The Mystery Megapack: 25 Modern and Classic Mystery Stories

by Talley, Marcia

  I saw that he was emptying his pockets; the table sparkled with their hoard. Rings by the dozen, diamonds by the score; bracelets, pendants, aigrettes, necklaces, pearls, rubies, amethysts, sapphires; and diamonds always, diamonds in everything, flashing bayonets of light, dazzling me—blinding me—making me disbelieve because I could no longer forget. Last of all came no gem, indeed, but my own revolver from an inner pocket. And that struck a chord. I suppose I said something—my hand flew out. I can see Raffles now, as he looked at me once more with a high arch over each clear eye. I can see him pick out the cartridges with his quiet, cynical smile, before he would give me my pistol back again.

  “You mayn’t believe it, Bunny,” said he, “but I never carried a loaded one before. On the whole I think it gives one confidence. Yet it would be very awkward if anything went wrong; one might use it, and that’s not the game at all, though I have often thought that the murderer who has just done the trick must have great sensations before things get too hot for him. Don’t look so distressed, my dear chap. I’ve never had those sensations, and I don’t suppose I ever shall.”

  “But this much you have done before?” said I hoarsely.

  “Before? My dear Bunny, you offend me! Did it look like a first attempt? Of course I have done it before.”

  “Often?”

  “Well—no! Not often enough to destroy the charm, at all events; never, as a matter of fact, unless I’m cursedly hard up. Did you hear about the Thimbleby diamonds? Well, that was the last time—and a poor lot of paste they were. Then there was the little business of the Dormer house-boat at Henley last year. That was mine also—such as it was. I’ve never brought off a really big coup yet; when I do I shall chuck it up.”

  Yes, I remembered both cases very well. To think that he was their author! It was incredible, outrageous, inconceivable. Then my eyes would fall upon the table, twinkling and glittering in a hundred places, and incredulity was at an end.

  “How came you to begin?” I asked, as curiosity overcame mere wonder, and a fascination for his career gradually wove itself into my fascination for the man.

  “Ah! that’s a long story,” said Raffles. “It was in the Colonies, when I was out there playing cricket. It’s too long a story to tell you now, but I was in much the same fix that you were in tonight, and it was my only way out. I never meant it for anything more; but I’d tasted blood, and it was all over with me. Why should I work when I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together? Of course it’s very wrong, but we can’t all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with. Besides, you’re not at it all the time. I’m sick of quoting Gilbert’s lines to myself, but they’re profoundly true. I only wonder if you’ll like the life as much as I do!”

  “Like it?” I cried out. “Not I! It’s no life for me. Once is enough!”

  “You wouldn’t give me a hand another time?”

  “Don’t ask me, Raffles. Don’t ask me, for God’s sake!”

  “Yet you said you would do anything for me! You asked me to name my crime! But I knew at the time you didn’t mean it; you didn’t go back on me tonight, and that ought to satisfy me, goodness knows! I suppose I’m ungrateful, and unreasonable, and all that. I ought to let it end at this. But you’re the very man for me, Bunny, the—very—man! Just think how we got through tonight. Not a scratch—not a hitch! There’s nothing very terrible in it, you see; there never would be, while we worked together.”

  He was standing in front of me with a hand on either shoulder; he was smiling as he knew so well how to smile. I turned on my heel, planted my elbows on the chimney-piece, and my burning head between my hands. Next instant a still heartier hand had fallen on my back.

  “All right, my boy! You are quite right and I’m worse than wrong. I’ll never ask it again. Go, if you want to, and come again about mid-day for the cash. There was no bargain; but, of course, I’ll get you out of your scrape—especially after the way you’ve stood by me tonight.”

  I was round again with my blood on fire.

  “I’ll do it again,” I said, through my teeth.

  He shook his head. “Not you,” he said, smiling quite good-humoredly on my insane enthusiasm.

  “I will,” I cried with an oath. “I’ll lend you a hand as often as you like! What does it matter now? I’ve been in it once. I’ll be in it again. I’ve gone to the devil anyhow. I can’t go back, and wouldn’t if I could. Nothing matters another rap! When you want me, I’m your man!”

