Murder at the Movies (Albert J Tretheway Series) Read online

  “Weren’t they black-and-white movies?” Wan Ho asked Jake.

  “So use your imagination.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” Tretheway said. “What about the cocked hat?’

  “Kidnapped,” Wan Ho said immediately.

  “Drums Along the Mohawk,” Jake said.

  “This is a pretty big field,” Tretheway said. “Could be anything from Mutiny on the Bounty to The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

  “Or even Gulliver’s Travels,” Jake said.

  “That’s a cartoon,” Wan Ho said.

  “Full length.” Jake defended his choice. “And he wore a cocked hat.”

  “Include it,” Tretheway said to Jake.

  “What’s left?” Wan Ho asked.

  “The flag,” Tretheway remembered. “The French tricolour.”

  “Beau Geste,” Jake said. “Has to be the one.”

  “Why not Suez?” Wan Ho asked.

  “Or Algiers. Or Garden of Allah,” Tretheway said. “Even the old Count of Monte Cristo.”

  “They all have a French theme,” Wan Ho said.

  “You’re right,” Jake admitted. “And don’t forget Stan and Ollie joined the French Foreign Legion in Flying Deuces.”

  “I don’t think our Fan’ll use a movie more than once,” Tretheway said.

  “Either do I,” Wan Ho agreed.

  “So let’s move on,” Tretheway said. “The crown. A replica crown of George III.”

  “In The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” Wan Ho said, “the bad guys were after the British crown jewels.”

  “Good choice,” Tretheway said.

  “The Tower of London,” Jake said. “Basil Rathbone played Richard III. That sure suggests a crown.”

  “So does The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex,” Wan Ho said.

  “There was a king in Robin Hood,” Jake said.

  “Richard the Lion-Heart,” Tretheway remembered.

  “What about a title with the word ‘king’ in it?” Wan Ho suggested.

  “Eh?”

  “You mean like King of Chinatown?” Jake asked.

  “Why not?” Wan Ho said. “Or King of Gamblers.”

  “King of the Underworld.”

  “King of the Turf.”

  “I think not.” Tretheway stopped their game.” Don’t write those down,” he said to Jake.

  “We must be close to the end,” Wan Ho said.

  “Just one left,” Tretheway said. “Really two. But I’ve lumped them together. There’s a good chance they’d be seen together in the same movie. I’ve left them purposely until now.”

  “Oh?” Jake looked at Wan Ho.

  “They’re special?” Wan Ho asked.

  “Just a feeling.” Tretheway didn’t explain further. “Dress uniform frock coat, General, Union Army 1864. And an 1853 cavalry sword with scabbard.”

  “There was a great cavalry charge at the end of Stagecoach,” Jake said.

  “Good one,” Tretheway said.

  “Dodge City maybe,” Wan Ho said. “Or Geronimo.”

  “Union Pacific,” Jake added.

  “Put them all down,” Tretheway said.

  “How about the daddy of all charges?” Wan Ho said. “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

  “That would only work for the sword,” Tretheway said.

  “And it’s old,” Jake said.

  “Just a couple of years,” Wan Ho said.

  “If you want old,” Jake said, “how about Birth of a Nation?”

  “Too old,” Tretheway said. “I’d rather go the other way.”

  Jake and Wan Ho looked puzzled.

  Tretheway explained. “I talked to Freeman Thake. He told me they get advance notice of coming attractions with a synopsis that he or his employees could read, if they’re interested. Only a couple of days ahead. Unless there’s a special event.”

  Jake and Wan Ho still looked puzzled.

  “There’s a biggy coming up for the West End. Late July,” Tretheway went on. “I’ve heard about it. And I’m sure you have. Lots of publicity. Even in Fort York. And the American Civil War plays a big part.”

  “Oh.” Wan Ho came to life. “The Margaret Mitchell book.”

  Jake snapped his fingers. “Gone With the Wind.”

  “Right,” Tretheway said. “A natural for the uniform and sword.”

  “And General Sherman?” Wan Ho asked.

  Tretheway shrugged.

  Jake wrote down Gone With the Wind.

  “How many does that give us?” Tretheway asked.

  Jake flipped through the pages of his notebook. “I make it just over forty movies.”

