The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  “Now! You see? We are back to the morning after the murder.”

  The blurred outlines of a tenement hall-way became visible. To the left, a wooden door—old-fashioned, dingy, with a glass transom above it. To the right, a similar door. A dingy flight of stairs in the background, leading upward. In the centre, depending from the low ceiling, a ramshackle chandelier. On the floor, worn, ragged oilcloth. People—half-a-dozen men in uniform, Detective Marberry—moved about the scene, opened Angelina’s door to the right, entered, and emerged. The whole a deep crimson. Blurred, occasionally grotesquely distorted; then again clearly distinguishable.

  “The morning after the murder,” the Doctor repeated. “Imperfect—as imperfect an apparatus as were our first, unimproved radios.… And now—look, Rosa! Now we are going back to the murder itself!”

  The crimson scene blurred again into formless crawling patches of light and shade. The hum slid upward to a still higher pitch, held even, and the blurs clarified. The hall-way again. Empty and dark—so dark that only the stairs and the dim outlines of the doors left and right were visible. An empty, motionless scene. Sinister, expectant. And then, very slowly, the left-hand door was opening. There was no light behind it; only a dark rectangle of shadow there. Then a flare. A pencil-point of light showed—moved—came out of the doorway, resolved itself into a human hand holding a lighted candle. For a moment nothing else in the blood-red gloom was visible. The hand with the candle advanced slowly into the centre of the hall-way. And now a dim blur of human shape beside it seemed almost distinguishable.

  The hand with the candle stopped. The candle-light seemed unnaturally to disclose nothing. Then the other hand appeared—a hand reaching upward, holding a long rubber pipe of the sort used to connect small gas-heaters. The hand slipped the rubber pipe over the hallway gas-jet, fumbled there, then moved away, carrying the pipe to the transom above Angelina’s door, pushing the transom open cautiously, sticking the pipe-end through, and closing the transom close upon it.

  All blurred, dark-red, and barely distinguishable. Swiftly done; a few seconds only. And then abruptly the scene brightened and clarified further. The outlines of the figure adjusting the pipe, turning on the gas, suddenly became plainly visible. Not a woman’s figure! Not Rosa Vitelli! The figure of a tall, slender, dark-haired man. Giorgio Vitelli! Unmistakable!

  It was so abruptly disclosed that a gasp ran over the room. The hum ceased. The bloodlight went out. From the black darkness of the Clubroom came the sounds of scuffling feet; an outcry from Rosa—her terrified, despairing moan in Italian: “They know I did not do it! Giorgio! Beloved! Run—run!” Her wild burst of sobbing; pattering footsteps; the clatter of a chair overturned; a thump; a body falling; an oath from the Very Young Man, and then his voice rising above the tumult—

  “Light the lights! I’ve got him! Light the lights, someone! I tell you I’ve got him!”

  The lights flashed on. Rosa sat in her chair, sobbing. On the floor by the door lay the struggling form of Giorgio Vitelli, with the muscular Very Young Man upon him. The Detective leaped to Rosa, gripping her by the shoulders, shaking her. “You saw that, Rosa! Why did you tell us you killed Angelina? You didn’t kill her!”

  “No! No!”

  Still shaking her—“Why did you say you did? Why?”

  “My Giorgio—he—he tol’ me to say I did it.”

  She was sobbing, oblivious to what was going on around her. The Assistant District Attorney rushed up to them. The Detective shook the girl again. “He told you to confess? Why—why did you do it?”

  “He tol’ me to say I did it—because I’m a girl. I get off. He tol’ me that. And you—you try always to make me say how I kill Angelina.” She broke into a hysterical flood of Italian. The Detective released her. He said swiftly—

  “As we thought. Says she never knew how or why her husband killed Angelina. She didn’t know how it was done, so, of course, she couldn’t tell us. It’s obvious that he was afraid to let her know—afraid she might be clumsy and say something that would arouse our suspicions—incriminate him. Is he talking? Now’s the psychological moment—we must make him talk!”

