AHMM, April 2007
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ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE
April 2007
Vol. 52, No. 4
Dell Magazines
New York
Cover by Anson Liaw
CONTENTS
FICTION
THE RETURN OF JASPER KOHL by John C. Boland
DISHES by Stringfellow Forbes
DRAWN FROM DEATH by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
NOT YOUR EVERYDAY POISON by John H. Dirckx
PANDORA'S DEFENSE by Gilbert M. Stack
MYSTERY CLASSIC
THE KNIGHT'S CROSS SIGNAL PROBLEM by Ernest Bramah
DEPARTMENTS
EDITOR'S NOTES
SOLUTION to the March Dying Words
MYSTERIOUS PHOTOGRAPH
REEL CRIME by Steve Hockensmith
DYING WORDS Acrostic Puzzle by Arlene Fisher
BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn
THE STORY THAT WON
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Visit us online at www.TheMysteryPlace.com!
Click a Link for Easy Navigation
CONTENTS
EDITOR'S NOTE: HAND-CRAFTED CRIME by Linda Landrigan
THE RETURN OF JASPER KOHL by JOHN C. BOLAND
DISHES by STRINGFELLOW FORBES
DRAWN FROM DEATH by LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
REEL CRIME by STEVE HOCKENSMITH
NOT YOUR EVERYDAY POISON by JOHN H. DIRCKX
PANDORA'S DEFENSE by GILBERT M. STACK
BOOKED & PRINTED by ROBERT C. HAHN
MYSTERY CLASSIC: THE KNIGHT'S CROSS SIGNAL PROBLEM by ERNEST BRAMAH
COMING IN MAY 2007
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EDITOR'S NOTE: HAND-CRAFTED CRIME by Linda Landrigan
Intrigue often follows close on the heels of great art. Money, beauty, and the insatiable desire of the collector create a perfect storm of motive. In John C. Boland's story, “The Return of Jasper Kohl,” murder is also part of the mix when an art legend returns to a sleepy artists’ colony. In Lloyd Biggle, Jr.'s “Drawn from Death,” hastily drawn caricatures are the catalysts to solving a series of linked break-ins in London; Biggle presses the artist Max Beerbohm (1872-1956), a contemporary of Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and George Bernard Shaw, into service as a sleuth.
Detective Cyrus Auburn returns in John H. Dirckx's “Not Your Everyday Poison” with a case involving antique furniture—and a long-ago murder—when a restorer takes a taste from a bottle of liquor he finds in an old cabinet. Also returning, Irish bare-knuckle boxer Corey Callaghan makes his way to Cheyenne, where he is making a circuit of western towns, along with his trainer Patrick O'Sullivan and their traveling companion Pandora Parson, when Patrick is accused of killing a local card shark in “Pandora's Defense” by Gilbert M. Stack.
We also have a tender story from Stringfellow Forbes titled “Dishes,” and a Max Carrados mystery classic by Ernest Bramah, “The Knight's Cross Signal Problem,” in addition to our ever challenging mystery-themed acrostics and our Mysterious Photograph contest. Robert C. Hahn highlights exceptional debut mysteries in his Booked and Printed column, and Steve Hockensmith profiles Peter Weber, the director of the new Hannibal Lecter prequel, Hannibal Rising, in his Reel Crime column.
Six great stories and novellas for connoisseurs of the art of murder.
[Back to Table of Contents]
THE RETURN OF JASPER KOHL by JOHN C. BOLAND
Tim Foley
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Lake Rehoboth was at the center of her earliest memories, her happiest memories—and her worst ones.
"The people Rembrandt painted never bit him,” Tamar Gillespie complained. She stood four feet back, examining her portrait of General Archibald Lee. She had got the arrogant tilt of the head, the curve of the lips, the large dark eyes—but the dignified personality that she had conjured from those features was a lie. Her success as a portraitist depended on not painting what she saw as much as on composition and brushwork. In this case, she hadn't painted the subject's foul disposition.
"How do you know?” said Edgar Bean, who had his pin-striped arms folded.
