The Comfortable Coffin

by Richard S. Prather

  Once more there was a period of silence, broken only by the shuffling of men and of whispered orders. Leung Fah felt a round, wooden object thrust into her hands. A moment later, a box of matches was pushed into her fingers. A man bent over her, so close that his voice breathed a thought directly into her ears, almost without the aid of sound.

  “The house of the Commissioner of Public Safety,” he said.

  The shuffling ceased. The voice of Sahm Seuh said, “That is all. Go, and wait at the appointed places. Hurry back, and there will be much gold. In order to avoid suspicion, you will leave here one at a time, at intervals of five minutes. A man at the door will control your passing. There will be no lights, no conversation.”

  Leung Fah stood in the darkness, packed with people whom she did not know, reeking in the stench of stale perspiration. At intervals, she heard a whispered command. After each whisper the door would open and one of the persons in that narrow, crowded staircase would slip from the suffocating atmosphere into the relative coolness of the street.

  At length, the door was in front of her. Hands pushed against her. The door swung open, and she found herself in The Alley of the Sky Horse once more, shuffling along with demure eyes downcast, and a face which was the face of a sleepwalker.

  Leung Fah went only so far as the house where the sacrifices were being offered to the spirit of the departed. The ashes of the sacrificial fire were still smoldering in the narrow street, drifted about by vagrant gusts of wind. Leung Fah knew that in this house there would be mourners, that any who were of the faith and desired to join in sending thought waves to the Ancestor in the Beyond would be welcome.

  She climbed the stairs, and heard chanting. Around the table were grouped seven nuns with heads as bald as a sharp razor could make them. At another table, flickering peanut-oil lamps illuminated a painting of the ancestor who had, in turn, joined his ancestors. The table was loaded with sacrifices. There were some twenty people in the room who intermittently joined in chanting prayers.

  Leung Fah unostentatiously joined this group. Shortly thereafter, she moved quietly to the stairs which led to the roof, and within thirty minutes had worked her way back to the roof of the house of the three candles. She sought a deep shadow, merged herself within it, and became motionless.

  Slowly the hours of the night wore away. Leung Fah began to listen. Her ears, strained toward the East, then heard a peculiar sound. It was like distant thunder over the mountains, a thunder which rumbles ominously.

  With ominous rapidity the murmur of sound in the East grew into a roar. She could hear the screams of people in the streets below, could hear babies, aroused from their sleep as they were snatched up by frantic parents, crying fretfully.

  Still, Leung Fah remained motionless. The planes swept by overhead. Here and there in the city bright red flares suddenly blossomed into blood-red pools of crimson. And wherever there was a flare, an enemy plane swooped down, and a moment later a mushroom of flame rose up against the night sky, followed by a reverberating report which shook the very foundations of the city.

  Leung Fah crept to the edge of the roof where she might peer over and watch The Sky Horse Alley. She saw surreptitious figures darting from shadow to shadow, slipping through the portals of the house of three candles.

  At length a shadow, more bulky than the rest, the shadow of a fat man running on noiseless feet, crossed the street, and was swallowed up within the entrance of the house of three candles. The planes still roared overhead.

  Leung Fah placed her box of red fire on the roof and tore off the paper. With calm, untrembling hands, she struck a match to flame, the flame to the flare.

  In the crimson pool of light which illuminated all the housetops, Leung Fah fled from one rooftop to another. And yet it seemed she had only been running a few seconds when a giant plane materialized overhead and came roaring down out of the sky. She heard the scream of a torpedo. The entire street rocked under the impact of the terrific explosion.

  Leung Fah was flung to her knees. Her eardrums seemed shattered, her eyes about to burst from their sockets under the terrific rush of pressure which swept along with the blast.

  Day was dawning when she recovered enough to limp down to The Sky Horse Alley. The roar of the planes was receding into the distance.

  Leung Fah hobbled slowly and painfully to the place where the house of the three candles had stood. There was now a deep hole in The Sky Horse Alley, a hole surrounded by bits of wreckage and torn bodies.

  A blackened torso lay almost at her feet. She examined it intently. It was all that was left of Sahm Seuh.

