The Man in The Morgue - Robert Arthur

Story: The Man in The Morgue

Author: Robert Arthur

Source: 20 Tales of Murder

Story Number: 60

Mildred Wilson has a violent temper and each of her tempers leads to a seizure and the doctor has strictly warned her not to get excited or shocked or lose temper. She has also been prescribed a special medicine which she can take whenever she encounters such an attack, failing to do so would definitely lead to her death. The story starts off with her husband Herbert declaring that he has taken an insurance policy against his death and might come in handy if he meets with an accident due to a weak break on his automobile.

On a rough day when the people have been asked to stay indoors and not to venture out in the icy conditions, Herbert declares to his wife that his firm is not doing good, that he needs to file for bankruptcy and they might have to let go of the house that they are leaving in. Remembering the insurance policy, she thinks that he is better off dead than alive and thinks of a not so foolproof way of killing him. She breaks the bottle and spills her medication and requests Herbert to fetch the medicine immediately. She is hoping that he will meet with an accident when already 7 people have been killed due to the rough weather.

He does meet with an accident but is not killed; a passerby helps him to the nearest destination which happens to be a Morgue. The caretaker of the morgue attends to him and while he is still unconscious, he decides to call the injured man’s wife and update the status to her. Over a choppy telephone connection and with the thick accent of the caretaker, all Mildred hears is that her husband has met with an accident and that he is in the morgue – from which she is able to reach only one conclusion!

What happens next? An eventful and a surprise ending await the reader!

House of Mirrors - Kurt Vonnegut

Name: House of Mirrors

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Source: Look At the Birdie: Unpublished Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut

Story Number: 59

Detectives Carney and Foltz are on a mission to confront and question the hypnotic therapy specialist Hollomon Weems. Many wealthy women(widows) have disappeared without a trace but all of them were seen entering the therapist's house before they disappeared. A cat and mouse conversation ensues among the three men. It looks as though Weems is successful in hypnotizing the men just by his conversation and finally he reveals that his main aim in life is to find suitable solutions for the troubled souls - elimination of undesirable habits or unreasonable fears. And for those who don't see a good future, he makes them pass through the mirrors to go into a better life - and that's how the women have all disappeared into those mirrors.

Weems takes the detectives to the big upper floor circular room which is full of mirrors and tells them that all the women (and many people the police aren't looking for) entered a new life in that room. The detectives request for a demonstration from the doctor but he politely declines. What then follows is a series of revelations and surprises when the detectives try to arrest him - the detectives reveal that they themselves are hypnotists but they still find it hard to arrest Weems as he is controlling them through hypnosis, the third detective who has been hiding is summoned in but in a very short amount of time even the third one is hypnotized. A flurry of activity, crisp dialogue and mounting suspense leads the reader to the final twist, ending the story on a high note!

Look At The Birdie - Kurt Vonnegut

This week, I'll be featuring some random stories read over the past few weeks and hence won't fall into any particular theme.

Story: Look At The Birdie

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Source: Look At the Birdie: Unpublished Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut

Story Number: 58

Kurt Vonnegut, most famous for his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, has quite a few short story collections to his credit as well. While Mortals Sleep (2011) & Look At The Birdie (2009) are the 2 most recent ones published posthumously. They do not contain mystery stories per say but the latter title could serve as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for those who aren’t acquainted with him. The 14 stories in this collection have all his trademarks – wit, humor, humanism and that sucker punch towards the end of the story which would leave the reader stunned & elated.

The title story in this collection starts off with a catchy line: I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I hated - and a man with a beard sat down beside me, and he said amiably ‘Why don’t you have him killed?’ This bearded person introduces himself as a quack psychiatrist turned ‘murder counselor’ and goes on to propound his theory of how he can get someone murdered without anyone getting the wise of it and how he has been using  this new technique to relieve the anxieties of his paranoid patients. What follows is a bizarre exchange of dialogue between these two individuals which effectively leads to a fitting twist like the old-fashioned O. Henry surprise ending!

Honeymoon Cruise - Richard Deming

Theme for the Week: Murder on The Seas

Story: Honeymoon Cruise

Author: Richard Deming

Source: Death Cruise - Crime Stories On The Open Seas, Murder on Deck.

Story Number: 57

'Richard Deming's tale of seduction and murder during a honeymoon cruise is a fine example of post-pulp magazine fiction that uses sexual tension to hook the reader. This story, written for Alfred Hitchcock magazine in 1966 is reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley; the story shows how easy it can be to toss one's scruples - and an inconvenient husband - overboard. A sense of inevitability propels "Honeymoon Cruise" to its ironic conclusion.' - Murder on Deck.

'Richard Deming's considerable contribution t short fiction includes almost 150 stories, of which "Honeymoon Cruise" is one of the best. ' - Lawrence Block.

Dan Jackson answers an ad placed for a navigational expert to pilot the Princess 2 on a Caribbean cruise and also double as a cook. The people taking the cruise: the newly married couple of Peggy and Arden Trader. The rest of the story deals with the strange chemistry between the 3 individuals on the boat, the seduction of Dan by Peggy and the fruitful plot to throw the husband overboard. Will they get away with it? Sure they do! and when the hullabaloo dies down, they get married and they themselves go away on a one month cruise. But is there a twist to it? Sure there is!

