Stephen Barr - Best of the best detective stories - 25th anniversary collection

My God, he was a good sort of man. I was really sorry when they found him next day, after he’d put a bullet through his head. And yet what else could he do? He knew I should get him.

I was furious with Fred Mortimer. That was no way to end a story. Suddenly, like that, as if he were tired of it. I told him so.

“My dear little friend,” he said, “it isn’t the end. We’re just coming to the exciting part. This will make your hair curl.”

“Oh!” I said sarcastically. “Then I suppose all that you’ve told me so far is just introduction?”

“That’s right. Now you listen. On Friday morning, before we heard of Sir William’s death, I went in to report to Inspector Totman. He wasn’t there. Nobody knew where he was. They rang up his apartment house. Now hold tight to the leg of the table or something. When the porter got into his flat, he found Totman’s body. Poisoned.”

“Good heavens!” I ejaculated.

“You may say so. There he was, and on the table was a newly opened bottle of whiskey, and by the side of it a visiting card. And whose card do you think it was? Mine! And what do you think it said? ‘A long life and all the best, with the admiring good wishes of—’ me! Lucky for me I had had young Roberts with me. Lucky for me he had this genius for noticing and remembering. Lucky for me he could swear to the exact shape of the smudge of ink on that card. And I might add, lucky for me that they believed me when I told them word for word what had been said at my interview with Sir William, as I have just told you. I was reprimanded, of course, for exceeding my duty, as I most certainly had, but that was only official. Unofficially, they were very pleased with me. We couldn’t prove anything, naturally, and Sir William’s suicide was left unexplained. But a month later I was promoted to Inspector.”

Mortimer fixed his glass and drank, while I revolved his extraordinary story in my mind.

“The theory,” I said, polishing my glasses thoughtfully, “was, I suppose, that Sir William sent the poisoned whiskey, not so much to get rid of Totman, from whom he had little to fear, as to discredit you by bringing you under suspicion, and to discredit entirely your own theory of the other murder.”

“Exactly.”

“And then, at the last moment he realized that he couldn’t go on with it, or the weight of his crimes became suddenly too much for him, or—”

“Something of the sort. Nobody ever knew, of course.”

I looked across the table with sudden excitement; almost with awe.

“Do you remember what he said to you?” I asked, giving the words their full meaning as I slowly quoted them. “ ‘The fact that my card was used is in itself convincing evidence of my innocence...’ And you said, ‘Not to me.’ And he said, ‘I wish I could convince you.’ And that was how he did it! The fact that your card was used was convincing evidence of your innocence!”

“With the other things. The proof that he was in possession of the particular card of mine which was used, and the certainty that he had committed the other murder. Once a poisoner, always a poisoner.”

“True... yes... Well, thanks very much for the story, Fred. All the same, you know,” I said, shaking my head at him, “it doesn’t altogether prove what you set out to prove.”

“What was that?”

“That the simple explanation is generally the true one. In the case of Perkins, yes. But not in the case of Totman.”

“Sorry, I don’t follow.”

“My dear fellow,” I said, putting up a finger to emphasize my point, for he seemed a little hazy with the wine suddenly; “the simple explanation of Totman’s death — surely? — would have been that you had sent him the poisoned whiskey.”

Superintendent Mortimer looked a little surprised. “But I did,” he said.

So now you see my terrible predicament. I could hardly listen as he went on dreamily: “I never liked Totman, and he stood in my way; but I hadn’t seriously thought of getting rid of him until I got that card into my hands again. As I told you. Sir William dropped it into the basket and turned to the window, and I thought; Damn it, you can afford to chuck about visiting cards, but I can’t. It’s the only one I’ve got left, and if you don’t want it, I do. So I bent down very naturally to tie my shoelace and felt in the basket behind me, because, of course, it was rather an undignified thing to do, and I didn’t want to be seen; and just as I was putting it into my pocket I saw that ink smudge again, and I remembered that Roberts had seen it. And in a flash the whole plan came to me; simple; foolproof. And from that moment everything I said to him was in preparation for it. Of course we were quite alone, but you never knew who might be listening, and besides” — he twiddled the stem of his wine glass — “p’raps I’m like Sir William, rather tell the truth than not. And it was true, all of it — how Sir William came to know about Totman’s birthday, and knew that those were the very words I should have used.”

“Don’t think I wanted to put anything on to Sir William that wasn’t his. I liked him. But he as good as told me he wasn’t going to wait for what was coming to him, and he’d done one murder anyway. That was why I slipped down with a bottle that evening and left it outside Totman’s flat. Didn’t dare wait till the morning, in case Sir William closed his account that night.” He stood up and stretched himself. “Ah, well, it was a long time ago. Good-by, old man, I must be off. Thanks for a grand dinner. Don’t forget, you’re dining with me next Tuesday. I’ve got a new Burgundy for you. You’ll like it.”

He drained his wine glass and swaggered out, leaving me to my thoughts.

From the 1948 anthology...

The Checklist found at the end of this volume reveals that Ellery Queen is the author with the most selections, appearing in eleven of the twenty-five volumes. The same Checklist also records that more of the 334 stories came originally from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine than from any other single source. This illustrates, however inadequately, the immense contributions made by Queen to the crime short story, both as writer and editor... The present exercise in the deductive skills of Queen the detective is without crime, but notable in its effective embrace of history and the neatness of its puzzle.

Those few curious men who have chosen to turn off the humdrum highway to hunt for their pleasure along the back trails expect — indeed, they look confidently forward to — many strange encounters; and it is the dull stalk which does not turn up at least a hippograff. But it remained for Ellery Queen to experience the ultimate excitement. On one of his prowls he collided with a President of the United States.

This would have been joy enough if it had occurred as you might imagine; by chance, on a dark night, in some back street of Washington, D.C., with Secret Service men closing in on the delighted Mr. Queen to question his motives by way of his pockets while a large black bullet-proof limousine rushed up to spirit the President away. But mere imagination fails in this instance. What is required is the power of fancy, for the truth is fantastic. Ellery’s encounter with the President of the United States took place, not on a dark night, but in the unromantic light of several days (although the night played its role, too). Nor was it by chance: the meeting was arranged by a farmer’s daughter. And it was not in Washington, D.C., for this President presided over the affairs of the nation from a different city altogether. Not that the meeting took place in that city, either; it did not take place in a city at all, but on a farm some miles south of Philadelphia. Oddest of all, there was no limousine to spirit the Chief Executive away, for while the President was a man of great wealth, he was still too poor to possess an automobile and, what is more, not all the resources of his Government — indeed, not all the riches of the world — could have provided one for him.