Murder Impossible Read online

'I am surprised,' was Bachoffner's reply. 'I was unaware that you knew of my existence.'

  'Miss Pettigrew spoke of you on the night of the dreadful occurrence that is, doubtless, responsible for your present visit,' explained Saxham. 'She desired that a telegram be dispatched to you. I at once recalled the name.'

  'Ah,' said the other, 'now I understand. That wire reached me at my chambers in time for me to catch the midnight train for Rugby. I called them up at nearly three o'clock in the morning.'

  Saxham made no reply, so Bachoffner continued slowly:

  'I came straightaway in search of you, on hearing of this astounding arrest, knowing that you viewed the body immediately after death. Tell me frankly: do you consider it possible, apart from the unthinkable nature of such a crime, that Miss Pettigrew could have murdered her uncle?’

  The doctor paused for a moment, as though to carefully select his words, surrounding himself with smoke clouds.

  'Judging from what I saw,' he admitted cautiously, 'I do not for a moment believe that she was in any way concerned.'

  Bachoffner passed his tongue over his dry lips, and clutched the arm of his chair nervously. He leant forward, his dark face wearing a curiously set expression.

  'You have a theory?' he suggested softly. 'Now that a woman's life is at stake, tell me what it is.'

  I saw Saxham glance sharply towards him and then turn his eyes away again from the concentrated gaze of the visitor.

  'Having had no means of verifying any theory which I may have formulated,' he answered, never for a moment committing himself, 'I really cannot make any definite statement.'

  That seemed to irritate Bachoffner. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled almost contemptuously.

  'Is she, then, to hang,' he harshly demanded, 'when there is one man who can save her and who yet declines to speak?'

  'Why do you assert,' asked Saxham, 'that I can save her?'

  'Because,' said Bachoffner tensely, 'you know that a hypodermic syringe was not used to inject the venom!'

  Some fleeting expression showed upon my friend's face. An instant later it had gone, and he was calmly puffing at his corncob.

  'I am afraid,' he replied, 'you are better informed than I. Is it alleged that a hypodermic syringe was employed?'

  'It is because such an instrument has been found in her possession that she is now under arrest,' was the answer. 'Yet I know well that she has had the instrument for a long time. Being a victim to neuralgia, she has, unhappily, become addicted to the morphia habit. I had hoped to cure her, when my position justified such stern measures as alone could prove effective; but unless her innocence can speedily be proved, the cure will be brought about in another way!'

  Saxham nodded, and screwed the wooden stem firmly into the yellow bowl of his pipe.

  'In your opinion,' he remarked 'a hypodermic syringe was not employed?'

  'Heavens!' cried Bachoffner, springing from his chair. 'I, with my poor knowledge of such things, can answer that question! I, who but saw the body for a moment! I, who have no M.D. after my name! Do you, a man that professes to be read in medicine, to be qualified in the science of poison and antidote, stand here and plead ignorance on such a point?''

  My friend was in no way perturbed. Bachoffner stood before him, with his black brows drawn into one continuous straight line, and his deep set eyes blazing furiously. He was obviously a hot tempered man, and Saxham's seeming callousness had fired him to passion.

  'You see,' said the doctor, 'I was not present at the postmortem.'

  'Postmortem!' rapped the other. 'You saw the body directly after death—only a few minutes after! If you knew anything of snake poisons, that would be enough.'

  'Snake poisons?' queried Saxham.

  'I said snake poisons!' Bachoffner repeated furiously. 'I am of half Indian parentage; I have lived in a country where many hundreds die every year as Mr. Pettigrew died. When a man has been bitten by a snake, I can tell that it is so. I do not talk nonsense of hypodermic syringes!'

  'I must apologize,' Saxham said soothingly, 'if I have unintentionally ruffled you; but may I venture to point out the improbability of your theory? Where could such a creature have come from? Where have gone?'

  Bachoffner's foot tapped the floor impatiently. 'You are not prepared to stake your professional reputation upon the point?' he asked fiercely. 'I fear not,' replied the doctor.

  At that our visitor, with some muttered remark, clapped his soft hat upon his head, and went out without a word of apology or farewell.

