Murder Impossible Page 6

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  It stung him. Lockwood showed P.C. Hamilton the bleeding little wound in his ear where the thing had attacked him. The fly had stung and, while its victim had danced with the sudden agony of that sting, the insect alighted on the pearls. A momentary quivering, then again the monstrous creature took itself into the air, carrying the pearls.

  Which way had it gone? Towards the river or along the embankment? Tobias Lockwood could not tell. Hadn't he enough to put up with, him with his stung ear, without watching the damned thing?

  P.C. Hamilton, Colonel Brough—a frankly suspicious and guffawing sceptic—and the distracted Labordien listened to Lockwood with growing amazement. The colonel bluntly grunted that the proper place to harken to Lockwood's fatheaded tale was in the local police charge room. Whereat P.C. Hamilton looked up from his notebook and asked the dapper military officer if by any chance he also doubted Mr. Labordien's story. To that question Colonel Brough had no answer.

  All was entered up and all was done that could be done, but the pearls were never traced nor the mystery cleared up in its slightest facet.

  The twentieth century dawned. The colonel moved from the house next door to Labordien and the stricken little jewel expert was left without any old friend at hand. Since his grotesque story about the fly was never accounted anything but a ridiculous camouflage for his own appropriation of the forty-thousand guinea necklace (Lockwood's corroboration was conveniently treated as the yarning of a well paid accomplice) Labordien found every door closed against him. In the place of his former fame he had the friendship of P.C. Hamilton.

  The solid young man never rested from his task of attempting to solve the wild mystery. On duty and off duty, he was a constant caller at Labordien's lonely house. Gradually a friendship sprang up between the men—growing as the years grew, throughout the War—until Superintendent Hamilton's retirement.

  It was nearly thirty-seven years later—Labordien was now old and bald and very gentle in his ways; Hamilton a sturdy and iron grey man inclined to excessive fatness—when the fly once again came across the courtyard from the direction of the river.

  Labordien's workroom had long been converted to a sort of study—a bookish place with a Whistleresque view of the bending river. As of old, the window facing the courtyard and the plane trees was wide open. And, as of old, the night was in June—sultry and overcast by massing thunder clouds.

  Labordien dropped the book he had been reading. Every vestige of colour went out of his face. He could not mistake that curiously abrupt hissing; no more could he deny his eyes their certitude that they had looked on the grisly insect once more. Trembling and suddenly terrified, he got up out of his chair.

  'All right, Henri,' a hearty voice boomed up to him from some place not discoverable. 'Don't you get alarmed. It's only Hamilton, you know.'

  'Hamilton! Where—where are you? What are you doing? That fly—that beastly thing's been in here!'

  'I know that.' Still the voice came from the courtyard, but there was no sighting the speaker. 'I sent it.'

  The jocular tone faded and an earnest ring came into Hamilton's voice.

  'Be careful, Henri. Stand to one side, well away from the window, and put your spectacles on the table. Turn 'em broadside on, facing the river, and keep back.'

  Mechanically, Henri Labordien did as he was bidden to do.

  The silken hiss sounded quite distinctly. A big orange and black fly rushed through the opening. Lightly it fell—across the spectacles. For a second it hovered and was still, then it darted like a coloured bolt from the room. The spectacles went with it.

  Weakly, Labordien sat down and covered his face with his hands. Whatever Hamilton's devilry was, it was too violently akin to the experience of years ago for comfort.

  Without his glasses he could not see very clearly, but he could hear a lot of rustling of leaves from the plane trees. Then a rough and guttural coughing, as of a man clearing his throat from dust. After that, steps which he recognized as those of Hamilton came across the courtyard and to the lower door. Without ceremony Hamilton clumped in and rapidly mounted the stairs. There was a rattle on the table and a laugh.

  'There are your specks, Henri! Sorry I risked 'em. But now our old friend Brough is nicely settled in chokey with a few years penal staring him in the face, hang him!'

  'Brough—you mean, Colonel Brough?'

  'That's the gentleman! Got him at last. He stole those pearls, you know. I was always dead certain of it, but never could get proof. That's the charge . . . half a lifetime old, but none the less certain.'

