'5. It is a murder which derives its problem from illusion and impersonation. Thus: the victim, still thought to be alive, is already lying murdered inside a room of which the door is under observation. The murderer either dressed as his victim or mistaken from behind for the victim, hurries in at the door. He whirls round, gets rid of his disguise, and instantly comes out of the room as himself. The illusion is that he has merely passed the other man in coming out. In any event, he has an alibi; since, when the body is discovered later, the murder is presumed to have taken place some time after the impersonated "victim" entered the room.
'6. It is a murder which, although committed by somebody outside the room at the time, nevertheless seems to have been committed by somebody who must have been inside.
'In explaining this,' said Dr Fell, breaking off, 'I will classify this type of murder under the general name of the Long - Distance or Icicle Crime, since it is usually a variation of that principle. I've spoken of icicles; you understand what I mean. The door is locked, the window too small to admit a murderer; yet the victim has apparently been stabbed from inside the room and the weapon is missing. Well, the icicle has been fired as a bullet from outside - we will not discuss whether this is practical, any more than we have discussed the mysterious gases previously mentioned - and it melts without a trace. I believe Anna Katherine Green was the first to use this trick in detective fiction, in a novel called Initials Only.
'(By the way, she was responsible for starting a number of traditions. In her first detective novel, over fifty years ago, she founded the legend of the murderous secretary killing his employer, and I think present - day statistics would prove that the secretary is still the commonest murderer in fiction. Butlers have long gone out of fashion; the invalid in the wheel - chair is too suspect; and the placid middle - aged spinster has long ago given up homicidal mania in order to become a detective. Doctors, too, are better behaved nowadays unless, of course, they grow eminent and turn into Mad Scientists. Lawyers, while they remain persistently crooked, are only in some cases actively dangerous. But cycles return! Edgar Allan Poe, eighty years ago, blew the gaff by calling his murderer Goodfellow; and the most popular modern mystery - writer does precisely the same tiling by calling his arch - villain Goodman. Meanwhile, those secretaries are still the most dangerous people to have about the house.)
"To continue with regard to the icicle: Its actual use has been attributed to the Medici, and in one of the admirable Fleming Stone stories an epigram of Martial is quoted to show that it had its deadly origin in Rome in the first century A.D. Well, it has been fired, thrown, or shot from a crossbow as in one adventure of Hamilton Cleek (that magnificent character of the Forty Faces). Variants of the same theme, a soluble missile, have been rock - salt bullets and even bullets made of frozen blood.
'But it illustrates what I mean in crimes committed inside a room by somebody who was outside. There are other methods. The victim may be stabbed by a thin sword - stick blade, passed between the twinings of a summer - house and withdrawn; or he may be stabbed with a blade so thin that he does not know he is hurt at all, and walks into another room before he suddenly collapses in death. Or he is lured into looking out of a window inaccessible from below; yet from above our old friend ice smashes down on his head, leaving him with a smashed skull but no weapon because the weapon has melted.
'Under this heading (although it might equally well go under head number 3) we might list murders committed by means of poisonous snakes or insects. Snakes can be concealed not only in chests and safes, but also deftly hidden in flower - pots, books, chandeliers, and walking - sticks. I even remember one cheerful little item in which the amber stem of a pipe, grotesquely carven as a scorpion, comes to life a real scorpion as the victim is about to put it into his mouth. But for the greatest long - range murder ever committed in a locked room, gents, I commend you to one of the most brilliant short detective stories in the history of detective fiction. (In fact, it shares the honours for supreme untouchable top - notch excellence with Thomas Burke's The Hands of Mr Ottermole, Chesterton's The Man in the Passage, and Jacques Futrelle's The Problem of Cell 13.) This is Melville Davisson Post's The Doomdorf Mystery - and the long - range assassin is the sun. The sun strikes through the window of the locked room, makes a burning - glass of a bottle of Doomdorf's own raw white wood - alcohol liquor on the table, and ignites through it the percussion cap of a gun hanging on the wall: so that the breast of the hated one is blown open as he lies in his bed. Then, again, we have -
'Steady! Harrumph. Ha. I'd better not meander; I'll round off this classification with the final heading:
'7. This is a murder depending on an effect exactly the reverse of number 5. That is, the victim is presumed to be dead long before he actually is. The victim lies asleep (drugged but unharmed) in a locked room. Knockings on the door fail to rouse him. The murderer starts a foul - play scare; forces the door; gets in ahead and kills by stabbing or throat - cutting, while suggesting to other watchers that they have seen something they have not seen. The honour of inventing this device belongs to Israel Zangwill, and it has since been used in many forms. It has been done (usually by stabbing) on a ship, in a ruined house, in a conservatory, in an attic, and even in the open air - where the victim has first stumbled and stunned himself before the assassin bends over him. So - '
'Steady! Wait a minute!' interposed Hadley, pounding on the table for attention. Dr Fell, the muscles of whose eloquence were oiling up in a satisfactory way, turned agreeably and beamed on him. Hadley went on: 'This may be all very well. You've dealt with all the locked - room situations - '
'All of them?' snorted Dr Fell, opening his eyes wide. 'Of course I haven't. That doesn't even deal comprehensively with the methods under that particular classification; it's only a rough offhand outline; but I'll let it stand. I was going to speak of the other classification: the various means of hocussing doors and windows so that they can be locked on the inside. H'mf! Hah! So, gentlemen, I continue - '
'Not yet you don't,' said the superintendent, doggedly. ' I'll argue the thing on your own grounds. You say we can get a lead from stating the various ways in which the stunt has been worked. You've stated seven points; but, applied to this case, each one must be ruled out according to your own classification head. You head the whole list, "No murderer escaped from the room because no murderer was ever actually in it at the time of the crime." Out goes every - thing! The one thing we definitely do know, unless we presume Mills and Dumont to be liars, is that the murderer really was in the room! What about that?'
