The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  She dipped her hand into her handbag and drew out a black object about nine inches long and three quarters of an inch thick and held it up for everyone to see.

  Someone, without thinking, began to clap; and there came a storm of applause that drowned the voice of the Clerk calling for order and the bellowing of Garbould.

  When the applause died down, Hazeldean, who never misses the right moment, said: “I have no more questions to ask the witness, my lord,” and sat down.

  That action seemed to clinch it in my eyes and, I have no doubt, it clinched it in the eyes of the jury.

  The purple Garbould leant forward and almost bellowed at Ruth: “Do you expect the jury to believe that a well-known man like your father died in the act of deliberately setting a dastardly trap to hang the prisoner?”

  Ruth looked at him, shrugged her shoulders, and said with a calm acceptance of the facts of human nature one would expect to find only in a much older woman: “Oh, well, Daddy was like that. And he certainly believed he had very good reasons for killing Mr. Willoughton.”

  There was that in her tone and manner which made it absolutely certain that Kelstern was not only like that but that he had acted according to his nature.

  Greatorex did not re-examine Ruth; he conferred with Hazeldean. Then Hazeldean rose to open the case for the defence. He said that he would not waste the time of the Court, and that in view of the fact that Miss Kelstern had solved the problem of her father’s death, he would only call one witness, Professor Mozley.

  The grey-headed, grey-bearded, stooping man, who had come to the Court so late, went into the witness box. Of course his face had been familiar to me; I had seen his portrait in the newspapers a dozen times. He still carried the brown-paper parcel.

  In answer to Hazeldean’s questions he stated that it was possible, not even difficult, to make a weapon of carbon dioxide hard enough and tough enough and sharp enough to inflict such a wound as that which had caused Kelstern’s death. The method of making it was to fold a piece of chamois leather into a bag, hold that bag with the left hand, protected by a glove, over the nozzle of a cylinder containing liquid carbon dioxide, and open the valve with the right hand. Carbon dioxide evaporates so quickly that its freezing point, 80° centigrade, is soon reached; and it solidifies in the chamois leather bag as a deposit of carbon dioxide snow. Then turn off the gas, spoon that snow into a vulcanite container of the required thickness, and ram it down with a vulcanite plunger into a rod of the required hardness. He added that it was advisable to pack the container in ice while filling it and ramming down the snow, then put the rod into a thermos flask; and keep it till it is needed.

  “And you have made such a rod?” said Hazeldean.

  “Yes,” said the Professor, cutting the string of the brown-paper parcel. “When Miss Kelstern hauled me out of bed at half past seven this morning to tell me her discoveries, I perceived at once that she had found the solution of the problem of her father’s death, which had puzzled me considerably. I had breakfast quickly and got to work to make such a weapon myself for the satisfaction of the Court. Here it is.”

  He drew a thermos flask from the brown paper, unscrewed the top of it, and inverted it. There dropped into his gloved hand a white rod about eight inches long. He held it out for the jury to see.

  “This carbon dioxide ice is the hardest and toughest ice we know of; and I have no doubt that Mr. Kelstern killed himself with a similar rod. The difference between the rod he used and this is that his rod was pointed. I had no pointed vulcanite container; but the container that Miss Kelstern pieced together is pointed. Doubtless Mr. Kelstern had it specially made, probably by Messrs. Hawkins and Spender.”

  He dropped the rod back into the thermos flask and screwed on the top.

  Hazeldean sat down. The juryman who had been reprimanded by Garbould leaned forward and spoke earnestly to the foreman. Greatorex rose.

  “With regard to the point of the rod, Professor Mozley: would it remain sharp long enough to pierce the skin in that heat?” he asked.

  “In my opinion it would,” said the Professor. “I have been considering that point and bearing in mind the facts that Mr. Kelstern would from his avocation be very deft with his hands, and being a scientific man, would know exactly what to do, he would have the rod out of the flask and the point in position in very little more than a second—perhaps less. He would, I think, hold it in his left hand and drive it home by striking the butt of it hard with his right. The whole thing would not take him two seconds. Besides, if the point of the weapon had melted the tea leaf would have fallen off it.”

