Chapter 9

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"LEBEAU!" Carter yelled in shock.

Louis Lebeau, who had been sitting just outside the barracks, opened the door and popped his head in. "Carter? Did you yell for me?"

"No, Newkirk's mmphf mmnhmme…" Carter started to explain, but suddenly there was a hand over his mouth.

"He said, 'couldn't throw,' " Newkirk quickly told Lebeau. "We were talking about baseball. He said uh…Babe Ruth couldn't throw."

"What is so wrong with that? Why do you have your hand over his mouth?" Lebeau asked.

"Well, he's getting 'imself too worked up, inn't he? It's not good for him in his condition. He needs to stay still." Newkirk turned to Carter and gave him a stern look. Wagging a finger at the other man, "No more baseball talk for you," he ordered. "We don't need you playing yourself out and making yourself sick again."

Lebeau regarded the two of them suspiciously for a few more moments. No one blinked. Finally he rolled his eyes and went back outside. Whatever the truth was, he figured he wouldn't want to hear it anyway.

"Geez, why the heck did you do that?" Carter asked once Lebeau had left and Newkirk had removed his hand. When Newkirk didn't answer and suddenly couldn't look him in the eye, Carter's mouth began to twitch. Suddenly he laughed. "I get it! You're embarrassed!"

"Rubbish!" Newkirk protested feebly. "Whatever 'ave I got to be embarrassed about?"

Carter's grin was a mile wide. "Either you didn't want Lebeau finding out you made him the killer, orrr" he said, drawing out the word and watching Newkirk closely for his reaction, "you didn't want him knowing that you're telling me a story." He clapped his hands and then pointed at Newkirk. "HA! I knew it! It's the second one, isn't it! Isn't it!"

"I don't know what you're on about."

"You do too. But what's the big deal? We all tell stories all the time."

"Not made-up ones."

"Is that what the problem is? But Peter, it's a really good story!"

"I don't care. Either you say you won't tell them or I won't tell you the ending!" Newkirk threatened.

"Okay, okay. Gee, somebody's a little sensitive. I betcha anything though that the others would love to hear it."

"Carter…"

"Well, maybe you could cut down on the intrepid hero stuff and I don't know if Lebeau would like being made into a killer - "

"Carter"

"and I don't know if Kinch'd be happy either, I mean about you making him Hochstetter's nephew and come to think of it, he hasn't had any lines yet - " Carter kept going, "but the Colonel would probably get a kick out of it. Unless he wouldn't like being a minor character; he's used to being in charge, you know. But I don't think he'd mind, since it's just a story after all - "

"CARTER!"

"Newkirk! I'm trying to tell you something important here! Would you listen?"

"No. That's it. I've had it. You're not getting the rest of the story now."

"Oh, don't be such a big crybaby. I was just teasing ya, buddy! I think they'd all like it a lot, but if you don't want me to say anything, I won't." Carter held up his right hand, "Honest. I promise."

Newkirk gaze narrowed as he stared at Carter. "I'm going to take you at your word," he finally said after a couple of minutes, "so you'd better watch yourself."

Carter nodded sincerely. "I swear, Peter. I won't tell anybody."

"All right, then."

--x--

"That's him right there," I said, pointing. "Inspector Louis Lebeau!"

"What?" Lebeau cried. "What is this foolishness? I do not own a timber mill, I am a detective."

I stepped up to him and faced him squarely. "That you are, mate. A detective. And for all the times I give you the wind up, you're a good one. Too good to make the mistakes you've made on this case," I said quietly.

"What mistakes, Mr. Newkirk," Hogan asked.

"Like mistaking the location of the squire's wound," I answered him, still looking at Louis. "You said the top of his head," I explained, "but anyone could see that the axe struck the back of his head, close to the neck."

"That does not mean that I killed him," Lebeau scoffed, but he backed up a step. He was nervous now.

"No, but your lying about it was certainly enough to make me suspicious. You couldn't have made such a stupid mistake, but then that could only mean you were trying to misdirect us. But why? Because you knew what placement of the wound meant: Kinchloe could have caught the old bloke's head on an upswing, but the split was deepest in the middle, meaning it was more likely the swing had come in straight and the killer was just a touch under the victim's height."

"That means nothing," he continued to deny, but he backed away by another step. I shot a look to Hogan and Carter and they quickly got behind him.

"There are other things," I went on. "The footprint you conveniently didn't notice, for instance. The small footprint. I was pulling your leg when I said it could've been yours, but I did notice the likeness."