  But the Very Young Man had already made Vitelli talk. Cuffed him on the head, choked him—until the Doctor and others pulled them apart. And in the confusion, hearing Rosa blurt out the truth, and before he could gather his wits, Vitelli had confessed.

  When the room had quieted, with the two policemen in charge of Vitelli, and Rosa still sobbing softly to herself, the Doctor spoke—

  “We have been successful, gentlemen—and I think that you probably understand almost everything which has transpired. Professor Walton would have me tell you that in fundamental principle every theory of light which I gave you is quite correct. Indeed, it is a hope of his that some day an apparatus such as I have described will be perfected. But for our ignorant present we had to use a motion picture. That was what you saw, gentlemen—a purposely crude and jumbled motion picture tinted red, made a few days ago with a young Italian actor playing the part of Vitelli. The scene so blurred and dark it was easy to catch the likeness.

  “For the crime itself: Sergeant Marberry unearthed that newspaper clipping. I chanced to see it myself the day it was published. A rubber tube was discovered in a hall-way—a tube leading gas from the hall-way jet through a transom into a flat. A whole family narrowly escaped asphyxiation. No motive, no criminal was located—and the thing went by the board. But it gave Vitelli his inspiration—and, reading it, Marberry saw at once that the Torno girl could have been murdered in similar fashion.

  “Other facts which Marberry brought to light made that assumption still more probable. The gas-jet in the hall-way on the Vitelli-Torno floor was lighted the night before; and in the morning the janitor found it turned out. Also, on the oilcloth floor of the hall-way Marberry found drippings of red wax. They suggested that a candle had been used by the criminal to furnish light. Red wax. Perhaps one of those small Christmas candles of which Italians are so fond. And it was only a few weeks after Christmas.… As a matter of fact, the stump of a red-wax Christmas candle was found in the Vitelli kitchen.

  “Another fact. Above the Vitellis, the tenants smelled a peculiar burning smell that night. Burning rubber! They recognised it at once. We knew then that the gas tube had probably been burned in the Vitelli grate—and now Rosa tells us this moment that her husband did burn something in the grate that night and would not let her know what it was. This grate, by the way, is a unique feature of the Vitelli flat—the only grate in the building.

  “All this indicated to us that either one of the Vitellis was guilty, or perhaps both. Especially in view of their turbulent relations with Angelina. Then, before any of the evidence had been used against them, Rosa confessed. It is obvious now that Giorgio soon realised that one or both of them would be arrested. And so he made her confess, to save himself.

  “To us, even then, it seemed a dubious confession for two reasons. First, Rosa would not tell how she committed the murder. Her lawyer soon counselled silence; but in the first hysteria when she confessed we were convinced she had had no such counsel. And her response to questions was such that we felt right along she had no knowledge of how gas was introduced into that flat. We made several cautious tests. For instance, to the sudden smell of burning rubber Rosa reacted much more innocently than did her husband.

  “Our second reason for doubting the truth of Rosa’s confession: The murdered girl was to become a mother. That changed the whole complexion of the affair, gentlemen! The probability was that Rosa did not know of this—but that Giorgio did. It supplied a very strong motive for him to kill this other girl who had suddenly become a millstone about his neck. Especially since, only two days before the murder, Rosa’s father, thinking to straighten out his daughter’s marital difficulties, offered Giorgio an excellent position in his contracting business, and insisted that the young couple move to Staten Island near him. Giorgio accepted. But Angelina had undoubtedly b
ecome a menace—and so he killed her.

  “All this we could reason out. But with Rosa confessing to the murder—and in the hands of able counsel—what could Mr. Green do? Nothing but what we did here to-night.

  “Rosa’s motive for the confession? Self-sacrifice, gentlemen. She loved her husband—still does. And he told her to confess. Doubtless pictured how Angelina had ensnared him—how, if caught, he would go to the electric chair. And assured her that a young, pretty wife, murdering a rival for jealousy, would get a very light sentence, if any. And true enough. Especially in Italian cases. Courts are very sympathetic with the perfectly natural trait of violent, passionate jealousy in a pretty, young Italian girl. And most especially if she can prove she had cause to be jealous, and confesses at once to her crime. The District Attorney has had that sort of thing to fight before. It made this case extremely awkward. And Vitelli—guilty, undoubtedly, of first degree murder—would go scot-free.”