  'Brough stole—stole those pearls?' Old Labordien was pitifully shaken. He gulped his drink and blinked. 'Am I still in command of my senses?'

  'You are! Listen, Henri, don't talk.' The exsuperintendent rubbed his big hands together jubilantly. 'The mystery of that theft is solved at last and I'm only sorry that poor Toby Lockwood isn't alive to be vindicated. Brough stole those pearls, and it was the cunningest job I ever knew.

  'Remember how you used to sit by the open window, day in and day out, on your jewel work?' Labordien nodded. 'And Brough could not fail to see what treasure you had in your hands every now and then. The open window lured him; the devil suggested means. For more years than I care to recollect I've tried to find out what those means were.'

  'And have you succeeded?'

  'Yes! When I was in Scotland the other day I walked along a river bank and I heard a sound. It was that finger-on-silk sound I've had in my ears for years. Not only that but, with the sound, a big silver blue fly came whizzing past my face. "Sorry," a voice called out; "my fault for not watching the bank—carry on!" The fly had been thrown by a salmon angler just below me. And lo and behold! the mystery of the stolen pearls was solved.

  'The fly was, I learned a "Silver Doctor." I betook myself to various authorities, practical and otherwise, until I learned that a good salmon fisher could drop such a fly into a floating coconut shell at thirty yards' range, nine times out of ten.

  'I went into Colonel Brough's history. He was adept at salmon fishing. Among his possessions we've found a beautiful rod and a cabinet of flies—double hooked 'uns—one of which clawed those pearls out of your possession.

  'He was up one of those plane trees. He cast out his fly, lengthening and ever lengthening his line, until he had just the amount out he required. The first fly you saw was a false cast—the second was dead accurate. The twin hooks got across the necklace and hauled the thing up into the tree.

  'Unfortunately for him he excitedly dropped the necklace, or else it fell off the hooks at the last minute, right under Lockwood's eyes. Brough cast again—a short cast now and infinitely more accurate. He tore Lockwood's ear, again crossed the fallen necklace and finally secured the treasure. He probably pocketed it then, leaving his rod hidden among the plane tree branches. No one dreamed of searching up there. He just had time to drop to earth and look as though he'd come out of his front door before the courtyard was filled up.

  'The fly he used was a "Durham Ranger"—black and orange and vermilion. It ranged all right for him, eh? The silken hiss was the noise of the almost invisible gutcast, to which the artificial fly was fastened. It cuts through the air with that precise sound.'

  'But surely this is all mere surmise—theory?'

  'Not on your life, Henri. You noticed how I, the veriest tyro in flycasting, managed to grab your glasses in two shots? After only a month's practice I could do that, out of the tree where he lurked. You may be sure that Brough did the job just like that. Your good name will be restored and my professional pique will be ended and all things are satisfactory.'

  'If only I could hope,' Labordien's old voice quavered to a half fearful, half joyful note, 'that all you say is true, I'd be a happy man after all these years of loss.'

  Deliberately exSuperintendent Hamilton poured drinks into two glasses. He passed one to Labordien.

  'Then drink to happiness, Henri, old friend. Brough confessed within
an hour of his arrest. Here's to better days!'

  ARTHUR PORGES

  Coffee Break

  No one could accuse Arthur Porges of creating unforgettable characters. Yet from the late-1950s to the mid-1970s (plus an occasional later offering), this unassuming author produced getting on for a hundred and fifty short stories of crime and detection in a range of mystery digests, from Bizarre!, Fear! and Terror Detective Story via Alfred Hitchcock and Mike Shayne through to that pillar of the establishment Ellery Queen.

  Quite a lot of the stories are one-of-a-kind, many of them yarns of vengeance and retribution with cunning little kinks in the tail. For the rest: well, they certainly had detectives—or, more properly, 'problem solvers', as Porges himself sometimes referred to them—usually quiet little men with academic backgrounds to whom perplexed and pressured police officers brought apparently unsolveable problems.