  “That many?” Wan Ho asked.

  “And that’s not counting the ones we haven’t seen yet,” Jake said.

  “Plus twelve stolen items,” Tretheway summed up.

  “Surely the Fan isn’t planning on using them all?” Jake asked.

  “Just one or two, I’d say. But he probably took others in hopes of finding a relevant movie,” Tretheway surmised. “And a couple more just to throw us off the track.”

  “Like which ones?” Jake asked.

  “Maybe the cocked hat,” Wan Ho suggested.

  “Maybe.” Tretheway shook his head. “But don’t forget what he did with the bowler.” He shifted in the jumbo wicker armchair, jamming his hands as far as they would go into his warm armpits.

  After a few minutes of thoughtful, discouraging silence, Wan Ho spoke.

  “I take it there’s nothing we can do right now?”

  “Just enjoy the evening.”

  The temperature had dropped with the sun. An owl hooted frigidly in the darkness. The intermittent night breeze steadied.

  “Invigorating,” Tretheway said. His breath hung, a frosty veil, in front of his face.

  “Albert.” Addie opened the back door. “Come on in. You’ll catch your death out there. I’ve made some hot chocolate.”

  Jake and Wan Ho lost no time in accepting Addie’s invitation. Tretheway followed, grumbling.

  Chapter

  7

  The second significant event happened a few days later, April 26, a Wednesday. But Tretheway didn’t hear about it until Friday.

  Addie slid the doors of the parlour open. “It’s for you, Albert.” She was up later than usual preparing food for a boarder’s Saturday graduation party. “It’s Charles Wan Ho,” she announced before retiring to the kitchen.

  Jake looked up from his Hornblower novel. “It’s late for him,” he said to Tretheway.

  Tretheway pushed himself out of the soft chair. Cigar ashes flew. Wayne King music oozed from the radio. “What’s the time?” he asked.

  “About twenty after eleven,” Jake said.

  “He must be working.” Tretheway went to the hall phone. Jake followed.

  “This may or may not be important.” Wan Ho’s voice crackled through the phone with no preamble.

  “Go ahead.” Tretheway bent over and held the receiver upright between his own and Jake’s ears.

  “Speak up. Jake’s listening.”

  “I’m at Central. A report just crossed my desk. A large, freshly dug hole was discovered by a Mr and Mrs Coombes in their backyard. Southwest area. 175 Chedoke Avenue. The street runs north and south to the Fort York mountain. It backs onto a creek, then the Fort York municipal golf course. Also called Chedoke.”

  Jake nodded. “I know the course,” he whispered to Tretheway.

  “The report’s dated Thursday morning. Yesterday,” Wan Ho continued. “That means the hole was dug sometime Wednesday night.”

  “You called me close to midnight to tell me about a hole in someone’s backyard?” Tretheway questioned.

  “There’s more,” Wan Ho said. “I talked to the investigating officer. He said it was an oblong hole about seven by four feet. And six feet deep. Very neat. The earth piled tidily close by. Sod stacked carefully to one side. He said it looked like a grave.”

  “Oh?” Tretheway’s intere
st rose.

  “Remember the movie Gunga Din?” Wan Ho said.

  “Very well,” Tretheway answered. Jake felt a slight shiver travel across his back.

  “Didn’t the Thugees dig graves for their victims?” Wan Ho asked.

  “They did,” Jake said. “Ahead of time.”

  “Even so,” Tretheway argued, “it’s still just a hole in the ground. Unless you have any other …”

  “I do,” Wan Ho interrupted. “At the end of the movie, Gunga Din warned the whole damned British army, saving them from certain annihilation, by playing a bugle. It so happens that Mr Coombes, or really Bugle-Major Coombes, is the leader of the Royal FY Light Infantry Bugle Band. He’s probably the city’s best known bugler.” Wan Ho paused to let his information sink in. “Would you like to call on the Coombses tomorrow?”

  “No,” Tretheway said.

  Jake looked surprised.

  “But…” Wan Ho started.

  “Tonight,” Tretheway said.

  “Eh?”

  “We’ll meet you there,” Tretheway ordered.

  Sometime during Tretheway’s late night, three-way phone conversation, Bugle-Major Reginald F. Coombes’s studded military boots clicked down the metal steps of the FY Street Railway car stopped at the bottom of his street.

