The Oblong Room - Edward D. Hoch

Theme for the Week: Edgar Winners

Story: The Oblong Room

Author: Edward D. Hoch

Source: The Edgar Winners.

Story Number: 76

Captain Leopold joins his Sergeant to investigate a open and shut case of murder in the college hostel. Ralph Rollings has been found stabbed to death. His roommate Tom McBern was found enclosed with the dead man for 24 hours and he is not willing to make a statement. The only thing they need to convict Tom is a motive and the whole investigation is based on finding that motive.

The first motive they consider is that they must have shared a common girl friend, which turns out to be true. But nothing much materializes from that angle though they get a pretty good understanding of the relationship between Ralph and Tom. Ralph has the strange capability to manipulate anyone - to have them under his thumb, make them obey his orders. Ralph controlled Tom in pretty much the same fashion; the relationship between them being that of a teacher and a pupil or like that of a Master and slave - with Tom being completely devoted to Ralph, to such an extent that he would go to any depth to protect Ralph.

The next motive to cross their path is the widespread use of LSD among the students. Bill Smith, the next door friend to both Ralph and Tom testifies that both of them often used LSD but he also stresses the fact that Tom was more like a protector and he would be the last man to kill Ralph. And yet, it is very clear that Tom did kill Ralph. The questions which Leopold has to answer: Why would he kill him when everyone knows that he would give his own life to protect Ralph? Why was he in the room for 24 hours after his friend's death? What exactly as he doing during all that time?

This story is a dedication to Edgar Allan Poe. The author draws parallel to Poe's The Oblong Box - where the box was on board a ship and it contained a body. Ralph correlates his room to the oblong box, as his coffin or his tomb and hence the title the oblong room.

This Will Kill You - Patrick Quentin

Theme for the Week: Edgar Winners

Story: This Will Kill You

Author: Patrick Quentin

Source: The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow(Queen's Quorum title #), The Edgar Winners.

Story Number: 75

A special Edgar was presented to Patrick Quentin in 1962 for his collection of short stories The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow. Quote from Queen's Quorum: 'This is a superb collection by "a master of the offbeat and subtle effect." One of the unusual features of the book is the emphasis on child-murderers, normally a taboo theme, but handled by Patrick Quentin with chilling finesse.' "Love Comes to Miss Lucy" is one of the most anthologized stories from this collection which involves the theme of child-murderer.

This story though is a classic example of the husband plotting his wife's murder and the wife in turn plotting the husband's murder - with a big variation. Harry Lund is tired of his wife. He has a new girl in his life and hence decides to do away with his troublesome wife Norma. He fixes the car breaks so that she will meet with an accident at the crucial 'suicide bend' when she takes the car on her own. He loses the car but his wife Norma comes out unscathed. He next plans a fire-in-house-due-to-cigarette-in-bed accident. He loses the house but his wife remains unscathed. Harry's misery continues. Both Harry and his wife are pharmacists. He prepares the cyanide tablet but refrains from using it as it would leave traces. Norma suffers a few heart attacks from the various life threatening events that she has faced recently. Next, he comes with the scheme of murdering her with an overdose of the heart medicine Epinephrine! He waits for a suitable opportunity, injects the overdose when she is in a coma, goes to her sister's house to build up an alibi but when he comes back he gets the shock of his life to find his new girl friend in the house conversing with her wife who is still very much alive! The story moves on towards a fitting finale!

The Landlady - Roald Dahl

Theme for the Week: Edgar Winners

Story: The Landlady

Author: Roald Dahl

Source: Kiss Kiss, The Edgar Winners.

Story Number: 74

Roald Dahl won his first Edgar for the highly acclaimed story Lamb to The Slaughter. Six years later, he won his second Edgar for The Landlady.

This is one of those teasers where the reader is expecting something worse to happen, the reader can anticipate the impending tragedy and yet the protagonist is so oblivious of! It's a very cunning game between the reader and the author where the author is leading the reader to believe that he can anticipate what's gone happen next but the author, with a grin on his face,  holds that climax hanging till the end with such subtlety that the reader will be left wondering whether the author pulled a fast one on him!

