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

“Did he go back to his old ways?”

“No! But he hated being so hard up, and when I got a job he hated being dependent on me.”

Inspector Purley considered the matter.

“So how long ago were these burglaries he did?”

“About five years ago — that’s when he stopped. But he’d been doing them for years, since he left school.”

“And he’s how old now?”

“Twenty-six.”

“What can you tell us about the burglaries? Surely there must be something about them that sticks in your mind, or one particular job he told you about that stood out?”

“No, there’s not. I never knew anything about them. I refused to listen.”

She was pulling back, Inspector Purley thought. She needed to be given a further push to remind her what was at stake.

“He must have been good,” he said admiringly, “never to have been caught. Didn’t he ever boast? Say what it was that made him so good?”

“Well...” She was reluctant, but was being borne along by the tide. “He always said the secret wasn’t the technical things, how to break and enter — though he was good at that, too. He said that what mattered was a good eye.”

The inspector digested this.

“For what? For stuff that would fetch a tidy sum? Or for an easy target, a likely victim?”

“The last. He always said the best target was a retired couple or a widowed person, someone who had built up a bit of property and was now pottering along.” She was putting it more politely than Richard usually had, but suddenly she put aside her protectiveness again. “ ‘Someone who had done quite nicely for himself and was now coasting towards his dotage’ — that’s how he described it once. He only said things like that when he was trying to get my goat.”

“I see,” commented the inspector drily. “He has a nice way with words, your husband. Or a nasty one.”

But privately he was pleased to have had contact with the man through his own words. They sounded very adolescent, and he wondered how much of the daredevil boy was in the man still. But most of all he hoped that her willingness to quote her husband’s words and show him in an unfavourable light meant that Selena Randall had turned a corner.

“Dick would never hurt Malcolm,” said Selena, dashing his hopes. “I’ve got to believe that. He loves him more than anyone in the world. That’s why I don’t want to hurt him.”

Inspector Purley reserved judgment. He hoped for her sake and the little boy’s that what she said about her husband was true.

Dick Randall came out of the little back-street jeweller’s with a spring in his step. The man had not hidden his appreciation of the brooch’s value, had commented on the workmanship and the quality of the stones, and had offered Dick a very fair price. He was an honest man, and it had been a pleasure to do business with such a person.

Malcolm was still strapped into his seat in the little car park round the corner. It always gave Dick a lift of the heart to see him again. He was solemnly watching a Dalmatian dog in the next car, which was in its turn watching a lazy car-park cat. It struck Dick how lucky he was that Malcolm was the sort of child who could be left on his own for fifteen or twenty minutes, without danger of panic fits or grizzling. He was solemn, watchful, and even, in his childish way, self-confident. Perhaps it was because he had had to be.

“Here I am, Captain,” he said, opening his car door and sliding himself into the driver’s seat. “A nice little bit of business, very satisfactorily concluded.”

He was talking to himself rather than the child, but as usual Malcolm took him up.

“What’s bizniz?”

“Business?” he said, starting the car and thinking how he could explain business to a three-year-old. “Well, let’s see. Business can be something you’ve got that someone wants and is willing to pay for. Or it may be some skill or ability that you have that the other man hasn’t got, and he’ll pay you to use that skill for him. Or it may be a sort of swap: Do this for me, and I’ll do that for you.”

He’d tried hard to make it simple, but he knew he was still talking as much to himself as to the child. He often did this, having no one but a child to talk to. Malcolm is going to grow up too quickly, he thought, unless I can settle him down somewhere where he can make friends and lead a normal child’s life.

“So did you have something that the man you went to see wanted?” Malcolm asked after digesting his words.

“That’s right, I did. And it means we can eat for a fortnight,” said Dick.

“What would we do if we didn’t have the money to buy food?”

“Oh, but we always will. That I can promise you, Malcolm. It’s what daddies are for — getting money so that you can have food and clothes and a bed for the night.”

After a moment Malcolm nodded, seemingly satisfied, and then went off into a light doze. Dick drove on southwards, at a moderate speed.