Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 03/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  The second series of knocks drove him backwards in shock—it was as if they were being sounded within the very room itself. “Goddamn,” he cried out as the club rose into the air, “Goddamn!” He charged the door and threw it open. The night outside washed up to his very doorstep, an inky ocean. The kerosene torches placed along the walkways had been extinguished to economize, while the weak light next to his door glowed without illumination in its smeared lantern. The inlaid eyes of the war eagle stared sightlessly after its prey. Brandon was sure he heard footsteps slapping the boards of the walk.

  In the near distance, a small pinprick of light indicated the hotel desk and as Brandon watched, it suddenly blinked out and returned a mere second later, as if someone had run past it. Brandon began to run as well, the adrenaline coursing through his veins removing any vestiges of sleep and fear. He sprinted toward the lobby and its beacon.

  The girl behind the desk leapt to her feet with a strangled scream as he pounded into the room. He looked this way and that for whomever he had chased. The doors to the dining room were closed, as was the gift shop, but he tried each to make sure they were locked. He turned towards the clerk. “Who came in here?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, but walked towards her and around the counter, as there was no other place for his tormenter to have gone but into the office behind the check-in desk. She backed up slowly to allow him to pass, her eyes wide and moist with terror. He stepped into the cramped office. There was no one there. The small room contained nothing but two metal desks and a filing cabinet. An exit door at the rear stood open, allowing for a cross-breeze; beyond it lay the endless night of the jungle.

  When Brandon returned to the lobby, he found himself alone.

  Brandon staggered into the dining room the following morning, his sleepless night evidenced by the bruised-looking smudges beneath his eyes. Paige was waiting for him. “Mr. Highsmith,” he called out in his large voice, “after you get your coffee, perhaps you’ll join me in my office.” He pointed at the tiny room Brandon had visited the night before. The waitresses watched him like a row of owls from across the room. Brandon nodded, filled his mug, and followed the big man into the lobby.

  “Mr. Highsmith,” Paige began as he settled heavily on the edge of one of the desks—he did not offer Brandon a seat. “In the short time you have been with us you have managed to frighten my staff and insult me, and Mr. Fuentes tells me that you made threatening gestures at him yesterday at the temple. There is no point in this situation continuing; I’m sure that you agree. I must insist that you leave our company at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps you will make arrangements now for an earlier flight home. Please feel free to use my phone.” He stopped and took a breath while studying the younger man. The morning breeze had faded with the rising sun and both men were perspiring heavily in the closed confines of the office. “You need to go home,” he concluded more softly.

  Brandon looked up from beneath his eyebrows at the older man and whispered, “She wasn’t going to give you a good report; she was going to recommend against bringing investors into your resort. She didn’t think things were right here.” He placed emphasis on the word “right.”

  Paige’s great dark face grew darker yet. “Who?” he asked.

  “You know who,” Brandon answered. “Julia.”

  Paige seized the office phone and thrust it at Brandon. “Call . . . now, please!”

  Brandon made no attempt to sleep that night, as he knew it would be useless. His flight from Belize City was the following afternoon, but he would have to leave the resort at first light in order to make the plane. In any case, he had determined, after his conversation with Paige, that he would not be caught sleeping again under his roof.

  Across the sandy expanse that separated his bungalow from the main building the thudding rhythm of drums reached him. This was the night the resort hosted the celebration of Garifuna music and dancing that Julia had written of.

  A barbeque was provided on the beach for the few guests. Occasional gusts of alcohol-fueled laughter reached him above the thumping music, the incomprehensible songs. His war club rose and fell on his chest with his breathing, its oystershell eyes winking in the overhead light. After several hours, the world outside his door grew dark and silent once more.

  The tapping seemed not so loud and he wondered if its previous resonance had been fueled by his dreams. Its source this time, however, was evident even in the glowworm light of his porch lantern. The slim young man who tapped shyly at his door had not even seen Brandon sitting mere feet away in the wicker chair at the end of the porch. As Brandon watched, he placed his ear to the door and listened intently for a moment, his hand drifting over the doorknob, then away. He stepped beneath the feeble lamp and studied something in his hand, looked back to the door, then appeared to shake his head.

  It was as he was bending over to retrieve something he had placed at his feet that Brandon spoke. “Did Paige and Fuentes send you . . . did they send you to Julia?”

  The young man spun around to Brandon’s voice in time to witness his materialization from the greater gloom, the club rising rampant in his hands, the cruel beak slicing hungrily through the thick air. His only word was, “Mercy.” After the first blow brought him to his knees, Brandon completed his task with workmanlike efficiency—a passerby might have thought he was chopping wood.

  The disheveled policeman sat outside Brandon’s cell and watched him drink the tepid coffee as his wife and three children studied the young murderer from around the edge of the outside door. The policeman removed his ill-fitting hat and waved it at his family as he would at flies. “Go away,” he commanded. They withdrew with titters and smiles to the safety of the outside world. The eastern sky had just begun to pink with the promise of day.

  “You are a bad murderer,” the policeman observed aloud, “to remain with your victim instead of running away—not that that would have done you any good, of course.”

