Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Эллин Стенли
- Год: 2016
- Язык: английский
- Год: Penny Publications
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016». Краткое содержание книги:
I told Julia, “According to the police report, there were signs of a struggle in his bookshop. The autopsy report has time of death between eight o’clock and midnight last Tuesday night. He was beaten to death — major cause of death appears to be a collapsed lung caused by a broken rib. The obvious assumption is that sometime after you called him last Tuesday, he was abducted from his shop and brought to the vacant storefront where he was interrogated, probably to find out who was looking for the inscribed copy of that Dickens book. Maybe they were trying to get information out of Bouchard that he didn’t have and they accidentally went too far with their interrogation, or maybe they simply didn’t want him alive afterwards.”
“Very good, Archie. I’m sure you know what I want next. Names of whoever Bouchard contacted after I called him.”
“Yeah, I guessed as much, and I’ve already started working on that.”
Bouchard’s phone records proved harder to locate than I expected, mostly because the Paris phone company was using security measures I wasn’t familiar with. It wasn’t until the plane had landed and Julia was in a taxi en route to the apartment she was using for the job that I was able to break into the system. A short time after that I felt my processing cycles quicken, which I knew from past experience was akin to excitement.
“I know the name of the person you’re after,” I said. “Olivier Tellier. He was one of the people Bouchard called. After each of the attacks against you, Tellier received a call within several minutes from a burner cell phone. He has to be the guy.”
Julia said softly enough so the cabbie wouldn’t hear her that she wasn’t familiar with him. It didn’t take me long after that to build a profile on Tellier. Most of what I found made his involvement in this incongruous. He was a wealthy art dealer with a net worth of over ten million euros and a private residence in the sixteenth arrondissement, which is one of Paris’s most exclusive neighborhoods. But after some additional digging, I also found rumors of ties to several Marseille mobsters.
Once Julia was back in the apartment, she was able to study Tellier’s home using Google Earth. I pointed out the obvious to her — that while the front entrance was unfortunately exposed to the street, thanks to a stone wall built behind the property she’d have privacy gaining entrance through the back of the building. For the next thirty seconds her facial muscles hardened and she sat as still as a marble sculpture. Then she told me what the plan was going to be.
At nine-thirty that night I followed Julia’s instructions and called Tellier. Speaking in French and mirroring Jean-Paul Belmondo’s accent from the movie Breathless, I said, “I know you’re looking for Lisa Hart. I know where you can find her.”
Lisa Hart was the cover identity Julia was using for this assignment. After three point four seconds of silence, Tellier demanded to know who was calling.
“Never mind that. I’ll be coming by your home in one hour. As long as you can raise fifty thousand euros by then, I’ll tell you where she is. If you don’t have the money waiting for me, you’ll never hear from me again.”
I disconnected the line. Julia lay hidden behind the house with a parabolic microphone and a headset covering her ears so she was able to hear the phone call Tellier made, while all I could do by monitoring his phone account was see that he placed a call and that it lasted forty-eight seconds. Thirty-four minutes later she dropped the microphone, took off the headset, and placed me back in her left ear. She sprinted to the back wall, and impressively scaled it as quickly as if she were running up a staircase. I asked if she knew how many of Tellier’s thugs had arrived at the house, and she shook her head.
This was the second time she had scaled the back of Tellier’s house. Earlier, she had cut a round piece of glass from a second-floor window so she could unlock it, then fitted the glass back into the hole. She now used a suction cup to remove the broken glass so that it wouldn’t fall out when she opened the window. With that done, she went through the open window in a fluid, graceful motion, rolling and landing on her feet without making a sound.
When she was on the stairs we heard Tellier’s voice, first demanding to know how an outsider knew he was looking for Lisa Hart, then explaining in detail what he wanted them to do to this outsider when the man arrived at Tellier’s home. By this time, Julia had reached the first floor and moved stealthily toward Tellier’s voice.
It turned out Tellier was in the living room with three men who were standing with their backs to Julia. Tellier, who was sitting, would’ve seen Julia, but his attention was fully on his thugs as he complained in a nasal whine how unhappy he was that an outsider had discovered what he was up to even if it would end up being to his advantage, and that if anyone ever found out that he had ordered Bouchard’s abduction and murder, he would have their heads.
I’ve seen Julius in action enough times to know how good he is in kung fu, but Julia was something else entirely as she sprung at them like a leopard, moving in a blur as she knocked out two of the thugs before Tellier and the third thug knew she was there. The remaining thug didn’t fare any better. He’d barely started to reach for a holstered gun when Julia delivered a spinning kick to his jaw that knocked him unconscious.
Tellier’s eyes bulged as he stared at Julia. He was visibly shaking, although I had the sense it was out of fury and not fear.
“You’ve been looking for me,” Julia said.
Tellier rushed her as if he were planning to tackle her. With very little effort, Julia tripped him up and sent Tellier’s chin cracking against the hardwood floor. The blow dazed him enough that he put up little resistance as Julia pulled his arms behind his back and secured his wrists with a plastic zip tie. She left him briefly to cuff the three unconscious thugs, then returned to Tellier and secured his ankles. After that she flipped him onto his back. She sat on her heels to get a good look at him.
“Why did you have to kill Daniel Bouchard?” she asked.
He stared back at her defiantly. “You know damned well why,” he forced out in a grunt.
“Where’s the book?”
“Go to hell.”
“You’re going to make me tear apart your home? Is it really worth having me do that?”
“Go ahead and waste your time. I don’t keep it here.”
I had spotted an obvious tell when he said that.
“He’s lying,” I told Julia. “He gave it away when his eyes wavered for a fraction of a second. Julius would clean him out if he ever got this joker in a poker game.”
She nodded slightly to let me know that she’d noticed his tell also. She took hold of Tellier’s jaw and forced him to look at her.
“Let me guess where you’re keeping Our Mutual Friend,” she said with a thin smile. “In your basement? No. Upstairs? No. Your den?”
Bingo. That was it. Tellier’s eyes wavered enough to give it away. After that it didn’t take Julia long to find a secret compartment behind a set of bookshelves, inside of which sat the copy of Our Mutual Friend. The inscription was made out to Marcel Bretel, as expected, and described how much Dickens enjoyed dining with Bretel at a Notting Hill restaurant, mentioning in detail the menu items they enjoyed. Since I had photos of Dickens’ signature, as well as letters of his to analyze, I would’ve recognized the inscription as a forgery even if my research hadn’t shown that the restaurant referenced only came into existence fifty-two years after Dickens’ death.
“The inscription and signature are clumsy forgeries,” I told Julia. “Any rarebook collector would realize that within seconds. As a first edition, the book might’ve been worth as much as four thousand dollars if it hadn’t been ruined by this obvious forgery, which has rendered it worthless.” An idea came to me and it only took me three hundred and thirty-four milliseconds to verify it. “I’ve been able to trace Laffont’s family tree back far enough to show that he’s not related to anyone named Marcel Bretel. In fact, I can’t find any evidence of a Marcel Bretel living in Europe during Dickens’ lifetime. The name was made up.”