by Mike Ashley
“May I point out,” he continued softly, “that all three of you on stage ended up mother naked at the piano? Just how did one of you manage to both carry the poison there, and dispose of the container?”
A stunned silence, and then a united howl of relief from the Berties: “We didn’t!”
Nick thought this through. Be blowed if he was going to be eaten alive by Bishop. “They could have poisoned their own glass after they’d drunk from it the first time, taken it to the piano and then switched glasses with Greta’s.”
“Very good, lad,” Bishop said briskly. “But they’d still need to secrete the wrapping somewhere.” He turned to the Berties. “Did any of you gentlemen notice anything unusual about the placing of the glasses?”
No one had. The relative positions had been as normal. Although, in the haste of the routine, the spacing between each glass changed, the order of the four did not.
“And you, Mr Duncan – you were on stage left in the line-up by the bar, and at the piano finale, did you sense or see any movement to the rear of the piano? No dark-cloaked villains?”
Paul reluctantly shook his head.
“Well, then, gentlemen, it seems you’re in the clear.” A pause. “Unless your full body searches reveal anything.”
“You’re not bloody serious, are you?” Paul moaned.
“Oh, I am, Mr Duncan, believe me. The sergeant here is very gentle though – usually.”
Gentle or not, the sergeant found nothing.
“Wouldn’t body cavities be a dangerous place to conceal cyanide?” Nick had become absorbed in the problem.
“Remarkable the way you cooks know so much about poison,” Bishop said admiringly. “We’re taking samples from all your food and kitchen utensils, of course.”
Les howled. “How am I supposed to make a living?”
“It’s what made a death we’re here to find out. Every scrap of paper, clothing, food and glasses will be bagged up for forensics to check, and every millimetre of stage and kitchen will be searched.”
“The hats!” Nick cried desperately. “They kept them on almost to the end. The poison must have been concealed in one of them.”
“Who is that bloody little squirt?” Paul cast his eyes up to an unmerciful heaven.
“If so, we’ll find traces,” Bishop assured him. “The way we’re going at the moment, however, it looks as if we can rule out Greta Hobbs’ death by murder. Much as I dislike the word, it does look impossible.” He grinned at the now visibly rejoicing Berties. “Mind you, you’d be surprised how often we think that at this stage.”
The sight of a huge mobile caravan drawn up in the side street next to the club, obviously, from Nick’s careful study, an incident room, was unnerving and confirmation enough that it had been murder. That made his summons back here with Les all the more daunting. Curiosity fought with fear of the “fix it on anyone” approach so beloved by the police in his reading material. Even spider-catching in Antarctica suddenly seemed preferable.
“Ah, our young detective.” Bishop greeted him from one corner of the kitchen made available for a table and chairs. “You’ll be pleased to hear you can go.”
“But that’s a scene of crimes’ van outside, isn’t it?” Nick was taken aback.
“Must be the CIA.”
Nick lingered as Les hastily cleared up and left. “You mean she wasn’t poisoned?” He tried not to sound disappointed.
“She was, but we’ve cleared your food.”
“So it was the drink?”
“It was. Forensic had a sleepless night. Nothing in the bottle, nothing in any of the glasses – save the one nearest to the lady, which was bung full of cyanide. And before you say suicide, forensic have found no traces of crystals in her clothing or handbag.”
Nick bade a silent last farewell to poisoned darts. “Suppose one of the strippers poisoned one of the extra three glasses on the bar and took that with him over to the piano, instead of the one he’d first drunk from?”
“Ashamed of you, lad. Where did he keep the crystals? And there’d be a fifth glass on the piano.”
“The hat?” Nick asked without much hope.
“Forget about hats. They were clean, too. What is it every self-respecting amateur detective pounces on?”
Nick didn’t like being mocked. “Fingerprints.”
“Right. And that’s why Mr Paul Duncan is at the station helping with enquiries.”
