Ellery Queen's Crime Cruise Round the World

by Ellery Queen

  Theobault laughed lightly. “Of course a murderer is not allowed to profit from his crime. But, after all, he’s got to have money if he wants to be defended by a competent, experienced attorney and that isn’t really profiting from his crime, now is it? Besides, there are all kinds of technicalities involved. A sane murderer obviously shouldn’t be allowed to profit from his crime. But does this hold true for an insane murderer? After all, can he be held responsible if somehow he picked up a buck or two? It’s just something that happened to him. Like an act of God. Leave everything to me.”

  “Do you think you can get me an acquittal?”

  He winced. “That would kill our movie sale. Who cares about the life story of an innocent man?”

  There was a knock on the door and it opened. McGillicutty looked in. “Are you two through yet?”

  I nodded. “I rather think so.”

  Theobault patted my shoulder. “Don’t answer any questions unless I give you the nod.”

  McGillicutty and Wiggins brought a third man into the room. “This is Oscar Vandermeir.”

  Oscar Vandermeir was a hulking pot-bellied man with large baby-blue eyes. He stared at me curiously. “So this is the Midnight Strangler?”

  McGillicutty nodded. “Have you ever seen him before?”

  Vandermeir walked first to one side of me and then to the other. “Well, he’s not one of my customers. Unless maybe he wore a beard. But actually he’s not the type which comes into my store at all. Mostly they’re late middle-age and ninety-nine percent of them are men. But what with this Women’s Lib, who knows but what that might change. And usually they’re single, though I suppose once in a while I get a married man.”

  Theobault spoke up. “Just who is this man and what does he have to do with the case against my client?”

  McGillicutty smiled. “Mr. Vandermeir is the proprietor of the AAA Acme Adult Book Store. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, eh, Turn-buckle?” He turned back to Vandermeir. “All right, Oscar, tell them all about it.”

  “Well,” Vandermeir said, “I’m not the type of person who goes to the police. Usually they come to me. Or at least they did a lot. But times change.” He side-tracked in reminiscence. “In the old days I had to fill my store with those dusty second-hand books that were classics and so on. I kept the real stuff in the back room. And you never knew which customer might be a cop. I’d get arrested half a dozen times a year and my place was once shut down for sixty days. But things are different now. More honest. More sophisticated. No hypocrisy.” His blue eyes were thoughtful. “Except maybe for the word adult.”

  McGillicutty prodded him back. “Get on with the story.”

  Vandermeir nodded. “Anyway, I don’t read the papers much. All that print is bad for the eyes. But I heard people talk about the Midnight Strangler and so when he wipes out his fifth man, I get hold of a newspaper and lo and behold the picture on the front page is that of one of my best customers, though I don’t know his name until I read it. My clientele don’t usually volunteer names unless they want to get on a special mailing list.

  “So I think, what a coincidence, and nothing more. Then comes the sixth murder and I see that I lost another good customer.

  “But still two coincidences don’t make enough coincidences for me to go to the cops. But I wait for number seven. And sure enough, again it’s one of my regulars who’s deep into flagellation among Transylvanians. So I decided that I ought to tell the police, even though they never done anything for me. And here at headquarters I look at pictures of all the other victims and I recognize all but two.”

  I rubbed my jaw. “Why would the strangler kill five people who were your customers and two who were not?”

  Vandermeir shrugged. “I’m not saying those two weren’t my customers. I’m just saying I didn’t recognize them. A lot of my people feel that they got to wear false beards and mustaches and wear dark-green glasses.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said wisely. “Apparently the strangler feels strongly about the kind of people who patronize adult bookstores and thus make them profitable to operate. He feels justified—possibly even cosmically called upon—to rid the world of sin. This particular kind, anyway.”

  McGillicutty regarded me pointedly. “Why didn’t this strangler just kill Vandermeir and get it over with?”

  I shrugged. “I rather suspect that he was saving Vandermeir as the pièce de resistance.’”

