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The Curious Case of Miss Clementine Nimowitz (and her Exceedingly Tiny Dog)

by Alex Acks

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Once he was out of the hotel, Simms decided to make his walk a long one. The night air was pleasantly cool, and the parks in this section of the city were quite well maintained. It was nice to, for once, be able to take a stroll on a level path and without having to carry a machete as a precaution besides. The streetlights had come on and the streets were beginning to surge with people headed to supper appointments as he finally turned back toward the hotel, Chippy still eagerly bouncing ahead of him.

“Mister Smythe, a moment if you please?”

Simms managed to keep from jumping, but it was a near thing. Firmly reminding himself that he was Mister Smythe and there was absolutely nothing at all amiss in his lovely world of tea parties, he turned to face the source of that request—Morris Nimowitz. “Ah, Mister Nimowitz. It is jolly good to see you, if a bit…unexpected.” Simms cast a quick glance at Chippy, hoping for a growl or some canine indication of yes him, he’s the one wot did it, but the dog’s attention seemed wholly fixed on nosing a patch of verge.

Morris waved a hand. Whatever coat he’d worn tonight, the yellow light of the streetlamps rendered it a rather sinister black, his face above it shadowy. “I come by here often, just for a bit of time to myself.” Sweat glittered on his brow; if he’d been walking, he must have been doing so at a furious pace.

Simms would have had to be blind to miss that several of the man’s knuckles were split. “Been in a spot of bother?” he asked, nodding.

“What? Oh.” Morris shook his head. “I… had a small fit of temper this afternoon, I’m ashamed to admit. I thought it best to burn it off athletically.” He fell into brooding silence.

“Did—”

At which point, Morris burst out with, “It’s that impossible harridan, Deliah. She always does try to twist my buttons.”

Simms blinked owlishly, but decided to take a tack that had proven successful in the past. “Well, women tend to be like that.”

“She’s no woman. She’s a jackal that’s been trained to walk on its hind legs.”

“I say, Morris…”

Morris shook his head. “I’m sorry. We barely know each other, and I’m dragging you into the family muck. But your wife seems quite taken with her, and I’d worry about that, were I you.”

“Oh?”

“Unnatural ideas,” Morris said. “They’re like a disease, and the weaker sex does tend to fall prey to them.”

“Ah…” Simms nodded, hoping he looked suitably wise as he did so. “Does that mean your Grandaunt…?”

“She was always a bit funny, I’ll admit. Had some odd ideas, but everyone’s got one of those in the family. You just do your best to ignore them at Christmas. But when, well… I took a bit of a beating on some investments, she was willing to help us out with a bit of cash.”

Recalling what the Captain had said about the state of Morris’s dress and his house, Simms was forced to wonder if he was still making these bad investments. Or if “bad investments” was wealthy twit speak for “compulsive gambling.” “Oh?”

“And then Deliah showed up from one of those extended trips of hers and put some sort of poison in Grandaunt’s ear. Oh, she was still friendly enough, but then she turned tight with her money.” Morris snorted. “She said she wanted to set up a scholarship fund for girls, or some sort of greenhouse, or… well, it changed all the time. But it always had something to do with plants, the woman could never leave the sodding things alone. And she’d do it all through Deliah, you see, with her guidance. Grandaunt said she couldn’t keep the details straight in her own head any longer.”

“Seems like a good cause.”

“Help the huddled masses and leave your own blood to be eaten alive by creditors?”

That actually sounded just fine to Simms as well, but he firmly reminded himself that Mister Smythe had different priorities than Mister Simms. “Right. When you put it like that…ghastly.” At his feet, Chippy, who had been sniffing around, paused at Morris’s shoe and made an odd little noise.

“She would have been far better off letting me invest her money, and she’d wanted to. But after Deliah showed up, she changed her mind so suddenly. I can’t imagine what sort of nonsense my cousin poured into her ear.”

Simms nodded, hoping he’d managed to screw his face into something approximately sympathetic. “Ladies don’t seem to have a head for money, I’ll admit.”

“Indeed. But oh no, it was Deliah, Deliah, Deliah…” Morris looked down, sniffing and frowning.