"Know what?” Tamar answered. Her thoughts had shifted to whether Edgar would try to whittle down her fee. He was frowning for a reason, perhaps pretending there was something in the painting he didn't like.
"About Rembrandt,” he said. “That his subjects didn't bite. You know, some of them refused to pay."
He was still frowning at the portrait of General Archibald Lee.
"What?” Tamar demanded.
"Oh, nothing, nothing. The painting is very good. The client will love it. The little fellow bit you, did he?"
"Just a nip,” Tamar confessed. “I was trying to get him to stay on the stool."
"And lift his chin like the noble beast he is."
"That too.” General Archibald Lee was a purebred King Charles Cavalier spaniel.
"Well, I'm sure the owner will be delighted.” Edgar Bean laid a hand on her shoulder—paternally, Tamar hoped—steering her through the Hologram Gallery, which commanded the highest prices in the high-priced town of Tyler River, Connecticut. Their business relationship was two years old and lucrative for them both. Besides representing Tamar in portraits, which were done on commission, the gallery showed the paintings she did because she loved her work. The doggie pictures sold. The landscapes, of which she was proudest, stuck to the walls.
"Do you need an advance?” Edgar Bean asked.
"It wouldn't hurt."
It never hurt. Her expenses rolled in faster than her brush moved.
At his desk, Bean drew a large black checkbook from a bottom drawer, paid Tamar half of what she would eventually receive for the portrait. As she folded the check into a jacket pocket, Bean remarked, “I'm beginning to worry about your lake painting. It should have sold by now. Perhaps...” He let the thought hang unfinished and walked to the north wall. She noticed he had moved the canvas to the second room, where the not-so-fresh work hung. Edgar was a greengrocer at heart. He would perk up wilted art with a spritz if he could get away with it. “It's rather gloomy, isn't it?” he said.
"You think?” She had painted it a year ago, when her life was coming apart. Mars black had spilled from the tube like blood at midnight. Hemlock and elms strangled each other. Even the water looked tortured. Placid little Lake Rehoboth had never known waves like those.
The gallery owner raised an eyebrow. He was telling her the painting was taking up wall space that something more commercial could occupy.
"If you want to crate it up, I'll send it down to New York,” Tamar said. She met his gaze, or tried to—whether because he was shy or evasive, staring eye to eye with Edgar was impossible. New York was her trump card. A small gallery in TriBeCa also represented her. Edgar would hate the thought of New York selling something he hadn't.
"No rush,” he said. His round face, white bearded and pink, wrinkled into a smile. “Perhaps a Stephen King fan will happen by and take it off my hands. In the meantime, I have to get next week's show mounted. So if you will excuse me..."
He walked her to the front of the gallery. Framed paintings were stacked facing the wall. It looked like a small show, fewer than twenty canvases.
"Who is it
?” Tamar asked.
Edgar had been quiet about the new show. Normally, there would have been posters and cards distributed weeks ago.
"Is it still a secret?” she prodded.
"I'll let you in on it. We have sixteen new works by Jasper Kohl."
"Wow, Edgar!” She didn't pretend she wasn't impressed. “I thought he had given up painting."
She thought he had gone insane, actually. That was the grapevine's version of why the legendary surrealist hadn't had a show in four years.
"He's back at work,” Edgar said.
"I'd like to meet him,” Tamar said.
"The opening is Tuesday night. You're invited, of course."
She moved toward the nearest painting for a peek.
"No, no, my dear.” Edgar intercepted her. “Let's save the surprise."
As she drove home, she replayed the conversation. She hadn't been invited to the opening until she asked to be. That wasn't like Edgar, who surrounded himself with artists like ... like what? Certainly not like a fat gray spider in a circle of wrapped flies. If Edgar had a web, she shared it willingly.
