The Laughing Butcher - Fredric Brown

Story: The Laughing Butcher

Author: Fredric Brown

Source: Carnival of Crime -The Best Mystery Stories of Fredric Brown.

Story Number: 21

Fredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery author. His debut mystery novel ‘The Fabulous Clipjoint’ won the Edgar for the Best First Novel in the year 1948. He has contributed more than 150 stories to the pulps and yet, except for the connoisseurs of the golden age of detective fiction, he is hardly remembered today!

Bill Pronzini in the introduction to this collection has this to say about Fredric Brown: “He invented several ingenious new ways to tell his stories; he introduced dazzling, sometimes outrageous, sometimes delightfully preposterous plot devices, apparently for the sheer artistic pleasure of developing them into plausible stories.” The best example which meets all these characteristics is his masterpiece of psychological horror “Don’t Look Behind You”, in which the narrator reveals in the first paragraph of the story that it is the reader who is the intended murder victim and goes on to tell a story as to how it all came about.

Fredric Brown also wrote a few genuine locked room or impossible crime stories and I have picked one such for this post. The laughing butcher refers to the evil butcher of the town of Corbyville, a sideshow magician and mentalist belonging to the 1000 odd population of ex-circus people. The townsfolk suspect him of practicing witchcraft but the women just adore him. But he has his eyes for only one woman and that woman is married to his arch nemesis Len. One day, when Len is passing his shop, the butcher points out a doll to him to indicate that Len would die shortly. This results in a showdown in which the butcher comes up triumphant without breaking a sweat.  All this drama is being watched by a Chicago cop (who is on his honeymoon) standing in a bar across the road, a bar in which the bartender is a 4 foot dwarf and a champion chess player. The cop rescues Len from the butcher and on their parting, hears the evil laughter of the butcher echoing throughout the road.

After getting the complete story about the rivalry between Len & the butcher, the cop and his wife continue on their honeymoon journey. 2 weeks later, a headline catches the cop’s eye. The butcher has been lynched by the residents of the town as they suspected him of killing Len, who has met a most mysterious death. Two sets of prints are seen going towards the scene of the murder, one belonging to the dead man Len and the other belonging to a big heavyset man like the butcher. But other than that the snow is undisturbed, there’s no sign of the 2^nd man’s prints progressing beyond the scene of crime or going back and there’s no other clue to the identity of the murderer. So how did the second man vanish from that place when there are no trees or any other escape routes?

The cop decides to make a pit stop on the way back; he observes the scene of the crime, makes some deductions and leaves without revealing his conclusions as he says he doesn’t have any proof to back up his theory. Five years down the line, he reveals what exactly must have happened to his brother-in-law which provides an interesting variation to the impossible crime situation of the missing footprints in the snow.

Murder Behind Schedule - Lawrence G Blochman

Story: Murder Behind Schedule

Author: Lawrence G Blochman

Source: Clues for Dr. Coffee.

Story Number: 20

Lawrence Blochman wrote a series of stories in the golden age tradition featuring the Forensic Pathologist Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee. Most of his stories feature a murder where the cause of death remains a mystery, the facts of the case gathered from all the suspects at the scene of the crime and the case gets resolved after Dr. Coffee conducts the autopsy as the results from the autopsy not only provides the cause of death but it also clearly points out who the murderer is as only one person could have committed such a crime.

One such case happens to be what Lieutenant Ritter refers to as the “Dr. Fell Case” as the murdered man was found inside a locked study with no sign of foul play. Michael Waverly calls the police and informs in a curtailed message that someone is trying to kill him. When the police arrive at his doorstep, they find Paul Monson (Mrs. Waverly’s lover) ringing the door bell continuously, the sleepy wife opens the front door and when they break open the study door, they find the phone still hooked to the dead man’s arm and his face showing a sign of fright.

Ritter calls in Dr. Coffee to identify the cause of death. After conducting the autopsy, the reason for the death explains the locked room murder as well as the person who committed it.

Superintendent Wilson’s Holiday - G.D.H & Margaret Cole

Story: Superintendent Wilson’s Holiday

Author: G.D.H & Margaret Cole

Source: The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories, Superintendent Wilson’s Holiday (Queen’s Quorum title #77).

