Humphrey gave a snort of disgust, and drained his crème-de-menthe noisily. Even Chief Inspector Rodd gave vent to a half-stifled groan of bewilderment.
Merriman frowned. 'You really are the dumbest crew I ever struck,' he snarled. His gay wit was so infectious that the tension eased at once. He pointed at Humphrey with an olive on the end of an ebony-handled poniard. 'Take your mind back,' he said, 'to a week last Wednesday, at sixteen minutes past seven p.m., in the hall of Mossburn Manor. Haven't you realized yet that the Mrs. Ogilvie who flung the grandfather clock over the banisters was in reality her own step-mother—Eleanor's sister's aunt by marriage? Even by the light of a single candle you should have noticed the blonde wig, the false hands, or the papier-mâché" mask—the very mask which was found later up the chimney in Simon's bedroom! Don't you see?'
Eleanor gasped. I could see Humphrey's knuckles whiten as his bony hands tightened their grip on the handle of the lawn-mower. I felt that the pieces were beginning to drop into place like bits of an enormous, sinister jig-saw puzzle. The trouble was, they didn't seem to fit.
'A left shoe, my half-wits,' rumbled Merriman. 'A left shoe with the lace missing. One onion where there should have been three. A half-chewed sweet in an otherwise deserted goldfish-bowl. By thunder, surely you see?' He rose to his feet and began to pace the room, with his head bent to avoid the oak beams. Sometimes as he walked he trod on the Chief Inspector, and once as he stood upright to emphasize a point, he brought down the chandelier with a crash. 'It was a chance remark from Lady Powder that tipped me off,' he bellowed, pounding a huge fist on the top of Eleanor's head. Eleanor's eyes widened, and on her face there was a look I hadn't seen before. 'We were on the roof, you remember, trying to find a croquet ball, and all of a sudden she said "It hasn't rained since Monday." ' He stood in the middle of the room, with one hand on the picture-rail and the other in his trousers pocket, and surveyed us. 'From that moment,' he said quietly, 'I knew I was on the wrong track.' He started to walk about again, and some of the floor-boards didn't seem any too safe down at my end of the room.
'But—great Scott!—if Alastair Tripp wasn't there . . . ' Humphrey began again.
'I'm coming to that.' Merriman fixed me with his eccentric glare. 'I believe I have told you more than once, my foolish ape,' he said, 'that there are a hundred and four ways of getting into a room with no doors on the inside and no windows on the outside. But that's beside the point. Consider, if you will, the night of the murder. Here we have John Smith taking a nap in the pantry. The door is locked. The window is locked. The cupboard is bare. The carpet—and mark this—the carpet is rolled up in a corner, tied round with ordinary common or garden string. Now then, in the first place, as you will have guessed, the lightly-sleeping figure on the camp bed was not John Smith at all.' Merriman fixed Eleanor with a penetrating stare. ' You know who it was, don't you, Mrs. Anstruther?'
'Mrs. what!' The question left my lips before I could stop it. Eleanor turned deathly pale, and tore her cambric handkerchief in two with a convulsive movement. Chief Inspector Rodd stirred slightly in his sleep. A frown of impatience played fitfully over the chiselled features of Humphrey Beeton. Outside the rain whispered eerily against the panes.
'Good Kensington Gore!' swore Merriman, wrenching a handful of stops from his treasured organ and hurling them at the Chief Inspector: 'it was so easy!’ He sat suddenly in the whicker armchair, and all but flattened Professor Meak, whom we had somehow forgotten. 'Let me take you through it step by step. A bootlace is fastened to one end of the blow-pipe, which has previously been filled with sugar. This whole deadly contraption is lowered down the chimney—oh, there was plenty of time, I assure you: remember that Mercia Foxglove had been concealed in the shrubbery since dawn, and in any case at that time nobody knew that Paul's father was really Janet's uncle from Belfast.'
'But if Alastair Tripp wasn't there . . . ' Humphrey's voice was desperate with curiosity. The lawn-mower trembled in his hands.
'I'm coming to that,' said Merriman, filling his pipe with herbs. 'Three onions,' he went on steadily, 'have already been placed midway between the door and the golf-club—which, you will observe, is leaning unnoticed against the wall. Very well, then. Recall, if you will, the evidence of the so-called Alfred Harp—actually, of course, as I will show you, he is none other than our friend the mysterious "milkman": but more of that anon. Where did he find the decanter after—I repeat, after— the gardener's cottage had been burnt to the ground? He found it, my pretty dumb-bells, in the pocket of Sir Herbert's dressing-gown—which was nowhere to be found.' He beamed expansively. 'Now do you understand?'
Humphrey rose unsteadily. His face was working, and I thought I detected a fleck of foam on his tie. I reached unobtrusively for my hat. 'But if Alastair Tripp—wasn't there— Humphrey almost shouted.
