The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes

by Mike Ashley

  “The old man will be gone by now,” she said; “but I shall perhaps find the wall there, with the sun on it, and the yellow flowers in the grass. And now, may I go?”

  It is a law of the story-teller’s art that he does not tell a story. It is the listener who tells it. The story-teller does but provide him with the stimuli.

  Randolph got up and walked about the floor. He was a justice of the peace in a day when that office was filled only by the landed gentry, after the English fashion; and the obligations of the law were strong on him. If he should take liberties with the letter of it, how could the weak and the evil be made to hold it in respect? Here was this woman before him a confessed assassin. Could he let her go?

  Abner sat unmoving by the hearth, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his palm propping up his jaw, his face clouded in deep lines. Randolph was consumed with vanity and the weakness of ostentation, but he shouldered his duties for himself. Presently he stopped and looked at the woman, wan, faded like some prisoner of legend escaped out of fabled dungeons into the sun.

  The firelight flickered past her to the box on the benches in the hall, and the vast, inscrutable justice of heaven entered and overcame him.

  “Yes,” he said. “Go! There is no jury in Virginia that would hold a woman for shooting a beast like that.” And he thrust out his arm, with the fingers extended toward the dead man.

  The woman made a little awkward curtsy.

  “I thank you, sir.” Then she hesitated and lisped, “But I have not shoot him.”

  “Not shoot him!” cried Randolph. “Why, the man’s heart is riddled!”

  “Yes, sir,” she said simply, like a child. “I kill him, but have not shoot him.”

  Randolph took two long strides toward the woman.

  “Not shoot him!” he repeated. “How then, in the name of heaven, did you kill Doomdorf?” And his big voice filled the empty places of the room.

  “I will show you, sir,” she said.

  She turned and went away into the house. Presently she returned with something folded up in a linen towel. She put it on the table between the loaf of bread and the yellow cheese.

  Randolph stood over the table, and the woman’s deft fingers undid the towel from round its deadly contents; and presently the thing lay there uncovered.

  It was a little crude model of a human figure done in wax with a needle thrust through the bosom.

  Randolph stood up with a great intake of the breath.

  “Magic! By the eternal!”

  “Yes, sir,” the woman explained, in her voice and manner of a child. “I have try to kill him many times – oh, very many times! – with witch words which I have remember; but always they fail. Then, at last, I make him in wax, and I put a needle through his heart; and I kill him very quickly.’

  It was as clear as daylight, even to Randolph, that the woman was innocent. Her little harmless magic was the pathetic effort of a child to kill a dragon. He hesitated a moment before he spoke, and then he decided like the gentleman he was. If it helped the child to believe that her enchanted straw had slain the monster – well, he would let her believe it.

  “And now, sir, may I go?”

  Randolph looked at the woman in a sort of wonder.

  “Are you not afraid,” he said, “of the night and the mountains, and the long road?”

  “Oh no, sir,” she replied simply. “The good God will be everywhere now.”

  It was an awful commentary on the dead man – that this strange half-child believed that all the evil in the world had gone out with him; that now that he was dead, the sunlight of heaven would fill every nook and corner.

  It was not a faith that either of the two men wished to shatter, and they let her go. It would be daylight presently and the road through the mountains to the Chesapeake was open.

  Randolph came back to the fireside after he had helped her into the saddle, and sat down. He tapped on the hearth for some time idly with the iron poker; and then finally he spoke.

  “This is the strangest thing that ever happened,” he said. “Here’s a mad old preacher who thinks that he killed Doomdorf with fire from Heaven, like Elijah the Tishbite; and here is a simple child of a woman who thinks she killed him with a piece of magic of the Middle Ages – each as innocent of his death as I am. And, yet, by the eternal, the beast is dead!”

  He drummed on the hearth with the poker, lifting it up and letting it drop through the hollow of his fingers.

  “Somebody shot Doomdorf. But who? And how did he get into and out of that shut-up room? The assassin that killed Doomdorf must have gotten into the room to kill him. Now, how did he get in?” He spoke as to himself; but my uncle sitting across the hearth replied:

  “Through the window.”

  “Through the window!” echoed Randolph. “Why, man, you yourself showed me that the window had not been opened, and the precipice below it a fly could hardly climb. Do you tell me now that the window was opened?”

  “No,” said Abner, “it was never opened.”

  Randolph got on his feet.

  “Abner,” he cried, “are you saying that the one who killed Doomdorf climbed the sheer wall and got in through a closed window, without disturbing the dust or the cobwebs on the window frame?”

  My uncle looked Randolph in the face.

  “The murderer of Doomdorf did even more,” he said. “That assassin not only climbed the face of that precipice and got in through the closed window, but he shot Doomdorf to death and got out again through the closed window without leaving a single track or trace behind, and without disturbing a grain of dust or a thread of a cobweb.”

  Randolph swore a great oath.

  “The thing is impossible!” he cried. “Men are not killed today in Virginia by black art or a curse of God.”

  “By black art, no,” replied Abner; “but by the curse of God, yes. I think they are.”

  Randolph drove his clenched right hand into the palm of his left.

