Ellery Queen's Crime Cruise Round the World

by Ellery Queen

  He had walked a couple of miles and had hardly seen a soul. People stayed at home. There was even some kind of panic, he had noticed, when it got to six and the light was fading and the buses and tube trains were emptying themselves of the last commuters. In pairs they walked, and sometimes they scurried. They left the town as depopulated as if a plague had scoured it.

  Entering the high street, walking its length, Barry saw no one, apart from those protected by the metal and glass of motor vehicles, but an old woman hunched on a step. Bundled in dirty clothes, a scarf over her head and a bottle in her hand, she was as safe as he—as far, or farther, from the right category.

  But he was still on the watch. Next to viewing the spots where the six had died, he best enjoyed singling out the next victim. No one, for all the boasts of the newspapers and the policemen, knew the type as well as he did. Slight and small-boned, long-legged, sway-backed, with huge eyes, pointed features, and long dark hair. He was almost sure he had selected the Italian one as a potential victim some two weeks before the event, though he could never be certain.

  So far today he had seen no one likely, in spite of watching with fascination the exit from the tube on his own way home. But now, as he entered the Red Lion and approached the bar, his eye fell on a candidate who corresponded to the type more completely than anyone he had yet singled out. Excitement stirred in him. But it was unwise, with everyone so alert and nervous, to be caught staring. The barman’s eyes were on him. He asked for a half of lager, paid for it, tasted it, and, as the barman returned to rinsing glasses, turned slowly to appreciate to the full that slenderness, that soulful timid look, those big expressive eyes, and that mane of black hair.

  But things had changed during the few seconds his back had been turned. Previously he hadn’t noticed that there were two people in the room, another as well as the candidate, and now they were sitting together. From intuition, at which Barry fancied himself as adept, he was sure the girl had picked the man up. There was something in the way she spoke as she lifted her full glass which convinced him, something in her look, shy yet provocative.

  He heard her say, “Well, thank you, but I didn’t mean to. . .” and her voice trailed away, drowned by the other’s brashness.

  “Catch my eye? Think nothing of it, love. My pleasure. Your fella one of the unpunctual sort, is he?”

  She made no reply. Barry was fascinated, compelled to stare, by the resemblance to Pat Leston, by more than that, by seeing in this face what seemed a quintessence, a gathering together and a concentrating here of every quality variously apparent in each of the six. And what gave it a particular piquancy was to see it side by side with such brutal ugliness. He wondered at the girl’s nerve, her daring to make overtures. And now she was making them afresh, actually laying a hand on his sleeve.

  “I suppose you’ve got a date yourself?” she said.

  The man laughed. “Afraid I have, love. I was just whiling away ten minutes.” He started to get up.

  “Let me buy you a drink.”

  His answer was only another harsh laugh. Without looking at the girl again, he walked away and through the swing doors out into the street. That people could expose themselves to such danger in the present climate of feeling intrigued Barry, his eyes now on the girl who was also leaving the pub. In a few seconds it was deserted, the only clients likely to visit it during that evening all gone.

  A strange idea, with all its amazing possibilities, crossed his mind and he stood on the pavement, gazing the length of the High Street. But the girl had crossed the road and was waiting at the bus stop, while the man was only just visible in the distance, turning into the entrance of the underground car park.

  Barry banished his idea, ridiculous perhaps and, to him, rather upsetting, and he crossed the road behind the oncoming bus, wondering how to pass the rest of the evening. Review once more those murder scenes, was all that suggested itself to him, and then go home.

  It must have been the wrong bus for her. She was still waiting. And as Barry approached, she spoke to him.

  “I saw you in the pub.”

  “Yes,” he said. He never knew how to talk to girls. They intimidated and irritated him, especially when they were taller than he, and most of them were. The little thin ones he despised.

  “I thought,” she said hesitantly, “I thought I was going to have someone to see me home.”

  Barry made no reply. She came out of the bus shelter, quite close up to him, and he saw that she was much bigger and taller than he had thought at first.

