Casebook 1: The Open-and-Shut Case - 1.3[index]

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An intruder had broken into the vault of the central branch of Helflemeny & Kimlico. The alarm had triggered, closing the door to the vault and trapping the culprit inside.

Helflemeny got there first, and, with the police in tow, attempted to open the vault. But he couldn’t. The combination had been changed. It was at this point that my superintendent had been called. And so, a little over an hour later, I arrived.

We checked over the security tapes: a man enters the building, climbing in through a skylight, and makes his way down to the basement. Without hesitating, the man enters the combination to the vault, heaves open the door and walks in. Until then, no alarm had sounded, but immediately and without obvious reason, the alarms activate, and the door slams shut. From then on, nothing occurs until the manager arrives on the scene with the police.

I asked Helflemeny about the combination; only two people knew it: Helflemeny and Kimlico. Kimlico was in Japan on business, and Helflemeny was halfway through a gala dinner when his beeper alerted him. I wrote this in my notebook. When I turned the page, out fell the piece of paper from inside the fish and fluttered to the floor. As I picked it up, a strange and ridiculous thought entered my mind. The thought was this: ‘What if it’s not a fish?’