The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes

by Mike Ashley

  “Wait.” Orbilio’s voice was calm. His authority stopped the men in his tracks. “This is his ground, we can’t hope to either catch or outwit him. Soldier!”

  A burly archer stepped up. “Sir.”

  Orbilio relieved him of his dark yew bow and weighted it in his hands. Carefully, he plucked an arrow from the quiver. Sweet Janus, the white tunic was now barely a dot!

  “Marcus,” breathed Claudia. “Leave this to the archer.” So many trees in between, it needed an expert!

  “This,” said Orbilio, notching the arrow into his bow, “is for Soni.”

  Claudia felt her heart thump. “I’m just as much to blame as you are,” she said. “I know you put him up as a plant, but it was my urging that bought him his grave.”

  The bow lifted.

  “This,” he repeated, “is personal.”

  With a hiss, the arrow departed. Silence descended on the clearing – the men in the cart, the soldiers, Claudia, Marcus – watching as one as the arrow took flight. No-one breathed.

  In front of them, the white dot grew smaller. Then, with a cry, Max fell forward. No-one spoke. Not even when Max hauled himself to his knees, then his feet, and then began running again . . .

  The colour drained from Orbilio’s face. “I winged him,” he gasped. “Only winged him.”

  The arrow, they could see now, was lodged in his shoulder. Painful. But hardly life-threatening.

  Orbilio wiped his hand over his face, as though the gesture might turn back time. Give him one more chance to make good.

  Then—“Look!” Claudia pointed. Marcus followed her finger.

  In the distance, a huge bristly boar came charging out of the undergrowth, tusks lowered. His furious snorting could be heard in the clearing. As though in slow motion, they watched as he lunged at the figure in white. They watched, too, as Max tried to duck, turn away, but the wily old boar had been there before.

  This was the mating season, remember.

  He had sows and a territory to protect . . .

  MR STRANG ACCEPTS A CHALLENGE

  William Brittain

  William Brittain (b.1930), now retired but for many years a high school teacher, has been writing mystery stories for over thirty years, starting with “Joshua” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1964). He then began a series of delightful tales in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine which explored mysteries in the styles of various authors, starting with “The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr” (December 1965), itself a locked-room murder, and covering Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. By then he had published his first story featuring Mr Strang, a high school teacher with a gift for unravelling the unusual. The first was “Mr Strang Gives a Lecture” (EQMM, March 1967). By my count there have been over thirty Mr Strang stories since then, several of them impossible crimes, but unaccountably none have been collected into book form. Here’s one of the most intriguing.

  MONDAY: THE CHALLENGE The 29 students in Mr Strang’s classroom gravely considered the two sentences scrawled across the freshly washed blackboard:

  All A’s are C’s.

  All B’s are C’s.

  “The apparent conclusion – that all A’s are B’s – does have a certain allure, a kind of appealing logic.”

  Mr Strang blinked myopically, his wrinkled face resembling that of a good-natured troll. Then he whirled, and his chalk drew a large screeching X through both sentences.

  “Of course,” he snapped, “it’s also dead wrong. Its error can easily be verified by substituting ‘teenager’ for A, ‘ostrich’ for B, and ‘two-legged’ for C in the original premises. Thus, all teenagers are two-legged, all ostriches are two-legged, and therefore all teenagers are ostriches. I doubt you’d accept that conclusion.”

  “I dunno,” guffawed a voice from the rear of the room. “Melvin’s a teenager, and he looks like an ostrich.”

  Laughter, in which Mr Strang joined. The student’s comment hadn’t been spiteful, simply an attempt to inject humour into a period of intense mental activity.

  Mr Strang’s elective class in Logic and Scientific Method was one of the most popular courses in Aldershot High School. It was also one of the most difficult in which to enroll. Those students finally accepted – invariably seniors – had risen to the top of the academic ranks like cream in fresh milk. With these students, a teacher could pull out all the stops, being not so much an instructor as a participant in a free give-and-take of theories and ideas.

