The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes

by Mike Ashley

  “Perhaps the painting has flown out the window,” Paula contributed.

  I squinted around at the wall outside the window. There was a hook set in the concrete facing to the right of the window, presumably for the window washers, but no painting dangled from it. A four-inch ledge ran below the window, extending a foot or so past it on either side. There was no painting secured to the ledge.

  I surveyed the kitchen and the butler’s pantry, areas in which few Czeppskis ever set foot, according to Maria, who was putting various cheeses on a platter when I intruded. The Czeppskis were entertaining that evening, and the concierge was expected to send up food, kitchen staff and waiters momentarily. The plates were stacked in the kitchen, and the silver, freshly shined, much of it sporting what I assumed was the Czeppski crest, was lined up on a table in the butler’s pantry. The two rooms were, as far as I could tell, devoid of religious artwork.

  I thanked the various Czeppskis for their co-operation and told them someone would be in touch, and rang for the elevator. On the way down, I tried pushing various buttons to see what would happen. Nothing happened until I pushed the stop button, and then the elevator jerked to a stop and a loud alarm went off. Two lobby men and a police detective awaited me on the ground floor when I arrived.

  “I don’t know what possessed me,” I said, stepping out of the elevator. “I just had an irresistible impulse to see what would happen if I pressed that button.”

  “Don’t say anything else until I read you your rights,” the detective said. “This time we’ve got you cold!” His name was Gibson, and we’d worked together on a few cases here and there in the past.

  “I confess all,” I told him. “I was led astray by evil companions in my youth. Hello, Gibson. You going up to see the graf?”

  “Oddly enough I’ve been waiting down here for you,” Gibson said. “I didn’t want to involve the department in whatever horrible falsehoods you were telling the Czeppskis.”

  Seeing that I neither needed help nor required restraining, the two lobby men returned to their stations. Gibson and I walked over to a couch set in an alcove in the lobby next to the building office. “You have something for me?” I asked. Contrary to the usual notion, public and private detectives actually tend to work fairly closely together when the opportunity presents. They get paid for apprehending the bad guys and we for retrieving the loot, and everybody’s happy – as long as we on the private side remember who has the badge.

  “Actually I called your office and Wohlstein told me where to find you,” Gibson said. “There’s something I’d like you to take a look at. A little sort of locked room mystery, just the sort of thing you like. Actually it’s right across the street, which is what you call a coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” I told him, “and just because I’ve been lucky a couple of times –”

  Gibson snorted. “Lucky! Listen, if I had your kind of luck I’d be police commissioner. Not that I’d want the job, it’s too political. What about the Marsden case? What about the Gallico job? Who but you would have thought he hid the pearls in the butter?”

  I sighed. “Okay, let’s take a look,” I said. “But don’t be disappointed if I don’t come up with anything.

  “I don’t expect miracles,” he said, but he lied.

  The building Gibson took me to was the one across Brass Street that obscured the view from the Czeppskis’ window of things westerly. A uniformed officer in the lobby let us in, and we took the ancient elevator up to the ninth floor. “The rental office says the place was rented furnished to a guy named Pedersen about three months ago,” Gibson said over his shoulder, leading the way down the corridor. There were eight doors fronting the corridor, by which I deduced that there were eight apartments on the floor. The door to 8-C was open and the crime scene forensic crew was busy inside. An assistant medical examiner was kneeling by the supine body of a white male who looked to be in his forties. The corpse had a couple of holes in his chest. At first glance from ten feet away I would have said he was shot; there wasn’t enough blood evident for stab wounds. But snap opinions like that are dangerous, there are too many variables. If the poor guy had been stabbed by an ice pick to the heart, for example, there probably would have been no blood at all.

  “It’s a one bedroom,” Gibson told me. “Nothing special. Looks like all the furniture came with the apartment. Pedersen, if that’s who he is, didn’t have much of his own. Only some clothing.”

  “If that’s who he is?”

  “No identification on the body. We’re having the rental agency send over the woman who handled the rental to see if she can identify him.”

  I nodded. “So what’s the mystery?”

  Gibson gave a half-nod toward the corpse. “The deceased was seen to enter the building shortly after ten last night. At ten seventeen the nine-one-one operator got the call that three shots had been heard from this apartment. When the first officers arrived at – “ Gibson flipped open his notepad “- ten twenty-two, there was a crowd of people gathered around the door. Two of them had been in the hall when the shots were heard. Nobody came out that door. They pounded on the door and yelled for a while, but they very wisely decided not to break in. After all, as far as they knew there was someone with a gun inside.” Gibson paused and looked up from his notepad.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “When the cops broke in there was nobody inside but the recently deceased.”

  “You’ve got it in one,” Gibson said. “It was locked and bolted from the inside. They had to kick the door down to break in.” He gestured at the door, which was splintered and off its hinges, showing the effects of violent entry.

  “No other exit?”

  “None.”

  “Windows?”

