“Or You Can Drink The Wine…?” - Paul C. Doherty

Story: “Or You Can Drink The Wine…?”

Author: Paul C. Doherty

Source: The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits

Story Number: 103

A locked room mystery dating from almost 3500 years ago, features one of Doherty’s chief characters Amerotke, the Chief Judge of Egypt.

The Lady Tiyea was supposed to have committed suicide but the circumstances under which her body has been found troubles Amerotke. The poison was found only in the wine and not anywhere else in the room, the wine hadn’t been completely consumed, the lady had taken a lot of trouble to apply makeup before retiring for the night (as was the custom then) and she had planned and instructed her servants on the tasks for the next day – a few key points which a person about to commit suicide wouldn’t think of carrying out.

But the circumstances doesn’t allow for any other explanation – the wine was poured in to the goblet by her maid who tasted it before handing it over to another servant who also took a sip before giving it to the lady, both these servants notice the Lady sipping the wine as soon as it is handed to her, she goes inside her room and locks it and a servant takes guard outside her room. When the door is broken open the next day, the Lady is dead due to a venomous poison which is found in the wine. If there was no way a person could have walked into the locked and guarded room, how was the poison induced? The clues are fairly laid out, the interviews of the husband and the servants are quite vivid and the final clue which Amerotke finds after a very detailed examination of the makeup kit - all of them clearly point to one person as the murderer and the reader should have the pleasure of identifying the solution much before it is revealed!

The Crime At Big Tree Portage - Hesketh Prichard

Story: The Crime At Big Tree Portage

Author: Hesketh Prichard

Source: The Dead Witness – A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Detective Stories edited by Michael Sims

Story Number: 102

A unique story for the following reason as cited in the introduction to this story: Hesketh Prichard has created an original and intriguing variation on the Sherlock Holmes type of detective in November Joe – a detective of the woods! He notices seemingly irrelevant minutiae in the wilds of the north; like Holmes, he turns coy about the clues’ importance until he is ready to talk – and, when he solves a case, doesn’t hesitate to serve as a vigilante judge and jury.

This story originally appeared as the third chapter of November Joe: Detective of the Woods and is set in the autumn of 1908. The narrator James Quartich has been asked to take a sabbatical and he decides to spend a few months hunting in the wilds of Canada but he ends up tagging along with Joe, who has been asked to investigate a murder at a camping site. The dead body of Henry Lyon and the woods are closely inspected for clues but both the gentlemen end up with different views of the murderer.  James is amazed at the keen observation skills of his companion who has pointed out that the murderer hasn’t left a single clue and that all the clues would be present in the previous camp which the gentlemen might have used. When they reach this camp, sure enough, they are able to make out that two men spent the night together and Joe propounds a series of observations about the characteristics of the murderer from the various clues strewn around, though he doesn’t explain as to how he inferred them from the available clues. To find the murderer, they go to the city where the murdered man lived, find out the names of the men who were absent (turns out to be 5) from the settlement during the crucial period, track down each one of them and just match the characters as propounded by Joe to one of them. Only then does he explain the significance of the clues!

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!