  The Doctor paused, and on an impulse went to the still sobbing Rosa and bent over her. “Your father will be very pleased, Rosa,” he said gently. “You see—though you don’t realise it now—your Giorgio isn’t worth all these tears.” He patted her shoulder and turned back to the room. “Poor little child! Only eighteen—and to have had a start in life like this!”

  THE LOCKED ROOM TO END LOCKED ROOMS

  AFTER WORKING as a commercial artist and architectural draftsman for much of his life, Stephen Barr (1904–1989) became a full-time writer in 1955, contributing numerous articles and short stories to such top-paying periodicals as Vogue, Playboy, Mademoiselle, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Atlantic Monthly. He was also a repeated contributor to numerous science fiction and mystery magazines, notably Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, where many of his frequently anthologized stories were first published.

  Born in England to American parents, he was educated in England but spent most of his life in the United States. He had avocational interests in composing music and creating puzzles. The latter resulted in Barr publishing several successful volumes on the subject: Experiments in Topology (1964); A Miscellany of Puzzles, Mathematical and Otherwise (1965; reprinted as Intriguing Puzzles in Math and Logic, 1994); Second Miscellany of Puzzles, Mathematical and Otherwise (1969; reprinted as Mathematical Brain Benders: 2nd Miscellany of Puzzles, 1982); and Puzzlequiz: Wit Twisters, Brain Teasers, Riddles, Puzzles, and Tough Questions (1978).

  “The Locked Room to End Locked Rooms” was first published in the August 1965 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; it was reprinted as “The Locked House” in Best Detective Stories of the Year (New York, Dutton, 1966).

  STEPHEN BARR

  THE REGENT’S is possibly the smallest club in London, but it is undoubtedly the most argumentative. Any statement made in the Regent’s, no matter how uncontroversial, will instantly be challenged. It is a bad place to be dogmatic. I was talking to two other members one evening, one of them a logician and the other a novelist, and the subject of detective stories came up.

  “There are really only two kinds of mystery,” the novelist said, rather recklessly.

  “Nonsense,” said the logician. “What are they?”

  “Why, the whodunit,” replied the novelist, “and the locked-room problem. The whodunit is—”

  “I know what it is,” interrupted the logician crossly, “but nine times out of ten it’s unfair. The author omits to give all the pertinent facts. And if it does happen to be written fairly, the reader will be able to solve the mystery as quickly as the detective. As for the locked-room problem, it isn’t a mystery at all: it’s a self-contradiction.”

  “I don’t see why—”

  “Of course you don’t,” said the logician. “What the author asks the reader to believe is that a man is found murdered in a place from which the murderer could not have escaped, and yet the murderer is not there. Writers have various ways of circumventing this. For example, the victim committed suicide in such a way as to resemble murder. Or the victim was dealt the fatal blow before he locked himself in: let’s say, he was shot through the head, and contrary to popular belief, he did not die for some time. Or the murderer locked the door on the inside while he was still on the outside. Or he was still concealed in the room. Or he contrived the murder from the outside.

  “The shoddiest solution of all is that he did, in fact, get out, and his escape appears impossible only because of the author’s incomplete and therefore unfair description of the circumstances. None of these faces squarely up to the real dilemma—that the murderer got out when he could not. That, by definition, is absurd.”

  “Rubbish,” said a gentle voice behind the logician, who quickly turned around. I saw that it came from Dr. Sylvan Moore, our oldest member, and his usually calm face was determined. “You are making the same mistake that I did once,” he went on as we formed a circle to include him. “You are treating this as a problem in topology, and humans as entities—like atoms.”

  “What the devil have atoms got to do with it?” said the logician, cross again.

  “Nothing. That’s my point. Did you ever hear of Petrus Dander, the explorer?”