Billy Weaver is looking for a hotel room when a Bed & Breakfast notice catches his interest. Before he knows what he is doing, he has rung the bell and even before he has withdrawn his hand, the Landlady has opened the door and invited him in. The price for the stay is half of what he intended to pay, the service impeccable as though one is being treated by his or her best friend's mother. Weaver happens to glance at the guest book and the only 2 names in that book strikes a chord in his memory - both were either famous or both were talked about in a newspaper for the same reason. But he can't recollect what it was. Then starts the cat and mouse game between Weaver and the Landlady - Weaver trying to identify those two individuals and the Landlady trying to elude him on this venture. In the meantime, he notices several odd things which he hadn't noticed before like how the parrot which looked so alive from outside turns out to be a stuffed animal; how the dog, always resting nearing the fireplace turns out to be a stuffed Dachshund; how the two men whom he is trying to recollect were exactly similar to him in physical and other characteristics -  all build up the suspense to an inevitable climax.

Love Lies Bleeding - Philip MacDonald

Theme for the Week: Edgar Winners

Story: Love Lies Bleeding

Author: Philip MacDonald

Source: Something To Hide, The Edgar Winners.

Story Number: 73

Cyprian is waiting for Astrid to get dressed so that he can take her out. He hears a strange exclamation from Astrid and when he turns around to face her, he is horrified at what he sees. Cyprian tries to wriggle out of the advancing clutches of the menacing Astrid and in the process he ends up beating her to death! He runs out of the house with blood covered all over his body, he loses consciousness on the road and when he comes around he has been arrested by the police. He is able to withstand the rigorous questioning and when a defense attorney is hired, he uses the leading questions dangled in front of him to build a defense for himself. But in spite of all these, he maintains that he is innocent and that there was another man who went out of the window!

He is tried in court and the defense attorney shows that the modus operandi in this case is pretty similar to two other deaths which followed Cyprian's arrest and since Cyprian had nothing to do with those two deaths, he is able to prove that Astrid was the first victim of a serial killer. The prosecution withdraws the case and Cyprian escapes the chair! But all along, Cyprian is pretty firm that there was another man in the room! The story is so woven that it's hard to figure out whether the protagonist did murder the girl or not, whether there really was someone other than the victim and the accused, what was so horrific which led to such drastic actions on behalf of Cyprian to escape the advancing clutches of Astrid - all combine to lead to a terrific climax!

The Adventure of The Mad Tea Party - Ellery Queen

Theme for the Week: Edgar Winners

Story: The Adventure of The Mad Tea Party

Author: Ellery Queen

Source: The Adventures of Ellery Queen, The Edgar Winners.

Story Number: 72

The Edgar category for the Best Short Story was started in 1947 and the first winner was none other than Ellery Queen.

Richard Owen has invited Ellery Queen to his son's birthday party. The theme for the party is Alice in Wonderland and all the major characters of the story are busy rehearsing for the next day's event. Ellery spends a restless night, stumbles into a strange room during the night when he is looking for the library, an event  which helps him later to solve the case of the missing mad hatter.

Richard is found missing the next day along with his mad hatter costume. Ellery, while inspecting all the rooms, notices one peculiar thing in the room which he had visited as part of his nocturnal jaunt. He sees the reflection of the cuckoo clock in the mirror as soon he opens the door; the clock has a radium dial which should have been reflected in the mirror when he had opened the door in the night but wasn't - which compels him to arrive at the conclusion that something fishy was going on in the room when he had entered. Somebody must have moved the clock after his visit or someone was standing in front of the mirror or the mirror was absent. He shuts himself in that room to investigate and what he does find doesn't please him.

Bizarre events follow - they start finding mails and messages addressed to each of the individuals in that house, each mail having one of the articles worn by the missing man. Ellery is able to display his deductive capabilities by piecing together a message from the sequence of the artifacts which have arrived in the mail - which turns out to be a rhyme from Alice in Wonderland, the significance of which is the hiding place of the dead body of the missing host! Who is sending the messages? How exactly is anyone able to send it as all the residents were under watch? Who is the murderer? A very clever and cunning psychological trap awaits the poor villain as does a few surprises for the reader!