“All the glasses would have Hamish Scott’s prints on.” Nick was thinking it through. “So if he were the murderer he wouldn’t need to worry about his prints being on Greta’s glass, but the others would.”
“Greta’s glass had Duncan’s prints on it as well as her own and Scott’s. If we could find how he transported the poison, we could wrap this up. Now, you’ve quite a name at Scotland Yard, so you think about it.”
“I’ve never even had a caution.” What the hell was this?
“I went there to the Black Museum a while ago. Back in the dark ages there was an Auguste Didier who helped Rose of the Yard in a few cases, generally those with fancy touches in them. Any relation?”
“Great-grandfather,” Nick muttered reluctantly. Too much eagerness to claim kinship might not go down too well, and in any case he wasn’t sure the news was welcome. True, an amateur detective in deepest Muckshire as a rival was way outclassed by one working with Scotland Yard. Maybe he’d check into it sometime.
“Just in case you have plans to follow in great-grandad’s footsteps, I solve my own cases. Plain and fancy. Right?”
“Right,” Nick hastily agreed.
“I don’t see how Paul Duncan can be guilty,” Nick proclaimed. Thinking of the impossible murder took his mind off his surroundings. Les’s kitchen in the rented industrial unit lurched its way through every food inspection, surviving more by luck of timing than merit.
“I told you to make that with huss.” Les peered peevishly at Nick’s work.
“For a monkfish kebab?”
“Who’s going to notice? It all gets charred to a cinder on the barbi.”
“All the Berties hated her, but they all stayed.”
“Ah, well, it was a living of some sort, even if Greta and good old Tony kept sixty per cent of it, and went on deluding them that they were building up a fund so that they could finance a launch into the big time. Not nice of Greta. It’s cheating,” Les added virtuously. He removed a chunk of fish from the end of each kebab. “Give ’em room to breathe,” he explained casually.
“No one came up from the rear, but what about from that side room on stage? The owner and his lighting chap were there. Of course, they still had to get the poison onto the stage.”
Les decided to be helpful. “You said it had to have been added between the two guzzling bouts. How about just stretching out from the wings?”
“Someone would have noticed a five-foot arm,” Nick retorted scathingly.
Les expired with a final shot. “Maybe it dropped from the ceiling. Now, could you condescend to earn some of that fortune I pay you?”
Nick did not reply. Les had set off a train of thought. He remembered Sherlock Holmes and the snake gliding down the bellrope; he remembered Dorothy Sayers, and an ingenious contraption; he even remembered poisoned darts . . .
“You again? Solved it yet?”
“I wondered if you’d checked the wings,” Nick blurted out, none too sure of his ground once faced with Bishop.
An amiable, if sardonic, smile. “Be my guest. Check ’em yourself. Let me know if I’ve missed anything. And let me tell you, Commander Bond, we’ve checked the spotlights and curtains half a dozen times. No cyanide crystals were showered down by guided missile, and no curtain rods left their moorings to deposit any either. Nor did anyone shoot a dart at her and poison the glass as a blind, or paint cyanide onto the piano keys so it would get absorbed into her fingers – but you didn’t think of that one.”
“No,” Nick admitted. “But the hats—”
Bishop smote his forehead. “Of course!” he cried. “Whyever didn’t you mention hats before?”
Nick ploughed doggedly on. “When the Berties stood at the piano nude, the last thing to go was the hats. Suppose the poison was held inside the brim and the murderer simply waved the hat low over the glass, released the poison somehow, then threw the hat offstage where it was switched for an identical unadulterated one.”
“Collusion? The owner will be pleased. You go and practise releasing cyanide crystals from a secret compartment on your head, as you jig up and down starkers. When you’ve succeeded, I’ll take you seriously.”
Nick subsided, crestfallen.
