The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes

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The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes Page 36

by Mike Ashley


  “You rig up a death trap,” I said, “using a keyhole.”

  “Now, look, we went over all that before. The key was inside the keyhole when we broke in, I told you that, and I won’t believe the killer used some kind of tricky gimmick that the lab crew overlooked.”

  “That’s not what happened at all. What hung both of us up is a natural inclination to associate the word ‘keyhole’ with a keyhole in a door. But the fact is, there are five other keyholes in this room.”

  “What?”

  “The desk, Eb. The rolltop desk over there.”

  He swung his head around and looked at the desk beneath the window. It contained five keyholes, all right – one in the rolltop, one in the centre drawer and one each in the three side drawers. Like those on most antique rolltop desks, they were meant to take large, old-fashioned keys and therefore had good-sized openings. But they were also half-hidden in scrolled brass frames with decorative handle pulls; and no one really notices them anyway, any more than you notice individual cubbyholes or the design of the brass trimming. When you look at a desk you see it as an entity: you see a desk.

  Eberhardt put his eyes on me again. “Okay,” he said, “I see what you mean. But I searched that desk myself, and so did the lab boys. There’s nothing on it or in it that could be used to stab a man through a keyhole.”

  “Yes, there is.” I led him over to the desk. “Only one of these keyholes could have been used, Eb. It isn’t the one in the rolltop because the top is pushed all the way up; it isn’t any of the ones in the side drawers because of where Murray was stabbed – he would have had to lean over at an awkward angle, on his own initiative, in order to catch that steel splinter in the stomach. It has to be the centre drawer then, because when a man sits down at a desk like this, that drawer – and that keyhole – are about on a level with the area under his breastbone.”

  He didn’t argue with the logic of that. Instead, he reached out, jerked open the centre drawer by its handle pull and stared inside at the pens and pencils, paper clips, rubber bands and other writing paraphernalia. Then, after a moment, I saw his eyes change and understanding come into them.

  “Rubber band,” he said.

  “Right.” I picked up the largest one; it was about a quarter-inch wide, thick and strong – not unlike the kind kids use to make slingshots. “This one, no doubt.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “Take a look at the keyhole frame on the inside of the centre drawer. The top doesn’t quite fit snug with the wood; there’s enough room to slip the edge of this band into the crack. All you’d have to do then is stretch the band out around the steel splinter, ease the point of the weapon through the keyhole and anchor it against the metal on the inside rim of the hole. It would take time to get the balance right and close the drawer without releasing the band, but it could be done by someone with patience and a steady hand. And what you’d have then is a death trap – a cocked and powerful slingshot.”

  Eberhardt nodded slowly.

  “When Murray sat down at the desk,” I said, “all it took was for him to pull open the drawer with the jerking motion people always use. The point of the weapon slipped free, the rubber band released like a spring, and the splinter shot through and sliced into Murray’s stomach. The shock and impact drove him and the chair backward, and he must have stood up convulsively at the same time, knocking over the chair. That’s when he staggered into those bookshelves. And meanwhile the rubber band flopped loose from around the keyhole frame, so that everything looked completely ordinary inside the drawer.”

  “I’ll buy it,” Eberhardt said. “It’s just simple enough and logical enough to be the answer.” He gave me a sidewise look. “You’re pretty good at this kind of thing, once you get going.”

  “It’s just that the pulp connection got my juices flowing.”

  “Yeah, the pulp connection. Now, what about Private Detective and the name of the killer?”

  “The clue Murray left us there is a little more roundabout,” I said. “But you’ve got to remember that he was dying and that he only had time to grab those magazines that were handy. He couldn’t tell us more directly who he believed was responsible.”

  “Go on,” he said, “I’m listening.”

  “Murray collected pulp magazines, and he obviously also read them. So he knew that private detectives as a group are known by all sorts of names – shamus, op, eye, snooper.” I allowed myself a small, wry smile. “And one more, just as common.”

  “Which is?”

  “Peeper,” I said.

  He considered that. “So?”