  This strange termination of the interview greatly surprised me; but Saxham merely smiled, and knocked out the smoking ashes from his pipe. He was quietly reloading, when again the bell rang, and I turned to him with the words:

  'He's come back!'

  'Perhaps,' said my friend, and went out to the door.

  A moment later Inspector Pepys stood in the room.

  'Good evening, gentlemen,' he began. 'I'm sorry to trouble, so late; but I wanted to ask, if it isn't private, what Mr. Goree Bachoffner came about?'

  Saxham proffered a box of cigarettes.

  'Thinking of arresting him?' he inquired genially. 'Nothing like a broad mind in these matters—a really comprehensive outlook.'

  Pepys made a slight grimace, detecting the irony in this remark.

  'Well, sir,' he said, 'the case is a very extraordinary one, and I was coming to you, anyway; but seeing our German friend running up here, I waited till he came out again, not wishing to interrupt.'

  For the second time that evening Saxham's opinion was solicited upon the matter of Cyrus Pettigrew's death, on this occasion he being invited to testify that a hypodermic syringe had been employed!

  'It's a funny thing for a young woman to carry about,' continued the inspector; 'and, when you come to think of it, no one else could very well have got into the carriage and out again. She inherits all his money, too.'

  'There are several objections to the theory,' Saxham assured him, after a pause. 'It is not likely, for instance, that she would carry such incriminating evidence about with her after the crime. Also, she is addicted to morphia. Any physician will tell you that.'

  Inspector Pepys did not seem too well pleased.

  'But a hypodermic syringe must have been used!' he persisted.

  'There were several punctures,' said the doctor; 'that rather militates against the idea. What's the evidence against Bachoffner?'

  Pepys started slightly.

  'Excuse me, sir,' he explained, 'but I didn't say I had any. As he's engaged to Miss Pettigrew, I've been keeping an eye on him, thinking he might be in her confidence. Even if I'd an atom of evidence against him, which I've not, the fact that he was in his rooms in Fig Tree Court when Miss Pettigrew's wire came from Rugby would clear him. I certainly thought they might be in it together, she doing the dirty work, and so I looked into the matter. He took in the telegram himself.'

  'Ah!' commented Saxham thoughtfully. 'He seemed very cut up this evening. In his opinion, Mr. Pettigrew died from snakebite.'

  'Snake bite be hanged!' responded Pepys. 'Of course he'd try to clear her. He's marrying a cool five thousand a year there! You may depend he's not anxious to see a big fortune slip through his fingers.'

  'You don't credit him with very exalted motives,' I said.

  'No, I don't,' replied the inspector. 'From all I hear, he's no great catch. I'm surprised at any girl standing him; but she seems to be more afraid of him than anything else. I wonder if he had influence enough over her mind—'

  'That's hypnotism,' Saxham interrupted. 'You're getting in a bit deep.'

  The Inspector rose from his chair, with something very like a sigh. 'Then you're not of opinion that a hypodermic syringe was used?' he asked.

  'No,' said Saxham slowly, and with the air of a man who has come to a momentous decision. 'I think a very extraordinary thing was responsible for Mr. Pettigrew's death. Mr Bachoffner, I believe, could assist us, if he felt so disposed.'

  'B
ut,' cried Pepys, 'he'd move heaven and earth to prove her innocent!'

  ‘I believe you,' admitted the doctor; 'but suppose we take the liberty of calling upon him, as time is precious, and putting a few plain questions.'

  This suggestion came as a great surprise to me. 'Why didn't you put the questions when he was here?' I demanded.

  'Because I had not made up my mind,' was the vague reply.

  Pepys and I, the inspector as mystified as myself, accompanied the doctor into Fleet Street and to Goree Bachoffner's rooms in Fig Tree Court. After some little delay, our knocking and ringing was answered by Bachoffner in person. He gave a start of surprise at seeing us, but almost immediately invited us to step inside. His room was very disorderly, being a litter of books and papers, with a few strange looking Oriental ornaments, and very little furniture. A handsome cabinet, apparently of Burmese work, stood against the wall between the windows.

  Bachoffner was far from cordial, but stood leaning against a chair, never asking us to be seated. Saxham, however, opened the conversation blandly.