  She turned and limped back up The Sky Horse Alley, her eyes downcast and expressionless, her face as though it had been carved of wood.

  The sun rose in the East, and the inhabitants of Canton, long since accustomed to having the grim presence of death at their side, prepared to clear away the bodies and debris, resume once more their daily course of ceaseless activity.

  Leung Fah lifted the bamboo yoke to her sore shoulders. Aiiii ah-h-h it was painful, but one must work if one would eat.

  It Wouldn’t Be Fair

  Jack Finney

  “Suppose you found this guy dead,” said Charley. He stood beside the lieutenant’s desk, hands in pockets, rocking gently on his feet, a lean young man with an intelligent face. “Murdered. Shot and poisoned in his library.”

  “The library?”

  “His library; big estate in England.”

  The lieutenant swung his swivel chair toward the window behind him. The morning light cut across one shoulder onto a face made thin by years of insufficient sleep and grooved from decades of worry. “Out of our jurisdiction.”

  “You investigate anyway,” Charley said cheerfully, “and find that the dead guy’s wife is a homicidal maniac, that her husband kicked her out into a blizzard on Christmas Eve, after squandering her fortune on another woman, and that she happens to own the Webley-Vebley .12-12 pistol which fired the bullet found in his brain.”

  “Someday,” said the lieutenant, “you’ll be too smart for your own good. Whatever you’re up to or after, I have a feeling, amounting to a conviction, that the answer is going to be no. I never heard of a Webley-Vebley.”

  “Annie would not be surprised.” Charley took a paper clip from the desk and, lowering his head, began carefully bending it straight. “Furthermore, the dead man’s wife had run a full page ad in the local newspaper threatening to kill him, she was alone with him during the last ten minutes of his life, and in her handbag are three African darts, each tipped with a poison which kills instantly by turning the blood into putty. You suspect anybody?”

  The lieutenant shrugged. “Looks like maybe the wife did it.”

  “Typical police stupidity.” Charley tossed the paper clip at the polished spittoon on the floor and it hit with a ping, then rattled inside. “Annie has often pointed out to me that we constantly leap to conclusions on just such flimsy evidence.”

  The lieutenant leaned forward, hands clasped, forearms on the desk. “Okay,” he said coldly, “just who is this Annie?”

  “Annie is a brain. Of a frightening power. A marvel at murder. But a brain bounded on the north by gorgeous brown hair, on the south by a magnificent coast line, and—”

  “Spare me,” said the lieutenant. “I am an old, old man. Just how does this mighty brain work?”

  “While we absurd police, satisfied with our ridiculous evidence, are lounging around the station house or stealing fruit from innocent peddlers, Annie is finding the more subtle clues which blundering police methods invariably miss. And she discovers presently what she suspected all along.” Charley hitched his chair closer to the lieutenant’s desk. “The wife is innocent. The murdered man’s aunt who raised him from childhood, sacrificed everything to put him through college, and who has been completely paralyzed for thirty-five years except for her ears which she can still wiggle slightly—”

  “She did it?”

  “Ex
actly. The rare Webley-Vebley is the only known pistol with a trigger so sensitive it can be fired by a flick of the ear.”

  The lieutenant leaned back in his chair, and gazed at the ceiling for a considerable time. “Colhaus,” he said finally. “You know Colhaus in the Thirteenth Precinct? He has a daughter—”

  “No,” said Charley, “Annie. I am not interested in anyone’s daughter but Annie. You may not understand—”

  “I might,” said the lieutenant. “Unlikely as it may seem, I was young once. The remedy in a case like yours—I should say the cure—is to marry the girl.”

  “I can’t.” Charley’s smile disappeared, and his face looked thinner. “In spite of some success during my six years as a member of Homicide, Annie regards me as only a reasonably well-qualified moron in the field of murder investigation. From her experience,” he said bitterly, “covering hundreds of cases, she has formed a very low opinion of police and their methods.”

