THE CASE OF THE UNREPENTANT GHOST by LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.

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By Linda Weatherly
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Few people have the unsettling experience of finding a Chief Inspector of the Metropolitan Police on the doorstep before they finish breakfast. Lady Sara Varnley, who was Britain’s finest detective, had it happen frequently at her residence in Connaught Mews, and she tolerated it without complaint. For one thing, Chief Inspector Mewer was an old friend who occasionally made himself useful. For another, the mysteries he brought to her were sometimes perplexing enough to be interesting.

The Chief Inspector’s yank on the bell pull was unmistakable. Rick Allwar, one of Lady Sara’s footmen, answered it and then came to inform us that the Chief Inspector and another gentleman had declined an offer of breakfast and were waiting for her in her study.

Lady Sara arched her eyebrows. “Another gentleman?”

“A small gentleman in plain-clothes. He doesn’t look like a policeman.”

“What does he look like?” Lady Sara asked.

“He might be something or other in the City, but it is difficult to say. He has had an unsettling experience, and he feels certain that he didn’t deserve it.”

Lady Sara laughed. “Very well. Tell them I’ll be down shortly.”

The other gentleman’s stature and slight build certainly appeared small when compared with the Chief Inspector’s massive bulk, but I had the impression that he was far more accustomed to giving orders than to taking them. His name was Vincent Uppington, and his card, which he presented to Lady Sara when the Chief Inspector introduced him, listed an impressive home address in St. John’s Wood and a business address on Threadneedle Street, the latter suggesting that whatever he did in the City was important.

Both gentlemen contrasted oddly with Lady Sara, who wore her hair plainly, dressed plainly, and never stood out in a crowd, though many men thought her beautiful. It was only when she began to talk that people became aware of a remarkable presence.

Lady Sara introduced me as Colin Quick, her assistant. She got us seated around the large conference table in the centre of the room and paused for a moment to study Uppington’s card. “Twelve Maxton Place,” she murmured. “I believe I know that neighbourhood. It is a semidetached house, is it not? Red brick construction. Both it and its companion are unusually large houses even for that neighbourhood, with extensive grounds that are surrounded by an iron-railed fence.”

Mr. Uppington was startled to find so much known about him in advance, and he fell silent.

The Chief Inspector prompted him. “It would be best for you to tell Lady Sara exactly what happened.”

“Very well,” Uppington said, “though it’s not likely to be any more believable now than it was last night. My wife and I enjoy entertaining. We have a large party at least once a month. Not a dinner party, those are bores, but a congenial gathering of friends, with a buffet table and music for dancing after everyone has eaten.

“Last night’s party proceeded as our parties always have proceeded, people enjoying the food and each other, lively talk, lots of laughter. I gauge the success of my parties by the laughter. A party where everyone stands around looking glum is a total failure.”

Lady Sara, who gauged a party’s success by the amount of serious talk it generated, gave him an encouraging nod. The Chief Inspector was looking on restlessly. This was not his idea of how to make a report. Uppington had spoken half a dozen sentences and still hadn’t gotten to the point.

“So—the party was going well,” Uppington continued. “Most of the guests had finished eating, and the musicians had arrived and were tuning their instruments in a nearby room. Afterwards, several of my guests thought they had noticed a stranger among us, but I hadn’t and my wife hadn’t, and none of my servants saw him. He could have slipped in through the front door when the servants were busy elsewhere, of course, and with so many people present—the guest list totalled more than thirty, and there were the musicians, and the servants, and several servants who were strangers to us whom we engaged for the party—probably no one, including myself, knew everyone present by sight.

“But no one mentioned there being a stranger present, no reason why anyone should, until suddenly we all took notice of him. Our salon has a magnificent fireplace, and over it hangs a large portrait, an oil painting, quite well done, of an elderly gentleman with a long, white beard. It is a portrait of the grandfather of my landlord, who occupies the premises next door. It hung there when his father was the occupant, and he had a sentimental desire that it should remain there. I had no objection. As I said, it is a well-done painting of a distinguished-looking gentleman, so I agreed to keep the portrait there and care for it.

“When I first noticed the stranger, he was standing in front of the fireplace facing my guests, most of whom were at the other end of the room. He had the same long, white beard as the man in the portrait, his face looked exactly the same except for a sort of ghostly gleam about it, he was dressed exactly the same way, and he had struck precisely the same pose as that of the man in the painting—like this.” Uppington got to his feet and raised one hand, index finger extended.

“The room gradually fell silent as more and more of my guests left off what they were doing to stare at the tableau that had suddenly arranged itself before us. And it was a striking tableau, with that silent figure exactly resembling the painting that hung behind and above him. Then the figure began to be enveloped by a haze that turned out to be smoke. As the smoke became thicker, the figure became dimmer and dimmer until it vanished in a sudden puff of smoke that completely obliterated it.

“At first, there was concern about fire, but the braver of my guests ventured into the smoke, emerged coughing, and said there seemed to be nothing there but smoke. Both guests and servants began opening windows and trying to do something about the smoke. As visibility improved in the room, we became aware that someone was lying on the floor where the smoke had been the thickest. It was a man, and one of my guests, a doctor, examined him and informed us that he was quite dead. He had been stabbed in the back by something like an ice pick, which was left in the wound. At that point, I called the police.”

Lady Sara turned to Chief Inspector Mewer. “Have you identified the victim?”

“Not yet,” the Chief Inspector said. “No one at the party knew him, and we haven’t had much time for a wider search. He isn’t listed as a missing person.”

“Did he bear any resemblance to the man who struck a pose in front of the portrait?” Lady Sara asked.

Mr. Uppington and the Chief Inspector shook their heads simultaneously.

“And the man who struck the pose vanished completely?”

This time they both nodded.

“Does everyone who was present agree that there was no body on the floor when you first saw the man posed in front of the portrait?”

“Absolutely,” Mr. Uppington said. “I mean, there were about forty people staring at that end of the room. Certainly some of them would have seen the body if it’d been there.”

“How long had the victim been dead?”

“No more than a few minutes when the doctor examined him,” the Chief Inspector said. “The body was still warm.”

“Is there any possibility that the wound could have been self-inflicted?”

“Absolutely none. Not even a contortionist could have stabbed himself in the centre of his back.”

Lady Sara reflected for a moment. “This is what we have, then—a stranger somehow got into Mr. Uppington’s party, struck a pose in front of a portrait whose subject resembled him, and then vanished in a cloud of smoke. When the smoke cleared, no evidence of him remained, but another stranger lay murdered on the floor, correct?”

Again, both Uppington and the Chief Inspector nodded.

“Of course you searched meticulously for an explanation of the first stranger’s miraculous disappearance.”

