The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  “Voilà,” he said. “That is what Cornworthy held in the lazy-tongs against Farley’s window. You remember, he hated cats? Naturally he rushed to the window.”

  “Why on earth didn’t Cornworthy come out and pick it up after he’d dropped it?”

  “How could he? To do so would have been definitely suspicious. After all, if this object were found what would anyone think—that some child had wandered round here and dropped it.”

  “Yes,” said Stillingfleet with a sigh. “That’s probably what the ordinary person would have thought. But not good old Hercule! D’you know, old horse, up to the very last minute I thought you were leading up to some subtle theory of highfalutin psychological ‘suggested’ murder? I bet those two thought so too! Nasty bit of goods, the Farley. Goodness, how she cracked! Cornworthy might have got away with it if she hadn’t had hysterics and tried to spoil your beauty by going for you with her nails. I only got her off you just in time.”

  He paused a minute and then said:

  “I rather like the girl. Grit, you know, and brains. I suppose I’d be thought to be a fortune hunter if I had a shot at her …?”

  “You are too late, my friend. There is already someone sur le tapis. Her father’s death has opened the way to happiness.”

  “Take it all round, she had a pretty good motive for bumping off the unpleasant parent.”

  “Motive and opportunity are not enough,” said Poirot. “There must also be the criminal temperament!”

  “I wonder if you’ll ever commit a crime, Poirot?” said Stillingfleet. “I bet you could get away with it all right. As a matter of fact, it would be too easy for you—I mean the thing would be off as definitely too unsporting.”

  “That,” said Poirot, “is a typical English idea.”

  THE BORDER-LINE CASE

  IT IS NOT SURPRISING THAT, coming from a family prominent in English literary circles, Margery Allingham (1904–1966) took to writing at an early age, beginning at age seven and publishing her first book, Black’erchief Dick (1923), an adventure novel about piracy and smuggling on the Essex salt marshes, while still a teenager. Her career as a mystery writer began soon after her marriage to Youngman Carter, an artist and editor of The Tatler magazine. The same age as his wife, the teenager designed the cover of her first book and became her lifelong literary advisor and unofficial collaborator. While her earliest mysteries are fast-moving adventure stories with considerable physical activity, her series character, Albert Campion, becomes involved in more cerebral cases as his busy career as an amateur sleuth progresses. Early on, he is described as “a silly ass” and says of himself that he is a con man who will do anything for a price, provided it is not vulgar or sordid, though this does not appear to be true as there is no evidence that he has ever done anything illegal. His eternally brave valet, the Cockney Magersfontein Lugg, is a former burglar and Borstal inmate who has cleaned up his act and is a loyal and invaluable aide in solving crimes and helping thwart espionage plots against England. Allingham wrote more than two dozen books about Campion, the last of which, Cargo of Eagles (1968), was completed by Carter, who went on to write two additional novels about the intrepid detective. The most famous books about Campion are Death of a Ghost (1934) and The Tiger in the Smoke (1952), which was filmed in 1956 by the Rank Organisation, though the character does not appear in the film.

  “The Border-Line Case” was first published in Mr. Campion: Criminologist (Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1937).

  MARGERY ALLINGHAM

  IT WAS SO HOT in London that night that we slept with the wide skylight in our city studio open and let the sootblacks fall in on us willingly, so long as they brought with them a single stirring breath to move the stifling air. Heat hung on the dark horizons and beneath our particular bowl of sky the city fidgeted, breathless and uncomfortable.

  The early editions of the evening papers carried the story of the murder. I read it when they came along about three o’clock on the following afternoon. My mind took in the details lazily, for my eyelids were sticky and the printed words seemed remote and unrelated to reality.

  It was a straightforward little incident, or so I thought it, and when I had read the guarded half-column I threw the paper over to Albert Campion, who had drifted in to lunch and stayed to sit quietly in a corner, blinking behind his spectacles, existing merely, in the sweltering day.

