The Sapphire That Disappeared - James Holding

Theme: Authors from the pages of AHMM

Story: The Sapphire That Disappeared

Author: James Holding

Source: Alfred Hitchcock's A Hearse Of A Different Color

Story Number: 90

Laurie and John from the famous firm of Private Detectives 'Landis & Landis' are enjoying their holiday in Buenos Aires when they are asked to solve the problem of the missing Sapphire by the store owner Quesada.

The store had only two customers when the Sapphire went missing - a Mrs. Thompson and a Mr. Ortega. Thompson is looking for aquamarine necklaces where as Ortega is looking for  a suitable gift for his wife and requests to see some uncut stones. The clerk, on his way back to show Ortega the gems, trips over and spills a lot of stones on the carpeted floor and the stones are quickly retrieved by the store employees. But one valuable stone is found missing. The big Sapphire which would stand out on the dark carpet is nowhere to be found in the edgeless circular room. Both the customers are searched thoroughly and they are let go only after confirming that they didn't have the stone on them or on their clothes. The only clue turns out to be a discarded bubble gum wrapper - but no one was chewing any gum nor was any gum found anywhere in the store.

Laurie and John exchange a series of hypotheses as to how the Sapphire could have disappeared but each one of them turns out to have already been verified with no result. They know that Ortega must be the guilty party and that a wad of gum was somehow involved but  how he managed to use the gum and hide the Sapphire remains a mystery.  The couple stumble across the vital clue when John bumps into a blind man after existing one of the Buenos Aires subway trains. A simple solution which is neatly done and fairly clued.

The Vapor Clue - James Holding

Theme: Authors from the pages of AHMM

Story: The Vapor Clue

Author: James Holding

Source: Alfred Hitchcock's Murders On The Half-Skull

Story Number: 89

Hub Grant and his wife have had an early start on their journey from Pittsburgh to Connecticut on a bitter cold still-dark morning. The engine develops a snag and Hub pulls into a gas station at around 5.30 in the morning. Since the gas station would open only at around 7, Hub decides to walk and check out if he can find some help from one of the houses he sees in the distance. The wife remains in the car.

Sarah Benson, the waitress of a Trucker's rest house , is out on her way to open the shop so that the truck drivers who are regular customers, can stop by for their morning coffee. Sarah sees a man(Hub) walking down the hill towards her shop and when he is about to wave to her, she sees a dark sedan come down the hill, hit the man with full force and make a quick getaway even before Sarah could react.

Lieutenant Randall has very less to go on to catch the hit-and-run driver. The only description that Sarah can give is that she noticed a mist from the exhaust pipe which sort of covered up the license plate. It takes 12 more hours for Sarah to understand the significance of the mist from the exhaust pipe; she approaches Randall and tells him as to what the vapor clue signified; a fact which is more than enough to figure out who the hit-and-run driver was and apprehend him in a very short time.

Dream Of A Murder - C. B. Gilford

Theme: Authors from the pages of AHMM

Story: Dream Of A Murder

Author: C. B. Gilford

Source: Alfred Hitchcock's A Hearse of A Different Color

Story Number: 88

Harvey Fenster had committed murder, plain and simple. The crime hadn't been detected. The only trouble was, Harvey dreamed! And so begins this very intriguing tale of a man who has willfully murdered his wife and passed it off as an accident.

Each night he dreams - he dreams about the murder and the events leading up to it. The irritating voice of his nagging wife, her request for a new washing machine, the rigging up of the wiring to induce shock which eventually leads to her death - it is all very vivid and more horrific than the actual crime itself. Each time the shrilling noise of the alarm clock wakes him up out of his nightmare.

But every night, the dream goes a little further. During the initial stages it was restricted to the actual event. Further on, he starts dreaming about things which never happened in real life - the police investigation, the various clues which the police didn't notice at the time of the murder, the police restarting the enquiry, the getting rid of the washing machine and other clues in the river, the police arresting him for the murder, the court room where the jury brings in a verdict of guilty - the dreams continue to haunt him but every time the alarm clock saves him from his nightmare and brings him back to reality! Until, the dream where the judge sentences him to death.... in the electric chair....

The Case Of The Helpless Man - Douglas Farr

Theme: Authors from the pages of AHMM

Story: The Case Of The Helpless Man

Author: Douglas Farr

Source: Alfred Hitchcock's A Hearse of A Different Color

Story Number: 87

Rudolph Iser is in a vegetative state after a stroke; he is completely paralyzed, can't move or talk, but can only hear and see. He has left two-thirds of his legacy to his nephew George and the remaining one-third to her niece Karen. Karen approaches her uncle and tells him that she will correct the errors in the will as he can't do anything about it. She brings  the drunken nephew into the room, places him in a chair in the line of the arm of the helpless man, puts a gun into the paralyzed hands and shoots at George.

The clever detective who is on the scene quickly realizes what must have happened there - he asks the helpless man to answer his questions with a Yes or No answer by moving his eyes. From this he elucidates that it was Karen who killed George. But he goes away a defeated man when Karen doesn't budge with her story that it was her uncle, with some miraculous last ditch effort, who shot George - a theory which no medical expert can refute.  

