The Private Bank Puzzle - Edwin Balmer & William Macharg

Theme for the Week: Queen’s Quorum Titles

Story: The Private Bank Puzzle

Author: Edwin Balmer & William Macharg

Source: The Achievements of Luther Trant (Queen’s Quorum #46)

Story Number: 38

Even though the story is from the 1910 collection, it hardly seems dated. This story was also picked by Vincent Starrett for his anthology Fourteen Great Detective Stories. There are many psychologist detectives but very few really use any psychological methods to unearth a murderer. Luther Trant, who considers himself a practical psychologist, uses pure psychological techniques in this story to expose a scheme to rob a private bank.

The experienced cashier Gordon feels that someone inside the bank is about to steal from the company vault. His reason for thinking so: somebody has been meddling with his things like the overcoat, scraps missing from the wastebasket, paper pads missing and finally an attempt to break into his old typewriter desk. He approaches the manager Howell and warns him about his feeling. Howell brings in Trant to figure out why his cashier is behaving so strangely for the past two months, after his son who was also an employer was expelled for his infraction. The incident which leads to his expulsion is explained by Howell as follows: the cashier puts 25 grand into a bag, locks it, seals it and hands it over to his son so that he can deliver it to a client. But when the bag is opened by the client, they find only fifteen thousand inside the bag. The son is expelled but the father pays the ten thousand to the bank and the event is kept under wraps.

Trant gets to know that the vault can be opened with a six lettered code word which is changed every week and is known only to the cashier and the manager. When Trant approaches the cashier, he tries to hide away a few scraps of paper which seem to have some sort of code. Trant conducts three tests to figure out whether the cashier is honest or not. Based on a few more questions he arrives at the conclusion that the son was innocent of the first robbery, it was done by another clerk and now, the bank is again under threat by a different clerk. He decides to conduct another test – a word association test for all the employees – with words carefully compiled and having 2 words which were used as the code-word to open the vault in the 2 previous weeks. He tabulates the results and arrives at the two culprits by propounding a scientific explanation as to how he achieved his results!

After-Dinner Story - William Irish

From this week on, I’ll aim to group my stories for the whole week to fit into a single theme. For the next 7 days, all the stories to be featured will be from a collection which has been considered as a cornerstone title by Ellery Queen in their critical study Queen’s Quorum - a history of the detective-crime short story as revealed by the 125 most important books published in this field from 1845 to 1967.

Theme for the Week: Queen’s Quorum Titles

Name of the story: After-Dinner Story

Author: William Irish

Source: After-Dinner Story

Story Number: 37

Cornell Woolrich or William Irish or George Hopley, an American novelist and short story writer was one of the greatest noir writers. Most of his stories are psychological thrillers, powerful in their atmosphere of terror and suspense with a subtle integration of plot and technique.

I’ve picked the title story from the collection After-Dinner Story, the collection which the Queens preferred over I Wouldn’t be in Your Shoes for the cornerstone title to be included as Queen’s Quorum title #97.

7 individuals get into an elevator along with the lift operator on various floors and it becomes an express elevator on its way down from the 10^th to the 1^st floor. After crossing the 10^th floor, the elevator malfunctions and hurls all the way down with a tremendous impact, extinguishing all the lights inside the car. They realize that the operator is dead from this impact and they spend quite some anxious moments before help arrives. Acetylene torches are used to cut a hole through the car roof to free the trapped men. They then realize that another man among them is dead – whose voice was heard just before the acetylene torches came into action. He has died from a gunshot wound with the gun buried under his body. The nitrate test reveals that the gun was fired by the dead man and hence the police close the case as a suicide.

A year later, all the 5 men who survived the elevator accident are invited to a dinner event by the Father of the dead man, promising to share his wealth among these men who were present during the final moments of his son’s life. The guests notice a peculiar form of serving – each guest is served a portion separately. At the end of the dinner, a giant pot with a yellow liquid is placed at the center of the table and the host tells them that it’s an antidote for a poison. He also goes on to declare that he knew all along that his son was murdered and that one out of the 5 men present there killed him. And to exact revenge, that one person’s food was poisoned. He asks the murderer to confess and drink the antidote as he had only half an hour before the poison starts acting. At the end of 25 minutes, all five of them look equally sick and everyone has only one question in their mind: did the host poison the right guy? If yes, how did he know who the murderer was? The story has a fitting finale for the suspense it builds up.

The Killing of Michael Finnegan - Michael Gilbert

Story: The Killing of Michael Finnegan

Author: Michael Gilbert

Source: The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories

Story Number: 36

In addition to the classic mysteries that he started off with (Smallbone Deceased is highly regarded by one and all), Michael Gilbert experimented with a lot of different genres – two of the most notable being police procedurals and spy stories. He created three main series characters - Patrick Petrella, Inspector Hazlerigg and the duo of British spies; the two collections ‘Game Without Rules’ & ‘Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens’ featuring the two British spies are considered to contain Gilbert’s best short stories.