  “Thank you,” said Greatorex, and turned and conferred with the Crown solicitors.

  Then he said: “We do not propose to proceed with the case, my lord.”

  The foreman of the jury rose quickly and said: “And the jury doesn’t want to hear anything more, my lord. We’re quite satisfied that the prisoner isn’t guilty.”

  Garbould hesitated. For two pins he would have directed the case to proceed. Then his eye fell on Hazeldean, who was watching him; I fancied that he decided not to give him a chance of saying more disagreeable things.

  Looking black enough, he put the question formally to the jury, who returned a verdict of “Not guilty,” and then he discharged Willoughton.

  I came out of the Court with Ruth, and we waited for Willoughton.

  Presently he came out of the door and stopped and shook himself. Then he saw Ruth and came to her. They did not greet one another. She just slipped her hand through his arm; and they walked out of the New Bailey together.

  We made a good deal of noise, cheering them.

  THE FLUNG-BACK LID

  DESCRIBED AS “The Simenon of South Africa,” Peter Godfrey (1917–1992) was a playwright, broadcaster, and journalist who was exiled to London from his native country for his outspoken opposition to apartheid. He wrote hundreds of short stories, mainly in the 1940s and 1950s, which were translated into eight languages. However, until Crippen & Landru published The Newtonian Egg (2002), he had had only one book published, Death Under the Table (1954), a very rare collection of detective stories issued by the obscure South African publishing house S. A. Scientific Publishing Co., the address of which was a post office box in Cape Town.

  Godfrey’s series character, lawyer and psychologist Rolf le Roux, with his assistants Inspector Joubert, Sergeant Johnson, and Doc McGregor, works in Cape Town and provides a look into every corner of that great international city. The homicide squad and le Roux confront the most elusive type of mystery, the seemingly impossible crime, and display extraordinary intelligence in their solutions. One case challenges them to understand how a quantity of cyanide got inside an unbroken hard-boiled egg. Another, published in Death Under the Table, “The Wanton Murders,” served as the basis for the 1957 motion picture The Girl in Black Stockings, which starred Anne Bancroft.

  “The Flung-Back Lid” was first published in John Creasey’s Crime Collection (London, Gollancz, 1979). It is a rewritten and improved version of “Out of This World,” first collected in Death Under the Table (Cape Town, South Africa, S. A. Scientific Publishing Co., 1954).

  PETER GODFREY

  ALL THAT DAY, the last day of March, the cableway to the top of Table Mountain had operated normally. Every half hour the car on the summit descended, and the car below ascended, both operating on the same endless cable. The entire journey took seven minutes.

  Passengers going up or coming down gawked at the magnificent panorama over the head of the blase conductor in each car. In his upper-station cabin the driver of the week, Clobber, hunched conscientiously over his controls during each run, and was usually able to relax for the rest of the half hour.

  In the restaurant on the summit, Mrs. Orvin worked and chatted and sold curios and postcards and buttered scones, and showed customers how to post their cards in the little box which would ensure their stamps would be canceled with a special Table Mountain franking.

 
In the box-office at the lower station, the station master, Brander, sold tickets for the journey, and chatted with the conductor who happened to be down at the time, and drank tea.

  Then, at 5:30 p.m., the siren moaned its warning that the last trip of the day was about to commence. Into the upper car came the last straggling sightseers, the engineer on duty, Mrs. Orvin, and the conductor, Skager. Alone in the lower car was the other conductor, Heston, who would sleep overnight on the summit.

  Then two bells rang, and the cars were on their way. For the space of seven minutes Clobber and the Native labourer, Ben, were the only two on top of the mountain. Then the cars docked, and Heston stepped jauntily onto the landing platform.

  He joined Clobber, but neither spoke. Their dislike was mutual and obvious. They ate their evening meal in silence.

