by Otto Penzler
“Persimmon arrived first and went into the ballroom to inspect the radiators. He was there, talking to one of the clerks, when Whelk arrived and the clerk returned at once to the ante-room and shut the ballroom door behind him.
“Five minutes later Whelk came out and told the clerks to have the cock turned on that allows the hot water to circulate in that branch of the system, and to see that the ballroom door was not opened until Mr. Persimmon came out, as he was going to test the temperature. He spoke with his usual resentment of the consultant and told the clerks that the latter had imagined that he could see a crack in one of the radiators which he thought would leak under pressure, and that that was his real reason for having the ballroom branch of the heating system connected up.
“In the meantime he took a seat in the ante-room with the intention of waiting there to hear Persimmon’s report when he came out. Mr. Hern,” said the inspector gravely, “Persimmon never did come out.”
“Do you mean that he is still there?” asked Hern.
“He is still there,” said the inspector. “He will be there until the ambulance comes to take him to the mortuary.”
“Has a doctor seen the body?” asked Hern.
“Yes,” said the inspector. “He left five minutes before you came. He went by a field path, so you did not meet him in the avenue.
“Persimmon died of a fracture at the base of the skull caused by a violent blow delivered with some very heavy weapon. But we cannot find any weapon at all.
“Of course the clerks detained Whelk when, Persimmon failing to appear, they discovered the body. They kept Whelk here until our arrival, and he is now detained at the police-station. We have searched him, at his own suggestion; but nothing heavier than a cigarette-holder was found upon his person.”
“What about his boots?” asked Hern.
“Well, he has shoes on,” said the inspector, “and very light shoes too—unusually light for snowy weather. They could not possibly have struck the terrible blow that broke poor Persimmon’s skull and smashed the flesh to a pulp. Whelk had an attaché-case too. I have it here still, and it contains nothing but papers.”
“I suppose,” said Hern, “that you have made sure that there is no weapon concealed about the body of Persimmon?”
“Yes,” said the inspector. “I considered that possibility and have made quite sure.”
“Could not a weapon have been thrown out of one of the windows?” asked Hern.
“It could have been,” answered the inspector, “but it wasn’t. That is certain because no one could open them without leaving finger-marks. The insides of the sashes have only just been painted, and the paint is still wet; while the hooks for lifting them have not yet been fixed.
“I have examined every inch of every sash systematically and thoroughly, and no finger has touched them. They are very heavy sashes too, and it would require considerable force to raise them without the hooks. No. It is a puzzle. And, although I feel that I must detain him, I cannot believe that Whelk can be the culprit. Would a guilty man wait there, actually abusing his victim before witnesses, until his crime was discovered? Impossible! Again, could he have inflicted that ghastly wound with a cigarette-holder? Quite impossible! But then the whole thing is quite impossible from beginning to end.”
“May I go into the ballroom?” said Hern.
“Certainly,” said the inspector.
He led the way through the ante-room, where three or four scared clerks were simulating industry at desks and drawing-boards, and we entered the great ballroom.
“Here is poor Persimmon’s body,” said the inspector; and we saw the sprawling corpse, with its terribly battered skull, face down, upon the floor near one of the radiators.
“So the radiator did leak after all,” said Hern, pointing to a pool of water beside it.
“Yes,” said the inspector. “But it does not seem to have leaked since I had the apparatus disconnected. The room was like an oven when I came in.”
Hern went all round the great bare hall examining everything—floor, walls, and windows. Then he looked closely at the radiators.
“There is no part of these that he could detach?” he asked. “No pipes or valves?”
“Certainly not, unless he had a wrench,” said the inspector; “and he hadn’t got a wrench.”
“Could anyone have come through the windows from outside?” asked Horn.
“They could be reached by a ladder,” said the inspector; “but the snow beneath them is untrodden.”
“Well,” said Hern; “there doesn’t seem to be anything here to help us. May I have a look at Whelk’s case and papers?
