AHMM, May 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  She nodded. “Yes. Why?"

  "Did he tell you that he was a psychiatrist, a Dr. Conley?"

  Her eyes went wide. “Yes, he did. How did you know? Who are you?"

  He gave her a sad smile. “I'm the real Dr. Conley, miss."

  "I don't get it."

  He nodded. “Let me tell you a story. A young man from a wealthy family, parents rather distant. Then the parents are killed in an accident far away. The young man feels guilty about not being closer to them. He feels he has to atone for what he thinks of as his sins. He develops a religious mania to build a cathedral, to make a grand offering to heaven. He begins to loiter around real churches and cathedrals, making a nuisance of himself. He tries to board planes for foreign countries. He's institutionalized but is desperately miserable and breaks out frequently."

  She looked at him. “Is that Simon Parr?"

  He nodded. “Exactly. Fortunately, being wealthy, his harmless fantasies can be indulged. We set up this place as a way for him to get to think about cathedrals and plan cathedrals, but still function out in the world."

  "But, doctor, then who are all those people who go in to buy cathedrals?"

  "Oh, they're part of the staff. They check in periodically to see that he's all right. Unfortunately, he's now developed an interesting transference issue: thinking that he's me and that he's helping other people with his problem. Still, it may turn out well. By helping others—"

  "He might help himself?"

  He smiled. “You do understand. I hope you can keep this confidential. He really is making excellent progress, although there's no saying how long he may have to continue here."

  "Sure, doctor. We were just curious, is all. It seemed so odd."

  "Yes. It may be just a front, but for him it's reality."

  They shook hands. She returned, eager to explain it all to Rick, while the middle-aged man walked back and entered Cathedrals R Us.

  Inside, the young man looked up. “Yes?” he asked the older man.

  "They bought it,” he replied.

  Copyright © 2007 Edmund X. Dejesus

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  MYSTERY CLASSIC: THE RIDDLE OF THE JACK OF DIAMONDS by STUART PALMER

  The doorbell shrilled for a long minute, and then followed impetuous pounding of small hard fists upon the door of Miss Hildegarde Withers's modest little Westside apartment. The middle-aged schoolteacher sat up suddenly in bed. By the pale gray light which filtered through her windows she saw that her alarm clock, set for eight, would not ring for another hour.

  "Whatever in the world—"

  Drowsily she found her slippers and dressing-gown, and swung open the door. It was a girl in her middle twenties, beautiful in a coldly perfect manner, and dressed in a soft coat which more than a hundred brown mink had died to make possible. Yet the dark hair was a little disarranged—the arrogant mouth frightened beneath its subtle smears of rouge.

  The dark eyes flashed, without hesitancy. “You are Miss Withers? The one I've read about? I'm in terrible trouble!"

  The schoolteacher swung the door wider, and offered her best chair to this perfumed and exquisite visitor. The slender gloved hands gripped together. “You will—you must help me!"

  "I'm Lorna Davies—Lorna Gault Davies,” said the young woman, as if that explained everything. She hesitated, and then plunged on. “It's about Rich—Richie Davies, my husband. They've arrested him. The police, you know. He's just an unworldly artist, and heaven knows what they'll make him do or say. It was all because the man who has an apartment on the floor above us was—died last night. A man named Merlin—Jack Merlin.” She leaned forward, and the mink coat opened to show that she was still wearing an evening gown daringly designed of white satin. “Richie didn't have anything to do with it, of course. But he's got himself terribly involved. He works late at night at his painting, and last night or rather this morning he went out for a walk. When he came back the elevator boy made a silly mistake and took him to the ninth floor instead of the eighth. Richie never noticed—the apartments are similarly located, and he found the door of Merlin's apartment open and walked in thinking he was home.

  "Then—” Lorna was staring at Miss Withers's slipper—"then he noticed that there was a dead body in front of the fireplace. He rushed out to call for help, and some people got out of the elevator and saw him. When the police got there they arrested Richie. They wouldn't believe his story, and of course the elevator boy swore up and down that he hadn't made such a mistake..."

  "Of course!” agreed Miss Withers. She was growing interested.

