Chapter 20 -- The Inspector's Notion

Winsteeple stood stockstill, facing the hall entrance into Jampers' office. He felt sure something
vital was right in front of him.

He turned to his right a bit, to take in the vacated desk one last time, still thinking about the body. Officer Glidden was down the hall, making sure the van attendants did not need further help.

When the officer returned, he held back, not fully reentering, knowing not to disturb the ruminating Inspector. Winsteeple beefily gestured at the overabundance of cabinets and carafes.
"We'll have to have all these bottles moved. Likely, their contents will have to be checked for
any poison. And tell Cloxon's man to make note of all the dust, especially on the different stoppers."


Almost unconsciously, he planted himself again facing the hallway as Glidden peered in discreetly. Winsteeple again sensed a nascent notion coming upon him like a shroud of light.

At first he did nothing. Then, slowly and without thought, he turned his bald head to the wall
along his left shoulder and saw with new eyes the black and white print on the wall.
Originally a lithograph ?

He knew now it was not the excessive dust that would matter to him--obviously quite old.
It was the picture itself. Of a grimacing, wide mouthed beast, yes, crouching, one long arm
wrapping its knees. Crouching in a dry desert landscape...

Outside the west windows, soon to be greying in the late afternoon sun moving behind it...
the billboard ! He gaped amusedly at the rocking action of its giant salted pretzel and
big (flat) mug of foamy beer. He was getting thirstier himself, just looking at it.

But, if Jampers really drank so much of this water, where did he go to the bathroom??


There were no amenities in the office itself. And he could not see Jampers galumphing down
the stairs to the street to someplace, and then back up again, every time he...

Glidden, who had slipped in by now, (to view the billboard), now watched the Inspector,
with the enthusiasm of certainty, heave himself the few steps into the cramped hallway
directly opposite the door.

With fingers like runover hot dogs, Winsteeple pawed at the edges of the thin wall, searching
for a crevice, punch or purchase.

When the wall popped open with a gasp to match their own, and let in an L-crack of light,
he half-turned delightedly and greedily pulled the door the rest of the way open.


Not exactly a secret door, but so parenthetically set (by someone) it would remain for private use in this little-visited quarter.

The barely carpeted steps to the restaurant below beckoned.

Of course, he went down them.

Chapter 14 -- Removals

Inspector Winsteeple finally moved aside and let the two men in

the hallway come in to move Jampers' dead body.
Apparently, they had been arguing about the wooden board the
shorter of the two had brought upstairs from somewhere.

"What is that?" , and surprising them, before one could answer,
adding, "A piano top?"

"It was all 'we' could find." replied the taller, as they lumbered it
along the east wall of the office on the way to the oversized desk.

"It'll make the body heavier." stated their superior.


Indeed, they would require some help even to move the overweight
body from its seated position in the heavy wooden chair.

As the two men carefully aligned the board onto the floor, Winsteeple
said, "Wait." And moved in for one last closer look at the tweezers in
the dead man's hand.
They had seemingly clenched tighter only since he had last examined
them here, the gap between their tips narrower by a few micrometers.
(He would have to ask the coroner if this were possible).
And, sure enough, there was a tiny perforation of paper from the edge
of a stamp, doubtlessly the one last held by the collector.
A stamp nowhere visible now. Removed by the killer?

After moving around the desk for another last check of the carpeting
around the various legs and the positioning of the body, the Inspector
stood back, and getting the men started by pulling the heavy chair out
said gently, "Be careful not to disturb anything or I'll hang you both
from the courtyard flagpole."

But, as they struggled to move the body out of the chair, and onto the
piano top on the floor, he did whatever he could to physically help.
As officer Glidden kept an eye on the critical objects and breakables.

Arguing again, somewhat more, in the narrow canehead turn of the hall
about which end of the body should go out first, they settled on the feet,
and except for too-frequent scraped fingers and corners and nearly
dropping the waterlogged corpse down the stairs the two managed to
get the man to the street door without any further assists.


