The Third Mystery

by James Holding

  The other suitor owed Mr. Thomas a considerable sum of money.

  One of the women guests had, unknown to any of the others present, been Mr. Thomas’s mistress for several years; but he had recently cast her off.

  When the butler was questioned, he said that the other two men were guests and that their names were Mr. Wayne and Mr. Perry.

  Muldoon called my attention to the fact that the strand of hair found on Mr. Thomas’ coat was the same color as the hair of one of the men, no two of whom had the same color hair, but I reminded him that it was also exactly the same color as that of one of the women.

  When Muldoon questioned Miss Mills, she said that she and Miss Terry were visiting Miss Thomas over the weekend; and when he urged her to make a clean breast of it and tell him who the killer was she just shook her mass of bobbed, black hair; and, burying her face in her hands, burst into tears.

  It was about the same with the others; no one would name the killer. One of the girls told Muldoon that she did not know where Miss Thomas was at the time the shot was fired that killed Mr. Thomas.

  Muldoon asked one of the male guests, the one with blond hair, how he accounted for the strand of hair on Mr. Thomas’ coat.

  “I think it has no bearing on the case,” the guest replied. “It is not fair to assume that it was a strand of the killer’s hair. As a matter of fact the killer had the same color hair as one of the guests who was absent from the room at the time of the murder.

  “So you know who the killer is?” demanded Muldoon, but the man closed up like a clam and would say no more.

  Muldoon turned again to Miss Mills and snapped, “Where were you when this man was shot?”

  “I was with Miss Thomas.”

  The butler was standing beside Miss Mills; the contrast between the colors of their hair was striking. He fidgeted as Muldoon questioned him.

  “Where was Miss Terry at the time of the murder?” the Inspector shot at him.

  “She was here in this room with Mr. Thomas,” blurted the butler.

  “Who else was in the room at the time?”

  “There were two others, beside Mr. Thomas and Miss Terry.”

  “Was the color of the killer’s hair the same as that of either of the other two present?”

  “No; but the other two had the same color hair.”

  This was all the information we could gather, but within ten minutes Muldoon arrested the killer.

  Whom did Muldoon arrest?

  SOLUTION

  Muldoon finds six people in the library:

  Miss Thomas

  Mr. Perry

  Butler

  Mr. Wayne

  Miss Mills

  Miss Terry

  Of the six people, it has been shown that three were women and the other three men; the three women having been named and the butler stating that “the other two men” were guests.

  As Perry stood across the room from Miss Thomas and her fiance, Wayne must be the other guest and therefore Miss Thomas’ fiance.

  As no two of the men had the same color hair, there must have been one blond, one red, and one black; and the same must be true of the women, as there were two of each color hair in the room.

  Miss Terry was in room at time of murder; she did not know where Miss Thomas was at that time. As Miss Mills was with Miss Thomas at the time of the murder, neither of them could have been in the room; so neither could have been the murderess. We therefore place an X before their names.

  There were three in the room (beside Thomas) when the murder was committed; two of them had the same color hair, so must have been of different sexes; the killer’s hair was of a different color. Miss Terry was there; and as both the other women were out of the room, Miss Terry and two men must have been there. Miss Terry and one of the men must have had the same color hair; therefore the third person must have been the murderer, and was a man.

  The killer had the same color hair as either Miss Thomas or Miss Mills.

  The butler’s hair was either red or blond, because it contrasted strikingly with Miss Mills’ black hair; and he must have been one of the two men in the room, in order to know definitely who was in the room at the exact moment of the murder.

  The killer did not have the same color hair as either of the other two men, and as he had the same color hair as one of the guests who was absent from the room it must have been the same color as Miss Mill’s, which was black, as she was the only woman guest absent from the room; therefore the killer had black hair.

  The butler could not have been the killer because his hair contrasted strikingly with Miss Mill’s, and we X him out.

  So either Perry or Wayne must be the killer.

  As Miss Mills was the only girl with black hair, Wayne’s hair could not have been black, as it was the same color as Miss Thomas’s, and so we X Wayne out.

  Therefore it was Perry whom Muldoon arrested.

  THE SKINS YOU LOVE TO TOUCH, by Janet Fox

  Ginger drove along the winding road, letting her thoughts drift. Beside her in the seat Madge, her mother-in-law, kept up a steady monologue that had to do, Ginger knew, with her views on almost any subject you could name. Ginger thought Madge’s views all unutterably stupid, but since she never said so, she and her mother-in-law got on famously. So much so that Winston had sent them out together on this Sunday afternoon on an impromptu antique hunt.

