by Otto Penzler
“That,” replied Thorndyke, “is for you to determine; but I can give you a useful hint. There is only one person who benefits by the death of Alfred Hartridge, but he benefits to the extent of twenty thousand pounds. His name is Leonard Wolfe, and I learn from Mr. Marchmont that he is a man of indifferent character—a gambler and a spendthrift. By profession he is an engineer, and he is a capable mechanician. In appearance he is thin, short, fair, and clean-shaven, and he has lost the middle finger of his left hand. Mr. Barlow is also short, thin, and fair, but wears a wig, a beard, and spectacles, and always wears a glove on his left hand. I have seen the handwriting of both these gentlemen, and should say that it would be difficult to distinguish one from the other.”
“That’s good enough for me,” said the inspector. “Give me his address, and I’ll have Miss Curtis released at once.”
The same night Leonard Wolfe was arrested at Eltham, in the very act of burying in his garden a large and powerful compressed-air rifle. He was never brought to trial, however, for he had in his pocket a more portable weapon—a large-bore Derringer pistol—with which he managed to terminate an exceedingly ill-spent life.
“And, after all,” was Thorndyke’s comment, when he heard of the event, “he had his uses. He has relieved society of two very bad men, and he has given us a most instructive case. He has shown us how a clever and ingenious criminal may take endless pains to mislead and delude the police, and yet, by inattention to trivial details, may scatter clues broadcast. We can only say to the criminal class generally, in both respects, ‘Go thou and do likewise.’ ”
THE CREWEL NEEDLE
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to slot Gerald Kersh (1911–1968) into any category of fiction, as his strange and powerful stories and novels run the gamut from crime to fantasy to literary fiction, with many of the works straddling more than one genre. A somewhat bizarre young life—he was pronounced dead at four, only to sit up in his coffin at the funeral—in which he described himself as being “a morose and tearful child,” continued through the early years of adulthood, in which he worked as a baker, nightclub bouncer, salesman, and professional wrestler. He served in the Coldstream Guards in World War II until an injury forced him out; he became a war correspondent and was buried alive during bombing raids on three separate occasions. Although a successful writer, he moved to the United States after the war to escape what he regarded as confiscatory taxation and became a naturalized citizen.
His most famous novel is Night and the City (1938), set in the London underworld of professional wrestling, which was the basis for the classic 1950 film noir directed by Jules Dassin and starring Richard Widmark; it was remade in 1992 with Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange. Most critics regard the 1957 novel Fowler’s End to be Kersh’s masterpiece and one of the great novels of the twentieth century, but it remains largely unknown. He wrote more than a thousand magazine pieces and more than a thousand short stories, the best known in the crime field being those about Karmesin, a rogue who narrates his own adventures and was described by Ellery Queen as “either the greatest criminal or the greatest liar of all time.” Typical of these stories is “Karmesin and the Crown Jewels,” in which the thief may have stolen the jewels from the Tower of London.
“The Crewel Needle” was first published in Lilliput in 1953; it was first collected in Guttersnipe (London, Heinemann, 1954). It was reprinted in the October 1959 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine as “Open Verdict.”
GERALD KERSH
CERTAIN OTHERS I know, in my position, sir, have had “severe nervous breakdowns”—gone out of their minds—took to parading the streets with banners, and whatnot, shouting Unfair! Well, thank God, I was always steady-minded. I could always see the other side of things. So, although I was unjustly dismissed from the Force, I could still keep my balance. I could see the reason for the injustice behind my dismissal, and could get around to blaming myself for not keeping my silly mouth shut.
Actually, you know, I wasn’t really sacked. I was told that if I wanted to keep what there was of my pension, I had better resign on grounds of ill health. So I did, and serves me right. I should never have made my statement without, first, having my evidence corroborated. However, no bitterness. Justifiable or unjustifiable, bitterness leads to prejudice which, carried far enough, is the same thing as madness … I started life in the Army, d’you see, where you learn to digest a bit of injustice here and there; because, if you do not, it gets you down and you go doolally.