  As anyone who took the trouble to find out knew, the RFYLI Bugle Band (Reserve) practised every Tuesday and paraded with the regiment every Friday. Both evenings ended convivially. The band’s Mess came alive with WWI reminiscences, bawdy military songs and Niagara-On-The-Lake Camp legends mellowed by past tellings, all washed down with countless jugs of nut brown ale.

  Acknowledging the friendly clanging bell of the departing streetcar with a casual salute, Bugle-Major Coombes marched smartly, if unsteadily, up Chedoke Avenue toward his home. Despite a wind-whipped misty drizzle, a tight little smile appeared on his weatherbeaten face as he swaggered rhythymically in front of his imaginary band. Long ago pictures of his wartime service, enhanced by memory and alcohol, materialized before his eyes as the shrill, exciting sounds of the band filled his head. Bugles blared “The Old Contemptibles” in pure, bitten-off notes. Drumsticks crashed smartly on thinly stretched drumheads in perfect staccato accompaniment.

  As he raised a make-believe baton and right-wheeled into his gravel driveway, a dark turbaned figure, swathed in loincloth, left the cover of a spirea bush and, from behind, looped a thin deadly garrote around his neck. The last words Bugle-Major Coombes heard were, “Kill for the love of Kali.”

  “Won’t this thing go any faster?” Tretheway said.

  “It’s not warmed up yet,” Jake answered.

  Tretheway twisted in his seat as much as he could toward Jake. “It didn’t start up too well either.”

  “It’s wet,” Jake alibied. “Starts beautifully if you give it a chance.”

  Tretheway grunted.

  The wipers swept hypnotically across the windshield as the ’33 Pontiac’s cold engine protested Jake’s rough handling. He pushed the heavy vehicle over the glistening roads at speeds on the edge of safety. When they turned up the incline of Chedoke Avenue, another car fell in behind them. A flash of headlights reflected from the Pontiac’s rear-view mirror.

  “Must be Wan Ho,” Jake said.

  Tretheway grunted again.

  Jake parked his customary foot-and-a-half from the curb in front of number 175. Wan Ho pulled in behind. The front verandah light shone through the mist. Other lights lit up the ground floor of the house.

  “Looks like they’re still up,” Jake said. He joined Wan Ho on the sidewalk.

  They waited while Tretheway planted both feet in the space between the car and the curb and pulled himself out of the sunken leather passenger seat.

  “Should we go around to the back?” Wan Ho asked.

  “Better go to the front door,” Tretheway said. “Don’t want to alarm the Coombeses.”

  Jake looked around at the other, mostly darkened, homes. “Or the neighbours,” he said.

  The three padded up the wet flagstone walk. Tretheway reached for the door. His outstretched arm was inches from the Coombes’s ornate, solid brass doorknocker, a replica of an RFYLI hat badge, when an unbelievably loud crash of breaking glass reverberated around the house.

  “What the hell?”

  “Where’d that come from?” Jake asked.

  “Don’t know,” Wan Ho said.

  A high, piercing, hair-raising scream followed a split second later.

  “That’s from inside.” Tretheway banged the doorknocker. “Police!”

  Another scream erupted.

  Tretheway tried the door. It didn’t open. “Damn!” His 275 pounds lunged at the thick oaken barrier. The Yale lock tore from the inside frame as the door banged open. A third scream, just as loud as the first two, pinpointed the source. Tretheway led the charge across the elegant foyer, past the curving staircase and through the kitchen to burst awkwardly into a sunken family room that stretched across the rear of the house. Mrs Coombes stood, hands on cheeks, in front of a shattered picture window. Shards of glass littered the floor. In the centre of a deep, hand-carved oriental carpet, highlighted eerily by a chandelier now swinging in the wind from the open window, lay the object hurled through the glass minutes before; a Thuggee pickaxe.

  “Police,” Tretheway said again. He fumbled for his badge, then realized it was in his uniform at home.

  “Jake,” he said.

  Jake pushed his hands into his own pockets. He shook his head.

  Mrs Coombes prepared for a fourth scream.

  Wan Ho quickly held out his badge. “Sergeant Wan Ho, Ma’am.” He pointed to Tretheway and Jake. “Inspector Tretheway and Constable Small. FYPD.”