  'My friend Inspector Pepys,' he said, 'is going fishing. We thought you might be so good as to lend him a rod.'

  This singular remark amazed the inspector and myself; but its effect on Bachoffner was truly astonishing. It might have been his death sentence, so ghastly was the hue that crept over his tawny skin. His face assumed a mottled appearance, while he stared glassily at the smiling speaker.

  'You're mad!' he gasped hoarsely, his eyes straying first to the big cabinet and then towards a corner in which I noticed, for the first time, the joints of a fishing rod. 'You're mad! I was here in my rooms when—'

  He checked himself suddenly, and stood there staring, a picture of terror stricken humanity.

  'When the telegram arrived?' suggested Saxham softly. 'Quite so. You have already been good enough to tell us that. But, as I chance to know, owing to Miss Pettigrew being taken ill again, the said telegram was not dispatched from Rugby until considerably after ten o'clock. It probably did not reach Fleet Street until eleven or later; and I would point out—a circumstance that my friend the inspector has somehow overlooked—that even allowing for five minutes' delay at Rugby, the 9.5 would reach Euston before eleven o'clock. In fact, there is no doubt that you got back in your rooms in time to provide yourself with this excellent alibi.'

  Bachoffner grasped the chair fiercely.

  'It's a lie!' he almost screamed. 'A cursed ingenious he! I was not on the train when it reached Rugby.'

  'Neither was the queer complexioned, auburn haired young man who so alarmed a certain nervous passenger,' Saxham pursued. 'That particular grease paint known as "two-and-a-half," well rubbed into such a skin as yours, would produce a highly interesting effect, and would moreover, be imperceptible at night. A fair wig, too, will do wonders, particularly in conjunction with pince-nez.'

  The man who was thus accused, after a rapid glance around the room, sank into a chair like one half stunned, still keeping his strange gaze fixed upon the doctor. I saw Pepys sidle to the door and take up his stand there, while Saxham's manner suddenly changed, and he strode forward, standing before Bachoffner with blazing eyes.

  'You cowardly, callous hound!' he said quietly. 'You trapped that poor girl into an engagement to marry you, and then, finding her guardian's objections insurmountable, and his niece wise enough to decline marriage without his consent, you determined to remove the only barrier that stood between you and a fortune. Had you been successful in this instance, probably your wife would have been the next victim.'

  Bachoffner did not move.

  'How many times you travelled, disguised, between London and Birmingham in the next carriage to Mr Pettigrew, waiting your chance, I cannot tell; but when, at last, only one nervous passenger stood between you and the achievement of your murderous scheme, you even took the risk of arrest as a madman and inevitable discovery, rather than let this opportunity go by. Shall I tell you how you took advantage of your victim's habit of travelling with one window open? How you risked your wretched life on the footboard of the train outside Northampton? How, having accomplished your purpose, you returned to the second class compartment, to leave the train and slip away when the alarm was given? How you so timed the murder that by hurrying on foot into Rugby you caught the 9.5 for Euston, quiedy sitting there whilst the car containing the dead man was detached from the Birmingham train?'

  'Good God!' cried the accused man, throwing wide his arms in a frenzied gesture. 'How do you know!'

  'I did not know,' said Saxham. 'Certain data, I collected; the rest I assumed. But you have confessed now. You all but did so in Carey Street tonight. It has been, perhaps, for the best that Miss Pettigrew was arrested. To see the very perfection of your plans leading to the ruin of the scheme proved too complex a situation even for you. You betrayed yourself, Mr. Goree Bachoffner, making a certainty of a suspicion that I had hardly hoped to confirm.'

  There was no doubt whatever that Bachoffner was guilty; but lacking the singular penetration and abnormal reasoning powers of my scientific friend, I was still hopelessly in the dark respecting the actual mode of Mr. Pettigrew's death. I was soon enlightened.

  'So confident were you in your own devilish cunning,' Saxham resumed suddenly, 'that you even left this here—where it struck my eye directly I entered the room, supplying the missing link and suggesting my opening remark.'

  As he spoke, he stepped to the cabinet, and took in his hand the top joint of a fishing rod, evidently a part of that which I had noted in the corner. A loop of black silk ran through the little brass ring at the top.