  Clobber picked up a book. Heston took a short walk, and then went to bed.

  Some hours later, he woke up. Somewhere in the blackness of the room he could hear Clobber snoring softly.

  Heston bared his teeth. Snore now, he thought, snore now. But tomorrow …

  The night began to grow less black. The stars faded first, then the lights far below in the city also winked out. The east changed colour. The sun rose.

  It was tomorrow.

  Brander came into the room which housed the lower landing platform, and peered myopically up along the giant stretch of steel rope.

  The old Cape Coloured, Piet, was sweeping out the car which had remained overnight at the lower station—the right-hand car. He said: “Dag,* Baas Brander.”

  “Dag, Piet,” said Brander.

  Two thousand feet above, the upper station looked like a doll’s house, perched on the edge of the cliff. The outlines of Table Mountain stood deep-etched by the morning sun. On the flat top of the elevation there was no sign of cloud—the tablecloth, as people in Cape Town call it—and there was no stirring of the air.

  Brander thought: Good weather. We will be operating all day.

  Piet was sweeping carefully, poking the broom edgeways into the corners of the car. He noticed Brander looking at him, and his old parchment flat-nosed face creased suddenly into a myriad of grins. “Baas Dimple is the engineer today,” he said. “The car must be very clean.”

  “That’s right, Piet,” said Brander. “Make a good job for Baas Dimble. You still have twenty minutes.”

  In the upper station, Clobber settled himself in his chair in the driver’s cabin, and opened the latest issue of Armchair Scientist. He had just about enough time, he reckoned, to finish the latest article on the new rocket fuels before the test run at nine-thirty.

  Line by line his eyes swallowed words, phrases and sentences. Then, interrupting the even flow of his thoughts, he felt the uneasy consciousness of eyes staring at the back of his neck. He had an annoying mental image of Heston’s thin lips contorting in a sardonic smile.

  He turned. It was Heston, but this time his face was unusually serious. “Did I interrupt you?” he asked.

  “Oh, go to hell,” said Clobber. He marked the place in his magazine, and put it down. He asked: “Well?”

  “I wanted a few words with you,” said Heston.

  “If it’s chit-chat you’re after, find someone else.”

  Heston looked hurt. “It’s … well, it’s rather a personal problem. Do you mind?”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “I’m a bit worried about the trip down.”

  “Why? You know as well as I do that nothing can go wrong with the cable.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just … Look, Clobber, I don’t want you to think I’m pulling your leg, because I’m really very serious. I don’t think I’m going to get down alive. You see, yesterday was my birthday—I turned thirty-one and it was 31 March—and I had to spend last night up here. Now, I’m not being superstitious or anything, but I’ve been warned that the day after my birthday I’d not be alive if my first trip was from the top to the bottom of the mountain. If I hadn’t forgotten, I’d have changed shifts with someone, but as it is …”

  “Look here, Heston, if you’re not bluffing, you’re the biggest damned fool—”

  “I’m not bluffing, Clobber. I mean it. You see, I haven’t got a relation in the world. If anything does happen, I’d like to see that each of the men gets something of mine as a sort of keepsake. You can have my watch. Dimble gets my binoculars—”

  “Sure, sure. And your million-rand bank account goes to Little Orphan Annie. Don’t be a damned fool. Who gave you this idiotic warning, anyway?”

  “I had a dream—”

  “Get to hell out of here, you little rat! Coming here and—”

  “But I mean it, Clobber—”

  “Get out! It would be a damned good thing for all of us if you didn’t reach the bottom alive!”

  Dimble, neat and officious but friendly, arrived at the lower station wagon, and with him were Skager and Mrs. Orvin.

  Brander shuffled forward to meet them.

  “Nice day,” said Dimble. “What’s your time, Brander? Nine-twenty-five? Good, our watches agree. Everything ship-shape here? Fine.”

  Skager scratched a pimple on his neck.