  The politeness of the members of the class was tempered by their scepticism. They were willing to weigh and consider the most heretical hypotheses, mercilessly rejecting what they believed to be sham, hypocrisy, or incompetence. After each period Mr. Strang felt exhausted, yet exhilarated – somewhat like a runner who has just broken the four-minute mile. In teachers’ heaven all classes would be like this one.

  “Let us, then, consider the logical fallacy of undistributed middle,” he went on. He drew a large circle on the blackboard with two smaller circles like staring eyes inside it. “If the large circle represents category C, and the smaller ones are A and B—”

  He paused. In the far corner of the room three students had their heads together and were whispering earnestly. “We seem to have a rump session meeting over there,” said the teacher. “Mr Cornish, Miss Doyle, Mr Lockley – what is it?”

  There was a moment of embarrassed silence. “I yield to the gentleman in the maroon sweater,” Mr Strang said. “What’s going on, Jerry?”

  Jerome Lockley was tall, black, and beautiful. As he slowly uncoiled from his seat it seemed as if he wouldn’t stop until his head hit the ceiling. Looking down from a height of over six and a half feet, he bestowed a sly grin on the old science teacher.

  “Well, Mr Strang,” Jerry began. “You understand we all dig the way you teach this class. I mean, you keep us hopping, but it’s kind of fun. Like basketball drills. And you’re a right guy personally. If somebody gets in a little trouble, you try to help out instead of just dropping the dime on him. So I wouldn’t want you to take anything I say the wrong way.”

  “Take what the wrong way?” asked the teacher.

  “Since we’ve been in this class we’ve hypothesized, syllogized, and organized. We’ve deduced, induced, inferred, and referred. Right?”

  “Right, Jerry. That’s what the class is all about.”

  “Yeah, but the first day you told us that all this logic stuff would help us in the real world.” He jerked a thumb toward the window. “Out there, where it’s all at. But so far all we’ve seen are little X’s that are all Y’s, and stuff about ostriches and diagrams like that one on the board.”

  “But there’s still nearly seven weeks to go—”

  Jerry shook his head. “Not good enough, Mr Strang.” He pointed toward the boy and girl with whom he had been whispering. “Richie and Alice and me, we’d like to know right now if what we’ve been learning is really gonna help us, or are we just spinning our wheels in here. How about it? Did you mean what you said that first day, or were you just jiving us?”

  “The last quarter of the semester is devoted to practical applications. But until you’ve learned the basic theories—”

  “Right on, Mr. Strang. We dig that. But you know all those theories, don’t you? I mean you could put ’em to use if you had to?”

  “I hope so, Jerry. Although I must say that often emotion tends to—”

  “Okay, Mr. Strang. Then prove it. Prove this logic of yours really works.”

  Mr Strang chuckled, but in his mind there was a twinge of foreboding. “And just what did you have in mind?”

  The others in the class looked up expectantly at the tall boy. Jerry thrust his head forward, daring the old teacher.

  “We want you to figure out how Simon Winkler was wasted.”

  Mr Strang reacted as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown over him. For long seconds he gazed at Jerry, speechless. “But that happened last summer,” he said
finally. “And even the police haven’t been able to – I mean, there’s no evidence really, that he was – uh – ‘wasted.’ I assume you mean murdered?”

  Jerry shrugged. “Come on, man. Them two ladies was standing right there, weren’t they? And the priest. As for the fuzz, what do they know? They never took this class, did they?”

  In a daze Mr Strang shook his head. In the far corner Richie Cornish tugged at Jerry’s sweater. “Sit down. He’s not gonna try it.”

  “Sure he will!” argued Jerry. “Mr Strang’s my main man. And he’ll figure it out too.”

  “Half a dollar?”

  “It’s a bet.”

  Jerry turned back to the teacher. “Now you got this deduction scam down pat. And it’s not like you’ve got no facts to go on. That case was on the front page in all the papers for weeks, and we all know you got a few connections with the local cops.”

  “But I can’t just barge in and reopen a police investigation that—”

  Jerry cocked his head to one side. “You can’t, Mr Strang?” he asked cynically. “Or you won’t?”

  So there it was. The gauntlet had been flung down, the challenge had been hurled. All 29 students waited for Mr Strang’s answer. The old teacher took a deep breath and then sat on his high stool, a foolish grin on his face.