  “By the eternal!” he cried. “I would like to see the assassin who could do a murder like this, whether he be an imp from the pit or an angel out of Heaven.”

  “Very well,” replied Abner, undisturbed. “When he comes back tomorrow I will show you the assassin who killed Doomdorf.”

  When day broke they dug a grave and buried the dead man against the mountain among his peach trees. It was noon when that work was ended. Abner threw down his spade and looked up at the sun.

  “Randolph,” he said, “let us go and lay an ambush for this assassin. He is on the way here.”

  And it was a strange ambush that he laid. When they were come again into the chamber where Doomdorf died he bolted the door; then he loaded the fowling piece and put it carefully back on its rack against the wall. After that he did another curious thing: He took the blood-stained coat, which they had stripped off the dead man when they had prepared his body for the earth, put a pillow in it and laid it on the couch precisely where Doomdorf had slept. And while he did these things Randolph stood in wonder and Abner talked:

  “Look you, Randolph . . . We will trick the murderer . . . We will catch him in the act.”

  Then he went over and took the puzzled justice by the arm.

  “Watch!” he said. “The assassin is coming along the wall!”

  But Randolph heard nothing, saw nothing. Only the sun entered. Abner’s hand tightened on his arm.

  “It is here! Look!” And he pointed to the wall.

  Randolph, following the extended finger, saw a tiny brilliant disk of light moving slowly up the wall toward the lock of the fowling piece. Abner’s hand became a vice and his voice rang as over metal.

  “ ‘He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.’ It is the water bottle, full of Doomdorf’s liquid, focusing the sun . . . And look, Randolph, how Bronson’s prayer was answered!”

  The tiny disk of light travelled on the plate of the lock.

  “It is fire from heaven!”

  The w
ords rang above the roar of the fowling piece, and Randolph saw the dead man’s coat leap up on the couch, riddled by the shot. The gun, in its natural position on the rack, pointed to the couch standing at the end of the chamber, beyond the offset of the wall, and the focused sun had exploded the percussion cap.

  Randolph made a great gesture, with his arm extended.

  “It is a world,” he said, “filled with the mysterious joinder of accident!”

  “It is a world,” replied Abner, “filled with the mysterious justice of God!”

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE JACOBEAN HOUSE

  C.N. & A.M. Williamson

  Early “impossible crime” stories sometimes used gimmicks that were later outlawed as unfair by aficionados of the miracle mystery. The obvious one was the secret panel, which was popular in Victorian mystery novels. Although the following story does include a secret panel, it is not directly related to the solution of the mystery, and although the device used is another one of those later abandoned by authors, its use here is both ingenious and fascinating. Charles Williamson (1859–1920) was an English journalist who married American writer Alice Livingston (1869–1933) in 1895. They began collaborating in 1902, when they hit on the idea of a novel based on a series of accounts of a man who is acting as a chauffeur, driving an American heiress around Europe. The book, The Lightning Conductor (1902), was so popular that they produced a whole series of books based on car journeys. The title of The Scarlet Runner (1908) refers to the car by which detective Christopher Race travels to solve his next mystery. It shows just how romantic the car was perceived in its early days. The book enjoyed some success and was even adapted into a silent film in 1916. The following is one of the more baffling episodes.

  The day after Christopher Race came back to London from his tour with the man of the “Missing Chapter” he found on his table a queer telegram. It said: “Please come at once with your car and try solve mystery at old house now used as hotel patronized by motorists. Same rate paid per day for necessary time as for automobile tour.—SIDNEY CHESTER, Wood House, New Forest. References, London and Scottish Bank.” And the message was dated two days back.

  Christopher did not see why he should be applied to as a solver of mysteries. However, the telegram sounded interesting. He liked old houses, and his desire to accept the offer was whetted by the fact that it had been made several days ago, and might have been passed on to someone else by this time.

  At all events, he thought he would answer the wire, and he did so before washing away the dust of travel which he had accumulated at the rate of thirty miles an hour.

  “Just back from journey. Found telegram,” he wired. “Am I still wanted? If so, can come.”

  When an answer arrived he had Scarlet Runner ready for another start.

  “Yes, urgently wanted,” ran the reply. “Hope you can start this afternoon. But don’t come to Wood House. Will meet you at the Sandboy and Owl, within mile of Ringhurst as you come from London. Please let me know probable hour of arrival. – CHESTER.”

  Christopher wired again, “Hope to reach you about seven.” And his hope was justified, as it usually was when he had to depend upon Scarlet Runner. He had often passed the Sandboy and Owl, and remembered the roadside inn for its picturesqueness, so that he lost no time in finding the way.

  “I have come to see a Mr Chester, who will be here in ten or fifteen minutes,” Race said to the landlord, who looked as if he might have had a meritorious past as a coachman in some aristocratic household.

  The sporting eye of the old man suddenly twinkled. “I think, sir,” he answered, “that the person you expect has arrived, and is waiting in my private parlour, which I have given up for the – for the purpose.”

  The landlord’s manner and slight hesitation, as if in search of the right word, struck Christopher as odd; but it was too late to catechize the old man in regard to Mr Chester, no matter how diplomatically.