"And then there was the pine dust, which lead me to believe there was a connection to this place - pine dust embedded not only in the bloody footprint, but also in the dirt scraped from the hooves of the squire's horse. The squire made a visit to the timber mill the night he was killed, and then someone from the timber mill was in the squire's study after there was blood on the floor. The squire's visit to the mill could possibly be explained away as a simple matter of business, though a little suspect so late in the evening, but the strange footprint connected some unknown person to the entire affair. And that is a connection you should have made. Would've have made any other time, so why not now? Why didn't you even want to investigate? I came to you this morning and you were packing to leave, still convinced Kinchloe was the murderer, even though there's a whole household of witnesses to confirm he never left the manor last night."

I finally came to the heart of the matter. "And then there was the matter of the squire's sudden history of making bad business deals, the sort which he knows won't benefit 'im."

"Any business deal has a chance of going bad," the Inspector argued.

"True," I conceded, "But deals like that can also mean blackmail is tangled up in the mess somehow, and you're too good mate, not to 'ave even looked into the matter. Not when the bloke's also been secretly burning letters in his grate and going on mysterious evening rides. And most especially not when that self-same bloke has just been done in with an axe. So I had to ask myself, Louis, why were you so determined not to investigate. But I never would've dreamed it was because you were the one doing the blackmailing - "

"That's a lie!" the Inspector suddenly shouted. Hogan grabbed him and he struggled in the taller man's arms. "It wasn't blackmail! The filthy pig, he was paying back what never belonged to him!"

"Because he ruined your father?" I asked.

"Because he killed my sister!" Lebeau cried. Carter gasped behind me, and I'll admit that I wasn't half surpised as well.

"I wired the police in Lac Noir last night, but they never said anything about your sister!"

The Inspector spit furiously on the ground. "That was how the bastard destroyed my father. He was Black Jack! He didn't make his money by mining. He made it by swindling every poor prospector who came around. But my father was a constable with the RCMP. He was famous!"

"Catch'em low Lebeau," I whispered. "He was famous, mate."

"Oui! And he fought Hochstetter at every turn! Or he did until Hochstetter kidnapped my sister. Then he held her life over my father's head for years. My father could do nothing but look the other way, dying inside all the time."

"But when Hochstetter made the mistake of killing her…"

"That's when my father was free to punish him. He drove himself to death, but he made Hochstetter run!"

"But then you came across Hochstetter here and you saw that his life wasn't in ruins, that he in Upper Tidwell, living like a toff on his own family's estate."

"How could I let that be?" Lebeau cried plaintively. "How was it fair?"

"But why didn't you just kill him right away?" Carter asked before I could stop him.

"Because the swine deserved to be bled dry, slowly dying by inches like my father and poor sister died!" Lebeau hissed.

"Then why did you kill him now, after only taking a few bits off of him?" I wanted to know.

"Because he refused to pay the blackmail any longer. He was willing to pay enough to keep me quiet so that he could still have his life here without there being trouble, but not more. Not enough to hurt him."

Hogan, ever the lawyer, asked, "Why didn't you arrest him, or arrange to have him extradited to Canada?"

Lebeau hung his head. "I had no proof," he explained. "Only my father knew all of the facts and he died before he would share them with me. He did not want me to be eaten by revenge like he was."

The poor bloke was done. The three of us escorted him to Judge Burkhalter's and arranged for him to be taken away to Lewes. I felt sorry for the Inspector. I couldn't wonder but that, had I been in a similar situation, might I have not done the same thing. And, if hadn't been for the need of freeing an innocent man, I wonder too if I might have been tempted to let him go.

However, as I said, there was Kinchloe to think of. At the same time Hogan went to see to the arrangements for Lebeau, he also had the much more pleasant job of freeing his good friend and being able to prove James Kinchloe's innocence to the world.

Since Hogan wasn't returning to London, Carter and I decided to take the train back. On the way, I obliged Carter by answering his remaining questions.

"So it wasn't 'Kinchloe' that the squire said - "

"Nor 'Ketchum Lowe' like Schultz the landlord thought," I put in.

"But 'Catch'em Low'. What kind of nickname is that?"

"Blokes at the Yard joke that it was because he was so short he had to tackle villains at the knees. However, since I believe the Mounties have a height requirement, it's more likely the story I got from the Canadian authorities is true: Lebeau senior was a relentless tracker who always caught whoever was doing something low."

"So the Inspector's father chased Hochstetter out of Canada, forcing him to leave his fortune. But didn't Mr. Hogan say that the squire had a lot of money when he came back from Canada?"