The detective knows that Karen killed George but he is helpless, the uncle knows that Karen is gone get away with murder but more importantly she will become the sole heir to his legacy and yet he can't do anything about it! Rudolph also knows that he is in his final moments, that he might not be alive when the detective comes back with more evidence or more questions. Will Karen get away with murder? Will she get her uncle's legacy which she has so schemingly aimed for? Or will the uncle, without the availability of any of his faculties, be able to do something to make sure that she doesn't inherit? Boils down to a fitting climax.

A Small Down Payment - Stephen Wasylyk

The stories for this week will be from the authors who I didn't even know existed but were prominently featured in the pages of the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine(AHMM).

Theme for the Week: Authors from the pages of AHMM

Story: A Small Down Payment

Author: Stephen Wasylyk

Source: Alfred Hitchcock's Tales to Make You Quake & Quiver

Story Number: 86

In the anthology AHMM Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense, the editor Linda Landrigan mentions that when readers were asked to suggest stories by their favorite authors for the fifty years anniversary anthology, many of them replied back saying 'any story by Stephen Wasylyk'.

Lazarus Neap gets a new deputy in Arbosh and nothing seems to work for Neap from that point on. A simple burglary arrest goes haywire, a girl found strangled in her apartment turns up no lead whatsoever. The next day, another girl is found strangled and Neap finds the girl's house and its artifacts looking exactly similar to the house where the first girl was found strangled. The certain clue in both the houses turn out to be a check made out for 25 dollars to a 'Date, Inc'.

What follows is a pure police procedural - with the duo stringing together the facts and the clues available from both the crime scenes. What they do find out is that both the girls were members of a dating agency, a man by the name of Hoopes was given a list of 3 women by the dating agency(2 of whom were found dead on consecutive days), and if they don't find Hoopes in time, they would have another body on their hands. They track Hoopes down to a hotel only to find that he has vacated the hotel without leaving a trace, they try to trace the girl but find that she is already on the way to keep her date with Hoopes but none of the girl's friends know about the dating place. When they do figure out the place by some clever deductions, they end up arresting the wrong person. But they get their man in the end!

Twist For Twist - Christianna Brand

Story: Twist For Twist

Author: Christianna Brand

Source: Ellery Queen's Mystery Parade

Story Number: 85

From the introduction to this story by EQ: "Twist For Twist" featuring Inspector Cockrill, won the First Prize in the special 1966 short-story contest sponsored by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine for members of Crime Writers Association of England. You will find this First Prize winner a twisting, turning, twisting story of "pure" detection in the grandest tradition of what John Dickson Carr has called "the grandest game in the world." A fascinating cast of characters - a baffling murder committed right before your eyes - a detective on the spot (in both senses of the phrase) - a plot that will whirl you like a top, with ingenious theory piled on ingenious theory until the truth finally emerges - in an image, the "Golden Age" detective story in the seventies!...

"At certain times of the year, there are numerous males called the drones, which have very large eyes and whose only activity is to eat and to participate in the mass flight after the virgin queen. But only one of the hornets succeeds in the mating and he dies in the end," quotes Harold Caxton to his fellow guests on the occasion of his second wedding. Nurse Elizabeth, who nursed the first wife of Caxton plays the role of the virgin queen where as three young men who are all smitten by Elizabeth play the roles of the drones to perfection. Before the dinner is over, Caxton is found dead of cyanide poisoning and Cockie unravels a very elaborate, deep-laid, long-thought-out, absolutely sure-fire plot of murder, and all of it conceived with utter cleverness and infinite patience!

Flair For Murder - Frances and Richard Lockridge

Story: Flair For Murder

Author: Frances and Richard Lockridge

Source: Ellery Queen's Crime Carousel

Story Number: 84

The husband and wife team of Frances and Richard Lockridge created a series of sleuths including the husband and wife team of Pam & Jerry North, Nathan Shapiro, Bernard Simmons and Captain Merton Heimrich. This story was the last short story which Frances and Richard wrote jointly before the death of Mrs. Lockridge in 1963 and is considered one of the best from their output.

Martin's dog has brought a soiled hat to his master which he immediately recognizes as belonging to John Adams; who is never seen without that hat on his head. When Martin stumbles across the spot where his dog has dug a hole in the garden, he finds the body of Adams buried in the asparagus bed.

John Adams, a gardener himself, was keeping a close eye on his friend's daughter Nancy as though to protect her after her Father's death. Nancy is wondering why John hasn't visited her for two days and she decides to pose her problem to her husband who is working in another city. When he comes home, when she is about to get up from the chair, she cuts her finger on the arm of the chaise from  a jagged metal, which she hadn't noticed till now even though she had used it on a regular basis. Her husband treats the bleeding fingers before Inspector Heimrich arrives to break the sad news.

Inspector Heimrich gets to use his nose as effectively as the dog which unearthed the body. He notices that the body was buried in a place where there was bone meal which would certainly attract a dog, a mistake which provides a decent clue to the identity of the murderer.  He investigates the gardener's shed where he notices a series of poisons. He gets to link these facts to the actual murder when Heimrich gets to use his nose again when Nancy faints after hearing the news from him. He smells something on the wound that has been bandaged and he ends up preventing a second murder and at the same time apprehending a murderer whose only fault lay in the fact that he didn't have the gardening knowledge which a country gardener would possess.