  "So you see? It's all a mistake, but Richie musn't stay in jail. If you'll only explain to the police!"

  Miss Withers was thoughtful. “If what you say is true, your husband has nothing much to worry about. But I'll take the case. Only understand this, young woman. My aim will be not to protect any one person, but simply to find out the truth—and the chips fall where they may."

  Lorna Davies hesitated only a moment. “Of course! That's what I want."

  "I'd better go down there,” Miss Withers decided. “Where did it happen?"

  "Saxton Arms—35 Park Avenue. I've my car here, but I can't wait while you dress. I must see some people before nine o'clock.” She grasped Miss Withers's hand, in a clasp that was surprisingly firm. “I'm trusting you—take care of Richie—” She was gone.

  Miss Withers frowned as she hastily dressed. She could understand why the young woman had other errands—there would be lawyers to see and all that—but why before nine o'clock?

  A very few minutes later the schoolteacher was inside a taxicab and hurtling through the almost deserted streets of Manhattan. She was breathlessly deposited before one of the better apartment houses of lower Park Avenue.

  She was trying to wheedle her way past the burly policeman at the door, when a dry voice behind her said, “Hullo! Here already?"

  "Oscar!"

  He took her arm and led her past the humbled guardians of the portal. “Only heard about this job half an hour ago,” he remarked accusingly as they headed for the elevator. “Like to know how you got here ahead of me."

  She told him, as they swept skyward, the bare facts of Lorna Davies's call. Inspector Oscar Piper looked rather stern. “You'll have a job of it, Hildegarde. It looks plenty bad for young Davies."

  "But Oscar, coincidences do happen—and elevator boys can make mistakes!"

  "Fish can wear water-wings, but they don't. Davies tells a pretty thin story—about his walking in upon Merlin's still-warm body by accident. Besides, he didn't rush out to turn in any alarm. He ducked down the stairs to his own apartment, and only the fact that some homeward bound merrymakers recognized him coming out of Merlin's door gave us the lead on him."

  They were going down the ninth floor hall. “Then who did turn in the alarm?"

  "Funny thing, that,” admitted the inspector. “The call came from an all-night drugstore down the street. Man's voice, but wouldn't give his name. That was about four o'clock this morning. If it was Davies, why didn't he use his own phone?"

  Miss Withers followed the inspector down the hallway to the door of 9A, which was at the moment being propped up by the wide shoulders of Patrolman Doone.

  "The medical examiner's just left, sir,” he told the inspector.

  "This may be no sight for a lady,” warned Piper. But Miss Withers marched stoutly through the door in his wake.

  The inspector was quite right. This was no sight for a lady. Through the open inner door of the wide foyer they could see flashes of blinding white light where the department photographers were taking pictures of the grim thing which lay sprawled face downwards upon the rumpled rug near the big living room fireplace. Mentally the schoolteacher checked down one point in favor of Richie Davies's story.

  A sergeant approached bearing a heavy iron poker—part of the set which lay overturned in the empty fireplace. “This did it,” he announced. “Fits the hole in Merlin's skull. Not a print
on it, either."

  The inspector nodded, and went over to scrutinize the corpse—a fattish, sleek man of perhaps forty or so dressed in a black robe and red silk pajamas. Piper thought he had seen that face somewhere before, though certainly not in the lineup.

  "What did the doctor say?"

  Sergeant Dilling put down the poker. “Who, Levin? Nothing much. Death instantaneous, and could not have been self-inflicted. Probably happened about three o'clock this morning—maybe three thirty. That crack with the poker would have felled an ox,” he said.

  The inspector spent the next half hour checking up on what had already been discovered about Jack Merlin and the apartment house. Merlin had lived here for two months—since February first. Two servants came in by the day—address unknown as yet. Entertained largely in the evening, both ladies and gentlemen of undoubted social standing. The elevator boys thought that there had been visitors last night, but they couldn't be sure, as Mr. Merlin's guests never sent up their names. A number of people had been taken up to the ninth floor.