“Certainly,” said the inspector. “Come into the ante-room. I’ve locked them in a cupboard.”
We followed him and he fetched a fair-sized attaché-case, laid it on a table and opened it.
Hern took out the papers and examined the inside of the case.
“A botanical specimen!” he exclaimed, picking up a tiny blade of grass. “Did he carry botanical specimens about in his case? It seems a bit damp inside,” he added; “especially at the side furthest fron the handle. But let’s have a look at the papers. Hullo! What’s this?”
“It seems to be nothing but some notes for his business diary,” said the inspector.
‘Feb. 12. Letter from Jones. Mr. Filbert called re estimate.
‘Feb. 13. Office closed.
‘Feb. 14. Letter from Perkins & Fisher re Grumby Castle.
‘Feb. 15. Letter from Smith & Co. Wrote Messrs. Caraway re repairs to boiler. Visit Grumby Castle and meet Persimmon 10:30 a.m.’
“February the 15th is to-day.”
“Yes,” said Hern. “The ink seems to have run a bit, doesn’t it? Whereabouts does Whelk live?”
“He lives in Market Grumby,” said the inspector. “His house is not far from where he is now—the police-station. Market Grumby lies over there—north of the castle. That footpath that goes off at right angles from the avenue leads to the Market Grumby road.”
Hern put everything back carefully into the case—even the blade of grass—and handed it back to the inspector.
“When do you expect the ambulance?” he asked.
“It should be here in a few minutes,” said the inspector. “I must wait, of course, until it comes.”
“Well,” said Hern. “I suppose, when the body has gone, there will be no harm in mopping up that mess in there? There is a certain amount of blood as well as that pool of water.”
“No harm at all,” said the inspector.
“Well then,” said Hern. “Please have it done. And, if it is not asking too much, could you oblige me by having the hot water turned on once more and waiting until I come back. I shall not be away for long; and I think that it may help in the solution of your problem.”
“Certainly,” said the inspector.
Hern and I went out again into the snowy drive and found, without difficulty, the path that led towards Market Grumby, for, in spite of the covering snow, it was clearly marked by footprints.
We walked along until we saw the opening into the road. A cottage stood on one side of the path, close to the road; and on the other side was a pond.
This was covered, like every pond, with a thick covering of ice, but in one spot, opposite the cottage, the ice had been broken with a pick and here an old man was dipping a bucket.
The water in the hole looked black against the gleaming ice and the sun glinted on the edges of the fragments loosened and thrown aside by the pick.
“Took a bit of trouble to break it, I expect,” said Hern to the old man.
“Took me half an hour,” grumbled the old fellow; “it’s that thick.”
“Is that the way to Market Grumby?” asked Hern, pointing to the road.
“That’s it,” said the other, and went into the cottage with his bucket.
The snow in the few yards between the cottage and the hole in the ice was trodden hard by the hobnailed boots of the old
man, but Hern pointed out to me that another set of footprints, of a much less bucolic type, could be seen beside them.
“Let us go back,” he said, “and see how the inspector is getting on with the heating apparatus.”
“I’ve had it on for half an hour now,” said the inspector when we got back to the ante-room. “The ambulance came soon after you went out.”
“Well,” said Hern. “Let us see how that leak is going on”; and he opened the door of the ballroom.
“Good heavens,” cried the inspector. “It’s not leaking now.”
“It never did leak,” said Hern.
“What is the meaning of it all?” asked the inspector.
“You remember,” said Hern, “that you came to the conclusion that if Whelk had been guilty he would have got away before his crime had been discovered.
“Well, my conclusion is different. In fact, I think that, if he had been innocent, he would not have waited.”
“Why so?” asked the inspector.
“I will tell you,” said Hern. “Whelk had to stay or he would certainly have been hanged. He hated Persimmon and had every reason for taking his life. If he had gone away you would have said that he had hidden the weapon that killed Persimmon.
