The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes

by Mike Ashley

  “Here he comes. We’d better handle him carefully, Owen. He’s got all her problems and his own, and he thinks she was Marilyn. In his paranoid moments, he even plays with the idea some BattleSpear conspirator killed her.”

  We got out and crossed the road. Edwin May came to a halt in front of the narrow entrance to the flat. He looked at that chipped green door with its tarnished brass knocker as if his whole life lay behind it, and that life was over. He said: “I can’t put it off any more. I haven’t been in since . . . all that ghastly nonsense with the police.” He pulled out a Yale key and made a stab for the lock, hitting the metal surround and pushing it in with a scrape.

  Inside the door was a heap of letters, bills, and free papers. He said: “You know, the contract must have come through this door while she was . . . lying there.”

  “Which contract, sorry?” I asked.

  “The one I told you about. The joint contract with Robinson’s and Meridian TV. A novel, ‘The Healer’, a TV series, and a factual show and a factual book about faith healing to go with it. Lots of TV personals for her. The whole thing well into six figures. After all her work, she’d really arrived, and then . . .”

  We followed him cautiously up a dark stairway. I said: “Mr May, did I hear you say Morrigan was working on a factual book about faith healing, or just a novel?”

  “Both. She did a hell of a lot of research on it. Let’s see.” A bright light flicked above, and I realized the stairs led to a big open-plan lounge. “I think there’s a picture here . . .”

  The room was full of odd pieces of furniture, none very new, which looked to have been bought separately for price rather than style or even function. The only expensive items were the TV and video, though there was a fairly new games console in another corner. The walls were stacked with books, mostly not in cases, almost to eye-height: above them the room was decorated with a wide variety of artwork: bookjackets . . . I recognized the one from The Merlinus . . . photographs, and a number of large framed or blockmounted oil paintings on fantasy themes. It was the kind of room my own circle of friends were only just starting to settle out of; though it had a distinct and unpleasant smell of urine, as though an unhousetrained cat lived there. If there was also a hint that joss sticks had been burned there, it was very faint, perhaps because there was a draught.

  Edwin had gone to an area of snapshot photos. “Here’s one of Megan at Lourdes with Lionel Fanthorpe.”

  I said: “Did she appear on ‘Fortean TV?”

  “A couple of times. She was more of a sceptic than Lionel, though not with a ‘K’ like some of her old uni pals. She was so looking forward to getting her own show, putting over her particular point of view.”

  Monique had been looking round the room impassively. Someone who only knew her from the office might have assumed she disapproved, though I happened to know her private life was just as Bohemian as Morrigan’s had been. She said: “I gather you’re implying she believed in faith healing, Mr May.”

  He said hurriedly: “Well, she didn’t call it belief, because she’d done a science degree, and unlike a lot of SF writers, she kept up with as much real science as she could. She had a collection of cases where some kind of Healing seemed to have worked, not necessarily Christian or religious, she was looking for ways of assembling some kind of control group when . . . Oh God! Excuse me a minute!”

  He abruptly stopped, as though he had seen something even more terrible than the ubiquitous reminders of his wife’s life and death, and hurried out of the large room, through a door decorated with a seaside cartoon of a girl in a bath. I heard flushing almost at once, and the ugly thought came to me that he was disposing of something . . . other than some female item which embarrassed him.

  I wondered if he could have been overcome with other emotions than grief. In our session, Morrigan had almost dismissed him, an ineffectual old pal she had grown apart from. It had been he who had persuaded her to write fiction and not do postgrad studies, a move which had scarcely justified itself financially after ten years. And the breakdown of their marriage wasn’t only over lifestyle and the BattleSpear situation: “We married for Dai, really. It was meant to be an open marriage, friends co-operating over a son. His idea, but he didn’t like the way it turned out. I went on the pull about once a year, and usually succeeded. He tried it all the time, and hardly ever got anywhere. He didn’t like that.”