The Most Obstinate Man in Paris - Georges Simenon

Theme for the Week: Queen's Quorum

Story: The Most Obstinate Man in Paris

Author: Georges Simenon

Source: The Short Cases Of Inspector Maigret

Story Number: 71

The Short Cases of Inspector Maigret happens to be the first book of short stories and novelettes about Inspector Maigret to appear in the United States in 1959, 27 years after the collection The 13 Culprits (Queen's Quorum title #85 from the year 1932) was given a cornerstone status in the Queen's Quorum. The 13 Culprits was printed for the first time in United States as recently as 2002 by Crippen and Landru if I'm not mistaken. The short cases consists of 5 novelettes, 2 of them translated by Anthony Boucher and the remaining 3 by Lawrence G. Blochman. Two of these stories are also available in Maigret's Pipe. The story that I've picked was translated by Blochman and is the case which Maigret likes to tell whenever someone asks him to talk about one of his most famous cases.

A man who enters a cafe in the Boulevard Saint Germain when the cafe is opened in the morning spends the next 16 hours in the cafe without eating anything. He just drinks coffee, keeps an eye on the cafe opposite to the one he is sitting in and no matter what the waiters in the cafe do to get rid of this man, he keeps rooted to his seat and leaves only when the cafe is closed at 11 in the night! As soon as he walks out, a shot is heard and a man goes down. The waiter who has served him so patiently for the last 16 hours believes that the man must have been hiding from some assassin  and has met his end. But when he approaches the fallen man, he finds that the dead man is somebody else and there's no sign of his obstinate customer!

Nobody is able to make headway in the case until Maigret gets involved. His investigation reveals that the dead man was a man who was sitting in a cafe the whole day opposite to the cafe occupied by the obstinate person. Strangely, his behavior(the dead man's) was exactly opposite to that of the obstinate man who has disappeared. He was garrulous, he ate a lot and drank a lot! Maigret believes that there must be a third cafe which had a similar strange visitor and he turns out to be right. In a cafe situated close to these 2 cafes and looking upon both of them, a lady spent a complete day from the time the cafe opened and left at a time when the obstinate man was supposed to have left! So, who killed whom? Who are these 3 individuals? The inspector unravels this pretty bizarre case in his  very own patient manner.

An Error in Chemistry - William Faulkner

Theme for the Week: Queen's Quorum Titles

Story: An Error in Chemistry

Author: William Faulkner

Source: Knight's Gambit (Queen's Quorum #105).

Story Number: 70

This collection consists of six detective stories - the second foray into detective stories by the great writer William Faulkner after Intruder in The Dust. The stories feature Uncle Gavin Stevens, a county attorney who assists the Sheriff in solving some complicated cases, the stories being narrated by Steven's nephew Chick Mallison.

Joe Flint calls the sheriff and confesses to having killed his wife in his father-in-law's house. The father-in-law, referred throughout as the old man Pritchel, who must have been a witness to her daughter's death refuses to say anything about the incident and locks himself in a room. The sheriff arrests Flint and locks him up in the county jail but Flint disappears from the jail without a trace. He had not broken out. He had walked out, out of the cell, out of the jail, out of town and apparently out of the county - no trace, no sign, no man who had seen him or seen anyone who might have been him.

Sheriff approaches uncle Gavin and tells him the story - highlighting the fact that there was no need for Flint to first confess to the murder, get himself arrested and then vanish off the face of the earth. In the meantime, various landlords have shown interest in buying off Pritchel's land and have made a handsome offer. The adjustor is ready to pay the insurance money for the policy which was taken on the daughter. Pritchel sends an invite to both the sheriff and Uncle Gavin to witness these two events of selling of his land and collecting the insurance check. During the course of events, the three men watch Pritchel add sugar to whisky and then add water to it - a mistake in the execution of making a traditional toddy. This sets of a chain of events which lead to the unmasking of a very clever but daring villain who was on the verge of getting away with triple murder.