“Meticulously,” the Chief Inspector agreed. He liked the word. He said it again, “Meticulously. There are no secret panels or trap doors in that room.”

“What do you make of it?” Lady Sara asked the Chief Inspector.

He responded with a loud harrumph. “In my time,” he announced, “I have encountered numerous tales of haunts. The tales never make sense. There are always as many descriptions as there are witnesses. If the ghost was a man, one witness saw him in a bowler, another in a topper, and a third swears he was hatless. One describes him as hatchet-faced, another as pie-faced, and a third as hollow-cheeked. His head was bald, or slightly bald, or he had a shaggy head of hair. He had a full beard, or a square-cut beard, or he was clean-shaven. He wore a craftman’s smock, or a business suit, or an evening dress. Mind you, all of those descriptions purport to describe the same illusion. If the ghost was female, it’s far worse. No two people ever see a ghost the same way. This case is different. When you have forty people who saw a man posed in front of a painting and each of them is able to describe him in considerable detail, and all of the descriptions are pretty much alike, I refuse to call him a ghost.”

“How are you proceeding?” Lady Sara asked.

“We are following our usual routine,” the Chief Inspector said stiffly.

“What about the occupant of the house next door?”

“We have already interviewed him. His bedroom is at the far side of his house, and he heard nothing until we rang his bell. He couldn’t tell us anything, and when we took him to see the dead man, he couldn’t identify him.”

Lady Sara turned her attention to Vincent Uppington. “Have you had any problems with your neighbour and landlord?”

“None,” Uppington said. “Actually, we have had very few contacts. He seems to be something of a recluse. I wouldn’t call him friendly, but he is always courteous.”

“Has he ever complained about these large parties of yours?”

“Certainly not. I asked him several times whether they bothered him, and he pointed out each time that his bedroom is on the far side of his house and no amount of riot in our salon would be likely to disturb him.”

“Had you been bothered by ghosts before this materialization last night?”

“Not at all,” Uppington said. He hesitated for a moment and then continued. “When we signed the lease, the estate agent told us the house was haunted, and there had been complaints from earlier tenants. He thought it odd because the house is relatively new. It is usually a venerable building or one that was the site of some deep tragedy that attracts ghosts. He didn’t seem to take the subject seriously, so we certainly didn’t—until last night.”

“In case you have any misgivings about continuing to reside there, I have good news for you. I feel confident that this particular ghost won’t be seen again.”

“How can you know that?” the Chief Inspector demanded.

Lady Sara smiled. “As you surely are aware, detectives, like magicians, are reluctant to reveal the tricks of their trade. I want to assure Mr. Uppington that there will be no uninvited guests at his next party—at least, none of the spirit variety. There may be a few crashers who are hoping for a repetition of last night’s excitement, and he would be well advised to plan for them. The dead man poses an entirely different set of problems: Who is he, how did he get there, why did he arrive at that particular moment, and who wanted him dead?”

The Chief Inspector nodded. “All of that. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Not at the moment. There are one or two aspects of the case that I’ll have to look into first. If you succeed in identifying him, please let me know at once.”

“I know you will want to inspect the premises. I have already informed Mrs. Uppington that you or one of your assistants will be calling.”

“Perhaps later,” Lady Sara said. “The first thing I must attend to is the rumour about the house being haunted.”

After the Chief Inspector and Mr. Uppington left, Lady Sara turned to me and asked, “What do you think?”

“I’m with the Chief Inspector,” I said. “I don’t believe the man was a ghost.”

“Neither do I. On the other hand, his conduct was rather more appropriate for a ghost than for a murderer. What manner of murderer is it who will attract attention to himself in the most dramatic way possible and then, when the eyes of everyone in the room are fixed on him, produce a cloud of smoke and use it as a screen to commit murder?”

“I would consider it unlikely behaviour even for a ghost.”

She shook her head. “There is no mystery at all about the ghost. The real mystery is how the murder victim got into the room since he wasn’t there when the ghost was first noticed. I’m considering the timing of the thing. The ‘ghost’ struck his pose in front of the fireplace; then when he had everyone’s attention, smoke began to envelop him. At that point, did the ghost dash out to get the body from somewhere, bring it back into the room, arrange it on the carpet, and then make his own escape?”

“It is more likely that the victim joined the ghost voluntarily as soon as the smoke was thick enough to conceal him.”

“Meaning that the victim obligingly made himself available to the murderer at the precise moment the murderer was ready for him? Perhaps,” she mused. “Perhaps. It is also possible that a third party was involved. I’ll remind you that none of this takes into consideration the Chief Inspector’s certainty that there are no secret panels in that room. The mechanism of the crime—how it was done—seems baffling, but it is all we have to contemplate until the victim is identified. Why it was done, and why the murderer chose that particular time and place, must wait.”

“So what do we do first?” I asked.

“The only logical place to begin is by interviewing the ghost,” she said.

* * * *

Maxton Place was a pleasantly wooded area populated with homes that would have looked palatial anywhere else. Here the emphasis was on the comfort of the residents rather than on vulgar portentousness, and the dwellings were fitted discreetly into the wooded landscape. Numbers 12 and 14 were, as Lady Sara had said, large even for this neighbourhood. Number 12 already had several callers, perhaps friends come to console Mrs. Uppington on the catastrophe that disrupted her party and, incidentally, hear the details firsthand. Their carriages and coachmen were waiting. We drove past number 12, turned in at number 14—the gate stood open—and followed a circular drive to the entrance.

The house itself—vast, solidly conservative—was evidence enough that the occupant possessed considerable wealth.

“It is an unlikely address for a ghost,” I observed.

“It is also an unlikely address for a murder,” Lady Sara said. “One would almost expect a clause in Mr. Uppington’s lease prohibiting either.”

Lady Sara rarely used her carriage, but on this day she had, with Old John Quick, her coachman and my foster father, driving. Like the excellent detective she was, she always managed to fit unobtrusively into whatever setting her work took her to, and a mere four-wheeler or trap would have looked ridiculously out of place at that address.

The footman was young, in his mid twenties, and he answered the bell with an energetic promptness. Lady Sara presented her card and informed him that she and her secretary were calling on Mr. Cecil Radcliffe. The footman bowed and led us up a long stairway to a first floor drawing room. There he invited us to make ourselves comfortable; Mr. Radcliffe would join us shortly.

The room—indeed, the whole house—had a dusty, disused air. I asked Lady Sara, “Does someone actually live here?”

“Mr. Radcliffe is a bachelor,” she said. “I haven’t seen him for at least fifteen years. He was something of a recluse even then. Unlike Mr. Uppington, he probably does no entertaining at all.”

Glancing about the room, my gaze settled on something startling: a large, painted portrait showing an elderly man with a long, white beard and suspiciously black hair. He was standing in a striking pose, hand raised, one finger elevated.