“If you can tell me how Paul Duncan did it – and I’m sure he did – I’ll stick a testimonial to you in the Black Museum,” Bishop said more kindly, “next to your ancestor. Remember, all these weird and wonderful ways you’ve doubtless read about in fiction didn’t have to pass the scrutiny of a couple of hundred screaming women – not to mention Mr Nick Didier’s. However glued they were to the attractions of the Berties’ persons, someone was going to see if poison shot down from the spotlights, just as they’d have noticed if any of the trio went fishing around in their fancy togs for a few cyanide crystals. Paul Duncan claims that he picked up Greta’s glass by accident; if he’s right, how did the poison get into his glass? I may be eating my own words, but perhaps this really is an impossible murder.”
“And I’ll eat my hat if it is,” Nick vowed silently.
If you eliminate the impossible, the improbable must be true, Nick told himself. It was an old-established principle in detective fiction. Only what was the improbable? If it was impossible for anyone on the stage to have carried out the murder, and the wings and ceiling had been ruled out, that left the audience – which had also been ruled out. Anyone walking up to her would have been noticed, and her husband who was closest was devoted to her. Even if that were a sham, Nick would undoubtedly have seen him, even at the critical moment of the strip, since he was tall enough for the full spotlight on the piano to pick him up if he approached his wife, and surely the women next to him and behind him would have noticed if he’d moved, even in the darkness.
So it was back to the Bubbling Berties, who had motive and opportunity, if not means of transporting the poison. Nick stared gloomily at Les’s Baked Alaska, composed more like traditional concrete than traditional meringue and ice-cream. Les’s inadequacies had driven Nick to look up a cookery book last night to see how these dishes should be made. There were critical moments in cooking a Baked Alaska. Extreme heat applied to extreme cold. Alaska was as cold as Antarctica, and cooking the baked version was as risky as spider-catching . . .
“If this is a wild goose chase, friend Didier, you’ll find you’ve cooked your own,” Bishop had threatened genially. But it wasn’t, and geniality had vanished by the time Bishop called him in again three days later. Bishop glared at him. “Are you expecting me to say I was wrong and you were right?”
“No, sir, I’m not expecting that.”
Bishop eyed him sharply. “And I don’t take to being mocked.” A pause. “What gave you the idea, incidentally?”
“My spider-catcher, sir,” Nick confessed shamefacedly. “It’s a handy gadget with a wire running from the handle; when it’s pulled, the trap at the end opens up. I thought something similar might suit our murderer’s purpose. A walking stick with a wire cut into it, and a removable tip to release the poison, would work very well, if he kept it at shoulder height to avoid the full spotlight on his wife, and chose his moment. I didn’t imagine he would keep the stick afterwards, of course, but I reasoned a blackmailer might make it his business to get hold of it. I doubt if your evidence bagging would go so far as to deprive a disabled man of his stick.”
“We did find it, and it was where you’d said it would be. Tony Hobbs is still denying he killed his wife, but you’ve helped me prove it,” Bishop generously admitted.
“No, I didn’t, sir. I don’t believe Tony did murder his wife. I don’t know whether or not he loved her, but he didn’t like her carrying on with other men, which she enjoyed flaunting. She underestimated his resentment, particularly when he found it was still going on. I think he knew he’d get nowhere by an outright challenge, so he chose this method. Unfortunately his intended victim, prancing around at the back of the stage as the Berties whipped off their thongs, spotted Tony doctoring his glass which was placed as usual behind Greta’s. He probably couldn’t believe his luck, when he cottoned on to what might be happening. If it was innocent, no problem. If it wasn’t, he could choose between denouncing Tony or seizing his own opportunity for a double hit: ridding himself of Greta and milking Tony dry.
“He chose, all right. When he returned to the piano, he picked up Greta’s glass, not his own, to drink from, probably using his left hand, and masking the extra stretch with his right arm from the other two. Then he replaced Greta’s glass behind his own, making sure the others did see him do so, and stole the stick at the first opportunity so that he could blackmail Tony into giving back all the money he’d pinched from them. He needed the stick because he couldn’t come forward later and suddenly claim to remember seeing Tony doctoring the glass, but he could ‘find’ the stick and allow it to ‘jog his memory’. And so it was Paul Duncan deliberately murdered Greta, not the Colonel.”