  The dusk of autumn draped the oak-beamed hall with shadow, and one lamp only made darkness seem more visible. The landlord opened a door at the end of a dim corridor, and said respectfully to someone out of sight, “The gentleman with the motor has arrived.” Then he backed out of the way, and Christopher stepped over the threshold. He saw a girl rise up from a chair, crumpling a telegram which she had been reading by the light of a shaded lamp.

  She wore a riding habit, and a neat hat on sleek hair the colour of ripening wheat. She was charmingly pretty, in a flowerlike way. Her great eyes, which now appeared black, would be blue by daylight, and her figure was perfect in the well-cut habit; but she was either pale and anxious-looking, or else the lamplight gave that effect.

  “I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Christopher. “I’ve come from London to see a Mr Sidney Chester, and was told I should find him here, but—”

  “I’m Sidney Chester,” said the girl. “It was I who telegraphed for you to come and help us.”

  Christopher was surprised, but he kept his countenance, and pretended to take this revelation as a matter of course.

  “Sidney is a woman’s name as well as a man’s,” she went on, “and there was no use explaining in a telegram. Please sit down, and I’ll – no, I can’t promise to make you understand, for the thing’s beyond understanding; but I’ll tell you about it. First, though, I’d better explain why I sent for you. I don’t mean to flatter you, but if there’s any chance of the mystery being solved, it can only be done by a man of your sort – clever and quick of resource, as well as an accomplished motorist. That’s my reason; now for my story. But perhaps you’ve heard of Wood House and the strange happenings there? We’ve tried to keep the talk out of the papers, but it was impossible; and there’ve been paragraphs in most of them for the last fortnight.”

  “I’ve been touring for a fortnight,” replied Christopher, “and hav’n’t paid much attention to the papers.”

  “I’m glad,” answered the girl, “because you’ll listen to what I have to tell you with an unbiased mind. You don’t even know about Wood House itself?”

  Christopher had to admit ignorance, though he guessed from the girl’s tone that the place must be famous, apart from its mysterious reputation.

  “It’s a beautiful old house,” she went on, the harassed expression of her face softening into tenderness. “There are pictures and accounts of it in books about the county. We’ve got the loveliest oak panelling in nearly all the rooms, and wonderful furniture. Of course, we love it dearly – my mother and I, the only ones of the family who are left – but we’re disgustingly poor; our branch of the Chesters have been growing poorer for generations. We had to see everything going to pieces, and there was no money for repairs. There were other troubles, too – oh, I may as well tell you, since you ought to know everything concerning us if you’re to do any good. I was silly enough to fall in love with a man who ought to marry an heiress, for he’s poor, too, and has a title, which makes poverty harder and more grinding. He’s let his house – a show place – and because he won’t give me up and look for a rich girl (he wouldn’t have to look far or long), he’s trying to get a fortune out of a ranch in Colorado. That made me feel as if I must do something, and we couldn’t let Wood House, because there’s a clause in father’s will against our doing so. We’re obliged to live there, or forfeit it to the person who would have inherited it if the place had been entailed and had had to go to a male heir.

  “But no such thought came to poor father as that mother and I would dream of making the house into an hotel, so it didn’t occur to him to provide against such a contingency. It was I who had the idea – because I was desperate for money; and I heard how people like old houses in these days – Americans and others who aren’t used to things that are antique. At last I summoned up courage to propose to mother that we should advertise to entertain motorists and other travellers.

  “Every penny we could spare, and a lot we couldn’t, we spent on advertising, when she’d consented, and two months ago we opened the house as a
n hotel. Our old servants were good about helping, and we got in several new ones. We began to make the most astonishing success, and I was delighted. I thought if all went on well I need have nothing to do with managing the place after this year. I might marry if I liked, and there would be the income rolling in; so you see, after these dreams, what it is to find ruin staring us in the face. That sounds melodramatic, but it’s the truth.”

  “The truth often is melodramatic,” said Christopher. “I’ve discovered that lately. Things happen in real life that would be sneered at by the critics as preposterous.”

  “This thing that is happening to us is preposterous,” said Miss Chester. “People come to our house, perhaps for dinner or lunch, or perhaps for several days. But which ever it may be, during one of the meals – always the last if they’re having more than one – every piece of jewellery they may be wearing, and all the money in their pockets and purses – except small silver and copper – disappear mysteriously.”

  “Perhaps not mysteriously,” suggested Christopher. “You mentioned having engaged new servants. One of them may be an expert thief.”

  “Of course, that was our first idea,” said the girl. “But it would be impossible for the most expert thief, even a conjurer, to pull ladies’ rings from their fingers, unfasten clasps of pearl dog-collars, take off brooches and bracelets or belts with gold buckles, and remove studs from shirt-fronts or sleeve-links from cuffs, without the knowledge of the persons wearing the things.”

  “Yes, that would be impossible,” Christopher admitted.

  “Well, that is what happens at Wood House every day, and has been happening for the last fortnight. People sit at the table, and apparently everything goes on in the most orderly way; yet at the end of the meal their valuables are gone.”

  “It sounds like a fairy story,” said Christopher.

  “Or a ghost story,” amended Sidney Chester.