Story Number: 19

Superintendent Wilson has been coaxed by his friend and medical adviser Michael Prendergast to go on a holiday and as a result they both find themselves exploring the coast of Norfolk. On the second day of their trip, half a mile from the beach across the cliffs, they come across a ruined cottage and a solitary tent. Wilson notices these unique features about the tent: One side of the tent is torn, the bed inside is wet though the tent isn’t, there are half burned cheque-books, there is a blood stained knife and there is a bucket outside which doesn’t have any water even though it has rained. Wilson is able to deduce a lot of things from these details and he believes that the two men who occupied the tent are still somewhere in the vicinity with at least one of them being dead.

When they reach the cliff edge, they find a suicide note on a rock; down below, a dead body with a slit throat and with a razor beside it. 2 bloodstained weapons for 1 body? All this points to a badly bungled up murder made to look like a suicide. He closely inspects the sets of footprints present and points out a strange anomaly (which is succinctly explained with a detailed map):

a.    2 sets of prints are seen from the road to the tent

b.    1 set of prints from the tent to the cliff with deep impressions of the feet to suggest he was carrying the dead body

c.    1 set of prints back from the cliff to the tent

d.    Same set of prints seen going from the tent towards the road (opposite direction to that of the cliff) but it has the same deep impressions!

With a little bit of background information about the two people involved (and a few others), it is revealed that one of them had forged a check for a huge sum and hence could have resulted in a quarrel between the two men and led to the grisly event. But none of this fools Wilson. He quickly exposes the criminal who would have plotted a much more sinister and clever murder than that meets the eye!

The Mystery of The Sleeping-Car Express - Freeman Wills Crofts

Story: The Mystery of The Sleeping-Car Express

Author: Freeman Wills Crofts

Source: The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories, The Mystery of The Sleeping-Car Express & Other Stories. It can be read online here.

Story Number: 18

The story is divided into 2 parts. The first part provides the details of the double murder and its investigation. The initial setting of the railway compartments is explained brilliantly in a few short lines. Someone pulls the emergency brake to halt the night train in the middle of nowhere. The guard in the last coach looks out of the window to check what’s wrong and notices that a few men in the first-class coach are summoning for help through the windows. The first-class coach embedded between a sleeper-car and third-class coach has six compartments – the first 2 and the last two are occupied with the in-between ones being vacant. When the guard reaches the 5^th compartment, he notices that a woman is trying to open the door but the door is jammed and the door on the other side is blocked with 2 dead bodies – both shot in the head. The compartment on the right has 4 gentlemen but they are also in the same predicament of the door being winched. No gun is found in the compartment, the woman inside the compartment testifies that someone shot from outside but the neighbors on the right and the left swear that no one except the guard used the aisle! Also, the vestibule exits at both the ends of the coach were guarded, no one was seen exiting the train through any of the doors and all doors were under constant observation by the people who were craning their necks outside the windows, which leads to an impossible murder situation! And the guard is not the culprit! J 

What follows is a detailed investigation from the police – thinking that the murderer must have left the train when the train stopped, they search the area where the train had stopped, no man is found in any nearby village, no stranger was noticed anywhere, there were no other trains – either a freight or a passenger train which the escaped man could have taken. Next, they investigate all the passengers who were in that compartment and the story of every individual matches the facts in the case and hence the police end up clearing everyone. The case remains un-solved.

The second part of the story deals with the murderer confessing on his deathbed to a medical practitioner as to how exactly he committed the murder and escaped.

The solution is too technical and requires a thorough knowledge of the British Railway system to understand the mechanics of the crime – which puts the readers throughout the world at a great disadvantage. A detailed map of the set-up could have improved matters a bit but don’t think it would be sufficient; it would need a series of pictures showing the step by step movement of the criminal to make the reader understand what the author is trying to impart. I being from India and being a rail fan where the railway network was introduced by the British, was a lot more familiar with the terminologies and the set up to an extent, but have to admit the solution was hazy and have only a vague idea as to how it was done.

Unlike some of the others who were frustrated (rightfully so) with this story (saw their reviews online), it didn’t stop me any from enjoying it and hence its inclusion in this post. A few have pointed out that the collection ‘The Mystery of The Sleeping-Car Express and Other Stories’ has some top quality stories (including 5 more railway mysteries) and I am planning to read it if I can get a copy of this book for a fair price.

Probably these two sites with the pictures should help:

The story is set in 1909 – the compartment that fits best our story would the 1900s one and can be viewed here.

This link clearly shows the compartment set up.

But it is incomplete without a picture of the outside of the train and how the compartments were connected to each other – couldn’t get it in the limited time that I spent on it.

