Free The Bilbao Looking Glass by Charlotte MacLeod Page A

wouldn’t have gone to the expense of insuring them. Miffy couldn’t have had much more good stuff, though, or some of it would have been on view and Sarah would have remembered. She’d spent enough time staring at Miffy’s walls during her younger days. The burglar must have skimmed off the cream and left the less desirable pieces even though many of them were larger and more showy. This was a connoisseur’s crime. How could it fit in with the primitive barbarity of an axe murder?
    To believe Alice B. had come downstairs and surprised the robber, then stood patiently waiting in the dining room while he ran around back to the woodpile, fetched the axe, and came back to slaughter her was absurd. To suppose someone intending to steal precious, fragile items like that Bilbao looking glass would encumber himself at the outset with such a heavy, awkward weapon was even sillier.
    A knife would have been just as effective and a lot easier to manage. Alice B. had slews of fine French steel knives for her gourmet cooking. She’d kept them razor sharp as a cordon-bleu chef ought to, and ready to hand in wooden racks screwed to the kitchen wall. Anybody who knew the house well enough to ferret out its valuables could surely have laid hands on any knife he wanted, or a cleaver if he’d rather hack than stab.
    Was it possible two separate crimes had been committed on the same night? Could Alice B. have heard the first burglar leaving, perhaps, and come downstairs only to run into a second who’d had the same idea but a less polished approach?
    More likely, the knowledgeable thief had brought a helper. There’d have been considerable fetching and carrying involved even if the items taken weren’t large. That Bilbao looking glass alone would have been as much as most people would risk trying to handle at one time. What would be the point in stealing a thing like that if you smashed it getting it out to your car?
    They must have had a car, Sarah thought. That wouldn’t have presented any great problem. Miffy’s house wasn’t off in the woods like this one, but situated at the intersection of two roads down in the picturesque part of the old village. Cars were more common than not around there, especially now since the tourists had begun to arrive and there was plenty of hedge to hide one behind.
    Suppose the person inside, the one who knew his way around, had been handing loot out the dining room window to a confederate who was taking it to a conveniently parked vehicle. Suppose Alice B. had in fact come downstairs and grappled with the thief, who might even have been a woman no bigger than she. Seeing his partner in trouble, the outside man might have run to get the axe from the woodpile, climbed in the window, and struck Alice B.
    That could explain why the dining room silver hadn’t been taken. They’d have meant to get the valuable smaller items first, then scoop up the bulky ones on their way out. Once murder had been done, however, they wouldn’t have dared do anything but flee. There must have been a certain amount of noise. Maybe Alice had cried out, and they couldn’t be sure Miffy would still be deep enough in her drunken stupor not to hear.
    Would Alice B. have been reckless enough to attack a burglar single-handed, even if it was somebody she knew? She’d have been drinking, of course, but she wouldn’t have been drunk. Perhaps that had been one flaw in what must otherwise have been a well-planned crime. Because Miffy never went to bed sober if she could help it, everybody tended to take it for granted Alice B. didn’t, either.
    In fact, however, Alice B. had been clever about pretending to keep up with the rest of the crowd while secretly watering her drinks with innumerable ice cubes so that she’d be able to keep her wits together and not miss anything. Miffy’s brand of hospitality being what it was, most of her guests had probably gone home fairly well anaesthetized last night, but Alice B. ought to have