by Ellery Queen
“Eve Drayton even told me the motive. She hated Vicky, of course. But that wasn’t the main point. She was Vicky Adams’s only relative; she’d inherit an awful big scoopful of money. Eve said she could be patient. (And, burn me, how her eyes meant it when she said that!) Rather than risk any slightest suspicion of murder, she was willing to wait seven years until a disappeared person can be presumed dead.
“Our Eve, I think, was the fiery drivin’ force of that conspiracy. She was only scared part of the time. Sage was scared all of the time. But it was Sage who did the real dirty work. He lured Vicky Adams into that cottage, while Eve kept me in close conversation on the lawn. . .”
H.M. paused.
Intolerably vivid in the mind of Chief Inspector Masters, who had seen it years before, rose the picture of the rough-stone bungalow against the darkling wood.
“Masters,” said H.M., “why should a bath-tap be dripping in a house that hadn’t been occupied for months?”
“Well?”
“Sage, y’see, is a surgeon. I saw him take his black case of instruments out of the car. He took Vicky Adams into that house. In the bathroom he stabbed her, he stripped her, and he dismembered her body in the bathtub.—Easy, son!”
“Go on,” said Masters without moving.
“The head, the torso, the folded arms and legs, were wrapped up in three large square pieces of thin transparent oilskin. Each was sewed up with coarse thread so the blood wouldn’t drip. Last night I found one of the oilskin pieces he’d ruined when his needle slipped at the corner. Then he walked out of the house, with the back door still unlocked, to get his wild-strawberry alibi.”
“Sage went out of there,” shouted Masters, “leaving the body in the house?”
“Oh, yes,” agreed H.M.
“But where did he leave it?”
H.M. ignored this.
“In the meantime, son, what about Eve Drayton? At the end of the arranged three quarters of an hour, she indicated there was hanky-panky between her fiancé and Vicky Adams. She flew into the house. But what did she do?
“She walked to the back of the passage. I heard her. There she simply locked and bolted the back door. And then she marched out to join me with tears in her eyes. And these two beauties were ready for investigation.”
“Investigation?” said Masters. “With that body still in the house?”
“Oh, yes.”
Masters lifted both fists.
“It must have given young Sage a shock,” said ‘H.M., “when I found that piece of waterproof oilskin he’d washed but dropped. Anyway, these two had only two more bits of hokey-pokey. The ‘vanished’ gal had to speak—to show she was still alive. If you’d been there, son, you’d have noticed that Eve Drayton’s got a voice just like Vicky Adams’s. If somebody speaks in a dark room, carefully imitatin’ a coy tone she never uses herself, the illusion’s goin’ to be pretty good. The same goes for a telephone.
“It was finished, Masters. All that had to be done was remove the body from the house, and get it far away from there. . .”
“But that’s just what I’m asking you, sir! Where was the body all this time? And who in blazes did remove the body from the house?”
“All of us did,” answered H.M.
“What’s that?”
“Masters,” said H.M., “aren’t you forgettin’ the picnic hampers?”
And now, the Chief Inspector saw, H.M. was as white as a ghost. His next words took Masters like a blow between the eyes.
“Three good-sized wickerwork hampers, with lids. After our big meal on the porch, those hampers were shoved inside the house where Sage could get at ’em. He had to leave most of the used crockery behind, in the kitchen cupboard. But three wickerwork hampers from a picnic, and three butcher’s parcels to go inside ’em. I carried one down to the car myself. It felt a bit funny. . .”
H.M. stretched out his hand, not steadily, towards the whiskey.
“Y’know,” he said, “I’ll always wonder if I was carrying the—head.”
“Q”
Jon L. Breen
The House of the Shrill Whispers
Well, Jon L. Breen has done it again! After parody-pastiches of S. S. Van Dine’s Philo Vance, Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct, “Frank Merriswell,” Ellery Queen’s “L. Larry Cune,” John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan, J. J. Marric’s (John Creasey’s) Gideon, Emma Lathen’s John Putnam Thatcher, Dick Francis, Hugh Pentecost’s Pierre Chambrun and John Jericho, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Isaac Asimov’s Black Widowers, Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op, Mr. Breen offers John Dickson Can-Carter Dickson’s Sir Gideon Merrimac, a chuckling blend of Dr. Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale. And what kind of crime is Old Giddy called upon to investigate? Naturally. A truly impossible one—of an invisible-lighter-than-air-killer-who-can-walk-through-walls-and-leaves-no-footprints. Who could ask for anything more?. . .