'I'm coming to that.'
It was too much. With a mighty roar of rage and impatience, Humphrey swung the lawn-mower over his head in a flashing arc.
As I groped my way down the back stairs I reflected sadly that this would probably go down in history as Merriman's Last Case.
Sources
The stories in this collection originally appeared as follows:
ALEX ATKINSON
'Chapter The Last: Merriman Explains': Punch, 15 August 1951.
JOHN DICKSON CARR
'The House in Goblin Wood': simultaneously in Strand magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (US), November 1947. The Third Bullet And Other Stories (1954).
'A Razor in Fleet Street': London Mystery Magazine, February/March 1952, as 'Flight From Fleet Street'.
JOSEPH COMMINGS
'Ghost in the Gallery': Ten Detective Aces (US), July 1949.
VINCENT CORNIER
'The Courtyard of the Fly': The Storyteller, June 1937.
GERALD FINDLER
'The House of Screams': Doidge's Western Counties Annual, September 1932.
JACQUES FUTRELLE
'An Absence of Air': The Storyteller, December 1922, as 'Vacuum'.
EDWARD D. HOCH
'The Impossible Murder': Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (US), December 1976, as 'Captain Leopold and the Impossible Murder' in a slightly different form.
W. HOPE HODGSON
'Bullion!': Everybody's Weekly, 11 March 1911.
GEORGE LOCKE
'A Nineteenth Century Debacle': privately printed and issued in the first 100 copies of Locked Room Murders And Other Impossible Crimes by Robert Adey (1979).
JOHN LUTZ
'It's a Dog's Life': Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (US), 3 March 1982, as 'The Case of the Canine Accomplice'.
BARRY PEROWNE
'The Blind Spot': Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (US), November 1945.
ARTHUR PORGES
'Coffee Break': Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (US), July 1964.
BILL PRONZINI
'Proof of Guilt': Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (US), December 1973. Graveyard Plots (1985).
LEONARD PRUYN
'Dinner At Garibaldi's': Malcolm's (US), March 1954.
JOEL TOWNS LEY ROGERS
'The Hanging Rope': New Detective Magazine (US), September 1946.
SAX ROHMER
'The Death of Cyrus Pettigrew': London Magazine, March 1909, as by A. Sarsfield Ward.
JOHN F. SUTER
'The Impossible Theft': Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (US), May 1964.
EDGAR WALLACE
'The Missing Romney': Weekly News, 27 December 1919. Four¬square Jane (1929).
JEFFREY WALLMANN
'Now You See Her': Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine (US), March 1971.
HAKE TALBOT's 'The Other Side' has never appeared in an English language magazine and is here published, in English, for the first time.
Acknowledgements
Every effort has been made to contact the owners of all the copyrighted stories, and grateful thanks are extended to the copyright holders for allowing them to be reprin
ted. If any necessary acknowledgements have been omitted, the editors and publisher hope that the copyright holders concerned will accept their apologies in advance.
'The House in Goblin Wood' and 'A Razor In Fleet Street' by John Dickson Carr. Copyright © 1947, 1952. Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates, Ltd., and Harold Ober Associates, Inc.
'The Courtyard of the Fly' by Vincent Cornier. Copyright © 1937. Reprinted by permission of Mrs Deidre Beatrice Warman.
'Coffee Break' by Arthur Porges. Copyright © 1964. Reprinted by permission of Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.
'Proof of Guilt' by Bill Pronzini. Copyright © 1973. Reprinted by permission of the author.
'The Impossible Theft' by John F. Suter. Copyright © 1964. Reprinted by permission of the author.
'It's A Dog's Life' by John Lutz. Copyright © 1982. Reprinted by permission of the author.
'The Death of Cyrus Pettigrew' by Sax Rohmer. Copyright © 1909. Reprinted by permission of A. P. Watt Ltd.
'Ghost in the Gallery' by Joseph Commings. Copyright © 1949. Reprinted by permission of the author.
'The Impossible Murder' by Edward D. Hoch. Copyright © 1976. Reprinted by permission of the author.
'A Nineteenth Century Debacle' by George Locke. Copyright © 1979. Reprinted by permission of the author.
'Now You See Her' by Jeffrey Wallmann. Copyright © 1971. Reprinted by permission of the author.
'The Blind Spot' by Barry Perowne. Copyright © 1945. Reprinted by permission of Mrs Fernanda Rolle.
Special thanks and acknowledgements to the following for their help and encouragement: Ed Hoch and Bill Pronzini; Peter Tyas (list-maker supreme!); Jan Broberg (who generously passed on a copy of Hake Talbot's original typescript of 'The Other Side'); Bill Lofts and Derek Adley (the old reliables); Dr Stephen Leadbeatter; the staff of the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and Roland and Daniele Lacourbe (for their enthusiasm, particularly in the matter of Joel Townsley Rogers).
JA/RA
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