Michael Finnegan, a close friend of Calder & Behrens and working for the British Intelligence has been found dead in mysterious circumstances. Though there is no doubt as to who killed him, Calder & Behrens suspect that the reason could be because of what he was working on at the time of his death which could be very important to the British and hence they decide to find out what it was. Finnegan’s wife tells them the name of the person who betrayed him; with some third degree measures on this traitor, they get to know that the reason he was killed was because he came to know about the assassination plot of a superior court judge.

They know who the target is but they don’t know exactly how the assassination is going to be carried out; during the detrimental torture tactics, they just get a few ramblings from the traitor with respect to the means, where he mentions only 2 words of importance – ‘court’ & ‘reports’. Calder takes up the role up studying the court security measures to identify how anyone could smuggle a bomb into the court. Behrens takes up the role of talking to the security forces, questioning them about the loopholes in their security procedures and suggestions to overcome them. Between the two of them, with their observations & the 2 clues which they have in their possession, they figure out the way in which the attempt is gone be made and the rest of the story deals in outwitting their adversaries.

The Amorous Corpse - Peter Lovesey

Story: The Amorous Corpse

Author: Peter Lovesey

Source: The Sedgemoor Strangler & Other Stories of Crime, The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Stories & Impossible Crimes

Story Number: 35

The detective constable receives a call from the post office saying that a man who tried a hold up is now dead. The man seems to have died of a heart attack and the body is taken away to the morgue. From the fingerprints, it turns out that the dead man was an ex-convict named Jack Soames. When the DC goes to his house, the girl friend Zara informs him that Jack was making love to her at 9.15 and hence couldn’t have been anywhere near the post office when he was supposed to have died. She further tells him that he left the house at around 10 and went to the benefits office. Zara identifies Jack in the morgue.

The DC then tracks Jack’s wife (separated for years) through the register of electors and asks her also to visit the morgue and confirm that it is her husband – which she does. The only anomaly is Zara’s testimony with respect to time. He decides to visit the Benefits Office as a means of checking up and to his surprise the security tapes show very clearly that Jack was indeed alive and present at the benefits office at 10.15. So how did the man end up in the benefits office at 10.15 when he was already dead at 9.15? A little bit of clever thinking and a detailed analysis of the video tape which shows the presence of another individual related to the case helps the rookie constable to crack this impossible crime of the amorous corpse which, I must say, reveals one of the most opportunistic murderers that one could come across!

The Booktaker - Bill Pronzini

Story: The Booktaker

Author: Bill Pronzini

Source: Casefile, Locked Room Puzzles.

Story Number: 34

This story was my introduction to the world of Nameless when I read it as part of the locked room anthology. Also, it has two of my favorite themes – an impossible crime and a bookshop setting for the crime!

John Rothman is the owner of the largest second-hand bookstore in San Francisco, a book store which deals in rare and antiquarian books, maps, etchings and prints. Over a period of time, there has been a series of thefts from the antiquarian room – first it was restricted to the books and more recently it has been the priceless maps. Rothman suspects the thief to be one of the 4 employees in the bookshop because of the nature of the theft: only 2 people have the key to the antiquarian room, the theft takes places usually in the afternoon when Rothman is away for lunch, there is a sensor alarm system near the cashier which is being manned by his most experienced and trustworthy employer and hence no outsider could have stolen them, each employee is made to pass the sensor while leaving for the day and only then the alarm is switched off by Rothman.

Rothman comes to Nameless as Nameless is a customer who is in the habit of buying pulps from him. He hires him to identify the culprit and more importantly identify the way in which the theft is being carried out so that he can taken precautions against such means. Nameless checks the background history and credit scores for each of the 4 employees, he questions the neighbors regarding the behavior of each individual but nothing worthwhile turns up. He then goes undercover as an employee of the bookshop with the name of Jim Marlowe (yes, as a tribute to Chandler) and keeps an eye on the proceedings. On the second day of his work, another very rare map is stolen. Every employee is searched, each is made to walk past the sensor but no alarm is set off and the whole bookshop is searched by Rothman and the private eye but the map remains elusive.

It takes a casual remark from Marlowe’s girlfriend to enlighten him about the technique being used for the theft, there is also a murder attempt which Nameless and his girlfriend has to thwart before he can reveal the solution to the mystery which is indeed fairly clued. The description about the bookshop, books and various pulp authors in addition to the puzzle plot makes it a highly satisfying and entertaining detective story.

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!