  'What thing was it that you attached to this and held through the open carriage window so that it settled on your victim's arm?' he demanded.

  Bachoffner looked up, with a face dreadful to see, and then laughed with an ever rising cadence. The shocking peals rang through the building.

  'You shall see!' he shrieked, springing past Saxham to the cabinet. 'You shall see!'

  Before we had time to conceive what he was about to do, he opened a drawer and threw back a glass lid, thrusting in his hand and withdrawing a length of black silk.

  At sight of the hideous thing which hung suspended at the end a sudden nausea came upon me. It was a huge insect of a dirty grey colour—a loathsome thing with great hairy, clutching legs and a bloated, scaly body the size of a small hen egg.

  'This is my sweet friend that kissed the poor Pettigrew!' he cried, his eyes glaring madly; and suddenly jerking the unclean creature into his hand, he ran through an open door that evidently led to his bedroom, laughing discordantly.

  'After him,' said Saxham; 'but don't let that fearful insect spring upon you! It is a Burmese spider, of a species related to the tarantula. Its bite is certain death.'

  The inner room was in darkness, but the doctor took the shaded lamp in his hand and entered. Pepys and I followed, to find Bachoffner writhing on the bed, with his fearful pet in his right hand. It was striking at his bare wrist again and again.

  As he caught sight of Saxham standing in the door with the lamp uplifted, he gave a maniacal shriek, tore the infuriated insect from his hand and hurled it across the room. A shudder of revulsion ran through me as the thing fell, with a dull thud, almost at my feet—dead.

  When we turned again to the bed, a glance sufficed to show that the master, in the throes of an agonizing death which he had so callously visited upon a fellow being, had but a few minutes to outlive his venomous servant.

  JOSEPH COMMINGS

  Ghost in the Gallery

  In the annals of Impossible Crime fiction, Joe Commings is a very underrated writer. Strike that. In the annals of Impossible Crime fiction Joe Commings is the most underrated writer.

  Consider the evidence. Starting with his first published short story, 'Murder Under Glass', in March, 1947, Joe produced a series of beautifully crafted tales of Impossible Crime which had stretched to almost forty by the time the last appeared in November, 1984. And w
hereas some authors can, like Joe, hit on clever and inventive plotlines, they rarely augment them with punchy dialogue, knockabout action and three dimensional characters—all of which are to be found in Joe's entertaining and ingenious tales.

  Take his main series detective for instance, US Senator Brooks U. Banner. His entry in Detectives' Who's Who lists among his past careers auctioneer, sideshow barker and county sheriff, while his hobbies include magic tricks, mechanical toys, watching sport and reading comic books. . . and solving locked room murders. It doesn't, naturally enough, mention that he weighs near as damn it 300 pounds, smokes vile smelling Pittsburgh stogies, eats like a horse and sports a line in clothing—frockcoat as big as a puptent, string tie, peppermint striped shirt, baggy britches and braces (being American, Banner calls them suspenders)—which, once seen, is never forgotten, no matter how hard his startled clients may try. Very much a Renaissance man, Banner is cut from the same bolt as Sir Henry Merrivale and Dr Fell, the creations of John Dickson Can, a writer Commings much admired.

  You might be forgiven for thinking that Banner's career was perhaps somewhat short lived since only four of his cases have seen the inside of a book, and two of those only in the last three years. But the facts are otherwise. Banner appeared, from 1947 to 1984, in no less than thirty-two stories and all but three of them were Impossibles. But the comparative obscurity of most of the magazines in which the stories themselves originally appeared has resulted in even the most eagle eyed of anthologists missing out on one of the genuine treats of post-War detective fiction. Here is an early Banner, a gem of a story—and only the fifth, out of thirty-two, ever to appear in book form.

  ROBERT ADEY

  That afternoon Linda Carewe poisoned her husband. She poisoned him with arsenic. As an afternoon, it was a rainy, dreary one in late fall. The downpour made the Honeywell Art Galleries gleam in the wet like a dark green marble tomb.

  Linda Carewe stumbled inside with a throbbing heart right past McPherson, the front door attendant. McPherson stopped talking to the newsboy with his sodden bundle of papers and stared into the gloomy interior after her.