"And how would I coax her out of there?"

"You could try knocking on the door and saying "A gentleman for Miss Daisy"."

He tried, and it worked. She flung open the door, a flurry of fair, curly hair and cheap scent, her eyes shining in antic.i.p.ation. "h.e.l.lo, darling oh, my hat." She"d spotted the clerical collar.

"Miss Truelove?"

She nodded.

"The friend of Patrick Flanagan?"

The pretty face creased at the name. "Poor Patrick, yes."

"Would you mind telling me if you saw him yesterday evening?"

"Why, yes, Father. He was in the play, and so am I. I"m Lola, the gangster"s moll."

"After it was over?"

"I saw him then, too. Some of us went for a drink at the Star and Garter. Patrick ordered oysters and champagne. He said he"d recently come into some money."

"Oysters and champagne until when?"

"About half-past eleven."

"And then?"

She hesitated. "Do you really need to know?"

"Think of me as a vessel."

"A ship, Father?"

He blinked. "Not exactly. More like a receptacle for anything you can tell me in confidence."

"You want to hear my confession?"

"Not unless you have something to confess."

She bit her lip. "We went on a river steamer."

"At night?"

"It was moored by the bridge. It had fairylights and music and there was dancing. So romantic. He ordered more bubbly and it must have gone to my head. We finally got home about four in the morning. I"d better say that again. I got home about four in the morning. We said goodnight at the door of my lodgings. There was nothing improper, Father. Well, nothing totally improper, if you know what I mean."

"How was his mood?"

"His mood?"

"Was he happy when he left you?"

"Oh, dear!" she said, her winsome young features creasing in concern again. "I"m afraid he wasn"t. He wanted to come in with me. He offered to take off his shoes and tiptoe upstairs, but I wouldn"t risk upsetting the landlady. I pushed him away and shut the door in his face. Do you think that"s why he killed himself?"

"No, I don"t," said Father Montgomery. "I don"t believe he killed himself at all."

"You mean my conscience is clear?"

"I have no way of telling what"s on your conscience, my dear, but I"m sure you did the right thing at the end of the evening."

Inspector Carew was far from happy at being dragged back to 7, Albert Street by a priest he"d never met, but the mention of murder couldn"t be ignored.

"The wife lied to us both," Father Montgomery said as they were being driven to Teddington. "She insisted that the shooting was at midnight, but I have a female witness who says Patrick Flanagan was with her in Richmond until four in the morning."

"So what?" said the inspector. "Emily Flanagan has her pride. She won"t want to admit that her wayward husband preferred to spend the night with some other filly."

"She wasn"t exactly grieving."

"True. I noted her demeanour. Maybe she"s not sorry he"s dead. It doesn"t make her a murderess."

"There"s money behind this," the priest said. "A man who can splash out on champagne and oysters at the Star and Garter is doing too well for a jobbing actor with a wife and father-in-law to support."

"We checked the bank account," the inspector said, pleased to demonstrate how thorough he"d been. "They have a modest income, but two days before his death he withdrew most of what they had, about sixty pounds. And so would I, if I was planning to do myself in. I"d have a binge and a night out with a girl before I pulled the trigger. Wouldn"t you?"

"I don"t go out with girls and I wouldn"t pull the trigger," said Father Montgomery. "Neither is permitted."

They drew up at the Flanagans" house in Teddington. Emily Flanagan opened the door, saw them together, and said, "Holy Moses!"

In the kitchen, the brandy bottle was empty. Old Mr Russell was asleep in a rocking chair in front of the stove.

"No need to disturb him," Inspector Carew said. "This concerns you, ma"am. An apparent discrepancy in what you told me. You said the fatal shot was fired at midnight."

"Or thereabouts," said Mrs Flanagan.

"Our latest information places your husband on a river steamer in Richmond at midnight."

"The heel! What was he doing there?"

"Dancing with an actress until nearly four in the morning."

"I"m not surprised," she said, failing to appreciate what an admission this was. "Which baggage was it this time?"

"Do you admit you lied to me?"

"How could I have known what he was doing in Richmond?"

"The time. You lied about the time."

""Thereabouts" is what I said. What difference does an hour or two make to you? I guessed he was entertaining some little trollop on the last night of his life, but the world doesn"t need to know, does it? Allow me some dignity when I walk behind his coffin, Inspector."

"Did you know he emptied his bank account and treated his actor friends to oysters and champagne?"

