Mortmain - Miriam Allen deFord

Story: Mortmain

Author: Miriam Allen deFord

Book: The Theme is Murder

A deputy sheriff is on his deathbed and he continues to live only through his will power and his ably supported doctor who visits him every day to treat him personally. He even has a resident nurse who caters to all his needs as he doesn’t even have the strength to get up from his bed. He is a wealthy man and he has no heirs – all his money is to be passed on to charities with a small allowance to the nurse. The nurse knows about the presence of ten thousand dollars in the wall safe which hasn’t been accounted in the will and she needs it badly. But she knows that the deputy sheriff is a wise man and it’ll not be possible to force him to part with that money. And she knows that he will not die in the very near future – this policeman is not the type who is gone take his own life to end the misery. The only way for him to die is for her to kill him – with poison! And the opportunity finally presents itself when the Doctor needs to go out of town for three days.

She knows that she needs to strike on the very first day that the doctor will not be visiting to provide herself the chance to escape the law. She decides to mix the poison along with the afternoon medicine so that the deputy is not suspicious. Once he takes his medicine, all that she needs to do is wash the container and the doctor on his return would have no grounds to suspect that his patient met an untimely death. Does it all end so smoothly? The reader knows that there’s some strange twist coming but no reader will be ready for the chilling and disturbing picture conjured up in the last two paragraphs of this story to leave a memorable impression in the reader’s mind!

The Oleander - Miriam Allen deFord

Story: The Oleander

Author: Miriam Allen deFord

Book: The Theme is Murder

The tragic events of this story concern two brothers – the narrator of the story and his evil brother Gilbert. The story beings with the narrator reminiscing about his childhood days when he used to spend most of his time near the oleander tree which his mother has planted and goes on to reveal how the tree has been his only friend during the tragic events that follow his entire life. The first sign that his brother Gilbert is not an ordinary child comes to the fore when he kills a cat but the greatest harm comes in the chemistry lab when the two brothers are carrying out an experiment: a blast which renders the narrator blind while Gilbert escapes unscathed. Since he is blind, he decides not to marry his girlfriend – who eventually ends up as Gilbert’s wife. Then there is an embezzlement charge against Gilbert but it is quickly hushed up. Next comes the complaint from the maid that it was Gilbert who hit their Mother which was the result of her death - she is discharged quickly.

Tragedy after tragedy befalls our narrator but he always turns a blind eye (aha!) to his brother’s faults and takes solace under the oleander tree. The break point finally comes when Gilbert cuts down the Oleander tree to the root as he knows that this will cause the maximum grief to his blind brother. Well, what can our narrator do? Can a blind man seek revenge against all the injustice meted out to him? If so, what can he do to Gilbert to make him suffer and how can he achieve it? You’ll have to read the story to find out and you won’t be disappointed with the coup de grace which comes in the final sentence of the story!

Something To Do With Figures - Miriam Allen deFord

Story: Something To Do With Figures

Author: Miriam Allen deFord

Book: The Theme is Murder, To The Queen’s Taste

One of the finest stories that I’ve read in a long long time.

Lorina Brackett and her brother Willard stay in the Wyndham hotel in adjacent rooms and the usual residents of the hotel are fed up of the notorious quarrels which they indulge in on a day to day basis. One fine day, Eric Scholl, the other neighbor of Lorina’s calls in the police complaining that something extreme was going on in her room. When the pole break in, Lorina is found stabbed to death with her brother Willard standing over her dead body with the murder weapon in hand. Seems like an open and shut case and the brother is convicted even though he claims he is innocent.

The only person who is convinced that the murderer was Eric and not the brother is Wedderburn, the narrator and the detective in the story who also stays in the same hotel. He provides the reader with the set up, the clues, the timings, the evidence and the possible motives for both the brother and Eric. The brother has already appealed several times, his execution has been stopped in anticipation of some new facts or proof being presented but dismissed each time with no conclusive evidence to show that the murder was committed by a third party. With just a few days to go for the final execution (after the last appeal has been rejected), Wedderburn battles with his mind to find that one vital point, that one vital clue which would conclusively show that the wrong man was being executed. Wedderburn, being an accountant, knows that the clue lies somewhere with the figures involved – what was wrong with the figures present at the scene of the crime? Will Willard be saved in time? To say that the reader is in for a surprise would be an understatement – it is an ingenious twist, its cleverness surpassed only by the cunningness with which the author has played fair with the reader.

236 different stories of detection, crime and mystery were published in the first four years of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. 36 of the best out of these 236 were collected in To The Queen’s Taste, the first supplement to 101 Years’ Entertainment. Ellery Queen includes this story by Miriam Allen deFord in Queen’s Taste and instead of providing an introduction to this story (as he does for all the other stories), he provides a note after the story: If you anticipated Miss deFord’s surprise ending, chalk up a large point for your side. Your Editors confess that they were completely taken aback by the revelation in the last sentence …. If you were fooled as neatly and unexpectedly as your Editors were, don’t blame it on “unfairness to the reader.” At no stage did Miss deFord violate the canon of fair play. As clearly as the … (let’s just say somewhere in the 1^st page), the author revealed the whole “trick” of the story – go back and read that sentence in the light of what you know now. True, she has deliberately and with malice aforethought tried to mislead you. But all’s fair in love, war & detective stories, and if you read the story again, you’ll find that strictly speaking, Miss deFord always told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Brava to Miss deFord for a remarkable performance in literary legerdemain!