“Since Mr. Radcliffe insists that a tenant keep his grandfather’s likeness prominently displayed, it shouldn’t be surprising that a similar painting hangs in his own home,” Lady Sara said.

Mr. Cecil Radcliffe entered the room so quietly that he seemed almost ghostlike himself. He had the air and appearance of a man who rarely entertained visitors before noon, and it perfectly suited his aristocratic manner. He was of medium height but looked taller because of his slender frame. He was clean-shaven when he bothered to shave, but on that day he hadn’t. Neither had he got around to combing his thick head of greying hair. His elaborate dressing gown had an Oriental look to it that severely clashed with the sedate surroundings. I would have guessed his age as anywhere between fifty and seventy.

Lady Sara and I rose when we became aware of his presence. He came close enough to us to touch my hand when Lady Sara introduced me. Then, inviting us to sit down again, he arranged himself in an elaborate imported bentwood rocking chair of a type that had been the rage in England fifty years before. It suddenly dawned on me that the whole house was fifty years out of date. So was Mr. Cecil Radcliffe.

“Oh dear,” he said with a sigh.

Lady Sara wagged her finger at him. “Naughty, naughty,” she said in a matter-of-fact way.

He shook his head. “No. Stupid, stupid.”

“We heard Mr. Uppington’s version earlier this morning,” Lady Sara said.

“Did you!”

“And now we would like to hear yours. But before you begin, my assistant should know the background.” She turned to me. “Semidetached houses like these are normally separated by a party wall, a wall common to both dwellings. That is the case with the upper stories of these two residences. With the lower stories, for reasons now long forgotten, the dwellings were separated by two walls with a dead space of about a yard between them.”

“It may have been conceived of as a noise barrier,” Mr. Radcliffe said. “I know of two other dwellings designed by the same architect that have a similar barrier, though, with less space separating the walls. One is in Mayfair and the other in Lambeth.”

“But neither of those residences has displayed such a spectacular tendency for attracting ghosts,” Lady Sara said pointedly. Mr. Radcliffe subsided.

“Fifteen years ago,” Lady Sara continued, “the residence next door became severely troubled by ghosts. Several tenants complained about them. They were discreet ghosts, materializing only for a short time and then vanishing in a haze of something that smelled remarkably like smoke. They rarely appeared to more than one or two people at a time and then only to people who were some distance away. Despite that, the tenants were severely troubled by them. The smoke tended to linger, and sometimes the house had to be fumigated. One tenant had a priest in to perform an exorcism ceremony. At least two tenants that I know of gave up their leases—though I must say Mr. Radcliffe was most considerate and refused to impose the financial penalties that the law would have allowed him. Finally, a tenant with a more practical turn of mind decided there was nothing ghostlike about an apparition that left so much genuine smoke, and he called in a detective—me. And instead of running in alarm when the ghost appeared, I watched it carefully and detected the secret panel trick.

“Whereupon I called Mr. Radcliffe to account and obtained his solemn promise—”

“Oh dear,” Mr. Radcliffe moaned.

“—solemn promise that in return for my keeping my discovery confidential, the ghosts would be laid to rest permanently. I should add that Mr. Radcliffe was an amateur actor of some distinction in his youth, and he still associates himself with an occasional theatrical production. He is, in fact, a dabbler—his wealth relieved him of the burden of pursuing a profession, so he has dabbled in a great many things other than the theatre. Chemistry, certainly. Probably carpentry and cabinet making. The panels are most ingeniously contrived.”

“Oh dear,” Mr. Radcliffe moaned again.

“All of this was fifteen years ago. Though Mr. Radcliffe gave me his solemn promise, for some reason he has yielded to temptation and permitted the ghost to reappear. This time it isn’t merely a question of distressing and alarming a neighbour. Somewhere, somehow, he has bungled badly, and he is in far deeper trouble than he is aware of.”

“Oh dear,” Mr. Radcliffe moaned.

“We will take that as read,” Lady Sara said. “Now let’s hear your story.”

“Oh dear. Did you say you knew Vincent Uppington?”

“I said I had met him.”

“Not the same thing.” Mr. Radcliffe shook his head gloomily. “Not the same thing at all. He is such a stuffed shirt—a stuffed shirt with nothing of substance to stuff it with, which is the worst kind. Piously stopping by to make certain his parties weren’t bothering me. It never occurred to him to invite me to one.” He suddenly laughed resoundingly. “But I attended them anyway! I attended all of them!”

“You didn’t!” Lady Sara exclaimed.

“But I did. Only the large ones, of course. It was a simple matter to disguise myself in an anonymous way. I would slip in when the way was clear, drift about, sample the food, quickly find out that the affair was as boring as I expected it to be, and make my exit when an opportunity came.”

“No ghost, no smoke?” Lady Sara demanded.

“None. I simply attended the parties as an uninvited guest, and with so many people about, no one knew everyone, so no one noticed. I assure you—I kept myself completely inconspicuous except for one thing. My manners are impeccable, I can’t help that, it’s a matter of upbringing, and those of most of Uppington’s guests aren’t.

“And then, one day when I was shaving—I still prefer to shave myself—I chanced to raise my hand in a way somewhat similar to the pose my grandfather assumes in that portrait.” He nodded at the painting we had already noticed. “I saw, to my amazement, that in my old age I had become very similar to my grandfather in appearance. Having made that discovery, I simply had to make use of it. All of the ghosting props I used in my haunting days were disposed of years ago, so I had to acquire new ones. I lavished a great deal of time and expense planning what was to be my last—and most momentous—appearance.”

“It certainly was momentous,” Lady Sara said dryly.

“Perhaps I should describe my props. My shoes are made to order to my own design. Making them is a ticklish business—the first two pairs didn’t work properly, and it wasn’t until the third that I successfully produced the smoke I had to have. When I rocked back on my heels, they generated the smoke, which issued through vents in the heels and soles. Just in case I might have to disguise myself further either before or after my prank, I had a frock coat made to match the one in my grandfather’s portraits, but my coat is reversible. I can quickly turn it inside out and it becomes a very different garment—blue rather than black and a different style of coat entirely, with just a suggestion of the threadbare and old fashioned about it. For the final touches, I carefully selected a white beard and a black wig that would match my grandfather’s. His beard was his own, but he wore that black wig all his life, even after his beard turned white. I should add that the firm that custom-made my props is well aware of my theatrical interests. Its employees thought I was ordering stage props.