  Mrs. Orvin said: “How’s your hand, Mr. Brander?”

  The station-master peered below his glasses at his left hand, which was neatly bound with fresh white bandages. “Getting better slowly, thanks. It’s still a little painful. I can’t use it much, yet.”

  “Don’t like that Heston,” said Dimble. “Nasty trick he played on you, Brander.”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t a trick, Mr. Dimble. Perhaps he didn’t know the other end of the iron was hot.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Orvin. “He probably heated it up, specially. I can believe anything of him. Impertinent, that’s what he is.”

  “Even if he did do it,” said Brander, “I can’t bear any hard feelings.”

  Dimble said: “You’re a religious man, eh, Brander? All right in its way, but too impractical. No good turning the other cheek to a chap like Heston. Probably give you another clout for good measure. No, I’m different. If he’d done it to me, I’d have my knife into him.”

  “He’ll get a knife into him one of these days,” said Skager, darkly. He hesitated. “He’ll be coming down in the first car, won’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Brander.

  “And it’s just about time,” said Dimble. “We’d better get in our car. After you, Mrs. Orvin. So long, Brander.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Dimble—Mrs. Orvin—Skager.”

  Heston came through the door leading to the landing platform at the upper station. In the car, the Native Ben was still sweeping.

  “Hurry up, you lazy black swine,” said Heston. “What in hell have you been doing with yourself this morning? It’s almost time to go, and you’re still messing about. Get out of my way.”

  The Native looked at him with a snarl. “You mustn’t talk to me like that. I’m not your dog. I’ve been twenty years with this company, and in all that time nobody’s ever spoken to me like that—”

  “Then it’s time someone started. Go on—get out!”

  Ben muttered: “I’d like to—”

  “You’d like to what? Come up behind me when I’m not looking, I suppose? Well, you won’t get much chance for that. And don’t hang around—voetsak!”*

  From the driver’s cabin they heard the two sharp bells that indicated that the cars were ready to move. Ben stepped aside. As the upper car began to slide down and away Heston went through the door, up the short flight of stairs and into the driver’s cabin. He looked over Clobber’s shoulder at the plate-glass window.

  The upper car was then twenty or thirty yards from the station. Both men saw Heston lean over the side of the car, and salute them with an exaggerated sweep of his right arm. Both men muttered under their breath.

  As the seconds ticked by, the two cars approached each other in mid-air.

  In the ascending car Dimble looked at the one that
was descending with a critical eye. Suddenly, he became annoyed. “That fool,” he said. “Look how he’s leaning out over the door. Dangerous …”

  His voice tailed off. As the cars passed each other, he saw something protruding from Heston’s back—something that gleamed silver for an inch or two, and was surmounted by a handle of bright scarlet. Dimble said: “God!” He reached and jerked the emergency brake. Both cars stopped suddenly, swaying drunkenly over the abyss.

  Skager moaned: “He’s not leaning …”

  Mrs. Orvin gulped audibly. “That’s my knife,” she said, “the one he said …”

  The telephone bell in the car rang shrilly. Dimble answered it.

  “What’s the trouble?” came Clobber’s voice.

  “It’s Heston. He’s slumped over the door of the car. There seems to be a knife in his back.”

  “A knife? Hell! He was alive when he left here. He waved to me … What should we do?”

  “Hang on a second. Brander, are you on the other end? Have you heard this conversation?”

  “Yes, Mr. Dimble.”

  “Okay, Clobber. I’m releasing the brake now. Speed it up a little.”

  “Sure.”

  The cars moved again.

  At the top, Dimble led the rush up the stairs to the driver’s cabin, where Clobber’s white face greeted them. They waited.

  The telephone rang.

  Clobber stretched out a tentative hand, but Dimble was ahead of him.

  “I’ve seen him,” said Brander, queerly. “He’s dead.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. He’s dead.”

  “Now look, Brander, we must make sure nothing is touched. Get on the outside phone to the police right away. And let Piet stand guard over the body until they get here, OK?”