The Nine Mile Walk - Harry Kemelman

Theme for the Week: Queen's Quorum Titles

Story: The Nine Mile Walk

Author: Harry Kemelman

Source: The Nine Mile Walk (Queen's Quorum #125). The story can be read online here.

Story Number: 67

Harry Kemelman won the Edgar in 1965 for his first Rabbi Small novel Friday The Rabbi Slept Late (reviewed favorably by Patrick on his blog). But even before this novel was written, Kemelman had a strong fan following for his Nicky Welt stories, the strongest proponent being none other than Ellery Queen as they had featured all the 7 stories in EQMM before the publication of the first novel. There was only one Welt story after he started publishing the Rabbi series. All the stories are collected in the collection The Nine Mile Walk - the final title to be included as a cornerstone in the Queen's Quorum list in 1967. The Queens have this to say about this collection: " ....the Nicky Welt stories which unquestionably perpetuate the purest form of the detective short story, with the author playing fair with the reader from first word to last. All the stories are solved by strict logic and carry on the Dupin-esque-Prince Zaleski-Old Man in the Corner tradition of armchair detection."

The title story, which the author took 14 years to formulate after the idea germinated in his class as an assignment to his students, is one of the most logically deduced stories that one could come across. "An inference can be logical and still not be true," quotes the Snowdon Professor Nicholas Welt. To prove this point, he challenges his friend to give him a random sentence of 10 to 12 words and that he would build a logical chain of inferences. His friend accepts the challenge with this sentence, "A nine mile walk is no joke, especially in the rain." What follows is a serious of inferences - about the man who uttered it, why he uttered it, to which place was he referring to etc. In the end, all of them turn out to be true -culminating in a dead body on a train and the apprehension of the culprits responsible for the foul deed, all deduced from just that one sentence!

Fear and Trembling’s - Michael Gilbert

Theme: Queen’s Quorum Titles

Story: Fear and Trembling’s

Author: Michael Gilbert

Source: Game Without Rules (Queen’s Quorum #124), Crimes Across The Sea.

Story Number: 66

Arthur Trembling is the owner of one of the best known travel agencies in Europe and his brother Henry is a secondhand bookseller. The other characters in this drama are the cheerful courier Roger, Arthur’s beautiful secretary (and mistress) Lucilla and the newly appointed employee Caversham. Arthur requests Caversham to deliver a thick parcel to his brother Henry – which C suspects are books which have been received from one of the tour group which has just returned. Lucilla, after being jilted by her boss, approaches Caversham and requests his help to expose Arthur – she believes that Arthur has been smuggling something with the help of the tour buses which have a specially concealed compartment. C decides to guard the bookshop after Arthur leaves the office and Lucilla decides to open the safe and check the contents as she noticed Arthur transferring something from the parcel received earlier. They plan to meet later in the night and compare notes – but when C meets her, she is dead in the passenger seat of her car - parked in his driveway!

Caversham drives the car to a remote location, gets back to his house and puts in an anonymous call to the police. The next day, when he is patiently waiting for the police to turn up at the office, C comes across the body of Arthur! There are a string of surprises towards the ends – with spies galore - nobody is who he or she is portrayed to be – with each country’s agency playing their own deadly game of espionage and counter espionage!

The Road to Damascus - Michael Gilbert

Back to the theme of the Queen's Quorum titles for the 1st week of the month.

Theme: Queen’s Quorum Titles

Story: The Road to Damascus

Author: Michael Gilbert

Source: Game Without Rules (Queen’s Quorum #124)

Story Number: 65

The collection of stories featuring the duo of British Intelligence spies Mr. Joseph Calder & Mr. Samuel Behrens have been hailed by Ellery Queen as the second best volume of spy stories ever written, with W. Somerset Maugham’s ‘Ashenden’ taking the first place!

Calder & Behrens were first introduced in the story “The Road to Damascus”. Behrens is keeping a close eye on Colonel Mark Bessendine to catch him red-handed as the British know that he is passing on secret information to the Russians. Calder meanwhile comes across a dead body in a cave which was being used for military operations during the war. His investigations reveal that the cave was designed by three men, two of them are dead and the third happens to be Mark Bessendine – who was blown away by a bomb when he was in the process of covering up the hideout and has now survived with a new face after undergoing a plastic surgery.

Since both the cases are connected, Calder & Behrens decide to club their resources to sort out the problem. To complicate matters, there was a German spy by the name of Hessel who had vanished into thin air during the same time frame. Who is the dead man? Is it Mark? If it’s Mark, then is the person masquerading as the Colonel really the German spy? Or is the dead man Hessel? If so, who killed him?  Finally, it all leads to a stimulating confrontation between Behrens and the Colonel!

Listen To The Mocking Bird - Fredric Brown

Story: Listen To The Mocking Bird

Author: Fredric Brown

Source: Homicide Sanitarium

Story Number: 64

Slimjim Lee, a bookie has been murdered with a crocheting needle in Perley’s residence. Perley, a man whose profession is to mimic bird calls and songs, has been arrested for Lee's murder as his neighbors heard his mocking bird tunes at the exact time of the murder. Perley claims that he wasn’t present at all in his house and hence requests private detective McCracken to find the actual murderer. A costly ring which Lee used to wear all the time is missing and since this has been insured, an insurance agent joins the investigation in the hopes of recovering the ring.