  “I must have just missed my bus. There won’t be another for ten minutes.” She looked, and then he looked, at the shiny desert of this shopping center, lighted and glittering and empty, pitted with the dark holes of doorways and passages. “If you’re going my way,” she said, “I thought maybe. . .”

  “I’m going through the path,” he said. Round there that was what everyone called it, the path.

  “That’ll do me.” She sounded eager and pleading. “It’s a short cut to my place. Is it all right if I walk along with you?”

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “One of them got killed down there. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  She only shrugged. They began to walk along together up the yellow and white glazed street, not talking, at least a yard apart. It was a chilly damp night and a gust of wind caught them as, past the shops, they entered the path. The wind blew out the long red silk scarf she wore and she tucked it back inside her coat. Barry never wore a scarf, though most people did at this time of the year. It amused him to notice just how many did, as if they had never taken in the fact that all those six had been strangled with their own scarves.

  There were lamps in this part of the path, attached by iron brackets to the red wall and the brown. Her sharp-featured face looked greenish in the light, and gaunt and scared. Suddenly he wasn’t intimidated by her any more or afraid to talk to her.

  “Most people,” he said, “wouldn’t walk down here at night for a million pounds.”

  “You do,” she said. “You were coming down here alone.”

  “And no one gave me a million,” he said cockily. “Look, that’s where the first one died, just round this corner.”

  She glanced at the spot expressionlessly and walked on ahead of Barry. He caught up to her. If she hadn’t been wearing high heels she wouldn’t have been that much taller than he. He pulled himself up to his full height, stretching his spine, as if effort and desire could make him as big as his cousin Ronnie.

  “I’m stronger than I look,” he said. “A man’s always stronger than a woman. It’s the muscles.”

  He might not have spoken for all the notice she took. The walls ended and gave place to low railings behind which the allotments, scrubby plots of cabbage stumps and waterlogged weeds, stretched away. Beyond them, but a long way off, rose the backs of tall houses hung with wooden balconies and iron staircases. A pale moon had come out and cast over this dismal prospect St thin cold radiance.

  “There’ll be someone killed here next,” he said. “It’s just the place. No one to see. The killer could get away over the allotments.”

  She stopped and faced him. “Don’t you ever think about anything but those murders?”

  “Crime interests me. I’d like to know why he does it.” He spoke insinuatingly, his resentment of her driven away by the attention she was at last giving him. “Why d’you think he does it? It’s not for money or sex. What’s he got against them?”

  “Maybe he hates them.” Her own words seemed to frighten her and, strangely, she pulled off the scarf which the wind had again been flapping, and thrust it into her coat pocket. “I can understand that.” She looked at him with a mixture of dislike and fear. “I hate men, so I can understand it,” she said, her voice trembling and shrill.

  “Come on, let’s walk.”

  “No.” Barry put out his hand and touched her arm. His fingers clutched her coat sleeve. “No, you can’t just leave it there. If he hate
s them, why does he?”

  “Perhaps he’s been turned down too often,” she said, backing away from him. “Perhaps a long time ago one of them hurt him. He doesn’t want to kill them but he can’t help himself.” As she flung his hand off her arm, the words came spitting out. “Or he’s just ugly. A little like you.”

  Barry stood on tiptoe to bring himself to her height. He took a step toward her, his fists up. She backed against the railings and a longer shudder went through her. Then she wheeled away and began to run, stumbling because her heels were high. It was those heels or the roughness of the ground or the new darkness as clouds dimmed the moon that brought her down.

  Collapsed in a heap, one shoe kicked off, she slowly raised her head and looked up into Barry’s eyes. He made no attempt to touch her. She struggled to her feet, wiping her grazed and bleeding hands on the scarf, and immediately, without a word, they were locked together in the dark.