Simms sniffed as well. There was suddenly a very particular and unpleasant sort of aroma in the air.

Morris looked up, mouth snapping shut in a look of rage for a moment. “Mister Smythe, I say!”

Simms looked down, just in time to see Chippy finish making a rather large, mushy, and redolent deposit on Morris’s shoe. So much for the dog not having an opinion of the man, he thought in near hysteria. Simms carefully cleared his throat, fighting to not smile. “Oh, I am sorry, Mister Nimowitz. I think the little chap must have eaten something naughty, to make a mess like that.”

Morris took a hasty step back. Simms caught a slight glitter, perhaps the hint of something slithering within the mess. Hastily he patted his pocket and offered Morris his handkerchief, which the man stared at in horror. “Your dog,” Morris ground out, “ruined my shoe!”

Simms stepped forward, carefully skirting the mess. His eyes watered from the smell, but that allowed him to hide the worst of it from view. “Frightfully sorry. You’ve no idea. Please, wipe it off as best you can and send the details of your size and the like to me at the hotel. I’ll buy you a new pair. I couldn’t possibly expect you to wear these again.”

Morris seemed to calm at that suggestion, perhaps at the prospect of having a brand new pair of—no doubt expensive, and Simms wagered, with the price further inflated—shoes he didn’t have to buy for himself. He snatched the handkerchief from Simms’s hand. “Not after the leather has been so…so traumatized.” Breathing pointedly through his mouth rather than his nose, he bent to mop at his shoe, and then tried to hand the handkerchief back to a horrified Simms before discarding it on the ground. “Good evening, Mister Smythe.”

Relieved, Simms nodded. “Good evening, Mister Nimowitz.” He resisted the urge to shoo the man away with his hands. Morris left quickly enough, walking awkwardly as if he was afraid to put any weight on the shoe.

Simms looked down at Chippy, who gave him a canine grin, tongue lolling. “And you, Mister Chippy. I don’t know if I ought to give you more of that jerky or set your bum on fire. How you produced something that massive, I can’t imagine. Not to mention the stench.” He carefully poked the discarded handkerchief over the worst of the mess with a bit of a stick from nearby. No, a stick was not going to cut it. Off they went in search of the nearest groundskeeping shed. Simms liberated a bucket and trowel, and returned to the site to dig for gold.

Simms had the bucket in one hand, another handkerchief covering its top in an ineffectual effort to hold in the smell. Chippy trotted happily alongside, looking disturbingly pleased with himself. Then again, Simms supposed, it was as if a great weight had left—or ejected—from the little animal. The lobby of the hotel was mercifully empty, though the clerk at the front desk jerked his head up in Simms’s wake, one hand covering his nose. He made it to the elevator before the man called for his attention, the words cut off by the doors closing.

As he held his breath for the next four floors, he was forced to wonder if this was perhaps not the wisest decision he could have made. Perhaps the stairs next time.

Oh, heaven forbid there’d be a next time.

Simms opened the door to the hotel room and paused, bucket and stench momentarily forgotten as he took in the overturned chair, the shattered vase, and Captain Ramos, a bloody handkerchief clutched to her nose, sitting in the middle of it all.

She turned toward him, grinning around the limp crimson cloth. “Ah, Simms,” she said. “I hope you had an interesting walk.”

“Not by your standards, I’d guess.” He held out the bucket toward her. Her eyebrows went up, presumably as the stink penetrated even her thoroughly abused nose. “But I got you some jewelry,” he said, deadpan. “Though I’m afraid you’ll have to take it as-is.”

---

Marta ventured out to hide the jewelry in one of their drop boxes before any other discussion was had, taking the most twisting and circuitous route she could find. Remembering her attacker’s frantic snatch for the satchel, she had little doubt the missing jewelry had been the aim as the most valuable things that she and Simms had liberated.

A thoughtful Simms greeted her upon her return. He’d at least swept all the debris out of the way and cleaned the blood from the floor before returning to his newspaper. Chippy lay sprawled across his lap, snoring gently. “Didn’t get to tell you before you ran off, but I saw Morris just now,” he said over the top of his paper.

