“Oh, the minister’s all right,” Wrankler conceded. I’m not a religious man myself, but I don’t mind him setting his helicopter down for a visit now and then. Sometimes when I’m all alone here I’m downright glad to see him.”
“That helicopter seemed pretty noisy,” Gideon remarked. “Oh, sure. When he comes to call, you know it.”
Toward evening Gideon managed to reach Maeva Armstrong at the funeral home, where preparations were being made for her husband’s service. I heard him say, “I hate to bother you at a time like this Mrs. Armstrong, but I have just one question to ask you. It might help the investigation. Shortly before you found your husband’s body, did you hear any loud noise in the sky—the sort of pulsating noise that a helicopter makes? You didn’t? You heard nothing at all?”
After a bit more conversation, Gideon hung up and turned to me. “She heard nothing, and I doubt if anyone else did. If the killer is using a helicopter he must have some sort of silencing device for it.”
“Is such a thing possible?”
“Not that I know of.”
Wrankler was pouring our after-dinner coffee. “Maybe the killer comes in on a hang glider, towed behind a boat.”
“Or in a scuba diving gear from under the water,” I suggested, entering into the spirit of the thing.
“A hang glider would pass too quickly over the victims,” Gideon answered seriously. “And a scuba diver would have left footprints between the water and his victims.”
Our after-dinner conversation was getting us nowhere, so we soon abandoned it. The fresh salt air had tired both Gideon and myself and we retired soon thereafter, sleeping soundly through the night.
In the morning when we awakened, the sun was already high among the treetops. It was after nine o’clock, and as we made our way sleepily to a belated breakfast at the main lodge. Seb Wrankler met us with news of another murder.
The victim this time was an elderly man who’d fallen asleep while fishing off a pier on one of the larger islands. The killing had occurred soon after darkness fell, but there were witnesses to swear that no one had gone out on the pier until a couple of them walked out together to waken the elderly man and found the usual fatal wounds around his face and throat. There was no calling card from the Flying Fiend this time, or if there was perhaps it had fallen into the water or blown away. The dead man’s name was Herbert Thompson and he was 67 years old.
“Always near the water,” Gideon mused. “As if it was a swimming fiend rather than a flying one.” This is two nights in a row. What do you think it means?”
He didn’t answer, but after breakfast he went to the telephone and managed to reach Sergeant Monticello at his office. They talked for a long time, very quietly, but when he rejoined Wrankler and me at the table he seemed dejected.
“No new leads,” he told us. “It seems hopeless.”
“Didn’t you ever have anything like this back in London?” I asked him. “Jack the Ripper and that sort of thing?”
“I’m not old enough to remember Jack the Ripper,” he answered dryly. “But I do have one idea I’d like to try out on you. It involves something Horace Black told us about there being oil under these waters.”
Seb Wrankler snorted. “You believe that old story? The only oil there’ll be around here is if the pipeline springs a leak.”
“Still,” Gideon said, “I think it’s worth looking into.”
We spent the day exploring the island, with Gideon concentrating especially on the area near the water’s edge. I couldn’t imagine what he was up to. Finally, in late afternoon, he told me, “I want you to go back to the lodge now. I’m going to stay out here alone.”
“Won’t it be dangerous after dark? The killer—”
“Exactly! I’m setting myself up as a target and I expect the killer to come after me. Here’s what I want you to do. Go back to the lodge for supper as usual and tell Seb I’ve got a clue and I stayed down by the water. Then, after supper, leave him and go back to our cabin alone. Tell him you’re going to lie down. But whatever you do, don’t drink any of the coffee.”
“The coffee?”
“We were drugged last night.”
“You mean that Seb—?”
“No time for talk now—do as I say. I want you to sneak out later and try to follow Seb when he leaves the lodge.”