  And that is how Raffles and I joined felonious forces on the Ides of March.

  PINPRICK, by Skadi meic Beorh

  A wee girl with two pinpricks for a nose smiled at me through her narrow mansion window, her big black eyes glistening like carrion beetles in the morning sunshine. Her fingers and the stone sill where she stood were smeared with fresh blood. She had killed something, but her features showed a lunacy that would send her to relatives if what she had slain was human, and give her a slap on the wrist if ’twas only her dog.

  It turned out to be human—and ’twas my lot in life to be hired by the butler, a Mr. Renault, as the child’s personal coachman. My first assignment was, the following morning, to drive Charlotte from her home in Rathmines, Dublin through the Wicklow Mountains to her uncle’s manor in Corsillagh. It would be a long day’s journey forcing us to pass through Gleann na Gruagh, a gloomy glen haunted by highwaymen and other denizens of low social esteem. Under no circumstance whatever was I to allow her to exit the four-in-hand (her privy needs while traveling to be met with a chamber pot). I dozed an hour at most that night, my mind unable to extricate itself from wondering who the babe had axed to death that sunny morn.

  * * * *

  As one may imagine, when we reached the darkest portion of the glen we were indeed waylaid and told to stand and deliver, for ’twas our money or our lives. Charlotte swung open the door of the coach and smiled, and the masked highwaymen smiled with their eyes, taken aback at her sweetness. She then drew two flintlocks and slew them who had hailed us so boldly, a ball entering an eye socket of one, the breast of the other.

  “Pinprick!” I said. “Get back in! Quickly! They were not the only two cutthroats living here!”

  “I like that you call me ‘Pinprick,’ Mister Coachman,” she said as she swung herself back into her seat and slammed the door shut. “I have a crossbow and full quiver, Mister Coachman. What do you have up there?”

  “Nothing to your concern,” I replied as I snapped the reins so hard all four horses whinnied in anger. I figured now why I had been sent on the precarious journey alone. No need for extra servants when not required!

  “I don’t like mean people, Mister Coachman. You should be nice to me. My fingers do bad things to people who speak harshly. To me.”

  “So I hear,” I whispered, hoping she hadn’t heard me.

  “I heard you,” she said.

  * * * *

  Inexplicably, we escaped the glen without further incident. We were moving along at a fair clip when, to the curdling of my blood, I registered a piercing scream which nearly unseated me. It was followed by a “Stop!”

  Did I stop? Of course I stopped. My father went to his grave providing me with an education, which included knowing when I was out of my depth with terrible enfants.

  “There once was a man from Kilkennyyy,” Charlotte sang as she relieved herself behind a spiny blackthorn, “who thought he would never get anyyy…”

  I plugged my ears with my forefingers and closed my eyes. This was not happening to me. This was not happening to me.

  “Listen to my rhyme, Mister Coachman.”

  “Must I, Pinprick?” I heard myself ask.

  “If you choose not,” the wee murderess replied as she brushed my sleeve with fingers still bloodstained from the morning before. Why hadn’t someone washed her hands? God in Heaven! I begged my guardian angels to guide me saf
ely to her awaiting Uncle Pilchard. (An outrider had gone ahead with the revolting news.) I suddenly felt an indomitable angelic presence, which indeed was comforting, and my belief remained constant that God will not put upon His children any more than we can bear. But why had I been chosen, of those with far better credentials (fellow murderers, for example), to escort a diminutive Elizabeth Bathory! Surely this was another instance, as with Job, where the Devil had wagered with God concerning my ability to endure the unthinkable—and God had accepted the challenge!

  “Mister Coachman?”

  “Yes, Miss Pilchard?”

  “Please call me ‘Pinprick.’”

  “Yes, Miss Pinprick.”

  “‘Pinprick’ by itself will do.”

  “Right. Pinprick. What can I do for you?” I asked as I opened the coach door and released the stairs for her.