"Did he, the rotter?"

"You don"t seem overly concerned."

"He left no will. As his nearest and dearest I"ll inherit everything he ever owned, including this house."

"Not if you"re hanged for murder, madam."

"What?" For the first time in all this sorry business, she looked alarmed.

Father Montgomery raised his hands to urge restraint on both sides. "Before we go any further, Inspector, why don"t I show you what I discovered in the den?"

Emily Flanagan, muttering mild expletives, followed them into the room where the body had been discovered. The priest pointed out the bullet hole in the books and remarked that it was unlikely that the victim had held a gun to his head and missed. "I suggest that someone else was holding the gun, someone who waited through the small hours of the night for him to come in and then pointed it at him and brought him in here and sat him at his own desk, where it would look as if he chose to die. I suggest there was a struggle and he deflected the first shot, but the second was fired with the gun to his head."

"A crime of pa.s.sion, then," said the inspector.

"No. Let me show you something else." He rolled back the carpet and revealed the copy of John Bull. "You can pick it up," he told the inspector. "Take note of the number seven scribbled on the top right corner. The magazine was delivered to this house as usual. It was Mr Russell"s copy, but Patrick Flanagan grabbed it the day it was pushed through the letterbox and hid it here. Now turn to page thirty-eight, headed Bullets, and look at this week"s thousand pound winner."

The inspector read aloud, "Mr PF, of Teddington, Middles.e.x. That"s Patrick Flanagan. No wonder he was out celebrating."

"But Patrick didn"t do the Bullets!" said Mrs Flanagan in awe.

"Right, it was your father who provided the winning entry. Being unable to walk more than a few steps, he relied on Patrick to post it for him. Patrick ripped open the envelope and entered the compet.i.tion under his own name. I dare say he"d played the trick before, because the old man was known to have a flair for Bullets."

"They"re second nature to him," said Mrs Flanagan.

"Patrick delayed paying in the cheque. I"m sure we"ll find it in here somewhere. He hid the magazine under the carpet so that your father shouldn"t find out, but the old chap managed to get hold of a copy."

"He sent me out to buy it."

"And when he saw the compet.i.tion page, he was outraged. The main object of his life was to win that compet.i.tion. He"d been robbed of his moment of glory by a shabby trick from his son-in-law. So last night he went to the study and collected the gun and lay in wait. The rest you know."

The inspector let out a breath so deep and so long it seemed to empty his lungs. "You"re clever, Father."

"A man"s soul was at stake, Inspector."

"Not a good man."

"It"s not for us to judge."

Mrs Flanagan said, "What was the winning entry?"

"Well, the phrase was "A Policeman"s Lot"."

""A Lawfully Big Adventure"," said the murderer with pride, entering the room.

He Couldn"t Fly MICHAEL KURLAND.

Michael Kurland has written science fiction (Ten Years to Doomsday, 1964), fantasy (Ten Little Wizards, 1988 which is also a mystery novel featuring Lord Darcy, created by Randall Garrett), mysteries (The Infernal Device, 1979, featuring Sherlock Holmes"s nemesis Moriarty) and a wide range of reference books, such as How to Solve a Murder (1995) and The Complete Idiot"s Guide to Unsolved Mysteries (2000). He has also written two novels featuring newspaper columnist Alexander Bra.s.s, Too Soon Dead (1997) and The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes (1998). Both those books are set in the 1930s, but in the following story we follow Bra.s.s back to an unsavoury episode in 1926.

Late last Tuesday night Bra.s.s and I ran into Theodore Finter, better known as the Two Step Kid, upstairs at the Hotsy Totsy Klub on Forty Seventh Street, off Sixth Avenue. In the circles which Bra.s.s and I frequent the Kid is a well-known character, but it happens that I"ve never had the opportunity to speak to him before, although Mr Bra.s.s first made his acquaintance many years ago. The Kid is a short, thin, wiry man with an unlined face, even now when he must be well into his forties. His avocation is dancing. His vocation, it is said by those who should know, is murder.

When the set was over, Fletcher Henderson and his boys retired to the green room, the bathroom, or the bar, and the blonde that the Kid had been two-stepping with went off to powder her nose. The Kid stepped over to our table to have a few words with Bra.s.s. They got to talking about the Good Old Days, which, as Mr Bra.s.s has told me many times, is anything that happened more than ten years before whenever you"re talking. Eventually the conversation got around to the last days of Sammy the Toad Mittwick, and this was a story which I had not heard before. It"s quite a tale and deserves retelling, so I went abroad into the world which is New York City and did some checking and some listening, and I wrote it all down here for you.