“I waited for an unusually large party—the great performance I planned deserved a large audience—and when one finally arrived, I joined the crowd through one of two concealed panels, this one at the back of the room. Wearing my special clothing and the smoke-generating shoes, I circulated among the guests for a short time and then drifted away unnoticed to the fireplace where the painting of my grandfather is displayed. I stood with my back to the other guests as though admiring the painting—though I was confident that no one was paying the slightest attention to me—and I quickly donned the false beard and the wig and applied makeup to lend a ghostly aspect to my face. Then I turned and struck my grandfather’s pose. When I had everyone’s attention, I tripped the smoke mechanism. My plan was to slip away when the smoke was thick enough to conceal me and make my escape through the concealed panel near the fireplace. I had checked in advance to make certain it wasn’t fastened.

“When I turned towards the fireplace, I tripped over something I knew hadn’t been there when I arrived at the end of the room. I had not time to investigate, the smoke might begin to thin at any moment. I reached the panel—and it was fastened. This was an unexpected crisis, but my props allowed for it. I removed the beard and wig, wiped the makeup from my face, turned my coat inside out so that it became different in both style and colour, and edged my way along the side of the room through smoke, exchanging comments with any guests I encountered. Just outside the salon a maid was standing near the second panel. I sent her into the room to help fan the smoke through windows that by that time had been opened, and the moment she was gone, I slipped through the panel and secured it. My shoes were still smoking a little bit, not badly. I reached my bedroom safely—I had my own servants to worry about as well as Uppington’s—returned my props to their hiding place, and went to bed. I thought my prank had come off perfectly, and I congratulated myself on a superb performance. Even when the police woke me to find out whether I could identify that body, I failed to connect it with the object I had stumbled over, but I did so the first thing this morning when my housekeeper got a full report from one of Uppington’s maids.

“And that, I swear, is the whole story. I never saw the dead man before.”

“Did anyone else know about these ghostly adventures of yours?” Lady Sara asked.

“I’m sure no one did. I never mentioned them to a soul.”

“Their history covers a considerable time span—from those earlier instances fifteen to twenty years ago to the present. This is extremely important. Are you quite certain that in all those years you never mentioned them to anyone?”

“I’m positive. I’m a self-sufficient kind of person, and I don’t need to brag to others about my exploits.”

When we rose to leave, Lady Sara warned him, “I may have more questions. The police certainly will. This case appears to be much too complicated for them.”

We drove to the City to the office of Radcliffe’s estate agent. Lady Sara left me in the carriage while she called on him.

“You’ll be an unnecessary distraction,” she said. “I know the man, and he may consider it a violation of trust to give me the information I want. I’ll have to exercise my feminine wiles.”

Her visit was a long one, but she emerged smiling. “Now we can go to work,” she said.

On our return home, she called a conference with her two footmen, Rick Alward and Charles Tupper—both of them highly competent investigators—and me. She first described the case.

“This may seem like a random shot at a venture,” she said, “but if we wait for the victim to be identified, it may be weeks before anyone misses him. We can proceed without knowing who he is because of one fact we know for certain about the murderer. He had to be familiar with Cecil Radcliffe’s secret panels and his ghostly hobby. Radcliffe swears he has never told anyone about them, but he could have forgotten, or someone could have come across the information some other way. I think our most likely suspect is a former tenant because no one else could have had access to the house for the leisurely examination such a discovery would require. I have here a list of nine former tenants going back more than twenty years. I’ll give each of you three names. At this stage of the investigation, I want to know only one thing: Where was each one last night? When I have answers for all nine, we will be able to proceed.”

The majority of the tenants had continued to use the same estate agent after they left Maxton Place, and the agent had been able to supply one or sometimes several subsequent addresses for them. I was able to deal easily with the first two names on my list. One was an elderly gentleman who had the previous year moved to a warmer climate because of his health. The woman who sublet his house informed me that he now lived at Torquay, in the southwest of England, and she kindly let me copy his address from a calling card he had sent to her.

The second former tenant was exceptionally well qualified for participation in a ghostly prank, since he was dead, but both Lady Sara and the Chief Inspector would have questioned his eligibility as a suspect.

The third posed problems. His name was Langley Halstead, and he was a solicitor residing at 24 Larkly Road. One glance at the house revealed that he was not a successful solicitor. It was in a row of houses of the type referred to as a terrace, but it was a mean neighbourhood, and they were mean houses. After being driven past the address several times in a four-wheeler, I decided that this particular gambit required special preparation.

I called on an elderly woman shopkeeper for whom I had done favours in the past and took some of her stock on consignment. She offered a startling variety of knickknacks and cheap jewellery, and she helped me to make a selection. I was about to become a peddler, a humble but respectable calling, and for the remainder of the day, my milieu would centre on the back doors and, hopefully, kitchens, of the row of houses on Larkly Road where Langley Halstead resided.

I dressed for the part in clothing that was shabby but not actually disreputable. Otherwise, my props were a wicker tray with a lid and cheap baize lining, the stock of trinkets and knickknacks my friend had lent to me, a limp that I had perfected through long practice, a cap that had seen much wear, and a barely visible smudge on my face.

I had a considerable advantage over most peddlers: Money was of no concern to me. I could offer spectacular bargains that were likely to put the customer in a cheerful mood and encourage talk and confidence.

Back I went to Larkly Road, and this time I inspected the back gardens and doors of residences. There were two well-cultivated gardens, but most of the rear vistas were even more unattractive than the front ones had been. The men residing in houses of this sort usually were something not too important in the City; their energies were sapped by their long day’s work and the turmoil of the twice-daily commuter trains. The wives exhausted themselves practicing gentility. There was no place in the budget for a gardener.

I called at the Halstead rear door after visiting several houses on either side, where I disposed of two necklaces, a ring, and eight brooches, and collected a full measure of gossip about Langley Halstead.

Residents of Larkly Road rarely had more than two servants, a maid and a plain cook, with one of them doubling as housekeeper, but most of these homes made do with only one. According to the servants employed by Halstead’s neighbours, he was a bachelor with a shoddy reputation. He never paid his bills. Since he was a solicitor, he had to be earning some money, but he certainly never spent any, not locally. And he did with only one servant, name of Effie, whom all of the neighbours’ servants felt sorry for.

Despite his miserly ways on Larkly Road, he had plenty of money for frolicking elsewhere. He frequently went out in the evening, dressed fit to kill and riding in a cab. I asked whether he had gone out the previous evening. No one had noticed.

My knock on the Halstead rear door was answered by Effie herself, a tall, thin, homely young woman of about twenty-five. She was entranced by my display of baubles, and after trying unsuccessfully to make up her mind, she invited me in for tea so she could take some time to decide.

I was surfeited with tea and teacake by then, but this was the price one paid for information. I pretended to sip tea enthusiastically and paid her compliments on the cake—actually, it was stale and overly sweet—which she had made herself. She placed my tray near the window, so the sunlight would strike the glass beads and baubles, and for a time she agonized over a choice between a blue brooch and a red one.

