Ellery Queen's Crime Cruise Round the World

by Ellery Queen

  “Oh, God, not that again,” he had answered. Turned his back on her. Zipped up his shaving kit, stuffed it in his travel case, snapped the case shut. Snapped her out of his life.

  New York. Thorwald’s head office. Sooner or later Thorwald would be intending to go to his New York office. “I’ll call Simon, that’s the thing to do,” she said aloud. She sat again on the sofa, reached for the telephone on the low teak table beside it, slowly dialed a familiar number. A secretary in New York answered. “This is Mrs. Thorwald Jensen, calling from Israel,” Solange said. “Please connect me right away with Mr. Simon, it’s important.”

  The voice of Simon, Thorwald’s chief, came over the wire as clearly as though he was on a telephone in the next apartment. “Hello, hello? Solange? Good to hear your voice. Where is Thorwald anyway, we’ve been expecting him every day. We need a briefing on that Negev Desert job. Here in New York? No, no sign of him, I said we’re waiting for him.”

  “But he said New York.” Her mouth was dry. “I thought. . .I haven’t heard. . .where do you suppose. . .”

  “Take it easy, Solange, don’t go getting upset,” Simon was saying. “You ought to know by now how crazy survey engineers can be. Any place they land is home and they never think anybody should be notified, especially bosses and wives. Thorwald’s probably stopped off in London to catch some shows, yeah, I’d bet on London. I’ll put in a call to the hotel he usually stays at, or have you called there already? No? Well, leave it to me, I’ll track him down. Listen, go out on the town yourself. Where are you? Tel Aviv?”

  “Haifa,” she said. And for no particular reason she added, “It’s a quiet town.”

  “Go to a movie,” Simon said. “And listen, the minute I catch Thorwald I’ll have him phone you.”

  A few more soothing words. A click. And she was alone with herself again. Thorwald call her? Never.

  She lay on the sofa until the summer sky changed from afternoon brightness to twilight, to dark, and even after that for a long time. “Why not a movie?” she finally asked herself. She rose, chose a light shawl, and went outdoors. As she walked up the stone stairs, from far behind her came the ecstatic hungering cries of animals in the zoo located at the head of the wadi in Gan Ha’em, the Mothers’ Park. She shivered, an unbidden primitive fear tightening the muscles of her back. She moved rapidly up the steep lane, pursued by the sounds, gasped with relief as she reached the sidewalk and saw the piercing headlights of cars speeding by.

  A last faint, almost laughing howl came from the animals. Then silence. The silence and the howling told her it was too late for the movie. Each night, for what reason she did not know, the animals cried briefly, at almost ten o’clock. And again in the dark early morning before dawn. Not feeding hours surely. Perhaps a check by caretakers; it didn’t matter, did it? Nothing mattered, Thorwald was gone.

  Even though she decided against the movie she continued up the steeply sloping street toward Central Carmel, the clustered shopping district on the crest of Mount Carmel. There she moved among laughing, noisy groups of youth clustered in front of restaurants, ice-cream stands, fellafel counters. Although so different, yet it made her think of other crowds of youth on Shaftsbury and Piccadilly in London where she and Thorwald had strolled after the theater, window-gazing at shops she might visit the following day. Standing in front of a china shop choosing table settings she would never have. How could birds of passage possess china, or silver, having no home other than hotels, leased apartments, pensions? A few weeks here, a few months there, never a year, then off on another exciting journey, the adventure of change that Thorwald craved.

  “I’ll go, I’ll leave Haifa, I can’t stay here any longer,” she told herself. Then clapped her hand over her mouth, fearful to be noticed talking to herself. She walked swiftly back down the mountainside, running the last few steps into her apartment. She turned the key and leaned, panting, against the door.

