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Mail to:
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Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
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Passport to Crime: A MALEFACTOR by Anton Chekhov
This month Passport to Crime brings back a classic tale from one of the world's greatest short-story writers, in English trans-lation. Several of Chekhov's stories, including this one, were reprinted in EQMM in the magazine's early decades as part of Ellery Queen's attempt to show that virtually every great writer the world has produced wrote at least one story that could be considered to belong to the crime genre.
Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett
An exceedingly lean little peasant, in a striped hempen shirt and patched drawers, stands facing the investigating magistrate. His face is overgrown with hair and pitted with smallpox, and his eyes, scarcely visible under thick, overhanging eyebrows, have an expression of sullen moroseness. On his head there is a perfect mop of tangled, unkempt hair, which gives him an even more spider-like air of moroseness. He is barefooted.
"Denis Grigoryev!” the magistrate begins. “Come nearer, and answer my questions. On the seventh of this July the railway watchman, Ivan Semyonovitch Akinfov, going along the line in the morning, found you at the hundred-and-forty-first mile engaged in unscrewing a nut by which the rails are made fast to the sleepers. Here it is, the nut! ... With the aforesaid nut he detained you. Was that so?"
"Wha-at?"
"Was this all as Akinfov states?"
"To be sure, it was."
"Very good; well, what were you unscrewing the nut for?"
"Wha-at?"
"Drop that ‘wha-at’ and answer the question; what were you unscrewing the nut for?"
"If I hadn't wanted it, I shouldn't have unscrewed it,” croaks Denis, looking at the ceiling.
"What did you want that nut for?"
"The nut? We make weights out of those nuts for our lines."
"Who is ‘we'?"
"We, people.... The Klimovo peasants, that is."
"Listen, my man; don't play the idiot with me, but speak sensibly. It's no use telling lies here about weights!"
"I've never been a liar from a child, and now I'm telling lies...” mutters Denis, blinking. “But can you do without a weight, your honour? If you put live bait or maggots on a hook, would it go to the bottom without a weight? ... I am telling lies,” grins Denis.... “What the devil is the use of the worm if it swims on the surface! The perch and the pike and the eelpout always go to the bottom, and a bait on the surface is only taken by a shillisper, not very often then, and there are no shillispers in our river.... That fish likes plenty of room."
"Why are you telling me about shillispers?"
"Wha-at? Why, you asked me yourself! The gentry catch fish that way too in our parts. The silliest little boy would not try to catch a fish without a weight. Of course, anyone who did not understand might go to fish without a weight. There is no rule for a fool."
"So you say you unscrewed this nut to make a weight for your fishing line out of it?"
"What else for? It wasn't to play knuckle-bones with!"
"But you might have taken lead, a bullet. a nail of some sort...."
"You don't pick up lead in the road, you have to buy it, and a nail's no good. You can't find anything better than a nut.... It's heavy, and there's a hole in it."
"He keeps pretending to be a fool! As though he'd been born yesterday or dropped from heaven! Don't you understand, you blockhead, what unscrewing these nuts leads to? If the watchman had not noticed it the train might have run off the rails, people would have been killed—you would have killed people."
"God forbid, your honour! What should I kill them for? Are we heathens or wicked people? Thank God, good gentlemen, we have lived all our lives without ever dreaming of such a thing.... Save, and have mercy on us, Queen of Heaven! ... What are you saying?"
"And what do you suppose railway accidents do come from? Unscrew two or three nuts and you have an accident."
Denis grins, and screws up his eye at the magistrate incredulously.
"Why! how many years have we all in the village been unscrewing nuts, and the Lord has been merciful; and you talk of accidents, killing people. If I had carried away a rail or put a log across the line, say, then maybe it might have upset the train, but ... pouf! A nut!"
"But you must understand that the nut holds the rail fast to the sleepers!"
"We understand that.... We don't unscrew them all ... we leave some.... We don't do it thoughtlessly ... we understand...."
Denis yawns and makes the sign of the cross over his mouth.
"Last year the train went off the rails here,” says the magistrate. “Now I see why!"
"What do you say, your honour?"
"I am telling you that now I see why the train went off the rails last year.... I understand!"
"That's what you are educated people for, to understand, you kind gentlemen. The Lord knows to whom to give understanding.... Here you have reasoned how and what, but the watchman, a peasant like ourselves, with no understanding at all, catches one by the collar and hauls one along.... You should reason first and then haul me off. It's a saying that a peasant has a peasant's wit.... Write down, too, your honour, that he hit me twice—in the jaw and in the chest."
"When your hut was searched they found another nut.... At what spot did you unscrew that, and when?"
"You mean the nut which lay under the red box?"
"I don't know where it was lying, only it was found. When did you unscrew it?"
"I didn't unscrew it; Ignashka, the son of one-eyed Semyon, gave it me. I mean the one which was under the box, but the one which was in the sledge in the yard Mitrofan and I unscrewed together."