This happened back in March of 1926, ten years ago now, and five years before I went to work for Mr Alexander Bra.s.s, famed columnist for the New York World, so I"m telling it based on talks with those who should know, including Bra.s.s himself, although he hasn"t been as forthcoming as he might. You will see why. My name is Morgan DeWitt, and I am Mr Bra.s.s"s amanuensis, leg man, bottle washer, errand-runner, and general all-around sycophant; but that"s all you"ll hear about me because, as I said, all this happened well before I arrived at the World building and talked Bra.s.s into hiring me. I"m going to tell it like I was there when it happened, looking over Bra.s.s"s shoulder, "cause that"s the best way to tell a story. But, since I wasn"t, some of the dialogue is what I figure they must have said, things being the way they were. Anyway, here"s the story.

It started when Jimmy Eisen, from his hospital bed in Brooklyn General, asked to see Bra.s.s. They called Jimmy the Canarsie Crusher when he was in the ring. He was a big man, big and powerful. But he was no Dempsey he was slow. His left jab could do more damage than a 10-pound sledge, and if he ever landed a right, well, you were down for the count and then some. But if you couldn"t dodge or block his jab you shouldn"t be on that side of the ropes; and as for the right; you"d have to stay awful still for an awful long time for it to reach you. But he could take a lot of punishment while he waited to land that one punch that would put you on the canvas.

The trouble was that, after eight years in the ring, he had taken a lot of punishment. It didn"t show in his face much, although his ears were maybe a little flatter than G.o.d had made them, but you could see it in his eyes.

His kidneys didn"t work too well anymore either. He peed blood. And when he talked there were pauses between his words that G.o.d never intended; and sometimes his sentences didn"t end up where he thought they would. But by G.o.d he could still take it.

Whoever had worked him over the night before had meant business: two ribs cracked, an arm broken maybe the docs were still trying to figure out whether there was or wasn"t a chip out of the bone, the ulna I guess it"s called, by the elbow and one side of his face really messed up. But he still managed a grin when Bra.s.s walked into the hospital room. At least Bra.s.s decided it was a grin, it was hard to tell for sure what with his face all bandaged up.

"Glad you could get over here, scribbler," he said out of one side of his mouth. "I think maybe I got some info for you."

"Who worked you over, Crusher?" Bra.s.s asked, coming over to the side of the bed. "I brought you a bag of oranges. Do you think you can eat them, or should I have someone squeeze them for you?"

"Oranges," said the crusher. "Oranges in March, who wudda thought?"

"Florida," Bra.s.s explained.

"Yeah," agreed Eisen. "That too."

"I"ll leave them here on the table," Bra.s.s told him. "Who did this to you?"

"It was a private dispute," Eisen said. "It took four of them with bra.s.s knuckles to knock me off my pins, and they was not without a few b.u.mps and bruises themselves before it was over."

"I"m sure," said Bra.s.s. "If you don"t want to say any more than that, then you don"t. What do you have for me?"

Eisen stared up at Bra.s.s with his one uncovered eye. "You remember Lumps Madigan?"

Bra.s.s nodded. "Middleweight," he said. "Canvasback. Not but that he didn"t try."

"Yeah, well, he"s hiding out from the mob boys, and he wants to talk to someone, like maybe buy some insurance."

"What happened, did he make a mistake and forget to fall down in the fourth?"

"Nah, he"s quit the ring. He was working for Dutch Schultz as an enforcer, "cause he"s pretty good at hitting those as don"t hit back. Not that he"s a coward or nothing, but he"s got a gla.s.s jaw."

"So what"s his problem?"

"Seems like somebody told the Dutchman that Madigan and a couple of other lowlifes are preparing to talk turkey to the McWheeter Commission. The Dutchman isn"t sure he believes this, but discretion being the better part of valor, he"s decided to have them all offed."

Bra.s.s"s eyes widened (or so I would suppose. I wasn"t there but Bra.s.s"s eyes always widen when he"s told something of interest. Okay, okay; I"ll b.u.t.t out now). "What sort of insurance does Lumps think I can buy him, except maybe a bus ticket to California?"

"You"ll have to ask him," said the Crusher, "which is the idea what I been telling you that you should go ask him."