With no one else as good as Perley at imitating bird calls, they find it tough to find a suitable replacement to take his place as the murderer. A cleverly disguised clue found at the scene of the crime helps McCracken in breaking the case - identifying an equally well hidden culprit with a strange murder method to boot.

Mom in The Spring - James Yaffe

Story: Mom in The Spring

Author: James Yaffe

Source: The Quintessence of Ellery Queen

Story Number: 63

This modern version of the armchair detective story is as impressive as the old traditional ones of Christie and Boucher and Orczy. Meticulously plotted, ingenious building up of the puzzle, fairly presented clues, thought provoking questions posed by Mom to her son who is presenting the case to her over dinner, Mom’s supreme capability of reading between the lines and unraveling of the puzzle plot with her deep insight into the human nature to reveal an entirely different aspect to the case which was hitherto camouflaged – all add up for a most interesting read. This story was my first introduction to James Yaffe and the Crippen and Landru collection My Mother, The Detective is high on my TBR pile – if I can find a decently priced copy!

David and Shirley are trying to play matchmakers for Mom and they have come to dinner with the most eligible bachelor in the Homicide Squad – Inspector Millner. During the course of the meal, David recounts the current case he and the Inspector are working on, a case where the police were fully warned. Mr. and Mrs. Winters approach the police with a story that somebody is out to kill their lonely and rich aunt. The aunt has been answering the lonely hearts advertisements and in the course of time has got one admirer in Keith – whom the Winters’ loath as they think that Keith will be instrumental in depriving them of their aunt’s inheritance.

When the old lady is found dead with a photo of a conman under her pillow, it doesn’t take long for the police to trace him and arrest him. But Mom believes that they have got the wrong person – she asks four questions and based on the answers to those 4 questions, she is able to tie up all loose ends in a most emphatic manner and direct them in the right direction to apprehend the guilty party.

Thread of Life - Will Oursler

Story: Thread of Life

Author: Will Oursler

Source: 20 Great Tales of Murder (edited by Helen McCloy & Brett Halliday)

Story Number: 62

A very short story of only 4 pages to show that even doctors fall prey to the deadly sin of pride – even at the cost of one’s life!

The Doctor gets a call one night from the hospital summoning him to treat a head fracture where the skull has been crushed, possibly due to a mugging attack. After seeing the patient, the Doctor shakes his head at his young associate as though to say that it’s gone be a touch and go.  “Not even your hands, with all their skills…” The associate chides him. The distinguished brain surgeon accepts the challenge and undertakes a deadly operation and comes up triumphs by saving the girl’s life. The beauty of the story is the twist ending - the whole moral of the story depends on it.

SPOILER ALERT:

It turns out that nobody except the Doctor is aware that it was he who was responsible for the girl's injury. If he had used a knife or a bullet, there would’ve been no question of calling in the great brain man to save her. The author points out in the final line that human pride is so great that, he could not fail, even in snatching from death the only witness against him!

The Bizarre Case Expert - William Arden

Story: The Bizarre Case Expert

Author: William Arden

Source: Ellery Queen’s Masters of Mysteries

Story Number: 61

Dennis Lynds has a lot of pseudonyms – he used William Arden to write 13 of the Three Investigator tiles and is now more popular for his Dan Fortune titles under the name of Michael Collins.

Sergeant Joseph Marx is the sole member of the central squad; a squad which gets cases that stumps the precinct squads but before the case ends up in the Unsolved File. One such case where he is called in is to explain the death of Mrs. Sally Tower, the circumstances of which go something like this: The residents of an apartment are unhappy about the noises coming in from 6B and hence call in the local police. They have to break open the door as the door is locked and chained; Sally has died of multiple blows to the head and her ex-husband is unconscious in the same room due to a hairline skull fracture with the only opening in the house being a window to the fire escape. Medical evidence points to the fact that the husband suffered the concussion before the woman met her death. When he recovers in the hospital, he tells the police about a masked burglar who entered through the opened window but the police find no such traces of a prowler.

A neighbor was constantly watching the door from the time the noise started till the police arrived on the scene; an invalid woman was sitting near the open window in her house and the fire escape under question was constantly being watched by her – no one entered the room through the window and no one escaped through that window! So the only explanation left for them to consider is the fact that the husband did indeed kill her wife but he tripped and fell leading to the fracture and the concussion (the wound to his head not being of the self inflicting nature) but they have a problem - they find no weapon in that room or anywhere outside the house which matches the wounds on them.

Marx first tries to break the alibi of the 2 witnesses who were guarding the door and the window but fails. His search for a weapon yields something but the problem with the instrument was that it was neatly arranged on a table and was too far away from the murdered woman for it to have been used by the husband! Marx goes back to the first report made by the patrolmen; collects all the people who were present when the door was broken; interviews each one of them and shows how the murderer, with the help of one of the unlikeliest of accomplices, was able to achieve his goal of setting up a perfect locked room murder!