Marta paused. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. He was a bit out of breath when we started talking, too.” Another glance. “Coincidence, that.”

Marta picked up the Compendium and retreated to her own bed to sit. “Sometimes a coincidence is just that.”

“Also had some freshly split knuckles.”

She grimaced, lightly touching her nose with one finger. It was going to take a lot of makeup to conceal the worst of the damage. “I’ll admit, Simms, the prospect of having had my nose broken by Morris Nimowitz is not one I relish.”

“The man is a twit.”

“For now, while we still have two operating hypotheses, let us leave it be.”

Simms grinned evilly at her. “You’re the boss. Oh, and two telegrams came. I tucked them into the book.”

She hurried to open the little volume, only to have Simms say, “She wrote it, apparently.”

“Wrote what?”

“The first telegram says that Clementine Nimowitz is George L. F. Kensington. Or rather he was her beard, I suppose.”

“Ah.” That, she had expected; it wasn’t exactly uncommon for a woman to publish under a man’s name in such circumstances. And that added some sense to the notes, to be certain; they were the changes to be made for the next edition of the book, presumably. Which would—

“And the second says that the pages for the third edition were turned in last week.”

—which would then make it the final project completed by Clementine Nimowitz before her death. “Oh my…” Marta breathed, ideas swirling through her mind as she connected this idea, of one last scholarly work completed, to the handwriting, the odd throw-away statements that had been made about Clementine. And why would a dedicated horticulturist be in a house without plants? Might she have given them all away first, wanting to see them well-looked-after? It added up to an interesting but still incomplete picture, the solid beginnings of why, ready to branch out into how and why now.

“Hm?”

“You said Miss Nimowitz’s maid was at Saint Joseph’s, correct?”

“Yes, but they said she was unconscious last they heard.”

“It’d be helpful if she was awake, but not necessary.” Marta shut the book. “We’ll be at the hospital as soon as the doors open for visiting hours.”

“Fine with me. Means I get to sleep in for once.” Simms stretched out his arms. “Dolly does like to get me up early.”

It was Marta’s turn to grin evilly. “Little Mister Chippy may have something to say about that.”

---

And indeed he did, twice during the night. But it was Marta who took him out for both walks. She had no idea how Dolly managed to wake her father as he claimed, considering he snored cheerfully on through whining and yelping and scratching at the door. She’d heard him once described as sleeping like the dead, though she’d never known a corpse to be so noisy.

When Simms finally did deign to crack an eyelid open, they had a strangely leisurely breakfast, coffee and soft-boiled eggs and shockingly nice steaks, to which Marta added a bowl of chili, much to Simms’s dismay. Leisurely or no, she dragged them promptly from the hotel in time to catch the trolley that would take them to St. Joseph’s. Chippy spent most of the journey in Simms’s arms, cheerfully covering his brown jacket with fine white hair and panting hotly against his ear.

The matron for the third floor took them to see Elizabeth Strickland with a murmured, “So good of you to visit. Poor lamb, I think she can hear you even now.”

That answered all Marta could have asked about the woman’s condition—still unhelpfully unconscious. And she did look a mess when they were shown into her section of the room, divided off by a series of curtains. Elizabeth Strickland had probably been a woman made pretty by animation; still and pale, she became wholly unremarkable, wisps of brown hair poking from under the bandages swaddling her head. Marta sincerely doubted the poor lady would ever hear anything again.

Simms doffed his hat, looking down at her. Chippy squirmed out of his hiding place in Simms’s coat and refused to hold still until set on the bed. There he snuffled at her fingers, nosing them disconsolately. “I’m sorry, little man,” Simms said, his voice gone rather hoarse. “I don’t think she’ll be waking up.”

Marta bent to peer at her. “I’m afraid I must agree. Nasty business. Simms. Keep watch at the door if you please.”