“Don’t you see that his only chance was to stay until you had searched him and found that he had no weapon? Was not that a clear proof of his innocence?”
“But there must have been some weapon,” exclaimed the worried inspector. “Where is the weapon?”
“There was a weapon,” said Hern, “and you and I saw it lying beside the corpse.”
“I saw no weapon,” said the inspector.
“Do you remember,” said Hern, “that your first account of the problem made me think of a certain old riddle? Well, the answer to this problem is the answer to a new riddle: ‘When is a weapon not a weapon?’ ”
“I give it up,” said the inspector promptly.
“The answer to that riddle,” said Hern, “is ‘when it melts.’ ”
The inspector gasped.
“I will tell you,” said Hern, “what happened. There is a pond close to the Market Grumby road, and Whelk passed this as he was coming here this morning to meet his enemy. The thick ice on that pond has been broken so that a bucket may be dipped, and chunks of broken ice lie all around the hole. Whelk saw these, and a terrible thought came into his wicked head. Everything fitted perfectly. He had found a weapon that would do its foul work and disappear. He picked up the biggest block of ice that would go inside his case. I dare say that it weighed twenty pounds. He waited until his enemy stooped to examine a radiator, and then he opened his case and brought down his twenty-pound sledge-hammer on the victim’s skull.
“Then he put his weapon against the radiator, had the heat turned on, told his story about a leak, and waited calmly until a search should prove his innocence.
“But by the very quality for which he chose his weapon, that weapon has betrayed him in the end. For that jagged chunk of ice began to melt before its time—very slightly, it is true, but just enough to damp the side of the case on which it rested, to make the ink run on his papers and to set loose one tiny blade of grass that had frozen onto it as it lay beside the pond. A very tiny blade but big enough to slay the murderer.
“If you will go to the pond, inspector, you will find footsteps leading to it which are not the cottager’s footsteps; and, if you compare them with the shoes that Henry Whelk is wearing, you will find that they tally.
“And, if they do not tally, then you may ask your friends a new riddle.”
“What is that?” asked the officer.
“ ‘When is a detective not a detective?’ ” replied my friend; “and the answer will be ‘When he is Rowland Hern.’ ”
THE CONFESSION OF ROSA VITELLI
ALTHOUGH HE WROTE prolifically in several genres, mainly for the pulp magazines in the years between the two World Wars, it was his prodigious body of work in the science fiction and fantasy field that caused Raymond King Cummings (1887–1957) to be described as the American H. G. Wells and one of the founders of the science fiction pulp story.
Born in New York City to wealthy parents, he attended Princeton University and is reputed to have mastered the entire three-year undergraduate physics curriculum in three months. The only job he ever held was as a technical writer and editor for Thomas A. Edison from 1914 to 1919, after which he resigned to become a full-time writer. His first story, “The Girl in the Golden Atom,” was published in 1919 and was spectacularly successful, finding its way into book form in 1922, a prestigious occurrence for any American writer of science fiction of the era. It introduced what soon became a cliché of the genre, likening atoms to tiny suns and planets that are the homes of minuscule life forms, sometimes primitive, sometimes far advanced. Over the course of his career he produced about seven hundred fifty short stories, novellas, and novels; some sources credit him with more than a thousand works. His obscure detective series about the Scientific Crime Club was discovered in an elegant English magazine, The Sketch, all twelve stories being published in 1925 (July 8 to September 23). If they were previously published in an American pulp magazine, as would be expected of an American pulp writer, it has yet to be reported.
“The Confession of Rosa Vitelli” was first published in the August 19, 1925, issue of The Sketch; its first book appearance was in Tales from the Scientific Crime Club (London, Ferret, 1979), in an edition of only one hundred copies.