Many is the good man I’ve known who has ruined himself by expecting too much justice. Now, I ask you, what sane man in this world really expects to get what he properly deserves?
If I had been thirty years wiser thirty years ago, I might have been retired, now, on an Inspector’s pension. Only, in the matter of an open verdict, I didn’t have the sense to say nothing. I was young and foolish, d’you see, and, therefore, overeager. There was a girl I was very keen on, and I was anxious to better myself—she was used to something a cut above what I could offer her. D’you see?
I was supposed to be an intelligent officer, as far as that goes in the Police Force. But that isn’t quite good enough. In those days, all the so-called intelligence in the world wouldn’t get a policeman very far—seniority aside—unless he had a kind of spectacular way of showing it.
I’m not embittered, mind you. Nothing against the Force. Only I ought to have known when to stop talking …
At first, like everybody else, I thought nothing of it. The Police were called in after the doctor, merely as a matter of routine, d’you see. I was on a beat, then, in Hammersmith. Towards about eight o’clock one Sunday morning, neighbors on either side of a little house on Spindleberry Road were disturbed by the hysterical crying of a child at No. 9.
At first there was some talk of the N.S.P.C.C., but there was no question of that, because the people at No. 9 were simply a little orphan girl, aged eight, and her aunt, Miss Pantile, who thought the world of her niece and, far from ill-treating the child, had a tendency to spoil her; because the little girl whose name was Titania was delicate, having had rheumatic fever.
As is not uncommon, the houses in Spindleberry Road are numbered odd coming up, and even going down. The neighbors in question, therefore, were Nos. 7 and 11. Spindleberry Road, like so many of them put up around Brook Green before the turn of the century, is simply a parallel of brick barracks, sort of sectionalized and numbered. Under each number, a porch. In front of each porch, iron railings and an iron gate. At the back of each and every house, a bit of garden. I mention this, d’you see, because these houses, from a policeman’s point of view, present only an elementary problem: they are accessible from front or back only.
Beg pardon—I’ve never quite lost the habit of making everything I say a kind of Report.
…Well, hearing child crying, neighbors knock at door. No answer. No. 7 shouts through letter box: “Open the door and let us in, Titania!” Child keeps on crying. Various neighbors try windows, but every window is locked from the inside. At last, No. 11, a retired captain of the Mercantile Marine, in the presence of witnesses, bursts in the back door. Meanwhile, one of the lady neighbors has come to get a policeman, and has found me at the corner of Rowan Road. I appear on the scene.
Not to bother you, sir, with the formalities; being within my rights, as I see them in this case, I go in, having whistled for another policeman who happens to be my sergeant. The house is in no way disturbed, but all the time, upstairs, this child is screaming as if she is being murdered, over and over again: “Auntie Lily’s dead! Auntie Lily’s dead!”
The bedroom is locked on the inside. Sergeant and I force the lock, and there comes out at us a terrified little golden-headed girl, frightened out of her wits. The woman from No. 11 soothes her as best she can, but the sergeant and I concentrate our attention upon Miss Lily Pantile, who is lying on a bed with her eyes and mouth wide open, stone-dead.
The local doctor was called, of course, and he said that, as far
as he could tell, this poor old maiden lady had died of something like a cerebral hemorrhage at about three o’clock in the morning. On a superficial examination, this was as far as he cared to commit himself. He suggested that this was a matter for the coroner.
And that, as far as everybody was concerned, was that, d’you see? Only it was not. At the inquest it appeared that poor Miss Pantile had met her death through a most unusual injury. A gold-eyed crewel needle had been driven through her skull, and into her brain, about three inches above the left ear!
Now here, if you like, was a mystery with a capital M.
Miss Pantile lived alone with her eight-year-old niece. She had enough money of her own to support them both, but sometimes made a little extra by crewelwork—you know, embroidering with silks on a canvas background. She was especially good at creweling roses for cushion covers. The needle she favored—she had packets and packets of them—was the Cumberland Crewel Gold Eye, one of which had found its way, nobody knew how, through her skull and into her brain. But how could it possibly have found its way there?—that was the question.
