length by Carolyn Kaiser. “Barlow must have killed Turnquist,” she said, “because Turnquist was the artist he used, and Turnquist could expose him. Right?”
I shook my head. “Turnquist was the artist, all right, and Barlow might have killed him sooner or later if he felt he had to. But he certainly wouldn’t have come down to my bookstore to do it. Remember, I’d met Barlow as Onderdonk, and all I had to do was catch sight of him walking around hale and hearty and the whole scheme would collapse. It’s my guess that Barlow never even left his apartment after the murder. He wanted to stay out of sight until I was behind bars where I couldn’t get a look at him. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Barlow?”
All eyes turned to the woman who now sat alone on the couch. She cocked her head, started to say something, then simply nodded.
“Edwin P. Turnquist was an artist,” I said, “and a fervent admirer of Mondrian’s. He never considered himself a forger. God knows how Barlow got hold of him. Turnquist talked to total strangers in museums and galleries, and perhaps that’s how they first made one another’s acquaintance. At any rate, Barlow latched on to Turnquist because he could use him. He got the man to copy paintings, and Turnquist derived great satisfaction from looking at his own work in respected museums. He was a frequent visitor to the Hewlett, Mr. Reeves. All the attendants knew him.”
“Ah,” said Reeves.
“He only paid a dime.”
“And quite proper,” Reeves said. “We don’t care what you pay, but you must pay something. That’s our policy.”
“That and exclusion of the young. But no matter. When Barlow began to panic about your forthcoming retrospective exhibition, Mr. Danforth, he paid a call on Edwin Turnquist. I suppose he urged him to keep out of sight. The substance of their conversation is immaterial. More to the point, Turnquist realized that all along Barlow had not merely been playing a joke on the art world. He’d been making great sums of money at it, and Turnquist’s idealism was outraged. He’d been satisfied with the subsistence wages he made as Barlow’s forger. Art for art’s sake was fine with him, but that Barlow should profit from the game was not.”
I looked at the bearded man with the lank brown hair. “That’s where you came into it, isn’t it, Mr. Jacobi?”
“I never really came into it.”
“You were Turnquist’s friend.”
“Well, I knew him.”
“You had rooms on the same floor in the same Chelsea rooming house.”
“Yeah. I knew him to talk to.”
“You teamed up with Turnquist. One or the other of you followed Barlow to my shop. After that, and just hours before I came up here to appraise the books, you came to my shop alone and tried to sell me a book you’d stolen from the public library. You wanted me to buy it knowing it was a stolen book, and you figured I would because you thought I was an outlet for faked or stolen art. You thought that would give you some kind of an opening, some kind of hold on me, but when I wouldn’t bite you didn’t know what to do next.”
“You make it sound pretty sinister,” Jacobi said. “Eddie and I didn’t know how you fit into the whole thing and I wanted to dope it out. I thought if I sold you the butterfly book you’d let something slip. But you didn’t.”
“And you didn’t pursue it.”
“I figured you were too honest. Any book dealer who’d turn down a deal like that wouldn’t be into receiving stolen works of art.”
“But Friday morning you evidently changed your mind. You and Edwin Turnquist came to my shop together. By then I’d been arrested for Onderdonk’s murder and released on bail, and you figured I was tied in somehow. Turnquist, meanwhile, wanted to let me know what Barlow was up to. He probably guessed I’d been framed and wanted to help me clear myself.”
I took a sip of coffee. “I opened the store and then went two doors down the street to visit a friend of mine. Maybe you two got there after I’d left. Maybe you were the bums I saw lurking in a doorway, and maybe you purposely dawdled across the street until you saw me leave. In either event, the two of you let yourselves in. I just left the door on the springlock, and that wouldn’t present any great problem for a man who can spirit large