"What Mitrofan?"
"Mitrofan Petrov.... Haven't you heard of him? He makes nets in our village and sells them to the gentry. He needs a lot of those nuts. Reckon a matter of ten for each net."
"Listen. Article 1081 of the Penal Code lays down that every willful damage of the railway line committed when it can expose the traffic on that line to danger, and the guilty party knows that an accident must be caused by it ... (Do you understand? Knows! And you could not help knowing what this unscrewing would lead to...), is liable to penal servitude."
"Of course, you know best.... We are ignorant people.... What do we understand?"
"You understand all about it! You are lying, shamming!"
"What should I lie for? Ask in the village if you don't believe me. Only a bleak is caught without a weight, and there is no fish worse than a gudgeon, yet even that won't bite without a weight."
"You'd better tell me about the shillisper next,” said the magistrate, smiling.
"There are no shillispers in our parts.... We cast our line without a weight on the top of the water with a butterfly; a mullet may be caught that way, though that is not often."
"Come, hold your tongue."
A silence follows. Denis shifts from one foot to the other, looks at the table with the green cloth on it, and blinks his eyes violently as though what was before him was not the cloth but the sun. The magistrate writes rapidly.
"Can I go?” asks Denis after a long silence.
"No. I must take you under guard and send you to prison."
Denis leaves off blinking and, raising his thick eyebrows, looks inquiringly at the magistrate.
"How do you mean, to prison? Your honour! I have no time to spare, I must go to the fair; I must get three roubles from Yegor
for some tallow!..."
"Hold your tongue; don't interrupt."
"To prison.... If there was something to go for, I'd go; but just to go for nothing! What for? I haven't stolen anything, I believe, and I've not been fighting.... If you are in doubt about the arrears, your honour, don't believe the elder.... You ask the agent ... he's a regular heathen, the elder, you know."
"Hold your tongue."
"I am holding my tongue, as it is,” mutters Denis; “but that the elder has lied over the account, I'll take my oath for it.... There are three of us brothers: Kuzma Grigoryev, then Yegor Grigoryev, and me, Denis Grigoryev."
"You are hindering me.... Hey, Semyon,” cries the magistrate, “take him away!"
"There are three of us brothers,” mutters Denis, as two stalwart soldiers take him and lead him out of the room. “A brother is not responsible for a brother. Kuzma does not pay, so you, Denis, must answer for it.... Judges indeed! Our master the general is dead—the Kingdom of Heaven be his—or he would have shown you judges.... You ought to judge sensibly, not at random.... Flog if you like, but flog someone who deserves it, flog with conscience."
Translated by Constance Garnett
* * * *
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Fiction: AN INDEX by Martin Edwrads
(Being an extract from a draft index to Celebrity Lawyer, the autobiography of Jude Wykeham)
Wykeham, Jude
Affair
With Esther Yallop
Autobiography
Mysterious disappearance of
Paid enormous sum to write
Posthumous publication, anticipated
Guilt
Presumed motive for suicide
Launch Party
Meets Esther Yallop at
Police investigation of
Errors in
Fake suicide note, misled by
Publisher
Shared with Esther Yallop
Puerto Banus
Purchase of holiday home at
Weekends spent with Esther Yallop in
Queen's Counsel
High earnings as
Rhetorical skills
Seduction, persistent employment of when engaged in
Strangling
Suspected of
Suicide
Apparent
* * * *
Yallop, Esther
Dress
Expensive tastes in
Provocative
Erotic poems
Authorship of
Lover, dedicated to
Husband, boredom with
Sarcasm, gift for
Strangulation of
Pleasure taken in
Remorse for, subsequent
* * * *
Yallop, William
English degree, uselessness of
Indexer, part-time employment as
Manuscript
Re-writing of
Theft of
Novels, unpublished
Personality
Despair, tendency to
Obsessive
Revenge, lust for
Writing
Career, literary
Experimental nature of
Failure in
Celebrity Lawyer, determination to compile index for
Confession
Double murder, to
Index, by means of
(c) 2007 by Martin Edwrads
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Fiction: MURDER ON THE LONDON EYE by Maria Hudgins
Maria Hudgins is a former high school science teacher who, on retirement, decided to combine two loves, traveling and mysteries, and write mysteries set abroad. She's been to England several times and this locked-room mystery deals with a murder committed in a glass capsule that can be seen from a good part of London. Look for her novel Death of An Obnoxious Tourist.
When DI Neville Moody and I got the call, we were a block away from Westminster Bridge on the north side of the Thames. A murdered woman had been discovered in capsule 18 of the British Airways London Eye. Traffic gridlock held us trapped at the foot of Big Ben for a good five minutes before we hit the bridge and saw the big wheel looming through the afternoon haze on our left.
"Is the wheel still running?” Moody asked into his police radio.
I looked, but the Eye turns so slowly that you can't tell, from a moving vehicle, whether it's moving or not.