I opined that either would look lovely on her, and I offered her an irresistible discount on a second brooch if she bought the first. That taken care of, she was pleased to have someone to talk with, and she described the workings of the household while I continued to simulate tea drinking.

According to Effie, Halstead was even more miserly than the neighbouring servants thought. Whenever she threatened to quit, he would raise her salary, but he often failed to pay her. He was always gadding about.

“Where does he go?” I asked.

“To plays or to the opera. Sometimes he’s away for two or three days to see plays in Paree or Oxford.”

“My word, that must cost money,” I said.

She snorted. “‘E’s got no money. That’s what ‘e always says. Can’t pay ‘is bills. Tradesmen pestering me all the time, threatening to cut ‘im off. But ‘e’s got money for plays.”

“Does he go to plays every night?”

“Noooo. ‘E couldn’t beg or borrow enough money for that.”

“What about last night?”

“‘E went to a play. Went directly from work so ‘e wasn’t ‘ome for supper. Out late too, as usual after a play. That’s when ‘e meets ‘is club.”

“What club is that?”

“The Two ‘Undred. ‘E’s always talking about ‘em. They meets after the play at some restaurant and talks about all the mistakes the actors made.”

That was as much as I could get.

I returned the unsold stock to my friendly shopkeeper, paid her, and went back to Connaught Mews, where I told Lady Sara, “If Halstead went to a play and then joined the Two Hundred afterwards, he has an alibi, but either proving it or disproving it may be difficult.”

“Other members of his club should be able to help us, but I’ve never heard of the Two Hundred. Have you?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll have to find someone who has,” she said.

She sent a telegram to Max Beerbohm, an old friend who was dramatic critic of The Saturday Review and knew everyone and everything connected with London’s theatrical scene. He dropped by that evening on his way to the theatre—impeccably dressed, sprightly in manner, exuding the air of a man who loves his work and is about to enjoy doing it. This was a false front. He hated his work, and Thursday, the day of the deadline for his weekly article, was a day of torment for him.

He had never heard of the Two Hundred, but he promised to enquire about it.

“If you can turn up the names and addresses of one or two members, that would be most helpful,” Lady Sara told him.

In the meantime, Rick and Charles were exploring their lists of former tenants at 12 Maxton Place. They returned home to report three negatives each. If Langley Halstead really had gone to the theatre, Lady Sara’s random shot at a venture was a complete miss.

The following day the police were no closer to the identification of the murdered man than they had been in the beginning. Charles, Rick, and I did the only thing we could do to avoid doing nothing at all. We performed a thorough investigation of Langley Halstead just in case he hadn’t been at the theatre.

He was indeed a spectacularly unsuccessful solicitor. He seemed to have no interests beyond the theatre and opera. There was no woman in his life except Effie, his maid/cook/housekeeper, who despised him. Charles turned up the only reference we found to a relative, a cousin who spent his summer somewhere in the Lake District. Halstead had once mentioned to an acquaintance, an estate agent whose office was in the same building as his, that his cousin was about to visit him.

On the strength of that, Lady Sara sent Charles off to the Lake District at once to see what he could turn up there, which was an even longer shot at a venture. The Lake District was more heavily populated in summer than in winter, but that population was spread over an impressively large mountainous area. It seemed rather early in the investigation for such a desperate measure, especially when we were far from exhausting possibilities in London.

Late that afternoon, Max Beerbohm told us all we needed to know about the Two Hundred. It was an informal group of theatrical enthusiasts who attended as many plays as possible and met after the performances in the beer salon in the basement of the Monica—the restaurant at 19 Shaftesbury Avenue, entrance in Piccadilly Circus—to discuss them. There actually were about a hundred and fifty members, but the membership was constantly in a state of flux. Some members of the group were certain to be at one or the other of London’s theatres whenever there was a performance, and twenty or thirty would gather at the Monica afterwards.

Max had managed to secure names and addresses of two of the members.

“We must see at least one of them immediately,” Lady Sara said.

I drew the name of Edward Fallowby, who lived on Half Moon Street. I went in the four-wheeler, with Old John driving, and had the good luck to find him at home.

He was an elderly gentleman and the third son of an Earl, but he had spent his life trying successfully not to look the part. He lived a Bohemian existence in rather shabby rooms, and his limited income barely stretched enough to cover his many interests. He painted pictures, wrote plays and poetry, and played the violin, all without noticeable success. He went to plays as often as the miserly allowance given him by his brother the Earl allowed.

I learned all that and more on our way back to Connaught Mews. He was immensely flattered that Lady Sara, whom he knew by reputation, wanted to see him.

When she got him settled comfortably, she came to the point at once. “One of the members of the Two Hundred is Langley Halstead. Do you know him?”

“Tolerably well,” Fallowby murmured. “Tolerably well. I usually see him once or twice a week. He is on an even more restricted budget than I am, but we both are devoted to the theatre.”

“So I have heard,” Lady Sara said. “I’m going to tell you something in strict confidence. Can I rely on you?”

“Of course,” Fallowby said.

“Your friend Langley Halstead is suspected of a serious crime. He may be completely innocent. We don’t want to trouble him on the basis of mere suspicions, which may be groundless, and we don’t want word of this investigation rumoured around and damaging his reputation. We are attempting to prove his innocence. Our information indicates that he went to the theatre last night and joined the Two Hundred afterwards at the Monica. If he did both, he is not guilty of the crime, and the police can look elsewhere. Can you help us?”

Fallowby took a moment to meditate. “He did join the Two Hundred after the play. There were perhaps twenty-five of us there, and we had attended four or five plays between us. He had seen Beerbohm Tree’s production of The Woman Who Won, which is a new play, it opened only last Thursday, and our members are already making book on when it will close. It is not a success. We spent the best part of two hours discussing plays—that one and the others we had seen.”

“But was Langley Halstead actually at the theatre?” Lady Sara persisted.

“He said he was. He talked at length about the play.”

“From his talk, would you judge that he had actually seen the play?”

Fallowby took a moment to reflect. “Yes, I would. I would say that he certainly had seen it. He was both perceptive and articulate about it. No one who hadn’t seen it could have talked about it the way he did.”

“Thank you,” Lady Sara said. “That is important evidence, but it would clinch the matter if someone saw him there. Would it be possible to find out whether anyone did?”

“It would be possible to try,” Fallowby said. “But unless he went to the theatre with another member, it’s chancy.”

Rick and I sat up late with Lady Sara discussing other approaches to the case that looked promising to us, but Lady Sara was like a horse player who continues to back a favourite even when it is dead last at the final turn. She held to her deduction that the murderer had to be a former tenant.