  “Well …” she replied as she rolled her eyes, “I’m hungry, and the basket of food prepared for me is not to my liking. I don’t care for soda bread and apples much.”

  My blood went icy. This meant that we had to stop again at Kilmacullough, which was only down the way, and purchase whatever would be to her heart’s delight.

  “I wish to use my crossbow and kill something to eat. Like Robin Hood,” she said.

  I went light-headed and fell against the lacquered coach, the sweat on my ungloved hand causing me to slip quickly along the surface so that my next contact was an eyebrow on the brass lamp.

  “Mister Coachman? Did you see something that frightened you?” she asked me as she snapped her head to gaze into a nearby stand of gorse. “Ooooo! You’re bleeding!”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I did see something frightening,” I replied, trying to staunch the seepage of blood with my kerchief.

  “What was it? What did you see that terrified you?” she asked as she bounced on her toes, an unsettling glee in her voice.

  Not answering her, which made her pinch her lips together and glare at me, I found strength enough to help her back to her seat, and to find mine. It would have only been a few more leagues and we would have arrived, safe if not sound. But now we needed to stop again so that she could kill something. What would she kill? And how would we cook it? We would be all night reaching our destination at this rate, and my post would most likely be lost. I may even be put into custody for kidnapping.

  We drove on.

  “Stop at the wee wood near Kilmacull, Mister Coachman,” cried Charlotte as she thrust her head out of the window. “We’re near there now. I can tell by the sweeter air. And, we just passed Bloodland.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “Bloodland?” I cried, trying to direct my voice backward at full gallop.

  “It’s nothing, Mister Coachman,” she cried back, and we rode on in silence as I reflected upon driving straight past ‘the wee wood near Kilmacull,’ but then considered that a crossbow arrow could easily pierce the roof of the coach.

  “Good thinking,” she said.

  I froze where I sat.

  * * * *

  “Here, Mister Coachman. Pull over here. See the wee wood?”

  Seeing a copse of oak growing in front of farmland, I said not a word as I slowed the team, dismounted and prepared to water them. I was glad ’twas near Summer Solstice, for we had many hours of light left though my pocket watch showed half past five.

  “Do you like my crossbow, Mister Coachman?”

  I turned and saw that the medieval weapon which had singly altered the face of warfare in that era was now pointed, loaded with an arrow, at my privy parts. I hopped like a man on fire and hid myself behind the nearest tree.

  “I wasn’t going to shoot you, Mister Coachman.”

  “What were you going … going to do then? Frighten me to death?”

  “Maybe. And careful with your tone,” she replied. “I have funny fingers. They like to dance.” Then she tromped off into the wood, likely glad they had dressed her in knee pants.

  * * * *

  The team ’ostled properly, I climbed back into my seat and, shaking like sheep fuzz in a breeze, packed my oom-paul pipe with a rich cherry tobacco, lit it, and tried to relax.

  “Mister Coachman!”

  I do not remember taking myself down from the four-in-hand. Nor do I remember running into the wood. After Charlotte’s scream coloring the surrounds like a nightmare, my first recollection is seeing the handsome lad crawling toward me, his eyes bulging as he gasped for air, an arrow piercing his left jugular and spine.

  “I got one!” Charlotte cried. “One of the shepherd lads! Oh, will he be tender enough to eat? I hope I haven’t made a mistake, Mister Coachman.” With her words she fired another arrow from the evil contraption, this one squarely entering his heart. He fell with a thump to the dewy grass.

  “Mmmm, smells wonderful, doesn’t it? I so love the scent of freshly spilled blood. They wouldn’t let me eat …”

  I had the crossbow in one hand and Charlotte in the other, dragging her by the collar back to the coach. How I accomplished it I do not to this day know, but soon I had the child tied securely and placed in her seat. Later I wished I had gagged her, but chose not to stop yet again to risk some kind of mishap such as a bite to my own jugular, or perhaps the employment of some hidden weapon I was unaware of.

