The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues (4 page)

“You said that in the case of a clever criminal descriptions are useless, unless the eyewitness is questioned by an artist,” Quinn explained. “You said that a clever criminal can make people see only what he wants them to see.”

Garson frowned.

“You also said that if I brought the witnesses to you, you could paint a portrait from their descriptions that would be much closer to the truth than any portrait a police artist could make.”

Garson’s hand shook.

The chief looked at Dickory. “Could I have some of that coffee, Miss, um. . . .”

Garson formally introduced them. “Chief Joseph P. Quinn, this is my apprentice, Dickory Dock.”

Joseph P. Quinn laughed heartily. “Hickory Dickory Dock, now how does that go?

“Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock,
The clock struck one,
The mouse fell down. . . .

“No, that’s not right; ‘down’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘one.’ Let me see—one—done—fun—gun. . . .”

“You were saying something about testing my theory, Chief,” Garson said quickly, afraid that Dickory was about to pour the coffee on Quinn’s lap.

“What? Oh yes, your theory. I’ve got a tough case on my hands, Garson; and I thought maybe you could help me out by questioning the three eyewitnesses.” Chief Quinn gulped down his coffee, rose and wandered about the studio to allow Garson time to make his decision. He stopped at the finished portrait and studied the lawyer’s face with interest. “Say, you
are
an artist, Garson. This picture is good, really good. It looks realistic, not like those smears that pass for art these days. I like it.”

The chief sounded sincere, but why shouldn’t he be, Dickory thought. Anyone who recited nursery rhymes was bound to like Garson’s slick and superficial style.

Quinn joined Dickory at the window overlooking Cobble Lane. “I’ve got it:

“Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock,
The clock struck one,
And down he run,
Just like Hickory Dickory Dock.

“How’s that? Get it—down he run, just like you run down to answer the door.”

Dickory’s eyes remained on the street below. The derelicit was still sprawled on the stoop, flagrantly ignoring the policeman-chauffeur behind the wheel of the chief’s car. “Are you going to arrest that drunk, Chief Quinn?”

Quinn shifted his cigar. “He doesn’t seem to be bothering anybody, does he? You know, Hickory, if we arrested derelicts there’d be no room left in our jails for the real criminals.” Dickory brushed ashes from her shoulder as the chief turned to leave. “Well, Garson, are you going to help me out with the witnesses?”

Garson nodded somewhat reluctantly. “Bring them here at three this afternoon.”

“Good. Three o’clock, then. And thanks.” Quinn stopped at the studio door. “By the way, I call this one The Case of the Horrible Hairdresser.”

Garson remained in his chair silently thinking, drinking his second pot of coffee. Dickory cleaned up after Roy G. Biv. Three times the doorbell rang; three people, all wearing dark glasses, had come to see Manny Mallomar: wobble-hipped Mrs. Jones, stilt-legged Mrs. Smith, and finger-cracking Mr. Smith.

“Don’t bother, it’s waterproof,” Garson said as she was about to remove her new watch to wash the turpentine-cleaned brushes in the kitchen sink. “Besides, it’s almost lunchtime. Run over to the deli and bring back some sandwiches; charge it to my account.”

Wondering about horrible hairdressers and why Mallomar’s guests were named either Smith or Jones, Dickory sauntered to the delicatessen around the corner. “Corned beef on rye with lots of mustard, and cole slaw, and extra pickle slices,” she ordered for herself. She paused. What kind of sandwich would someone like Garson want? Something bland and humorless. “Turkey on thin-sliced white bread, no mayonnaise.”

Back on Cobble Lane she ignored the derelict’s plea for spare change and hurried into the house to be greeted by another repugnant character in the dimly lit hall. Manny Mallomar grabbed Dickory by her jacket collar. “What was that cop doing upstairs?”

“Ask him yourself; he’ll be back any minute.” Dickory pushed against the fat man, squirming out of his grasp, and climbed the stairs in time to his muttered profanities. Mallomar had squashed her sandwiches, but he had also stained his white suit with pickle juice.

Garson was still deep in thought when Dickory slapped the soggy lunch bag on the kitchen counter. “All right!” he exclaimed, aloud but to himself. He clapped his hands on the arms of his chair and stood up. He had made a decision. “Let’s fix up this place and get ready for the eyewitnesses. Detectives must be well-organized for detecting and deducting.” With a hammer he banged against the radiator under the front window, setting up ear-shattering and floor-shaking reverberations. Then he listened. Stunned, Dickory removed her hands from her ears and listened, too.

