AHMM, December 2007
Page 1
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CONTENTS
EDITOR'S NOTES: CRIME FOR ALL TIME by Linda Landrigan
Fiction: THE BOOKWORM'S DEMISE by Beverle Graves Myers
THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER by Willie Rose
Fiction: CAR TROUBLE by Jas. R. Petrin
Fiction: DEAD OF WINTER by Catherine Mambretti
HOW TO SOLVE AN ACROSTIC
Fiction: MANDELBROT'S PATTERNS by Keith McCarthy
Fiction: THE GREEN FLASH by Deloris Stanton Forbes
SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER
REEL CRIME by Steve Hockensmith
Fiction: PANDORA'S FORT by Gilbert M. Stack
BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn
Mystery Classic: A WATCHER BY THE DEAD by Ambrose Bierce
SOLUTION TO THE NOVEMBER “UNSOLVED"
INDEX: VOLUME FIFTY-TWO: 2007
COMING IN JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008
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EDITOR'S NOTES: CRIME FOR ALL TIME by Linda Landrigan
I have a particular fondness for historical fiction. I enjoy the tactile sense of a bygone world that a good writer conveys. I enjoy learning a bit of history as it is interwoven with the narrative. I enjoy the rich, well-chosen detail distilled from an author's exhaustive research. This month we feature three such detailed and imaginative stories.
Returning author Catherine Mambretti ("The Mute Monja, Or the Walls Could Talk,” April 2004) brings to life the period of the early European settlement of America—just at the time when we are noting the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, Virginia. When Kokoum, husband of Powhatan Princess Pocahantas, is found dead in the woods, suspicion falls first on the starving white “cutthroats,” then on Edward, a white slave of the Powhatans, and finally on Pocahantas herself, before the shaman Redhunt, Edward's master, determines what truly happened in the “Dead of Winter.” Ms. Mambretti has promised that this story is the first of a series featuring Redhunt and Edward.
Eighteenth century Venetian P.I. Nicco Ziani returns in Beverle Graves Myers's “The Bookworm's Demise,” and his investigation into the death of an old impoverished aristocrat reveals a lot about the mores and culture of Venice, the crossroads of Europe and Asia.
And sharp-witted gambler Pandora Parson returns in “Pandora's Fort,” the latest installment in Gilbert M. Stack's series featuring itinerant bare-knuckle boxer Corey Callaghan and his trainer Patrick O'Sullivan. As usual, brains and muscle combine to see the trio through another adventure in America's Wild West.
Our other terrific stories this month include DeLoris Stanton Forbes's vignette of life on Saint Maartens, which is not without its problems, in “The Green Flash,” and Keith McCarthy's thought-provoking “Mandlebrot's Patterns.” Our cover story, Jas. R. Petrin's “Car Trouble,” brings back the dying shy Leo “Skig” Skorzeny ("Easy Money,” January/February 2007), who becomes a detective (of sorts) when the old woman who cuts his hair is fingered in a murder case.
A special treat this month is Robert C. Hahn's Booked & Printed column. He reviews four mysteries suitable for young adults who're ready for the grownup bookshelves.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Fiction: THE BOOKWORM'S DEMISE by Beverle Graves Myers
Edward Kinsella III
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Old people were not welcome in Venice. In those days, my city danced on the lagoon, a fountain of masquerade and pleasure, merrily ignoring the storm clouds that hovered over the rest of Europe. If your knees creaked too painfully to indulge in minuets, if potential lovers ran when you dropped the mask that hid your wrinkles, Venice had no patience with you. All that remained was to take to your bed, turn your face to the wall, and pray for the good Lord to take you quickly.
It was not just advanced age that made Arcangelo Tartini such a sorry figure. He had to be one of the ugliest men I had ever encountered. Six feet tall, but stooped so that his chin nearly rested on his chest, he had a cadaverous face, with slack, red-rimmed eyes unadorned by lashes or brows. Lower down, his shiny, pink lips worked as ceaselessly as a cow chewing her cud. Whenever we met, he larded his conversation with snatches of verse and flowery prose that put me in mind of a stage actor. Yet his much darned clothing hinted at an aristocratic past, especially the ancient wig I suspected of harboring more than a few fleas among its curls.
