Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

There was no need to take the car. Dick was only interested in portable property. He had a nose for houses inhabited by the sort of people who would have accumulated it. He had a wonderful sense, too, of street geography, acquired during his teenage years: He always knew the best approach to a place, and still better the whole range of possible escape routes. There was no point in subtlety in the approach to number 41 Sheepscar Road, but as he padded along he renewed in the darkness the possible ways of making a quick exit from the area. The lights in the bungalow had been switched off by the obliging neighbour. All the adjacent house lights were off. Once inside the garden he waited in the darkness at the side of the house to make sure he had not been heard or observed. When no lights went on or sounds were heard, he let himself in through the front door with the ease of practice. Where you could use a credit card to do it you knew you were dealing with very unworldly owners.

Which everything in the house pointed to. The jewel box was by the dressing-room table in the main bedroom, and yielded modest to good pickings. The inevitable stash of notes under the mattress amounted, his experienced grasp of the bundle told him, to something in the region of two hundred pounds. The sideboard drawer revealed silver cutlery of good quality and an antique candle-snuffer which he suspected was something special. All went into the overnight bag after a torchlight inspection, as did an Art Deco vase in the centre of the dining table. He was out of the house in ten minutes. The rooms he left were to all intents and purposes so similar to their state when he came in that the neighbour would probably not notice that there had been an intruder.

He was back in the little bedroom with Malcolm half an hour after he had left him. As he undressed, the boy stirred in his sleep. Dick got in beside him and cuddled him close. Their future seemed assured for the next week or so.

Inspector Purley looked at Selena Randall with a mixture of sympathy and exasperation. He had always had the feeling that she was holding out on him, either deliberately or unconsciously. In fact, he’d pressed her on this in previous talks they’d had, and she had denied it, but in a way that never quite did away with his suspicion. Now it was going to come out.

“You say there’s something about your husband that you’ve been keeping from us?” he said.

He flustered her further.

“Well, not keeping from you. Just not telling you because I didn’t think it was relevant. And I didn’t want to hurt Dick, because I always thought — or hoped, anyway — that one day he’d come back and everything would be as it used to be. That’s what I really wanted... You see, this could really harm him...”

“Yes. Go on.”

“He... When I met him, six years ago, he was an accomplished thief. A house burglar.”

Inspector Purley bit back any annoyance.

“But he’s got no record. We checked.”

“No. I said he was very accomplished. He was never caught... You do see why I didn’t tell you, don’t you? I mean, if he was to be caught with Malcolm, it wouldn’t be just the abduction, would it?”

She looked at him, tearfully appealing. Inspector Purley sighed. The story had changed in seconds from not thinking it relevant to not wanting to land her husband with an even longer prison sentence than he’d get anyway.

“Do you know, Mrs. Randall, I think it’s time you made up your mind.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You really have to sort out your priorities. Is your first priority getting your little boy back?”

“Yes. Of course it is.”

“Then you’ve got to tell us everything that might be relevant to finding him and your husband. Everything.”

“Yes... It’s just that I’ve never felt bitter towards Dick. I loved him when I married him, and I still love him. I can’t believe he’d be so cruel as to let me hear Malcolm’s voice on the phone and then cut us off after only a single word. It’s like he’s become another person.”

Inspector Purley thought that might be because he was afraid Malcolm would let slip something that could be of use to the police, but he was not in the business of trying to make her think more kindly of her husband. That was the whole problem.

“That’s really cruel,” he agreed. “Now, about these burglaries: What kind of detail can you give me about them? Your husband isn’t on our computer, but the burglaries will be.”

She looked at him wide-eyed.

“I don’t know any details. I only know he was doing them. That’s how he dressed so well, ran a car, did the clubs, and ate at good restaurants. When I found out, of course, I made him stop. That was a condition of our getting engaged. My father got him a job with a business associate. For a time he did very well. He learned quickly, and Dick always had charm. People warmed to him, looked on him as a friend. He was under-manager of the Garrick Hotel in Darlington when the group merged with a larger one, and there were redundancies... That was when things started to go wrong.”