  McGillicutty folded his arms. “We’ve had a stakeout on Vandermeir’s store for two days now. We saw one of his customers come out of the store, and we saw you step out of a dark doorway and follow him.”

  “That was Homer Schlemiel,” I said.

  “And who is Homer Schleigel?”

  “Once a week, on Thursdays, Homer Schleigel goes bowling. Or he claims to. Only last week he forgot to take his bowling ball along. When he got back home at about eleven that night, his wife asked him how the bowling had gone, meaning to twit him on forgetting his ball and assuming that he had been forced to use one of the balls provided to the public by bowling alleys. He said, fine, fine, that he’d rolled a 600 series, and that the old ball was operating better than ever.

  “His wife lapsed into silence and suspicion. The next day she phoned Hanlon’s Pizza, which was the name on the back of her husband’s bowling shirt, and discovered that Homer had quit the team some six months before. She would have followed him the next Thursday—which is today—except that they aren’t a two-car family. So she hired me to find out what he’s been up to.”

  I called to mind Homer’s movements. “He left Milwaukee at six-thirty. It is a half an hour drive south to this city. He put his car in the Apex Parking Lot. He then walked to the Tivoli, where he saw Deeper Esophagus, which I understand is a sequel. At its conclusion he stopped in at Mac’s Malt Shop for a pistachio sundae. He then resumed walking with a purpose, eventually entering Vandermeir’s establishment. He did some extensive browsing and then made a few purchases. He returned to the Apex Parking Lot and reclaimed his auto. I was about to do the same for my vehicle and follow him when you people descended on me. Homer is probably back in Milwaukee by now.”

  Sergeant Wiggins had been listening hostilely. “I got no use for private detectives.”

  I sighed. “I had hoped to ride out this storm on my own strength, however I see that I do need help. Actually I am a member of the Milwaukee police department. I believe that should carry some weight. At the moment I am on educational leave. I am working on my masters degree and my subject is the function of the private detective in our society and it seemed to me that I could hardly learn more about the field than by becoming a private detective myself.”

  McGillicutty turned to Sergeant Wiggins. “Check that out.”

  Wiggins left the room and McGillicutty also excused Vandermeir.

  He got back to me. “Just because you’re a regular cop doesn’t mean that you automatically can’t be the strangler. We’ll check you out and we’ll check you out good.”

  My eyes had been drawn to my topcoat hanging on the wall peg. I distinctly remembered reaching into the right-hand pocket for a handkerchief, finding none, but instead finding Theobault’s card. That pocket should now be empty, and yet there seemed to be a slight bulge there. It rather piqued my curiosity.

  I rose and went to the coat. I slipped my hand into the pocket and it closed on an object. I pulled it out. It was a small rubber stamp. I tested it on the back of my hand and could just make out the faint words, “Sinners must pay.”

  “Well,” I said accurately. “Well, well.”

  McGillicutty had, of course, been watching me. So had Theobault. The latter rose to his feet. “Turnbuckle,” he commanded. “Don’t say another word.”

  “Shut up,” McGillicutty said, and I rather agreed with him. McGillicutty and I sat down again, facing each other. McGillicutty began darkly to think.

  “Captain,” I said, “when I was arrested, I was thoroughly searched, was I not?”

  He ag
reed reluctantly. “I searched you myself. No stamp.” He sighed. “The strangler knew that we were watching the store. Hell, he probably saw us—there were enough of us scattered around. He saw us pick you up. He realized that if we were watching Vandermeir’s store that we must have found the key to the string of murders. He decided he might as well call it quits. He also figured that was a good opportunity to nail the case down so that we wouldn’t be looking for the strangler any more. He rushed over to the station, waited in the crowd, and while you were being hustled through he planted the stamp in your pocket. Just like Theobault planted the card.”

  McGillicutty eyed Theobault.

  Theobault flushed. “I am not the strangler. All I slipped into Turn-buckle’s pocket was my card.” Nevertheless, he looked down at his huge hands and seemed to be trying to think them small.

  “No, Captain,” I said. “Theobault did not slip the stamp into my pocket. When I came into this room, I reached into that pocket for a handkerchief. I found no handkerchief, but I did find his card. However, only his card. No rubber stamp.”