  In the night, near morning, she heard the animals cry again and she moaned as she struggled to recapture sleep. With eyes staring into the dark she tried to imagine how the woman, Thorwald’s unknown love, might look. Dark hair and violet eyes, like a movie actress? No, Thorwald liked blondes; that was why she had lightened her own red-brown hair, had become a titian blonde. She fretted with the idea of perhaps getting up, turning on the light to see again how well her titian hair contrasted with sage-green eyes. “You’re unreal,” Thorwald had said when he first saw the change of color. “Absolutely not real, Solly, I must be imagining you. Eyes of an Egyptian cat and hair of an angel. Come here, give us a kiss.”

  He had loved her then. What had changed him?

  Face it, be realistic: Thorwald was in love with change, always another project, another country, and now another woman. Sameness bored him. On the go, here, there, anywhere, everywhere.

  “God, tell me, where is he now?”

  She sat up, arms clasping her shoulders in a comforting hug. She rocked to and fro in a terrible wrestling with God, “Tell me, God, tell me!” Then fell back on the pillow, exhausted, smothered by the dark and the loneliness.

  In the morning she tried to eat, couldn’t, only drank coffee. She opened the utility cupboard, found the key to her storeroom, picked up a flashlight, went into the open foyer and down the basement stairs. In the storeroom she surveyed the travel cases, selected one of medium size, and carried it upstairs.

  She went to the telephone and called their travel agent. “This is Mrs. Thorwald Jensen. I want to make a flight reservation.”

  “Shalom, shalom, Mrs. Jensen. You going to join Mr. Jensen? By the way, was he able to make his connection in Europe?”

  Connection? To New York? Or to some other place where the woman would be waiting to greet him? I never looked at his ticket. I should have looked at his ticket. I could only think that he was leaving me.

  “He hasn’t cabled,” she said. “But make my ticket just like Mr. Jensen’s please.” Perhaps I’ll find the woman and when I do I’ll—

  “Very good. When will you want to leave? And would you like me to make a hotel reservation in Mexico City? Oh, but of course, your husband will be taking care of that.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Mexico City! Then the woman would be there, otherwise Thorwald would have gone directly to New York. “And I want to leave right away, tomorrow. I’ll call for the ticket this afternoon.”

  The arrangements finished, she went into the bedroom with the travel case. “How can I take everything?” she asked, helpless at the thought. It was a leased furnished apartment but the paintings, the books and ornaments were hers. And all the clothes she had delighted to preen herself in before Thorwald. What good had that been?

  She sat on the bed beside the case, dully contemplating its limited size. She rose, took the key and flashlight again.

  In the foyer that opened directly onto the terraced garden she halted abruptly, startled to see a small deer run across the flagged walkway. Its hoofs spattered on the graveled path which bordered the flower-strewn terrace. In swift succession behind the deer ran a stocky mustached man and two lean youths in work clothes. Tree branches thrashed against the building as the three vanished around the building, their pounding footsteps crescendoing into heavy thuds as they leaped down the last terrace onto the sharply descending sides of the wadi.

  She hurried down the basement stairs, picked her way along the narrow hallway beside the row of storerooms to the door that opened onto the side garden. From there she went to the edge of the embankment above the wadi. Dry brush cracked in the canyonlike depths below. She saw, far down, the deer dodging among trees, leaping ahead of its pursuers.

  It has run away from the zoo, she thought, escaped its prison. Did Thorwald do that?

  She began to tremble.

  One of the youths left the group and turned back along the wadi’s floor toward the zoo located at its end. She stayed to see how the search progressed, but soon the deer and the other two men vanished, concealed by brush and
trees. She sat on the ground, waiting, watching. After a time the youth who had returned to the zoo came back with a second older man who carried a gun, an unusual kind of gun which she recognized from a safari trip in Africa she had taken with Thorwald. A gun to shoot tranquilizing darts.

  She felt a momentary pang for the fleeing animal, then hardened against it. “It shouldn’t run away, it’s safer in the zoo, it’s not good to run away.”

  She rose and went back to the storeroom. There she hesitated beside a large travel case, left it untouched, then chose a smaller one and a duffel bag.

