Murder Most Foul

by Robert Bloch

  The blow of the ax caught him dead center. As he toppled forward, the two muscovy ducks, their feathers streaked with blood, fell in an awkward heap on their sides, then bounded to the far end of the barn, giving the pen a wide berth. At the same time, from the wild-eyed boars, came a long, low, eerie whine.

  The old woman wiped the blade with a rag. The whine grew in intensity as she knelt beside the body of Oscar Phipps to strip it. The gloves took a long time.

  By the barn door, which she opened just enough to squeeze through, she reached for an overhanging rope. A single jerk unlatched the pen. The whining suddenly ceased, and for a moment there was silence in the barn.

  Then the boars rushed out.

  Mind Over Matter

  Ellery Queen

  Paula Paris found Inspector Queen of Police Headquarters nearly inconsolable when she arrived in New York. She understood how he felt, for she had flown in from Hollywood expressly to cover the heavyweight fight between the Champion Mike Brown and the Challenger Jim Coyle, who were signed to box fifteen rounds at the Stadium that night for the championship of the world.

  “You poor dear,” said Paula. “And how about you. Mastermind? Aren’t you disappointed, too, that you can’t buy a ticket to the fight?” she asked Ellery.

  “I’m a jinx,” said Ellery gloomily. “If I went, something catastrophic would be sure to happen. So why should I want to go?”

  “I thought witnessing catastrophes was why people go to fights.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean anything gentle like a knockout. Something grimmer.”

  “He’s afraid somebody will knock somebody off,” said the Inspector.

  “Well, doesn’t somebody always?” demanded his son.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him, Paula,” said the Inspector impatiently. “Look, you’re a newspaperwoman. Can you get me a ticket?”

  “You may as well get me one, too,” groaned Ellery.

  So Miss Paris smiled and telephoned Phil Maguire, the famous sports editor, and spoke so persuasively to Mr. Maguire that he picked them up that evening in his little open sports car and they all drove uptown to the Yankee Stadium to see the brawl.

  “How do you figure the fight, Maguire?” asked Inspector Queen.

  “On this howdedo,” said Maguire, “Maguire doesn’t care to be quoted.”

  “Seems to me the champ ought to take this boy Coyle.”

  Maguire shrugged. “Phil’s sour on the champion,” laughed Paula. “Phil and Mike Brown haven’t been cuddly since Mike won the title.”

  “Nothing personal, y’understand,” said Phil Maguire. “Only, remember Kid Beres? The Cuban boy. This was in the days when Ollie Stearn was finagling Mike Brown into the heavy sugar. So this fight was a fix, see, and Mike knew it was a fix, and the Kid knew it was a fix, and everybody knew it was a fix and that Kid Beres was supposed to lay down in the sixth round. Well, just the same, Mike went out there and sloughed into the Kid and half-killed him. Just for the hell of it. The Kid spent a month in the hospital and when he came out, he was only half a man.” Maguire smiled his crooked smile and pressed his horn gently at an old man crossing the street. Then he said, “I guess I just don’t like the champ.”

  “Speaking of fixes…” began Ellery.

  “Were we?” asked Maguire innocently.

  “If it’s on the level,” predicted Ellery, “Coyle will murder the champion. Wipe up the ring with him. That big fellow wants the title.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Damn it,” grinned the Inspector, “who’s going to win tonight?”

  Maguire grinned back. “Well, you know the odds. Three to one on the champ.”

  When they drove into the parking lot across the street from the Stadium, Maguire grunted, “Speak of the devil.” He had backed his car into a space beside-a huge foreign-type job the color of arterial blood.

  “Now what’s that supposed to mean?” asked Paula Paris.

  “This red locomotive,” Maguire chuckled, “is the champ’s. Or rather, it belongs to his manager, Ollie Stearn. Ollie lets Mike use it. Mike’s car’s gone down the river.”

  “I thought the champion was loaded,” said Ellery.

  “Not any more. All tangled up in litigation. Dozens of judgments wrapped around his ugly cars.”

  “He ought to be hunk after tonight,” said the Inspector. “Pulling down half a million bucks for his end!”

  “He won’t collect a red cent of it,” said the newspaperman. “His loving wife—you know Ivy, the ex-strip tease doll with the curves and detours?—Ivy and Mike’s creditors will grab it all off—after taxes, that is. Come on.”

