The Vanished Steamboat - Edward D. Hoch

Story: The Vanished Steamboat

Author: Edward D. Hoch

Source: The Ripper Of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Tales

Ben Snow is whiling away the time in New Orleans when his friend Eddie, a riverboat gambler coaxes him to come down to Vicksburg. When there is a death of a gambler and there is a vacant spot on the steamboat, Eddie decides to take the trip on the ‘River Ridge’ and try his luck with the cards. Ben Snow declines his friend’s invitation to join him on this journey from Vicksburg to St. Louis. He bids his friend goodbye from the dock and watches the steamboat till it vanishes down the Mississippi river.

The next day, the owner of the Steamboat ‘River Ridge’ hires Ben Snow to find the boat as the boat seems to be missing. The owner strongly suspects that it’s her brother who has hijacked the boat. In 24 hours, the boat should have crossed Greenville but the message from Greenville is that they didn’t see any boat. Another boat ‘Carrollton Belle’ which left St. Louis the day before and which should have crossed ‘River Ridge’ midway didn’t meet the boat at all. The Belle is now berthed in Vicksburg and the captain of the ‘Belle’ is pretty certain that the ‘River Ridge’ is not on the river. Where did the boat with 55 crew members disappear? If it’s lost on the water, somebody would have seen it by now, if it had sunk down, the coastguard officials who were dredging would have found it. They even try to use  Conan Doyle’s solution of the ‘Lost Special’ where he makes a train disappear between two stations but the application of the same on the river between two ports doesn’t fetch them the same prize!

The solution is pretty simple and I did work out the problem as to where to find the boat but you have to give it to the author for planting the vital clue to the solution right there in the open – highlighted in italics - and yet I missed it altogether!!!

The Ripper Of Storyville - Edward D. Hoch

Story: The Ripper Of Storyville

Author: Edward D. Hoch

Source: The Ripper Of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Tales

The Ripper of Storyville is the first book collection of one of Hoch’s most imaginative creations, Ben Snow, the nineteenth century gunman who wanders through the West with two of his companions – his horse and his derringer pistol. Hoch combines ingenious plotting with a strong sense of time & place – thereby making it both Western and Historical mysteries. Snow is a fast draw and a crack shot and is often mistaken for Billy the Kid, and is hired for his shooting services. The first seven Ben Snow stories were written 30 years ago for The Saint Mystery Magazine. The series was resumed in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine after a break of 19 years; this collection features all the 7 written for SMM and 7 from the ones published in EQMM.

In the title story, Ben Snow travels from Texas to New Orleans to find Kinsman’s daughter Bess in the red light district of Storyville. Kinsman is on his deathbed and wants his daughter to come back and take over the millions that she is due for. The reason for hiring a gunman? Jack the Ripper is suspected to be operating in the area and already 2 prostitutes have met a gory end. And by the time Ben finds Bess, the body count has gone up to 3 and Bess is not in a mood to go back to her Father.  Ben not only has to persuade Bess to come back with him but he needs to keep her alive till the killer is caught. The 4^th victim happens to be Bess’s own roommate. Snow has no other option but to investigate and find the link amongst the 4 women. … Which when he does with some clever deductions eventually leads to the fact that the Ripper’s final victim is none other than Bess!

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.

The Theft of the Bingo Card - Edward D. Hoch

Theme for the Week: Murder on The Seas

Story: The Theft of the Bingo Card

Author: Edward D. Hoch

Source: Murder on Deck - Shipboard & Shoreline Mystery Stories: This collection is a mixed bag - it has more stories on the shore rather than the sea. And for those set in seaside resorts or hotels, any number of stories could replace the ones that are available in the book. And for those stories set on ships or ocean liners, I would expect some relationship or motive for setting the story in such a locale but I was a bit disappointed on that front as well.

Story Number: 54

It seems that the author got his idea for this story when he was on a mystery cruise on the Holland America Line where he learned that the lifeboats were provided with bingo cards - to distract the people who are on a lifeboat while the ship they were in is sinking or when they are waiting to be rescued! Only, he uses it for more nefarious purposes!

Nick Velvet and his wife are holidaying on the cruise ship Antilles - header for a weeklong tour of the Caribbean. A corporate group is being entertained with a murder mystery game but the man who plays the corpse in the game is found dead sometime later due to an overdose of cocaine. The dead man's wife Dolores hires Nick to steal a bingo card - a bingo card which can be identified by its number 253 and which is present on one of the 12 lifeboats. The reason to obtain the card - the man was killed because he was looking for this particular card! Nick's first job is to figure out which of the lifeboats has the card he wants, then he needs to find a way to get on them as they are hung high above the deck and any attempt at bringing them down on to the deck would set off an alarm.

When he does manages to steal the card before the prescribed deadline, Nick Velvet realizes  that he has a lot more work to do as he finds out that Dolores also has been killed in the same fashion as her husband. The only clue is the odd arrangement of the numbers on the card, he goes about the detection by interviewing the various bingo players. The significance of the card and the message which those numbers depict, points to him the murderer who has killed twice to lay his hands on the card! A bingo player should have no problem in spotting the killer as there are two very glaring clues dangled right in front of the reader's eyes which one could miss in the blink of an eye.

A Melee of Diamonds - Edward D. Hoch

Story: A Melee of Diamonds

Author: Edward D. Hoch

Source: The Best of Mystery – selected by Alfred Hitchcock

Story Number: 33

Edward D. Hoch has written more than 900 stories and has the phenomenal record of having his story published each month in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine for a period of 34 years without missing an issue! He has created numerous series characters, some of the most prominent being Dr. Sam Hawthorne who deals in Impossible Crimes, Captain Leopold featuring in police procedurals, Nick Velvet who steals only strange objects which have no value, Simon Ark who is 2000 years old and is always in search of the devil.

This impossible crime story features the New York Homicide detective Captain Leopold. Rudy Hoffman (who has got a long record) is seen breaking the glass display of the Midtown Diamond Exchange by several pedestrians on the road, the assistant who was closing the shop witnesses Rudy grabbing a set of diamonds from the broken window, a policeman who is quickly on the scene when the alarm goes off and tries to stop Rudy but Rudy smashes his head with the cane. A young man pursues the burglar, catches up with Rudy and when they are involved in a tussle, the police reinforcements turn up and arrest Rudy. But when they search him, they don’t find any diamonds on him. Rudy was under constant observation from the time he broke the glass till the police apprehended him. The only two people who had any contact with him during that time frame are the unconscious policeman and the young man, a search doesn’t reveal any diamonds on both these parties.

The police are stumped till a young girl approaches Captain Leopold and tells him that her boyfriend Freddy has the diamonds. He retrieves the diamonds just in time before the boyfriend returns back to the house and has adequate time to hide it before he confronts Leopold. The captain plays a deadly game by saying that the diamonds have vanished, he allows Freddy to search him and the house and when he is convinced that somebody else has done away with it, Leopold suggests to call his accomplice who handed him the jewels in the first place, which results in an unnecessary death. But it takes all of Leopold’s wits to figure out how this impossible crime was committed and by whom.