There was no lack of conjecture, you may be sure. Doctors cited dozens of instances of women—tailoresses and dressmakers, particularly—who had suddenly fallen dead through having needles embedded in various vital organs. Involuntary muscular contractions, it was demonstrated, could easily send an accidentally stuck-in needle, or portion of a needle, working its way between the muscles for extraordinary distances, until it reached, for example, the heart …
The coroner was inclined to accept this as a solution, and declare a verdict of Death by Misadventure. Only the doctor wouldn’t have that. Such cases, he said, had come to his attention, especially in the East End of London; and in every case the needle extracted had been in a certain way corroded, or calcified, as the case might be. In the case of Miss Lily Pantile, the crewel needle—upon the evidence of a noted pathologist—had been driven into the skull from the outside, with superhuman force. Part of the gold eye of the needle had been found protruding from the deceased’s scalp … What did the coroner make of that?—the doctor asked.
The coroner was not anxious to make anything of it.
In the opinion of the doctor, could an able-bodied man have driven a needle through a human skull with his fingers?
Definitely, no.
Might this needle, then, have been driven into Miss Pantile’s skull with some instrument, such as a hammer?
Possibly; but only by someone of “preternatural skill” in the use of fine steel instruments of exceptional delicacy …
The doctor reminded the coroner that even experienced needlewomen frequently broke far heavier needles than this gold-headed crewel needle, working with cloth of close texture. The human skull, the doctor said—calling the coroner, with his forensic experience, to witness—was a most remarkably difficult thing to penetrate, even with a specially designed instrument like a trephine.
The coroner said that one had, however, to admit the possibility of a crewel needle being driven through a middle-aged woman’s skull with a hammer, in the hands of a highly skilled man.
…So it went on, d’you see. The doctor lost his temper and invited anyone to produce an engraver, say, or cabinetmaker, to drive a crewel needle through a human skull with a hammer “with such consummate dexterity”—they were his words, sir—as to leave the needle unbroken and the surrounding skin unmarked, as was the case with Miss Pantile.
There, d’you see, the coroner had him. He said, in substance: “You have proved that this needle could not have found its way into the late Miss Pantile’s brain from inside. You have also proved that this needle could not have found its way into Miss Pantile’s brain from outside.”
Reprimanding somebody for laughing, he then declared an Open Verdict.
So the case was closed. A verdict is a verdict, but coroners are only coroners, even though they may be backed by the Home Office pathologist. And somehow or other, for me, this verdict was not good enough. If I had been that coroner, I would have made it: Willful Murder by a Person or Persons Unknown.
All fine and large. But what person or persons, known or unknown, with specialized skill enough to get into a sealed house, and into a locked room, hammer a fine needle into a lady’s skull, and get out again, locking all the doors behind him, or them, from the inside—all without waking up an eight-year-old girl sleeping by the side of the victim?
And there was the question of Motive. Robbery? Nothing had been touched. The old lady had nothing worth stealing. Revenge? Most unlikely: she had no friends and no enemies, living secluded with her little niece, doing no harm to anyone … There was a certain amount of sense in the coroner’s verdict … still …
Only let me solve this mystery, and I’m made, I thought.
I solved it, and I broke myself.
Now, as you must know, when you are in doubt you had better first examine yourself.
People get into a sloppy habit of mind. I once read a detective story called The Invisible Man, in which everybody swore he had seen nobody; yet there were footprints in the snow. “Nobody,” of course, was the postman, in this story; “invisible” simply because nobody ever bothers to consider a postman as a person.
I was quite sure that in the mystery of Miss Pantile there must have been something somebody overlooked. I don’t mean Sherlock Holmes stuff, like a cigarette ash, and whatnot. Not a clue, in the generally accepted sense of the term, but something.
And I was convinced that somehow, out of the corner of my mind’s eye, I had seen in Miss Pantile’s bedroom a certain something-or-other that was familiar to me, yet very much out of place. Nothing bad in itself—an object, in itself, perfectly innocent; but, in the circumstances, definitely queer. Now what was it?