  He might not have liked her exhibition of art. She’d been a model for most of the oil paintings, originals of book-covers I’d seen on racks, not her own. Usually, model-Morrigan wore something to cover her hair, not much more over the rest of her body, waving a weapon or other fantasy item. The faces were clearly her, though some of the bodies must have been modelled by someone more buxom.

  I doubt I’d have suspected Edwin of committing a murder if he hadn’t kept hinting that someone had done so. Megan said that exhibitionistic self-promotion kept her afloat, and he’d have known and lived with that. And he could hardly have killed her for money. She’d died before he knew about the contract. He hoped for it perhaps, but didn’t know. I wasn’t arrogant enough to suppose a man could murder a goose which hadn’t yet laid any golden eggs, then rely on my post-mortem Psychological profile to get the gold from the unlikely mine of BattleSpear.

  The bathroom led directly off the lounge: next to it on the same side was the open door to a kitchen. In the opposite wall were two more doors, to bedrooms I supposed, one open, one closed. I went to the open one in search of the source of the draught I’d noticed. I wondered if someone could have broken in that way, looked inside, and found a child’s room. A small casement window was open a crack but locked in position, the main window double-locked shut. I was just examining an oddity, an incense-boat on the ledge of the child’s window, when a doorbell rang loudly. May called from the bathroom: “Could you see who that is?”

  I went downstairs and got to the door just as the bell rang again. I opened it to find the man we had seen earlier, while we were waiting. He did look like Edwin May, though the resemblance was increased because both were pale and red-eyed. May wore a short beard, but this man had just shaved rarely and carelessly, with little more than a day’s growth around his lips, but much more in the awkward corners of his face. He glared at me and snarled: “Who the devil are you?”

  “I . . . we are here with Mr May.” Introducing oneself in such situations is never easy. People are funny about being seen around psychologists. He moved to go in past me and I said: “While we’re on introductions, just who are you?”

  An awkward thought struck me, and I said: “Mr May’s in the bathroom. You’re not the late Mrs May’s boyfriend, are you?”

  “No,” he said, taking advantage of my uncertainty to push past me and on up the stairs. “She never mentioned a boyfriend. I’m a very old friend. Dr Alan Glade. I was Megan’s tutor at LSS . . . London School of Science.”

  I followed him up, feeling out of place. What authority did I have to stop him, a stranger myself in the home of a one-session dead client? Luckily, Edwin emerged from the bathroom as we reached the top of the stairs. His face was dead white and covered in sweat. He saw Glade in a double-take and said: “What are you doing here?”

  “I left . . .” Glade checked, then, seemed to compose himself. “I know I’ve left it a bit late to offer condolences, but I’d like to. I . . . never quite knew how things stood between you two.”

  “How they stand is, I’m a totally unprepared single parent. I’ve not been emotionally able to set foot in this place . . . now I’m here with two shrinks in tow . . . this is Owen GlenMorgan . . . Megan saw him . . . and Monique de Macaque. I’ve gotta sort out a million things. You . . . why couldn’t you write? Or e-mail?”

  “Well, I lent Megan some research papers and oddments, the Skep Tactics book on so-called healing and some other stuff, and I need to reclaim them for . . . ”

  “Nothing is going out of here till I’ve done . . . what you do. Make an invent
ory, I suppose. E-mail me a list. I have to go through all her stuff with the shrinks . . . not stuff that’d interest you . . . Battle-Spear stuff. I have to find out what made her do it.”

  Being in the death flat had taken the oddly aggressive drive out of Alan Glade. He looked as deflated as a reveller who had gatecrashed a party, and discovered it was a wake . . . which was more or less what he was. He said: ‘Well, yes, sorry again, I knew it and you obviously knew it, she should never have got involved with those battleSpear people. I’ll . . . yes, I’ll e-mail you.”

  He went quietly down the stairs and let himself out. Edwin began to explain. “I just saw that, and it was too much for me.” He pointed at a large open shopping bag full of clothes. “Her washing machine had packed up, she never got round to getting it fixed, and she used to get a bag ready for my sister Ann to do . . . Ann never minds being helpful that way, but this sort of thing, she can’t handle at all!”