  Brandon made no answer to this, but said softly, “Thank you for the coffee . . . thank your wife for me.”

  “Why did you kill our brother and friend, Marcus Donda, young man? You are covered with his blood. Why did you lie in wait for such an innocent?”

  When Brandon remained silent the policeman continued angrily, “He was an altar boy, did you know this? But how could you,” he asked the room at large. He sighed deeply, then added, “I cannot protect you here, young man; not once the word is spread. You will be transported at first light to Belmopan.” He seized the paper grocery sack that contained the bloody club and made for the door.

  “Not so innocent, maybe,” Brandon said quietly to his back.

  The policeman turned and studied his prisoner with genuine interest. “How could you know anything of him . . . of his innocence or badness? How would you have met or known him?” he persisted. “He only began his new job as waiter last night. That was why he went to your room—he had gotten the bungalows mixed up, poor boy. He was delivering room service, you fool.”

  “His first night?” Brandon questioned softly, the metal cup drooping in his fingers, its contents dribbling unheeded onto the concrete floor. “. . . But there was the rapping . . . the knocking . . . ?” But the policeman had already left to pull his truck around to the cell entrance.

  Brandon felt everything whipped loose from its moorings like a twister dismantling a barn, board by board, even the nails being sucked out and driven like shrapnel before the maelstrom. He tottered to his feet like a drunk and peered out the barred window to the dawning, hellish day. On its ledge a gecko filled its throat-sack with air and sang its few improbable notes to the departing night, filling the echoing chamber with the resounding tap-tap of wood striking wood, or perhaps it more resembled the sound of someone knocking at the door urgently demanding entry or attendance . . . tap-tap . . . tap-tap-tap.

  After a moment of this Brandon began to scream.

  Copyright © 2011 by David Dean

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  Fiction

  Vanishing Act

  by Christine Poulson

  Yorkshire-born Christine Poulson is an art historian who wrote several books on 19th century art and literature before creating her academic mysteries starring Cambridge University English lecturer Cassandra James. The most recent novel in that series is 2006’s Footfall. She currently lives with her family in a water mill in Derbyshire. Her short fiction for EQMM includes 2010’s “A Tour of the Tower,” which was short-listed for the Fish-Knife Award, offered jointly by the CWA and Fish Publishing.

  “One of these men is a murderer.”

  Edward looked at the grainy black-and-white photo that Edith held up. Three men smiled out at him.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked. “Who are they?”

  “I’ll give you a clue. One of them’s my brother—and he’s not the murderer.”

  Edward gestured impatiently. “I need a better look.”

  She brought her wheelchair closer to his bedside and leaned forward, bringing with her a gust of perfume, something warm and spicy.

  Theirs was a new friendship and it would inevitably be a short one. The doctors were careful not to offer any predictions, but Edward knew that he didn’t have more than a week or two. He was bedridden now. The morphine took care of the pain, but what he hadn’t expected was the boredom. Strange that time should drag when there was so little of it left, but so it was. That was why Edith was such a godsend. She was in the hospice for a week’s respite care. They had taken to each other and she visited him every evening, scooting down the corridor in her wheelchair. She was an interesting woman, had spent most of her working life in Canada as a museum curator. He enjoyed her “take no prisoners” attitude without feeling it was one he could adopt himself.

  “Your brother is the one in the middle,” he decided. They had the same nose: That bump on the bridge was unmistakable. “Who are the others?”

  “Let’s call that one Dr. X and that one Dr. Y.” She pointed with a red-varnished fingernail.

  Edward studied the photograph. Dr. Y was tall and fair with something irresolute about his mouth, the kind of man who is a little too anxious to please. Dr. X was short and dark with a widow’s peak and full, sensuous lips.

  “When you say murder . . . ?”

  “This all happened a long time ago—say, twenty-five years, even thirty? A surgeon had an affair with a theatre nurse. When it turned sour, he murdered her to save his marriage—and his reputation. There was a conspiracy of silence amongst his colleagues, and he was never brought to book.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “My brother told me. He was one of the doctors who kept quiet. Fred died a couple of months ago.” She gave a caw of laughter. “He’s beaten me to it. Just. He was very near the end when he let it out of the bag. It preyed on his mind. You know how it is. . . .” She shrugged.

  When you’re near the end? Yes, he did know—who better?—and counted himself lucky. On the big things, marriage, children, work, he’d done just fine. He did rather regret that he’d never got round to reading Proust, but you can’t have everything.

  “Fred told me what I’ve just told you,” Edith went on. “One of these men is a murderer.”’

  “Did he say how . . . ?”

  “She was found dead in bed. Healthy young woman, never had a day’s illness in her life. One of those unexplained deaths. Hospital dispensaries are full of things that could bring that about. They weren’t as strict about keeping track of drugs in those days.”

  Edward thought it over.

  The stillness was broken only by the slap of sleet on the window. The curtains hadn’t been drawn against the November night. Streaks of rain gleamed on the glass and overlaid the smeared lights of the town in the valley below.

  At last he said, “After all this time, it’s pretty academic. . . .”

