EQMM, May 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Auguste produced his ace. The distressed gentleman would have swept off his hat and bowed in deep appreciation at such a coup—holding out the hat, of course, for tangible recognition. Auguste was particularly proud of this coup, especially as it had involved no visits to Italian communities where he might be forced to partake of their cuisine. “There is an Italian man of middle years working in Romanos. He speaks excellent English and could well by his manner have been an actor."

  "Does he answer to the name of Fantino?"

  Uncertain whether this was a joke, Auguste decided to take it seriously. “No,” he admitted. “But then, he wouldn't."

  Egbert Rose laughed, put in a good humour again. “What about our clergyman? Any signed confessions to Gabrielle Flower's death?"

  "No, but he was living at the time of the murder in the village of Lower Potwell. I have checked it, and it is not only in Warwickshire but next to the village where Miss Gabrielle Flower was brought up. He could easily have been the childhood sweetheart."

  He waited for the inspector to congratulate him, but was disappointed.

  "Are you cooking up red herrings for me, Auguste?"

  "Mock turtle soup,” Auguste replied automatically, flustered by the sharp note in the inspector's voice, and then realising his mistake. “My apologies, Inspector. That is on the luncheon menu."

  Egbert Rose was unrelenting. “No real turtles around?"

  He looked round as though expecting to see several turtles on their backs awaiting execution, Auguste thought crossly. Fifty years ago, in the days when Francatelli cooked for the queen, that might have been the case. This, however, was a different age, when his cookery instruction to “procure a fine lively turtle weighing about 120 lbs” had produced no problem at all for the enthusiastic cook. Nowadays, with the pace of the London life, kitchens were hard put to it to find the time to produce even mock turtle soup. Hardly progress. Even as this thought passed through Auguste's mind, something stirred, however. He could almost see the distressed gentleman sitting at a table as he had done that evening waiting eagerly for his dinner.

  "Mock turtle soup!” he exclaimed.

  "So you said. Too early in the morning, thank you."

  "No, no. Perhaps the distressed gentleman was providing mock turtle soup with these three crimes."

  "Not sure I follow you,” Egbert Rose said cautiously

  "I don't yet follow myself,” Auguste admitted excitedly, “but I am tracking the turtle."

  "Well done. Perhaps you'd take me with you, if you'd be so kind."

  Auguste tried to do so. “Sir William Taylor is a real turtle, is he not?"

  "Mr. Didier...” the inspector began threateningly.

  "Please bear with me,” Auguste pleaded. “This soup takes time to prepare. Whether or not he murdered his first wife, as I believe he did, he remains real. Phelps also could have seen and recognised him recently."

  "True,” Egbert Rose admitted.

  Encouraged, Auguste continued. “Our clergyman, too, is a real turtle. Whether or not he was also a murderer, he was present at the crime. Phelps could also have seen and recognised him recently."

  "Obviously."

  Auguste hurried on. “That leaves one candidate for mock turtle. Giovanni Fantino."

  "Because we haven't found him yet,” the inspector whipped back crossly. “It doesn't make him mock. He could be that waiter at Romanos or any other of the hundreds of aging Italians in London."

  "But what if he isn't?” Auguste said.

  "Dead, you mean?"

  "Isn't made of real turtle. Suppose he always was mock, and a purée of turtle herbs was added to confuse us. Mary Bracket was a child at the time of the murder. She said her mother had told her the story. Who told the mother, though? And who told Montague Phelps? Remember that after the crime, the mother made some investigations herself and then left London with her daughter, who has only just returned here."

  "So she's a mock turtle, is she?” Egbert was getting impatient. “Get to the point, Auguste. You mean Miss Bracket saw Fantino in London?"

  "No. She saw the distressed gentleman. He implied but didn't say he'd seen the murderer he feared.” In his mind's eye he could see Phelps nodding approvingly.

  Egbert Rose clutched his head. “You mean Phelps was Fantino?"