The next morning she invited Chief Inspector Mewer to see her, along with an official of the post office, and they had a long discussion about telegrams. As a result, the offices near Halstead’s home and office were to search their files—a tremendous task—for telegrams to or from Halstead.

The Chief Inspector was in a testy mood—he still hadn’t identified the murdered man. “Are you trying to pull another needle out of the haystack?” he demanded. “How many times do you expect that to succeed?”

Lady Sara ignored him. “One more thing,” she told the postal official. “Please arrange a search of records of Lake District offices for telegrams addressed to Halstead—probably at his office.”

Chief Inspector Mewer winced. However, a search of postal records was no problem of his, since his men wouldn’t be involved, so he said nothing. Lady Sara got her way as she usually did.

Edward Fallowby telegraphed about noon. He had been in touch with eight other members of the Two Hundred, and all were agreed that Halstead talked like a man who had just seen the play and had been genuinely disappointed by it. But no one had seen him at the theatre. Fallowby promised to continue his enquiries.

* * * *

Stephen Lynes was a promising young artist and protégée of Lady Sara’s. He was the proprietor of a highly successful waxworks on Tottenham Court Road, which she had financed for him. When she needed an artist, he was always available.

She collected him immediately after lunch and took him and me off to the morgue. We were met there by Sir Thomas Tallmage, a distinguished London physician who had been Lady Sara’s suitor for more than twenty years.

“What is it you want?” Sir Thomas asked.

“Can you form any notion of what a dead man’s voice sounded like from examining his throat?” Lady Sara wanted to know.

Sir Thomas sat down in the nearest chair and stared at her. Then he laughed. “If anyone else had asked me that, I would have thought the question too silly to even consider. Since you are asking me, I suppose I’ll have to go through the motions and make some kind of guess.”

He did examine the murdered man and found nothing abnormal about his voice box. “He was neither soprano nor bass,” he opined. “Since he has a well-developed chest, I would call him a baritone. More than that I can’t say—except that if it’s a singing role you want him for, he is no longer available for auditions.”

Lady Sara thanked him and turned the corpse over to Stephen Lynes. His task was to make a careful drawing of the murdered man. “A lifelike drawing,” she said. “Too often photographs of a corpse show a person who is unmistakably dead. I want something that shows what the man looked like when he was alive.”

Lynes produced a remarkably lifelike drawing, and Lady Sara immediately asked for several copies. The first two she handed to me. I left at once. My assignment was to get to the Lake District as quickly as possible and assist Charles Tupper, who was already there. At Euston Station I caught a train to Birmingham, where an intersecting line ran directly north to Kendal and the Lake District.

The Lake District centres in the Cumbrian Mountains, and railways shun a mountainous region. In the vicinity of the Lake District, they follow the coast or turn inland to form a complete circle around it. A few branch lines point towards the interior but only for short distances. One of these terminates at Windermere, where Charles Tupper had set up his headquarters.

Charles was waiting for me with a hired trap when I arrived there early next morning, and the first thing I did was hand him Lynes’s drawing of the dead man.

“Oh good,” he said. “The telegrams are a washout. I think the dead man and Halstead communicated by mail—if they communicated at all and if the dead man did come from here. The written description of him fits a lot of people, so I was reduced to looking for someone from here, and that fits almost anyone.”

“The man we want will also be missing,” I pointed out.

“True, but he hasn’t been missing long enough to be missed. Also, we’re getting into fall, and many Lake District residents head for milder climates during the winter. ‘Lake District’ covers a lot of territory, as you may have noticed, and I’ve sampled only one small corner of it. What if he comes from the Keswick area on the other side of the mountains?”

“We have to start somewhere,” I said, “and, as you said, the drawing should help.”

“The drawing should be an immense help.”

Charles had a stocky build something like that of a bulldog, which he resembled in his tenacity. With the drawing we retraced the ground he had already covered. In Bowness he had found three promising leads, or at least three leads. The drawing eliminated all of them. In Windermere it was a similar story. We headed north, pursuing a thin scattering of leads through tiny communities.

At Ambleside, we called on the postmistress, a plump, cheerful, businesslike woman who made her cramped post office radiate hospitality. Charles presented Lynes’s drawing to her, and she exclaimed at once, “Why, that’s Sherwin Danson!”

It didn’t take her long to tell us everything she knew about him. He owned a cottage that he occupied from May through October. When cold weather came, he and his housekeeper usually left for Falmouth, but as far as she knew, they were still at the cottage. Danson rarely received any mail. Letters from London? Perhaps one or two in the course of a summer. She gave us careful instructions to finding his cottage.

After an exhausting climb back into the hills, we came upon a pretty cottage with a striking view of the long, gleaming Lake Windermere curving away to the south far below us.

The housekeeper, one Gwenda Owen, a tiny, middle-aged Welsh woman whose English was unexpectedly fluent, received us with puzzlement that changed to confusion when Charles handed her Lynes’s drawing of the dead man.

“Yes, yes, that’s Mr. Danson. Where did you get it?”

As gently as I could, I explained that the drawing was of a man who’d suffered a serious accident. She was needed in London at once to identify him. She had difficulty understanding why she was needed. “But surely he knows who he is,” she kept protesting. When finally she understood, she collapsed completely. That evening, we formed an oddly contrasted group in the Windermere Railway Station. Charles and I were feeling inappropriately exultant for having resolved an impossible problem, but Mrs. Owen was displaying enough grief for the three of us.

Early the next morning, Lady Sara met us at Euston with her carriage, and we were driven directly to the morgue, where Mrs. Owen had no difficulty making a tearful identification of the dead man as Sherwin Danson. Lady Sara sent a note to Chief Inspector Mewer, who was certain to be both pleased and irritated—pleased to have his work done for him and irritated to find that Lady Sara had stolen another march on him.

We took Mrs. Owen to a small, homey boarding house where Lady Sara thought she would be more comfortable than in a hotel. By the time we got her settled there, she had given us our whole case.

She knew Langley Halstead only by name, but the name was familiar enough. He and Sherwin Danson were cousins. Danson was comparatively well off—he had two or three thousand a year, and since he lived frugally and had no one to spend it on but himself, he appeared to be rolling in money to a spendthrift like Langley Halstead.

Langley Halstead was not well off. He went through life teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Danson was a sterling character, a splendid young man; Halstead came as close to being a scoundrel as he dared.

Halstead was Danson’s only heir.

With that background, the case practically wrote itself.

Unfortunately, there was no proof. Halstead would claim he was at the theatre at the time of the murder, and some twenty-five members of the Two Hundred would testify that on that night he attended their gathering at the Monica immediately after the play and gave every indication of having just seen it and been disappointed by it. He also would claim he hadn’t known his cousin was in London, and unless someone had seen the two of them together, that would be difficult to refute.

