The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits (Mammoth Books)

by Ashley, Mike;

  I tried the door myself. “If it’s something like a heart attack every second counts. This feels like a flimsy lock.” I glanced at Zealand for permission. “Should I force it?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I hit the cockpit door with my shoulder and the door started to give. Once more and it sprang open.

  Ross Winslow was visible at once, toppled from the pilot’s seat onto the unused copilot’s seat next to it. I saw the blood and heard Bonnie’s high-pitched voice from the aisle. “What? – What is it?”

  I took a deep breath and told Zealand, “Get her out of here, off the plane. Right now.” Then I stepped forward and bent over the pilot’s seat examining the body. There was no doubt that he was dead.

  “What is it, Doctor?”

  I turned as Mavis Wing stepped into the cockpit, still wearing her stunt clothes. “Ross Winslow is dead,” I said.

  “What?”

  “He’s been stabbed to death. Go get Sheriff Lens for me, will you? He’s a stocky man over at the edge of the crowd.”

  Sheriff Lens merely shook his head and stared at me. “What you’re sayin’ is downright impossible, Doc. Winslow was stabbed to death while he was alone inside this locked cockpit and you’re trying to tell me it wasn’t suicide?”

  “It wasn’t suicide,” I repeated. “Look at where the knife went in – between the ribs on his left side, toward the back. No suicide would stab himself there. It’s an almost impossible angle, certainly an unnecessary angle. Besides, when would he have done it? He landed the plane, remember, and taxied up to the crowd. Are we to believe he suddenly decided to kill himself then, by stabbing himself in the back at a nearly impossible angle?”

  The sheriff stroked his chin, thinking about it. “Well, that leaves only one other explanation. Zealand and Bonnie Pratt got him to open the door and they killed him together.”

  “Zealand and Bonnie barely know each other. Why would they conspire to kill Winslow? Besides, you’re forgetting the cabin door was locked from Winslow’s side. I had to break it in with my shoulder.”

  “Yeah,” he answered glumly.

  “We’d better talk to them,” I decided. “Whatever happened in that cockpit, they must have heard something.”

  They were both waiting in the hangar. I spoke with Bonnie while Sheriff Lens questioned Zealand separately. “I didn’t hear a thing from the cockpit,” she assured me. “You can barely hear yourself think in that plane, Sam! It’s the noisiest contraption imaginable! Art Zealand told me that on commercial runs they give the passengers cotton to plug their ears.”

  “The landing seemed smooth from where we stood.”

  “It was smooth. There was nothing at all unusual until the plane came to a stop and Ross just didn’t come out the door.” Her composure cracked on the last word and she started to sob.

  “Bonnie,” I said softly, “I have to ask you this. How serious was it between you and Winslow? You only met him yesterday.”

  She turned her tear-streaked face to me. “I’d never known anyone like him, Sam. I never believed in love at first sight, but I guess that’s what happened to me.”

  “Did it happen to him too?”

  “He said it did. We – we spent the night together.”

  “I see.”

  “He told me he wanted to settle down in a town like this, give up barnstorming and raise a family.”

  “Maybe he told that to lots of girls, Bonnie.”

  “I don’t think so, Sam. I believed him.” She wiped her eyes.

  “But if you came out here this morning to watch the circus and then discovered he’d lied to you, it might have made you want to kill him.”

  “Do you think that?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Bonnie.”

  She collected herself and dried her eyes. “Well, suspect or not, I still work for a newspaper. I guess I’d better go write this up for Monday’s edition.”

  I left her in the hangar and went in search of the sheriff. When I found him he told me Zealand’s story agreed with Bonnie’s. The noise of the plane had kept them from hearing anything unusual from the cockpit. “What now?” Sheriff Lens asked, gazing uncomfortably at the cluster of townspeople still waiting at the edge of the field. They’d been told there was an accident and the show had been cancelled, but most of them refused to budge even after the ambulance from Pilgrim Memorial Hospital came and removed the body.