  “In the living room, a picture window that doesn’t open flanked by two of those louvre-type windows that open like Venetian blinds and you’d have to be a cat to get in or out. In the bedroom, a sash window that’s locked from the inside and enough dust around it so’s it hasn’t been opened any time recently.”

  “Secret passages or trap doors?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Did you look?”

  “Yeah, we looked. If we don’t come up with something better, we’ll probably send a squad down to take the place apart, but I’m damn sure it’ll be a waste of time. I think what we got here is the invisible man. You know – like the Shadow. The guy possesses the power to walk out of rooms without nobody seeing him.”

  I raised one eyebrow, a gesture I’ve been trying to perfect since high school. “Life is a glorious cycle of song!” I said. “Two impossible crimes on the same day.”

  “It’s why you private dicks get the big money,” Gibson said. “I hear what with overtime and everything you must be clearing pretty close to minimum wage.”

  “Yeah. And I hear the police department isn’t political any more.”

  He shook his head sadly and I shook my head sadly and I stuck my hands in my pockets and started into the room.

  “Wait a second,” Gibson said. “We got to put on booties before we go in.” He had someone toss him a couple of pair of the white cotton tie-ons that you’re supposed to wear over your shoes to make sure you don’t track anything into a crime scene, and we put them on. “Keep your hands in your pockets,” he told me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  I walked slowly around the living room, trying to keep out of the way of the crime scene people, and stared at things. I had no idea what I was looking for. The walls of the living room were landlord green up to waist level, and covered with a fading rose-pattern wallpaper above. There was a beige couch and matching stuffed chair that looked as though they had come into the world during the Eisenhower presidency, a low coffee table well decorated with cigarette burns, and a pair of lamps on end tables that only Southern California landlords don’t find funny. A television table sans television set sat across the room from the couch. A floor lamp, one of
the sort that was a steel rod with a shaded bulb at one end and four claw feet at the other, was lying on the floor by the window. I peered into the bedroom, which contained a bed and a dresser, and one of those sliding-door closets that stood open and empty.

  One wide set of mini-blinds covered the three sections of the living room window. They were pulled up as far as they could go. I looked out of the central picture window, which looked as if it had been cleaned recently except for a couple of greasy-looking circles high on the glass. I rubbed my finger across them and saw that they were on the outside of the glass. The Czeppskis’ building loomed at me from across the street. There were a pack of wooden matches, a souvenir of Hollywood key ring devoid of keys, and a small dab of either clay or putty on the window sill, some of the small number of things present that hadn’t been supplied by the landlord. I turned back to Gibson. “Bullets?” I asked.

  “As far as we can tell, two in the deceased and one in the wall – over there above and to the right of the front door.”

  “Recent?”

  “You thinking he was shot earlier and the sounds they heard in the hall were, maybe, a recording?”

  “Just something to eliminate,” I said.

  “They could smell the gunpowder in the hall, and Dr Gadolfus here says that the deceased bought it right about the time the shots were heard.”

  The assistant medical examiner looked up. “That’s right,” he said.

  “Did you find the gun?” I asked Gibson.

  “It was lying next to the body,” he told me. “A Browning.380 automatic. But he didn’t shoot himself- that would be too easy. No powder burns. He was shot from at least six feet away.”

  I shrugged. “The murderer was hiding in the room and mingled with the crowd in the hall when they broke in,” I suggested.

  “Only the two officers went in,” Gibson told me, “and only two officers came out. They say so, and so do the civilian witnesses.”

  “Just an idea,” I said.

  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  “Here’s something weird,” Dr Gadolfus said, pausing in his labours. In an instant he had five people gathered around him and the body, eager for a view of something weird. “I didn’t notice until I turned this work light on,” he explained, “because his hands were in shadow. But look at his thumbs.”

  The body was in something approaching full rigor mortis, and the hands were turned palms down. Dr Gadolfus held a mirror under the right hand so we could see. The ball of the thumb appeared to be dark purple – almost black. “The left thumb is the same,” Dr Gadolfus said, “I’d say this man has been fingerprinted recently.”

  “Modern fingerprint fluids don’t do that,” Gibson said.

  “Maybe he was just an old-fashioned sort of guy,” I said, but I was thinking of something else. Finally a useful idea had occurred to me. And if I was right, each of these two impossible crimes solved the other. I went slowly around the room, peering at the walls and floor, looking for something – anything – that would fit in with my theory. Finally I spotted it. There was a slight bit of plaster dust – just a touch – in a crack in the floor by the wall, opposite the window.

  Gibson came over to see what I was doing. “You ought to get yourself one of them big lenses like Sherlock Holmes used,” he said, slapping me on the back.

  I straightened up. “You want to make lieutenant?” I asked him.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The credit for solving this one won’t do me any good,” I said. “I’ll give it to you.”

  “You been here for, what, twenty minutes, and already you know who the invisible man is?”

