A Melee of Diamonds - Edward D. Hoch

Story: A Melee of Diamonds

Author: Edward D. Hoch

Source: The Best of Mystery – selected by Alfred Hitchcock

Story Number: 33

Edward D. Hoch has written more than 900 stories and has the phenomenal record of having his story published each month in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine for a period of 34 years without missing an issue! He has created numerous series characters, some of the most prominent being Dr. Sam Hawthorne who deals in Impossible Crimes, Captain Leopold featuring in police procedurals, Nick Velvet who steals only strange objects which have no value, Simon Ark who is 2000 years old and is always in search of the devil.

This impossible crime story features the New York Homicide detective Captain Leopold. Rudy Hoffman (who has got a long record) is seen breaking the glass display of the Midtown Diamond Exchange by several pedestrians on the road, the assistant who was closing the shop witnesses Rudy grabbing a set of diamonds from the broken window, a policeman who is quickly on the scene when the alarm goes off and tries to stop Rudy but Rudy smashes his head with the cane. A young man pursues the burglar, catches up with Rudy and when they are involved in a tussle, the police reinforcements turn up and arrest Rudy. But when they search him, they don’t find any diamonds on him. Rudy was under constant observation from the time he broke the glass till the police apprehended him. The only two people who had any contact with him during that time frame are the unconscious policeman and the young man, a search doesn’t reveal any diamonds on both these parties.

The police are stumped till a young girl approaches Captain Leopold and tells him that her boyfriend Freddy has the diamonds. He retrieves the diamonds just in time before the boyfriend returns back to the house and has adequate time to hide it before he confronts Leopold. The captain plays a deadly game by saying that the diamonds have vanished, he allows Freddy to search him and the house and when he is convinced that somebody else has done away with it, Leopold suggests to call his accomplice who handed him the jewels in the first place, which results in an unnecessary death. But it takes all of Leopold’s wits to figure out how this impossible crime was committed and by whom.

The Glass-Domed Clock - Ellery Queen

Story: The Glass-Domed Clock

Author: Ellery Queen

Source: The Adventures of Ellery Queen (Queen’s Quorum Title # 90), First published in the 1933 October issue of Mystery League, also included in ‘The Best of Ellery Queen’.

Story Number: 32

Finally, before moving on to the few modern practitioners that I’ve read, I would like to close the list of the old authors with none other than Ellery Queen.

There’s nobody in the history of detective fiction that has had such a significant impact on the growth of the detective short story as the duo of Frederic Dannay & Manfred Lee, writing under the pseudonym of Ellery Queen! In addition to the numerous cleverly plotted novels, 8 short story collections and a few remarkable critical studies, their contribution to the creation of the numerous anthologies remain unparalleled. And their legacy continues even to this day in the form of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

This story selected from their first collection of short stories starts off with a challenge to the reader by quoting that of all the hundreds of criminal cases solved by Ellery Queen, none offered a simpler diagnosis than that of the Glass-Domed Clock! And the explanation from Ellery lasts throughout the final one third part of the story after claiming it as a ‘simple’ case which anybody with a common sense could have solved.

Martin Orr has been found murdered in his curio shop - with the most curious feature being the effort put in by the dying man to grab a purple amethyst and the glass-domed clock, the least accessible amongst all his other easily accessible relics – which would surely qualify as a dying message to identify the culprit? The suspects include the murdered man’s 5 friends who had met the previous night for their weekly poker game (which obviously ended in a tumultuous way), his wife and his assistant. Their professions range from a jeweler to a newspaperman to Wall Street brokers.

Of all the things, it is the fact that one of them celebrated his 50^th birthday a few days ago which interests Ellery most. He shows even more interest in the gifts received by him from the remaining gentlemen in that group. He doesn’t explain as to why he thinks he is gone find a clue among those gifts but a clue he does find amongst all the doggerel verse that has been inscribed on these gifts. Based on which, he is able to shed light on the two enigmatic items found in the dead man’s hand which clearly points to only one man in that group as the culprit – which incidentally, he isn’t!

