Ellery Queen's Champions of Mystery vol. 33 (1977)

by Ellery Queen

  “Sounds like a lot of hocus-pocus to me,” Mildred McKay said. “I certainly hope you don’t spout off like that to the college kids you teach.”

  “I realize it would be taxing your limited intellectual abilities to understand,” McKay sighed. “Especially in a person used to a lifetime of stifling all natural urges. Ah, well, killing is something few women understand anyway.”

  “Sounds to me like a windy excuse to go out and slaughter innocent animals. Or take a day off from responsibilities at home,” Mildred added. She dumped the dishwater down the drain. There was a loud sucking noise as the water escaped through the plumbing. “This drain is going to clog up again,” she said.

  “It wouldn’t if you’d stop using it as a garbage disposal.”

  “Hmmph,” she said. She wiped her hands on her apron. “Well, I’m going to open a can of peanuts and watch some TV. What time do you want to be rousted out of bed in the morning, Harry?”

  “I’ll be getting up much too early for you, my dear. I’ll stop for breakfast along the way.”

  “Well, don’t you go getting yourself shot for a deer. Every year you hear about somebody getting shot out in the woods during hunting season.”

  “I assure you, it’s quite deserted where I go. Few hunters know of this place.”

  “It’s so deserted even the deer don’t go there,” Mildred said. “Every year it’s the same thing. You spend money on a license, drag out that damn gun—okay, rifle—and go off running around in the woods the first day of deer season. And then that’s it. All you come home with is wet feet.”

  McKay smiled curiously and sighted the rifle at his wife again. “Bang,” he said.

  Mildred humphed, opened the can of peanuts, and headed for the living room.

  “Millie,” Harry called after her. “Please try not to get peanuts on the carpet again.”

  For 25 years McKay had been going hunting the first day of deer season. He only went that one day, and always to a spot where few other hunters went. Once a year was enough. It always satisfied him. And in 25 years he had never once brought home a deer.

  As always, the night before his trip he dreamed about that day on Saipan. It was the first week of July, 1944. The island still wasn’t officially declared taken, but the Japs were beaten. It was just a matter of blasting them, one by one, out of their caves and holes.

  McKay was the point man for a patrol that had run into trouble and was returning late. There wasn’t quite an hour of daylight left. McKay was working his way along a little ridge overgrown with brush. It was a good place for a rathole sniper, the kind who sits in little holes in the ground with a little grass roof overhead, waiting for patrols to come by.

  They had run into one on the way out and two men had been killed before they finally located the sniper and blasted him out with grenades. McKay’s eyes and ears were sharply tuned to catch any movement or sound. But he was still surprised when he saw the Jap. He didn’t expect the Jap to be just sitting there, lounging on the grass and enjoying what was left of the sunlight. He was smoking a cigarette. He probably thought it was a safe time to come out of his hole. By now most American patrols would be behind their perimeters of defense.

  Still, he didn’t expect a Jap to do anything as human as to relax. McKay was always surprised when he found a Jap helmet with a picture of family or a girl friend inside. Just like Americans. But you didn’t expect it.

  McKay sighted in and squeezed the trigger. Bang and the Jap lurched and fell backward. His rifle clattered into the hole. When McKay went up to him the Jap was still alive. He had been hit in the back of the neck and there was blood drooling out of his mouth. A fly had settled on his cheek. He looked up at McKay and blinked just before the final shot. In death the shriveled, sun-dried little Jap seemed no more important than a stray dog that McKay had once shot at the garbage dump back home.

  It had been the first time McKay had ever killed anyone. The experience left him with a strange feeling that he was unable to explain to himself until much later, until after the war, when he found his power to kill taken away from him. Killing was so effortless, so simple. McKay discovered that he enjoyed killing. . .