  "There was no Fantino. Did anybody at the Yard check to see if there was such an actor? Even if there was, he didn't kill Adolphus Bracket. Once begun, the myth of Fantino just grew. Actors at his level were coming and going all the time. There was no proof in fact that Adolphus Bracket had been killed by someone at the Albion. But there was a deep suspicion in the widow's mind which she passed on to her daughter. The daughter returned to London and saw Montague Phelps. The soup that had been simmering in her mind for nineteen years now boiled over."

  "So who did kill Bracket?"

  "The distressed gentleman, Montague Phelps,” Auguste said sadly. The old rogue had been not a lovable rogue at all, but a most unlovable murderer, who had killed the man whom he believed stood in his way to advancement.

  Egbert Rose looked taken aback. “So who murdered him?"

  "A greatly distressed daughter, Inspector,” Auguste replied reluctantly, as he had liked Mary Bracket. “Through the need for revenge on the man who had, in effect, taken both parents from her so early."

  Egbert Rose thought about this carefully, and then sighed. “The trouble with you, Mr. Didier, is that you will complicate things. I come here about one murder, and you serve up the most likely solutions to four."

  "A salmagundi of four turtles, Inspector,” Auguste said indignantly, “and none of them is mock."

  (c)2008 byAmy Myers

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: MS. GRIMSHANK REGRETS by Nancy Pickard

  Nancy Pickard's most recent suspense novel, The Virgin of SmallPlains, was published to rave reviews and garnered a slew of awards, including the Reader's Choice Award, the Agatha Award, and nominations for the Edgar, Dilys, and Macavity awards. The paperback edition of the book appeared in 2007. Lately, the Kansas author has been taking timeto write short stories; we've got another of her clever tales in store for later this year!

  My dear niece Sarah,

  While I do appreciate your mother's effort to encourage you to write thank-you notes, I regret to say that your latest one was a bit of a mess. I mean this literally, not cruelly, dear. I realize you are “only” ten, but that is no excuse for sloppy work. Even a child such as yourself, with a so-called “learning disability” can surely do better than that.

  Let me list the ways:

  1. Wash your hands before you begin. Fingerprints, at your age, are no longer “precious."

  2. The book I gave you is en-titled Anne of Green Gables,not Ann of Green Gables.Proofreading is next to cleanliness, my dear.

  3. You wrote that you read the book and “loved it,” but a few examples of things you liked would go a long way toward proving the truth of that claim.

  4. Do not ask an old woman, “How are you?” The answer is rarely, “Fine.” Write, instead, “I hope this finds you well."

  I hope this letter finds you willing to do better next time.

  Your loving Great-Aunt,

  Phyllis

  —

  P.S. Please tell your mother not to waste her budget on such fine stationery next time. You are but a young girl. Dime-store writing paper will do just fine for you.

  * * * *

  Phyllis Shank laid down her fountain pen, folded the notepaper in half, and inserted it in its matching envelope, which she then addressed, sealed, and stamped. She had only two more mailings to prepare on this lovely, sunny Saturday morning in June, and a stack of similar notes already completed. She would have looked forward to this weekly task were it not for the sad fact that the world needed so much improvement and she had so little time to devote to it, what with her gardening and volunteer work now that she was retired from teaching. But at least now that she was n
o longer molding 9th-grade minds—or what passed for minds—she had this opportunity to address others who might benefit from her counsel.

  * * * *

  Dear Mrs. Carson,

  Your novel, Love's Mystery, came highly recommended to me by a person I had long considered to be a friend. After reading only the first chapter, I now know two things that I did not know before:

  1. No one who would recommend any of your books to me could possibly know me very well. Apparently, she is not the friend I thought she was, a mistake for which I do not blame her, but only myself. You may rest assured that I have also written to her to tell her so.

  2. Publishing standards have declined shockingly, which I pointed out in my letter to your publisher. It is clear that you have some talent, which makes it even sadder that you would waste it on such a tasteless story with such offensive language in it. I'm sure you do not use those words in your own life, so I cannot imagine why you would inflict them on your would-be readers.

