Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006
- Автор: Пикард Нэнси, Пронзини Билл
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
“Suicide,” Corby said in awed tones. “Lansing, of all people.”
Quincannon paid no attention to them. While they were gabbling, he finished his examination of the dead man and picked up the LeMat revolver, slipped it into his coat pocket.
Suicide?
Bah!
Murder, plain enough.
“Murder?” James Carreaux said in disbelief. “How can Lansing’s death possibly be murder? He died alone behind not one but two locked doors!”
“No, sir,” Quincannon said. “Not alone and not by his own hand.”
“I don’t understand how you can make such a claim.”
“He had no weapon when I braced him in the fermenting room — I would have noticed a pistol the size and shape of a LeMat. If he had been armed, he’d’ve drawn down on me instead of running like a scared rabbit.”
“He could have smuggled it in earlier and stashed it somewhere, couldn’t he?”
“Plan to take his own life when he had enough money to flee the city? And do it here in the brewery, in a blasted utility room? No, Mr. Carreaux, Caleb Lansing was murdered.” Quincannon paused to light his stubby briar. “Three facts prove it beyond a doubt.”
“What facts?”
“The location of the fatal wound, for one. Lansing was shot on the left side of the chest, just above the rib cage — a decidedly awkward angle for a man to hold a handgun for a self-inflicted wound. Most gunshot suicides choose the head as their target, for the obvious reason.”
“I’ll grant you that,” Carreaux said reluctantly.
“Second fact: There were no powder burns on Lansing’s shirt or vest. He was shot from a distance of at least eighteen inches, a physical impossibility if his were the finger on the trigger.”
“And the third fact?”
“His key to the two doors. It wasn’t on his person or anywhere in the utility room. He couldn’t have locked that door without it, now could he?”
The brewery owner sighed and swiveled his creaking chair for a long stare out the window behind his desk. Fog lay over China Basin and the bay beyond; tall ships’ masts were visible through its drift, like the fingers of skeletal apparitions. Quincannon, puffing furiously, created an equivalently thick tobacco fog in the office. The good rich aroma of navy plug helped mask some of the Golden Gate’s insidious pungency.
At length Carreaux swiveled back to face him. He was a large man of fifty-odd years, florid, with sideburns that resembled woolly tufts of cotton, and morose gray eyes. Not a happy gent, Quincannon judged, even at the best of times. He said obliquely, “Now you know why I have such an aversion to firearms.”
Quincannon made no comment.
“Well, then. You’ve convinced me — murder has been done in my house. Who the devil is responsible?”
“Lansing’s accomplice, of course.”
“Accomplice?”
“In the theft of Otto Ackermann’s formula for steam beer.”
“For the finest steam beer on the West Coast,” Carreaux amended grimly. “Golden Gate’s exclusive formula, until now. I don’t suppose there is any chance that Lansing, or this alleged accomplice of his, has yet to turn it over to West Star?”
“None, I’m afraid,” Quincannon said. “The charred note and the two thousand dollars in Lansing’s flat testify to a consummated deal.”
Carreaux sighed again. “I’ll try to get an injunction against West Star. But that may not stop them from implementing Ackermann’s formula, even with their duplicitous brewmaster in jail.”
“You still have the copy of the formula that Ackermann gave you?”
“Yes, in a safe place, but that was years ago. It’s possible he made refinements since then. Even if he didn’t... the competition, man, the competition.”
Quincannon understood; he’d been well schooled in the subject. A master brewer’s formula, the proportions in which he mixes his ingredients, the manner in which he treats them in the processing, is the lifeblood of a successful brewery. Golden Gate’s reputation as San Francisco’s best producer of steam beer would suffer, and lead to reduced sales, if West Star were to begin brewing lager of comparable quality.
“Tell me this, Quincannon. Why would Lansing need an accomplice to steal the formula, when he had access to it himself as Ackermann’s assistant?”
“The accomplice was likely the brains of the pair. His idea and plan, mayhap. He may even have had a hold of some sort on Lansing to force him into the crime.”
“You suspected there were two of them all along, then?”
“Of course,” Quincannon lied. He should have suspected it, given Lansing’s weak-stick nature. When viewed in the proper light, the man was a poor candidate for the solo planning and execution of such a crime. Ackermann had been a burly gent; it could not have been an easy task to cosh him and then pitch him into that vat of fermenting lager. Well, even the best detectives suffered a blind spot now and then. Not that he would ever admit it to a client, or to Sabina or anyone else.
“The motive for Lansing’s murder?” Carreaux asked. “And why in such a location?”
“My suspicion is that the two arranged to meet secretly in the utility room this morning, likely not for the first time. Lansing was consulting his watch when I found him in the fermenting room, which suggests that the time of a meeting was near at hand. When he escaped from me, he fled to the storerooms to keep the rendezvous and to tell his partner that the game was up. Lansing was the sort who would spill everything in an instant, once he was caught, and the accomplice knew it. Either he felt he had no choice but to dispose of him then and there before his name was revealed, or the killing was premeditated; the latter would explain why he was armed.”
“Do you have any idea of his identity?”
“Not as yet.”
“Or how he could have committed murder behind two locked doors and escaped unseen with you and others guarding the only exit route?”
“Not as yet. But I’ll find out, never fear.”
“You’d better, Quincannon,” Carreaux said. “You advertise yourself as San Francisco’s premier detective. Well, then, prove it as a fact and not mere braggadocio — and prove it quickly. For the sake of your reputation and mine!”
The door to the storerooms had been locked again after the removal of Caleb Lansing’s body, at Quincannon’s urging and Carreaux’s order. And all the keys had been rounded up and accounted for. Quincannon took one of the keys with him when he left Carreaux’s office. He appropriated a bug-eye lantern from the shipping offices to supplement the weak electric light, and then let himself into the storerooms and locked the door again behind him.
He re-searched the utility room first, in the interest of thoroughness. It contained nothing that he might have overlooked the first time. He went next to the room housing the sacked barley. The dusty smells of grain and burlap were thick enough to clog his sinuses and produce several explosive sneezes as he shined the bug-eye over the piled sacks. They were stacked close together, at a height of some five feet and flush against the back and side walls. Nothing larger than a kitten could have hidden itself behind or among any of them.
He crossed into the other large room. The boxes of yeast and heavy sacks of malt, sugar, and hops stood in long, tightly packed rows along the side walls. No one could have hidden behind or among them, either. The floor at the far end wall was bare; a pile of empty hop sacks and a pair of hand trucks lay against the near end wall. Everything was as it had been when he’d looked in earlier.
Or was it?
No. Something seemed different now...
Quincannon stood for a few moments, cudgeling his memory. Then he made a careful examination of the room and its contents. A thin smile split his freebooter’s beard when he finished. So that was the answer! Bully!