Signor Tartini and I lived in the same building. The Ca’ Renaldo, a decaying palazzo in the parish of Saint Barnaba, faced a narrow waterway that dumped into the Grand Canal. A fine selection of Venice's human flotsam and jetsam inhabited its cramped rooms. Ruined noblemen with pedigrees that rivaled my own rubbed elbows with swindlers, mediocre artists, and scribes who kept the news-sheets supplied with gossip. The occasional harlot enlivened our lot.
The old gentleman's room was on the floor below mine. His overlooked the courtyard, while mine had a fine view of the canal, if I cared to squeeze through my long window and out onto my narrow balcony. In the way of such things, I wouldn't see Tartini for days on end, and then our paths would cross at every turn. With a rattle of phlegm, he would make a courtly bow, remind me that he wrote a fine hand, and ask if I needed anything transcribed. That's how he made his living. He copied out letters and romantic sonnets for men who lacked artistic handwriting or composed notes for those who couldn't write at all.
I had given Tartini some business recently when I found the need to send an anonymous letter to a certain lady. I waited in his shabby room while he fetched a writing box of battered mahogany that he stowed under his bed. “The poor man's closet,” he explained with a wry grin. After mixing powdered ink with a dollop of water, he sharpened his quill in slow jerks, with hands that were as crabbed as the talons of a hunting bird.
Noting my dubious glance, he said, “Don't worry, your carissima will have a letter worthy of the noblest swain. I'm slow these days, but my hands are steady. God willing, they'll remain so. If the palsy ever settles in, I'll starve for sure."
He followed those words with proof of his promise. As I gave voice to my heart's desire, elegant loops and flourishes flowed from his pen. Once he had blown away the blotting sand, he handed over my letter with a gallant gesture that gave me a glimpse of the man he must have been in his youth.
"You've done well, Nicco. To craft a good love letter, you need to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.” Behind his wire spectacles, one eye closed in a lashless wink. “So says the philosopher Rousseau. Since he's a Frenchman with a string of mistresses, I consider him an expert on such matters."
Chuckling, I'd sweetened the old man's fee with a few extra soldi, a reward for his droll melancholy that added a bit of whimsy to my day.
But there would be no more amusing quotes, and I would have to pen my own letters from now on. Carlo Bianchi, one of Ca’ Renaldo's newsmongers and Signor Tartini's nearest neighbor, had just knocked at my door to deliver the news. The old man was dead.
"Look him over, Nicco. Tell me what you think.” Bianchi had dragged me downstairs to Tartini's room and was stabbing an inky forefinger toward the corpse stretched out on the floor beneath a thin, patchwork coverlet. “Something doe
sn't smell right."
I wrinkled my nose at the general odor of unlaundered linen and unemptied chamber pot. “What would you expect? He couldn't afford the maid more than once a month."
"You know what I mean. I got you down here because you understand this messy business. It's murder, Nicco. Murder as plain as the nose on my face."
That would be an obvious murder indeed. Bianchi's ruddy nose was as lumpy and pitted as a misshapen strawberry. Overindulgence in his favorite Montepulciano had also left him with a liverish complexion and a tendency to fall asleep whenever his head touched a cushion. Despite these shortcomings, Bianchi never failed to entertain the readers of the popular Mondo Morale with his caustic observations on the daily life of our city.
"Have the sbirri been called?” I asked. My business of providing services for the anxious and desperate often put me in conflict with Venice's constabulary. I didn't want to be found hovering over a corpse when the law arrived.
Bianchi gave a short nod. “They've come and gone. Didn't take more than five minutes to call it an accident and send for the wagon from the charnel house."
