Quests of Simon Ark

by Edward D. Hoch

  “The police are treating it as a natural death. There’s no reason yet for us to treat it any differently.” He took my arm and led me away.

  “You mean you believe this business of a witch’s hex?” I said. “You believe those glass doors imprisoned and killed him somehow?”

  “I believe he died before our eyes, trapped in the door with no living thing anywhere near him. He couldn’t have been murdered, therefore his death must have been from natural causes.”

  And that’s what we told Greg Hopkins later that afternoon, seated in his office overlooking Wall Street. At first he couldn’t believe our words, but then he asked for a detailed account of our meeting with Maud Slumber and our later encounter with Eric Caser.

  “How did you know it was Caser?” he asked Simon.

  “You showed me a picture of his brother Lyle. And Maud Slumber made the remark that they were more alike than twins. When I saw a man so closely resembling the photograph approaching the building I made the simple deduction it was Eric.”

  “Eric dead! I still can’t believe they could both go like that. Maybe the old woman is a witch after all.”

  “There are other possibilities,” Simon remarked. “Coincidence, for one. But what can you tell me about Dr. Langstrom?”

  The attorney shrugged. “He’s an old friend of Maud’s. A widower, getting along in years himself but still active. In addition to his own small practice he does a bit of research for the government. Some business with electric eels.”

  “And Marie, Miss Slumber’s French maid?” Simon asked.

  “I don’t know anything about her. Maud mentioned her once recently, said she was seeing some man Maud didn’t approve of, but that’s all I know. I’ve only seen her once or twice when I called at the apartment.”

  Simon nodded, almost as if this was the answer he’d expected. “I’m sorry we couldn’t have been of more help to you. We simply arrived too late.”

  “Too late?” Hopkins repeated, not understanding. “But I thought you were there when he died.”

  “Perhaps Eric Caser started to die a long time ago, when Maud Slumber first put her hex on him.”

  “Then you believe in witchcraft?”

  “I believe in Maud Slumber. It may not be the same thing.”

  The following morning I was visited by Detective Sergeant Anthony Banto. He entered casually after my secretary announced him and glanced around at the framed cover art from some of our bestselling paperbacks. “First time I’ve ever been in a publishing company. Neptune Books, eh? My son reads a lot of them. You print ’em here in the building?”

  “No, over in New Jersey. This is just the editorial and sales office.”

  “Interesting business, I suppose.”

  “You’ve come about the death I witnessed yesterday?”

  “Yeah.” He took out his notebook and thumbed through the pages. “Eric Caser. That the fellow?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Tell me what happened. You were there with another man. Simon Ark?”

  “That’s right.” I went over the previous day’s events once more, leaving out the part about Maud Slumber’s hex. “Do you have the autopsy report yet?”

  He scratched his ear and nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Was it a heart attack?”

  “No. He was poisoned.”

  “Poisoned!” I almost came out of my chair. “A slow-acting poison that just happened to kill him while he was stuck in the revolving door?”

  Sergeant Banto shook his head, ignoring my sarcasm. “No, actually the medical examiner says it was a form of cyanide that would have caused death within less than a minute. It was apparently injected by a hypodermic needle into the victim’s left arm.”

  “That’s impossible,” I insisted. “Simon Ark and I witnessed the whole thing. No one came near the man. He was trapped in this revolving door and no one was near him.”

  “What about after he was freed?”

  “He was already dead then.” I remembered the doctor and the security guard. “Even if he wasn’t, Simon and I were there all the time. No one could have injected him without our seeing it.”

  The detective shook his head. “Well, he sure didn’t commit suicide. No hypo was found on the body.”

  “His hands were in plain view all the time,” I agreed. “He was writing on the glass with a marking pen.”

  “Writing?”

  “I mentioned it earlier. He wrote the word Marie.”

  “As he was dying?”

  “Yes. He seemed unable to speak and his strength was fading fast—he died in less than a minute.”

