I kicked my brother-in-law under the table. He grunted and inclined his head in my direction.

“Has Chalmers been out of the picture since this banquet business started?” I asked in an urgent whisper.

Mac guffawed, causing Lynda to visibly strain her ears our way. “By no means, Jefferson. We spent the entire cocktail hour together in a spirited discussion of chronological problems in ‘The Red-Headed League.’ He is merely returning from a short hiatus, undoubtedly provoked by the demands of personal biology. Why do you ask?”

“I’m taking a census.” Max Cutter could play mysterious sleuth as well as any amateur. For once I knew something Mac didn’t know, and I was going to play that out as long as I could. “Is there somebody else here who wasn’t here at the beginning, somebody who came in late?” The killer didn’t have to be one of the Sherlockians, but it was a good bet.

Mac pulled on his beard, as if stimulating his hair follicles would do the same for his brain cells.

“There is at least one person,” he decided. “Hugh Matheson. I haven’t encountered him for hours, not even at the bar.”

Others around the table heard the comment and nodded their agreement. Nobody had run into Matheson since just after the last session of the colloquium - except, of course, Lynda and me, and we weren’t saying.

“I am quite certain that the last time I saw Hugh was during his set-to with Noah,” Mac said just as Chalmers rejoined the table.

“He had an argument with Queensbury?” I said. “When? Where?”

“At the back of the room, right after Kate’s talk,” Chalmers chipped in.

“What were they arguing about?”

Chalmers shrugged his ignorance.

“Eavesdropping is a loathsome habit,” Mac said. “Perhaps you should inquire of Dr. Queensbury as to the nature of the contretemps.”

“In other words,” I said, “you couldn’t get close enough to hear and you’re annoyed.”

He didn’t deign to answer. I let the subject hang there, hoping somebody would pick it up and enlighten me on what had happened between the surgeon and the lawyer, but no one did. The conversation drifted off into other channels.

Somehow the topic got on to Sherlock Holmes in the movies. Names like Basil Rathbone, Arthur Wontner, Jeremy Brett, and Robert Downey, Jr., and somebody named Cumberbatch were bandied about, along with a bunch I don’t remember. I was familiar with Basil Rathbone - he looked like Queensbury - and I’d also seen a couple of the Brett TV shows and the over-the-top Robert Downey, Jr. movie. But the other names left me in the dust. It was like being on the outside of an inside joke. I was only half-listening anyway.

While it was going hot and heavy Mac leaned my way again, hand over his mouth. “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” he demanded in a low voice.

“No,” I said absent-mindedly.

My mind was on the dust-up between Queensbury and Hugh Matheson, a man who stopped breathing no more than an hour or so later. Lynda and I had been assuming that greed was the emotion behind the murder, a robbery gone wrong. But suppose there was some other passion involved - whatever had caused those two men to raise their voices in a public place.

I watched for Queensbury to leave the table where he was seated next to Molly Crocker, determined to question him as soon as possible. When my bladder started crying for relief I ignored it, afraid I’d miss a chance to corner Queensbury if I left the President’s Dining Room. Finally the tall surgeon made a bee-line for the exit, apparently in a big hurry. I excused myself to Lynda and followed him.

Into the men’s room.

Now I was glad I had a legitimate reason for being there. Once I took care of that I met Queensbury at the wash basins. He greeted me as an old friend while he washed his long-fingered hands. Before I could ask a question he offered his solution to the book thefts.

“It’s that Pfannenstiel fellow,” he said, a gleam in his gray eyes. “There was no sign of a forced entry because there was no forced entry. The thief used a key. Who had a key? The very person who set up the exhibit with the Chalmerses. Elementary, really.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said, holding my hands under the hot air blower. “Not Gene.”

“As Holmes himself said, ‘when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Something similar happened at the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. A part-time library employee was charged with stealing more than a hundred rare books with a total value of almost a million and a half dollars. I clipped the story for my scrapbooks.”

I knew that Gene couldn’t be guilty because Matheson was - unless, of course, Gene had been Matheson’s inside man. But in that case why stop at three books? With Gene’s access they could have practically loaded up a truck and cleaned the place out.

I shifted gears.

“I understand you had a bit of a confrontation with Hugh Matheson this afternoon.”

With a shrug of his shoulders, the surgeon pooh-poohed that description of the incident. “I guess you’d say we had a few heated words, as usual.”

“What was it about?”

“He accused me of spoiling the colloquium for him by insisting at every turn that Sherlock Homes was a real person,” Queensbury said as he pushed open the restroom door. “Apparently the last straw was when I stood up at the end of Kate’s talk to dispute her attribution of Conan Doyle as the author of the Holmes stories.

“Really, Hugh was intolerably rude about it and totally lacking in humor. I particularly objected to his characterization of me as, quote, ‘a prissy piss-ant.’ However, I gave the fellow the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was having a bad day.”

Remembering the sight of the lawyer’s blood-drenched body, I could confirm that. But I didn’t, of course.

“The exchange was heated and rather loud,” Queensbury continued, “but it only lasted a few moments before Hugh said he didn’t have any more time for such foolishness. He was in a hurry.”

“Did he say why?”

“Oh, yes. He was rather gleeful about it. He told me with a distinct leer that he had business with a lady.”

Chapter Nineteen - Oscar the Grouch

“A lady?” Lynda repeated later, almost hissing the words. “That was me!” she exclaimed ungrammatically.

“Shhh. I know that - and you don’t have to tell everybody else.” We were standing at the back of the President’s Dining Room. Mac was at the front, saying something about the upcoming Reader’s Theatre. “The point here, Lynda, is that Queensbury might share that little tidbit with the police. And if he does, and if the police find out you were Matheson’s constant companion at the colloquium today, you can expect Oscar to land on you like a ton of bricks.”

“Oscar Hummel is a ton of bricks.”

“He’s a little overweight.” Maybe sixty pounds or so, not closer to a hundred like Mac. “He’s also made his share of high-profile goofs, but don’t underestimate him - especially his tenacity. That would be a big mistake.”

“He has all the subtlety of a suicide bomber.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “and he could be just as destructive.”

We reclaimed our seats as the Reader’s Theatre began. Some local acting talent, including a few students, sat on stools at the front of the room and took parts reading a Sherlock Holmes story, “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.” They wore only symbolic costumes - Holmes was identified by the ubiquitous deerstalker cap, for example. There were two Dr. Watsons - one the narrator and one the character - and both wore bowlers.

The title character of the story, Milverton, is the Worst Man in London, Holmes tells Watson. He is trying to squeeze blackmail out of a female client of Holmes, who refuses to play ball. Instead, Holmes adopts the identity of a plumber and romances Milverton’s housemaid. Once he wheedles enough information out of her, he cons Watson into helping him burgle Milverton’s house late one night to retrieve a set of embarrassing letters.