  There was Cyriack Skinner Grey, a brilliant research chemist confined to a wheelchair as a result of a climbing accident, with Lieutenant Trask of the local police to bring him the problem, and Grey's fourteen years old son, Edgar, to do some of the legwork. Grey appeared in thirteen stories. Just behind Grey, at least in terms of quantity, was Ulysses Price Middlebie, Professor Emeritus of the History and Philosophy of Science, a helpmate on no less than ten occasions to police detective Sergeant Black. Next we have Joel Hoffman, a pathologist on the staff of Pasteur Hospital, and thereby specially enabled to solve the murders, five in all, brought to him by his friend Lieutenant Ader. One of the Hoffman stories incidentally, 'No Killer Has Wings', earned a rightful place in the 1961 Best Detective Stories of the Year. Julian Morse Trowbridge, once a child prodigy in mathematics, now retired following a breakdown, provided the cerebral assistance, to Captain Gregg, in four criminal cases. Chester Payne Middleton solved one murder; so did Professor Charles Westmore Norton, and pathologist John Holland, and George Fort Elgin. . . You're beginning to get the picture?

  The fact is that in Porges's stories (and I leave aside his splendid parodies involving Stately Homes and Celery Green) the detectives are not important. It is the problem that matters—and, indeed, the problem at which the author excels.

  If you 're looking for a tale of unusual ingenuity, look no further. Porges will show you how to conceal a valuable painting on a yacht so that no one can find it, obtain a sample of blood from a murder suspect when he refuses to give it, cause a house to burn down six weeks after it was locked and barred. And here he is, through the medium of Professor Middlebie, solving a locked room poisoning—and showing how it's possible to put another wrinkle on the oldest of walnuts.

  ROBERT ADEY

  'I always thought that locked room cases occurred only in detective A. novels.' Sergeant Black's tone was plaintive, as if he accused the universe of unfairness to the police.

  Ulysses Price Middlebie, object of the remark, and former professor of the history and philosophy of science, but now a sometime crime consultant, looked thoughtful.

  'Undoubtedly they began with mystery fiction,' he said evenly. 'But life does imitate art. To put it otherwise, I'm sure that many bright and imaginative crimes have been suggested—even guided step by step—by ingenious stories.'

  'Which means in addition to out guessing dumb apes with lengths of pipe, we now have to keep two jumps ahead of the best mystery story writers!' the sergeant grumbled. 'I don't suppose you ever read such stuff,' he added.

  'To the contrary,' Middlebie said. 'I've always enjoyed a good crime story, especially of the puzzle variety. And now even more so.' He glanced down at his heavily taped ankle, which was propped up on a hassock.

  'As much my bad luck as yours,' Black said. 'It's the kind of case where you'd come in very handy. But you can't get around, even to watch birds, and anything that stops you from galloping over hill and dale with binoculars is pretty bad.'

  'Tell me about it, anyhow,' Middlebie suggested. 'I may still be of some help.' Then he added drily: 'My head isn't taped.'

  Black had the grace to redden slightly.

  'You're right of course,' he said. 'It's your brains I've picked, mostly. But you must admit,' he persisted, 'that often I just miss seeing things that are significant to you because of your scientific background.'

  'True, but I'll try to pry out of you even the things you saw without noticing them. So go ahead, and give me all the facts.'

  The sergeant paused to organize his thoughts for a moment, and then began the recital.

  'The dead man is Cyrus Denning, a bachelor of sixty-two. He's supposed to have poisoned himself with cyanide. His prints, and only his, are on the cup. He was found dead in a locked room. Nobody had been near him for at least half an hour before his death. From here on in,' Black suggested, 'we'd better change to that method— Socratic, wasn't it?—you liked so much in college, because I don't really know what to tell you or in what order.'

  'All right,' the professor said amiably. 'That's as good an approach as any. You say the door was locked. How?'

  'Bolted on the inside; a heavy brass bolt.'

  'That's not such an impossibility. Such a door can often be locked by attaching a string or wire to the bolt, and shooting it home from the outside.'

  'Not this time,' Black said grimly. 'The door is recessed, and fits too tightly. Besides, no such string was found, and my suspect had no chance to remove it.'