  “Was anyone named Marie on the scene?”

  “No,” I said. I told him about Maud Slumber’s maid.

  “But you have no reason to believe this was the Marie he meant, or even that he was trying to indicate the name of his killer?”

  “No, but in detective stories a dying message is usually—”

  “This isn’t a detective story, sir. There was a movie when I was a kid—before your time, I guess—about a man who died saying the word Rosebud. Turned out at the end it wasn’t the name of a person at all—just a sled he’d had as a kid. See what I mean about dying messages?”

  “Citizen Kane,” I remarked. “It wasn’t before my time.”

  “But you get my point?”

  “Yes.”

  “So think about it. Who could have injected this man Caser with the poison?”

  I thought about it. “No one.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No one,” I repeated. “He couldn’t have died that way.”

  “But he did. Unless you’re willing to believe in the supernatural.”

  “Who said anything about the supernatural?” I asked.

  “I should have told you I interviewed Simon Ark just before coming here. He seems to believe a supernatural explanation is possible. He said something about witchcraft.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll be getting back to you,” Banto said, rising.

  As he was going out the door I asked, “Do you believe in witchcraft, Sergeant?”

  He looked back and smiled. “Oh, no. Not me.”

  I telephoned Simon as soon as Banto had left and described my conversation with him. “My talk with him was quite similar,” he said.

  “How could Caser have been injected with poison in front of our eyes?” I asked.

  “It’s an interesting problem,” Simon admitted. “Are you coming up to hear me speak tonight?”

  “Of course.” The evening session was a public portion of the university’s workshop and Simon would be delivering a brief, popularized version of his student lectures.

  “I’m leading off the program at eight.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  I’d heard him speak many times before, but this evening Simon delivered his concept of magic in the Middle Ages with a new verve that seemed to hypnotize the young audience. Watching his gestures, listening to his words, I could almost believe his occasional claim that he’d been there when the Inquisition burned its witches, when Gilles de Rais rode with Joan and the horned god danced beneath the winter moon.

  Afterward I sought him out at the rear of the podium. “You really outdid yourself tonight, Simon,” I said.

  But he wanted nothing of my compliments. “Come here, my friend. A most unusual visitor is waiting for me backstage.”

  I followed him down a dimly lit corridor to a tiny office that had been given over to him for the evening. To my surprise a young woman sat patiently waiting for him—Marie, the maid.

  She stood, startled, as I entered behind Simon, but he immediately calmed her. “You may speak freely in front of my friend. You have nothing to fear from either of us.”

  She nodded, and I noticed that she was clutching a wrinkled brown paper bag. “I had to see you, Mr. Ark,” she said. “I heard you speaking with Miss Slumber yesterday, before—the death.” She lifted her dark eyes
to his. “It was the second death, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Both brothers. Madam’s former husband and now his. brother.”

  “What have you brought me?” Simon asked.

  “I found this in Madam’s bedroom drawer.” She thrust the bag into Simon’s hands and sat back as if glad to be rid of it. “I thought of telling the police but decided to bring it to you instead.”

  He opened it carefully and extracted two identical stuffed manikins. The faces had been given crude male features and bits of hair. The clothing seemed fashioned from authentic pieces. They were named—one carried a slip of paper on its back with LYLE printed on it. ERIC was pinned to the back of the other. The Lyle puppet had a tiny sliver of glass embedded in its throat. The Eric puppet had a small pin sticking out of its left arm.

  “My God, Simon!” I gasped. “Does such voodoo nonsense still go on?”

  “It appears so,” Simon murmured, examining the dolls with care. “Witches have always used puppets, for love charms and for harming enemies.”

  “Then this proves it—Maud Slumber is a witch!”

  “Do not jump to hasty conclusions, my friend.” He turned back to the French girl, asking, “When did you find these, Marie?”

  “Earlier today, when I was cleaning.”