A timid knock sounded from the hallway. Bianchi answered, slitting the door open and conversing in whispers. Then he shut it and propped his wasted frame against the planks. “Marina from across the hall. She gives her condolences and wants to know if she can do anything."
"Uncommon good manners for a slut."
His reply was barbed. “Like so many here, our Marina has fallen below her natural station."
When I merely shrugged, he nodded toward the body. “Are you going to take a look?"
"All in good time,” I murmured, opening the slatted blind to admit a ladder of bright July sunshine.
At the center of the room, beside the corpse, stood a chair and a table that held Tartini's writing box. The lid was shut. Its hinges creaked as I swung it back. The paper was neatly stacked in its compartment and the pen had been wiped clean, but the sand shaker had overturned to spill its granules in a miniature pyramid.
I shook my head at the open ink jar. The old man was probably regaling Heaven's angels with witty epigrams, but if he chanced to cast an eye down to earth, he would be very annoyed to see his expensive ink drying up. I solemnly replaced the glass stopper.
Across the room, a bedstead was covered with a sheet that trailed down onto a fraying mat and a welter of old news-sheets. A few articles of clothing hung from wall pegs.
As I'd noted on my previous visit, the opposite wall contained a roughly built shelf that stretched from floor to ceiling. It overflowed with volumes bound in leather or marbled paper. I ran my finger along the spines, many with titles picked out in gilt. Books of poetry kept company with accounts of military conquest and plays written in several languages. A literary hodgepodge. Yet I had a feeling that the old man could have easily put his hand on any book he fancied.
I unshelved a volume of Dante, ran my hand over the butter-soft leather, and lingered over the fearsome illustrations of the poet's view of Hell. The old man evidently took better care of his books than himself. The Dante was free of dust and showed no sign of bookworm or dampstain. A bold signature decorated the flyleaf, but it wasn't Arcangelo Tartini's.
Bianchi had abandoned his post at the door and was standing over the body with crossed arms. “I didn't expect a man with your reputation to shirk from death."
I replaced the Dante with a reluctant sigh. “All right, let's see the old bookworm."
Bianchi bent to jerk the coverlet away. As I knelt, a sharp pain ran through both knees. I was nowhere near as ancient as our dead neighbor, but my joints had begun to remind me that my fledgling days were long past.
Tartini lay on his left side, his wig askew and sticky with blood from a wound at the back of his skull. Wire spectacles dangled from his right hand. One lens had cracked in the shape of a crow's foot. Tartini's toothless mouth formed an oval of surprise, but his eyes were shut.
Bianchi's gaze followed my own. “I closed them first thing. Couldn't stand not to."
"You discovered him?"
"That's right, not quite an hour ago. After I saw he was beyond help, I sent one of Mimmo's boys for the sbirri. We had quite a dustup. They're convinced that Signor Tartini slipped and hit his head right there."
Bianchi pointed to a smear of blood on the near edge of the table. I stood to take a closer look. Gauging the position of the body and the chair that had been pushed aside, I decided that the sbirri might have stumbled on the correct conclusion. The constables were coarse men, more skilled at catching pickpockets than investigating suspicious deaths, but like the old proverb goes: Even the worst fisherman gets lucky sometimes.
Bianchi seemed to divine my thoughts. “Don't be so hasty. Keep looking."
"If you insist,” I replied, drumming my fingers on the lid of the writing box, trying to picture Tartini's last movements. In addition to the box, the tabletop held a small lamp for warming sealing wax and a plate bearing a ripe peach and a paring knife. The old man must have interrupted his work to eat his breakfast.
My mouth watered at the sight of the fruit. I reached for the peach, pressed its fuzzy skin to my nose, and took a deep, voluptuous whiff. I'd heard the singsong cries of the fruit seller paddling along the canal earlier that morning: “First peaches of the season. Straight from the mainland. Come buy. Come buy.” I hadn't tasted a peach since last summer. If my purse wasn't as thin as a sow's ear, I would have called to the man and pulled some up in a basket.