Mallomar shouted up some ugliness, then heavy thuds climbed the stairs.

“Isaac can feel the vibrations in his basement room,” he explained to his cringing apprentice as the one-eyed mute lumbered into the studio. Garson wrote the lawyer’s name in large block letters on a sheet of paper, handed it to Isaac, and pointed to the portrait. Isaac left with the large canvas tucked under one arm.

“Can he read?” Dickory asked hoarsely, still trembling.

“A bit. He engraves my name and the sitter’s name on a gold plaque after he finishes the frame.”

“He makes your frames?”

Garson nodded. When he spoke again, his voice was touched with sadness. “No one knows anything about that poor lost soul—who he was or what he did before some terrible accident tore apart his face and mangled his brain. Isaac, himself, remembers nothing, but his fingers have not forgotten their craft.”

“Then how do you know his name is Isaac Bickerstaffe?” Dickory persisted.

“Questions, questions,” Garson replied sharply. “No more questions, please remember that.”

Dickory shrugged.

Garson sighed. “Haunted Dickory. I’ll tell you what—I’ll answer your question if you promise it will be your last.”

Too proud to promise anything, Dickory stared at him blankly. Garson turned and busied himself in the studio, arranging three straight-backed chairs between the empty easel and the draped easel. Then he started up the open stairway but stopped in midflight, having decided to answer her question. “I named him myself,” he said, leaning over the banister. “I named him Isaac Bickerstaffe after an obscure nineteenth-century poet, who wrote:

“I care for nobody, no, not I,
If nobody cares for me.

“I thought that sentiment suited the expression on his battered face. Now, no more questions. Get out a pen and a notebook; I’ll be right down.”

A different Garson came down the stairs. Although still unsmiling, this one seemed more sprightly, almost playful. He was carrying a paint-smeared smock, an artist’s beret, and two other hats.

“Hats?” asked Dickory, notebook in hand. Realizing it was a question, she changed her tone. “Hats,” she said affirmatively.

“Right you are, Sergeant Kod. These are hats.”

“And I am Sergeant Kod,” Dickory guessed.

“Right again.” Garson placed a bobby’s helmet on her head, a deerstalker hat on his.

“And you are Sherlock Holmes.”

“Wrong,” he replied. “I am Inspector Noserag.”

“Noserag?!” That was funnier than Dickory Dock.

“Simple, actch-ly,” Garson said in near-British accents. “Noserag is Garson spelled backward, almost. And Kod is Dock spelled backward, almost.”

“And we are almost detectives,” said Dickory.

“We ARE detectives, Sergeant Kod. I am the greatest sleuth in the universe, and you are my trusted assistant.”

Pacing the floor, the greatest sleuth in the universe dictated a list of art supplies to his trusted assistant, who wrote out an accurate list in spite of the difficulties she had understanding Noserag’s accent, which alternated between British and Humphrey Bogart: a new easel, taboret, life-sized manikin, brushes, paints.

“Acrylics,” he said, now British. “Indeed, I surmise acrylic paints would be preferable, more synonymous with the precision of modern detection.” The inspector inspected Dickory’s notes, criticized her handwriting, and suggested she take a course in calligraphy. “An artist must strive for beauty in all things, Sergeant, even in constabulary affairs.” He strode to the kitchen, shoulders slouched.

“Egad, what’s this?” Holding the dripping paper bag between the tips of two fingers, Inspector Noserag dropped the squashed sandwiches into the garbage pail. “Remove your hat, Sergeant Kod; I am taking you to lunch.”

Dickory stored the sleuths’ hats on a closet shelf and followed Garson out of the house. Had she now been sent for sandwiches, she would have ordered him a ham and cheese.

Garson ordered a hamburger with everything on it and a Coke. An unusual choice, Dickory thought, for a slick society portrait painter, or the greatest detective in the universe who had yet to solve a case. Or the brooding employer who now sat opposite her. They ate in silence and walked back in silence. As they turned the bend into their narrow street, a man in dark glasses approached them. At first glance Dickory thought Manny Mallomar had another visitor, but then she noticed the tin cup, the tapping white cane, the German shepherd on a short lead.