  Ellery assisted Miss Paris from the car and tossed his camel’s hair topcoat carelessly into the back seat.

  “Don’t leave your coat there, Ellery,” protested Paula. “Someone’s sure to steal it.”

  “Let ’em. It’s an old rag. Don’t know what I brought it for, anyway, in this heat.”

  “Come on, come on,” said Phil Maguire eagerly.

  From the press section at ringside the stands were one heaving mass of growling humanity. Two bantamweights were fencing in the ring.

  “What’s the trouble?” demanded Ellery.

  “Crowd came out to see heavy artillery, not popguns,” explained Maguire. “Take a look at the card.”

  “Six prelims,” muttered Inspector Queen. “And all good boys, too. So what are these muggs beefing about?”

  “Bantams, welters, lightweights.”

  “So what?”

  “So the card’s too light. The fans came here to see two big guys slaughter each other. They don’t want to be annoyed by a bunch of gnats—even good gnats… Hi, Happy.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Miss Paris.

  “Happy Day,” the Inspector answered for Maguire. “Makes his living off bets.”

  Happy Day was visible a few rows off, an expensive panama resting on a fold of neck-fat. He had a puffed face the color of cold rice pudding, and his eyes were two raisins. He nodded at Maguire and turned back to watch the ring.

  “Normally, Happy’s face is like a raw steak,” said Maquire. “He’s worried about something.”

  “Perhaps,” remarked Ellery, “the gentleman smells a mouse.”

  Maguire glanced at Ellery sidewise, then smiled. “And there’s Mrs. Champ herself. Ivy Brown. Some stuff, hey, men?”

  The woman prowled down the aisle on the arm of a wizened, wrinkled little man who chewed nervously on a long green cold cigar. The champion’s wife was a full-blown animal with a face like a Florentine cameo. The little man handed her into a seat and hurried off.

  “Isn’t the little guy Ollie Stearn, Brown’s manager?” asked the Inspector.

  “Yes,” said Maguire. “Notice the act? Ivy and Mike Brown haven’t lived together for a couple of years, and Ollie thinks it’s bad publicity. So he pays a lot of attention to the champ’s wife in public. What d’ye think of her, Paula? The woman’s angle is always refreshing.”

  “This may sound feline,” murmured Miss Paris, “but she’s an overdressed harpie with the instincts of a she-wolf who never learned to apply make-up properly. Cheap—very cheap.”

  “Expensive—very expensive. See, Mike’s wanted a divorce for a long time, but Ivy keeps raising the ante. Say, I gotta get to work.” Maguire bent over his typewriter.

  The night deepened, the crowd rumbled, and Ellery felt uncomfortable. Specifically, his six-foot body was taut as a violin string. It was a familiar but always sinister sign. It meant there was murder in the air.

  The challenger appeared first. He was met by a roar, like the roar of a river at flood-tide bursting its dam.

  Miss Paris gasped with admiration. “Isn’t he the one!”

  Jim Coyle was the one—an almost handsome giant six feet and a half tall, with preposterously broad shoulders, long smooth muscles, and a bronze skin. He rubbed his unshaven cheeks and grinned boyishly at the fans.

  “His manager, Barney Hawks, follo
wed him into the ring. Hawks was a big man—almost as big as his fighter.

  “Hercules in trunks,” breathed Miss Paris. “Did you ever see such a body, Ellery?”

  “The question more properly is,” said Ellery, “can he keep that body off the floor?”

  “Plenty fast for a big man,” said Maguire. “Faster than you’d think, considering all that bulk. Maybe not as fast as Mike Brown, but Jim’s got height and reach in his favor, and he’s strong as a bull. The way Firpo was.”

  “Here comes the champ!” exclaimed Inspector Queen.

  A large ugly man shuffled down the aisle and vaulted into the ring. His manager—the little wizened, wrinkled man—followed him and stood bouncing up and down on the canvas, still chewing the unlit cigar.

  “Boo-oo-oo!”

  “They're booing the champion!” cried Paula. “Phil, why?”

  “Because they hate his guts,” smiled Maguire. “They hate his guts because he’s an ornery, brutal, crooked slob with the kick of a mule and the soul of a pretzel. That’s why, darlin’.”