  I thought the best thing I could do then was stop Mavis Wing before she took off with her two companions. I told Sheriff Lens what I had in mind and he trailed along. Mavis and the others were in Zealand’s office, staying clear of the crowd. I took her aside and asked, “What was your relationship with Ross Winslow?”

  She stared hard at me. “I don’t know that I need to answer that. You’re not the police, are you?”

  “No, but I am,” Sheriff Lens told her. “Answer the question.”

  “Maybe I should clarify it,” I continued. “Winslow spent the night with a local girl. Might that have made you jealous enough to kill him?”

  “Certainly not. And you’re forgetting I was up in the sky at the time.”

  “On the wing of his plane,” I reminded her. “He could have slid open the cockpit window to call to you and been killed by a knife you threw, then managed to slide the window closed before he died.” I saw the sheriff make a face as I spoke. Even he could see the impossibility of that theory.

  “You can’t see into the cockpit from the top of the wing,” Mavis told us. “Try it if you don’t believe me. Besides, I was on the wing for only a few seconds, and visible from the ground. No one saw me throw anything. Throw anything! I was too worried about keeping my balance.”

  “We’ll try it,” I assured her, but I knew I was on the wrong track. I turned to Sheriff Lens. “Have you identified the knife?”

  He nodded. “Zealand says it was a utility knife from the hangar. Anyone could have picked it up.”

  “Did you see anyone with a knife?” I asked Mavis Wing.

  “No.”

  “Did you see anything unusual while you were on the wing of the plane?”

  “No.”

  “All right,” I said with a sigh. “The sheriff may want to question you again later.”

  “What about the other two?” Lens asked as we left the office. “Renker and Verdun?”

  “Renker was flying Mavis’s plane up there, right next to the Trimotor. Verdun was somewhere on the ground. Maybe Renker threw the knife from his cockpit.”

  “Oh, come on now, Doc – you know that couldn’t ‘a happened. First of all, that knife’s not balanced for throwin’, especially not up in the sky with the wind blowin’. And the wound was in the side, around toward the back, and slantin’ upward. No knife thrown through the plane’s window could have hit him there.”

  “Of course not,” I agreed readily. “I realized that as soon as I said it to Mavis. And that lets Renker off for the same reason. But let’s talk to him anyway.”

  Max Renker was in his mid-thirties, and his blond hair and the scar on his right cheek reminded me of German war aces with university dueling scars. He answered our questions directly, but added little to our knowledge.

  “Did you actually see Winslow in the cockpit of the Trimotor?” I asked.

  “Sure, I saw him. I waved to him, even. He was alive and well them – but of course he’d have to be, to fly the plane.”

  “I want to go up on the wing, like Mavis did,” I said suddenly.

  His eyes widened. “You mean up in the sky?”

  “No! On the ground. Can you get me a ladder and help me up there?”

  “Sure.”

  Renker went first and then helped me up onto the wing, some ten feet off the ground. Although the front of the cockpit could certainly be seen, Mavis was right – the angle of the glass prevented a view of the pilot’s seat. “That’s what I wanted to know,” I said. “Let’s go back down.”

  “Wing-walking on the Trimotor is m
ore dangerous than on the Jennies,” Renker explained as he helped me down the ladder. “The smaller planes have cables on top we can cling to or brace our legs against. You can’t see them from below but they’re a big help.”

  I reached the ground and walked around to the front of the plane. “What’s this?” I asked, pointing to a small metal door beneath the cockpit windows on the right side.

  “Compartment for luggage and mail sacks. We use it for tools.”

  “Is there any opening from here to the cockpit?”

  “No. Take a look and see for yourself.”

  I went back inside the plane, walking up the slanting aisle between the rows of wicker seats, then up the few steps to the cockpit door I’d battered open. I checked the windows and noticed each had a little inside latch that was firmly in place. “We modified the cockpit area to our own needs,” Renker explained over my shoulder. “The door is placed a bit differently than in commercial planes, and we added those latches so kids wouldn’t be climbing through the cockpit windows when the plane’s parked overnight at some hick airfield.”