Then he was gone, moving away from me down the shoreline. I felt bewildered and a little frightened, but I did what he asked me. Under the circumstances I found it difficult to converse with Seb Wrankler, and I may have been too obvious when I declined his offer of coffee. But later I acted properly drowsy and told him I was turning in early. Maybe he’d decide the drugged coffee hadn’t been needed.
I waited in our cabin for about ten minutes and then made my way through the woods to the back of the main lodge. After an uncomfortable half hour squatting behind a bush, my vigil was rewarded. Seb Wrankler came out carrying a large cardboard box carefully in both hands.
I followed him through the woods, staying under cover at all times. It was dusk now, but I could still see him as he reached the dock and went aboard the boat with his strange cargo. Gideon was nowhere in sight, and I assumed he was still on the other side of the island. After a few moments Wrankler started the boat’s inboard motor and pulled away from the dock. Before long the darkness would make it impossible to see anything but the boat’s running lights.
Quickly I crossed the island, seeking the area where I’d left Gideon. He was still there, sitting on the sand, staring out at the darkness which was quickly enveloping the water. I wanted to run to him and warn him, but I hung back, hidden at the edge of the trees. I thought I heard the noise of an approaching boat, but it died as quickly as it had begun.
So I waited.
After about five minutes I was impatient to tell him of my presence. I was about to yell something when I heard a low humming sound in the sky above the beach. It grew louder but not too loud, and Gideon appeared not to notice.
And then I saw it—a great winged creature circling about ten feet over Gideon’s head.
I broke from the trees, unable to restrain myself any longer. But even as I ran out onto the beach, the creature dove and came in straight for Gideon’s face. He started to rise, seeing it at last, but the thing was almost upon him.
Then a sudden single shot rang out and the creature seemed to come apart in midair. There were shouts from the water and two more shots.
“Gideon! Are you all right?” I asked as I reached him. “I think so. It was a close call.”
A Coast Guard boat came into view, and I recognized Sergeant Monticello standing in the bow with a high-powered rifle in his hands. “We got him!” he shouted to Gideon. “He went for a gun and we had to kill him.”
I looked back at Gideon. “Wrankler?”
He nodded and walked to the water’s edge where the thing I’d taken for a creature lay smashed in the shallow water. It was one of the model airplanes from the lodge. That was the murder weapon?” I asked in disbelief.
Gideon Parrot nodded. “The Flying Fiend will fly no more.”
Later, back at the lodge, with Monticello and me as an avid audience, Gideon explained. “Wrankler used model airplanes with propellers sharpened to razor-thin edges. They were guided from his boat by a thin, almost invisible wire. The killings usually took place around dusk or shortly after dark, when he could still see his victims but the small model planes were almost invisible. He could guide them quite accurately with the wire, and he chose victims who were dozing or otherwise off-guard. Before they knew what hit them those razor-sharp propeller blades were slicing up their face and throat. If the plane was damaged after the attack and unable to fly back to the boat, Wrankler could jerk on the wire, flip the plane into the water, and pull it back on board. There’d be no trace on the hard wet sand between the body and the water.”
“But what was his motive?” Sergeant Monticello asked.
“I suspect it was oil. Some
other corporation—other than the one that employed him—wanted to drill for oil on these islands. They secretly hired Seb Wrankler to scare people away and make the area unpopular, so there’d be less opposition to their buying mineral rights to the islands. I mentioned oil to him today, figuring if that was the motive he’d probably mark me as the next victim just to get rid of me.” Gideon got to his feet. “Meanwhile, Sergeant, we’ll be getting a good night’s sleep and heading back in the morning.” He paused at the door. “You were here right on schedule after our telephone conversation this morning. I believe I asked you something else too.”
“About Frank Armstrong’s funeral. It’s tomorrow morning at ten.” Gideon nodded. “We’ll want to stop there on our way to the airport.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Simply to pay our respects to one of the victims.”