"They've stopped it,” the radio crackled back.
"They're holding everyone who was in that capsule, I assume."
"Apparently she was alone."
Moody flicked his left blinker on and paused before turning into the street beside County Hall. “You're saying it was suicide, then?"
"I have no details, sorry. They said murder."
Moody turned on our flashing lights and drove onto the pedestrian street between County Hall and the base of the Eye's superstructure. He pulled up to the entrance ramp, slowing to let people move out of the way. This was the first time I'd seen the big wheel without a queue winding down the switchbacks of its glass-covered ramp.
A couple of constables pushed back the gathering gawkers, nudging them closer to the ticket office in County Hall. I could see no crime-scene tape. A black-jacketed attendant stood sentry at the bottom of the ramp.
"Did we beat the SOCOs here?” I hurried round the bonnet of the car to catch up with the long-legged Moody.
A young policewoman hustling up behind us answered. “They're on their way, sir."
Flashing his credentials at the attendant, Moody introduced us both. “Detective Inspector Moody and Sergeant Derek Wilde,” he said. “Where are the people who were in the capsule—if that's what you call it—with the deceased?"
"That's just it, sir. There were no other people. She was alone."
"Don't these pods carry about twenty people at a time?"
"Slow day, sir."
I looked up and across the glass roof of the entrance. People were still in the capsules. Panicky people. In a pod on my right, suspended some thirty feet above us, was a woman with a baby in her arms and a toddler pitching a tantrum round her knees. Her frazzled hair told me she was past caring what she looked like. Noses pressed against the curved glass all round, mouths silently begging Let us out, kids in urinary crisis bouncing to avoid wetting themselves.
"We need to get those people out of there,” I said.
"Right.” Moody squinted up at the arc of capsules awaiting disembarkation. The wheel, when it turned, did so clockwise from our vantage point looking westward, so the capsules to our right held people who had already been around, and those on our left were just getting started. “We won't wait for the SOCOs. Sergeant, you and I are going to make a trip round in the capsule with the body. I assume it's the one at the bottom now?"
The attendant turned toward the wheel and nodded. “Yes, sir, we haven't touched anything since we saw that she was ... past helping."
"Good. I'm going to get a constable over here and I want you to get the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and proof of identity of all the people as they get off. Do they have ticket stubs with them? Right. Collect their stubs, put each person's name on their stub, and put all the information along with the stubs in an envelope. A separate envelope for each capsule. Mark it with the capsule number."
"A lot of these people are probably tourists,” I said. “They'll have nothing but a hotel address in London."
"Right you are.” Moody paused and dragged the back of his hand across his stubbly jaw line. “The tourists from outside the U.K. will have passports on them—at least
they're supposed to. Make photocopies of the first page of their passports and put that in the envelopes, too."
The attendant nodded without blinking, as if he was concentrating to his utmost.
A constable had been summoned. When he'd hustled over to us Moody ran through the instuctions he'd given the attendant and concluded, “Before you let anyone go, ask them if they saw anything that might help us in our enquiries. Tell them there was a death in capsule eighteen, but be vague about the circumstances. Ask anyone who seems to have seen anything to stay until we make our circuit and let the others go, with the proviso that they keep themselves available for further questions."
"Derek,” he said, turning to me, “find us a stack of large envelopes."
I found a sort of office behind a redwood barrier nearby, flashed my ID, and was given a box of Manila envelopes. I handed it to the attendant Moody had put in charge of gathering addresses and headed for the capsule with the open door.
Moody shoved a pair of latex gloves at me as I walked in. The wheel was turning again—ever so slowly. Behind me, the glass door slid closed and locked, and an attendant engaged a second lock from the outside.
In the center of the capsule was a surfboard-shaped wooden bench and on the far end of that bench a huddled form, its grey head tilted to one side. I joined Moody on the far end of the capsule and recoiled sharply when I looked at the woman's face, blotched by hundreds of broken capillaries. One eye was slightly open and a swollen tongue protruded thickly between the lips. Her hands were folded demurely in her lap, as if she were simply waiting for the doctor's assistant to call her name.
"Why hasn't she toppled over?” I asked.
Moody and I knelt on opposite sides of the body. The ligature with which she had obviously been strangled was still round her neck, and under it, a straight-line bruise indicative of murder, not suicide. At the back of the neck and also encircled by the ligature, a sturdy steel rod ran vertically down through the woman's jacket, between two strips of wood on the hatch-patterned bench, and down to the floor. The upper end of the rod terminated in a loop that made a sort of cradle for the back of her head. I had seen similar rods jammed into the ground to position crime-scene tape, the loop at the top forming an eye through which the tape could be threaded.
"She's been propped up!” Moody ran his hand across his face and sat back on his heels. “Why in hell would somebody go to so much trouble to kill this poor lady in a glass bubble you can see from half of London?"
EQMM, December 2007 Page 15