The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues

  Dickory groaned aloud. How could she think such selfish thoughts when Garson was locked behind bars for a crime he did not commit?

  The telephone rang three times, stopped, and rang again. It was the code only her brother and Chief Quinn knew, devised to protect her from crank calls and inquisitive reporters.

  “Hello, Hickory, you all right?”

  “Sure, Chief. How’s Garson?”

  “Fine, just fine; says you shouldn’t worry. His lawyer arranged for Isaac Bickerstaffe to be Garson’s cellmate. The big fellow seems more at peace now that his friend is with him.”

  Once again Dickory had forgotten about Isaac. Garson was right; she was uncharitable. “When can I see Garson? And Isaac,” she added as an afterthought. “Can they get out on bail?”

  “Bail’s a bit tricky on a murder charge, and usually only relatives can visit prisoners, but I’ll arrange for you to see them in a few days. Meanwhile, I’ve got some things to discuss with you. Eight in the morning be all right?”

  “Eight is fine, Chief. I’m not quite ready to go back to school yet.”

  “Well, get a good night’s sleep. And don’t worry; I’ve got a man watching the house.”

  “I’ve seen him, a bearded kid with a backpack and a guitar. He’s keeping the whole neighborhood awake with his awful strumming. What’s his name, Tinkle?”

  “No, Hinkle.” Quinn hung up, wondering if he would ever find any competent street detectives.

  At eight o’clock sharp, the shiny black car rolled into the narrow street. From the window Dickory watched Chief Quinn climb the stoop. She heard him ring the bell. He had come to question her, possibly to search for evidence that would convict Garson of the murder of Edgar Sonneborg. But there had been no murder. Garson had not killed Sonneborg; Garson was Sonneborg. Somehow or other, without revealing his identity or the existence of the paintings, Dickory had to convince the chief that Garson was innocent of the impossible crime.

  Quinn rang again. Dickory covered the Sonneborg self-portrait with the red velvet drape and slowly descended the stairs. She wanted Quinn to wait. She was going to take the offensive in her duel with the Chief of Detectives of the New York City Police Department.

  “Good morning, Chief Quinn. I was just having coffee in my studio. Won’t you join me?” The lady of the manor led her guest up the stairs.

  “I just wanted to ask a few questions,” Quinn said.

  “Please sit down and make yourself comfortable. You take your coffee black, if I remember correctly. Now, where were we? Oh yes, seven.”

  “Seven?”

  “Yes, I am quite certain it was seven. You rhymed six with dicks, but you may not rhyme seven with heaven. I am not about to leave this sunny world just yet.” She tossed her head and uttered a brittle laugh.

  Phony, just like Garson, Quinn thought, wondering if it was contagious or just came with the house. “Seven, now let me think.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object that he kept hidden in his large fist.

  “Hickory Dickory Dock,

  The mouse ran up the clock,

  The clock struck seven,

  Eight, nine, ten, eleven,

  For Hickory Dickory Dock.”

  Quinn clicked open the enamel case painted with roses and, dangling the watch from its chain, handed it to Dickory.

  “Oranges and lemons,”

  say the bells of St. Clements;

  “You owe me five farthings,”

  say the bells of St. Martins,

  “When will you pay me?”

  say the bells of Old Bailey,

  “When I grow rich,”

  say the bells of Shoreditch.

  Eyes closed squeezing back her tears, Dickory shut the case on the antique watch and listened to Quinn’s explanation of how Shrimps had been involved in the robbery of Dock’s Hock Shop. He had not only stolen the watch after the murder of her parents, but the recording equipment as well.

  “Now, Hickory, I’m afraid I have something else for you.”

  She opened her eyes to a search warrant.

  “It’s the basement that I’m really interested in,” the chief explained. “Do you happen to have the combination to the lock on the storeroom door?”

  “Dickory, my name is Dickory,” she replied, stalling for time. She had been caught off guard by the old watch and its painful memories; now the chief had the upper hand. She did not have the combination to the lock, but she didn’t want him to know that, yet. “Chief, I do want to help. I’ll do everything I can to cooperate with the police, because I know Garson is innocent; but I’m very confused. Would you please tell me what’s going on?”