  “Eb, Murray also collected every other kind of popular culture. One of those kinds is prints of old television shows. And one of your suspects is a small, mousy guy who wears thick glasses; you told me that yourself. I’d be willing to bet that some time ago Murray made a certain obvious comparison between this relative of his and an old TV show character from back in the fifties, and that he referred to the relative by that character’s name.”

  “What character?”

  “Mr Peepers,” I said. “And you remember who played Mr Peepers, don’t you?”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Wally Cox.”

  “Sure. Mr Peepers – the cousin, Walter Cox.”

  At eight o’clock that night, while I was working on a beer and reading a 1935 issue of Dime Detective, Eberhardt rang up my apartment. “Just thought you’d like to know,” he said. “We got a full confession out of Walter Cox about an hour ago. I hate to admit it – I don’t want you to get a swelled head – but you were right all the way down to the Mr Peepers angle. I checked with the housekeeper and the niece before I talked to Cox, and they both told me Murray called him by that name all the time.”

  “What was Cox’s motive?” I asked.

  “Greed, what else? He had a chance to get in on a big investment deal in South America, and Murray wouldn’t give him the cash. They argued about it in private for some time, and three days ago Cox threatened to kill him. Murray took the threat seriously, which is why he started locking himself in his Rooms while he tried to figure out what to do about it.”

  “Where did Cox get the piece of steel?”

  “Friend of his has a basement workshop, builds things out of wood and metal. Cox borrowed the workshop on a pretext and used a grinder to hone the weapon. He rigged up the slingshot this morning – let himself into the house with his key while the others were out and Murray was locked in one of the Rooms.”

  “Well, I’m glad you got it wrapped up and glad I could help.”

  “You’re going to be even gladder when the niece talks to you tomorrow. She says she wants to give you some kind of reward.”

  “Hell, that’s not necessary.”

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth – to coin a phrase. Listen, I owe you something myself. You want to come over tomorrow night for a home-cooked dinner and some beer?”

  “As long as it’s Dana who does the home cooking,” I said.

  After we rang off I thought about the reward from Murray’s niece. Well, if she wanted to give me money I was hardly in a financial position to turn it down. But if she left it up to me to name my own reward, I decided I would not ask for money at all; I would ask for something a little more fitting instead.

  What I really wanted was Thomas Murray’s run of Private Detective.

  STAG NIGHT

  Marilyn Todd

  Marilyn Todd worked as a PA before setting up her own secretarial agency, but these days she writes full time. She is the author of the audaciously delightful series of mysteries set in ancient Rome, in the early days of the Empire. The first was I, Claudia (1995), and the series currently runs to six volumes. This is her second Claudia short story, but the first “impossible” murder.

  Fat and replete against the trunk of an ancient oak tree, the old boar suddenly snorted awake. What was that? Hairy ears pricked forward, straining, craning – but through the dappled shade they
discerned only the liquid trill of a flycatcher, the rustle of foraging beetles. Unconvinced, he lifted his snout and sniffed the sultry air. Ripe woodland raspberries. Chanterelles. The musk of a badger who’d passed through last night. Familiar scents, which should have reassured a seasoned tusker – yet the bristles down his back refused to be pacified. Obedient to a million years of instinct, the old boar lumbered to his feet.

  Then he smelled it.

  Dog! Dog and . . . and – He was halfway up the bank before he placed the memory.

  Man.

  Dog and man, and as he shambled towards the brow of the hill, the glade behind him filled with alien sounds. The clash of steel. Shouts. Baying. And the sickening scratch and slither as frantic claws sought a purchase on the slippery leaf litter . . .

  Only once did the old boar glance back. The hunt was gaining. One man was way out in front now, the sunlight off the hunter’s long spear blinding the boar’s button eyes. This was not his first brush with the enemy. Last time, when he’d stupidly allowed himself to be cornered, he escaped only by goring two dogs to death and leaving one human male badly gashed. Even then, someone shot an arrowhead into his haunch, but he’d been lucky. The barb dropped out as he ran and the wound quickly healed. Nevertheless, it was a lesson learned the hard way and today the stakes were higher than ever.