  The lieutenant gestured with his thumb toward a huge, oak-framed display cabinet which hung on the wall opposite. Its green felt surface, under the glass, was paved with dozens of overlapping photographs and deadly mementos: cruelly sharp photos of bodies in every state of violent death; sullen-faced men and women, struggling or passive, in the arms of the police; actual pistols and blackjacks wired in place.

  “You were with me on those,” said the lieutenant. “Some of them. You did good work, sometimes. Tell her about them.”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “Crude and slipshod work. We often arrested and convicted the first guy we suspected. Sometimes, in fact, the only suspect. And often very obviously the obvious suspect. Do you realize what that means?”

  “Tell me.”

  “They were innocent.”

  The lieutenant smiled bleakly. “Yes? What about the Crowley case? Clear-cut.”

  “It was,” said Charley gravely, “but it took two weeks to break. Perhaps you thought that was fast? Tell me. You sometimes stop to eat, on a case? Even sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fool. There is no time for anything but drinking. Naturally, you are pitifully slow.”

  “This Annie is faster?”

  “She often solves cases a full forty-eight pages before Perry Mason.”

  The lieutenant sighed. “Just what did you have in mind?”

  “Well, sir.” Charley selected another paper clip. “Single-handed I have been unable to convince Annie that the murders of fiction, filled with brilliant deductions and subtle clues, have nothing to do with the facts of life. I have told her about our cases. They are dull. No African darts. No guns concealed in the wall which fire when the first frost contracts the woodwork. No hypodermic needles which inject a chemical freezing the blood to dry ice and causing veins to explode. We don’t even seem to find any footprints. So what does that mean? The answer is obvious to Annie. We are missing something. We are trampling countless delicate clues under our big flat feet. Convicting innocent men on obvious, ridiculous clues while fiends, ingenious beyond our poor capacity to imagine, are lounging around the city laughing at us. Lieutenant, a man has to have respect from his wife.”

  “So?”

  “So I thought, sir, we’d take Annie along on the next case. Show her a real murder—”

  “No.” The lieutenant stood up, walked out from behind his desk, and gestured at the walls of his office. “This is not a book from the rental library,” he said, “with every killing an excursion trip.” With his other hand he gestured at the window toward the police garage three stories below, where a motorcycle idled, its vibrations gently rattling the windowpane. “This is Center Street, Police Headquarters; real police with work to do, not a picnic for amateur mystery-story—Charley, you know better.”

  Charley stood up and took his hat from the lieutenant’s desk. “I guess so. It’s too bad though; Della Street goes everywhere with Perry Mason.”

  “Colhaus—”

  “No,” said Charley, “Annie.” He put on his hat and stood for a moment, looking at the floor. “I rather expected this. Which brings me to my final hope.” He reached inside his suit coat and brought out a bright-green-jacketed book, which he had held concealed under his arm. “I would like you to read this. The thrilling adventures of Hercule Poirot.”

  “Why?” the lieutenant demanded.

  “It’s a very fascinating story. And I would like you to finish it—” he hesitated, “—and before you come with me to Annie’s tomorrow night.”

  The lieutenant stared at Charley, his eyes narrowed. “Someday,” he said, “you will be too smart for—”

  “It’s my only hope.” Charley opened the door and began backing out. “My only chance is that your gray hairs and ancient wisdom will succeed where I have failed—” the door was closing, “—in persuading Annie that the police are as i competent, in a much duller way, as Agatha Christie.”

  Annie’s living room, Charley had often noticed, was feminine and suited her perfectly. But he was not prepared, the following evening, for what it did to the lieutenant. The lieutenant—surrounded by dainty, soft-glowing lamps, pastel-tinted slip covers, bright modern paintings—looked as out of place as a bishop in a pool hall.

  But Annie was superb. She sat gracefully curled in a corner of the davenport, her hair, as always, even more gloriously brunette than Charley remembered. Her softly tanned face was eager, smiling and alive. Her large, blue and beautiful eyes were animated. She seemed confident.

  “The lieutenant read Hercule Poirot,” Charley announced. “Loved it.”

  “Oh?” Annie looked interested; she smiled. “Did you figure it out?”

  “No,” said the lieutenant.