  I regret to tell you that I will never check out any of your other books from the library, nor can I in good conscience recommend them to my acquaintances.

  Yours truly,

  Phyllis Shank

  * * * *

  Proofread. Fold. Insert. Address. Seal. Stamp.

  From the stack of offenses she had collected from the past week, Phyllis picked up the thickest pile. It was composed of several articles from the local newspaper, each article marked up with strong red ink—grammar, punctuation, and spelling corrected, questions of fact circled, composition corrected with examples of improved style. When necessary, beside the reporter's byline she wrote in legible block letters, “AAH?” which stood for “Affirmative Action Hire?” She did not have to explain the acronym, or even pen an accompanying note for this mailing, because the editor, Marvin Frolich, could count on receiving a full packet from her every Monday. He was, by now, after several years, cognizant of her abbreviations. The source of this latest mailing would pose no mystery to him.

  Phyllis sat back, satisfied with her morning's labor.

  Then she gathered the creamy white envelopes into a neat stack and marched them outside to her mailbox for her post woman, Diane Stevens, to pick up. Phyllis always tried to time her arrival at the box with Ms. Stevens's arrival, so that she could let her know of any problems with previous deliveries, or remind the girl to tuck in her blue shirt or comb her hair. Yes, it was a hot job, and yes, it was no doubt difficult to keep one's clothing tidy while carrying a heavy bag, but that was no excuse for arriving looking as if she had dressed in her truck. She was, after all, an official representative of the United States Postal Service and the residents along her route were her employers.

  Lately, they seemed to miss each other, sometimes by what seemed to Phyllis to be only seconds.

  This time, Phyllis lingered longer than usual by the mailbox.

  When Ms. Stevens still didn't come, Phyllis sighed, raised the flag to indicate there was mail to pick up, and returned to her house.

  It seemed a mere moment later when she glanced outside and saw that the flag was down again.

  * * * *

  On Monday, Sarah Bodine read the note from her Great-Aunt Phyllis and started to cry. When her mother, Amy, took the note from Sarah's shaking hands, she started to rage.

  "I could kill her for doing that!” Amy told Sarah's dad that evening.

  "How bad was it this time, and how did Sarah get hold of it?"

  "You read it, you'll see how bad it is! Sarah read it because she got home before I did and picked up the mail before I could get to it first and throw the damned thing away."

  "Why does your aunt do things like that?"

  "Because she's a bitter, nasty old witch who doesn't have a kind bone in her body! She called Sarah's learning disability ‘so-called'—"

  "What? My God—"

  "Yes, and she said our stationery was too good for Sarah.” Amy's face, tearful by now, twisted with bitterness. “According to Aunt Phyllis, dime-store paper is good enough for Sarah.” She blew her nose on the tissue her husband handed her. “Sarah and I picked out that stationery together, and we picked the best we could afford, because we agreed we wanted to show people how much we appreciate it when they give us presents."

  "If there is such a thing as karma...” her husband said, letting the implication linger. His wife took up his sentence and finished it for him, “...then my Aunt Phyllis is going to die of a thousand paper cuts!"

  He almost laughed at that, because it sounded so silly, but then he looked over at a photo of their ten-year-old daughter, thought of how hard reading was for her, how she struggled with spelling words and composing paragraphs, and a rage to equal his wife's came over him.

  "She was a teacher!” Hal Bodine was indignant. “For how many years?"

  "A hundred and fifty,” Amy said with a half-sob, half-laugh.

  "Would you mind if I had a word with dear Aunt Phyllis?” he asked, his tone dripping cold contempt for the woman.

  "No!” Amy exclaimed, and then she said gratefully, “I wouldn't mind at all. Somebody needs to say something."

  * * * *

  Sybil Carson opened the creamy envelope with some trepidation.