Without further ado, she retrieved a locked wooden chest from under the bed—the possessions Elizabeth had with her at the time of the accident. She made quick work of the flimsy lock with her picks and examined the contents. No clothes—those had likely been far too bloody to be worth keeping. A few bits of surprisingly high quality jewelry—those were in keeping with what she’d seen in Clementine’s home, so either the maid had been a thief, or her employer had believed in generous gifts. No sign of the envelope that Simms’s mailman had mentioned, suspiciously enough. Marta picked up the little leather handbag, noting a small bloodstain on one corner, and upended it onto the bed. A small mirror, cracked pocket watch, pen, paper, and key ring fell out. Marta gave the bag another little shake and one more key slithered onto the light blue hospital blanket, this one attached to a leather cord.

Marta picked it up, frowning. It was an unremarkable key, cheap and mass produced…just like the one she’d found in the Compendium. She retrieved the mold of the other key from her pocket and confirmed that, yes, they were the same.

“This,” Marta said, waggling the bit of metal in her fingers. “Quite literally the key. How frightful.”

“Someone has a sense of humor.”

“A terribly literal one.” She returned the rest of the items to the chest and re-locked it, and then stuffed it back under the bed. “What time is it, Simms?”

Obligingly, he checked his pocket watch. “Just gone half past nine.”

“There are rather a lot of banks in this area, I saw as we came in. Banks offering safe deposit boxes.” She turned the key in her fingers. There were many possibilities for such a key, but that one certainly fit the location. “The banks all ought to be open by now.” And for half an hour—they might already be too late. “Whoever attacked me last evening took an exact copy of that key from me, and has no doubt put it to use already or will soon. We’d best hurry.”

Only hurry was quite difficult, when one didn’t know where to aim hastened footsteps. Chippy trotted gamely along, fluffy tail high like a flag, as they crossed and re-crossed the broad square.

They found the correct bank on the fourth try, one reputable enough to trust but still small-time enough to warrant cheap keys and slightly shoddy locks. Confronted by the bank of safe deposit boxes within the vault, Marta referred to the Compendium. There were no numbers in the notes, but… Marta turned to the page of the Zacetachichi and snorted, a little shock running through her. “Oh, you rude thing,” she murmured. Yet that was a sense of humor she could certainly appreciate.

“Captain?”

Marta waved a hand to shush him. “Box 202, Simms.” The key proved to be a perfect fit for that lock, confirming what she now knew, the details sliding into place in her mind. Deliah must be quite good at disguise, to have gone about masquerading as Morris. And she was quite good at other things as well, Marta thought ruefully, lightly touching her still-aching nose.

“No envelope,” Simms said. “Just this.” He handed her a folded note.

In neat copper-plate handwriting now familiar from the notes in the Compendium, the note read:

Dearest “Mrs. Smythe:”

I’d like to thank you for retrieving my key. Breaking in to a bank vault is a messy proposition in the best of times, and I’ve a timetable.

If you would be so kind, I’d like my dog back now. I helped Grandaunt pick him out. Oh and I’d like my jewelry back as well. It’s part of my rightful inheritance, you know.

Sincerely,

Deliah

PS: I’ll be waiting at the little coffee shop across the square for the next hour. I’ll be ever so disappointed if I don’t see you.

Marta laughed, folding the note back up in her hands. “Rude indeed. Wonderfully rude.”

“What?”

“Fancy a spot of coffee, Simms? I’ve a few questions left I’d like answered.”

---

As promised, Deliah Nimowitz waited in the back corner of the coffee shop across the square. She took out her fan and waved it coquettishly at Marta and Simms as they approached. As soon as they were within sight, Chippy began tugging madly at his lead. After a hand wave from Marta, Simms shrugged and let him go; the little dog raced to cover the last bit of distance, the leash whipping and snapping behind him. He immediately squirmed into Deliah’s lap.

There was something satisfying to Marta, to see Deliah’s black mourning skirts get coated with dog fluff just as Simms’s jacket had. It made her look slightly less collected and smug. Deliah’s face was partially obscured by a black lace veil, though Marta could sense amusement crackling around her like an electric halo.

“Hello, little darling,” Deliah murmured to Chippy, and patiently allowed him to wash her chin. “Please do sit…well, come now, you might as well tell me your real names.”