By morning the newspapers had the story of the Flying Fiend’s demise and were speculating as to the motive behind the series of bizarre crimes. As he drove us to Frank Armstrong’s funeral, Monticello told us he’d discovered monthly payments to Wrankler by an oil company.
“It’s only a matter of time before we put it all together.”
Gideon waited until after the funeral to approach Mrs. Armstrong. She recognized him at once and hurried over to thank him. “You’re the man who exposed the Flying Fiend, aren’t you? I don’t know how to thank you for avenging my husband.”
“He hasn’t yet been avenged,” Gideon said sadly. “Your husband was not one of the victims of Seb Wrankler and his fiendish device.”
“What do you mean?”
“None of the other bodies had the Flying Fiend calling card, only your husband’s. That was because the killer’s murder device, a model plane, could not deliver and drop such a card. It was important in your husband’s murder, though, because you wanted to direct our attention toward the sky and away from the ground—which is the route by which his killer really approached.”
“Are you accusing me—?”
“It was a copycat killing, something the police often encounter in serial murders. You killed your husband as he dozed on the sand, probably using a razor to make it look like the other murders. And you left that card so we’d look for an airborne killer.”
“I hope you can prove these charges, because I’ll sue you for every—”
“Oh, I can prove them, Mrs. Armstrong. You told us you got a flare from the tent after finding your husband’s body, and lit it to summon help. The flare was by the body, all right, but there was only one set of your footprints to the body and then to the boat. You never went back for the flare, which means you had it with you all the time. And you had it with you because you knew you’d be needing it when you walked up to your husband with that razor.”
Her body seemed to sag then, as she turned to look at our faces all around her. “And this is Sergeant Monticello,” Gideon continued. “I’m sure you remember him, Mrs. Armstrong.”
THE SPARE KEY
by Edward Marston
I first met Doug at Malice Domestic and was struck by his passion for short stories and by his encyclopaedic knowledge of the mystery genre. At a subsequent Malice Domestic, the two of us took part in a play written in tribute to Ngaio Marsh and I remember telling him how much I’d enjoyed his biography of John Dickson Carr, a compelling read in every way.
he knew that it was coming. What she had not anticipated was the sheer force of the blow. When her literary agent, Kenneth Hooper, invited her to luncheon at the Ritz Hotel — and was excessively attentive to her throughout the meal— Elvira Coyne sensed that there was bad news in the wind, and she braced herself accordingly. Hooper had represented her for thirty years and, until recently, it had been a profitable relationship. He had always treated her with the kind of studied respect that he reserved for an elderly maiden aunt, even though he was actually the same age as his client. For the first time ever, he was now almost flirtatious with her. It was an unmistakable danger sign.
S
As they sipped their coffee, she could bear the suspense no longer. “What’s happened, Kenneth?” she asked.
“I’ll come to that in due course.”
“Come to it now, man. I’m on tenterhooks.”
“Finish your coffee first,” he suggested, gently.
“Right,” she said, downing it in one large gulp. “I’m ready.”
“Another cup, Elvira?”
“No! Put me out of my misery. They’re offering me less money this time, aren’t they?” Hooper shook his head. “They’re demanding exclusive world rights?” He lowered his eyes. “They’re going to cut back on the print run, is that it?”
He sipped his black coffee before meeting her anxious gaze.
“It’s worse,” he said in a funereal whisper. “They’ve rejected the manuscript altogether.”
She was flabbergasted. “Rejected it?” she cried. “But it’s the best book in the series. You said so yourself.”
“I did,” he agreed, loyally. “And it is. No question of that.”
“Then why did they turn it down? The Cat Who Conquered Everest is my unchallenged masterpiece.”
“The very peak of Elvira Coyne—if you’ll forgive the pun.”
“I’ll forgive anything but those treacherous publishers,” she said, grimly. “After all I’ve done for them, this is how they repay me!”
“It’s shameful.”
“Utterly disgraceful.”
“I expressed my disappointment in the strongest language.”