Inspector Winsteeple remained in the office to consider something.

Chapter 10 -- The Inspector's Trilemma

the body could not be seen from the door, until one entered the room part way, hunched over as
it was on the leftward side of the angled, mahogany desk which was too large for the room.

at a glance, Inspector Winsteeple took in the entirety of the murder(?) scene, the commonplace,
likely-to-prove extraneous details as well as the clearly out of place.
against the backdrop of the brightly sunlit west windows, the pale green walls, the liquor cabinet
and overabundance of water carafes, the tusk or rib bone mounted on a modest pedestal, what
leapt out at him immediately were the plain abnormalities...

the corpse, face down on a broad open book, (obviously, even from here and 'upside down', a
stamp album), had one hand up and was still holding, between thumb and forefinger, what looked to be a pair of tweezers.
he leaned in a bit, arms behind his bulky back, to be certain there seemed nothing in their metal
tips. and noted with a start, in the view of his left eye, the roughly 3x4 inch rectangle, left by
something now missing, in the slight coating of dust on the otherwise immaculate desk.
out of habit, he did not gasp or otherwise indicate this discovery, instead backing away again
to his standing position partly, (and deliberately), blocking the door.

he could hear the murmuring of the van drivers, whom he knew, in the narrow hall behind him,
but gave their words no attention. he acknowledged the officer in the room, to his right---
"Glidden(?)", he half-hinted---who nodded, and spotted the framed, black & white lithograph
(some sort of beast crouching in the desert?) on the wall just behind the rather tall man's head.

there was a coating of dust, much older and untouched than that on the desk, on the picture's
upper edges. perhaps, like the tear in the empty armchair (which looked to be an old one...
the stuffing was grey), it was worth remembering.

"It's Mr. Jampers, sir". "Yes." "He was the theatre manager. This is his office." "mmmp".

The Inspector adjusted his offkilter, black-rimmed spectacles, trying to find their right askew.
He was very nearsighted and almost completely bald, his skin slightly jaundiced a pale yellow
almost the same color as his too-wellworn, linen suit.
His body looked like an upended meatloaf, his head like a dinner roll jammed on top. He
stood heavily, in ill-fitting clothes, about 5 foot 10 and 240 pounds.
His black bolo tie with its hollow-eyed, houndhead slider-clasp did little but disappear.


As Officer Glidden spoke on a mite more on the convoluted Jampers family tree, Winsteeple
bent down to the floor and plucked out, (with his own tweezers), a tiny bit of turquoise gravel from a patch of untramped nap of the flattened carpeting.
He held it up to his bleary eyes, pleased as a child, as the officer watched the whole manouvre.

"Has it all been photographed?"--the officer hesitated, thinking he meant the whole of the gravel
bit---"Especially the desk?" "Yes, sir."
Pocketting the gravel in a cigarette paper, the Inspector heaved himself around to view the
body from behind. As he spun 'round the southwest corner of the desk, he noted the empty
brass ashtray, so perfectly placed as to belie any disturbance.

after reenforcing his first impressions of the upraised hand and the proximate, open-tipped
tweezers and rectangular 'shadow' in the dust, he looked all about the body and the floor
nearest its legs and feet, (still tucked under the desk), slightly and gently moved the head
and, raising himself straight again declared, "There's not a drop of blood visible."

the desk had clearly not been shifted on the carpet in years. pulling the dead man's waxy
chair back he revealed Jampers' enormous, water-logged belly straining it's white shirt
even more than did his own.


three interlocked questions had emerged to him from all of this:
the excessive water intake, tho likely a personal, idiosyncratic habit might bear indirectly
on the means of death?
the missing object that had been on the desk, where & what was it??
and had the motive, or the missing object, anything to do with what had been held in the
stamp-collector's tool???

he would have difficulty listening to his beloved wife, tonight.