  “Very well, Jerry,” he said slowly. “I don’t guarantee any results, but I can try.”

  “Right on, man!” Jerry extended an arm rigidly, his fist clenched.

  As the bell rang, the students left, the sound of their excited whisperings buzzing in the old teacher’s ears. He slumped over the demonstration table, cradling his head in his hands.

  “Vorticella!” he said harshly. “Leonard Strang, you are an old fool!”

  TUESDAY: THE CASE Detective Sergeant Paul Roberts stood at the front of the classroom, looking about warily. The kids had been decent enough so far, but who could tell what they might be plotting? Who in hell ever knew what was going on inside kids’ heads these days?

  The only reason he was here was because he hadn’t been alert enough to think of a plausible excuse when Mr Strang had called him yesterday evening to ask him to come to the classroom and discuss the Winkler case. Oh, sure, he did owe the old teacher a favour – many of them, in fact. But standing here in front of this group of sharp-eyed youngsters . . . Roberts envied Mr Strang his classroom cool.

  The old boy had done his homework right enough. There was Father Raymond Penn over in the corner, the case’s only unbiased witness. The young cleric’s unkempt hair and bushy beard made him look more like a hippie than a priest, in spite of the black suit and collar. Roberts was glad he’d stopped by the precinct’s records section to get the still-open file on the Winkler case. It wouldn’t do to annoy Mr Strang by coming in unprepared. He cleared his throat loudly.

  “Last July twenty-first,” he began, “over in the Bay Ridge section of Aldershot, Simon Winkler died. The cause of death was a blow on the head – a fantastically powerful blow, since not only was the skull shattered, but two of the cervical vertebrae were crushed.

  “Now Simon’s aunts, Agnes and Lucille Winkler, were within a few feet of him when he died. Furthermore, they both had every reason to want him dead. And yet it’s impossible that either of them struck him down. The police even investigated the possibility that the whole thing was an accident. But that was just as impossible. You see, we not only can’t find out how the blow was landed, but also, whatever object struck Simon Winkler seems to have disappeared.”

  The students leaned forward like bloodhounds on the scent. “I don’t have to worry about withholding information,” the detective went on, “because there’s nothing to withhold. By the time we’re through here today, you’ll know as much about the case as I do, and I was the man in charge of it. But the police are really stumped by this one. I guess the newspapers are too. All over the state they headlined it The Weird Winkler Death.”

  “That’s all right,” Jerry Lockley drawled. “Mr Strang’ll figure out what really happened, with logic and all that jazz.”

  Roberts made a wry grin. “Just a word of warning,” he said. “Although Lucille Winkler died last month of a stroke at the age of eighty, her older sister Agnes – an invalid in a wheelchair – is still alive, in a nursing home. So no rash accusations, okay? The laws concerning slander and defamation of character apply here just as well as anywhere else.”

  “Paul,” said Mr Strang ingenuously. “We merely intend to examine the evidence and see where it leads.”

  “Oh, sure, Mr Strang. Just like you always do.” A loud guffaw from the rear, and Roberts turned back to the class. “I’ll just start things off by saying that at the time Simon Winkler came to call on his aunts, he was in the process of trying to take their house away from them by some kind of sharp legal ploy. The two old women hated his guts. They made no bones during the entire investigation about how much they despised their nephew. So Simon Winkler’s visit to his aunts was hardly a social call.”

  He motioned to the priest. “Now I’d like to introduce the man who was actually present in the house at the time of Simon Winkler’s death. Want to step up here, Father Penn, please?”

  Father Raymond Penn came to the front of the classroom, where he used a finger to hook the white collar tab out of his shirt and undo the top button. To most of the boys the young priest seemed like a “right buy”; many of the girls found him adorable. He jammed his hands into his pants pockets and looked out at the class as if puzzled and bewildered by the human condition.

  “By the time Lucille Winkler got in touch with me, Simon had already phoned her several times,” he began. “Lucille had put him off with one excuse or another, but when it became clear that eventually she’d have to see him about who really owned the house, she set a date and asked me to be there. She wanted a witness present, you see.