  “Fair enough, Dickory,” Quinn replied sympathetically. He settled back in his chair, unwrapped a cigar, lighted it carefully, then began his tale.

  “Julius Panzpresser first called my attention to the disappearance of Edgar Sonneborg at a dinner party a month or so ago. Sonneborg had been missing for fifteen years, but I put a man on the case anyway—Panzpresser is a very influential person, you know. Well, much to my surprise, things got moving pretty fast. The more we found out, the more suspicious we became.”

  “What did you find out?” Dickory asked.

  “First we tracked down the private detective that had worked on this case for Panzpresser—Manny Mallomar.”

  “Mallomar, a private detective?”

  Quinn nodded. “He was, until he found out he could make more money in the extortion racket. Mallomar refused to tell us anything about Sonneborg, but we were curious about his living in Garson’s house. Why would a well-known artist rent half of his house to two crooks like Manny Mallomar and Shrimps Marinara? So, we checked Garson’s bank records. Garson’s a wealthy man; he didn’t need rent money; in fact, there were no deposits to account for rent. But he was withdrawing large sums regularly. Blackmail. Then when we saw Panzpresser enter this house, we were certain it was blackmail.”

  “Cookie came here to sit for her portrait,” Dickory said.

  “Not Cookie, her husband, Julius. Mallomar was not only blackmailing Garson, but Julius Panzpresser and quite a few other people as well.”

  Dickory wondered which of the Smiths or Joneses was Julius Panzpresser.

  The chief continued. “As far as we could tell, Garson was the only artist Mallomar was blackmailing. And Mallomar had worked on the Sonneborg case. We figured Garson, the artist, knew something about Sonneborg, the artist, and was paying dearly to keep it secret. I decided to dig into Garson’s past, and keep an eye on his present comings and goings.”

  Now Dickory realized why the chief had visited their studio so often. It was not because he wanted their help on his cases. “You were spying on Garson!”

  Quinn tapped cigar ash into his coffee cup. He did not like the word “spying.” “Surveillance,” he said. “We had come across some incriminating evidence and I was trying to figure out how Garson’s mind worked. A fascinating mind, very shrewd, very clever. In fact, I rather enjoyed his Sherlock Holmes deductions.”

  “What incriminating evidence?”

  “When last seen, Edgar Sonneborg shared an attic studio with another young artist, Frederick Schmaltz. That was fifteen years ago, and neither has been heard from since. Their landlady is long dead, but her son remembers seeing one of the artists lugging a heavy trunk down the stairs. He remembers the exact date because he had come to the house for his mother’s birthday. It was September tenth. September tenth,” the chief repeated, “and the landlady’s son identified a photograph of Garson as the artist he saw.”

  “He identified Garson as Frederick Schmaltz?” Dickory asked. She knew that was impossible, Garson was Sonneborg. But what had become of Frederick Schmaltz?

  The chief hedged the question. “The landlady’s son identified the photograph as one of the two artists who lived in the attic, and the last one seen. The artist who moved out a large heavy trunk on September tenth was Garson, and on September tenth of the same year, Garson mov
ed into this house.”

  “That’s not evidence for murder,” Dickory said derisively.

  “No, it may not be evidence,” Quinn had to admit, “but it is a fact. And we do have the tape recording.”

  Mallomar had been blackmailing Garson with a tape. Somehow or other, Shrimps had bugged the office of Garson’s lawyer, and the police had found the tape recording in Mallomar’s files. Quinn shuffled through a notebook. “Funny thing, of all the dirt Mallomar collected against his victims, this was the only one of criminal nature. Everybody else was paying for stupid indiscretions. We destroyed all that, of course.”

  “Read me what was on the tape,” Dickory said impatiently.