  He looked about to make another dash for the toilet. Monique intervened: “That’s odd! I looked in the kitchen, and saw an ‘on’ light on the washing machine.” She added: “It’s the same make as mine!” in a tone which said expensive Harley Street shrinks wouldn’t otherwise know much about kitchen equipment.

  “That should not be on!” Edwin snapped, rushing to the kitchen.

  “Could anyone else have been in here?” I asked.

  “No, No! Not even BattleSpear, let’s be realistic! Police at least checked that, though they didn’t look into anything else!”

  Which might have been their job, but wasn’t mine. “You’re saying this is a suspicious death, and the police have obviously been here. What did they find?”

  “What they looked for, which was nothing! Two constables checked for signs of a break-in, labelled her a hippy who popped pills. That was all they knew, and they decided it was all they needed to know. If she’d been lying there with a bloody great spear stuck through her, they’d have said it was a syringe!”

  Monique nodded. “But you feel her death resulted from a kind of negligence?”

  “BattleSpear negligence! That’s a good word! I went to the station and asked for someone in charge. I wanted to explain that they’d harassed her till she flipped and gave up and muddled her pills. Harassment’s a crime isn’t it? All I got was some sergeant who’d tried to turn his memoirs into a novel, and he said that if they locked up all the rude, grasping, shortchanging publishers in London, they’d have no cells left for other kinds of crime. But I managed to get the inquest adjourned and if you can do me a profile of how they upset her frame of mind, treating an artist like a shopgirl, I might get a sensible verdict!”

  I had my doubts. I glanced at Monique. She was listening with the interested, compassionate, otherwise expressionless poker face she uses for all awkward clients. I’m told I use it too. Edwin turned back to the kitchen. “What’s in here!” He opened the washing machine and let out an incredibly vile smell of old urine.

  “That’s terrible!” I said, hastily adding: “What is in there?” before he could back away and make me investigate myself.

  He held his nose and looked inside. “Just her jeans and panties. She must have had a fit and forgotten it was bust. The fits affected her memory, you see. That must be why the place smelled bad.”

  “Not entirely.” Monique said. “I think the smell we noticed earlier came from this couch.” She went into the living room and pointed at a black, leather-look settee which faced the TV.

  “So she had a fit watching TV. She must have remembered to try and wash her clothes, but forgotten to clean that up. God! If only someone had been here!”

  He again looked ready to rush for the toilet. To distract him, I said: “Did you say there was also a smell of joss incense? I think I’ve found out why.”

  I indicated the open bedroom. It had a single bed, made, and was decorated with childish posters, mostly of fantasy adventures and carrying the BattleSpear logo. There was a large table on which a game based on such scenes had been set out with metal figures and toy scenery. I expected Edwin to complain at this invasion of his son’s room, but he refrained: presumably it was allowable for children to enjoy BattleSpear. I indicated the incense boat on the window ledge. Two joss sticks had burned right down. Edwin said: “Beats me! It’s unbelievable. Megan hated the smell of joss, ever since her accident. She never used it.”

  I knew the smell of joss sometimes came as an aura before her fits. “This accident. Did it have anything to do with her epilepsy?”

  “It did. Megan did a hard course, Joint honours, no bloody puns, Envo’ Sci’ and Biochemistry. She was told . . . Glade told her . . . she was heading for a First on the strength of a project. She went out to celebrate with some of her course, got slewed, went to someone’s room, rolled up and lit up. Lots of joss but not much dope, I heard. I wasn’t there, myself, that time.” He stopped abruptly, I suppose numbering the times in Megan’s life when he wasn’t there. “So they ran out of dope and Megan set out on a bike to get some more. No one knows exactly what happened. She was found by the road. When she came to, she couldn’t remember.

  “Not long after that she started getting the joss . . . aura, they call it . . . and then getting fits. Totally buggered her exams. Memory was a sieve made of Swiss cheese. Oddly enough she was better on those pills. Most of the time. She’d oversleep and couldn’t get up to do a job, so she started writing seriously. Didn’t totally swear off dope, just bicycles. And joss, more to the point.”