  The newspapers called the murder “The Coal Court Shooting Case,” and the facts were simple.

  At one o’clock in the morning, when Vacation Street, N.E., had been a deserted lane of odoriferous heat, a policeman on the beat had seen a man stumble and fall to the pavement. The intense discomfort of the night being uppermost in his mind, he had not unnaturally diagnosed a case of ordinary collapse and, after loosening the stranger’s collar, had summoned the ambulance.

  When the authorities arrived, however, the man was pronounced to be dead and the body was taken to the mortuary, where it was discovered that death had been due to a bullet wound neatly placed between the shoulder blades. The bullet had made a small blue hole and, after perforating the left lung, had furrowed the heart itself, finally coming to rest in the bony structure of the chest.

  Since this was so, and the fact that the police constable had heard no untoward sound, it had been reasonable to believe that the shot had been fired at some little distance from a gun with a silencer.

  Mr. Campion was only politely interested. The afternoon certainly was hot and the story as it then appeared was hardly original or exciting. He sat on the floor reading it patiently, his long thin legs stretched out in front of him.

  “Someone died at any rate,” he remarked at last and added after a pause: “Poor chap! Out of the frying pan … Dear me, I suppose it’s the locality which predisposes one to think of that. Ever seen Vacation Street, Margery?”

  I did not answer him. I was thinking how odd it was that a general irritant like the heat should make the dozens of situations arising all round one in the great city seem suddenly almost personal. I found I was desperately sorry for the man who had been shot, whoever he was.

  It was Stanislaus Oates who told us the real story behind the half-column in the evening paper. He came in just after four looking for Campion. He was a detective inspector in those days and had just begun to develop the habit of chatting over his problems with the pale young man in the horn-rimmed spectacles. Theirs was an odd relationship. It was certainly not a case of the clever amateur and the humble policeman: rather the irritable and pugnacious policeman taking it out of the inoffensive, friendly representative of the general public.

  On this occasion Oates was rattled.

  “It’s a case right down your street,” he said briefly to Campion as he sat down. “Seems to be a miracle, for one thing.”

  He explained after a while, having salved his conscience by pointing out that he had no business to discuss the case and excusing himself most illogically on grounds of the heat.

  “It’s ‘low-class’ crime,” he went on briskly. “Practically gang shooting. And probably quite uninteresting to all of you, who like romance in your crimes. However, it’s got me right down on two counts: the first because the man who shot the fellow who died couldn’t possibly have done so, and second because I was wrong about the girl. They’re so true to type, these girls, that you can’t even rely on the proverbial exception.”

  He sighed as if the discovery had really grieved him.

  We heard the story of Josephine as we sat round in the paralysingly hot studio and, although I never saw the girl then or afterwards, I shall not forget the scene; the two of us listening, breathing rather heavily, while the inspector talked.

  She had been Donovan’s girl, so Oates said, and he painted a picture of her for us: slender and flat-chested, with black hair and eyes like a Russian madonna’s in a transparent face. She wore blouses, he said, with lace on them and gold ornaments, little chains and crosses and frail brooches whose security was reinforced by
gilt safety pins. She was only twenty, Oates said, and added enigmatically that he would have betted on her but that it served him right and showed him there was no fool like an old one.

  He went on to talk about Donovan, who, it seemed, was thirty-five and had spent ten years of his life in jail. The inspector did not seem to think any the less of him for that. The fact seemed to put the man in a definite category in his mind and that was all.

  “Robbery with violence and the R.O. boys,” he said with a wave of his hand and smiled contentedly as though he had made everything clear. “She was sixteen when he found her and he’s given her hell ever since.”

  While he still held our interest he mentioned Johnny Gilchick. Johnny Gilchick was the man who was dead.

  Oates, who was never more sentimental than was strictly reasonable in the circumstances, let himself go about Josephine and Johnny Gilchick. It was love, he said—love, sudden, painful and ludicrous; and he admitted that he liked to see it.