“To hell with them! We simply take the book elsewhere.”
“That won’t be easy,” he warned.
“Why not? I have an excellent track record. And I have a name.”
“Yes, Elvira. Unfortunately, it’s a name that’s inextricably linked with feline mysteries and your publisher feels—not to put too fine a point on it—that cats have had their nine lives.”
“Fiddlesticks! Find me another publisher.”
“I’ve tried them all—in vain.”
“You mean, there’s not one publisher in London who likes cats?”
“No,” he replied, sadly. “As pets, they love them; but not as the protagonist in a mystery novel. One publisher went so far as to say that he finds such books more akin to cat litter than literature.”
“Didn’t you show them my sales figures?”
“That would have been fatal. There’s been a steady decline over the past three years. Nothing to do with the quality of the writing, of course,” he added with an emollient smile. “That’s been consistently high. It’s just that tastes change.”
Elvira was shaken. After three decades as an author, she had come to take her success for granted, turning out one book a year and following the same tried-and-tested formula. Now, it seemed, she had reached the end of the line. A tall, full-bodied, handsome woman in her sixties, she had enjoyed her fame to the full. Nothing pleased her more than to be able to boast to her friends about her forthcoming book.
“What will I say to them?” she gasped. “To whom?”
“To my fans, Kenneth. They expect their annual Elvira Coyne.”
“Then they’ll have to get it in another form,” he argued. “It’s one of the reasons I wanted us to meet today. It’s time to go in a new direction. You must branch out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Publishers want noir fiction nowadays.”
“I gave them that in The Cat In the Black Hat.”
“Or thrilling spy stories.”
“That’s why I wrote The Cat Who Worked for the KGB.”
“Historical mysteries have also taken off.”
“Have you forgotten The Cat Who Met Abraham Lincoln?”
“Art theft is another productive field.”
“I covered that in The Cat Who Collected Picasso.”
“Granted,” he said, “but only from the point of view of a four-footed feline. Very amusing, of course, but necessarily lightweight. What a
publisher would like to see you do is to tackle crime from a human perspective. More realism, Elvira,” he urged. “More bite, more blood, more purpose. Give us something new.”
By the time she got back to her apartment, Elvira Coyne was in a state of profound depression. Her writing life had come to an abrupt end. The book over which she had slaved for an entire year had been universally rejected. Kenneth Hooper had praised it effusively but that was typical of him. He never upset his authors by offering frank criticism. That would be too unkind, especially where a female client was concerned. Hooper was a gentleman of the old school, a balding sage with an honors degree in Politeness. He had done his best to break the bad tidings gently, but Elvira was nevertheless shattered.
How on earth could she come up with something different? The only thing she knew about was cats. Sharing her life with four of them, it was not difficult to study their habits, sense their moods and monitor their behavior. She was essentially a cat person—unlike Dorothy Fielding, for instance, who was an unrepentant dog lover. Dorothy owned the apartment block in which Elvira lived, and her dog, Pancho, was the scourge of the four cats. The vendetta between the animals had been used in The Cat and the Mexican Bandit, one of Elvira’s earlier novels, a stirring saga in which Pancho had been transformed into the Sombrero Outlaw. Dorothy had an autographed copy on her bookshelf, along with everything else from the pen of her talented lodger.
Elvira returned home in time to see her landlady about to take her
dog for a walk. A game old bird with silver hair and a kind face, Dorothy gave her a welcoming smile.
“What’s the title of the next book, Miss Coyne?” she wondered. “It’s still under discussion, Mrs. Fielding.”
“You come up with such whimsical stories.”
“I do my best,” said Elvira through gritted teeth.
“I read them aloud to Pancho, you know,” confided the other, “though I have to change the central character to a dog for his benefit. His favorite was The Dog Who Won the Battle of Waterloo.”
“It was the Cat who won the battle,” corrected Elvira. “Shush! Don’t say that word. It always upsets him.”
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