Nick grinned, as he added: “There was no reason for me to mock you. Two murders at half-cock don’t add up to one full monty. The murder of Greta Hobbs by Paul Duncan was impossible – just as you thought, sir.”
OUT OF HIS HEAD
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
This story and the next three are a little group of early impossible crime stories to give a flavour of the past. In fact this story is one of the very earliest, the second only after Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, to feature an amateur detective seeking to solve a locked-room murder. The story is a self-contained episode in the rather rambling novel Out of His Head (1862). Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) was an American poet, author and editor – he edited the Atlantic Monthly from 1881 to 1890. He wrote a number of stylish and idiosyncratic novels and stories of which the most popular in his day was “Marjorie Daw” (1873) about a man who falls in love with a girl he later discovers never existed. In The Stillwater Tragedy (1880), Aldrich introduced a private detective some years before Doyle created Sherlock Holmes. Although the following is the oldest story in this anthology, it remains remarkably fresh today, a testament to Aldrich’s skills and inventiveness.
I
I am about to lift the veil of mystery which, for nearly seven years, has shrouded the story of Mary Ware; and though I lay bare my own weakness, or folly, or what you will, I do not shrink from the unveiling.
No hand but mine can now perform the task. There was, indeed, a man who might have done this better than I. But he went his way in silence. I like a man who can hold his tongue.
On the corner of Clarke and Crandall Streets, in New York, stands a dingy brown frame-house. It is a very old house, as its obsolete style of structure would tell you. It has a morose, unhappy look, though once it must have been a blythe mansion. I think that houses, like human beings, ultimately become dejected or cheerful, according to their experience. The very air of some front-doors tells their history.
This house, I repeat, has a morose, unhappy look, at present, and is tenanted by an incalculable number of Irish families, while a picturesque junk-shop is in full blast in the basement; but at the time of which I write, it was a second-rate boarding-place, of the more respectable sort, and rather largely patronized by poor, but honest, literary men, tragic-actors, members of the chorus, and such like gilt people.
My apartments on Crandall Street were opposite this building, to which my attention was directed soon after taking possession of the rooms, by the discovery of the following facts:
First, that a charming lady lodged on the second-floor front, and sang like a canary every morning.
Third, that Mary Ware was a danseuse, and had two lovers – only two.
Mary Ware was the leading lady at The Olympic. Night after night found me in the parquette. I can think of nothing with which to compare the airiness and utter abandon of her dancing. She seemed a part of the music. She was one of beauty’s best thoughts, then. Her glossy gold hair reached down to her waist, shading one of those mobile faces which remind you of Guido’s picture of Beatrix Cenci – there was something so fresh and enchanting in the mouth. Her luminous, almond eyes, looking out winningly from under their drooping fringes, were at once the delight and misery of young men.
Ah! you were distracting in your nights of triumph, when the bouquets nestled about your elastic ankles, and the kissing of your castanets made the pulses leap; but I remember when you lay on your cheerless bed, in the blank day-light, with the glory faded from your brow, and “none so poor as to do you reverence.”
Then I stooped down and kissed you – but not till then.
Mary Ware was to me a finer study than her lovers. She had two, as I have said. One of them was commonplace enough – well-made, well-dressed, shallow, flaccid. Nature, when she gets out of patience with her best works, throws off such things by the gross, instead of swearing. He was a lieutenant, in the Navy I think. The gilt button has charms to soothe the savage breast.
The other was a man of different mould, and interested me in a manner for which I could not then account. The first time I saw him did not seem like the first time. But this, perhaps, is an after-impression.
Every line of his countenance denoted character; a certain capability, I mean, but whether for good or evil was not so plain. I should have called him handsome, but for a noticeable scar which ran at right angles across his mouth, giving him a sardonic expression when he smiled.
His frame might have set an anatomist wild with delight – six feet two, deep-chested, knitted with tendons of steel. Not at all a fellow to amble on plush carpets.