Detective: SIR GIDEON MERRIMAC
Millard Carstairs reflected in his first-class carriage seat in the New Orleans-Manchester local that he was not nearly the stuffy, stodgy puritanical Victorian that his jocular friends so insistently accused him of being. For example, take that young girl seated across from him. He was glad her skirt was short and that he enjoyed an unobstructed view of her well-moulded limbs. It didn’t embarrass him a bit. Thus, he convinced himself, he was a man of the nineteen-seventies.
True, he was approaching middle age, and a conservative lower upper-class upbringing had convinced him that there were certain proprieties to be observed, even cherished; and true, these proprieties had guided him well through his youth. But he was not a stuffy, stodgy stick-in-the-mud. As if to prove it, he endeavoured to engage the young lady in conversation.
Nancy Williston proved to be her name. “Williston. Williston!” he exclaimed. “I knew the name was familiar. I think the chances are more than fair, dear lady, that we may be getting off at the same stop, though that stop is clouded in obscurity and remoteness.”
The fair-haired beauty raised demure eyebrows in surprise. “And what is your destination, sir?”
“Warwick-on-Stems, The Clifton Place—or the House of the Shrill Whispers, as it’s called.”
She shuddered. “I hate that name. It frightens me. But you’re right. How on earth did you know?”
“I have suddenly remembered that there was a Nancy Williston, Margrove Clifton’s ward, that my old friend Billy Clifton, who has summoned me to the House of the Shrill Whispers, grew up with as a sister. He described her to me many times, her fair hair and pert nose and beautiful, delicate features. You seem to fit that description perfectly, and since your name is Nancy Williston, I could only conclude that you are the same young lady. And if I may, I must say I’m delighted that so comely a travelling companion is going to the same destination I am.”
“You are perceptive, sir. And your presence does much to relieve me, too. You are so strong and handsome and trustworthy-looking. And I am afraid.”
Millard looked at her sharply. She did look afraid. He could see it in her eyes, the same type of fear he had recognized in the voice of his old friend Billy Clifton when the telephoned summons had come. “Why should you be afraid, Miss Williston? I realize that the House of the Shrill Whispers is said to be haunted, and that the ghost of old Admiral Wilburforce Cogsby has been seen to walk there on July 12 of the last year of every decade since 1880, and that today is July 11, 1970, but surely that old superstitious nonsense has no effect upon you.”
“It is not only that,” she replied tremulously. “There have been other mysterious goings-on at Uncle Margrove’s house—threats on his life. Shortly after signing his latest will, leaving everything to Billy and me to share equally and cutting off his other three children, who are all currently visiting him, Uncle Margrove barricaded himself in the guest cottage, ordered it surrounded by artificial snow, had four spotlights placed on the walls to illuminate the premises from sunset to sunrise, engaged eight
een private security men from Pinkertons’ to watch the guest house constantly, and made sure that all the doors and windows were locked and bolted from the inside. Only Answorth is allowed to visit him there.”
“Answorth!” Millard exclaimed. “Is that old fellow still there? That old retainer must be a hundred.”
“He’s only eighty-seven,” Nancy corrected, “and he’s the only man Uncle Margrove can trust. Answorth brings Uncle Margrove his food and his mail twice a day.”
“And yet your uncle is still afraid?” Millard prompted.
“Yes,” Nancy Williston returned. “In his letter he talked of an invisible lighter-than-air killer who can walk through walls and leaves no footprints.”
“Really!” Millard ejaculated. “That’s the same thing Billy mentioned to me. I didn’t see how he could be serious. But that could have been what had made him so worried, couldn’t it?”
“Yes, it could be worrying. How ironic that Billy and I, named in the will, should be worried, when the other three children, not named in the will, should—should—”
“Yes? Should what?”