Garson smiled at him! He smiled and bowed a sweeping bow and tossed a pebble into the blind man’s cup.

Dickory frowned. The dog growled.

“Bless you,” said the blind man.

Digging in her purse for change, Dickory wondered how Garson could be so kind to a hideous deaf-mute yet so callous toward a blind man. She dropped a quarter into his cup.

“We have company,” Garson said flatly, pointing ahead.

Cobble Lane was a sea of staring faces. From the chief’s car parked on the curb, the policeman-chauffeur stared at the derelict on the stoop. The derelict stared at the three women in the back seat. The three women, blonde, redhead, and brunette, stared at Shrimps Marinara, who was peering through the bedroom window at the policeman-chauffeur. From the basement window Isaac Bickerstaffe stared, just stared, and between the blinds on the second floor Chief Quinn’s cigar bobbed up and down.

Manny Mallomar, who had let the chief of detectives into the house, leaned out of his door as they entered the hallway. Narrowing his bulging eyes, he shook a fat fist at Garson. In reply, Garson and Dickory bounded up the stairs with more noise than usual.

“Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock,
The clock struck two,
And up he flew,
Just like Hickory Dickory Dock.

“I just made that up,” Chief Quinn said, pleased with himself.

“Sorry I’m late,” Garson replied. “Let’s get down to business.”

2

“The Case of the Horrible Hairdresser,” the chief announced dramatically after sitting down in the most comfortable chair and relighting the stub of his cigar. “The perpetrator works out of beauty parlors just long enough to get into some widow’s confidence.”

“Aha, the old confidence game,” Garson exclaimed.

“May I continue?” the chief asked. Garson waved his permission. “The perpetrator sets the widow’s hair a few times, then tells her he can make her ravishingly beautiful with a special formula he has invented. But—his formula is a secret, and he can’t use it in someone else’s shop. So, the widow makes a private appointment, and the next week she goes to the hairdresser’s hotel room (always a different hotel) and gets the works.”

“The works?” Dickory asked, alarmed.

“The works: shampoo, set, manicure, whatever a hairdresser does.”

Dickory eased back into her chair.

“The widow looks into the mirror,” Quinn continued. “She
is
ravishingly beautiful, or so she thinks. And now the con begins. The hairdresser can’t use his fabulous formula again, he says, not until he pays ten thousand dollars to some chemist or other. Meanwhile, he can’t patent it or put it on the market. Of course, he could take the chemist to court, but that would take years. Well, you can figure out the rest. The widow doesn’t have years to wait. The formula works, she knows that; she also knows it could make millions. So, she lends him the ten grand and becomes part owner of the formula.”

“And that’s the last the widow sees of her money,” Garson guessed, “and the hairdresser.”

Quinn nodded. “Not only that. Three days after the treatment each of the widows wakes up bald. Bald as a billiard ball.”

Garson didn’t seem especially thrilled at the prospect of interviewing three bald widows. “Might as well bring them up,” he said unenthusiastically. “All three together.”

“One at a time is how we usually do it,” Quinn explained. “The victims can influence one another’s testimony or start arguing, and then what do you have?”

“The truth,” Garson replied, donning his costume.

In paint-smeared smock and French beret, Garson bowed to the three wigged widows. “Welcome, mesdames. It is indeed a pleasure having three such lovely ladies grace my humble atelier.” He kissed their hands.

The women giggled; the chief snickered. Dickory found this new role humiliating. Garson was acting out a tourist’s idea of a bohemian painter.

“My, what an artistic place you have here,” said the red-wigged widow, gazing up at the skylight.

“So this is Greenwich Village,” the blonde said.

The brunette pointed to the manikin. “Would you just look at this big jockey doll? Have you ever seen anything so quaint?”

The suave artist escorted his chattering guests to the straight-backed chairs between the easels. “Permit me to say how truly sorry I was to learn of your misfortune. None but the basest of criminals could have committed such an outrage on three such charming women. Acting out of the noblest charity, you have not only lost your piggy banks, but have been brutalized to boot.”

A tear trickled down the cheek of the blonde-wigged widow; the redhead blinked at the dashing painter with gratitude. No one at the police station had treated them with such sympathy and understanding. Garson, with all his fakery, was soothing the widows’ pain.