  At one o'clock, Piper learned, the doorman went off duty, and only one elevator boy remained. Guests had to use their own passkeys to enter the main door. Piper nodded. Then Davies could have walked down seven flights of stairs, phoned in the alarm from the drugstore booth, and returned to his own apartment without being seen, particularly if he chose a time when the elevator boy was taking someone up or down. But why?

  Pondering such problems, the inspector sought his companion, and found her quietly playing solitaire on one side of the big round dining-room table. “Don't disturb me,” she told him. “I don't often make Canfield, and it looks as if—"

  She played out half a dozen more cards, and then stopped short. “If only I could have turned up the jack of diamonds, I'd have made it.” She shook her head, and rose from the table. “Sorry to have kept you, Oscar—but there wasn't much to see in this place.” The Inspector frowned, and then shrugged his shoulders.

  Idly she lifted the buried card which had kept her from making the game. It was a queen. The jack of diamonds was not in evidence ... anywhere in the deck.

  "Botheration!” said Hildegarde Withers. “For a man who keeps as many poker chips in his sideboard as the late Mr. Merlin, you'd have thought he'd have a complete deck of cards.” She replaced the deck with the dozen others which rested in a drawer of the sideboard, and meekly followed the inspector out into the living-room.

  The schoolmistress pointed to a heavy brass stand of the non-tippable variety, which stood in the living-room near the foyer door. “Tell your blood-hounds not to neglect that,” she advised.

  The inspector peered into it, and then suddenly went down on his knees. With a pencil from his pocket he proceeded to lift from the mess of ashes and stubs which clogged the tube several torn and twisted bits of paper. Miss Withers watched in silence while he pieced together the fragments of four checks—amounts varying from fifty to four hundred dollars, all made out to cash, dated this same day, and signed with names straight out of the Social Register. Beneath them was a torn deposit slip for the Merchant's Uptown Bank, signed with the name “John Merlin” and dated to-day. Five checks were listed—four with amounts varying from fifty to four hundred dollars—and a fifth to the amount of $2,500! There was also a cash entry for six hundred and fifty.

  Yet try as they would, the eager detectives did not light upon the missing check for the larger amount. Finally they gave up poking among the refuse.

  "At least this gives us something to work on,” Piper decided finally. Miss Withers sniffed, and led the way toward the door.

  "I don't suppose,” said Miss Withers casually, “that there's any use looking for the dead man's spectacles."

  Piper stopped short. “Eh?"

  "Of course you noticed that the corpse showed a red mark across the bridge of the nose, where glasses usually rest? Yet I didn't see any glasses."

  "Neither did I,” admitted Piper. He made hurried inquiries. “The sergeant didn't see any, either. He noticed the red mark and asked the elevator boys. They say Merlin never wore glasses.

  "I wonder,” said Hildegarde Withers. “Perhaps we'll find Merlin's spectacles along with the jack of diamonds."

  Piper looked at his watch, and saw that it was barely eight. “How about some breakfast?” he demanded.

  The schoolteacher shook her head. “Never let a trail get cold,” she insisted. “Suppose we do a little breaking and entering?"

  "If you mean Davies’ apartment downstairs, the boys already gave it the once-over when they picked him up..."

  "Then we'll give it the twice-over,” said Hildegarde Withers. “Perhaps there is some tiny detail which your men overlooked."

  With a master-key secured—no doubt illegally—from the building manager, they entered apartment 8A, first ringing long and loud to make sure that Lorna Davies had not returned from her errands. Except that the furnishings were of a distinctly Bohemian type, this apartment was a duplicate of the one upstairs—and Richie Davies's thin story was thus somewhat aided.

  One end of the living-room, near the windows, had been transformed into a studio, and underneath a “daylight” lamp a large easel held an unfinished oil painting which the Inspector admired sardonically. It represented a purple triangle in the close embrace of seven orange and gold pretzels. “Nude Descending a Staircase,” Piper decided. Miss Withers sniffed. Then she leaned past him and touched the bright purple, which came off on a wide smear on her finger. She nodded. “I thought so!"

  They wandered through the high-ceilinged rooms. “Plenty of dough,” hazarded the inspector. “Must cost a fortune."