  Back upstairs the thought of the deer and the men in the wadi clung and troubled her. She went to the wide living-room window which faced the deep sprawling ravine, pushed aside the glass to let in the air, pulled a chair close, and sat down to see if the searchers would succeed. Shortly before noon one youth, carrying the tranquilizer gun, hurried up the wadi toward the zoo. Behind him, moving slowly with the weight of the sleeping beast, were the man who had brought the gun and the other youth. The first man, the one with the mustache, was not with them.

  Solange stood up and went to the bedroom.

  In late afternoon she decided she was finished with packing. Too bad about the paintings, the fragile ceramics. But she could return; there were months left on the lease. Only she wouldn’t, not ever, never see her charming collections again; too bad, too bad, everything was too bad.

  She changed clothes, walked to the shopping district. There she closed out her bank account and picked up her ticket that was made out for Mexico City. Yes, surely the woman would be there. Somehow she would find that woman. And she would kill her.

  Back home she remembered that she had not eaten all day. She went to the kitchen, prepared tea and toast, thought vaguely about poaching an egg but gave up the idea. She took her tea and toast into the living room, sat before the window, nibbled and sipped as she stared into the wadi. Not seeing it, seeing only the pictures in her mind, she drifted into sleep.

  The excited wailing of the zoo animals awakened her in the night. She switched on the light, looked at her watch. Ten o’clock. Why did the animals cry at this hour? Were they lonely? Was the deer awake too? Or perhaps it was dead, never to join again in the nightly excitement of the animals.

  She telephoned a taxi company, made arrangements to be picked up early in the morning. Then she bathed, carefully made up her face, blotting out the dark circles under her eyes, outlining her lips, filling between the lines with provocative color. She assessed the mouth Thorwald had kissed so many times. The vulnerable mouth of a baby, he had said, tantalizing with the cat eyes and the angelic hair. Thorwald, how could you have left me?

  Briefly the eyes in the mirror flamed, then became shuttered.

  When she finished dressing she did not lie down but sat in the chair waiting for morning.

  Before dawn she carried the two cases up the steep lane to the sidewalk, tucked them against shrubbery, and returned for the duffel bag. Back again in the open entranceway she hesitated uncertainly, looked down the basement stairs, waited, thinking. Then she returned to the apartment and found the storage-room key.

  When she came back up the basement stairs she was carrying the large travel case. She took both it and the duffel bag up to the street to wait for the taxi.

  At Lod Airport she joined the passenger queue going through security check. When her turn came she lifted the smaller cases to the checking table. Did you pack these yourself, did anyone give you anything to carry, did anyone other than yourself have access to these, give you any gifts to transport? Yes, no, no, no. The girl security officer expertly prodded and lifted clothing, felt inside shoes, tested bottles, finally closed the cases.

  “You have another case, Madam. Please lift it to the table.”

  Solange lifted the large case. “Open it, please.” She did. The girl’s voice sharpened. “Are you certain you packed this case yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “But these are men’s clothes. Is your husband with you?”

  Involuntarily Solange started to look behind her, caught herself. “No. They are my husband’s clothes. He left earlier. I’m taking this case to him.”

  The girl hesitated, then systematically lifted out the clothes, searching pockets, unrolling socks, unzipping the shaving kit, squeezing the shaving-cream tube, turning the razor’s handle. Finally she said, “It is all right. Thank you.”

  Solange went to the ticket check-in station, paid the excess-baggage charge, went upstairs, through customs and the body-and-hand-luggage search. Inside the departure lounge she bought the English-language newspaper, then wandered unseeing past jewelry and souvenir displays to the exit gate. Almost time, almost time to leave Israel, almost time. . .

  Her flight was announced and she filed down to the bus, onto the plane, found her seat beside the window. Opened the newspaper. Breath whistled through clenched teeth with her sharp intake of air. Even though the headlines were small, the article sprang at her from the middle of the front page. Body of American Oil Official Found on Mount Carmel.

  The deer had found him. Staggered by the dart it had floundered into the brush and fallen almost on the body mutilated by wild animals almost beyond recognition. Except for the airline ticket, found in the torn and scattered clothing and finally pieced together, it would have been difficult to identify the man. But when all the ticket fragments were rejoined, there it was: Thorwald Jensen, destination New York via Mexico City.