  When he awoke at four o’clock he was filled with this feeling. He dressed and went downstairs and started a pot of coffee on the stove while he loaded the car. The house was quiet and peaceful now. The only thing that broke his feeling of absolute serenity was an open can of peanuts, half full, on the arm of the livingroom couch. He took the can with him into the kitchen, found the plastic lid on the stove top, and put the can in its proper place in the cabinet. Then he sat at the table and sipped a cup of coffee and enjoyed a cigarette until four thirty.

  By six o’clock he had driven far enough into the mountains to stop for breakfast. He pulled over at an all-night hash stand that had advertised its hours and its cuisine on faded, weathered signs along five miles of highway. There were two tractor trailers and a pickup truck in the graveled parking lot when McKay drove in. In the back window of the pickup a thirty-thirty lever-action Winchester was visible on a rack.

  Inside, the room was permeated with a smoky mustiness that comes from cigarettes and heavy grease. It was a large room, poorly lit, with a few tables and a long low counter. A short-order cook in stained white pants and a T-shirt worked the grill while a sleepy, heavy-hipped waitress leaned against the cash register and smoked a cigarette.

  McKay took a stool at the end of the counter closest to the other hunter. The waitress put her cigarette in an ashtray on the counter and came over with her pad.

  “Two fried eggs, over easy,” McKay said. “Some home fries and a slice of ham. And I’ll have my coffee now.”

  “Get that, Charlie?” the girl said.

  By way of answering, Charlie cracked two eggs over his grill, scooped out a handful of potatoes, and laid a slice of precooked, presliced ham in the mess to warm. The waitress poured the coffee and brought McKay a knife, fork, and spoon. He found himself examining the prongs of the fork for food particles. The coffee was overcooked and bitter.

  While he was waiting for his food, McKay swung around and nodded at the other hunter. He was a big man, with a quiet, long-jawed face and dark curly hair. His empty plate was pushed to the side and he was staring into a cup of black coffee.

  “Out to try your luck the first day?” McKay said cheerfully.

  The man lifted his head, sized up McKay and nodded.

  “Me, too,” McKay said. “Always go the first day. Never get a deer, of course, but I find that being off by yourself in the woods, where a man can think and not be bothered, is the real lure of hunting. At least, that’s the way it is with me. Some men go for the sport of killing.”

  The man furrowed his brows and looked curiously at McKay.

  “You know these woods pretty well?” McKay asked.

  “I been up here before,” the man answered.

  “Maybe you could give a guy like me a few pointers on where to go,” McKay said. “Now, I don’t mean to horn in on your territory, understand. But I’d sure appreciate it if someone would give me a tip as to where I could set up a nice stand.”

  The man considered for a moment. Then he said, “I usually make a right turn off the main road about six miles up. Puts you on a township road that follows along the ridge. Go in maybe five-six miles, to where you see the scrub oak growing. Had a fire some years ago, so everything looks dwarfed. I usually park along in there somewhere and walk down the ridge. There’s a dried-up marsh after you’re in a ways. I got a six pointer out of there two seasons ago.”

  “Well, that’s very kind of you,” McKay said. “Some men never like to give away their favorite spots.”

  “It’s a free country,” the man said.

  “It is at that,” McKay answered. “You look like a man who helped keep it that way, I might add. What outfit were you in during the war?”

  “Thirty-second at Buna,” the man said.

  “Then you certainly did your sh
are,” McKay said. “The thirty-second was quite an outfit. I was in the Pacific myself, in the Marines. Second Division, Sixth Regiment.”

  The man nodded and gulped the last of his coffee. “Well, I’d better get a move on,” he said.

  “Nice talking to you,” McKay said. “Maybe I’ll run into you out there.”

  McKay found the pickup parked along the road where the man in the restaurant had said it would be. He drove on a mile beyond it before he pulled over and got his rifle from the back seat.

  It was breaking into a cold day, but without wind. The sky was an iron overcast. McKay went down a short embankment at the side of the road and followed a narrow ravine through waist-high scrub oak. He looked straight ahead, stepping carefully, with his rifle in both hands, just as he had done when he was point man for a patrol during the war.