Pettis was sitting forward, his bald head gleaming by the glow of the red - shaded lamp as he bent over an envelope. He was making neat notes with a neat gold pencil. Now he raised his prominent eyes, which seemed more prominent and rather startled.
'Er - yes,' he said, with a short cough. 'But that point number 5 is suggestive, I should think. Illusion! What if Mills and Mrs Dumont really didn't see somebody go in that door; that they were hoaxed somehow or that the whole thing was an illusion like a magic - lantern?'
'Illusion me foot,' said Hadley. 'Sorry! I thought of that, too. I hammered Mills about it last night, and I had another word or two with him this morning. Whatever else the murderer was, he wasn't an illusion and he did go in that door. He was solid enough to cast a shadow and make the hall vibrate when he walked. He was solid enough to talk and slam a door. You agree with that, Fell?'
The doctor nodded disconsolately. He drew in absent puffs on his dead cigar.
'Oh yes, I agree to that. He was solid enough, and he did go in,'
'And even,' Hadley pursued, while Pettis summoned the waiter to get more coffee, 'granting what we know is untrue. Even granting a magic - lantern shadow did all that, a magic - lantern shadow didn't kill Grimaud. It was a solid pistol in a solid hand. And for the rest of the points. Lord knows Grimaud didn't get shot by a mechanical device. What's more, he didn't shoot himself - and have the gun whisk up the chimney lik
e the one in your example. In the first place, a man can't shoot himself from some feet away. And in the second place, the gun can't whisk up the chimney and sail across the roofs to Cagliostro Street, shoot Fley, and tumble down with its work finished. Blast it. Fell, my conversation is getting like yours! It's too much exposure to your habits of thought. I'm expecting a call from the office any minute, and I want to get back to sanity. What's the matter with you?'
Dr Fell, his little eyes opened wide, was staring at the lamp, and his fist came down slowly on the table.
'Chimney!' he said. 'Chimney! Wow! I wonder if -? Lord! Hadley, what an ass I've been!'
'What about the chimney?' asked the superintendent. 'We've proved the murderer couldn't have got out like that: getting up the chimney.'
'Yes, of course; but I didn't mean that. I begin to get a glimmer even if it may be a glimmer of moonshine. I must have another look at that chimney.'
Pettis chuckled, tapping the gold pencil on his notes. 'Anyhow,' he - suggested, 'you may as well round out this discussion. I agree with the superintendent about one thing. You might do better to outline ways of tampering with doors, windows, or chimneys.'
'Chimneys, I regret to say,' Dr Fell pursued, his gusto returning as his abstraction left him, ' chimneys, I regret to say, are not favoured as a means of escape in detective fiction - except, of course, for secret passages. There they are supreme. There is the hollow chimney with the secret room behind; the back of the fire - place opening like a curtain; the fire - place that swings out; even the room under the hearthstone. Moreover, all kinds of things can be dropped down chimneys, chiefly poisonous things. But the murderer who makes his escape by climbing up is very rare. Besides being next to impossible, it is a much grimier business than monkeying with doors or windows. Of the two chief classifications, doors and windows, the door is by far the more popular, and we may list thus a few means of tampering with it so that it seems to be locked on the inside;
'1. Tampering with the key which is still in the lock. This was the favourite old - fashioned method, but its variations are too well known nowadays for anybody to use it seriously. The stem of the key can be gripped and turned with pliers from outside; we did this ourselves to open the door of Grimaud's study. One practical little mechanism consists of a thin metal bar about two inches long, to which is attached a length of stout string. Before leaving the room, this bar is thrust into the hole at the head of the key, one end under and one end over, so that it acts as a lever; the string is dropped down and run under the door to the outside. The door is closed from outside. You have only to pull on the string, and the lever turns the lock; you then shake or pull out the loose bar by means of the string, and. when it drops, draw it under the door to you. There are various applications of this same principle, all entailing the use of string.
'2. Simply removing the hinges of the door without disturbing lock or bolt. This is a neat trick, known to most schoolboys when they want to burgle a locked cupboard; but of course the hinges must be on the outside of the door.