“I mustn’t say.”
“Yes, you must! I’m Billy’s best friend. I want to help.”
“Very well, then. Should be the object of our worry. I’m sure that either Cavendish or Jessica or Franklin wants to murder Uncle. Billy thinks so, too. It’s almost as if there was another will by which one of them would inherit. But I know that Uncle wants Billy and me to to be his heirs.”
“Hmm,” Millard pondered. “I wish Old Giddy were about.”
“Who?”
“An old friend of mine. Sir Gideon Merrimac, the world’s greatest detective. Billy asked me to try and make contact with him, but I was unable to. If only he were here.”
A booming voice could be heard from the passage between the cars. “Harrumph! Oh, by Gumbo, harrumph! Deuced bother!”
“I think someone is stuck in the passage between the cars,” Nancy Williston suggested.
“Yes,” Millard returned, bounding to his feet with determination. He thought he recognized that “Harrumph.” He assaulted the passage, and after much pulling and pushing and grunting, the imprisoned colossus was extricated, realizing Millard’s hopes. For the scarcely ruffled harrumpher, released from his prison and wheezing like a beached whale, could only be one man.
Who else was that fat and ruddy-cheeked? Who else wore two monocles, one in each eye, over a bulbous Fieldsian nose, a full set of gold teeth, and a pristine-white Colonel Sanders goatee? Who else wore a black opera cape in the heat of July, over purple-and-gold-checked tree-sized trousers, from one of whose pockets protruded a flowered handkerchief into which its proprietor periodically wheezed with earth-shattering volume, sometimes causing his cape to flutter and reveal a holstered antique duelling pistol hanging precariously onto his prodigious belly?
Yes, it could not be doubted. It was the man the situation called for—Sir Gideon Merrimac, known far and wide as Old Giddy.
Millard made hurried introductions and invited Old Giddy to sit down with them. When this demanding engineering feat had been adequately accomplished, Millard hopefully asked Old Giddy his destination.
“A haunted house! A ghost house! One called the House of the Shrill Whispers!”
Millard and Nancy gasped in unison. “Then you know about Sir Margrove and the invisible-lighter-than-air-killer-who-can-walk-through-walls-and-leaves-no-footprints?”
Old Giddy’s beady eyes lit up behind both monocles. “Of these matters I am sadly ignorant. I was hoping the good solid ghost of Admiral Wilburforce Cogsby might make his scheduled once-every-ten-years appearance, a matter I have been sent to cover by my publisher, who is dismayed by my failure to lay many ghosts lately. But this phantom killer you speak of is unknown to me. I haven’t seen old Stinky Clifton since our public-school days, but I don’t remember him as a man pursued by invisible killers. Have they caught him yet?”
“No, thank God!” Nancy gasped. “You call Uncle Margrove Old Stinky?”
“Don’t they call him that any more?” Old Giddy queried in surprise. “I’m still called Old Giddy. Has Old Stinky gone high-hat on me and grown up? They all seem to do that.”
“Have you had any good cases since I saw you last?” Millard enquired.
“Several cases, son, but nothing really up my alley, nothing Old Giddy could stick his grinnin’ teeth into. I tracked down an escaped denizen of Marineland that was reported terrorizing little old ladies by peeking in their windows, charges that proved groundless, I might add. I also brought to grief some vandals who were toppling over equipment in a carpet factory. I found the bunco artists who had been cheating a member of a New York theatrical club. I discovered the miscreant who barricaded the doorway of a used-car dealer with a pile of unnecessary trimmings from 1950 automobiles. I ferreted out the man who stole an amazing new formula for baby food. And I finally figured out who locked Butterick Prattler, the lawyer fellow, in a closet on his wedding day.”
“These sound like fascinating cases,” Millard protested.
“Yes, but not really my kind of case, though some came close enough. A rumored seal, a rocked loom, a rooked Lamb, an impassable chrome, a miracle pablum, and a sealed groom. Close every one of them, but no cigar! But you, son, you talk of an invisible-lighter-than-air-killer-with-wings-who-can-walk-through-walls-and-leaves-no-footprints. Now you’re talking my language!”
“We never said he had wings,” Nancy interjected.