  Several remarkable features distinguished this murder from the others. There was blood on the victim who had fair hair instead of dark, though otherwise strongly resembling Patrick Leston and Dino Facci. Apparently, since Barry Halford hadn’t been wearing a scarf, the murderer’s own had been used. But it was the evidence of a slim dark-haired customer of the Red Lion which led the police to the conclusion that the killer of these seven young men was a woman.

  Celia Fremlin

  A Lovely Morning to Die

  A horrifying story, told with Celia Fremlin’s “special touch”—one that will touch us all. . .

  If only she’d known it would be as easy as this, she’d have done it long ago. Still holding the pillow firmly over the old woman’s face, Millicent allowed her eyes to travel warily down the length of the wide old-fashioned bed. Beneath the blankets and the worn limp eiderdown the emaciated body raised scarcely a hump; a long thin irregularity was all it was, not as high as even the shallowest of the graves in the nearby churchyard.

  She had been afraid there would be some sort of struggle, that at the approach of death the feeble, almost useless old limbs would be infused with demonic strength, that the old worn-out body would thresh about like a great fish beneath the blankets, refusing to die. Most of all, she had feared there might be gasps and chokings and moans of protest from under the pillow. If this had happened, would she have been able to go on with it? Or would her nerve have cracked, forcing her to abandon the resolution that had cost her so many heart-searchings, so many self-questionings, over so many weeks?

  If only she’d known it was going to be like this—the victim so peaceful, so cooperative almost, the bedroom so quiet! Had she only known this was how it would be, she’d have done it months—no, years—ago.

  But how long did she have to stay like this, clutching and pressing down on the pillow? How long do you have to hold a pillow over a person’s face before you can be sure—quite, quite sure—that the last breath is gone? For the first time she comprehended the awful loneliness of the task she had undertaken, with no precedents to go by, no one in all the world to give advice or guidance.

  She bent low, pressing her ear against the pillow, as though trying to catch some whispered last words, some final message from her once-beloved mother. . .

  It was breathing she was listening for, of course; and there was none. No sound; no stir of movement; and yet still she dared not release the pressure, not just yet. Edging the weight of her body farther over the pillow, to make sure that it stayed in place, she slid her hand beneath the blankets and felt for the old woman’s heart. The ribs stuck out like the slats of a plate rack, the pouches of wrinkled skin lay still and flaccid beneath her touch.

  No heartbeat. No flutter of breath. Nothing. It was over! So quietly, so decently! It was beyond belief!

  And then, suddenly, like a great yellow sea monster rising from the deep, her mother’s face lurched upward, grimacing, contorted, and a howl like a wolfs burst from the parched lips as with hands like claws the creature wrenched the pillow from her daughter’s grasp, and flung it to the ground—

  Millicent woke, sweating with terror, to find herself safe in bed, in her own neat, austere little bedroom just across the landing from her mother’s; and for a moment she lay still, breathing deeply, recovering from the nightmare: reorientating herself, reassuring herself that she was awake, and that none of those awful things had actually happened.

  Yes, it was all right. It had only been a dream—one of those unnerving nightmares that had been troubling her increasingly of late.

  She really ought to consult Dr. Ferguson about these bad nights she was having, get him to prescribe something. He was a kind man, and, so far as his busy schedule permitted, concerned for Millicent’s plight. Always, after his routine visit to her mother every Wednesday, he would make a point of asking Millicent how she felt. Eating all right, was she? Not overdoing it? She must remember that she wasn’t getting any younger—62, wasn’t it, this year?

  More than once he had insisted on taking her blood pressure, had tut-tutted, with slightly raised eyebrows, at the result, and had urged her to take things easy for a while, to try not to do too much. He had known as well as she had that with a senile, bedridden old mother of 92 in her sole charge, there was no way Millicent could take things easy, no way she could not do too much but since there was nothing that either of them could do about it, they had smiled appropriate politenesses at one another, and he had gone on his way. At least it was nice to know that he cared.