  “Did anyone but your son use this room?” I wasn’t that interested in joss sticks. I wanted to access and assess his jealousy.

  “I suppose so. Not lately. She was so into researching the bloody BattleSpear game . . . she used to play it by e-mail, for Christ’s sake . . . at least she didn’t let the nerds get up here!”

  Monique asked: “How about that character who was here just now? The old friend . . . ex-tutor?”

  “Doubt it. He was even more anti-joss than she was. Spent all his time trying to keep her away from what he called hippies. Me, mostly. I suppose you’d better see where I found her.”

  He went back to the living-room, then stopped abruptly. “Of course Glade felt she had to be an academic like him. Kept telling her to get a medical cert and sue the uni if they wouldn’t let her do a Ph.D. I don’t know if that’s relevant.”

  I doubted it. I sensed he was stalling, not wanting to go back into that room. He went on: “Luckily, she got a break almost at once. She got a story in Interzone . . . top SF zine . . . and that led to her getting a novel contract. Pissed Doctor Glade off . . . we didn’t see him for ages. Anyway, he . . .”

  Monique took charge. “Were you going to show us where you found her?”

  “Yes.” He took a deep breath.

  I felt desperately sorry for him. “Look, I know this isn’t easy.”

  He opened the door to the last room. The curtains were open, but not the windows, which had ventilating fans set into two panes. It was dominated by a large double bed, with the covers thrown back. There was a computer, another games table, even some BattleSpear posters, though these had adult . . . or at least teenboy . . . themes, women warriors in leather or rubber armour. Most of these weren’t modelled by Morrigan, but over the bed was a large painting on glass. It showed her underwater, appearing to rise through the sea toward the sunrise . . . or sunset, I realized. The picture was so positioned that the light of the setting sun through the window might sometimes reach it. Morrigan’s hair was uncovered, the green ends blending with the water, the red and yellow with the sunset. It was the only picture I saw in the flat in which she appeared to be entirely naked, though it was hard to be certain, as seaweed and fish were floating strategically.

  He caught the direction of my gaze. “The original cover painting from the Morrigan May special issue from Interzone. It’s by Sexton, the top fantasy artist.”

  While not exactly provocative, I felt the nude image would remind anyone who entered the room that
it held potential for other games than BattleSpear. I said: “I never quite understood what caused the two of you to split up.”

  “Nothing!” he shouted. “Oh, odd differences over this and that, not even real quarrels. We never stopped getting on, helping each other . . .”

  Monique said quickly: “So! It’s dramatic and ironic . . . you found her lying like Marilyn Monroe, dead from barbiturates.”

  “Not exactly. There was no last call . . . I swear it! Not to me, anyway. Maybe to someone dodgy . . . no. No!” He blinked, then said: “But there is another odd thing. What was it . . . ‘all the morning papers said, was that Marilyn, was found in the nude!’? Well Megan used to like sleeping nude, in fact she always did in summer, unless she thought she might fit, in which case she’d wear a thick pair of panties.

  “This was different. She was naked below the waist, even though she’d probably just fitted, but she had on a sweatshirt and even a bra. She never normally wore a bra to sleep.”

  “OK, OK, this was an odd situation,” I said. I’d liked Megan, and nothing I’d seen in the flat suggested she was a person who would kill herself deliberately and leave her body for her son to find. I thought Edwin disliked that idea as much as I did, but he was afraid of the more logical formulation of an accident. If Megan’s faith in healing had led her to prematurely abandon her drugs, then lose track of the safe dose and overdo them, her life’s work was in vain. His continual flirting with the idea of an impossible murder told me this was a safer theory for his peace of mind. Unfortunately, publishers tend to prefer their authors alive. Once they’re famous they can die and someone will keep on writing their books, but no one would ghost-write and publish Megan’s healing theories under these circumstances. So I added with feeling: “And a tragic one! But how do you know it wasn’t just unusual? She wasn’t expecting you . . . do you know exactly when . . .”