  “Ah, here we are.” Quinn cleared his throat and read the fragmentary transcript. “The corpus of Edgar Sonneborg (unintelligible) basement of Number 12 Cobble Lane (unintelligible) kept secret at all costs (unintelligible) death of all concerned.”

  “Corpus!” Dickory gasped.

  “That means body,” the chief explained.

  Dickory knew corpus meant body; corpus was often used in discussing the complete life’s work of an artist. The transcript meant that the body of the work of Edgar Sonneborg (his paintings) must be kept from public display until all of the persons in the portraits were dead. But she could not tell Chief Quinn that, not without revealing the existence of the Sonneborg canvases. “A tape recording cannot be used as evidence,” she said, unsure of her facts.

  Quinn shrugged. “You forget, Hickory, that Garson has confessed.”

  2

  The lock had been sawed, the door broken in by the time Dickory and Chief Quinn reached the basement storeroom. The police were awaiting orders from the chief.

  Except for the racks against the walls holding unframed canvases, the room was bare. Dickory held her breath as Quinn pulled the left edge of one of the Sonneborg paintings halfway from its stack and frowned at what he saw. He much preferred Garson’s pretty portraits to this new-fangled modern art.

  “Do you like it, Chief?” Dickory said hastily, noticing that the signature was still concealed. “That’s one of my paintings, or I guess I should say one of my attempts at painting.”

  “Very nice, Hickory, for a beginner. Nice, bright color. I like it.” Embarrassed by his lie, Quinn quickly slid the painting back into the rack and ordered his men to dig up the concrete floor. After all, he was looking for a corpus, not a masterpiece.

  The Sonneborg paintings were safe, for the while.

  The police dug a six-foot hole in the storeroom floor, dug up the cement around the furnace, dug up the tile in the kitchen and the floorboards in the spare room. All they found were some old whiskey bottles hidden in the prohibition years and a skeleton of a dead mouse.

  “There’s your corpus, Chief,” Dickory said.

  Quinn bit hard on his cigar stub and stormed out of the house, leaving a crew to repair the damaged floors.

  Hat on her head, Sergeant Kod sat on a packing case in the middle of the storeroom surrounded by the Sonneborg paintings she had removed from the racks. Souls, naked in unrelenting truth, stared out at her from their canvases as she tried to untangle the knots of this nonexistent case. There were no witnesses, no descriptions, just these paintings in the basement and the Sonneborg self-portrait upstairs in the studio, the double self-portrait with the bloodstained hand.

  Sonneborg was Garson, but how could she prove that without revealing these paintings? Sonneborg was Garson, but who was Frederick Schmaltz?

  A drum majorette laughed uproariously as she flung her baton in the air; a jockey rode twelve bent men, whipping his jury with malicious frenzy. Dickory turned away from the portraits of Cookie Panzpresser and Garson’s lawyer to seek out the paintings in Sonneborg’s earlier style. A strutting matador. A toothy Lady Dracula. A tragic clown dancing with a broken paintbrush and an empty palette. The packing case overturned with a loud thud as Dickory leaped to her feet. That was it! That was the painting she had been looking for—the portrait of Frederick Schmaltz.

  Even though Dickory now had proof that Garson was Sonneborg, there was only one person who could help her and still keep the secret. But it was the one person who most wanted Garson behind bars. She rested the two wrapped canvases at her feet and rang the bell of the large mansion.

  “I must see Julius Panzpresser immediately,” she said to the butler who opened the door.

  “I’m sorry, you will have to make an appointment.”

  She stuck one foot between the jamb and the closing door. “I’m certain Mr. Panzpresser will want to see me. My name is Dock, former secretary to Manny Mallomar. Tell him I have come to discuss a Mr. Smith.”

  Dickory bit a fingernail to the quick, waiting, hoping she had used the right name. She had. Mr. Smith appeared, his turkey-neck red with anger, and showed her into his study.

  She detested this dirty role of blackmailer, but Garson’s freedom was at stake. Seated across from her, Panzpresser glared with curiosity and contempt. “The police said they destroyed Mallomar’s files,” he said at last.