  “Is it, though? What about all these breakthroughs in forensic science and what they can do with DNA? If the police reopened the case, who knows what they might find.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  They both started, caught each other’s eye, and laughed.

  “Edith?” A nurse, a thickset man that Edward hadn’t seen before, was standing at the door. “It’s time for your injection.”

  Edith swung her wheelchair round.

  “Hey! You can’t just leave it at that! Which one is it?”

  “You decide. Observing criminals was your job, after all.” As she headed for the door, she raised a hand in farewell. “Let’s see how good a judge of character you are.” The words rang out like a challenge.

  He watched as she disappeared through the door. Helpless and exasperated, he slumped back on his pillows. That was Edith all over. Surprising that someone hadn’t murdered her before now.

  She had left the door open, but it didn’t matter. He liked to see people coming and going up the corridor.

  His glance strayed to the clock on the wall. Only nine o’clock. An hour until he could expect his daughter’s phone call. He sighed and picked up the photo again. Yes, he had seen many killers in his time as a court artist. But he had long ago learned that, as Shakespeare put it, “there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.” Appearances could indeed be deceptive.

  The men were standing on the steps of a building—neo-Georgian—and now that he looked more closely he saw that one of them had a glass in his hand. Some kind of celebration? Had this been taken before the murder? If indeed there really had been a murder. The three men were much the same age, somewhere around the mid thirties. The clothes and the body language—it was surprising how much you could learn . . . Was Dr. X or Dr. Y wearing a wedding ring? If only he had a magnifying glass. . . .

  When the phone rang, he was surprised to see that an hour had passed.

  Jennifer cocked her head. Her ear was so attuned to the night and the silence that she was alert to the smallest unusual noise. She wasn’t the nervous type—never had been—and she was used to working nights, but . . . what was that sound?

  She put her paperwork to one side and went out into the corridor. It stretched out in both directions. It was empty, but she had the feeling that she had just missed someone. She listened again. The silence was unbroken. On a quiet night like this the hospice must be one of the most peaceful places in the world. No visitors, no phones ringing, no consultants’ rounds. And tonight she wasn’t expecting anyone to die while she was on duty.

  She looked at her watch. Nearly one o’clock. She’d got into the habit of sitting with Edward for a while around now. He didn’t sleep well and enjoyed the company.

  She brought him his tea and settled down for a chat. This was what nursing should be, really getting to know and care about your patients. It was a privilege, and so often you saw the best of people at times like this. People sometimes asked her, did that make it harder when they died, but strangely enough, it didn’t.

  “Any news about the baby?” she asked. Edward’s only daughter, Laura, was in New Zealand waiting for her own daughter to give birth. It had been a difficult pregnancy with enforced bed rest.

  He shook his head. “Laura rang earlier. She’s still fretting about not being here. I’ve told her not to be so silly. Melanie needs her mum with her. And as for me, I don’t want any harm to come to my first great-grandchild, do I? Just so long as he or she arrives before I go.”

  “I’d put money on it,” Jennifer said.

  She would, too. Edward would hang on for that, though afterwards it would be a different matter. The real question was whether Laura would get away in time to be with him at the end. She could guess how sorely he yearned for his daughter, but it remained unspoken between them.

  “I’m not short of visitors,” he said, as if he had read her mind.

  “The day staff tell me you’ve made quite a hit with Edith.”

  He winked at her. “Oh, I’m n
ot so far gone that I don’t have an eye for a good-looking woman. Kathleen popped in earlier on, too.”

  Kathleen was the hospice chaplain, a Church of England vicar who came in four afternoons a week.

  “I thought you Quakers didn’t have any truck with the clergy?”

  He laughed. “Oh, I’m happy to chat to anyone. And anyway, we don’t talk about religion. We’ve discovered that we’re both keen on classic crime fiction. She’s promised to lend me a collection of Ellery Queen short stories.”

  Jennifer nodded. She wasn’t a regular churchgoer, but her own faith was simple and secure. She was certain that the souls of her patients found safe harbour. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did know it.

  They talked for a while longer. When she saw that his eyelids were drooping, she arranged his pillows for him and put the emergency buzzer within reach. She dimmed the lights and went quietly away.

  As she walked back to the nurses’ station, she glanced into each room in turn. She had actually passed Edith’s room before she registered that something was wrong. She turned back and went in. What she had seen was the light reflected off Edith’s eyes. They were half open. She moved without haste to the bed and touched the pulse-point at the throat. The skin was cool under her fingers. Sometime in the last couple of hours, Edith had slipped silently away.

  Jennifer closed Edith’s eyes and said a short prayer.

  “You weren’t expecting it, were you?” Edward said. “I know Edith wasn’t. She thought she had awhile to go yet.”

  It was the following night and Jennifer was rearranging his flowers. “Well, yes. But these things don’t always go according to a timetable.”

  “I can’t believe it. She was so full of life.”

  Jennifer gave him a compassionate look. He had no difficulty in interpreting it. Funny: The more his body wound down, the greater seemed to be his insight into what other people were thinking. He could almost see the thoughts flitting through her head. Poor old boy, she was thinking. It brings home the fact of death. Bound to be upsetting.