  “Certainly not,” said the logician. “Why should I?”

  If you read the newspapers (Dr. Moore said), you would have seen his obituary some years ago; but what was not told was that he was murdered, and almost certainly by his own son.

  The circumstances were somewhat baroque, but because of a confidential mission he’d been on for Whitehall it was hushed up. The son’s disappearance was also glossed over; they merely said he’d gone abroad.

  Petrus Dander was one of the most charming men I ever met—and one of the most satanic. He inherited a fortune and a town house in Manchester Square from his father, and proceeded to marry Lily Maynard. It is on my conscience that I had introduced them to each other.

  Their only child, Jonathan, was born during World War I while his father was with Allenby in the Near East. Dander made a brilliant war record but he never came home on any of his leaves, preferring each time to volunteer for extra duty that gave him in the end a reputation second only to that of Lawrence of Arabia. Lily was bewildered and crushed, but she pretended to believe it was patriotism rather than callousness. Dander arrived in Manchester Square during May of 1919 as though he had just come back from a stroll, and succeeded in fascinating his wife all over again. But this time it was more like the fascination of a serpent for a bird.

  I don’t think there was ever any physical violence; his bullying was far more subtle. Lily seemed to grow more and more transparent and less alive, so that those of us who knew her learned of her death without surprise—almost without shock. That was in 1931, and Dander was in the Gobi Desert. It very nearly finished off Jonathan then and there—I almost wish it had. He and his mother had become too close—much too close; and Jonathan was convinced that his father had caused Lily’s death, in which he was right. The antipathy was returned—Dander despised his son as a milksop and a mother’s boy.

  My wife and I had Jonathan down to our place in Sussex after Lily’s funeral to see if we could straighten him out a bit—but he was like a lost soul. Then Dander came home, and I had my first taste of his temper, if it can be called that. He turned up unannounced one morning, and with a charming smile he proceeded to lay down the law.

  “Hello, Mrs. Moore. Now look here, Sylvan”—he ignored Jonathan—“what the devil d’you mean by bringing my son here?” We were too nonplused to answer him. “If you think you can use the pretext of old acquaintance to interfere in my private affairs you’re mistaken. Pack your gear, Jonathan.”

  My wife recovered herself first.

  “But Jonathan needs to get away from London. He was all alone—”

  “He’s not alone now, and I’ll decide his needs.”

  “Look here, Dander,” I began, but he interrupted me.

  “Jonathan’s my son, more’s the pity, and I’ll not have him subjected to your second-rate middle-class sentimentality.”
He turned to Jonathan for the first time. “Didn’t you hear what I said? Get your gear. You’re going with me, and then you’re going to a tutor’s and then to Sandhurst.”

  “But Father, I don’t want to go into the Army!”

  “Shut your mouth, you young swine! You’ll do as I tell you.”

  I looked at Jonathan and for the first time I saw a resemblance to his father, but his father looking out from behind bars, murderous yet helpless. They left a few minutes later.

  Some time later I heard a rumor that Jonathan, after some sort of tussle with his father, had gone on a protracted hunger strike, but was sent to the tutor in spite of it. I heard nothing more of either of them for some years, and the Manchester Square house remained closed because Dander had gone abroad. Then Jonathan was sacked from Sandhurst under rather peculiar circumstances, and his father came back. I saw him in this room for a few minutes just before he was to meet Jonathan, and judging from the look in his eye I didn’t envy the boy.

  Dander acted toward me as though nothing had ever happened between us, and in some mysterious way he made me accept it.

  “Tell me, old man,” he said to me, “can you recommend a really sound psychiatrist? I’m worried about Jonathan.”

  I am a psychiatrist, as he well knew, and as there were two members within earshot I was not exactly pleased. I believe I mentioned Gideon, the worst faker on Harley Street, and Dander left me with a flashing smile.

  The first I heard of his death was a very solemn call from Blake-Smith of the Foreign Office. “Would you come up? Petrus Dander is dead, and you were his closest friend.”

  “Closest friend!” I said. “I hated the man. How did he die?”