Lady Sara was convinced that he had seen the play a night earlier—skipping the club meeting afterwards—which was why he could give such a convincing critique of the play on the night of the murder, but she could no more prove that than she could prove that he was lurking behind the panelling with Sherwin Danson during Cecil Radcliffe’s ghostly performance, waiting to murder Danson as soon as the smoke became thick enough.

We still had to explain how Halstead had managed to find out about Cecil Radcliffe’s final theatrical performance and how he got himself and his cousin into Vincent Uppington’s salon with such precise timing.

We were almost better off when we didn’t have a case.

“I think,” Lady Sara said, “we will have to contrive something.”

“How?” I wanted to know.

“I knew this would happen so I have already started.”

Mr. Eldridge Barriman was a theatrical agent. Lady Sara had given him copies of Lynes’s drawing, and now he had something for her. We called at his office, taking Mrs. Owen with us, and Mr. Barriman paraded for us six likenesses of Sherwin Danson. Mrs. Owen had been forewarned, or she certainly would have collapsed all over again. They had used makeup to bring their appearances as close as possible to the drawing, and the resemblances were remarkable.

But that wasn’t sufficient for Lady Sara. She had each of them speak a few humdrum lines, and she asked Mrs. Owen which sounded most like her master. Mrs. Owen immediately opted for number five, who was more a tenor than a baritone—thus wiping out Sir Thomas Talmage’s scientific approach to post-mortem vocal appraisals—whereupon Lady Sara instructed the others to listen carefully to five’s voice and try to emulate it.

“We’re going to stage a drama,” she said. “How well you perform it will determine whether a man gets away with murder.”

We left them practicing their vocal imitations. As soon as their costumes were ready, there would be a dress rehearsal.

Lady Sara sent me off to inspect a warehouse in Pudding Lane, just off Lower Thames Street and not far from the river. I was to have a leading role in this drama myself, and she wanted me to make myself familiar with the setting.

The mention of Lady Sara’s name got me admitted at once, and I found the warehouse to be a scene of frenzied activity. It looked as though major modifications were underway, with partitions of wood being shuffled about to form a complicated maze. When I tired of jumping out of the way of the workmen, a stairway took me to an upper floor that no longer existed. From behind bales of coarse fabric that filled a narrow balcony, I could look down on the maze from above. The scenario Lady Sara was putting together still wasn’t clear to me, but at least I understood what I had to do, and I would be ready when the grand opening came.

* * * *

Langley Halstead was of medium stature, but the moral shadow he cast was minute. He was a shabby man, and he occupied shabby premises. I wondered, in fact, how he managed to attract any clients at all. The appearance of the man, along with the appearance of his office, should have put them off. He greeted me with what he thought was a warm smile of welcome; it looked more like a grimace to me.

“I need some leases drawn,” I told him. “Is this the sort of thing you handle?”

“But of course,” he said soothingly.

“I own a warehouse in Pudding Lane just off Lower Thames Street. It is being partitioned into small units to be leased for storage purposes. Several of them are already spoken for. There will be twenty-five when the remodelling is finished. So, hopefully, I will need twenty-five leases—but not all at once, of course. Five or six to begin with and then one or two at a time until all the storage units are leased. Are you interested?”

Langley Halstead definitely was interested. Even if he had expectations of soon being heir to a fortune, he had to have money to keep going on. Probably Effie was demanding her wages, and the seedy-looking clerk in his office looked as though his wages were in arrears also. We made an appointment to visit my warehouse together the next morning.

I was perspiring when I left him. Everything had gone well, but I still couldn’t understand what Lady Sara was up to.

The next morning when I escorted Langley Halstead into the warehouse, the workmen were no longer visible, and the place was silent as an empty warehouse could be in that noisy neighbourhood. The scent of fresh sawdust still hung in the air, and probably it helped to assure Halstead that my project was genuine. He gave no sign of suspecting anything.

“The storage units open off this main corridor,” I told him. “Go ahead and look around. I want you to have the whole project in mind.”

“Mr. Radcliffe has a lifelong interest in the theatre,” Lady Sara whispered. “Except for your part, he has directed this scenario himself—and very competently too.”

Radcliffe nodded solemnly. He looked as nervous as an amateur actor about to make his first professional appearance.

Below us, Langley Halstead was making a show at doing a thorough job for me. The more pains he took, and the more time, the larger he could make his bill. As Lady Sara had anticipated, he poked into this area and that, going all the way to the far end of the warehouse before he turned back. As he moved along, workmen, carefully keeping out of his sight, silently swung the partitions into different positions. This scenario’s props had cost a pretty penny, and Lady Sara seemed pleased at the result.

When Halstead finally had seen enough and started back, he sensed at once that something was wrong. He took a turn he remembered and found himself in a long room he had never seen before. There was no other exit. As he began to retrace his steps, a ghastly scream froze him in his tracks. He spun around—and found himself facing the man he had murdered eight days before, a man looking exactly like Danson, and sounding like Danson, and dressed exactly as Danson had been on that fatal night in Uppington’s salon.

“You treacherous scoundrel!” the image of Sherwin Danson moaned. “Stab me in the back, will you? Now it’s your turn!” A cloud of smoke enveloped him. He charged out of it flourishing an ice pick and ran directly at Halstead, who uttered a choking scream himself and fled on feet that terror had lent wings to.

Unfortunately for him, he didn’t know exactly where he was. Everything was arranged differently from what he had seen on his way in. In his panicky scramble to get away from the ice pick—wielding ghost, he found himself in a blocked corridor where yet another ghostly Sherwin Danson was waiting.

Halstead froze momentarily, staring as though hypnotized until that figure also charged out of a cloud of smoke waving an ice pick. The scenario was repeated twice more. Finally, one of the ghostly figures got Halstead cornered, another joined him, and another, and in the end, Halstead found himself facing all six of them, all wielding ice picks, and all intent on extracting full payment for the murderous blow Halstead had struck. As they edged towards him, trickles of smoke still rising around them, Halstead turned again and fled. He crashed through a partition, crashed through another—on Lady Sara’s orders they had been flimsily constructed—and at length found himself at the street door where I had left him. It was still locked, of course, but he didn’t hesitate. He crashed through it and took off at top speed. He might have covered miles before his terror abated, but there were two large constables waiting, and with an “‘ere, what’s all this?” they collared him.

When they tried to take him back into the warehouse, he collapsed completely, and they had a full confession by the time they got him to the nearest station.

Officially, that ended the case of the ghostly murderer.

* * * *

Vincent Uppington and his wife decided to put the scene of the murder behind them as soon as they could find an acceptable place to live. Cecil Radcliffe treated them handsomely, generously waiving the penalties he was entitled to and doing everything in his power to speed them on their way.