'3. Tampering with the bolt. String again: this time with a mechanism of pins and darning - needles, by which the bolt is shot from the outside by leverage of a pin stuck on the inside of the door, and the string is worked through the keyhole. Philo Vance, to whom my hat is lifted, has shown us this best application of the stunt. There are simpler, but not so effective, variations using one piece of string. A "tomfool" knot, which a sharp jerk will straighten out, is looped in one end of a long piece of cord. This loop is passed round the knob of the bolt, down, and under the door. The door is then closed, and, by drawing the string along to the left or right, the bolt is shot. A jerk releases the knot from the knob, and the string drawn out. Ellery Queen has shown us still another method, entailing the use of the dead man himself - but a bald statement of this, taken out of its context, would sound so wild as to be unfair to that brilliant gentleman.
'4. Tampering with a falling bar or latch. This usually consists in propping something under the latch, which can be pulled away after the door is closed from the outside, and let the bar drop. The best method by far is by the use of the ever-helpful ice, a cube of which is propped under the latch; and, when it melts, the latch falls. There is one case in which the mere slam of the door suffices to drop the bar inside.
'5. An illusion, simple but effective. The murderer, after committing his crime, has locked the door from the outside and kept the key. It is assumed, however, that the key is still in the lock on the inside. The murderer, who is first to raise a scare and find the body, smashes the upper glass panel of the door, puts his hand through with the key concealed in it, and finds the key in the lock inside, by which he opens the door. This device has also been used with the breaking of a panel out of an ordinary wooden door.
' There are miscellaneous methods, such as locking a door from the outside and returning the key to the room by means of string again, but you can see for yourselves that in this case none of them can have any application. We found the door locked on the inside. Well, there are many ways by which it could have been done - but it was not done, because Mills was watching the door the whole time. This room was only locked in a technical sense. It was watched, and that shoots us all to blazes.'
' I don't like to drag in famous platitudes,' said Pettis, his forehead wrinkled, 'but it would seem pretty sound to say exclude the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. You've excluded the door; I presume you also exclude the chimney?'
' I do,' grunted Dr Fell.
' Then we come back in a circle to the window, don't we?' demanded Hadley. 'You've gone on and on about ways that obviously couldn't have been used. But in this catalogue of sensationalism you've omitted all mention of the only means of exit the murderer could have used ...'
'Because it wasn't a locked window, don't you see?' cried Dr Fell. 'I can tell you several brands of funny business with windows if they're only locked. It can be traced down from the earliest dummy nail-heads to the latest hocus-pocus with steel shutters. You can smash a window, carefully turn its catch to lock it, and then when you leave, simply replace the whole pane with a new pane of glass and putty it round; so that the new pane looks like the original and the window is locked inside. But this window wasn't locked or even closed - it was only inaccessible.'
'I seem to have read somewhere of human flies -' Pettis suggested.
Dr Fell shook his head. 'We won't debate whether a human fly can walk on a sheer smooth wall. Since I've cheerfully accepted so much, I might believe that if the fly had any place to light. That is, he would have to start from somewhere and end somewhere. But he didn't; not on the roof, not on the ground below -' Dr Fell hammered his fist against his temples. ' However, if you want a suggestion or two in that respect, I will tell you -'
He stopped, raising his head. At the end of the quiet, now deserted dining-room a line of windows showed pale light now flickering with snow. A figure had darted in silhouette against them, hesitating, peering from side to side, and then hurrying down towards them. Hadley uttered a muffled exclamation as they saw it was Mangan. Mangan was pale.
' Not something else?' asked Hadley, as coolly as he could. He pushed back his chair. ' Not something else about coats changing colour or -'
'No,' said Mangan. He stood by the table, drawing his breath in gasps. 'But you'd better get over there. Something's happened to Drayman; apoplectic stroke or something like that. No, he's not dead or anything. But he's in a bad way. He was trying to get in touch with you when he had the stroke ... He keeps talking wildly about somebody in his room, and fireworks, and chimneys.'
CHAPTER 18
THE CHIMNEY
AGAIN there were three people - three people strained and with frayed nerves - waiting in the drawing - room. Even Stuart Mills, who stood with his back to the fire - place, kept clearing his throat in a way that seemed to drive Rosette half frantic. Ernestine Dumont sat quietly by the fire when Mangan led in Dr Fell,
Hadley, Pettis, and Rampole. The lights had been turned off; only the bleakness of the snow - shadowed afternoon penetrated through heavy lace curtains, and Mills's shadow blocked the tired gleam of the fire. Burnaby had gone.
'You cannot see him,' said the woman, with her eyes fixed on that shadow. 'The doctor is with him now. Things all come at once. Probably he is mad.'
Rosette, her arms folded, had been pacing about with her own feline grace. She faced the new - comers and spoke with harsh suddenness.
'I can't stand this, you know. It can go on just so long, and then - Have you any idea of what happened? Do you know how my father was killed, or who killed him? For God's sake, say something, even if you only accuse me!'
'Suppose you tell us exactly what happened to Mr Drayman,' Hadley said quietly, 'and when it happened. Is he in any grave danger?'
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