“You haven’t figured that out yet?” Marta asked. “I’m a bit disappointed.”

“I have been a bit busy,” Deliah said tartly. “Though if the two of you are married, I’ll eat my fan.”

Simms snorted. “Do I look mad to you?”

Marta was fairly certain that was supposed to be her line. But amusing enough, normally their bickering seemed to render their occasional role as a married couple more believable. “Captain Marta Ramos, at your service.” She swept Deliah a bow, doffing a hat she wasn’t actually wearing, and sat. “And my associate, whom I haven’t enough breath to name, and he’d rather you just call him Simms anyway.”

Deliah’s fan snapped open and fluttered, perhaps obscuring a smile. “Oh, I am honored,” she said.

Simms had remained standing; he glanced between the two women warily. “So she murdered Clementine Nimowitz?” His eyebrows went up as if to ask and we’re going to have coffee with her?

“Do sit down, Simms.” Marta patted the chair next to her. She turned her attention to Deliah, meeting those remarkable tawny eyes again. The veil was no impediment at all. “Miss Clementine Nimowitz killed herself. Correct, Deliah?” With a bit of post-mortem assistance, obviously. But the intentional nature of it seemed clear: sending the maid away on an errand, giving away all of her no-doubt beloved plants, finishing the book that had been her life’s work first.

Deliah nodded. Something tightened in her expression as if in pain, though Marta now knew better than to take any such tells at face value. “I was simply there to make certain it wouldn’t get… ugly… after.”

“It was plenty ugly when we saw it,” Simms muttered.

But they all knew it could have been immeasurably worse, all three glancing at Chippy.

“Also, the intention was to give it the appearance of a murder, since she didn’t want to…shame…the family with a suicide. Always the bloody family and the reputation. And now you’ll ask why, I suppose,” Deliah said, sighing. “That’s rather personal…”

“I know why already.” Marta leaned forward, elbows on the table. “She’d become senile, hadn’t she?”

Deliah drew back a bit. Marta took oblique satisfaction in that. “How did you guess? The entire family had conspired to keep it quiet. One of the few things upon which we could agree.”

“I don’t guess,” Marta said. “I might have ignored the comments here and there about her having gone a bit forgetful or odd, since that’s the sort of thing people often say behind the backs of the elderly. But the corrections written in the Compendium were inescapable. She’d only partially updated the book before she began to lose herself, hadn’t she?”

Deliah’s voice was a bit hollow when she answered. “Just control of her hands, at first. I helped her with the last of it, taking dictation when she could focus. She knew she was struggling, but she wanted it finished.” Her delicate features thinned out with sorrow. “She was so frustrated. Such an intellect, and then…”

That was a specter Marta hoped would never haunt her, though she did also wish to live to a ripe old age. While not normally given to sympathy, it still struck home, though not enough to put her off her line of reasoning. “And knowing her weakness, the less scrupulous members of your family sought to control her.”

“Yes.” The word was a venomous hiss.

“But not you yourself?” Marta raised an eyebrow.

“You took the evidence yourself. The will that named me as heir, which Morris so vilely attempted to replace, was signed before any symptoms began to intrude upon her life.”

Which they had only Deliah’s word for, not that Marta felt a compelling urge to make herself magistrate over this familial squabble. The questions were being answered, and that was her primary concern. Next to her, she could all but feel Simms radiating discomfort at the implication. “I can only presume that Elizabeth Strickland’s final errand was to take a new copy of the will to the safe deposit box, then.”

“Ah, Elizabeth,” Deliah sighed. “That was unfortunate. She was a good woman, and to be felled by random chance…” She stroked Chippy’s head. “That was why Chippy was left in the house, you see. She was supposed to have been back, perhaps an hour after the deed was done, to find her mistress murdered. But when she didn’t return, well…I could hardly be the one to find her just on my own. Morris had already been such an ass about me visiting Grandaunt that I had to start creeping about disguised as him to do so.”

Marta snorted. “I don’t think you had to make him your disguise.”

Despite the grim topic, Deliah laughed lightly. “Well, true. It was just a bit more fun that way.”