  The tension had been building in him from the moment he had stepped out of the car. He made his way into the deeper brush, moving carefully, slowly, bringing his feet down soundlessly on the hard frozen ground. Then the brush started to thin out and give way to full-size trees. He came to a tiny creek and stopped. Something inside him told him to change direction, and he moved on again, bearing to his right.

  He came to a place that was thickly grown over with laurel. He had to bend to make his way through it. After a while he came to a small clearing. The laurel and dogwood bushes formed a tight canopy overhead. The little creek widened here and dipped over a tiny rock bed into a shallow pool of moving water. The ground around the pool was torn up.

  McKay backed out of the clearing and circled around through the underbrush. Then he stopped. Through the brush he could see the man from the restaurant warming his hands over a small kerosene heater. He was sitting on a log that had fallen between two trees, with his back to McKay.

  McKay crept up behind the other hunter.

  There was a wild quickening of his pulse, but every muscle of his body went loose. It was just like the old days, just like being on Saipan. The woods were deathly quiet.

  When he was close enough to get a good shot he dropped to one knee and aimed at the middle of the man’s back. He rammed a cartridge into the chamber. At the sound of the bolt snapping, the other hunter turned around.

  “Bang,” McKay said, and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet tore into the man’s shoulder and bowled him over. He was on his hands and knees, scrambling for his rifle, when the second bullet tore into his face and exploded out the back of his head. He threw his arms out and collapsed.

  McKay came up and sat down on the log. He looked at the still body of the other hunter. “You should really try to understand,” he said aloud to the dead man. “Having been at Buna.”

  Mildred was at the stove stirring hot chocolate when McKay came in through the kitchen. The table was a mess of toast crumbs, butter smears, and dirty dishes. McKay closed the milk container and returned it to the refrigerator.

  “Empty-handed again,” Mildred said.

  “Yes, but with my spirit cleansed.”

  “It was on the news about some hunter with his head blown off. Every year people keep getting killed.”

  “Don’t let that dishearten you, my dear. These accidents do happen. But it’s such a lovely experience that any risk involved is entirely worth it. While I was out in the woods today I met a husband and wife who go hunting together. Delightful people,” McKay said. “Next year I think I shall insist you accompany me.”

  Georges Simenon

  Inspector Maigret Thinks

  The story of two hangings on the Seine, against the interesting background of weirs and locks, barges and tugs, with Inspector Maigret called into the case when all the other investigators had failed—Maigret as surly as the Seine itself, Maigret puffing constantly on his pipe, Maigret perplexed and irritable and grumbling and finally coming round to “thinking bargee”—to thinking the way barge people do. . .

  Detective: INSPECTOR MAIGRET

  The lock-keeper at Coudray was a thin sad-looking chap, dressed in corduroys, with a drooping mustache and a suspicious eye—a type one often meets among bailiffs.

  He made no distinction between Maigret and the fifty people—detectives from Corbeil, officials from the Public Prosecutor’s office, and reporters—to whom, for the last two days, he had been telling his story; and while he did so he kept watching, up and down river, the greenish-blue surface of the Seine.

  It was November. It was cold, and a white sky—garishly white—was reflected in the water.

  “I had got up at six in the morning to look after my wife,” he said, and Maigret thought to himself how it was always these decent sad-looking men who have sick wives to take care of.

  “Even as I was lighting the fire it seemed to me that I heard something. But it was later, while I was upstairs preparing the poultice, that I finally realized that someone was shouting. I went downstairs again. From the lock itself I made out a dark shape against the weir.

  “‘What is it?’ I shouted. A hoarse voice replied with ‘Help!’

  “‘What are you doing there?’ I asked him.

  “He went on shouting, ‘Help! Help!’ So I got out my dinghy to go over. I saw it was the Astrolabe. As it was getting brighter, I was finally able to make out old Claessens on the deck. I’d swear he was still drunk, and knew no more than I did what the barge was doing on the weir. The dog was loose, even though I had asked him to keep it tied up. That’s all—that’s all I know.”