"I got my friend Olsen to check on that, amongst other things. It seems our squire was a master of misdirection and juggling debt. He didn't have nearly the money that the village thought he did at the time. His fortune only came later as he swindled his way through the population in these parts."

"How did you know about Lebeau's father in the first place?"

"Like I said, he was famous. At least in detection circles. Unfortunately, his downfall was famous too, and anyone who didn't take a liking to Inspector Lebeau thought nothing of spreading the story around. They didn't do it as often once the Inspector started making his way up the ranks, but the rumours have been about for years."

"So you knew the whole story as soon as Mr. Schultz mentioned Lac Noir."

"Pretty much. I wired Canada for information on Black Jack and what happened to him. They knew Lebeau senior had run the sorry bugger out, but not what happened to him. And the date of his disappearance matched up with the squire's return to England. The wire to Olsen was not only to check on Hochstetter, but also to see if he could confirm the owner of the Black Jack Timber Mill. Lebeau did a good job of hiding his tracks, but Olsen was able to run it down."

"Why'd Lebeau call it the Black Jack Timber Mill? Seems to me that he wouldn't want to be reminded of what happened in Canada."

"I think it was to intimidate Hochstetter. A sort of permanent reminder of what Lebeau knew, right on his own estate."

Carter sat back and watched the scenery for awhile, pondering all of this. "Can I ask you one more question?" he asked a few minutes later.

"Ask away, mate."

"How could Klink have possibly mistaken Inspector Lebeau for Kinchloe when he came into the study that night when they were supposedly arguing?"

"Either the old sod got the time wrong and he really did see Kinchloe, or that flippin' monocle of his needs a bloody good wash!" I said.

--x--

"So that's it?" Carter asked.

"What more were you expecting? I'm not going to narrate the whole bleedin' trial for you."

"I don't know. The end just kind of lacks something. More…panache."

Newkirk grew suspicious at the shifty glint in Carter's eye. "Are you having a laugh?" he demanded.

"No, no," Carter chuckled. "I really think it needs something else. I know! I know! Maybe the intrepid assistant could prove it was really Newkirk framing Lebeau for the whole thing! Or he heroically recaptures the Inspector when the Inspector makes a break for it! Or - " But he didn't get any further because Newkirk hit him with a pillow.

Two days later…

Carter was up and around - done with his malingering as Newkirk put it - and outside enjoying the sunshine. Newkirk on the other hand, was in the barracks and deeply immersed in a new mystery novel he'd found in the latest pile of books the Red Cross had sent, when Lebeau stormed in and shook his fist at him.

"Vous avez le cervau d'un sandwich au fromage!" he shouted angrily at Newkirk.

"Wot?!"

"You have the brain of a cheese sandwich!" Lebeau translated. Newkirk fumed.

"CARTER!"


Well, there you go: a nice long chapter to wrap everything up. Hope you enjoyed it!

A couple of people have mentioned that they were unfamiliar with this particular Sherlock Holmes story and that's because it's not technically canon. The original story "The Adventure of Foulkes Rath" was one of twelve stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's youngest son Adrian, along with the mystery writer John Dickson Carr, in the book The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes published in 1952. Each story was based on an unsolved case mentioned in the canon however, this one being for 'the Addleton tragedy' from The Golden Pince-Nez.

Obviously, I took a bit of licence in having Newkirk claim the story as his own, but since my story is set during the war, he couldn't claim to have read it. However, I took more licence by changes I made to the story: putting the whole thing in Newkirk's dialect, having the hero and not the sidekick tell the story, adding the characters of the Judge and the telegraph man (apologies to Baker fans for making him so cranky, but the part was supposed to go to Gruber), etc.

However, the biggest alteration I made was in changing the killer and his motives. Inspector Lestrade is not the killer in the original; the real killer is a character we don't meet for the first time until the posse actually goes the timber mill, which I felt was a little weak. It also left me with the problem of which Hogan's Heroes character to put in that spot. Because of the clues, he needed to be a different height from the main suspect, yet also needed to have a similar or rhyming name. Why am I telling you all this? Because it means I had to deviate from the plot quite a bit, so if some clue doesn't make sense, it's my fault and not the fault of Doyle and Carr.

Finally, my apologies to all Kinch fans. I'm sorry he didn't get any lines at all. Maybe in the next story.

And yes, I know the guys don't have any pillows, but I wanted Newkirk to be able to hit Carter with some force but not hurt him. And I also know Babe Ruth started off as a pitcher, so please no emails from baseball fanatics either.