I racked my brains trying to visualize in detail the scene of that bedroom. I was pretty observant as a youngster—I tell you, I might have got to be Detective-Inspector if I’d had the sense to keep my mouth shut at the right time—and the scene came back into my mind.
There was the room, about sixteen feet by fourteen. Main articles of furniture: a pair of little bedsteads with frames of stained oak; crewelworked quilts. Everything neat as a pin. A little dressing table, blue crockery with a pattern of pink roses. Wallpaper, white with a pattern of red roses. A little fire screen, black, crewel-worked again with yellow roses and green leaves. Over the fireplace, on the mantel shelf, several ornaments—one kewpie doll with a ribbon round its waist, one china cat with a ribbon round its neck, a cheap gift vase with a paper rose stuck in it, and a pink velvet pincushion. At the end of the mantel shelf nearest the little girl’s side of the room, several books—
Ah-ah! Hold hard there! my memory said to me. You’re getting hot! … You remember the old game of Hot and Cold in which you have to go out of the room, and then come back and find some hidden object? When you’re close to it, you’re hot; when you’re not, you’re cold. When my memory said hot, I stopped at the mental image of those books, and all of a sudden the solution to the Spindleberry Road mystery struck me like a blow between the eyes.
And here, in my excitement, I made my big mistake. I wanted, d’you see, to get the credit, and the promotion that would certainly come with it.
Being due for a weekend’s leave, I put on my civilian suit and went down to Luton, where the orphan girl Titania was staying in the care of some distant cousin, and by making myself pleasant and tactful, I got to talking with the kid alone, in a tea shop.
She got through six meringues before we were done talking …
She was a pale-faced little girl, sort of pathetic in the reach-me-down black full mourning they’d dressed her in. One of those surprised-looking little girls with round eyes and mouth always part open. Bewildered, never quite sure whether to come or go, to laugh or cry. Devil of a nuisance to an officer on duty: He always thinks they’ve lost their way, or want to be taken across a street. It’s difficult for a busy man to get any sense out of them, because the
y start crying at a sharp word.
Her only truly distinguishing mark was her hair, which was abundant and very pretty. Picture one of those great big yellow chrysanthemums combed back and tied with a bit of black ribbon.
I asked her, was she happy in her new home? She said, “Oh, yes. Auntie Edith says as soon as it’s decent I can go to the pictures twice a week.”
“Why,” I asked, “didn’t your Auntie Lily let you go to the pictures, then?”
Titania said, “Oh, no. Auntie Lily wouldn’t go because picture houses are dangerous. They get burnt down.”
“Ah, she was a nervous lady, your Auntie Lily, wasn’t she,” I said, “keeping the house all locked up like that at night?”
“She was afraid of boys,” Titania said, in an old-fashioned way. “Those boys! What with throwing stones and letting off fireworks, they can burn you alive in your bed. A girl isn’t safe with these boys around.”
“That’s what your poor Auntie said, isn’t it, Titania? Now you’re not afraid of boys, are you?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Brian was a boy. He was my brother.”
“What, did Brian die, my little dear?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “He died of the flu, when Mummy did. I had the flu, too. But I didn’t die; only I was delicate afterwards. I had the rheumatic fever, too.”
“Your brother Brian must have been a fine big boy,” I said. “Now about how old would he have been when he—passed away? Twelve?”
“Thirteen and a quarter,” said Titania.
“And so he passed away, and I’m very sorry to hear it,” I said. “And your Auntie Lily wouldn’t let you go to the pictures, wouldn’t she? Well, you must always obey your elders, as you are told in the Catechism. Who did you like best in the pictures?”
Her face sort of lit up, then. She told me, “Best of all I liked Pearl White in a serial, Peg o’ the Ring. Oh, it was good! And John Bunny and Flora Finch—” She giggled at the memory. “But we had only got to Part Three of The Clutching Hand when Mummy and Brian died, and I went to live with Auntie Lily … Apart from the danger of fire, picture palaces are unhealthy because they are full of microbes. Microbes carry germs … Auntie Lily used to wear an influenza mask on her face when she went out—you know, you can’t be too careful these days,” said this serious little girl.