As a result, when Chief Inspector Mewer insisted on having the crime expounded to him, the site where it occurred was vacant and available. Rick, Charles, and I accompanied Lady Sara to 12 Maxton Place, and both the Chief Inspector and Cecil Radcliffe met us there.

“The crime was made possible by the fact that there is an entrance to the house that even Mr. Radcliffe wasn’t aware of,” Lady Sara said. “No doubt it resulted accidentally when central heating was installed in both houses. Halstead had a key to the entrance that led down to the furnace room from the outside, and sometime during his occupancy as a tenant, he discovered that pushing aside a panel alongside the stairs gave access to the space between the two houses.

“When he discovered this, he immediately deduced where the ghosts that were plaguing him came from. No doubt he went on from there to discover the panels opening into his salon. He had already arranged to give up his lease on the excuse that the ghosts were disrupting his life—he couldn’t afford to keep the house, and this gave him a convenient excuse to leave. For the moment, there seemed to be nothing he could gain from his discovery.

“In the midst of his present financial doldrums, he remembered it and, I suspect, began to frequent Maxton Place in the hope of picking up something of profit. It would not surprise me to learn that Mr. Radcliffe wasn’t the only uninvited guest at Vincent Uppington’s parties. The next piece of the puzzle is not surprising, considering Halstead’s passion for the theatre. He was interested in amateur theatricals himself, belonged to two theatre groups, and—though universally regarded as a very poor actor—always attended casting nights in hope of securing a walk-on part. This is how he became acquainted with an employee of Mr. Radcliffe’s theatrical supplier. That individual may have remarked to Halstead—in complete ignorance of the use Mr. Radcliffe’s custom-built shoes were to be put to—’Old Radcliffe is taking up theatricals again.’ Halstead, who knew how the shoes had produced smoke years before when he was a tenant, guessed what that meant. The ghost was going to make another appearance. He began to speculate as to how to make use of it. He would have no difficulty in obtaining the date of Uppington’s next party, what with the provisions ordered and extra servants and musicians engaged.

“Halstead certainly knew he was the only heir of a rich cousin, Sherwin Danson. Probably he thought, as unprincipled heirs so frequently do, that his cousin simply didn’t know what to do with his money. Danson came to London occasionally, and Halstead undertook to show him a good time—probably at Danson’s expense. It was simple for Halstead to write and say, ‘Come to London on such and such a date, and we’ll have a great time playing a prank on a practical joker.’ Remember—Halstead had seen the ghost appear more than once when he was a tenant, and he was able to anticipate Mr. Radcliffe’s plans completely. He knew the ghost would make his appearance and then vanish in a cloud of smoke by ducking inside the secret panel by the fireplace. The prank he proposed to Danson was to lock the panel that Radcliffe thought was unlocked and watch Radcliffe’s antics when he found himself trapped in the middle of his own prank with no way out. Danson was a simpleminded person; that sounded like good fun to him and an appropriate punishment for any landlord unprincipled enough to spoil a tenant’s party. So they waited by the panel—and as soon as Radcliffe began to produce smoke, Halstead stabbed Danson in the back, and bending over low to take advantage of the thick smoke near the floor, he quickly dragged the body into the salon, slipped back through the panel, and locked it. He didn’t worry about locking the other panel, though he certainly knew about it. Perhaps he thought Radcliffe wouldn’t be able to get back through the salon without detection. In any case, he had to get to Shaftesbury Avenue and the meeting of the Two Hundred to establish his alibi. He committed his crime and ran.

“It was almost a perfect crime. The connection of Halstead with this house was ancient and easily overlooked. There was nothing to show that Danson was in London—probably Halstead had told him, dramatically, to burn his letter. And there was nothing to show that Halstead knew he was in London or had been in touch with him. Result: An impossible crime with an unknown victim. And even when the victim finally was identified—which he had to be in order for Halstead to collect his inheritance—there was nothing to connect him to Halstead except their relationship. It all occurred just as Halstead planned because Mr. Radcliffe had decided on one last ghostly fling.”

Mr. Radcliffe’s sigh seemed to express genuine feeling. “I regret the whole thing deeply, but of course that won’t give the young man his life back. But now the ghost definitely is retired, and I’ll leave this house vacant as a memorial to Sherwin Danson. It’s the least I can do.”

The Chief Inspector was scowling at Lady Sara. “You had no evidence at all,” he told her severely. “Merely because Halstead leased the premises years ago doesn’t connect him with them now, and it certainly doesn’t prove he knew how Mr. Radcliffe’s ghost performed or when the performance was to take place. You surmised this, you deduced that, you say Halstead must have known about something or other, but you can’t prove anything. It’s fortunate that Halstead confessed. The Attorney-General would refuse to face a jury without better evidence than that.”

“But he has better evidence,” Lady Sara said. “He has the best possible evidence.”

“What is it?”

“Sherwin Danson’s murdered body and the fortune Halstead had hoped to inherit. The crime and the motive. No jury ever has any difficulty in understanding them.”

Chief Inspector Mewer wanted to examine the secret panels. He did so, marvelling at the skill with which they were concealed, and then we gathered at the far end of the room from the fireplace and were about to leave.

A loud groan suddenly transfixed all of us. We whirled; standing in front of the fireplace, pose exactly matching that of the portrait, was a white-bearded, black-wigged ghost. Before we could grasp what was happening, clouds of smoke began erupting around him.

Suddenly, Chief Inspector Mewer gave a roar of anger and rushed at the cloud of smoke. He was too late; there was nothing there, and the secret panel was locked.

Lady Sara was delighted. “How charming!” she exclaimed. “How wonderfully appropriate that this case should end with a glimpse of a real ghost!”

Cecil Radcliffe murmured, “If I hadn’t seen that with my own eyes...”

The Chief Inspector was angry enough to rip open the panel with his bare hands. He thought someone was having a laugh at his expense, and he resented it.

Lady Sara told him to relax. “It is a laugh at all of us,” she said soothingly. “This should make the case memorable for you. Few chief inspectors have ever seen a ghost. Most ghosts avoid them. Though I must confess that in a way I found it disappointing. I would venture to say, Mr. Radcliffe, that your own ghostly performance was probably much superior to the real one we just witnessed.”

“Do you honestly think so?” Radcliffe sounded gratified.

“I’m convinced of it. If you are wise, you’ll leave it at that.”

“I will! Oh, I will!”

As our carriage drove off, I asked Lady Sara to account for the extra ghost.

“It bore a noticeable resemblance to Mr. Radcliffe’s young footman,” she said. “I’m afraid Radcliffe is incorrigible. He so enjoyed staging my warehouse scenario that he has begun a new career. He has retired from acting and taken up directing.”

Copyright © 2006 Lloyd Biggle, Jr.