  “So the door and the windows were latched on the inside,” I mused. “And no knife could have been thrown from outside even if a window was open.” I turned to Renker in the cramped cockpit. “What about it? You must have some idea how he was killed.”

  He leaned against the wall next to the door. “Sure. Art Zealand and the girl stabbed him. Ross staggered back into the cockpit, latched the door to keep them out, and died. I hear people can do things like that, even with a fatal knife wound. Isn’t that so, Doc?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “But it’s hard to believe they’re both lying. Besides, I don’t see any blood by the door, only right by the seat here, as if he was stabbed sitting down.”

  “Then what are you left with? Suicide?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Suicide isn’t very likely either.”

  “Well, I sure had no reason to kill him. Ross was the star of the show, he and Mavis. Tommy and I are nothing without them.”

  “I’d better talk to Tommy,” I decided. “He was on the ground – maybe he saw something the rest of us missed.”

  Tommy Verdun was a small man with short dark hair. He sat in the office wearing a long white duster pulled around him as if to ward off a chill. “I don’t know anything about it,” he grumbled. “I sure didn’t kill him.”

  “Where were you at the time it happened?” Sheriff Lens asked.

  “I don’t know when it happened,” he answered evasively. “You think he was killed in the air or on the ground?”

  “He had to be alive to land the plane,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah. Well, I was over in the back of the hangar, making sure the kids stayed away from my plane.”

  “Anybody see you?”

  “I suppose not,” he admitted. “But then nobody seen me kill Ross either.”

  “Did you kill him?” I asked.

  “I told you I didn’t. You don’t listen good.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be the clown of this outfit? You’re not very friendly for a clown.”

  “Got nothing to be friendly about, with the boss dead.”

  I went back outside with Sheriff Lens. “I don’t like that fellow,” I told him.

  “Neither do I, Doc, but that don’t prove he killed anyone. We still don’t know how it was done.” He thought for a moment. “But I got an idea. Maybe there was some sort of mechanical gadget that stabbed him when he sat down in the pilot’s seat.”

  “You’re forgetting he took off, flew a dangerous stunt almost touching that Jennie’s wingtip, and then landed again. He couldn’t have done any of that with a knife in him.”

  “I guess not,” the sheriff agreed glumly. “But what about this guy Verdun? If he was a clown wouldn’t he be foolin’ with the kids instead of tryin’ to chase them away from his plane?”

  “A good point,” I admitted. “But if he’s lying about where he was at the time of the murder –” I stopped, suddenly remembering an earlier conversation. “Let’s find Zealand.”

  The owner of the flying school was in the hangar with Bonnie, seated opposite her and holding her hands. They broke apart as we entered. “Hello, Sam. Bonnie and I were just having a chat.”

  “So I see. Art, before the killing you asked to see Winslow alone and I heard you say you didn’t know what you were getting into when you booked his crew. What was that about?”

  Zealand shifted uneasily. “This morning I got a phone call from a friend in Ohio. He told me Winslow and his crew got drunk and smashed up a town out there. Winslow and his wife spent the night in jail.”

  “His wife?”

  “Sure. He and Mavis were married.”

  Bonnie Pratt flushed deeply and turned away. “Did you know this?” I asked her.

  “Art was just telling me. I didn’t know it before.”

  “So there’s our motive,” I said. “The oldest motive there is.”

  “Maybe we got a motive, Doc,” Sheriff Lens said, “but we still don’t have the killer. And you’ve ruled out every way Winslow could have been stabbed in that locked cockpit.”

  “Every way but one, Sheriff.” I glanced out the hangar door and spotted Tommy Verdun walking quickly across the field toward his plane. “Come on!” I shouted.

  I ran out, calling to Verdun, but he broke into a run, perhaps sensing my suspicions. “Try to head him off,” I called to the sheriff.

  His long white duster billowed out behind him as he ran, and it seemed to slow him down. Finally I was close enough to grab the coattail and I yanked him to the ground. Then the sheriff and I were on top of him.