  “In a drawer, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “A drawer Miss Slumber often uses?”

  She hesitated. “No. More likely one she would hide something in.”

  “Does she know you have taken these?”

  “No—unless she looked for them while I was gone.”

  Simon nodded. “Tell me one thing. Did you know Eric Caser?”

  Marie shook her head. “I never met him. I knew Lyle. He got me the job with Miss Slumber before he died. But I never knew his brother.”

  “Does Miss Slumber have a great many visitors to her apartment?”

  “No. She hasn’t got any friends. She told me they are all dead.”

  Simon returned the dolls to the paper bag. “I want you to return these,” he instructed. “Put them back exactly as you found them.”

  “But—Aren’t you going to tell the police?”

  “Not quite yet.”

  She took the bag somewhat reluctantly and we saw her to the door.

  Simon stared after her in the darkness, watching as she walked across the parking lot toward a waiting car. When she was almost up to it, the car’s headlights went on. “Come,” he said suddenly, “she’s not alone.”

  “What if she isn’t?”

  “Remember Greg Hopkins telling us, Maud didn’t approve of a man she was seeing? I want to know who he is.”

  We reached the car just as it was pulling away. The glow from an overhead streetlight fell across the windshield and I could see Marie’s startled face staring at us from the passenger seat. Behind the wheel sat Vic Tannet, the security guard.

  We followed them back downtown in my car.

  “It might not mean anything,” I argued.

  “Perhaps not,” Simon agreed.

  “So why are we following them back to Maud Slumber’s apartment?”

  “Because I want to make certain the dolls are returned intact.”

  We let ourselves be announced once more and accompanied Marie up to the apartment. Vic Tannet vanished with his car without speaking to us. “Don’t you trust me?” Marie asked in the elevator. “Didn’t you think I’d bring them back?”

  “We can create a diversion,” Simon explained, “while you return them to the drawer in which you found them.”

  But the diversion was not to be of our making. We walked in upon a scene of Maud Slumber, along with her attorney Greg Hopkins and Dr. Langstrom, sipping champagne from fluted Swedish glasses. “You’re just in time to join the celebration,” she said. “The more the merrier.”

  “What are we celebrating?” Simon asked, accepting a glass of champagne as Marie doffed her coat and disappeared into the bedroom.

  “My wedding! Dr. Langstrom and I were married a week ago. I wanted to keep it secret but he’s convinced me it’s time to make it public.”

  We offered our somewhat startled congratulations while Dr. Langstrom beamed and shook hands. “You gentlemen work with Greg here?” he asked, obviously uncertain as to our function.

  “They’re advisers,” Hopkins answered quickly.

  “This has been the greatest week of my life,” Langstrom said. “Dear Maud is the woman I need beside me. I’m glad she’s agreed not to keep it a secret any longer.”

  Marie reappeared from the bedroom and Maud instructed her to open another bottle of champagne. “Mr. Hopkins has an empty glass, dear.”

  “No, no,” the lawyer insisted. “I really must be going.”

  Simon and I decided to depart at the same time and Maud walked us to the door. “Dear Greg, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner but you understand, don’t you? We can take care of any legal technicalities next week.”

  “There shouldn’t be any, unless you wish to change your will.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” she said, patting his shoulder. “Oh, and can you be here tomorrow morning? That detective, Banto, is coming at eleven and I’d feel better about seeing him if you were present.”

  “Sure,” he answered agreeably. “I’ll be glad to.” He marked the time down in his date book.

  She turned to Simon and said, “At my age, if only a woman could marry her doctor and lawyer life would be so much easier.”

  Simon laughed, then paused at the door with a question. “Did anyone know about your marriage? Marie, for instance?”

  She shook her head. “No one. No one at all.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Hopkins told her.

  In the elevator I remarked, “There was certainly no talk of witchcraft tonight.”

