More Twisted

inscribing detective asked.
    “’E didn’t say,” Sloat admitted.
    “Convenient,” the pale detective said wryly. It was clear that they didn’t believe the ruffian.
    Goodcastle tried to keep a curious and cautious expression on his face. In fact, he was wracked by anxiety, wondering if he could pull off this little theater. He’d had to act fast to save himself. As he’d told Sloat he was going to treat Scotland Yard to a taste of their own medicine—but not to forsake his homeland and flee to France, which he’d decided he could never do. No, he’d use evidence to connect Sloat to the burglary—through a fabricated story about the music box with the hidden compartment on the one hand and, on the other, making certain Sloat took the incriminating money purse from Goodcastle at the Green Man.
    But would the police accept the theory?
    It seemed for a moment that they would. But just as Goodcastle began to breathe somewhat easier, the chief inspector turned quickly to him. “Please, sir. Your hands?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I will examine your hands. One final test in this curious case. I am not yet completely convinced the facts are as they seem.”
    “Well, yes, of course.”
    Goodcastle held his palms out, struggling to keep them steady. The detective looked them over. Then he looked up, frowning. After a moment he lowered his head again and smelled Goodcastle’s palm. He said to Sloat, “Now yours.”
    “Listen ’ere, coppers, you bloody well ain’t—”
    But the constables grabbed the man’s beefy hands and lifted them for the chief inspector, who again examined and sniffed. He nodded and then turned slowly to Goodcastle. “You see, the Westphalian ring is of a unique design—silver and gold, unusual in metal craft. Gold, as you know, needs no polishing to prevent tarnish. But silver does. Mayhew told us that the ring had been recently cleaned with a particular type of silver polish that is scented with perfume derived from the lily flower. It is quite expensive but well within Mayhew’s means to buy liberally for his staff to use.” Then he turned toward Sloat. “Your hands emit a marked scent of lily and display some small traces of the off-white cream that is the base for the polish, while Mr. Goodcastle’s do not. There’s no doubt, sir. You are the thief.”
    “No, no, I am wronged!”
    “You may make your case before the judges, sir,” the light-haired policeman said, “from the dock.”
    Goodcastle’s heart pounded fiercely from this final matter—about the polish. He’d nearly overlooked it but had decided that if the detectives were now so diligent in their use of these minuscule clues to link people to the sites of crimes, Goodcastle needed to be just as conscientious. If a burglar could leave evidence during the commission of a felony, he might also pick up something there that might prove equally damning. He thought back to the ring and Mayhew’s dressing chamber. He recalled that he’d recognized the scent of Covey’s Tarnish-Preventing Cream in the velvet-lined boxes. On the way to the Green Man, he’d bought some, slathered it liberally on his palm. Shaking Sloat’s hand to seal their agreementhad transferred some to the ruffian’s skin. Before returning to his shop, Goodcastle had scrubbed his own hands clean with lye soap and discarded the remaining polish.
    “Cooperate, sir, and it will go easier on you,” the hatted detective said to Sloat.
    “I’m the victim of a plot!”
    “Yes, yes, do you think you’re the first brigand ever to suggest that? Where is the ring?”
    “I don’t know anything of any ring.”
    “Perhaps we’ll find it when we search your house.”
    No, Goodcastle thought, they wouldn’t find the ring. But they would find a half dozen other pieces stolen by Goodcastle in various burglaries over the past year. Just as they’d find a crude diagram of Robert Mayhew’s apartment—drawn with Sloat’s own pencil on a sheet of Sloat’s own paper. The burglar had planted them there this afternoon after he’d met with the ruffian at the Green Man (taking exemplary care this time to leave no traces that would link him to that incursion).
    “Put him in darbies and take him to the jail,” the pale officer ordered.
    The constables slapped irons on the man’s wrists and took him away, struggling.
    Goodcastle shook his head. “Do they always protest their innocence so vehemently?”
    “Usually. It’s only in court they turn