  What mattered for him was that a barge should have come and run aground on his weir, at the risk, if the current had been stronger, of smashing it. The fact that the only thing found on board—other than the drunken old stableman and a big sheepdog—was two hanging corpses, a man and a woman—that didn’t concern him at all.

  The Astrolabe, afloat again, was still there, about a hundred and fifty meters off, guarded by a policeman who kept himself warm by marching up and down on the towpath. She was an old motorless barge—an écurie, or stable, as they call the boats that ply mainly on the canals and keep their horses on board. Passing cyclists looked around at this grayish hull that all the newspapers had been full of for the last two days.

  As usual when everyone else had failed to uncover anything new, Chief Inspector Maigret was called in. Everyone concerned had been engaged on the inquiry, and the witnesses had already been interrogated fifty times, first by the police, then by the Corbeil detectives, the magistrates, and the reporters.

  “You’ll find Emile Gradut did it!” everybody kept telling him.

  And Maigret, who had just questioned Gradut for two hours, had come back to the scene of the crime, and stood there, hands in the pockets of his thick overcoat, looking surly, smoking his pipe in little short puffs, staring at the sullen landscape as if he wanted to buy a plot there.

  The interest lay not in the Coudray lock where the barge had been stranded, but at the other end of the reach, eight kilometers upstream at the Citanguette lock.

  The same setting as down here, in short. The villages of Morsang and Seineport were on the opposite bank some distance away so that one saw only the quiet water fringed with trees and, here and there, the hollow of a disused sandpit.

  But at Citanguette there was a bistro. The barges went to any lengths to lie there overnight. A real waterman’s inn where they sold bread, tinned food, sausage, ropes, and oats for the horses.

  It was there that Maigret really conducted his investigation, without seeming to, having a drink now and then, sitting by the stove, going for little strolls outside while the owner—a woman so fair she might almost have been an albino—watched him with respect tinged with irony. . .

  That is what was known about the Wednesday evening.

  Just as it was beginning to get dark, the Eaglet, a small tug from the upper Seine, had brought her six barges like chicks up to the Citanguette lock. At that time a fine rain was falling. When the boats had been moored, the men as usual had gathered at the bistro for a drink while the
lock-keeper was putting away his gear.

  The Astrolabe appeared at the bend only half an hour later when darkness had already fallen. Old Arthur Aerts, the skipper, was at the helm, while on the path Claessens walked ahead of his horses, his whip on his shoulder.

  Then the Astrolabe moored at the end of the line, and Claessens had taken his horses aboard. At the time nobody was paying any attention to them.

  It was after seven o’clock, and everybody had already finished eating, when Aerts and Claessens entered the bistro and sat down beside the stove. The skipper of the Eaglet was holding forth, and the two had no need to say anything. The flaxen-headed innkeeper, a baby in her arms, served them four or five cheap brandies without paying much attention.

  This, Maigret now understood, was the way of things here. They all knew one another, more or less. One entered with a casual greeting. One went and sat down without saying anything.

  Sometimes a woman came in, but it was to do her shopping for the next day, after which she would say to her husband, busy drinking, “Don’t be too late coming back. . .”

  It had been that way with Aerts’s wife, Emma, who had bought bread, eggs, a rabbit.

  And from this moment onward every detail became of the utmost importance, every piece of evidence was tremendously valuable. So Maigret was insistent. “You’re sure that when he left, about ten o’clock, Arthur Aerts was drunk?”

  “Blind drunk, as usual,” the patronne answered. “He was a Belgian, after all. A good chap, really, who sat quietly in his corner and drank until he had only just enough strength to get back on board.”

  “And Claessens, the stableman?”

  “It took more than that to make him drunk. He stayed about another quarter of an hour, then he left, after coming back to look for his whip which he had forgotten.”