my bravado, for the footman was at least two inches taller than I, and correspondingly broad in the shoulders and arms. He shook me off like a terrier shakes off a rat, and made for the door at the end of the passage leading to the kitchen.

I followed, yelling as I went, “Call the police!”

Charles and I ploughed through the kitchen and out to the area, a paved yard below the street level. Like the street, the court-yard was covered with a thin sheet of ice. Charles crashed through the kitchen door, took one step, and landed ungracefully on his rump. I tripped over him, and thus I was accorded the honours when the police arrived to take the wretched man away. To add to his chagrin, the officers hauled him out the front door, onto Fifth Avenue, before a gawking crowd.

To my astonishment, Alva appeared, overseeing the removal of her footman. She fixed him with that basilisk stare of hers, as if daring him to speak out. “Don't you worry, Charles,” Alva said. “Vanderbilts take care of their own. I will see that you have a good lawyer.”

Charles stared helplessly at her as he was being led away. Hargreave followed, to give his deposition, and Mr. Vanderbilt retreated
to his study, leaving me at the back of the hall. Before I could make my presence known, a tiny child, barely three years old came in, with her nurse. The child's eyes were red, but whether the tears were from the cold or another reason I could not say.

Her mother, Alva, spared a glance for the child. “How was your party, Consuelo? Did you have a good time?”

“I wanted to skate, Mama, but the Astor children would not skate with me. They said that Vanderbilts are not the thing.”

Alva straightened up. I could have sworn I saw the light of battle in her eyes. “Not the thing!” she muttered to herself. “Vanderbilt money's not good enough for the Astors? We'll see about that!” Then she patted the child on the shoulder. “Never you mind, dear. Nurse, take Miss Consuelo up and see she is kept warm. Consuelo, you listen to me. When you are a duchess, they will come begging to play with you!”

“Am I to be a duchess, Mama?”

“Or a princess. Trust your mama, you shall be.”

The child thought gravely, then said, “But I may not wish to be a duchess.”

Alva stiffened. “I'll tell you what you wish, child. Get upstairs.”

Consuelo noticed me for the first time. She gravely curtsied, then scampered up the stairs, followed by her nurse.

Mrs. Alva turned and saw me, lurking, as it were, in the shadow of the grand staircase. She smiled, and turned those remarkable eyes in my direction. “Why, Mr. Escott . . . it is Escott, isn't it? I thought I recognized you. You were in that amusing play . . .”

“I am delighted to know that my performance was so memorable.” I began to edge towards the door.

Alva's smile became almost fierce. “Actors lead such difficult lives, I hear. Audiences are so fickle. Why, someone who was enormously popular one day can be cast aside the next. All it takes is a word or two in the right ears . . .”