  McGillicutty frowned. “You mean that the stamp was planted in your pocket after you got into this room?”

  “That’s right, Captain.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you saying that I planted that stamp in your coat?”

  “No. I have been sitting here in this chair and the topcoat has been in my sight continuously. I know that you did not approach it.”

  “Vandermeir? He murders his own customers because he’s got a guilt complex about how he makes his money?”

  “No. Not Vandermeir either.”

  “Then who the hell else is there?”

  “Captain, was Sergeant Wiggins on the stakeout at Vandermeir’s store?”

  “No, this was strictly a homicide show.”

  “Isn’t Wiggins in Homicide?”

  “No, he’s with the vice squad. But naturally he’s got an interest in the case and so I sent for him when I brought you in.”

  “Captain,” I said, “the only person who touched my topcoat after I entered this room was Sergeant Wiggins when he so graciously hung it on that peg.”

  McGillicutty closed his eyes.

  I nodded. “Wiggins was here at headquarters when you brought me in and he realized that this was a perfect opportunity to frame me and close the case. Evidently he didn’t have the opportunity to slip the stamp into my pocket as I was being pushed through the crowd downstairs. Or he simply didn’t have the stamp on him. But it must have been near somewhere, because between the time I arrived here at headquarters and the time he appeared in this room I doubt if he would have had time to drive home, retrieve the stamp, and return.”

  McGillicutty sighed. “He lives way out near the county line—at least an hour round trip. And he’s been pretty upset about the new porno laws. And he’s got those damn headaches all the time. . .”

  “He was hoping I would be searched again as a matter of routine and the stamp found. Or he might have even planned to suggest another search himself.”

  I put the stamp back into the pocket of my topcoat and returned it to the wall peg. “However, I wager that now Wiggins will attempt to unframe me.”

  That got McGillicutty’s attention. “Unframe?”

  “Yes. Because it is one thing to frame a simple private detective for murder, but it is quite another to attempt to do the same to a legitimate policeman who has the rank of detective-sergeant and an unblemished record. Too many questions would be asked, there would be too much probing, and the truth would probably come out. No, Wiggins has to unframe me now.”

  “And how is he going to do that?”

  “When he returns and sees that we have apparently not yet found the stamp, he will invent some reason for approaching my topcoat. He will surreptitiously remove the stamp.”

  Wiggins returned some five minutes later. “He’s a cop all right, Captain. A detective-sergeant.” Wiggins licked his lips. “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to hand him his topcoat and let him go. Right? We all made a mistake.” He moved to the topcoat and for perhaps two or three seconds his back effectively shielded it from our view.

  He turned and brought me the coat.

  McGillicutty and I studied the contours of Wiggins’ suit and probably arrived at the mutual suspicion that the small bulge in the right side pocket of his suitcoat was now formed by a rubber stamp.

  “Wiggins,” McGillicutty said, “what is that bulge in your right-hand pocket?”

  Wiggins did not look down. “Nothing, Captain. Nothing. Maybe my key ring or something.”

  McGillicutty was insistent. “Let’s see it, Wiggins.”

  “Captain,” I said. “When one finds a rubber stamp, can a stamp pad be far behind? You don’t suppose that if we looked in his locker, or perhaps in his automobile, we might find a stamp pad and that if this stamp pad were subjected to laboratory scrutiny we might even find on this pad several vestigial impressions of the words, ‘Sinners must pay’?”

  Wiggins lost his color. “Damn you, nobody has the right to search my car.” Then he stared at the revolver Captain McGillicutty had pointed at him and he pulled himself together. “I refuse to say another word until I see my lawyer.”

  Theobault rose and rubbed his huge hands. “If you don’t mind, Captain, I’d like to speak to my client alone.”

  Ernest Savage

  Mr. Fixit

  She didn’t even know who Dr. Mortimer was, but he had phoned and given her Mr. Fixit’s name. “For that leaky sink, and any other problem you’ve got. Yes, Mr. Fixit’s your man.”

