The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin

the last lines of his limericks different from the first; whereas the fact is—”
    “Yes, yes,” said Cadogan impatiently, taking the newspaper cutting from his pocket book. “I see what you mean. ‘Ryde, Leeds, West, Mold, Berlin’. Some fantastic method of designating people by means of limericks.”
    “M’m.” Fen scrabbled through the pages. “And I somehow darkly suspect that our Mr. Sharman is one of them. Look here—there was an Old Person of Mold who shrank from sensations of cold; so he purchased some muffs, some furs, and some fluffs, and wrapped himself up from the cold. In the picture he looks like a sort of globular bear. doesn’t that fit?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “Moreover, Mr. Sharman came into a substantial legacy last night. And so did some others, apparently.”
    “Ryde, Leeds, West, and Berlin.”
    “Exactly. The Old Man of the West, you remember, wore a pale, plum-coloured vest—”
    “There was another, wasn’t there, who never could get any rest.”
    “Yes, but they set him to spin on his nose and chin, and there’s nothing distinctive about that, except therapeutically.”
    “Ah.” Cadogan paused and reflected that he had drunk too much. “What about Ryde?”
    “There was a Young Lady of Ryde,” Fen read after some further search, “whose shoe-strings were seldom untied. She purchased some clogs and some small spotted dogs, and frequently walked about Ryde. It really isn’t uncommon, you know, for people’s shoe-strings to be seldom untied, and clogs are scarcely conceivable. Which leaves the small spotted dogs.”
    “I remember Berlin.”
    “So do I. He was an Old Man whose form was uncommonly thin…” For the first time Fen hesitated. “It does all sound a bit wild, doesn’t it?”
    “Well, what’s your idea?”
    “I haven’t any really.” Fen considered. “It’s just this rather shaky train of correspondences; Miss Snaith—comic verse—Rosseter—advertisement—Sharman’s inheritance. But I confess it had occurred to me that Sharman and the ‘others’ he talked about might be the legatees in case Miss Tardy didn’t put in her claim.”
    “But they aren’t. Rosseter is.”
    “On the face of it, yes.” Taking a cigarette from a gold case, Fen put it slowly into his mouth. “There are such things as secret trusts, you know. You leave your money to one person and direct him to pass it on to another—with certain safeguards to make sure he does. In that way the general public can’t find out who’s getting it.”
    “But why on earth should Miss Snaith go in for such a rigmarole?”
    “I don’t know.” Fen lit his cigarette and tried to blow a smoke-ring. “I dare say Rosseter could tell us, but he won’t. A heel,” he added, being somewhat prone to out-of-date Americanisms.
    “Nor will Sharman,” Cadogan said gloomily. His face lightened as he observed a popular woman novelist stumble on getting into the lift. “I tried.”
    “Oh, you’ve been blundering about, have you,” said Fen with interest, “like a bull in a china shop? Well, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t let anvthing out, anyway.”
    “By the way, why did you foist him on that undergraduate?”
    “Chiefly to keep him under surveillance while I was talking to you.”
    “I see. Well, we’ve only got to find a man with a plum-coloured vest, a man who’s uncommonly thin, a girl with some small spotted dogs, a—by the way, what about Leeds?”
    “Her head was infested with beads.”
    “My dear Gervase,” said Cadogan, “it’s all quite fantastic and hopeless.”
    But Fen shook his head. “Not entirely,” he said. “If we can discover a beautiful shop-girl with blue eyes and a small spotted dog… Let’s start now.”
    “Start? Now?”
    They started.

5. The Episode of the Immaterial Witness
    Considering the matter afterwards, tediously rehearsing it to bored or frankly incredulous audiences, Cadogan became eventually convinced that this was by far the most