  The plane taxied slowly to the runway. Its engines revved, then quieted as a white car sped toward it. Two men got out of the car, motioned authoritatively at a truck which hurried forward. Workmen leaped from it, rolled mobile stairs against the airliner’s side. A stewardess unlocked the exit door.

  She waited, hands gripped together, eyes closed as scenes of that last night with Thorwald skimmed through her mind. The frightening, furtive struggle to push and pull Thorwald down the basement stairs, past the storerooms, into the garden. Then along the garden path, rolling him down the wadi’s sharp incline, every cracking twig an alarm, every lighted window discovery.

  The exit door opened and the two men entered the plane. As they started down the aisle she rehearsed in her mind what she would tell them. The truth, only the truth. He was straightening his tie before the bathroom mirror. I came behind him, begging him again not to leave me. He smiled and shook his head, not even bothering to answer, as though what I said had no importance, merely a whim to be smiled at. I already had the knife, held behind me. I struck. Hard. It was terrible. Awful. I begged him to come alive. But he couldn’t. I knew that, and I was terrified. Sol took him into the wadi.

  As the men stopped in the aisle beside her row, she stood up, almost in welcome.

  Australia

  Upfield

  Arthur W. Upfield

  Wisp of Wool and Disk of Silver

  Did you know that Arthur W. Upfield wrote a short story about his famous half-aborigine detective, Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, usually called Bony? Yes, he did, and there’s a baffling mystery about the original manuscript of the story. Here are excerpts from a letter written by Mr. Upfield to your Editor:

  Dear Mr. Queen,

  Two years ago you invited me to enter a short story in your Detective Short Story Contest. Your letter was received when I was very ill, and subsequently other circumstances obtruded.

  Recently, I read an announcement in a New York paper that you are conducting a similar contest for this year, and as I have not now the conditions of the earlier Contest, perhaps you would enter the enclosed story for me.

  The detective short is strange work for me, this being the first. In the event of non-success, kindly drop it into your w.p.b.

  Cordially yours,

  Arthur W. Upfield

  Now this letter was dated 7th June, 1948—thirty-three years ago! And your Editor did not see or read that letter until early in 1979! Surely it must have been received at the EQMM office in 1948, and surely
no member of EQMM’s editorial staff would have failed to send an Upfield contest submission (especially one about Bony) to your Editor. And yet I swear to you that to the best of my recollection I never saw or read that letter and manuscript until thirty-one years after Mr. Upfield mailed them! What happened? How could they have been mislaid all these years? We just don’t know. (Can you imagine how Mr. Upfield must have felt never to have heard a single word about the fate of his story?)

  But for readers of EQMM, better later than never—even thirty-three years later. We learn from the author’s letter that “The Fool and the Perfect Murder” (the original title) was the first Bony short story, and so far as we have been able to check, it is also the only Bony short story. Strange that Mr. Upfield chose to flirt with “the inverted detective story” as his technique, but whatever the form, an Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte short is a most welcome discovery, particularly for future anthologists. Cheers!

  Why is Bony so successful as an Australian detective? Here is how he explains it: “I am peculiarly equipped with gifts bequeathed to me by my white father and my aboriginal mother. In me are combined the white man’s reasoning powers and the black man’s perceptions and bushcraft. . .Which is why I never fail.”

  It was Sunday. The heat drove the blowflies to roost under the low staging that supported the iron tank outside the kitchen door. The small flies, apparently created solely for the purpose of drowning themselves in the eyes of man and beast, were not noticed by the man lying on the rough bunk set up under the veranda roof. He was reading a mystery story.

  The house was of board, and iron-roofed. Nearby were other buildings: a blacksmith’s shop, a truck shed, and a junk house. Beyond them a windmill raised water to a reservoir tank on high stilts, which in turn fed a long line of troughing. This was the outstation at the back of Reefer’s Find.