“Miss, I never eliminate a possibility.”
“That’s the secret of his success,” Millard provided.
“You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie, honeychile,”
Old Giddy verified.
“Old Giddy,” Nancy probed, “are you English or Southern American?”
“Does it matter? After all, I’m just a character in a detective story and so are we all, so let’s get down to the problem at hand without further palaver.”
“Look,” Millard objected, “you may be a character in a detective story, Old Giddy, but I’m real! Prick me and see if I don’t bleed.”
“A character in a detective story had jolly well better bleed, son, or it won’t be much of a detective story. If we were characters in a novel instead of characters in a short story, I’d discourse with you at appropriate length about the foolishness and absurdity of characters in fiction pretendin’ they’re real. It leads to characterization and verisimilitude and other elements that stand in the way of a good story. But that is neither here nor there anywhere else.”
Millard Carstairs fumed silently. Being accused of not being corporeal didn’t bother him personally, but the implication that Nancy also lacked flesh and blood affronted him deeply. Still, Old Giddy was widely proclaimed, by others as well as himself, as a bona-fide genius, and if the delusion that he was a fictional character came as part of the package, so to speak, Millard was willing to put up with it—at least, until the problem of the invisible-lighter-than-air-killer-et-cetera had been solved.
The old servant Answorth, looking older than his 87 years, met the trio at the Warwick-on-Stems station with bad news. Or good news, depending on the point of view. Old Giddy appeared positively ecstatic about it.
“Sir Margrove Clifton,” the retainer quavered, “has been murdered in the guest cottage. All the doors and windows were triple-locked and triple-bolted from the inside. The cottage was surrounded by artificial snow in which no footprints appear. All sides of the cottage were spotlighted and watched by Pinkerton men, especially hired for the purpose, and they saw no one approach the guest cottage. I must conclude that the ghost of Admiral Wilburforce Cogsby has walked and killed. He was a rather pleasant and well-behaved ghost up to now, but his latest escapade has tried my patience severely.”
“The ghost isn’t supposed to walk until tomorrow night,” Old Giddy wheezed, as he manoeuvered his 400-pound bulk into the horse-drawn carriage that would take the four of them along the winding road to the
House of the Shrill Whispers. “He really is an anti-social ghost if he walks a night early. I’m thinking a human killer is our real quarry, Answorth.”
“Aye, and the house is full of candidates, sir. Mr. Franklin, Miss Jessica, and Mr. Cavendish, as foul a lot of relations as so fine a man could ever have. But none of them for all their evil impulses has the ability to walk through walls or fly or become invisible.”
“But they could grip a duelling pistol,” reasoned Old Giddy. “A ghost could not. Ghosts can go through walls all day and all night, but they cannot pick up a gun and fire it.”
“You’ve forgotten something, Answorth,”
Nancy revealed in a faint whisper.
“Have I, Miss?”
“Yes. Ever since the days of Admiral Wilbur-force Cogsby, who haunts the House of the Shrill Whispers because he is searching for the ghost of his lady-love who died there July 11, 1870, the inhabitants of the house have used a special calendar. The Admiral had a three-century supply made, so that the date of his love’s death would be blotted from the Cogsby calendar forever.”
“You’re right, Miss!” the old retainer rasped. “She’s right, Mr. Giddy. All our calendars have no July 11 and two July 12’s. At the House of the Shrill Whispers it is now July 12!”
“You mean,” Millard interrogated, “that the ghost has a choice of two nights to walk, in case the atmospheric conditions are not right the first night?”
“Joke if you will,” the old servant bristled. “But the ghost, who has already walked once, may this year, having tasted blood, walk twice.”
With that Answorth mounted the coach, took the reins in his gnarled hands, and began the journey to the House of the Shrill Whispers.
Millard and Old Giddy had an immediate look at the murder scene. Sure enough, the old man had been shot and the gun was gone. The spotlights were all in working order, and the triple-locks, and triple-bolts were all untampered with and for all the world impregnable. The whole scene was impossibly baffling.
“Now you go see the family, young fellow,” Old Giddy insisted. “Old Giddy wants to have a closer look at the murder scene.”
