Booking In. Jack Batten
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For several moments neither Fletcher nor I spoke. Personally, I was struck a little dumb by how effortlessly Maury had finessed the safe.
“Very impressive, Mr. Samuels,” Fletcher said. “Please tell us how you did that.”
Maury turned around, not a touch of self-congratulation in his expression. “Inside here,” he said, indicating the apparatus on the top of the safe, “there’s a pin that locks a sliding bolt. When I gave the dial a counterclockwise turn, it freed up the pin to move. Then I smacked the mallet on top of the safe, and that moved the pin for no more than a split second. So when I turned the dial clockwise, the pin was down, the sliding bolt moved, and the dial turned the whole way around, which, as you guys can see, opened the safe.”
“Totally diabolical, Maury,” I said when he finished his explanation. “Who taught you the trick?”
“Freddie Biscuit showed me a couple months ago,” Maury said. “It was just him and me shooting the breeze about robbing in general, me the burglar, Biscuit the ace safecracker. He told me about the mallet gimmick on a certain kind of digital safe. All theoretical, you understand.”
I remembered Freddie Biscuit from the help he’d given me with a client a year earlier. He was very small, not more than five feet tall, sensible and conscientious, loved to drink Johnny Walker Black.
“Biscuit,” I said, “a very agreeable guy.”
“Best person on safes I ever saw,” Maury said.
“Does this mean we have our man?” Fletcher said. He sounded excited but cautious. “The one who robbed my safe? Could it be this Biscuit person?”
“Not a chance,” Maury said. “But if you want, I can ask Biscuit what he’s heard on the street. Biscuit’s a guy, he keeps himself up to speed on that kind of thing.”
“You think the job on my safe was done by a professional?”
“I’m leaning that way.”
“No matter who opened the safe,” I said, “the other factor we’ve got to consider is how the guy got into the store. I assume the doors were locked?”
“Dear lord, of course they were,” Fletcher said.
“How many keys to the store you got in circulation?”
“None in what you call circulation, Crang,” Fletcher said. “I personally have two keys. One on the key ring I carry at all times, the other in a drawer at home. The same goes for my assistant. Charlie has two keys. We’re meticulous about security.”
“How long has he been your assistant?”
“She has been with me the last four years. Charlie is short for Charlotte. Charlotte Watson. I’d trust her with my life.”
“Charlie. The woman I see sometimes when Annie and I drop by the store? She runs the computer side, if I’m not mistaken, always sitting at a keyboard?”
Fletcher nodded. “And she deals with the telephone clients.”
“What about the other people I sometimes see behind the counter?”
“Part-timers. They come and go.”
“Comings and goings I understand, but how do they get into the store?”
“They work either when Charlie’s on duty or I am. We let them in and lock up behind them when we close. And Crang, you can stop asking questions about keys. There are just four, and none of them has ever gone missing. So stop speculating about last night’s burglar getting into the store with a key.”
I looked at Maury. “Any more questions we need to ask?”
“Definitely one,” Maury said to me. “What we have to check is did the guy breaking in leave any signs of how he got past the locks on the front door or the back.”
Both of us looked at Fletcher.
“Nothing’s broken, if that’s what you mean. There’s no indication of somebody smashing their way in.”
“There’s more subtle stuff I got to take a good look at, mainly the locks on the doors.”
I said to Fletcher, “I notice you got a chain lock on the front door. You or Charlie put that on every night before you leave?”
“Correct,” Fletcher said. “We lock and chain the front door and leave by the back. There’s an alley out there.”
“That where you park your car?” I asked.
Fletcher shook his head. “There’s no parking allowed in the alley. I have a regular city permit to park on the streets in the neighbourhood.”
“The guy upstairs,” Maury said. “I haven’t spotted any way he could get directly into the store from his place. There’s nothing I’m missing, right?”
“As you also no doubt noticed, his name is Hamilton Carruthers,” Fletcher said. “And no, Ham’s access to his office is up the stairway from the street, and that’s all.”
“Where’s Ham now?” I asked. “I haven’t heard any sounds from above.”
“He’s not up there,” Fletcher said.
“Maury and I might want to talk to him.”
“That probably won’t be for a day or two.”
“The guy’s vamoosed?” Maury said.
“Not as you mean it,” Fletcher said. “Ham came in here an hour ago to tell me he’s fed up sleeping in his office. He’s taking his wife on what he called a makeup overnight in Niagara on the Lake. I hope it works out. She’s a lovely girl.”
The matter of the architect now apparently put to rest as far as Fletcher was concerned, he closed the safe door and reset the combination. He turned and waved for Maury and me to follow him down a short hall toward the back door. In the hall, a step or two from the door, a couple of dozen books, all fat reference volumes, as far as I could tell, lay scattered across the floor.
“These books were what Ham must have heard in the night,” Fletcher said. “They were stacked in two neat piles, but it’s close to pitch black in the hall with the lights out. Whoever intruded probably knocked the piles over. That would have made for some very loud bangs.”
“Bumping into the books would most likely have happened on the way in,” I said. “I’m supposing Ham up there needed a few minutes of deep thought before he phoned you. You answered the call. Then what? You took how long to get dressed and drive over here?”
“I live in one of the waterfront condos near Spadina,” Fletcher said, closing his eyes in concentration. “I was still half asleep. Not feeling very efficient after being awoken like that. I must have needed ten minutes to get organized and another ten or fifteen to drive to the store.”
I looked at Maury.
“A half hour altogether?” Maury said. “Man, in a half hour, a burglar with a little experience could have ransacked the National Mint and made a getaway.”
“Okay,” I said, “you figure the timing part’s settled, Maury?”
Maury nodded. “Now I wanna have a look at the back door.”
“Gentleman,” Fletcher said, “I’ve already satisfied myself that no breakage was necessary for the robber to get in the back way.”
“Just let me see the friggin’ thing,” Maury said.
Fletcher opened the back door. Beyond it, there was an alleyway that ran behind the College Street shops and restaurants, ending in north-south streets at either end.
Maury hovered over the lock on the outside of the door. He murmured to himself and squatted down until he was eye level with the lock. It was bright enough in the alley, but