The Deep Blue Sea - Ina Bouman

Theme for the Week: Murder on The Seas

Story: The Deep Blue Sea

Author: Ina Bouman

Source: Death Cruise - Crime Stories On The Open Seas

Story Number: 56

Ina Bouman lives and writes in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has written a few novels featuring Jos Welling, an inquisitive journalist with a social conscience and an open mind.

Melanie has won a free cruise in a surprise draw. The prize also includes a free flight to Singapore, from where the cruise starts; a 12 days cruise to the Pearls of the Orient. Melanie is surprised by her husband's decision to allow her to go on the cruise by herself; when most of the times he is always keeping a close eye on her.

She meets a lot of folks who are single on the ship - who are on the ship in pretty peculiar circumstances. On top of that, Melanie has a feeling that she is being watched. Then over a span of few days, there are several attempts on her life - which makes it clear that her husband has hatched up a plan to do away with her. Well, Melanie has had similar plans and she has poisoned the food which she has packed for her husband. A person who comes to the aid of Melanie on the ship is also bumped off! So will Melanie survive the 12 days on the claustrophobic ship? Who is the mysterious assailant among the passengers? Will Herbert fall prey to her wife's devious murder plans? The suspense builds up to a nice climax.

Rumpole At Sea - John Mortimer

Theme for the Week: Murder on The Seas

Story: Rumpole At Sea

Author: John Mortimer

Source: Murder on Deck, Death Cruise.

Story Number: 55

Quoting from the introduction to this story in Murder on Deck:  Hilda Rumpole is determined to enjoy a second honeymoon on a cruise ship with her long-suffering  husband, the "Old Bailey hack" Horace Rumpole. "She Who Must be Obeyed" prevails, and the two set out for a Mediterranean cruise, which becomes a busman's honeymoon for the barrister when his shipmates - including a despised Judge - are convinced that a passenger has mysteriously and suspiciously disappeared. This story proves again John Mortimer's inimitable abilities to entertain while making a serious case for the fundamental tenets of British Justice.

Rumpole goes into hiding and decides not to step out his cabin on seeing Justice Graves on the cruise ship - a judge with whom he has had some serious issues off late. Interestingly, the judge reciprocates the exact same feelings! Ultimately when they come face to face accidentally, they decide to play out the game of judge & defense lawyer to humor each other on the ship, to a case of what appears to be the mysterious disappearance of a woman. The judge has an able ally in the form of a detective novelist who fittingly plays the role of the plaintiff. The detective novelist is on the lookout for a plot for his new mystery novel and he thinks he has got one being played out right before the eyes of the passengers - he builds up a wonderful case against the man whom he believes is responsible for the disappearance; he even uses the technique of reading the circumstances of the case as  the first chapter from his new book  to trigger a reaction from the individual under suspicion only to be foiled by Rumpole's  antics of defending the man as he would have in a court of law. Highly entertaining tale with numerous hilarious repartees being exchanged by the three leading gentlemen.

The Theft of the Bingo Card - Edward D. Hoch

Theme for the Week: Murder on The Seas

Story: The Theft of the Bingo Card

Author: Edward D. Hoch

Source: Murder on Deck - Shipboard & Shoreline Mystery Stories: This collection is a mixed bag - it has more stories on the shore rather than the sea. And for those set in seaside resorts or hotels, any number of stories could replace the ones that are available in the book. And for those stories set on ships or ocean liners, I would expect some relationship or motive for setting the story in such a locale but I was a bit disappointed on that front as well.

Story Number: 54

It seems that the author got his idea for this story when he was on a mystery cruise on the Holland America Line where he learned that the lifeboats were provided with bingo cards - to distract the people who are on a lifeboat while the ship they were in is sinking or when they are waiting to be rescued! Only, he uses it for more nefarious purposes!

Nick Velvet and his wife are holidaying on the cruise ship Antilles - header for a weeklong tour of the Caribbean. A corporate group is being entertained with a murder mystery game but the man who plays the corpse in the game is found dead sometime later due to an overdose of cocaine. The dead man's wife Dolores hires Nick to steal a bingo card - a bingo card which can be identified by its number 253 and which is present on one of the 12 lifeboats. The reason to obtain the card - the man was killed because he was looking for this particular card! Nick's first job is to figure out which of the lifeboats has the card he wants, then he needs to find a way to get on them as they are hung high above the deck and any attempt at bringing them down on to the deck would set off an alarm.

When he does manages to steal the card before the prescribed deadline, Nick Velvet realizes  that he has a lot more work to do as he finds out that Dolores also has been killed in the same fashion as her husband. The only clue is the odd arrangement of the numbers on the card, he goes about the detection by interviewing the various bingo players. The significance of the card and the message which those numbers depict, points to him the murderer who has killed twice to lay his hands on the card! A bingo player should have no problem in spotting the killer as there are two very glaring clues dangled right in front of the reader's eyes which one could miss in the blink of an eye.