“I am reminded,” said Mac, “of a Persian proverb quoted by Sherlock Holmes in ‘A Case of Identity’ - ‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.’”

Chalmers blinked and fidgeted with his hands, a man who knew something awful had happened to him but didn’t understand quite what. Lynda turned to him.

“You must have known,” she said. “You must have realized Renata killed your old rival, and yet you kept silent.”

“How could I have guessed?” His old eyes darted around the room, pathetic and pleading.

“You knew your air gun was missing and you knew your wife didn’t really have an alibi,” Lynda said. “You’re too shrewd not to have added it all up.”

“We never spoke of it,” he said. I leaned forward to hear. “But I did suspect. I thought she did it for me - because Matheson stole my books, stole my whole life practically.”

Renata stood up, arms folded, and laughed in a way that sent bumps goose-stepping down my spine. “I stole your precious books, you silly old fool, not Hugh. That was part of the setup, to give you a solid motive for killing him. I knew that jealousy over me wasn’t enough.”

She paced in front of the fireplace, no more than a couple of feet in front of me, suddenly overcome with nervous energy.

“It was clear to me early on that you took those books,” Mac said. “‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ There was no forced entrance into the exhibit room. The keys were all accounted for and there were no obvious indications that a duplicate had been made. Ergo, there was no burglary. On Friday afternoon, when you and Woollcott visited the display, you grabbed those three books when you were unobserved and took them away in that immense handbag of yours, didn’t you?”

Mac seemed to take Renata’s stony silence for assent. “I was certain that you didn’t do it out of a simple desire to possess the books. Why, then? I concluded it was an attempt to malign Hugh, the most likely suspect in the theft based on motive. I didn’t know why, however. Hugh didn’t appear to be in any imminent danger of arrest, so I kept my thoughts to myself until I could see what you were up to. Possibly that decision of mine cost a man his life, and I shall have to live with that guilty knowledge for the rest of mine. When Hugh was killed, Renata, I suspected you at once.”

I whirled on my brother-in-law, barely holding myself together as my voice rose. “You knew it was her and you let me run around acting like an amateur detective in a stupid book, making a fool out of myself for nothing?” This was just too much to take without protest.

“By no means was it for nothing, Jefferson! Au contraire, your activities were crucial. I needed to know whether any other explanation was possible. I was hoping with all my heart-”

He was still talking when I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye: Renata coming at me. Before I could react she had snatched the cane/gun from my loose grip.

She held the stick in her left hand, the handle in her right, jamming the wicked device up against her husband’s ear. Immobilized by panic, Chalmers’s eyes widened and his skin turned a color I’d most recently seen on the corpse of Hugh Matheson.

It was all I could do to keep from losing control of my bladder, but Mac barely raised an eyebrow. “Framing your husband was never the end game of the plan, was it, Renata?” he said. “That wouldn’t have been enough.”

She shook her head. “The evidence was all circumstantial. There was no guarantee he’d be convicted, but I didn’t need that. I just needed for him to be suspected as a killer while I was his brave and innocent trophy wife. Then some day when I had to shoot him in self-defense I’d be seen as the real victim, not him. But he is going to be the victim - right now.”

With that Renata shoved forward the metallic ring near the top of the cane and turned the decorative handle a quarter-turn to the right. My entire body was tensed for the whoosh of deadly air, the site of blood.

But the sound was muted and nothing happened to Chalmers. Renata’s face contorted in shock and fury and she repeated the action. Click, click, click. Nothing happened.

Desperate, she turned, first to me and then to Mac. “What have you done?”

From the side pocket of his tweed suit coat, Mac held up a bullet. “It seemed to me that removing the bullet was the prudent thing to do, once I had it figured out. I was a trifle late getting back to the colloquium.”

With an inarticulate cry Renata lifted the cane above her head, turning it into a club. Woollcott Chalmers cringed in front of her, still paralyzed with shock. I started to move, but Lynda moved faster.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, wresting the heavy stick from Renata’s hands. “You’re not going to hit anybody else with that damned thing.”

Chapter Thirty-Five - The Wrap-up

This time I didn’t disguise my voice when I called 911. No more Minnie Mouse. Officer Gibbons and a phalanx of Erin’s Finest were there on the double, Oscar not among them. I suspect he was chowing down with his mother at the Bob Evans restaurant just off the highway.

That was a few months ago but seems longer as I write this account in mid-summer. In the light of Renata’s confession, I’m happy to report that the identities of the man and woman seen outside Matheson’s hotel room and that of the person who phoned in the murder have fallen off the chief’s radar screen. Or maybe he’d rather not know.

Ralph Pendergast, less forgiving or forgetting, is still spitting nails about the whole business, but there’s not much he can do about it. It’s kind of hard for him to distance himself from the Chalmers Collection, and thereby all the chaos it wrought, considering that I still have my iPhone video of him speaking so eloquently about St. Benignus being honored to receive the Collection. I haven’t posted it to YouTube, but the unspoken threat is there.

Renata Chalmers is still awaiting trial, out on a huge bail posted by her husband. He also hired Aristotle O’Doul, the most prominent criminal defense attorney in the country. Speculation has it that O’Doul is going to try to mount a novel defense based on battered lover syndrome. I wish I had the popcorn concession for that circus.

Lynda’s first-person account of the showdown on Half Moon Street won kudos all around, and there are probably some journalism awards awaiting her and maybe a promotion if there is any justice in the world.

You may be wondering about Lynda and me. So am I. I’m not sure that we’re dating again, but we’re definitely no longer not dating. She’s changed her Relationship status on Facebook to “It’s Complicated,” and so have I. Standing over a dead body, concealing information from the police, being accused of murder, facing down a killer - those are bonding experiences when a man and woman do them together. So we’re moving toward each other again - at glacial speed and sometimes two steps forward and one step back, but moving nonetheless.

Sebastian McCabe, meanwhile, remains insufferable. He did, after all, solve the murder. Now he’s more convinced than ever that I’m his Watson. And now that I’ve written this, I guess I am.

A Few Words of Thanks

On behalf of my friend Thomas Jefferson Cody, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to the following family members, friends, and experts whose contributions to the preparation of this manuscript for publication were invaluable:

Ann Brauer Andriacco

Michael J. Andriacco

Felicia Carparelli

Alistair Duncan

Paul D. Herbert

Bill Schrand

Special thanks to Jeff Suess for his editing and proofreading on this second edition.