  “They don’t look like policemen,” Mrs Coombes said.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs Coombes,” Tretheway said. “But this is an emergency.” He pointed to the pickaxe. “I assume that was thrown through the window?”

  Mrs Coombes frowned suspiciously but nodded.

  “Did you see who threw it?” Tretheway asked.

  “Yes I did,” Mrs Coombes said, recovering. “An Indian.”

  “Pardon?”

  “An East Indian. Right out of Rudyard Kipling. Wearing a white sheet and a, you know,” she swirled a finger around her head, “a turban. Like Sabu.”

  “You’re sure?” Tretheway questioned.

  “Yes. He just stood there. Beside the hole in the ground.” She paused for a moment. “Almost as if he wanted me to see him.”

  “Sergeant,” Tretheway ordered. “You stay with Mrs Coombes.”

  “But…” Wan Ho began.

  “Let’s go,” Tretheway said to Jake. He started for the side door. Jake followed looking back helplessly at Wan Ho.

  “Be careful of the creek,” Mrs Coombes shouted after them.”

  Outside the wet darkness closed around them.

  “The flashlight’s in the car,” Jake said.

  “No time.” Tretheway jogged through the backyard, skirting the barely discernible hole with the neat pile and sod still beside it, to the edge of the hallow gorge now in deep shadow.

  Jake caught up. “There’s the golf course.” He pointed across the gorge to where what light there was showed a relatively flat, but rolling, cultivated landscape. No figures could be seen.

  “He must be down there somewhere.” Tretheway started rashly down the steep, uneven incline through misshapen rocks and long wild grass. Jake took a more lateral, safer descent.

  “Damn.” Tretheway’s curse was easily heard over the gurgling spring run-off.

  “What’s the matter?” Jake shouted.

  “Nothing.” Tretheway tried to remember the last time he got a soaker.

  “There’s some flat stones down here,” Jake shouted. “I think we can get over the creek.”

  “Forget it,” Tretheway shouted.

  “What?” Jake scrambled back. Tretheway leaned against a tree pouring creek water from his boot onto the
ground.

  “He’s gone,” Tretheway said quietly. “He’s made his point. Left the Thuggee axe. Made sure Mrs Coombes saw him.”

  “You mean he got away?” Jake asked.

  Tretheway nodded. “I just wonder.”

  “Hm?”

  “Where do you suppose Mr Coombes is?”

  “The Bugle-Major?”

  Tretheway nodded. “It didn’t look like he was in the house.”

  Jake’s neck went prickly. “No, it didn’t.”

  “And why do you suppose our Indian friend was standing beside the alleged grave?”

  Jake didn’t answer.

  “We’d better have a look.”

  “You’re not thinking…”

  “Now we need the flashlight,” Tretheway interrupted.

  Jake ran to the car. By the time he got back to the grave, Tretheway was already there, bent over, hands leaning on his muscular thighs, staring into the dark hole. The swirling mist verged on rain.

  “There’s something there,” Tretheway said.

  Jake switched on the flashlight. Bugle-Major Coombes lay on his back, arms neatly folded over his midsection. The beam of light picked out the brilliant scarlet and gold of the Bugler’s braid across his chest. Large drops of moisture from the trees splashed onto his face, washing away some of the token clay clods thrown onto the grave. The small tight smile remained.

  “Gawd.” Jake switched the light off.

  Two cruisers, an unmarked car with detectives, a FY Expo reporter with photographer and Doc Nooner, all appeared shortly after Tretheway’s call to Central. Chief Constable Horace Zulp arrived last. His sirens awoke the residents who had managed to sleep through the first part of the investigation.

  “Strangled,” Doc Nooner said to Zulp. “Some sort of garrote. Wire, rope, cloth.”

  Tretheway and Wan Ho stood in the warm dryness of the Coombes’s family room within earshot of Zulp. Jake positioned himself behind them. Relevant activity hummed in the background. One neighbour made coffee. Another comforted Mrs Coombes in the adjacent living room. Detectives bustled. Mud spots showed on everyone’s clothing, evidence of graveside examinations, especially Doc Nooner’s.

  “And not too long ago,” the doctor concluded.