  "Hmm,” Miss Withers interjected. “Must have cost a fortune, you mean. Notice the mend in the Persian rug, half-hidden by the coffee table? Notice that the curtains are sun-faded? All the same, the kitchen is in splendid order, and so is the bedroom. No twin beds here, either. Looks like a happy home, Oscar—run on a decreasing budget. Maid by the day, and dinners out."

  "You're way ahead of me,” protested the inspector. “Now do we have breakfast? There's nothing more to see in this place."

  But he was wrong. There was something more to see. It happened to be Lorna Davies, who spoke softly from the doorway behind them, as she removed her gloves.

  "Mind if I come in?” she said.

  "Er—” began the inspector. “We just—"

  "I'd love to show you around—some of Richie's paintings are considered quite good,” Lorna continued. She placed her gloves and handbag on a table, and lit a cigarette with a steady hand. “Perhaps you wouldn't mind waiting while I slip into something more suitable than evening clothes?” She was still wearing the white satin gown.

  "Thank you, my dear, but we only have a moment...” said Hildegarde Withers. Lorna Davies disappeared in the bedroom.

  "Poker-face,” observed Piper. “She was sore as—anything at finding us here, but she covered it."

  "Eh?” said Miss Withers, startled out of her thoughts. “Poker-face! That's it.” She said no more, but as the inspector busied himself with lighting a cigar, the schoolteacher moved casually toward Lorna Davies's mesh handbag, shielding it from Piper's view. Her hands slid softly forward, and the bag opened without a snap. It was not robbery upon which the meddlesome lady was bent—indeed, exactly the contrary—but when she saw the interior of that handbag she changed her mind. Whatever she had expected to find there, it was not the missing jack of diamonds.

  Coolly she pocketed it, and as coolly turned toward the inspector. “Perhaps we'd better not wait, after all,” she said—and they tip-toed out.

  Downstairs Piper made a phone call. He had promised to be only a moment, but Miss Withers waited for ten minutes. He rejoined her with his cigar cold and dead between his teeth, and she knew at once that something had happened.

  "A confession from Davies?” she asked.

  "For once you're wrong,” said Oscar Piper. “That young man isn't talking, though he seems plenty worried. There's..
."

  "By the way, Oscar,” Miss Withers cut in, “do you happen to know how Davies was dressed when they arrested him?"

  "Huh? Why, yeah. In a smock and old flannel trousers. The boys who picked him up had to wait while he dressed. Why?"

  "Never mind why,” he was told. “Now what's the rest of it?” Piper frowned. “It probably doesn't have anything to do with the case,” he began, as they went out of the apartment house, “but they've made a funny discovery down at Centre Street. The fingerprint boys went through Merlin's apartment a couple hours ago, and they found nothing. Or rather, they found so many prints that they didn't mean much. All the same, on a silver flask in Merlin's desk they found a print that checks up in our files with that of a gent who's been wanted for a long time ... a hood who goes by the name of Feets Titus. He's—"

  "Aha!” said Hildegarde Withers.

  "But he's not our man,” continued the inspector. “Because fingerprints age as the oil dries out of them, and this print was at least two weeks old. No fresh ones of the guy, so he didn't pull the job last night. It's not up his alley anyway—Feets is more the type to pull out an automatic or a machine gun and blow his victims to blazes."

  "A public enemy, eh? Tell me more,” insisted the schoolteacher, as they sat down to breakfast in a drugstore on a little side street.

  "More about Titus? Seattle wants him for homicide—he was driving away from the scene of a racketeer bombing and killed two kids in the street. New Orleans for dope running—Chicago for rape and attempted murder—Philadelphia for another hit-and-run gangster car job—” The inspector patiently went on, from metropolis to metropolis, detailing the list of Feets Titus's escapades. “Here we've had him in the lineup several times, but never pinned anything on him. He used to be Amy Rothstein's bodyguard and special messenger, that's how he got the nickname ‘Feets.’”

  The inspector took a deep swig of his coffee. “Of course we'll try to pick him up, but it's like looking for a needle in a haystack."