  The first litter of the year had been raised, this was the mating season again. The old tusker had sows and his territory to protect . . .

  And so it was, crashing through the undergrowth, with the smell of sweat and metal closing fast, that the wily boar prepared his defence—

  II

  “Disappeared?” A little worm wriggled in Claudia’s stomach, leaving behind an icy cold trail. “Cypassis, grown men don’t vanish in broad daylight in front of a dozen other men.”

  But her tone did not match the strength of her argument – goddammit, the hunt was turning into a nightmare! First her bodyguard, Junius, was stretchered home, bloodied and unconscious, having lost his footing up on the ridge. Then two more men returned, wounded and weak. And now we hear that another member of the party’s come a cropper . . .

  “Exactly how is Soni supposed to have performed this feat of magic?” she asked. Dear me, the lengths men go to for a few yellowed tusks and some antlers to hang on the wall! “Taken wings, like Pegasus?”

  “I know it sounds ridiculous,” said her ashen-faced maid. “But apparently Soni was leading the hunt one minute and – pfft! gone the next. There was talk of a boar – perhaps that distracted him, maybe he took off alone, but the point is, he hasn’t come home – and – and—” Cypassis spread her large hands in a gesture of helplessness. “And the worrying part is, no-one really cares that he’s missing.”

  Yes, well, Claudia thought. They wouldn’t be the first rich bastards not to give a toss about their slaves. “Have you questioned the bearers?” she asked. Surely they’d care that one of their number might lie at the mercy of ferocious wild beasts?

  “That lot!” Cypassis sneered. “Within ten minutes of returning, they were too drunk to string two words together!”

  “And Junius?” Claudia ventured. “I suppose he can’t shed light on the matter?”

  “Still no change in the poor boy’s coma,” Cypassis said sadly, and a nail drove itself in to Claudia’s heart.

  It was her fault Junius was on the ferry landing, poised to cross the River Styx. A lump formed in her throat and refused to subside. The trouble was, the young Gaul had been so eager to join this morning’s hunt! She paced her bedroom floor and put the stinging in her eyes down to the brilliance of the setting sun. Max, the hunt’s organizer had been against it from the start –Junius being a rank amateur and all that – but Claudia had prevailed, pleading her bodyguard’s case that the last time he’d been hunting had been as a ten-year-old lad with his father, long before he’d become a slave through the wars.

  Also, she wanted to give Junius a treat.

  Max’s hunts were famed the length and breadth of Italy – rich businessmen handed over small fortunes for the privilege of being one of the few – and if her bodyguard was to go hunting, dammit, he might as well go with the best! And now look. Waxy and pale, barely breathing, they’d scraped him up from the foot of a gully and carried him home on a stretcher.

  “He’ll be fine,” she assured Cypassis. “I’ve seen these head wounds before, it’s simply a question of time.”

  Liar. She’d never seen one in her life, had no idea whether Junius would pull through or not, but there was no point in both of them worrying themselves to a frazzle.

  “And you can stop fretting about Soni. He was the star of today’s show and, trust me, heroes don’t pop like bubbles.” Sweet Minerva’s magic, to hear them talk, you’d think the boy was a god in the making, not simply another bearer Max had trained up!

  “They said he led the hunt from the start,” Cypassis said breathlessly. “Ran like a hare, according to one. Even uphill. Even weighed down with his javelin and arrows!”

  Remembering his bunched muscles and stomach harder than permafrost, it was easy to see why Cypassis had been so eager to fulfil her errand of seeking out the young slave. Claudia glanced at the girl’s bosom, bouncing and generous like puppies in hay, and knew that no man alive had yet rejected charms given so freely and yet totally without obligation. Cypassis loved ’em and left ‘em, usually with dazed grins on their faces and memories warm enough to last them a lifetime, and Soni – red-blooded hunk that he was – would be putty in those broad Thessalian hands. If Wonderboy was missing, it was certainly not because he was hiding!