RAY CUMMINGS
“YOU SAY THIS Rosa Vitelli has confessed to the murder,” exclaimed the Banker. “There’s no mystery when you have a——”
The Doctor nodded. “Quite so. But, gentlemen, though she admits having killed the girl Angelina, she will not tell how she did it. There is considerable mystery about that.” The Doctor gazed around the small private Clubroom, with its group of interested members; and then indicated the two visitors beside him. He added: “Mr. Green and Sergeant Marberry here are puzzled. More than that——”
“Suppose you give us an outline of the case,” the Chemist interrupted. “If you think we can be of any help——”
“I will. As I told you, Sergeant Marberry—a good friend of mine—has been assigned to this Vitelli affair. His knowledge of Italian—he is very frequently given such cases. And Mr. Green, one of the Assistant District Attorneys, has the case in his office for prosecution.”
The Banker raised his hand impatiently. “The murder, Frank——”
“Quite so,” smiled the Doctor. “Briefly, the circumstances are these. Some three weeks ago—on the early morning of Jan. 10 to be exact—a young Italian girl was found dead. She lived in the Italian section south of Greenwich Village. Name, Angelina Torno. Age, twenty-three. Unmarried. An extremely pretty girl—a factory worker. With another girl roommate, she occupied a small flat on the third floor of a tenement building. This other girl does not enter the case—she had been on Staten Island with a sick mother for several weeks, leaving Angelina alone in the flat.
“On the early morning of Jan. 10, one of the fourth-floor tenants came downstairs, and in the dim, badly ventilated third-floor hall-way, smelled gas. There is no electric light in this building—only gas. Angelina did not answer thumps upon her door. It was later broken in. Her flat was found flooded with gas, and the girl in bed—dead.”
“Suicide!” murmured the Banker. “You said murder——”
The Doctor smiled grimly. “Wait, George. It was murder, not suicide. The night of Jan. 9 and 10 was extremely cold—you all remember that three-day cold spell we had. Angelina slept that night with all her windows closed, even the transom over her door to the public hall was closed. All the doors and windows closed, and locked on the inside. The outside temperature was down to zero that night. It was perfectly natural for an Italian girl to shut herself up without fresh air and go to bed.
“But it was murder, not suicide, for though the small flat was full of gas, and the girl dead of asphyxiation,
every gas-cock in the flat was turned off securely. That was not suicide, gentlemen. You don’t kill yourself by turning on the gas, and then get up and turn it off.”
The Astronomer murmured: “But how——”
“Exactly so.” The Doctor glanced at his watch. “I must hasten.… Jack, are you and Professor Walton ready with everything?”
The Very Young Man nodded eagerly. “Yes, Sir. Everything’s ready.”
“Good.… Gentlemen, this Rosa Vitelli is in custody. Mr. Green has ordered her to be brought here to-night—they will have her here any moment. In a word, the Vitellis occupy the third floor flat across the hall from Angelina. A young, rather well-educated Italian-American couple. Rosa, eighteen; and Giorgio, twenty-six. Married just over a year. No children.
“Sergeant Marberry here was assigned to the case. Marberry established at once that young Vitelli had been paying undue attention to the Torno girl—so much so that he and his wife had had violent quarrels over it. After the murder, when the Vitellis were about to be arrested, Rosa gave way under Mr. Green’s questioning and confessed. Jealousy was her motive. She was afraid she would lose her husband to the other girl. And doubtless she had good reason to suppose it.
“All that is clear enough. The queer part is that Rosa absolutely refuses to tell how she committed the murder. Nothing can break down that refusal. If by some unknown method she got into Angelina’s flat, turned on the gas, and then turned it off and got out again—how she could leave the doors and windows locked on the inside, with a key on the inside lock of the hall door—all this she refuses to explain.”
“Why won’t she explain?” the Alienist demanded.
“There you have it! Why won’t she? That also we do not know. But she will not. Her husband possibly could tell how she did it, but he maintains only a stubborn, sullen silence, and says he does not know.”
Sergeant Marberry—a slender, dark-haired man, nearing forty—said abruptly: “You have not told them, Dr. Adams, that we think we know how the crime was committed. This Rosa Vitelli——”