The Unlocked Room - John F. Suter

Name of the story: The Unlocked Room

Author: John F. Suter

Source:  Crimes Across the Seas – 19^th MWA anthology edited by John Creasey

Story Number: 31

This story has two interesting features – it is a parody of Henry Merrivale and has a neat little impossible crime as its puzzle plot. Jon Dickens Carbon is a famous detective-story writer who specializes in writing locked-room stories. He is found strangled at one corner of the room, a corner completely surrounded by still-wet varnish on the floor unmarred by a single footprint. Patrolman Witmer who was on an errand to deliver a ticket to the Policeman’s Ball is on the scene of the crime within a few minutes of the tragedy. He has three suspects to deal with – Jon’s brother & niece (the 2 who would inherit the fortune equally) and the Old Man – Colonel Goliath Perrivale (his motive being that the author outright used his ides without paying him a cent) who helps the police occasionally to solve locked-room murders!

The brush used to paint the varnish is still wet in the hands of the victim, the dead man was spoken to by 2 of the witnesses just five minutes before his death, the experiment to show that the murderer could’ve painted the floor after the murder turns out to be a dead end as it takes Witmer a complete 8 minutes to achieve the task. Perrivale says that the case could be solved between Witmer and himself and he propounds a few theories to explain the impossible murder in a fashion and tone very similar to that of Merrivale. Witmer, not fooled by any of those theories, calls on his experience as an odd-jobs painter in his free time to provide the actual solution which trumps all those provided by Perrivale!

Future Imperfect - Stuart Palmer

Name of the story: Future Imperfect

Author: Stuart Palmer

Source:  Choice of Murders – 12^th MWA anthology edited by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Story Number: 30

Stuart Palmer wrote close to 20 detective novels usually featuring the spinster sleuth Hildegarde Withers, who made her debut with the ‘The Penguin Pool Murder’. His other creation was the hardboiled private eye Howie Rook. Though he has written a number of short stories featuring Miss. Withers, this story doesn’t feature any detective.

Jerry Waite is a novelist who has been asked to take a vacation and come back only after he has some new and fresh ideas to offer the script writers. He is approached by an old man named Baxter in a bar in Mazatlan (on the upper west coast of Mexico) and after confirming that Jerry is indeed a novelist, tells him that he has got a story that Jerry can write and that it involves a perfect murder. The old man goes on to tell a tale about his friend Sam, who planned and murdered his wife after coming across in an old newspaper a new and original method of committing a murder, which required no complicated preparation or equipment, involved no brutality nor spilled any blood, and left absolutely no traces. The doctor does bring in a verdict of natural death due to a heart attack. Baxter says that the story should end with the explanation of the murder method, which he explains and highlights the fact that it has been used only twice: once by its inventor and the second time by Sam with each one successfully getting away with it.

The actual story continues to end in a surprising twist, which could be easily anticipated but the highlight of the story remains the unique method of murder; the author does mention in the afterword that the press clipping of a murder by this gimmick was genuine!

Murder Lock’d In - Lillian De La Torre

Story: Murder Lock’d In

Author: Lillian De La Torre

Source: The Return of Dr. Sam: Johnson

Story Number: 29

Lillian de la Torre is known for her historical mysteries which featured the 18^th century detective Dr. Sam: Johnson – where the stories are more or less based on the actual crimes of the 18^th century (solved or unsolved), with a new solution proposed by the author as befits the crime and the period in which it occurred. Even though this story appears in the third collection, it is supposed to be the first recorded case of Dr. Johnson and his biographer cum narrator, James Boswell. The same story is titled ‘The First Locked Room’ in the locked-room anthology “Death Locked In” but doesn’t feature Dr. Sam and the story has a more historical feel with different characters, a different story line set 30 years earlier but ends with the exact same solution.

Mrs. Taffety has come down to meet Mrs. Duncon as per an appointment but when no one answers the door, she raises an alarm that the door is not being opened even though she knows that there are three women inside. When there is hesitation to break open the door by the Temple Watch (the supreme legal authority during that time), a charwoman says there could be another way in from her master’s chambers. She undertakes the effort to walk on the parapet from the master’s chambers, breaks the glass on the rich woman’s casement (window sash), unlocks the latch, opens the window, drops into the room and opens the door for the waiting crowd to enter. Mrs. Duncon and 2 of her maids are found dead inside the locked and bolted room – with 2 women strangled and one dead due to repeated hammer blows.