  'Very well. What about a window?'

  'One, at the back. It's been nailed shut for years, and undisturbed; that I guarantee. I went over every inch with a good magnifying glass.'

  'Could the glass have been cut out and reputtied in?' There was a twinkle in the old man's grey eyes. 'That's one from a mystery story I read some months ago.'

  'Not a prayer. It was old, crumbly putty; dry and hard, but still holding tight.'

  'Why nailed down?'

  'Denning didn't care much about fresh air, and he was very secretive. Fancied himself a scientist and inventor. The place was a one room cabin by Lake Bradley, converted into a workroom and lab. The front door—the only one—he used to padlock on the outside when he left. When he was working there, he usually bolted it from the inside.'

  Middlebie frowned slightly. 'Perhaps I should ask why, in the face of all this, you doubt he killed himself.'

  Black's lips narrowed. 'Instinct—plus the fact that he left no note. In my experience, a suicide almost always leaves some explanation. Then there's the fact that Denning was filthy rich. When there's enough money as bait, the greedy rats can be inferred.'

  'Do you have a particular rodent in mind?'

  'You bet. The old man's nephew. He was right there when they found him, and he's the lad to inherit two hundred thousand bucks, and who knows how to spend it fast.'

  'So he was at the cabin. Let's have the details.'

  'The boy—his name's Jerry Doss—admits seeing his uncle in the lab at noon. Sometimes he helped Denning, and managed to borrow a few bucks each time; not much because the old boy was tighter than a new girdle.

  'Anyhow, he left Denning at 1:30, alive, he claims. The old man promptly bolted the door behind him. Then Doss went across the lake—that's about a hundred yards—to chat for a bit with the man at the dock, who rents boats in season. Things are quiet there now, of course.

  'Well, he stayed there for half an hour, then left. But he asked the boatman to keep an eye on Denning's front door, which to me is one sign of a plot. The boy was obviously setting up an alibi.'

  'What reason did he give for such an odd request?'

  'He told the fellow that Denning had been bothered by some of the kids—that they hammered at the door and ragged him. Doss said that if the boatman could catch them at it, and identify them, his uncle would be glad to slip him ten bucks.'

  'Very plausible,' Middlebie said, with a wry grin. 'The boy has imagination—if he invented the story.'

  'I'm betting he did. Anyhow, at this point all is clear. Doss left Denning half an hour before, and didn't go near the door, as the bo
atman can testify. He never took his eyes off the area, watching for the kids, and hoping to earn ten bucks the easy way.

  'Then, about fifteen minutes after the boy left the dock, the man sees him at the front door, hammering away and yelling. Finally, he turns and motions to the boatman to join him. When the guy gets there, Doss tells him that he looked in the window, and saw that his uncle was either dead or unconscious. The window's in back, remember, so nobody could have seen the boy look in.

  'Well, they break down the door—it takes both of them, because of the heavy brass bolt—and find Denning dead, with a cup of poison at his hand. He's slumped over the table near the window.'

  'Couldn't he have been killed when Doss first left? Before going across the lake to the boatman?'

  'That's what bugs me,' Black groaned. 'There was a cup of coffee on the table, boiling hot. It must have been recently poured—and that's where the cyanide was. Cold water wasn't good enough for this suicide. He has to have his poison in fresh, hot coffee!

  'And that isn't all,' the detective almost shrieked. 'A cigarette was burning on the edge of an ash tray. It couldn't have been lit more than a few minutes earlier.' He looked at the professor, his whole face one agonized question mark.

  'Hmmm,' Middlebie murmured. 'I begin to see what you're upset about.'

  'So it has to be suicide, and I'm an idiot,' Black said, more quietly, 'only I don't like the smirk of that nephew, or the little spark in his beady eyes. He engineered this deal some way, and I want to nail him!'

  The professor was lost in thought for the moment. Then he said absently: 'You must have read about Sherlock Holmes.'

  Black gaped at him.

  'I'm thinking of his brother, Mycroft,' Middlebie said, smiling. 'Mycroft?'