  Brown stood six feet two inches, anatomically a gorilla, with a broad hairy chest, long arms, humped shoulders, and large flat feet. His features were smashed, cruel. He paid no attention to the hostile crowd or to his taller, bigger, younger opponent.

  But Ellery, whose peculiar genius it was to notice minutiae, saw Brown’s powerful jaws working ever so slightly.

  And again Ellery lightened.

  When the gong clamored for the start of the third round, the champion’s left eye was a purple slit, his lips were cracked and bloody, and his simian chest rose and fell in gasps.

  Thirty seconds later he was cornered, a beaten animal, above their heads. They could see the ragged splotches over his kidneys, blooming above his trunks like crimson flowers.

  Brown crouched, covering up, protecting his chin. Big Jim Coyle streaked forward. The giant's gloves sank into Brown’s body. The champion fell forward and pinioned the long bronze merciless arms.

  The referee broke them. Brown grabbed Coyle again. They danced.

  The crowd began singing “The Blue Danube,” and the referee stepped between the two fighters again and spoke sharply to Brown.

  “The dirty double-crosser,” smiled Phil Maguire.

  “Who? What d’ye mean?” asked Inspector Queen.

  “Watch the pay-off.”

  The champion raised his battered face and lashed out feebly at Coyle. The giant laughed and stepped in.

  The champion went down.

  “Pretty as a picture,” said Maguire admiringly.

  At the count of nine, with the bay of the crowd in his flattened ears, Mike Brown staggered to his feet. Coyle slipped in and pumped twelve solid, lethal gloves into Brown’s body. The champion’s knees broke. A whistling six-inch uppercut to the point of the jaw sent him toppling to the canvas.

  This time he remained there.

  “But he made it look kosher,” drawled Maguire.

  The Stadium howled with glee and bloodlust. Paula looked sickish. A few rows away Happy Day jumped up, stared wildly about, then began shoving through the crowd.

  “Happy isn’t happy anymore,” sang Maguire.

  The ring was boiling with police, handlers, officials. Jim Coyle was half drowned in a wave of shouting people; he was laughing like a boy. In the champion’s corner, Ollie Stearn worked slowly over the twitching torso of the unconscious man.

  “Yes, sir,” said Phil Maguire, rising and stretching, “that was as pretty a dive as I’ve seen, brother, and I’ve seen some beauts in my day.”

  “See here, Maguire,” said Ellery. “I have eyes, too. What makes you so cocksure Brown just tossed his title away?”

  “You may be Einstein on Centre Street,” grinned Maguire, “but here you’re just another palooka, Ellery.”

  “Seems to me,” argued the Inspector in the bedlam, “Brown took an awful lot of punishment.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Maguire mockingly. “Look, you boobs. Mike Brown has as sweet a right hand as the game has ever seen. Did you notice him use his right on Coyle tonight—even once?”

  “Well,” admitted Ellery, “no.”

  “Of course not. Not a single blow. And he had a dozen openings, especially in the second round. And Jimmy Coyle still carries his guard too low. But what did Mike do? Put his deadly right into cold storage, kept jabbing away with that silly left of his—it couldn’t put Paula away!—covering up, clinching, and taking one hell of a beating… Sure, he made it look good. But your ex-champ took a dive just the same!”

  They were helping the gorilla from the ring. He looked surly and tired. A small group followed him, laughing. Little Ollie Stearn kept pushing people aside fretfully. Ellery spied Brown’s wife, the curved Ivy, pale and furious, hurrying after them.

  “It appears,” sighed Ellery, “that I was in error.”

  “What?” asked Paula.

  “Hmm. Nothing.”

  “Look,” said Maguire. “I’ve got to see a man about a man, but I’ll meet you folks in Coyle’s dressing room and we’ll kick a few gongs around. Jim’s promised to help a few of the boys warm up some hot spots.”

  “Oh, I’d love it!” cried Paula. “How do we get in, Phil?”

  “What have you got a cop with you for? Show her, Inspector.”

  Maguire’s slight figure slouched off. Ellery’s scalp prickled suddenly. He frowned and took Paula’s arm.