  Simon Ark smiled slightly. “Perhaps she used a love charm on Dr. Langstrom. Witches sometimes tie two puppets together with red ribbon to cast a spell over a desired love object.”

  “Puppets?” Hopkins asked.

  “She had two hidden in her bedroom drawer,” I told him. “Marie found them and brought them to Simon. They were labeled with the names of Lyle and Eric and pierced with glass and a pin.”

  “My God!”

  “God was not the intended recipient of her prayers in this case,” Simon said drily.

  “But—if that’s true, you’re saying she caused the death of the Caser brothers. You’re saying you have proof her hexes really work.”

  “Not at all.” We’d reached the lobby and walked out past the security guard. It wasn’t Vic Tannet. He was nowhere in sight. “What I’m saying is only that someone made those dolls, and that that same someone caused Eric Caser’s death in this revolving door.”

  “Who else could it be but Maud?”

  “Who else?” Simon repeated. “Marie, for one. Have you ever considered the possibility that Marie might be the real witch of Park Avenue?”

  We talked far into the night, seated in a conveniently isolated booth at a bar near Grand Central Station. We’d walked there from Maud Slumber’s and had felt the need to continue the conversation for a time.

  “What do you mean,” Greg Hopkins asked, “when you say that the person who made those puppets caused Eric Caser’s death? What about Lyle Caser?”

  “Lyle’s death could have been an accident,” Simon explained. “But Eric was certainly murdered. He was injected with poison in his left arm, the same arm that was pierced with a pin on the doll meant to represent him. Since the autopsy results have not been made public, there are only two possibilities to explain this. Either we believe in witchcraft or we believe that Eric’s murderer made those dolls. Because a third person would not have known how Eric died.”

  “How could anyone have killed Eric with both of you watching?” the lawyer wanted to know.

  Simon Ark, drinking an unaccustomed glass of imported beer, leaned back. “Let us examine a purely hypo
thetical possibility. Maud Slumber imagines herself to be a witch, but in truth she has no powers. Lyle Caser, anxious to spy on his former wife, and possibly her relationship with Dr. Langstrom, plants Marie in the apartment as a maid. Marie in time takes up with the daytime security guard and they develop a scheme to fleece the old woman out of her money.”

  “That would be unlikely,” Hopkins protested. “I keep a very careful eye on her finances.”

  “Let me finish, please. I told you this was hypothetical.

  “Lyle is killed in an accident, but his brother Eric comes along and somehow learns of Marie and Vic’s scheme. He threatens to tell the old lady and they have to kill him—but in such a way that it’ll be linked to Lyle’s death and Maud’s claims of witchcraft. They make the dolls and Marie plants them in the apartment. She told us Maud never has visitors, so who would have done it? Then Vic lies in wait for Eric in the building lobby. He jams the revolving door with a small metal wedge and somehow manages to inject the poison into him as he struggles to free him. Eric doesn’t know Vic, but in his dying moment he realizes who must be behind the plot and he scrawls Marie’s name on the glass. Vic wipes it off as soon as he has the chance.”

  “But how could he inject Eric?” I wanted to know. “The door was always between them. You implied before that Eric wasn’t killed until later.”

  “No,” Simon admitted. “He was dead before we freed him from the door.”

  “Then how was Eric poisoned?”

  “We can work that out later,” Greg Hopkins said. “I like most of it—it makes sense. And when no one found the dolls where Marie had planted them, she pretended to find them herself and bring them to you, Simon. It all hangs together.”

  “All you have to do is prove it,” I commented.

  We fell silent for a bit, thinking about that.

  It was late when we finished talking and I phoned my wife Shelly to tell her I’d be staying in town overnight, taking the spare bed in Simon’s temporary room at the university.

  Which was how I happened to be with him at breakfast in the morning when Sergeant Banto showed up. “You fellows live together or something?” he asked, settling down at our table in the dining hall.

  “I missed the last train to Westchester,” I explained. “Simon put me up overnight.”