There was one odd note in this tabletop tableau—a balled-up handkerchief with a dainty lace edging stuffed under the rim of the plate. I unfolded it to find a gnarled pit and a few shreds of browning peach skin.
"According to the sbirri, that's what sent him on his way,” said Bianchi.
"What? A piece of fruit?"
"He slipped on a discarded skin."
My eyes ran over the corpse's waistcoat embroidered with silver thread that had tarnished to black, the woolen breeches shiny with wear, the white stockings striped with ladders that revealed bruised shanks. Tartini's buckled shoes were in no better condition than the rest of his attire, but there was something else.
"They're on the wrong feet,” I said.
"Exactly,” Bianchi replied. With no flinching that I could detect, he removed the shoes that slewed from Tartini's bony feet and handed them to me. A slick peach skin stuck to each bumpy sole. Corresponding stains marred the tiles at Tartini's toes. “I'll admit our friend could be unsteady at times, Nicco, but his wits were quick and sure. He never put his shoes on the wrong feet."
My blood beat in my ears. Now I saw why Bianchi was so insistent on murder. “Someone staged this."
He nodded. “Someone who was in too much of a hurry to make sure the shoes got back on the right feet after they'd been ground into the peach skin."
"Why the hurry, I wonder."
"I might have had something to do with that. Once I come to life in the morning, I open the blinds and lean out the window to call to the old man. Just to see if he made it through the night, you know. His shiny bald head usually pops right out. We trade a bit of chaff and that's it."
"But not today."
"No, I hailed him several times. When he didn't answer I jumped in my breeches and ran next door."
"The door was unlocked?"
Bianchi nodded.
"Anyone in the hall?"
"No one. And I'll tell you something else.” He tapped his red nose. “I can play bloodhound too. I've already talked to Mimmo. He's been watching the door all morning, and there've been no strangers on the staircase, coming or going."
"That means someone from the Ca’ Renaldo did this."
"Yes.” Bianchi's tone could have frozen a pitcher of cream in one breath. “Unless a murderer from outside crawled up the side of the building like a spider, it's one of us."
"Would you like to tell me who you suspect?"
He spread his hands. “I have no idea—that's why I calle
d you. Old Tartini was as meek as a lamb. He posed a threat to no one, and he didn't have two soldi to rub together."
I raised my eyes to the shelf bulging with literature of the ages. “Books like those don't come cheap."
Bianchi dismissed the books with the shrug of a man who reads nothing but news-sheets. “Probably had those forever. Might've been selling them off when his scribbling didn't pay."
I let my gaze range over the polished leather bindings and then asked, “Did the constables notice the shoes?"
"I made certain they did, but they weren't impressed. They insisted that he was simply a senile old fool."
I exhaled through pursed lips. Already knowing the answer, I asked, “What do you want me to do?"
"Find out who did it, of course. You can't tell me you're in someone's hire because I've seen you holding down a bench at Sperazzi's coffee house all week."
He was right, but I didn't want to say so.
Bianchi clutched my sleeve. “Nicco, he has no family left. He's old and alone, and we're the only ones who might come close to caring what actually happened."
I looked around the drab little room, so like my own, except for the books. A pair of flies buzzed around the ripe fruit on the table. As I slowly nodded my assent, someone pounded on the door hard enough to make it bounce in its case. The charnel wagon had arrived.
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Marina had taken up residence at the Ca’ Renaldo less than a month ago. A few times I'd seen her flit through the lobby on her way out into the night. Bidding me good evening, she'd sent me a saucy glance through the flimsy veil of the zendale that covered her sleek hair and white shoulders. I'd responded with the bow of a man who was desolated to be otherwise engaged.
After Bianchi had gone about his business, I stepped across the hall and knocked at the young harlot's door. She answered with a quavering, “Come in."
I found her kneeling before a makeshift prie-dieu that she'd fashioned from an upended carton. She clasped a string of rose-colored beads between her palms. Black smoke curled from a squat tallow candle, and a plaster statue of the Blessed Virgin beamed a crooked smile at the infant Jesus in her arms.