  A touching and delicately woven story that will take you up to but not through “that light-filled door”. . .

  He hadn’t wanted to take the job, but she’d been so persuasive over the phone and had—somehow—sounded so much like Millie that he’d agreed to at least talk to her about it.

  But the next morning at her front door he still didn’t want the job and was prepared to tell her so when two things occurred at once—he got his first good look at her eyes, and the left-rear tire of his van parked in her driveway blew out with a loud bang.

  “Good heavens!” she said, recoiling a ladylike distance, her eyes wide and luminous. “How clever you are.”

  He had not, of course, staged the event, and either her naïveté or wit—whichever it might have been—annoyed him. But there were those eyes. How was it that frail and delicate women of a certain vintage had eyes of that special provenance?—from, say, Cartier’s? As Millie’s had been toward the end. Jewels glowing with a deep inner fire. You never saw them in the young or the fat or the healthy. Ah, the healthy.

  “Come in,” she said, pulling the door wide, but he still didn’t want to. And if that damn tire hadn’t blown out just then, he would’ve excused himself and driven away. But willy-nilly now, he was stuck in her driveway for at least a half hour and he might as well see what she wanted. He followed her into the dark hall and through a door to the kitchen. She had mentioned the kitchen over the phone.

  “There,” she said, pointing. “The sink. And cabinets.”

  Well indeed, there was work there—too much of it. He could see the stains of dry rot where the old linoleum butted against the cabinet base; which meant, of course, that he’d have to tear out everything down to the joists below and replace it all. Four or five hard days of work for one man and he didn’t want it; it was too soon, too soon after Millie’s death. He’d not yet found the new path to follow with his life—but surely, he kept thinking, it wasn’t more of this, more of the same. He turned, hard-faced.

  “I can recommend a man to—” The eyes stopped him cold, staring from the door. Did they never blink?

  “I wanted you,” she said firmly. “You were recommended. You are Mr. Fixit, are you not? Your van says so.”

  The legend MR. FIXIT was painted on the side of the van clearly visible through the kitchen windows. Yes, he was Mr. Fixit and had been for the five years Millie had spent dying. Befo
re her affliction, he’d run his little store downtown, but when she began needing his attention every several hours day and night, he tailored his work to suit that need. He could not have afforded outside help, and wouldn’t have wanted it anyway. Luckily he had, in earlier years, developed the skills necessary to do almost any household-repair job and he’d become a handyman, Mr. Fixit.

  But he did not intend to remain one, and with Millie gone a month now there was no need to. There were other things he could do, other places he could go, a whole world out there, and at 60 he still had time to explore it, to find his intended path. He knew it was not merely repairing kitchens.

  “Please,” she said; and he thought, well, this one last time, but by God she’ll pay for it.

  “It’ll be expensive,” he said gruffly, “and perhaps not worth it to you. I mean, the sink works at least, doesn’t it? So what if it leaks a little? I mean, why not just let it go? None of us live forever, ma’am, and no offense intended, but you—” Well, no, he couldn’t tell her her hold on life was palpably weak, even to a lay eye, that the new sink might not even arrive before—No, there were limits.

  “I want you to do it,” she said, almost imperiously, the large eyes blinking twice now, as though to hold back tears.

  “I charge seven dollars an hour,” he continued, thinking to blow her out of the water with the sheer cost. It was two dollars more than he’d ever charged before.

  “That’s all right,” she said.

  “Eight dollars if you watch me.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Nine dollars if you talk to me.”

  “Please—” She seemed frightened.

  “Ten dollars if you tell me how to do it!” His voice had crescendoed in unexpected anger and she backed slightly out of the room. “And I get paid every night before I leave,” he said. “In cash. Not a check, but cash.”

  “It’s all right,” she whispered.

  “Too damn many people have cheated me,” he said. “The laborer is worthy of his hire, but some people don’t seem to think so. You’d be surprised how many people in this town owe me money for work done!” His voice was rising again. “I collect in cash at the end of every day—do you understand?”