  “So he’s our killer,” Sheriff Lens said, reaching for his handcuffs.

  “No, Sheriff, you don’t understand,” I said, “Didn’t it seem strange to you that Mavis’s plane landed at the far end of the field after her act, when the crowd was up here?” I pulled upen Tommy’s duster to show the white blouse and knickers underneath. The long blond wig was stuffed in his pocket. “Mavis wasn’t on that plane. Tommy walked on that wing in her place while Mavis was in the cockpit of the Tin Goose killing her husband.”

  I told it all once, after the sheriff had arrested Mavis and taken down her statement. I stood in the center of the empty hangar feeling a bit like a lecturer, and said, “It was really quite simple – so simple I nearly missed it. After I battered in that cockpit door and sent Bonnie and Art for the sheriff, I bent to examine the body and Mavis suddenly appeared behind me in the doorway. Because I thought she’d been on the wing of that other plane, I never asked what she was doing there, or how she’d made it from the far end of the field so fast. I accepted her presence without even wondering how she’d gotten on the plane ahead of Sheriff Lens.”

  “How did she get on board?’ Bonnie asked. “I didn’t see her outside.”

  “Of course not, because she was on the plane all the time, hidden in the cockpit. Winslow didn’t shout for help when he found her there because he never expected she’d kill him. She’d probably had Verdun take her place on other occasions. Winslow told us Verdun sometimes dressed up like a woman for his act, and at that distance the crowd could only see the long blonde hair and the outfit Mavis always wore.”

  “But why did she hide in the cockpit?”

  “To confront her husband with the fact that he’d spent the night with Bonnie. Isn’t that right, Mavis?”

  She shifted on her chair. “He was always doing it,” she answered dully. “I told him I’d kill him if he didn’t stop.”

  “So you hid in the cockpit and confronted him. You probably argued during the flight, with the noise of the plane covering your voices. You stepped behind his seat and brought the knife up into his side. Then you took over the co-pilot’s controls and landed the plane yourself. When I broke the latch and pushed in the door, you simply stood flat against the wall behind it where I couldn’t see you. When I bent over you stepped into the doorway as if you’d just c
ome on board.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Sheriff Lens muttered.

  “It wouldn’t have worked if Zealand or Bonnie had remained on board, but you were improvising. It was your only chance.”

  “But Renker and Verdun musta known she did it,” the sheriff said.

  “They strongly suspected it, of course. But they’d already lost one star act and if they turned her in they’d have no jobs.”

  Verdun shook his head. “I didn’t know what she was plannin’ when I took her place. I’d done it before as a joke. I didn’t know she’d kill him.”

  The crowd had all gone home by the time we finished, except for April and Vera. They were standing out by the Tin Goose, waiting for us to finish. I was sorry April hadn’t gotten the plane ride I’d planned for her.

  “– And that was the story,” Dr Sam Hawthorne concluded. “It was the last flying circus that ever came to Northmont. The era of the barnstormer was just about over. It ended about as quickly as it began. It ended that day for Ross Winslow, one of the great ones.

  “In the fall of that same year my folks visited me in Northmont to see how their son the doctor was getting along. It was during hunting season, and their visit was almost spoiled by an impossible killing during a deer hunt.

  “But that’s for next time.”

  I’ll Never Play Detective Again

  CORNELL WOOLRICH

  Cornell Woolrich (1903–I968) is so closely associated with nerve-racking suspense, such as The Bride Wore Black (1940), The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1945, as George Hopley) and the story that formed the basis of the film Rear Window (1954), “It Had to be Murder”, that it’s easy to forget that he started out as an imitator of F. Scott Fitzgerald with several Jazz-Age novels. He remained a frustrated jazz-age writer for some while. His biographer, Francis M. Nevins, speculates in First You Dream, then You Die, that the following story may well have been written in the 1920s and failed to sell, so was rewritten when Woolrich established his pulp market. The version reprinted here first appeared in Black Mask in May 1937, so there are a few post-I920s references (see if you can spot them) but otherwise the story is pure Roaring 1920s.