  The new champion’s dressing room was full of smoke, people, and din. Young Coyle lay on a training table like Gulliver in Lilliput, being rubbed down. He was answering questions good-humoredly, grinning at cameras, flexing his shoulder-muscles. Big Barney Hawks was running about with his collar loosened and handing out cigars like a new father.

  The crowd was so dense it overflowed into the adjoining shower room. There were empty bottles on the floor and near the shower-room window, pushed into a corner, five men were shooting craps with enormous sobriety.

  The Inspector spoke to Barney Hawks, and Coyle’s manager introduced them to the champion, who took one look at Paula and said, “Hey, Barney, how about a little privacy?”

  “Sure, sure. You’re the champ now. Jimmy-boy!”

  “Come on, you guys, you got enough pictures to last you a lifetime. What did he say your name is, beautiful? That’s a hell of a name.”

  “Isn’t yours Couzzi?” asked Paula coolly.

  “Socko,” laughed the boy. “Come on, clear out, guys. This lady and I got some sparring to do. Hey, lay off the liniment, Louie. He didn’t hardly touch me.”

  Coyle slipped off the rubbing table, and Barney Hawks began shooing men out of the shower room, and finally Coyle grabbed some towels, winked at Paula, and went in, shutting the door. They heard the cheerful hiss of the shower.

  Five minutes later Phil Maguire strolled in. He was perspiring and a little wobbly. “Where’s the champ?” he shouted.

  “Here I am,” said Coyle, opening the shower-room door and rubbing his bare, wet chest with a towel. There was another towel draped around his loins. “Hiya, Phil-boy. Be dressed in a shake. Say, this doll your Mamie? If she ain’t. I’m staking out my claim.”

  “Come on, come on, champ. We got a date with Fifty-second Street.”

  “Sure! How about you, Barney? You joining us?”

  “Go ahead and play,” said his manager in a fatherly tone. “Me, I got money business with the management.” He barged into the shower room, emerged with a camel’s-hair coat over his arm, waved affectionately at Coyle, and lumbered out.

  “You’re not going to stay in here while he dresses?” said Ellery petulantly to Miss Paris. “Come on—you can wait for your hero outside.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Miss Paris submissively.

  Coyle guffawed. “Don’t worry, fella. I ain’t going to do you out of nothing. There’s plenty of dolls.”

  Ellery piloted Miss Paris firmly from the room. “Let’s meet them at the car,” he said in a curt tone.

&
nbsp; Miss Paris murmured, “Yes, sir.”

  They walked in silence to the end of the corridor and turned a corner into an alley which led out of the Stadium and into the street. As they walked down the alley, Ellery could see through the shower-room window into the dressing room. Maguire had produced a bottle and he, Coyle, and the Inspector were raising glasses.

  Ellery hurried Miss Paris across the street to the parking lot. Cars were slowly driving out. But the big red limousine belonging to Ollie Stearn still stood beside Maguire’s open sports car.

  “Ellery,” said Paula softly, “you’re such a fool.”

  “Now, Paula, I don’t care to discuss—”

  “What do you think I’m referring to? It’s your topcoat, silly. Didn’t I warn you someone would steal it?”

  Ellery glanced into the car. His coat was gone. “Oh, that. I was going to throw it away, anyway. Now look, Paula, if you think for one instant that I could be jealous of some oversized . . . Paula! What's the matter?”

  Paula’s cheeks were gray in the brilliant arc-light. She was pointing a shaky forefinger at the blood-red limousine.

  “In—in there… Isn’t that—?”

  Ellery glanced quickly into the rear of the limousine. Then he said, “Get into Maguire’s car, Paula, and look the other way.”

  Paula crept into the car, shaking.

  Ellery opened the rear door of Steam’s limousine.

  Mike Brown tumbled out of the car to his feet, and lay still.

  After a moment the Inspector, Maguire, and Coyle strolled up, chuckling over something Maguire was relating in a thick voice.

  Maguire stopped. “Say. Who’s that?”

  Coyle said abruptly, “Isn’t that Mike Brown?”

  The Inspector said, “Out of the way, Jim.” He knelt beside the still body.

  Ellery raised his head. “Yes, it’s Mike Brown. Someone’s used him for a pincushion.”

  Phil Maguire yelped and ran for a telephone. Paula Paris crawled out of Maguire’s car and blundered after him, remembering her profession.