The Locked Tomb Mystery - Elizabeth Peters

Story: The Locked Tomb Mystery

Author: Elizabeth Peters

Source: The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits, The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Mysteries

Story Number: 101

Just bought both these titles in the Friends of The Public Library bookstore and this story immediately caught my eye for two reasons – it was in both the collections and it involved a locked room mystery! And hence it was obviously hard to let it go! Crocodile On The Sandbank is one of her books which I’ve heard a lot about but haven’t got around to yet.

Senebtisi’s funeral had been the talk of the town because of the riches that she took along with her to the next world, leaving her son penniless. When there is a spate of tomb robberies on the west bank and the riches from inside the tombs start floating around in the open market, the citizens are a worried lot. One such tomb robbery puzzles everyone – including the Pharaoh, who hires Amenhotep Sa Hapu to investigate the strange robbery – the facts of the case goes something like this:

Senebtisi’s son Minmose decides to make sure that his mother’s tomb hasn’t been disturbed. He requests the Priest who helped in the burial ceremony to inspect the tomb; the necropolis seal is intact, they still decide to break open the seal and enter to make sure that the thieves haven’t dug a tunnel into the tomb. When they enter the tomb, the priest witnesses the mummy to have been dragged out of the burial chamber, the valuables are missing, the body inside the mummy has been torn open and yet the stone tomb itself hadn’t been broken in – the seals on the door were intact, the mortal untouched, there was no break of the smallest size in any of the tomb walls or ceilings and the dust lay undisturbed on the floor.

Amenhotep knows who the culprit is right from the beginning but he has no proof or evidence to show for it – the two interviews of the priest and Minmose provide him and the reader sufficient clues to figure out the clever trick of the locked tomb!

Whistler’s Murder - Fredric Brown

Story: Whistler’s Murder

Author: Fredric Brown

Source: The Shaggy Dog and Other Murders

Story Number: 100

Carlos Perry used to be in Vaudeville, a solo act, whistling – and hence the company name of ‘Whistler & Company’, which he had been using for his latest occupation of song writing. But he had cheated a lot of his friends and employees and hence a lot of them were pretty bitter – his nephew Walter traces a few of his vaudeville friends and tells them of his plan to help them when Carlos dies and passes on the inheritance to him. To expedite the process, Walter sends a threatening letter (without having any intention to carry out the threat) to his uncle saying he would die at a particular time. Walter believes that this would soften up his uncle and would help matters but Carlos just hires two security guards from a very reputed agency to guard him during the crucial hour. But in spite of it, somebody finds a way to bypass them and murder Carlos in his estate.

The insurance detective Henry Smith stumbles across this impossible crime when he goes to meet his client Walter Perry to renew his life insurance policy. Walter is the prime suspect as the police trace those threatening letters to him and is eventually arrested. But he has got a perfect alibi and the police can’t figure out exactly how the murder could’ve been committed. 2 security guards were standing guard on the roof of the house, there’s only 1 entry into the house via the front door and the men on guard can see the door and the complete surrounding area – no human could have approached the door without they seeing him. Yet, when there is a telephone call in the night and one of the guards goes down to answer the phone, he finds the man whom they were guarding dead! One person searches the house while the other still keeps watch on the roof but they don’t find anyone.

Smith talks to Walter in the jail and gets the background details about Carlos, his company and information about the people his uncle had cheated. Smith however gets his vital clue from the horse trainer on the estate who says he has been having a jolly good time fooling the city detectives about the difference between the various breeds of horses – which leads him to the ingenious solution of this very clever impossible crime.

Coffee Break - Arthur Porges

Story: Coffee Break

Author: Arthur Porges

Source: AH’s Tale to Make You Quake & Quiver

Story Number: 99

Sergeant Black has come to ask for the able assistance of Ulysses Price Middlebie, a former professor of the history and philosophy of science, but now a crime consultant. His problem to the professor – a locked room murder involving death due to poison!

Cyrus Denning, a 62 year old bachelor was supposed to have poisoned himself with cyanide in a locked room which was under constant observation. But Black’s instinct says that he was murdered. The murdered man was filthy rich, the only heir was with the murdered man half an hour before his death, the heir asked the boatman to keep a close eye on the door thereby getting himself an alibi for the crucial half hour and there was no suicide note. The professor explains away the locked bolt in a casual manner saying that it could’ve been locked using a high powered magnet from outside. But there are two other crucial factors that need to be explained: The coffee that contained cyanide was boiling hot when the door was forced open along with a newly lighted cigarette – giving an impression that the man was murdered just minutes before the door was broken in. If that was so, then how did the murderer get in and out of the tightly locked and guarded room?

Since Middlebie is no position to inspect the scene of the crime on his own two feet, he requests Black to take a lot of photographs inside the closed room and closely inspect the bolt on the door to make sure that it wasn’t an iron bolt. With the results of the analysis on the bolt and the photos, the professor propounds an interesting solution to this locked room problem!

The Million-to-One Chance - Roy Vickers

Story: The Million-to-One Chance

Author: Roy Vickers

Source: Best of The Best Detective Stories – 25^th Anniversary edition of the MWA Anthology

Story Number: 98

It’s not exactly an inverted detective story but it pretty much comes close it – the identity of the murderer is known from the beginning; the entire climax of the story depends on one question: what was the flaw in the murderer’s scheme that tripped him and how exactly was this message passed on to the police?

