The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues Read Online Free PDF Page B

can’t patent it or put it on the market. Of course, he could take the chemist to court, but that would take years. Well, you can figure out the rest. The widow doesn’t have years to wait. The formula works, she knows that; she also knows it could make millions. So, she lends him the ten grand and becomes part owner of the formula.”
    “And that’s the last the widow sees of her money,” Garson guessed, “and the hairdresser.”
    Quinn nodded. “Not only that. Three days after the treatment each of the widows wakes up bald. Bald as a billiard ball.”
    Garson didn’t seem especially thrilled at the prospect of interviewing three bald widows. “Might as well bring them up,” he said unenthusiastically. “All three together.”
    “One at a time is how we usually do it,” Quinn explained. “The victims can influence one another’s testimony or start arguing, and then what do you have?”
    “The truth,” Garson replied, donning his costume.
     
    In paint-smeared smock and French beret, Garson bowed to the three wigged widows. “Welcome, mesdames. It is indeed a pleasure having three such lovely ladies grace my humble atelier.” He kissed their hands.
    The women giggled; the chief snickered. Dickory found this new role humiliating. Garson was acting out a tourist’s idea of a bohemian painter.
    “My, what an artistic place you have here,” said the red-wigged widow, gazing up at the skylight.
    “So this is Greenwich Village,” the blonde said.
    The brunette pointed to the manikin. “Would you just look at this big jockey doll? Have you ever seen anything so quaint?”
    The suave artist escorted his chattering guests to the straight-backed chairs between the easels. “Permit me to say how truly sorry I was to learn of your misfortune. None but the basest of criminals could have committed such an outrage on three such charming women. Acting out of the noblest charity, you have not only lost your piggy banks, but have been brutalized to boot.”
    A tear trickled down the cheek of the blonde-wigged widow; the redhead blinked at the dashing painter with gratitude. No one at the police station had treated them with such sympathy and understanding. Garson, with all his fakery, was soothing the widows’ pain.
    “Poor mesdames, I know how difficult this will be for you, but we must now speak about that despicable hairdresser. It is the only way we can get your money back, so please try to remember all the details, trivial as they may seem. My apprentice will take notes from which I will later paint a portrait and which you may then have to verify.”
    The widows were agreeable. The questioning began.
    Garson asked the widow in the brown wig about the size of the horrible hairdresser.
    “Not very large,” she replied. “I’d say about five-feet six-inches tall.”
    “More like five-ten,” said the short widow in the red wig. “And slim.”
    “Francis was five-seven or -eight,” said the blonde-wigged one.
    Notebook on her lap, Dickory sighed at the widows’ lack of observation as she wrote down the various heights.
    Garson asked for the hairdresser’s full name.
    “Francis White.”
    “Francis Black.”
    “Francis Green.”
    Quinn’s cigar looked like an exclamation point at the end of his “I told you so” smirk. Wanting no part in this unprofessional interrogation, he left the arguing group to roam about the studio floor.
    “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Garson said weakly. “We all agree that the hairdresser’s first name is Francis. And I’m sure we will soon agree about his size.”
    “It’s difficult,” the blonde apologized. “You see, most of the time I was sitting and Francis was standing behind me. We did most of our talking into the mirror.”
    “Aha!” Garson exclaimed. “Then we shall recreate the scene of the crimes.”
    The chief of detectives groaned from the library.
    Garson rolled the mirror across the floor and placed it before the seated women as first he, then