  “Photostats,” Dickory replied tersely.

  “It was a stupid mistake I made years ago. Nothing serious, as you know, but it would be very painful for my wife if she ever found out.” Panzpresser looked for sympathy from his young blackmailer, but her face was hard and determined. “All right, how much do you want?”

  “We’ll get to the price after you’ve answered a few questions,” she said in a businesslike tone. Panzpresser was at her mercy. “First, did you ever meet Edgar Sonneborg?”

  “No.”

  Disappointed, Dickory continued. “Then how did you get his painting, the ‘Fruit Peddler’?”

  “It won first prize for unexhibited artists at the old Whitney Museum. I bought it.”

  “But you never met the artist who painted it?”

  “Sonneborg? No, I never met Sonneborg. The painting was delivered by a friend of his, another artist who wanted to show me some of his own paintings. They were awful. The only good thing about them was the frames. I suggested he give up painting and become a framemaker.”

  “What was this friend’s name?” Dickory asked from the edge of her chair.

  “Name? How should I know, that was fifteen years ago.”

  Dickory unwrapped the paintings and held one toward Julius Panzpresser. “Is this the friend?”

  “Sonneborg!” Panzpresser exclaimed to Dickory’s horror. He leaped up, grabbed the painting, and rushed to the window to examine it in daylight. “Where did you get this? This is a Sonneborg painting!”

  “Yes, Mr. Panzpresser, this is a Sonneborg painting,” Dickory said with relief. “But who is the man in the portrait?”

  The art collector was so delighted with his new discovery that Dickory had to repeat her question.

  “The man in the portrait? Oh, that’s the big guy who delivered the ‘Fruit Peddler,’ the one with the good frames.”

  “His name was Frederick Schmaltz,” Dickory said. “His name is now Isaac Bickerstaffe, though his face is hardly recognizable. He saved my life.”

  “Fifteen years I’ve been searching for another Sonneborg painting. Fifteen years.” Eyes glued to the canvas, he had not heard a word Dickory said.

  “Mr. Panzpresser, please put that painting down. I have some very important things to discuss with you. Mr. Panzpresser. Photostats! Blackmail!”

  The art collector returned to his chair, more concerned about buying the painting than paying blackmail. “Name your price.”

  “Free Garson.”

  “Garson!” Panzpresser was out of his chair again, ranting about that third-rate dabbler, that murderer who deprived the world of one of its great modern geniuses. Only after Dickory started for the door with both canvases did he settle down and listen to her explanation.

  “I don’t have any photostats, Mr. Panzpresser, and even if I did I would never blackmail anybody. But I had to get you to hear my story. You have a great deal of influence; you c
ould get Garson released from prison—after all, you started the whole investigation.”

  Julius Panzpresser began fuming again.

  “Edgar Sonneborg is still alive. And still painting,” she said quickly.

  Now Julius listened.

  Dickory explained, upon Panzpresser’s promise of secrecy, that Garson was Sonneborg. She explained why Garson insisted that the paintings be kept from public view.

  The art collector was still skeptical. “Even if I could identify the mutilated man, Isaac what’s-his-name, as the one who delivered the painting, it doesn’t prove he’s Schmaltz. Besides, this painting is of the same period as the ‘Fruit Peddler.’ That ridiculous portrait Garson made of my wife looks more like the work of Schmaltz than the genius of Sonneborg.”

  Dickory was prepared for this argument. “Mr. Panzpresser, I have met your wife, Cookie. She is a wonderful woman, so cheerful and full of life.”

  “Oh, no,” Julius moaned. “Not blackmail again.”

  “Not at all. I don’t want to hurt either you or Mrs. Panzpresser; I just want to free Garson.” Dickory unwrapped the second canvas. “I have something to show you that may cause you some pain, but please try to look at it with the eye of a collector. Look at it for the masterpiece it is, one of the greatest paintings of Edgar Sonneborg.”

  Julius Panzpresser stared into the laughing face of a prancing, middle-aged drum majorette, hat askew on her tousled bleached curls.