* * * *
Tamar Gillespie thought Lake Rehoboth was a perfect place to work. After Labor Day, the summer people went home, social obligations faded, and the strident arguments over how the little community should be governed subsided to murmurs. A half dozen other artists lived along the hilly roads surrounding the lake, so there were Sunday plein air expeditions. Her mother lived a quarter mile down the road, in an A-frame overlooking the small grassy dam that kept the lake in place. Her grandfather had lived in one of the first tiny houses built sixty years ago, which he had crammed with political books until the floors creaked. For Tamar, Lake Rehoboth was at the center of her earliest memories, her happiest memories—and her worst ones. It even accommodated her widowhood, dangling promises that the second half of her life might be better than the last several years had been.
Her fame annoyed her. In Tyler River, she was known as the “dog painter.” In New York, she was that dog painter because the field was crowded. She had done portraits of bank presidents and university benefactors, neurasthenic heirs and ectomorphic children, but dogs had made her career. Michael Satich, the television smile that lit thirty million mornings, had loved the fact Tamar painted his three Pomeranians in an ornate boudoir that a French king would have found comfortable. Tamar never told him she thought the animals deserved a French king's fate.
Michael Satich had a lot of friends who shared his taste. A half dozen commissions followed within a month of the portrait being hung, and others followed from people who would never be famous but imitated celebrities’ style. She had plenty of work that she didn't like, and enough sense to be grateful for it. Her husband's final year had pretty much wiped them out financially. Bills were still coming in, but the collection threats had stopped.
Six more dogs, she thought, and she could start paying down the mortgage she had taken on the house. She had known she was going to lose Dan. She felt awfully selfish knowing she hadn't wanted to lose everything else.
She drove up the hill to her cottage and saw her husband's former partner, Cal Hoover, standing beside a North Fairfield Police cruiser. He was big and unfriendly looking, which she supposed was a good thing for a cop to be these days. Cal and his wife had tried to comfort Tamar as her husband declined, an awkward business for all concerned. It wasn't easy for cop families to separate compassion from their own dread.
"Business or coffee?” she called.
Cal's smile was short lived. “Both, please. Do you know Jean Ann Arnold?"
"Sure I know her."
"Her husband reported her missing. Said you were with her this morning."
"We were out painting.” She glanced at her watch. It was five thirty, the day already getting gray. “That was hours ago."
She pushed open the door, which she never locked, crossed the porch, and started turning on lights. While she heated water for coffee, Cal Hoover asked her about the plein air group's outing.
"Jean Ann should have been home before noon,” Tamar said. “We almost didn't get together because it looked like rain, so we stayed on the mountain.” She had dropped into the local habit of calling the small, hilly community “the mountain.” “We met down at the Arthur Street beach. That was a little after nine. Bobbie Silver had her grandkids coming, so she left around eleven. Nate Perlman, Jean Ann, and I called it quits at about quarter to twelve."
"Did Jean Ann say she was going anywhere?"
"Not to me."
"Who left first?"
"I'm not sure. Jean Ann and I were getting into our cars around the same time. Nate lives just up the hill, so he was walking. I may actually have driven off first."
Having taken off his topcoat, Cal sat comfortably at the breakfast counter and stirred decaf into hot water. He had never known quite what to make of Dan Gillespie's wife. She was Jewish, like most of the people at Lake Rehoboth, and he told himself that this didn't matter without being sure it was true. The community had been here for a long time, built by New Yorkers who hadn't been able to buy property in much of southern Connecticut in the 1950s because of restrictive deed covenants. He liked having Lake Rehoboth in his jurisdiction because it meant there were about two hundred houses he didn't have to worry about except for an occasional burglary. He knew that the community had been noisily political before his time, with protests for Ethel Rosenberg and against whatever war was going on. But it had quieted, half the first generation were living in Boca Raton or Boynton Beach, and now there were a theater group, a couple of writers, several professional artists, and a handful of people who commuted by rail down to New York.
Dan had been happy with her, the woman he called his red-diaper baby, and that made two guys on the North Fairfield Police force who had had good marriages.
"What do you know about Jean Ann's husband?” Cal asked.
"Bruce Arnold? Good guy, an accountant; he has an office in Tyler River.” She frowned at him. “She's only been missing six hours. What's this about?"
His big head tilted. “We like to believe North Fairfield delivers a superior police product. And Mr. Arnold's first call was to the chief."