Crouch happens to have a dog with him when he was murdered and the dog happens to be a mastiff, the legendary dog of England which was only one among the 12 that could be found in the continent. The story is exquisitely built up to show the hatred between Stretton and Arthur Crouch, their fight over the same girl and their ultimate final showdown where Stretton breaks Crouch’s neck. He quickly buries him in his garden and the only other person who knows about Crouch’s presence in Stretton’s home is the mastiff who is patiently waiting outside the house in the car. When he takes a rifle to shoot the dog, he finds it sitting near the grave of his master. He shoots the fierce looking dog, buries it in the garden next to his master. Crouch’s wife complaints to the police when he doesn’t turn up for 24 hours but the police find absolutely no trace of the dog or Crouch and the case passes on to the department of dead ends. Meanwhile, Stretton has spent agonizing days looking out for the police but when nobody turns up on his doorstep for a month, he thinks he has got away with murder.

Six months down the line, he is surprised when the detectives from the police force come to his house with a warrant to search his garden! When he asks about the reason as to who informed them, the police detective says that the message indeed came from a mastiff! This breaks down Stretton and he quickly confesses explaining that he must have shot the wrong mastiff even though the probability of it happening was one in a million. Interestingly, it turns out that Stretton had shot the mastiff which Crouch owned and the way in which the message(where the bodies were buried) passes on to the police is something which is extraordinarily clever and brilliant!

Ten Clues for Mr. Polkinghorn - Charlotte Armstrong

Story: Ten Clues for Mr. Polkinghorn

Author: Charlotte Armstrong

Source: EQ’s Lethal Black Book

Story Number: 97

Polkinghorn is a mystery writer who calls in the police to report strange signs of life in his neighboring house which to be vacant for a period of 10 days. 3 convicts had escaped the prison a few days back and 2 out of them were supposed to have drowned. But the police are yet to track down the third person and the problem for them is they don’t know who among the three survived! And they suspect that this third escapee was occupying the empty house before he fled.

Polkinghorn tells the police that he could help them if they could tell him about these escaped convicts. When he gets the description of the three men – an Italian with only one foot, a New York man named Sparrow with grey hair and grey eyes and a young Navy seal from Kentucky, the writer is happy to point out and explain in detail the 10 clues which the police have missed – 3 of them point to the one foot man, 1 points to the man from Kentucky and the remaining 5 point to Sparrow. When the occupants of the house arrive, they are asked to explain these 10 clues. The residents come up with some great explanations to the presence of those 10 anomalies – with each one adroitly explained, the great mystery writer’s hypothesis is shattered one by one and he quickly takes leave. The police do catch the third convict based on the eleventh clue provided by the residents and it turns out to be the one who was selected as the least likely by Polkinghorn, a fact which makes the writer agree with the police that the life is not quite so strange as fiction!

Thieves’ Bazaar - W. L. Heath

Story: Thieves’ Bazaar

Author: W. L. Heath

Source: AH’s Tales To Make You Quake & Quiver

Story Number: 96

This is just the second story that Heath contributed to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery magazine. The story is set in Karachi in Pakistan in a Chor(thief) Bazaar – a market in many Asian tourist cities where stolen goods are sold at throwaway prices.

Jan and her Father are on a world tour and they have reached Karachi as the final leg of their tour. Jan is accompanied on her shopping spree by Dave, whom she met on the ship. When they are conversing about buying gems, they are accosted by one Thomson, who is immediately branded as a shady character by Dave, who prides himself in recognizing a ‘Shady’ anywhere. Thomson tells them that the most important thing in buying gems is recognizing a valuable one when you see it – a talent which neither Jan nor Dave know about. He recommends a place where they could get the gems for a good price and at the same time be confident that they were not swindled. He also tells them that they wouldn’t be able to find it on their own and that he would take them there himself. Dave smells a rat but he fails to talk Jan out of it. So, he decides to accompany her and keep an eye out for trouble.

They end up in a shop in the Thieves’ Bazaar, the shop owner displays a lot of gems and Jan settles for a good looking Sapphire. The price also turns out to be extremely reasonable! It all works out as a smooth transaction and they return back to their ship. Dave feels that something has indeed terribly gone wrong but he can’t put his finger to it. The Sapphire looks genuine and the price is certainly not exorbitant. When he shares his thoughts with Jan, she also agrees that she felt the same way when she was in the gem shop. Nothing untoward happens till the next day. When Dave returns back to his room after Jan & her Father fail to keep up their appointment with him, he is perplexed to see the gem owner and a few other guys thoroughly searching his room. He is quickly conked over and when he comes around his room is in a complete mess. Though he was anticipating something bad to happen all along, the actual outcome turns out to be a lot more shocking and surprising than he had ever imagined with only one fact turning out to be as he had expected – that Thomson was indeed a ‘shady’!

Double Exposure - Ben Hecht

Story: Double Exposure

Author: Ben Hecht

Source: EQ’s Twentieth Century of Detective Stories

Story Number: 95

Quote from EQ: “This story is a brisk, authoritative, witty model of the newest psychiatrist crime story, with sharp, shrewd irony and a kind of brimstone brilliance…”                   

Noted Psychiatrist Dr. Caleb Mudie has been murdered by his newly married wife Felicia on their honeymoon. Felicia is being tried for the murder and another Psychiatrist Dr. Hugo decides to come to her aid and defend her on the witness stand as he has a lot of background knowledge about Mudie – which if presented to a court, would force any jury to acquit. The story is narrated by Dr. Hugo to his best friend asking him to judge whether Hugo was a hero or a villain.

The story in all its complexity reveals the brilliant psychiatric shrewdness of Dr. Hugo – how he first manipulated Mudie to get rid of Felicia’s suitor, how he manipulated Mudie to go ahead and marry Felicia and how his manipulation led to the final demise of Mudie – 2 perfect murders committed so deftly and so cunningly that no punishment could ever be meted out to Dr. Hugo by the law - all carried out with the sole purpose of getting rid of his competitors and have Felicia for himself!