  “I had an aunt once who used to talk about the Real Thing,” he explained, “and embarrassingly silly the old lady sounded, but after seeing those two youngsters meet and flame and go on until they were a single fiery entity—youngsters who were pretty ordinary tawdry material without it—I find myself sympathising with her if not condoning the phrase.”

  He hesitated and his smooth grey face cracked into a depreciating smile.

  “Well, we were both wrong, anyway,” he murmured, “my aunt and I. Josephine let her Johnny down just as you’d expect her to and after he got what was coming to him and was lying in the mortuary he was born to lie in she upped and perjured her immortal soul to swear his murderer an alibi. Not that her testimony is of much value as evidence. That’s beside the point. The fact remains that she’s certainly done her best. You may think me sentimental, but it depresses me. I thought that girl was genuine and my judgment was out.”

  Mr. Campion stirred.

  “Could we have the details?” he asked politely. “We’ve only seen the evening paper. It wasn’t very helpful.”

  Oates glared at him balefully.

  “Frankly, the facts are exasperating,” he said. “There’s a little catch in them somewhere. It must be something so simple that I missed it altogether. That’s really why I’ve come to look for you. I thought you might care to come along and take a glance at the place. What about it?”

  There was no general movement. It was too hot to stir. Finally the inspector took up a piece of chalk and sketched a rough diagram on the bare boards of the model’s throne.

  “This is Vacation Street,” he said, edging the chalk along a crack. “It’s the best part of a mile long. Up this end, here by the chair, it’s nearly all wholesale houses. This sand bin I’m sketching in now marks the boundary of two police divisions. We’ll take that as the starting point. Well, here, ten yards to the left, is the entrance to Coal Court, which is a cul-de-sac composed of two blank backs of warehouse buildings and a café at the far end. The café is open all night. It serves the printers from the two big presses further down the road. That’s its legitimate trade. But it is also a sort of unofficial headquarters for Donovan’s mob. Josephine sits at the desk downstairs and keeps an eye on the door. God knows what hours she keeps. She always seems to be there.”

  He paused and there came into my mind a recollection of the breathless night through which we had all passed, and I could imagine the girl sitting there in the stuffy shop with her thin chest and her great black eyes.

  The inspector was still speaking.

  “Now,” he said, “there’s an upstairs room in the café. It’s on the second floor. That’s where our friend Donovan spent most of his evening. I expect he had a good few friends with him and we shall locate them all in time.”

  He bent over the diagram.

  “Johnny Gilchick died here,” he said, drawing a circle about a foot beyond the square which indicated the sand bin. “Although the bobby was right down the road, he saw him pause under the lamppost, stagger and fall. He called the constable from the other division and they got the ambulance. All that is plain sailing. There’s just one difficulty. Where was Donovan when he fired the shot? There were two policemen in the street at the time, remember. At the moment of the actual shooting one of them, the Never Street man, was making a round of a warehouse yard, but the other, the Phyllis Court chap, was there on the spot, not forty yards away, and it was he who actually saw Johnny Gilchick fall, although he heard no shot. Now I tell you, Campion, there’s not an ounce of cover in the whole of that street. How did Donovan get out of the café, where did he stand to shoot Johnny neatly through the back, and how did he get back again without being seen? The side walls of the cul-de-sac are solid concrete backs of warehouses, there is no way round from the back of the café, nor could he possibly have gone over the roofs. The warehouses tower over the café like liners over a tug. Had he come out down the road one or other of the bobbies must have been certain to have seen him. How did he do it?”

  “Perhaps Donovan didn’t do it,” I ventured and received a pitying glance for my temerity.

  “That’s the one fact,” said the inspector heavily. “That’s the only thing I do know. I know Donovan. He’s one of the few English mob boys who carry guns. He served five years with the gangs in New York before Repeal and he has the misfortune to take his liquor in bouts. After each bout he has a period of black depression, during which he may do anything. Johnny Gilchick used to be one of Donovan’s mob and when Johnny fell for the girl he turned in the gang, which was adding insult to injury where Donovan was concerned.”