"She could have gone to a movie."
"Or met a boyfriend.” Cal raised his brows as he made the suggestion.
Tamar could only shrug.
"You two aren't close,” he said.
She settled down on the stool across from him. “We don't share secrets.” Before he could nudge her again, she said, “Jean Ann said something to my mother once. She thought Mom should be upset that I'd married Dan. He wasn't Jewish. And he was a cop."
"A bad combination,” said Cal, who wasn't Jewish and was a cop.
"She doesn't mean any harm, but sometimes she's silly. Her parents were labor lawyers. To them, cops were oppressors of the working man, strike breakers. We enjoy painting together, but we don't talk politics. Or men."
Cal's phone rang. He said, “Okay, I'll be there.” He got up. “Mrs. Arnold's car turned up."
"Where?"
"About a half mile from here. Do you want to come?"
* * * *
"Is there a path here?” Cal asked, stepping around the green sedan that was nosed between clumps of mountain laurel a dozen yards off Esther Road.
Tamar pointed ahead to rising land in which gray stripes of ledge poked through tawny weeds. The weeds had the beaten-down look of a deer trail that led through a corridor of sparse hemlock.
"We call it the Nature Trail,” Tamar said. “It goes back about two miles to a beaver pond."
It was getting dark. Cal asked, “Would someone go up there to paint?"
"Yes."
"You've done it?"
"Many times."
"Is it safe?"
"The hills aren't very steep. If you see any wildlife, it's mostly deer.” She glanced at him. “You could break an ankle."
He turned to a uniformed woman who had been canvassi
ng the area. “Get out the flashlights. Mrs. Gillespie will lead us. We may have to get more people up here. It's supposed to be cold tonight."
It was full dark forty minutes later when a flash beam picked up a waterlogged plaid shirt half submerged in the shallows of the pond. Tamar looked away from the awful sight. Jean Ann's sketch pad fluttered on a glacial rock twenty feet above the water.
* * * *
Shaken,Tamar stopped at her mother's house. She was thirty-six years old, and she still retreated here when the world turned ugly. Dorothy Hirsch had been a teacher, and then for a couple of years when Tamar was a teenager a struggling divorcee, until a new career selling real estate took off. Twenty years later, Tamar had trouble remembering her mother as a tough-minded saleswoman. Somehow she had become frail and old.
"It looks like Jean Ann slipped off the rock,” Tamar explained. “She may have been there since noon."
"Do you think she could have run into somebody?"
Tamar understood. Groups of motorcyclists, mostly benign, roared along Route 7 on weekend afternoons. Strangers sometimes drove up an old logging road within a half mile of the pond to use drugs or shoot bottles. As her mother got older, minor dangers on the periphery worried her more. It occurred to Tamar that their roles were gradually reversing. She didn't know if she would ever be the source of comfort her mother had been. She did her best to allay the older woman's concern.
"Jean Ann's wallet was in her paint box. It looks like an accident."
"That's terrible,” Dorothy Hirsch said, then with the bluntness Tamar had always admired, said, “I'm sorry I didn't like her better."
* * * *
From her own porch, bundled in a cable-knit over fleece, Tamar watched the headlights come down from Esther Road. There was a streetlight near the automatic gate that kept the little community private, and she counted three marked police vehicles, a couple of cars that looked official but weren't rigged with light bars, and a medical examiner's truck. She wondered how Bruce Arnold was taking the death of his wife. There were grown children somewhere on the East Coast, and two of Jean Ann's sisters lived nearby. The presence of family relieved Tamar of any guilt over not offering Bruce her help or condolences. She could do that in the next couple of days, when the first outpouring of sympathy from other Lake Rehoboth families had run its course. By ten or eleven o'clock tonight, the Arnold refrigerator would be full of tuna casseroles and roast chicken. By the middle of the week, Bruce Arnold would be wondering what to do with the deli platters, rugelach, and babkas. Christians sent flowers. Jews sent food. Jean Ann had brought over a roast chicken after Dan died.