Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

Kobari laid the wallet on the dresser top and stepped back. Andrew slipped his pen from his shirt pocket. He said in Swahili to Kobari, “You should’ve left it there until the Technical Unit took their photographs.”

Kobari grinned. “If I had, sergeant, photographs wouldn’t be the only thing they’d have taken. There’s money inside.”

Andrew nodded glumly; wouldn’t be the first time evidence had vanished from a crime scene.

Using the pen, he eased the wallet open. Behind a scuffed transparent plastic screen was a driver’s license made out to Bradford Quentin, who lived, who had lived, on a street in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States of America. The picture matched the face on the bed. The man’s birthdate was April 7,1936.

Fifty-three years old, then. He looked very fit for fifty-three. Except, of course, for the small matter of being dead.

Gingerly, with the pen and the tip of his index finger, Andrew pried open the money compartment. Three bills in there, each a hundred U.S. dollars. Other than those and the driver’s license, the wallet was empty. No credit cards, no business cards, no photographs of beaming wife and beaming children.

Andrew asked Kobari, “Could the wallet have fallen under the dresser accidentally?”

Kobari shook his head. “It has a backboard, this dresser, that reaches to the floor. I think he put it there deliberately, to hide it.”

Andrew frowned. “If he were about to commit suicide, why would he hide his wallet?”

Kobari shrugged: Who knew why Wazungu did the lunatic things they did?

Andrew said, “His plane ticket.”

Kobari looked puzzled. “Sergeant?”

“In order to get here from this Atlanta, Georgia, he had to take a plane, or possibly a boat. Where is the ticket?”

“I don’t know, sergeant. It’s not under the dresser.”

They found the tickets — two of them — in the interior pocket of a white linen jacket hanging in the closet. Bradford Quentin had flown from the United States to the capital on the fifth of the month, and on the feeder flight from the capital to the Township on the sixth, yesterday. According to the tickets, he was due to return to the capital on the eighth, and to the U.S. on the ninth.

Standing outside the closet door, Andrew tapped the tickets lightly with his finger. “If he were planning suicide, why would he buy a ticket all the way to Africa? And a return ticket at that? He could’ve killed himself more conveniently, and more cheaply, in Atlanta, Georgia.”

“Perhaps he became suddenly depressed when he arrived,” said Kobari. “Culture shock.”

“A suicidal culture shock?”

“But, sergeant, if he arrived only yesterday, how could he have made an enemy who hated him badly enough to kill him?”

Andrew nodded. “We shall have to discover where he went yesterday, and with whom he spent time.”

“Sergeant?”

Dr. Murmajee, approaching from the bed.

“Yes, doctor?” Andrew said.

“I’ve done all I can at the moment. I won’t be able to add anything, I’m very much afraid, until after the autopsy.”

“Your conclusions, doctor?”

“Ah,” said Murmajee sadly. “Conclusions. Well, of course, as I say, everything is tentative until—”

“Can you estimate the time of death?” Andrew asked him.

Blinking, Dr. Murmajee said, “Oh my, certainly, sergeant, if you like. Lividity has progressed very nicely indeed, and rigor too, and the body has cooled down extremely well. Convenient for our purposes, eh, these air conditioners? I should say that death occurred, oh my, perhaps eight or nine hours ago. Roughly speaking, of course.”

Andrew looked at his watch. Ten thirty now. So between one thirty and two thirty this morning. Roughly speaking.

“Anything else, doctor?”

“Well, yes, there is one thing. Rather curious, I think. You might want to take a look, eh?”

Andrew and Kobari followed him over to the bed where the doctor, bending forward, ran his finger along the edge of the dead man’s palm.

“Most curious,” he said. “He seems to have developed a long callus sort of affair, right along this area. On both hands. From the tip of the little finger all the way down to the wrist. Clearly the man was in excellent physical shape, like someone who did manual labor, yes? But there are no calluses on the palms, only along here. Now what could have caused them, I wonder?”

“Karate,” said Constable Kobari.

Andrew and the doctor looked at the constable.

“You practice with sandbags,” Kobari explained to Andrew. “Hitting them.” He made a short chopping gesture. “It’s to toughen the hands. You see, sergeant, I have this callus myself.”

Andrew looked at the outstretched right hand. “Where?”

Kobari turned his hand around, brought it toward his face, and glared at it, frowning. Bringing up his left hand, he ran his fingers along the ridge of his right. Triumphantly, victory snatched from the palms of defeat, he said, “Here, sergeant, it’s there, you can feel it.”

Andrew touched the ridge of Kobari’s hand and located an area that might, with some charity, have been considered an incipient callus.

“You do karate?” he asked the constable.