  He paused and smiled.

  “Donovan was bound to get Johnny in the end,” he said. “It was never anything but a question of time. The whole mob expected it. The neighbourhood was waiting for it. Donovan had said openly that the next time Johnny dropped into the café would be his final appearance there. Johnny called last night, was ordered out of the place by the terrified girl, and finally walked out of the cul-de-sac. He turned the corner and strolled down the road. Then he was shot by Donovan. There’s no way round it, Campion. The doctors say that death was as near instantaneous as may be. Johnny Gilchick could not have walked three paces with that bullet in his back. As for the gun, that was pretty obviously Donovan’s too. We haven’t actually picked it up yet, but we know he had one of the type we are after. It’s a clear case, a straightforward case, if only we knew where Donovan stood when he fired the shot.”

  Mr. Campion looked up. His eyes were thoughtful behind his spectacles.

  “The girl gave Donovan an alibi?” he enquired.

  Oates shrugged his shoulders. “Rather,” he said. “She was passionate about it. He was there the whole time, every minute of the time, never left the upper room once in the whole evening. I could kill her and she would not alter her story; she’d take her dying oath on it and so on and so on. It didn’t mean anything either way. Still, I was sorry to see her doing it, with her boy friend barely cold. She was sucking up to the mob, of course; probably had excellent reasons for doing so. Yet, as I say, I was sorry to hear her volunteering the alibi before she was asked.”

  “Ah! She volunteered it, did she?” Campion was interested.

  Oates nodded and his small grey eyes widened expressively.

  “Forced it on us. Came roaring round to the police station with it. Threw it off her chest as if she were doing something fine. I’m not usually squeamish about that sort of thing but it gave me a distinct sense of distaste, I don’t mind telling you. Frankly, I gave her a piece of my mind. Told her to go and look at the body, for one thing.”

  “Not kind of you,” observed Mr. Campion mildly. “And what did she do?”

  “Oh, blubbered herself sick, like the rest of ’em.” Oates was still disgruntled. “Still, that’s not of interest. What girls like Josephine do or don’t do doesn’t really matter. She was saving her own skin. If she hadn’t been so enthusiastic about it I’d have forgiven her. It’s Donovan who is i
mportant. Where was Donovan when he fired?”

  The shrill chatter of the telephone answered him and he glanced at me apologetically.

  “I’m afraid that’s mine,” he said. “You didn’t mind, did you? I left the number with the sergeant.”

  He took off the receiver and as he bent his head to listen his face changed. We watched him with an interest it was far too hot to dissemble.

  “Oh,” he said flatly after a long pause. “Really? Well, it doesn’t matter either way, does it? … Still, what did she do it for? … What? … I suppose so.… Yes? … Really?”

  He seemed suddenly astounded as his informant at the other end of the wire evidently came out with a second piece of information more important than the first.

  “You can’t be certain … you are? … What?”

  The faraway voice explained busily. We could hear its steady drone. Inspector Oates’s exasperation grew.

  “Oh all right, all right,” he said at last. “I’m crackers … we’re all crackers … have it your own damned way!”

  With which vulgar outburst he rang off.

  “Alibi sustained?” enquired Mr. Campion.

  “Yes.” The inspector grunted out the word. “A couple of printers who were in the downstairs room swear he did not go through the shop all the evening. They’re sound fellows. Make good witnesses. Yet Donovan shot Johnny. I’m certain of it. He shot him clean through the concrete angle of a piano warehouse as far as I can see.” He turned to Campion almost angrily. “Explain that, can you?”

  Mr. Campion coughed. He seemed a little embarrassed.

  “I say, you know,” he ventured, “there are just two things that occur to me.”

  “Then out with them, son.” The inspector lit a cigarette and wiped his face. “Out with them. I’m not proud.”