  Signs fairly bristled amid the lush foliage of the hillsides; it seemed that every other farmer had stopped cultivating the land to harvest the money of silly, antique-crazy rich women from town. “Only,” she thought, reconsidering that idea, “I’m one of those women, too.”

  She’d always known Winston had money; it was just difficult to connect that with herself, even though she’d been married to him for almost a year.

  “Look, look, stop here!” Madge’s plump white hand, glittering with several rings, indicated a weathered sign almost hidden in the trees. “Sharkey’s,” it said in letters rudely burned into the silvered board. Ginger braked the station wagon just in time to make the turn into the almost overgrown drive.

  “Are you sure this is an antique shop?”

  “In this area it couldn’t be a massage parlor,” said Madge with an earthy laugh. “Or could it?” Light was cut off by overhanging branches, and the wagon bounced jerkily through iron ruts. There was something diseased-looking about the trees, Ginger thought; probably lack of sunlight. Fat ropy vines twined about trunks that showed patches of phosphorescent white beneath peeling bark. Madge was oblivious to the atmosphere, taking out her compact mirror to study her perfectly made up fiftyish face, the lacquered sweep of auburn-dyed hair.

  The buildings were widely scattered in the forest growth—a house that seemed scarcely more than a shack, dilapidated outbuildings leaning to one side or with boards missing…a newer, larger structure of corrugated metal seemed to be the shop, if shop it was.

  Madge didn’t hesitate but pushed open the door.

  Inside was an old-fashioned glass display case in which reposed several crude wood carvings, human and animal figures.

  “Not much in here,” said Ginger, poised nervously near the door. The place unnerved her with its echoing emptiness, cobwebs wagging from walls and ceiling in an unfelt breeze. A harsh chemical smell hung heavy on the air.

  There was a clump, scuff, clump from a room beyond this one, and a man emerged from it, walking with a limp. One leg was obviously shorter than the other, making him list to one side, and he held his head at an awkward angle to compensate.

  The grin that opened in his almost chinless face showed the jagged snags that were all that was left of his teeth and made Ginger think the name Sharkey was accurate, however he’d come by it. She noticed that his hands, toying with a chisel, were, unlike the rest of him, very clean.

  “We were just looking at your, er, wares,” said Madge. She had touched the dusty countertop and now wiped her fingertips with a tissue.

  “Oh, that there’s mo
re like a hobby,” he said and went to one side of the room. Dust covers obscured what were obviously chairs by their shapes. Sharkey pulled off one of the covers to display a chair covered in darkish beige leather. The legs and front of the armrests were intricately carved. Ginger had to move closer to see that they were fashioned in the shapes of human faces and hands.

  “Ah, the craftsmanship,” said Madge.

  Ginger didn’t like the designs; they were almost too lifelike, and the expressions weren’t pleasant. As usual, she said nothing. Madge ran her hand along the top of one armrest and made a small sound of amazement under her breath. “This really is extraordinary work,” she said.

  “All done here, every bit,” said Sharkey. “M’dad taught me to tan the hides and I sort learned the whittlin’ on m’own.”

  “Feel,” said Madge, drawing Ginger’s hand toward the fine-grained leather. Tentatively, she touched it, then let her fingers run along its length. It had really a strange texture, she thought, velvety smooth and it seemed almost to hold…warmth.

  “Well, sit down in it. I can see you’re intrigued,” said Madge. “Can you picture it in your living room, across from the sofa? Divine!”

  Ginger eased into the chair. There was no squeak of stiff new leather; smooth warmth slid along the backs of her thighs. The springs gave beneath her and she felt suddenly cradled, although there was something vaguely repellent about the feeling, too.

  “I can tell it’s so comfortable it’s almost obscene,” said Madge.

  That was the word. Ginger struggled to rise and it was as if the chair clung to her caressingly a moment before releasing her.

  “How much?” asked Madge.

  “Two thousand,” said Sharkey quickly, as if ready for the question as well as for the reaction to his response.

  “What, for a chair? That’s outrageous!”

  “Yes, definitely too much,” said Ginger, finding a voice as she rubbed briskly at the places on her arms that the chair had touched. “Let’s go.”

  “But we’ve only just started to bargain,” said Madge.