  “When I arrived at the Winkler house that afternoon, the weather was about as wet as it could be. Rain had been pouring down for the past few days and nights, and the weatherman had predicted more of the same. I banged the knocker on the front door and heard Lucille fumbling with the lock, but by the time it opened, my hat was just a mass of soaked cloth.

  “Lucille took my hat and raincoat to dry them off at the stove in the kitchen. Since she also had to tend to Agnes in the wheelchair, she left me alone in the living room for quite some time.”

  He shrugged. “Matter of fact, I read three chapters in a book on fishing that was on the coffee table. I was just deciding whether I’d spent my next vacation catching bass in Canada or fishing for blue marlin off Mexico when she came back, wheeling Agnes in front of her. Gone about half an hour, I’d say.”

  Roberts looked significantly at Mr Strang. Puckishly the teacher wiggled his fingers.

  “We chatted for a while,” Penn went on. “Mostly about the weather. Lucille prattled on a lot about spending most of the previous dry week dragging the lawn sprinklers around that big back yard of theirs, and now here they had so much water it was like living under a faucet.

  “Finally Agnes looked out the window. ‘I think Simon has arrived, Lucille,’ she said. ‘We must have some tea.’

  “Outside, Simon Winkler was getting out of a cab. From what I could see, he was about fifty or fifty-five years old.”

  “Fifty-four,” interrupted Roberts.

  The priest nodded. “But then I glanced back and noticed Lucille,” he went on. “She was giving her sister the oddest look. Then she said, ‘I’ll put the water on.’ She went out to the kitchen, but she was only gone for a minute or so.”

  Penn took a deep breath, and his eyes grew wide. “Now we come to the part the newspapers called weird. Me, I say it’s downright eerie. You see, just as Lucille came back, there was a loud knocking at the front door, and Simon Winkler was shouting through it for someone to hurry and open up. ‘Soaked to the skin!’ I heard him yell. I felt sorry for him because I’d been through the same thing just an hour before. Lucille was
fumbling with the bolt – she had arthritis in both hands – and I was wishing there were a window in the door so I could at least make a sign to him that we were opening the door as fast as we could, when” – the priest’s voice grew low and sonorous – “when there was the sound of a dull thump from outside. That was followed by another sound – like something heavy sliding down the length of the door.”

  The students looked at him in rapt silence. This was what they had been waiting for.

  “Seconds later we got the door open. And the rain poured in on us, because something was propping open the outer storm door.” Penn pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.

  “The thing holding open the storm door,” he continued, “was the body of Simon Winkler. He was lying on the front stoop with blood gushing from his head. There were some gardening implements on the stoop – a bushel basket and some other things – and the blood had stained them all red, even in the rain. I was numb. Didn’t know what to think or do. Finally I felt for a pulse. There was none. Winkler was dead.”

  A pencil falling to the floor sounded like a cannon shot in the classroom.

  “Well,” said Penn, “I tried to get the women back into the house. But they just stood in the doorway, staring at the body. Finally I told Lucille to go inside and call the police. Agnes and I remained in the doorway looking down at the body. The rain was coming in, but it seemed almost obscene just to leave the body there without anyone – I mean—”

  He swallowed loudly, mopped at his face with the handkerchief, and sagged into a chair.

  “What hit him?” asked Richie Cornish.

  Roberts got to his feet. “That’s what we’d like to know too, young fella,” he said. “It was at this point the police entered the case. The first patrol car that pulled up found Father Penn and Agnes Winkler looking down at the body at the doorway. A sheet was put around the body and the sheet immediately soaked through with rain and blood.”

  Roberts drew out a report form from the file folder he was holding and consulted it, speaking in a low voice: “I arrived on the scene at four thirty-five pm. We ran a grease pencil outline of the body on the stoop and then had the body taken to the morgue. By that time the door was closed again, but before knocking I looked around a little. There, on one side of the stoop, was a bushel basket with a handful of weeds in it, and a metal sprinkling can lying on its side. On the other side of the stoop was a shiny new pair of grass shears and a little trowel. And that was all.”