  “I know who and how, and about half of why,” I told him. “You want it?”

  “No joke?”

  “No joke.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Take a couple of uniformed officers and go across the way,” I told him, “Up to the Czeppskis’ apartment. Read Paula – that’s the daughter – her Miranda rights and tell her that Feodore is still alive and he’s identified her, or that he wrote her name in blood as he lay dying – something like that. The shock should do it. I’m betting she’ll confess.”

  “Who’s Feodore?” Gibson asked.

  I pointed to the corpse. “The Czeppskis’ butler,” I told Gibson. “That’s him.”

  “Where do you get that from?”

  “His thumbs. Like you said, that’s not fingerprint fluid. That’s the colour a butler’s thumbs turn when he’s been polishing the silver.”

  “That’s a stretch,” Gibson said.

  “The Czeppskis have a room full of freshly-polished silver,” I told him.

  “Why the girl?” he asked me. “How’d she do it?”

  “You arrest her,” I told him, “then we’ll talk.”

  “Even if that is the Czeppskis’ butler, I can’t just walk in there and arrest this girl on your say so,” Gibson said. “Give me something.”

  I pointed to the floor. “See that white stuff in the crack? It’s plaster.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Watch!” I said. I prodded at the wall with my forefinger, feeling something rough under the wallpaper as I went. When I had it fairly well located, I turned around. The crime scene crew had all paused what they were doing to watch me. If I was wrong, I was going to feel pretty foolish. But I wasn’t wrong. “Lend me a scalpel,” I asked Dr Gadolfus.

  He fished in his bag and passed me a disposable scalpel, still nicely wrapped in aluminum foil. I peeled it out and ran the blade carefully around the edge of the outline I had mapped out. The rectangle of wallpaper fell away, revealing a two-by-three-foot wood panel that had been carefully inserted into a matching hole cut into the plaster and lathe wall. I gingerly pulled it out and turned it around. “Meet Saint Simon,” I said. “He’s worth about two million dollars.”

  Gibson shook his head. “Good enough for me,” he said. “You must know something. I’ll go pick up the Czeppski girl.”

  It was close to midnight when I set the St Simon painting down on the floor of Junior’s office, leaning it up against the wall. Junior was there, of course. He might have been called back when he heard I was coming in with the painting, but I think he lived there. “Two million dollars on the hoof,” I told him. “You’d better put it in the safe ‘till morning.”

  He stared at the painting for a minute, his eyes narrowed, then he turned to me. “Gibson called,” he told me. “The girl confessed.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I thought she would.”

  “She’s not really Czeppski’s daughter,” Junior said. “She’s his mistress. The daughter’s still in Paris. Married to a schoolteacher, apparently. Has no intention of leaving.”

  “So that’s it,” I said. “So the mistress was planning to skip with the butler and the painting.”

  “She says the wife was trying to kill her, so she had to get out. They had an agreement, one of these menages à trots, but the wife was beginning to feel pushed out, so she was pushing back. The girl was tired of the arrangement, and I suppose the graf, anyway, so she decided to head out and take a little something with her.”

  I nodded. “It sounds right,” I said. “The two ladies didn’t seem to be on the best of terms.”

  “How’d she do it?” Junior asked. “How’d she get the painting out of there? How’d she get out of the room after she shot what’s-his-name?”

  “Feodore,” I said. “Didn’t she tell Gibson?”

  “She’s too busy crying and blaming Feodore for everything. She was in the apartment when he walked in. He was supposed to be in San Francisco waiting for her. She realized that he was planning to take the St Simon himself and split, so they had a big fight and she shot him. In self-defence, she says.”

  “Could be,” I said. “It was a good plan, but it just wasn’t her lucky day.”

  Junior produced a bottle from his desk drawer and put it, and two
glasses on the desk. “Fid Mut will be pleased to get that thing back,” he said. “Just what was their plan?”

  I picked up the bottle to see what he was drinking this month. It was a California pear brandy. I’d never had pear brandy. I tried it. It was good. I poured some more and organized the story in my mind. “Some of this is guesswork,” I told him, “but I think most of it will hold.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Junior said.

  “The apartment Feodore was killed in was their trysting-place,” I said. “It may have been picked for its location, or the location might have suggested the scheme, I don’t know.”

  “Just what was the scheme?”

  “I’m getting there. Paula and Feodore decided to leave and take the painting with them. Since they would be the obvious suspects, they had to make it look as though it would have been impossible for them to have done it. I would guess that Feodore was supposed to make himself visible in San Francisco when the painting went missing. A couple of days before the theft they ran a string – probably a high-strength monofilament fishing line – between the Czeppskis’ front window and the front window in the other apartment. They looped it around the metal rod of a standing lamp, that was pushed up against the louvered window on the left side of the picture window, and took it back across the street. It was probably tied off to a hook outside the Czeppskis’ window to make sure it wasn’t seen by the Czeppskis. From the street eight floors below it would be completely invisible.”