Mystery

“Let me help you upstairs.” Victor shot Tom a dark look, and took his wife’s arm to get her to her feet and lead her out of the room.

When his father came back down, Tom was in the little television room, eating the rest of his sandwich and watching one of the WMIL-TV reporters stand beside the hull of the Mogrom’s Fortune at the police dock as he described how the Maritime Patrol had found the boat. “Here on the waterfront, they are scoffing at the theory that Hasselgard could have been washed overboard. Amid growing rumors—”

“Haven’t you had enough of this?” Victor unceremoniously bent down and turned the channel indicator until a baseball game appeared on the screen. “Where’s my sandwich?”

“On the table.”

He left and returned almost immediately, the big sandwich dripping out of his hand. He lowered himself into his chair. “You’re mother will be fine, no thanks to you.”

Tom went up to his room.

At seven o’clock, his parents came downstairs together, and Tom turned off the television just before they came into the room. His mother looked exactly as she had at noon—dressed to go out in her pearls and high heels. He told them to have a good time, and called Lamont von Heilitz as soon as they walked out the door.

They sat on opposite sides of a leather-topped coffee table stacked with books. Lamont von Heilitz leaned against the high tufted back of a leather sofa and squinted at Tom through cigarette smoke.

“I feel restless, that’s why I’m smoking,” he said. “I never used to smoke when I worked. When I was a young man I used to smoke between cases, waiting to see who might appear on my doorstep. All in all I must be a weaker creature now than I was then. I didn’t enjoy seeing the police in my house this afternoon.”

“Bishop came to see you?” Tom asked. Everything about Mr. von Heilitz seemed different this night.

“He sent two detectives named Holman and Natchez home with me. The same two men invited me along to Armory Place last night to discuss the death of Finance Minister Hasselgard.”

“They consulted you?”

Von Heilitz drew in smoke, then luxuriantly exhaled. “Not quite. Captain Bishop thought I might have written them a certain letter.”

“Oh, no,” Tom said, remembering trying to call the old man after watching the previous night’s news.

“Whatever they were doing down in Weasel Hollow kept interrupting the interrogation. I didn’t get back here until nearly noon, and Detectives Holman and Natchez didn’t leave until after three.”

“They questioned you for another three hours?”

He shook his head. “They were looking for a typewriter that would match up with the letter. The search was slow and industrious. I’d forgotten how many typewriters I had accumulated. Holman and Natchez took it as particularly suspicious that one old upright was hidden away in the filing cabinets.”

“Why did you hide one of your typewriters?”

“Just what Detective Natchez wanted to know. He seemed very distressed, this Detective Natchez. I gather that one of the young officers injured in Weasel Hollow—Mendenhall?—was important to him. In any case, the typewriter was a souvenir of the Jack the Ripper’s Grandson business—did you read about it last night? It was the machine on which Dr. Nelson wrote his letters to the New York police.” Von Heilitz smiled and smoked, sprawled out on his chesterfield, his feet up on the coffee table. He had spent a night at police headquarters, and a morning watching detectives paw through his files. He had showered, shaved, napped, and changed clothes, but he still looked exhausted to Tom.

“Nothing happened the way I thought it would,” Tom said. “They keep you overnight—”

The old man shrugged.

“—and this man Edwardes is killed, and two policemen were shot, and Hasselgard killed himself—”

“He didn’t kill himself,” von Heilitz said, squinting at Tom through a cloud of smoke. “He was executed.”

“But what did Foxhall Edwardes have to do with it?”

“He was just—what was the word his sister used? A convenience. He’s the way they close the books.”

“That means I killed him too. Hasselgard and Edwardes would still be alive if I hadn’t written that letter.”