A maid is arrested (she is hanged for the murder in the actual historical case) when the hammer used for the killing is traced to her but the doctor suspects a much sinister entity when the locked bolt couldn’t be explained with the rope trick. Dr. Johnson and the narrator toss around the various possibilities and dispel them as quickly as they were thought off which finally leaves them with only one alternative - a solution however improbable, must be the truth!

In the afterword to the story, the author has this to say about the solution: “In analyzing the “locked-room mystery” and its possible solutions, with singular prescience Dr. Johnson seems to have anticipated John Dickson Carr’s “locked-room lecture” in The Three Coffins; though the solution that detector Sam: Johnson arrives at is not among those considered by Carr.”  Hmmm!

The Two Bottles of Relish - Lord Dunsany

Story: The Two Bottles of Relish

Author: Lord Dunsany

Source: 101 Years of Entertainment, The Little Tales of Smethers

Story Number: 28

Smithers is the name of a little man who sells Num-numo, a relish for meats & savories. He is also the narrator of this story. He shares his room with an Oxford educated man named Linley. Smithers observes that his roommate has a very shrewd and intelligent mind and hence asks him to have a go at solving the strange murder which has baffled the police and the Scotland Yard. He remembers the case only because the suspect had bought 2 bottles of his relish.

A small girl was seen alive for the last time with a man named Steeger when they spent 5 days together in a cottage. Steeger continues to stay in the cottage for 15 more days after the girl was seen for the last time. The local police have kept a constant vigil on this man and the cottage – he seems to be a vegetarian, he is seen cutting down every one of the 10 trees present in the cottage garden, piling them up neatly into heaps of logs, he has not left the house for those 15 days and yet there is no sign of the girl when the police enter the cottage at the end of 20 days. The girl has not been cut into pieces, she has not been burnt in a fire, she has not been buried anywhere and yet there is no trace of her. In addition to all these, the biggest stumper for the Yard is the strange behavior of Steeger in going to all that trouble of doing such hard labor to cut down all the tress.

Linley asks Smithers to have a look at the house and talk to the grocer from where Steeger bought all his food, he also asks him to find out whether he bought the 2 bottles of nun-numo together or whether it was purchased on different occasions. Based on the answer to this one question, Linley comes up with an ingenious deduction to the problem of the missing dead body!

Solved By Inspection - Ronald Knox

Story: Solved By Inspection

Author: Ronald Knox

Source: The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories

Story Number: 27

Ronald Knox is probably more talked about for his Detective Decalogue than his novels of detection. Five out of his six detective novels featured the insurance investigator Miles Bredon and he is also featured in one short story which also turns out to be a locked room murder – a puzzle plot, which I found much superior to any of his novels.

Dr. Simmonds has been sent by the insurance agency to ascertain the cause of death of the eccentric millionaire Jervison. The doctor has asked Bredon to join him in his inspection. Jervison has taken an insurance policy against his death – leaving all the money to a spiritualistic group called the Brotherhood which consists of only 4 people. The cause of death is pretty straight forward – he died of starvation, not having eaten food for 10 days. But the question is why he didn’t eat the food when the room had a lot of eatables which could’ve sustained any man for those many days?

Bredon has to figure out whether it was suicide or whether it was a very clever murder as the circumstances looks highly suspicious. Jervison had locked himself in a gymnasium to conduct an experiment, he had taken a narcotic on the first day of his experiment, he had plenty of food to sustain him, he had a pad and a pencil at hand on which he could’ve written down his thoughts or observations and yet there is nothing on the writing pad, the food has not been touched, there is no sign of foul play and no other entry into the room other than the door which the police break open.

Bredon observes three strange things – the bed is at the center of the room, the bedspreads are all piled up on the floor and the most important finding – the scratches on the floor from the wheels of the bed to indicate that the bed has been moved by 2 inches. From these, he declares that Jervison was murdered and goes on to show how the man was murdered in that locked room!