  “Sharkey, telephone.” The slatternly woman had appeared in the doorway so quickly she gave an impression of being insubstantial—faded gray house dress, wispy mouse-colored hair.

  “If you’ll wait right hyer, ladies, we can talk about it some more,” he said and went out with the woman, who must be his wife, Ginger thought with a shudder.

  “I don’t like this place,” said Ginger. “Or Sharkey, for that matter.”

  “He’s a little rough. But what a craftsman. I think you can talk him down on his price. I think he was afraid we were going to leave. With these people, bargaining is expected.” Ginger looked down and saw with embarrassment that her hands had found the back of the chair and were making subtle caressing movements. Quickly she pulled her hands away, buried them in the pockets of her jacket.

  Sharkey had now been gone some time, and Madge paced the length of the room, pausing to peer through the back doorway. Then she went through the open door, into the back room.

  “Madge—Mom,” she corrected, though she had never said that second word with ease where Madge was concerned. She didn’t have to imagine Madge as Winston’s mother, though; they had the same steely stares, the same jutting chins. “That man will be back any minute.”

  There was silence from the back room, and when Ginger could stand the suspense no more, she rushed through the door, almost colliding with her mother-in-law. The room was dim, crowded with cluttered workbenches and low vats in which some vile-smelling liquid sat, topped with clots of greenish scum. Arcane tools lay scattered about, and the tiles of the floor were discolored with dark rustlike stains. Madge was standing as if paralyzed, and then Ginger saw she stared at a workbench on which lay a sheet-draped form.

  A recognizably human form. Here and there on the sheet’s surface were blotches of red. Madge’s mouth was working without bringing forth anything very coherent. The color had washed from her face; the dots of rouge on her cheeks made her look like an aging rag doll.

  “Shouldn’t we just…look,” said Ginger, touching the edges of the sheet. “Maybe it’s not—”

  “No.” Madge half-screamed the word. “Can’t you see he’s taken the skin?” She made a half-stifled retching noise as Ginger dropped the sheet, visions of striated muscle tissue red with blood slipping past her mind’s eye.

  They both heard the opening of the door, the step, shuffle, step coming nearer; too late to pretend they’d seen nothing.

  “Ahhh.” Sharkey looked embarrassed, as if he’d been caught with his hand in a cookie jar, instead of this monstrousness. “I wish you ladies hadn’t come in here. Now you know my little secret.” Ginger hung back, waiting for Madge to burst out with a tirade, but there was silence.

  “There’s really nuthin’ like it, you know,” said Sharkey. “Works up so easy, kinda with a life of its own. M’daddy gave me his secret formuler. Wears like iron, too.”

  “But these are people…” began Ginger.

  “Only in a manner of speakin’. They swarm in the city like lice—junkies, bums, runaways. My cousin, Mort, he’s smart about things like that. It ain’t never anybody’d be missed. Nobody cares about’em, y’know.” Madge began to nod dully. Color was working its way back into her face behind the masklike makeup. As they talked, Sharkey had somehow maneuvered them out of the dim workroom. Once out of the place, Ginger felt that it almost didn’t exist. They stood in the cavernous showroom where the chair sat in a wedge of sunlight cast through a curtainless window—a piece of furniture, that was all, inert and harmless. Somehow she kept thinking of its smoothness. She felt almost an ache to run her fingers over its surface.

  * * * *

  “I know the kind of people you mean,” said Madge almost meekly.

  “It makes the chairs, well, different like, I dunno…” said Sharkey.

  “Unique,” said Ginger, surprised at the firm tone of her own voice.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, “kinda gives the chair a soul, or that’s the way I see it.”

  “Why, that’s very poetic,” said Madge, and then she fell silent as Ginger snapped open her purse and withdrew her checkbook.

  Sharkey rewrapped the chair in the dust cover and with difficulty carried it out of the shop and loaded it into the back of the station wagon. “Mine,” thought Ginger. She couldn’t remember feeling this much at ease with herself or who she must become. She owned something that no one else could have at any price.

  “You really should try and be a little more careful,” she said to Sharkey as she sat in the station wagon, ready to drive away. Now very poised and in control, she could afford to be kind. “You should never leave customers alone like that.”

  A small gleam ignited in Sharkey’s deep-set eyes. “Oh, I always let ’em catch me, ma’am.”

  “You let them catch you?”

  “Sure, it always gets me my askin’ price.” He cleared his throat and turned his head to spit. “Ever’ single time.”