  It was useless to hope for any more sleep that night. Already the light was beginning to show round the edges of the curtains, and outside the twittering of the first birds had begun. Through the open door across the landing (both doors were kept wide-open at night now, lest Mother’s low moans of distress should fail to rouse her) Millicent could see the outlines of Mother’s vast mahogany wardrobe, glimmering grayly in the half light of early dawn; and beyond it, deep in the shadowed heart of the sickroom, she could hear the harsh, rasping snores that for so long had been the backdrop of all her days and nights.

  Only occasionally, now, did the old woman rouse herself from this ugly, uneasy sleep; to moan, or babble, or sometimes to plead wordlessly, unavailingly, staring desperately into her daughter’s eyes, begging urgently for Millicent knew not what. A bedpan? A loving kiss on her cracked lips? Or merely a nice cup of tea, to be fed, trickles of it dribbling down the wrinkled, flabby jowls onto the pillow, whose cases Millicent often had to change four or five times a day.

  There was no knowing what Mother wanted: and often Millicent, who had once loved her mother so much, had drawn from her such strength and love and comfort through the long years of family crises, family rejoicings—often, Millicent would eagerly proffer all three—the bedpan, the kiss, and the cool tea—almost simultaneously; and when, afterward, the old woman sank once more into noisy, unrefreshing sleep, it was hard to tell which, if any of them, had done the trick.

  Perhaps none of them had. Perhaps the invalid had fallen asleep from sheer weariness, exhausted by the futile effort of asking. . .asking. . .asking for the one relief her daughter would not, could not give.

  Or could she? More and more often lately, through the long wearying days of nursing, and housework, and more nursing, and through the even longer anxious, insomniac nights, forever on the alert, forever half listening through the two wide-open doors for sounds of distress—more and more, during these past weeks, Millicent had found herself turning over and over in her mind the ethics of her impending decision.

  There was no doubt at all about what her mother would have wanted—her real mother, that is, the loving, energetic, courageous woman who even at 80 had tended her home single-handed, and her half acre of garden; had invited grandchildren and great-grandchildren on long visits, and had even found time to do volunteer work at the local hospital as well; about the views of this vigorous, life-loving person there could be no question at all:

  “You won’t let me get like that ever, will you, darling?” she’d said mo
re than once to her daughter after a particularly harrowing session at the geriatric ward. “It’s wicked, it’s obscene, to let a person linger on like that—just a hulk of flesh, all meaning, all dignity gone! It’s a wicked thing, it’s the one and only fear I have about getting old—that I might end up like that! You won’t let it happen to me, will you, darling? You’ll make sure, won’t you, if I’m past doing for myself, that they bump me off good and early?”

  Such an easy promise to make, with the August sun streaming in through the kitchen window, and the putative victim up to her elbows in flour, preparing a batch of jam tarts for the impending visit of her two great-grandsons, aged nine and eleven, and with appetites like wolves.

  “Of course I promise,” she’d answered, and meant it; for in fact she agreed entirely with her mother’s attitude, admired and respected her for it. Besides, it all seemed so incredibly unlikely. Mother was the kind of person who would die in harness when the time came—drop dead wheeling the library cart along some polished corridor, or while sawing too vigorously at a dead branch overhanging her beloved garden.

  But it hadn’t happened like that; and how could you be sure, now, that this mumbling, senile old wreck was still of the same mind?

  Once, several years ago, while Mother had still been her sane and sharp-witted self, Millicent had posed this very question to her; and her reply had been immediate and unhesitating:

  “You must do what I’ve asked you to do, darling—I, myself—the real me. This person talking to you now—the one you see in front of you, she’s the real me, the one you must listen to. Pay no attention to the views—if any—of the mindless, dribbling old loony I may one day turn into, because she won’t be me any more, not in any real sense. Do you think I’d allow that senile old hag to decide how I am going to die?”

  Proud words, and unanswerable. Quietly Millicent had resolved that, should the occasion ever arise, she would do exactly as her mother had asked. For so brave, so indomitable a person, how could a loving daughter do less?