  “You mean, not till the end.”

  “I mean,” said the lieutenant—he took a swallow of his drink, “—that I never did get it. I read the book. I finished it. Read the last chapter twice. And I still don’t know who killed Aaron DeCourcey.”

  “But, Lieutenant. It said. It said Robert did it; Robert, the adopted son. He confessed.”

  “I know. We get those confessions all the time; they don’t mean a thing.” The lieutenant paused, took a thoughtful sip of his drink, then spoke decisively. “I think maybe this Lacy guy did it: Lacy Spreckles.”

  “But—”

  “It figures,” said the lieutenant. “He hated the guy, he bought the gun, he had a fake alibi, he needed the money, he was about to be written out of the will, he said he’d do it, nobody else was—”

  Annie recovered her voice. “But, Lieutenant! He couldn’t have done it! Don’t you remember? About the sundial?”

  “Look, young lady; we had a case two months ago—”

  “Oh, those. Lieutenant, don’t you remember?” said Annie pleadingly. “He and Lady Gwen were in the garden—”

  “Sure I remember! But I didn’t get it.”

  “But it’s so simple.” She forgave him with a smile. “He and Lady Gwen noticed on the sundial in the garden that it was exactly three-thirty. She remarked on it, remember? Then they figured out that that was sun time, two minutes slower than real time, so it was actually three-thirty-two, don’t you see? But then Hercule figured out that the sundial was over three hundred years old, and during that time the revolution of the earth changed or something—”

  “That’s the part I didn’t get.”

  “Well, neither did I, exactly. But anyway, the revolution changed the earth’s relation to the sun, so the sundial was really correct, don’t you see? It really was three-thirty, so Lacy couldn’t possibly have done it.”

  “I thought,” said Charley tactfully, “that it could have been Lady Jane.”

  “No.” Annie reached out to tuck Charley’s tie neatly inside his coat. “It couldn’t have been her, either. Remember she was in the drawing room talking to Blake? The brother-in- law? And he noticed how the sun glinted on her hair bringing out the delicate tones of red and gold? Remember?”

  “I guess so,” said Ch
arley.

  “Well,” said Annie happily, “don’t you see then? It was cloudy all day.”

  “Cloudy?”

  “Oh, Charley!” She leaned forward impatiently and began ticking off points on her fingertips. “There was no sun all day except once, for a second or so. So if Blake saw the sun on Lady Jane’s hair, it must have been three-thirty. Because that was the only time Lacy and Lady Gwen could have told time by the sundial in the garden!” Annie paused. “Lieutenant,” she appealed, “you see that, don’t you?”

  “I guess so,” said the lieutenant in a strangled voice, “except—well, maybe the sun was out some other time, too. And nobody noticed it.”

  Annie slumped back on the davenport. “Of course not,” she said hopelessly.

  “But why?” said the lieutenant

  “Because! It just couldn’t, that’s all!”

  The lieutenant glanced at Charley. “But why?” he said plaintively. “Why? Just tell me why, that’s all!”

  “Lieutenant,” said Annie with dangerous calm, “don’t be absurd. The sun couldn’t because—why, it wouldn’t be fair.”

  There was a long silence during which the lieutenant worked carefully at squeegeeing the moisture from the side of his glass with a forefinger.

  Finally, Charley looked up and spoke. “Maybe,” he said pleasantly, “they commit murders differently in England.”

  “Yes,” said the lieutenant, “they have rules.” He turned to Annie. “Look, young lady. In twenty years on the force I have never had a single sundial in any case I’ve ever been on or ever heard about. And the earth keeps right on revolving in the same old way. The way murders really happen, a guy gets knocked in the head, stabbed with a knife, or shot with a gun. Once in a while, poisoned. Whoever did it beats it, and we go out and look for him till we find him. That’s all there is to it, nine times out of ten. Clues, yes. Hard to find, sometimes? Certainly. But no delicate subtle clues like sundials, and no split-second alibis. Believe me, murders are practically never committed, and they are never, never solved the way you read about in detective stories.” The lieutenant paused and took a long drink from his empty glass.