“Why, then, take his now-invalid will?”

There was something very predatory about Deliah’s smile. “So I could tuck it away in Grandaunt’s house where he would find it. I want to see the look on his face when his hopes are thoroughly dashed at the magistrate’s bench.”

Ah, family. The source of such warm feelings. “And just what are you, Deliah?”

The smile turned secretive. “A spy, dear Captain.”

“For whom?” Oh, but that was fun.

“For whoever can afford me.” Deliah retrieved a small filigree watch from an inner pocket of her jacket, checking the time before snapping it shut. “And with that, I’m afraid I must go. I’ve an appointment with Grandaunt’s solicitor. You took longer than I expected.” But rather than rise immediately, she leaned forward, Chippy momentarily hidden by her bosom. “But I’ll take my jewelry back now. That set was Grandaunt’s favorite.”

Marta spread her hands, this time her smile taking on a smug air. “I no longer have it, I’m afraid. I’ve sent it to a safe place, but you know how this goes. Sometimes things simply get lost.”

Anger flashed hotly in Deliah’s eyes for a moment, and then she laughed, sitting back again. “I should have made my request before telling you of my profession, shouldn’t I?”

“Wouldn’t have made a bit of difference, I’m afraid. You’ve already made quite an impression on me.” Marta resisted the urge to touch her nose.
Deliah set Chippy down on the ground and rose to her feet. Automatically, Marta rose as well. Deliah stepped around the table, putting them in closer proximity than was probably necessary. A stray corner of Marta’s mind noted, again, that Deliah smelled quite lovely. “Well, then. As a personal favor to me, would you mind looking for it?”

“Well, we don’t normally take jobs…” Marta drawled. “We’re pirates. We tend to take rather than return. But…”

“I take personal favors rather seriously.” Deliah reached out as if to pick a bit of fluff from the bodice of Marta’s dress, but instead leaned in more closely.

“I—”

Deliah proceeded to cut off the conversational riposte Marta had prepared by kissing her, a technique no one had ever dared try before.

A moment later, Marta caught Deliah’s wrist, pulling her hand away from the pocket sewn on the inside of her jacket. “Naughty, naughty,” she said.

“Well, I did have to try.”

“I don’t—”

Deliah gave her a particularly wicked smile and kissed her again.

As gambits went, Marta decided after a moment, she could get to like this one, particularly when it involved such soft lips and—oh my—a very clever tongue, nearly so clever as the exceedingly attractive mind behind it all.

After a long moment in which Marta heard nothing but the thud of her own heart and the sound of her breath rushing, Deliah pulled back. Delicately, she reached up to touch a finger just to the side of Marta’s nose. “More makeup, dear Captain. You’re still looking a bit squashed. I’d offer to kiss it better, but I think your man Simms might have an apoplectic fit.” She turned to go, Marta’s hand falling away—when, exactly, had she gripped the edge of Deliah’s sleeve like that?—and said over her shoulder in a thoroughly amused tone, “I look forward to hearing from you.”

For once robbed entirely of words, Marta watched her go silently. Deliah did not glance back, her skirts swishing gracefully as she walked away, though Chippy did cast a few little looks toward Simms before bounding happily along in her wake. Only when Deliah had left the shop, her departure announced by the tinkling of the bell, did Marta murmur, “Oh, you wicked creature.”

Simms looked rather like someone had hit him in the back of the head with a brick. At some point he’d risen to his feet—oh, the dear man, had he thought Deliah was going to attack her?—but now his legs seemed to no longer be prepared to hold him, and he thumped back down into his seat. “Well,” he said after a long moment, his tone shocked and affronted. Had he been an elderly society maven, Marta would have expected him to be clutching at his pearls. “Well, now I have seen everything.”

“Oh, I hardly think that, Simms. I’ve gotten the impression there’s quite a bit more to it.” Marta sank back down to her own chair, carefully licking her lips. A thoughtful smile turned up the corners of her mouth as she considered the jewelry, the opportunities, the chance to work both with and against someone of that caliber—someone of that caliber with such gorgeous eyes and clever lips. “I’m certainly looking forward to finding out.”