  Fan mail was such a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it could lift her spirits on a bad writing day. It could propel her back to her writing feeling as if she had magic in her fingers. Mail like that made her feel blessed and grateful to get to do what she did for a living, however small that living was these days. But it could also plunge her into black despair on days like today. She was already teetering on the edge of giving up on her latest novel, even though she couldn't afford to give up. One more hard knock might bowl her over. It wasn't as if she could easily find another line of work. For one thing, she wasn't young, and for another she didn't have any other skills. She'd been writing novels for thirty years, always thinking the next one would make enough money to let her relax a little bit. So far, that hadn't happened. People assumed writers were all rich, but she made just enough to barely hang on until she fulfilled her next book contract. And she wasn't even doing that this time. This book had been due three months earlier, but the story just wouldn't come. She had tried every writing trick she knew to fool herself into getting going again, and still nothing happened on the page that anybody would ever want to read. If she didn't meet her deadlines, she didn't get paid. If she didn't get paid, neither did her bills...

  Please, she thought as she slowly opened the pretty envelope, please be a nice note. I just can't take any criticism right now. Nasty “fan” mail felt like a slap out of the blue, like a hand shoving out of the envelope or computer to strike her hard enough to leave marks on her psyche, if not on her face.

  Sybil pulled the notepaper out and unfolded it.

  Maybe I shouldn't read any fan mail right now, she thought, before looking down at the words. Maybe I shouldn't take the chance of letting it demoralize me. But then she chided herself, Don't be a baby. Sticks and stones...

  Sybil read it clear through, and then laid it gently down in her lap.

  Words can never hurt me?

  What an abominable lie that was and always had been.

  Maybe, she thought, as a sob rose in her throat, I should write a novel about killing one of my readers...

  * * * *

  "Hey, Boss, Ms. Grimshank rides again."

  Marvin Frolich's secretary tossed the weekly Monday missive onto his desktop with a grin. They had dubbed their “volunteer” editor “Ms. Grimshank” as a play on her real name, which was Phyllis Shank. Once a week, like clockwork—which she would have derided as cliché—her copies of their articles arrived, all marked up in blaring red ink.

  "Sometimes,” Marvin admitted to his secretary, “I like to imagine that all that red ink is her blood..."

  "Boss!” His secretary laughed. “You'd never get away with it."

  He sighed. “I know, but wouldn't it be nice."

  What really tick
ed him off was that she was sometimes correct in the letter, if not the spirit, of her corrections. He had even learned a few things from her “editing.” But that learning wasn't worth the price of how nasty it all seemed, and it wasn't worth the pain it caused the reporters who had seen that awful acronym, “AAH.” Affirmative Action Hire? What colossal arrogance! One of the victims had been a young black reporter with budding talent, but no confidence to match. The bigoted remark had set her back months. Only last week, it had infuriated an editor who may have fit the definition of “handicapped” in terms of his paralyzed legs, but who was anything but handicapped when it came to brains and ability. Marvin had never meant for either of them to see the mailings from Ms. Grimshank, but both of them had, by accident.

  "One of these days,” Marvin predicted to his secretary, “our Ms. Grimshank is going to get what's coming to her."

  She grinned. He didn't.

  "And what is that, Boss?"

  "She's going to get edited out."

  * * * *

  When Diane Stevens didn't find the usual stack of ivory envelopes in Ms. Shank's mailbox on Monday, she sensed that something was wrong. Maybe the old biddy was out of town, but Diane doubted it, because Phyllis Shank never seemed to venture beyond her own mailbox. She even had her groceries delivered.

  Probably so she can tell the boy to tuck his shirt back in, Diane thought.

  "Or maybe,” she muttered to herself as she stared at the small house down the short walkway, “so she can tell him that canned goods really should be double bagged, and what was he thinking to put the frozen vegetables in with the loaf of bread?"

  Diane tried to get herself in hand. The old woman could be sick in there.

  She went up the walk, hurrying to make up for her previous ill will. But when she reached the front door, she took the few seconds required to make sure her uniform was on straight and to pat down her hair. Not that either action would silence dear Ms. Shank. No, no, if your uniform looked good, and you'd just got your hair done, she'd still ask you if you really thought those shoes were suitable.