The Locked House - Stephen Barr

Story: The Locked House

Author: Stephen Barr

Source: 21st annual anthology of the ‘Best Detective Stories of the Year’ published in 1966.

Story Number: 17

What are some of the statements which a critic or a person who abhors locked room mysteries could put forth for his defense? They could read something like this:

 “A locked room problem isn’t a mystery at all: it’s a self-contradiction”

 “What the author asks the reader to believe is that a man is found murdered in a place from which the murderer couldn’t 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. Or the murderer locked on the door on the inside while he was still on 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.”

Looks like the author set himself the task to break their defenses by providing this tightly knit locked room murder which does not fit any of the categories mentioned above. This is a story where a man has been murdered in a locked house (decapitated body in the living room with the axe used for the deed in the underground cellar), the murderer is not present in the house but at the same time, the murderer did not leave the room! If Dr. Fell gave us 7 categories under which to categorize all the possibilities of a locked room murder, Stephen Barr brilliantly instructs us that this method could very well be the eight. This story was written in 1965 but a variation of this method was used recently in one of the episodes of Jonathan Creek. It would be really interesting to come across a few more.

The Wine Glass - A.A. Milne

Story: The Wine Glass

Author: A.A. Milne

Source: 2^nd annual anthology of the ‘Best Detective Stories of the Year’ published in 1947.

Story Number: 16

A.A. Milne is best known as the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh but is also remembered by the mystery fans for his novel ‘The Red House Mystery’.

A detective novelist and a Scotland Yard detective are discussing the fine art of murder and the man from the yard opines that the simple way of committing a murder is often the best way. To substantiate his claim, he recites the following story.

The Marquis of Hedingham is celebrating his birthday and a bottle of Tokay arrives at the Lordship’s residence with a card bearing the name of his brother-in-law Sir William Kelso and a personal message. The butler is asked to serve this Tokay for the dinner party in the night but very shortly the butler is found dead after he tastes the wine while decanting. The narrator Mortimer and his boss are called in to investigate and they go about finding a person who had sufficient motive to kill the rich man, a man who had access to Kelso’s visiting card and knowledge of the relationship between the two gentlemen to feign a proper greeting message on the card. They fail to find any such person.

Mortimer then applies his theory that the simple solution is the true solution and thereby concludes that it was indeed the butler who was the intended victim and the murderer was none other than the man whose card was attached to the wine bottle!  Without telling his supervisor, he confronts Kelso to get a confession but he points out to Mortimer that the card being in his own name would convince any jury that he was innocent. Mortimer takes his leave telling him that he would pass on his theory to his boss. The next day, the boss is found dead due to poisoning, a wine bottle beside him with Mortimer’s visiting card attached to it! Mortimer is able to prove to everyone that he has a perfect alibi for the entire duration and moreover his visiting card attached to the wine bottle proves his innocence beyond doubt. When the police go to Kelso’s house, they find him to have committed suicide. The narrator ends the story here to which the novelist objects saying this can’t be the solution as it doesn’t prove what Mortimer set out to prove in the first place.

Mortimer then springs the delightful surprise on the novelist as well as the reader and explains how it indeed was a very simple murder and the simplest explanation was indeed the truth!

The Hand of God - Harry Stephen Keeler

Story: The Hand of God

Author: Harry Stephen Keeler

Source: 20 Tales of Murder (MWA Anthology Edited by Brett Halliday & Helen McCloy)

Story Number: 15

If the novels and stories of Harry Stephen Keeler have to be described in one word, the word that comes to mind is ‘Weird’. His stories are highly imaginative, unpredictable, unclassifiable & inexhaustible. And this story, which was written particularly for this anthology, is a fitting example which exhibits all these characteristics.

The first 2 parts of the story deal with the dream that is haunting the protagonist Carrew. He has been fantasizing for quite some time about a Chinese girl both in his dream and in his wakeful life. The dreams are beginning to worry Carrew as the girl in the dream is tending to get more aggressive as he starts preparing for his marriage in real life. One fateful night, he dreams that the girl has a Chinese dagger with her - which she plunges into his heart.

The 3^rd part is the police investigation where they find the body of Carrew stabbed to death inside a locked room. All the evidence in the case points to the fact that it was a murder and not suicide.

The penultimate part of the story is most fascinating in describing the testimony of the Physician to the coroner’s jury of how this murder was committed. He explains all the evidence and the clues garnered at the site to build up his case to show that what first appeared as a supernatural death indeed has a rational explanation, which obviously, only Keeler could have thought of! The final part is of course the jury’s verdict.