  With Claudia’s bodyguard out of action, who better, she’d thought, than Soni for a replacement? His skill, his courage, his cunning had been praised from the rafters, and let’s not forget his strength and his stamina. Thus, Cypassis had been despatched to fetch him with a view to sounding him out, but that had been over two hours ago . . .

  Across the atrium, where cedar-scented oil lamps hung from every pillar, where water cascaded down five circular tiers of a fountain and where marble athletes wrestled, boxed or weighed up the discus, an orchestra suddenly struck up, making her jump. Every note from the horns and the cymbals, the trumpets and drums dripped testosterone.

  “Oh, no! The banquet!” Cypassis clapped her hands over her mouth. “I didn’t realize it was so late!” She scurried across to Claudia’s jewel box and rooted out a handful of ivory pins. “There’s your hair to pin up, your shoes need a buff—”

  “You concentrate on finding Soni,” Claudia said. Any fool can give their sandals a rub on the back of her calves, and as for her curls – well, they’d simply have to get on with it. “Unless,” she grinned, “you’d rather I approached someone else?”

  Deep dimples appeared in Cypassis’ cheeks, and some of the colour returned. “I’ll settle for Soni,” she grinned back. “I hear he holds his women as tight as his liquor!”

  Masculine voices boomed out in the hall, laughing, recounting, reliving, as they made their way to the banquet and Claudia clipped on earstuds shaped like a bee. Gold – naturally. A present from Max. She buffed up her armband, inlaid with carnelian and pearls, another gift, and fixed a filigree silver tiara into her hair. The tiara had been the first in this generous line, along with alabaster pots containing precious Arabian perfumes, intricate onyx figurines and rare spices all the way from the Orient.

  Despite knives scraping against plate, silver platters being cleared and replaced, despite music and voices growing louder and louder, as though each had to compete with the other, Claudia made no move to join the men in the banqueting hall. Instead she leaned her elbows on the warm windowsill. The setting sun had sponged the enveloping hills a warm heather pink and the mew of the peacocks strutting on the lawn cut through the rasp of the crickets and the low-pitched croon of the hoopoe. Far in the distance, a wagon clattered over the cobbles, bringing home the last of the harvest. Down in the fertile lowlands of the Tiber, the wheat would have
been threshed and winnowed a whole month before and would already be piled in granaries guarded by tomcats. But this was Aspreta, hilly and wooded, deep in the Umbrian hills.

  This was the land of the huntsman.

  Of one man in particular, Max – who had tamed the wild woods around his sumptuous villa to create vast landscaped gardens awash with artificial lakes, temples and grottoes. With watercourses rippling their way down the hillsides. With fishponds and porticoes and foaming white fountains, which the dying sun had transmuted into molten copper. A skein of ducks flew overhead, and the air was rich with the smell of freshly scythed grass and the merest hint of ripe apples. It was surely impossible for anything sinister to have occurred in this Umbrian idyll. There would, Claudia felt certain, be a perfectly simple explanation for Soni’s disappearance . . .

  She poured herself a glass of chilled Thracian wine and sipped slowly. Dear me, Max’s lands were so vast, a girl had to positively squint to even see the hunting grounds from the villa. A smile twisted one side of her mouth. Oh, yes. This was definitely the right decision, accepting his invitation to stay . . .

  She pictured her host, tanned and blond, lean and muscular, and knew that the sight of him in an open-shouldered hunting tunic cut high above the knee had fluttered many a female heart in its time—

  Max. She rolled the name around on her tongue. Max. Ducatius Lepidus Glabrio Maximus to be precise, but known (for obvious reasons) as Max. And this fabulous estate was his. Or more accurately, was his and his alone. No wife – Max divorced wives like most men shuck peas – but more importantly, no heirs either. Claudia sighed happily. That’s right. No little Max’s running around, waiting to inherit the pile. Idly she wondered how quickly a girl might conceive, to redress this obvious imbalance . . .

  The sun sank below the hilltops, swamping the valley in its garnet embrace, as swallows made their final parabolas over the lake. A perfect night for seduction, she reflected. A perfect night for—

 

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