  * * * *

  Two tall footmen, several servants, and Charlotte’s uncle all appeared as if they greeted the ‘Ooser’ itself as we arrived. When I was ushered into the Great House, for fear that I was dying, a quick glimpse into an outsized wall mirror showed me the reason for their pallid complexions. Though I knew the reflected figure to be me, the green skin and disheveled hair of a lunatic were completely incongruent with my usual demeanor.

  “Sir!” Lord Perrault whispered as he waved all servants but his footmen away. “What is the meaning of your arrival here with my niece?”

  “Arrival?” I asked, still very much dazed.

  “Aye! Were you not properly briefed?”

  “What … should I have been briefed about, sir?” I managed to say.

  Lord Perrault looked to his footmen and the few family members who had entered the room. He then turned back to me.

  “Based upon your, ah, curriculum vitae, shall we say,” the rich man replied, “you were hired to perform a certain service for the family.”

  “I am afraid I do not follow you, sir,” I replied. “I have done as requested. The child is quite safe, though I do apologize for her being bound. I can explain.”

  The gentleman closed his eyes as beads of sweat erupted over his features. “Are … you not John Copper, newly released from Dublin Castle gaol to, shall we say, serve the Pilchard-Perrault clan with a most necessary but particularly unsavory duty?”

  “Copper? Copper, did you say? No, my surname is Coppe. I am John Coppe.”

  “Oh God in Heaven,” he replied. “There has been a terrible mistake. The rush and bustle of yesterday, surely. All the confusion. May … may I ask, Mr. Coppe, how came you to be hired?”

  “A reputable reference made an appointment for me a fortnight ago,” I said.

  “That damned butler Renault!” came Perrault’s reply. “His infernal loss of memory has caused us far too much pain this time round!”

  “Sir,” I said, “if I may be permitted. I am quite sure that I do not understand what has happened. Mr. Renault was quite cordial, if a bit flustered. Might I inquire into the particulars, even a wee bit, in order to clear my own mind?”

  Lord Perrault again looked about him, and, I assume, receiving a familial consolation invisible to me, perhaps because of my own bedraggled state, turned back and placed his large hand on my shoulder.

  “You sir—or I should say the murderer John Copper—were hired to dispatch that devil Charlotte somewhere on the highway from Dublin.”

  “Not my sweet Pinprick,” I whispered.

  “Say you something, Mr. Coppe?”

  * * * *

  Having with a purloined bag of currency made amends to
the clans of the two murdered thieves (one of which, ironically, had been John Copper deciding not to make himself present for his Pilchard Manor assignment once released from gaol for that particular duty), Charlotte and I today abide in a comfortable stone cottage hidden in the olden oaks and ash of Gleann na Gruagh. Though my education and my father’s memory may be sullied by my present actions, I could not see the disturbed child assassinated over a condition of mind completely out of her control.

  We do well for ourselves when the affluent travel through this perpetually shadowed woodland. Furthermore, Charlotte has taught me to fashion and fletch crossbow arrows.

  ~ John Coppe, Highwayman

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Skadi meic Beorh is the author of the satirical novel The Pirates of St. Augustine, the short story collection Always After Thieves Watch, and the reader-friendly dictionary Pirate Lingo, all from Wildside Press. His poetry/prose collection Golgotha has been released through Punkin House Press. New Irish Poems is a forthcoming collection, also through Wildside Press. Having lived in California, Maine, Vermont, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Ireland, he now makes his home in Historic St. Augustine with leather-worker Ember Goodacre.

  THE RED HERRING, by William Hope Hodgson

  S.S. Calypso

  August 10

  We docked this morning, and the customs gave us the very devil of a turnout; but they found nothing.

  “We shall get you, one of these days, Captain Gault,” the head of the searchers told me. “We’ve gone through you pretty carefully; but I’m not satisfied. We’ve had information that I could swear was sound; but where you’ve hidden the stuff I’ll confess stumps me.”

  “Don’t be so infernally ready to give the dog the bad name, and then add insult to injury by trying to hang him,” I said. “You know you’ve never caught me yet trying to shove stuff through.”