Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

“He was demonstrating grenade technique, sir. He had a practice grenade. It was painted the way they are, to show they’re not armed. He pulled the pin and counted down to show us how long it took for the fuse to burn. It went off, sir. It wasn’t a practice grenade. It was a live grenade. He it went off, sir. It blew him to bits, sir.”

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Joseph and Mary. Jesus. The poor bastard. He must have known the jig was up. All right, here comes McWilliams now.”

And Lieutenant McWilliams arrived, polished shoes covered with red Georgia dust even in winter, uniform spotless and pressed, every brass button glittering in the December sunlight. Even before McWilliams got off his salute, Captain Coughlin barked at him.

“You’ve sent for the medics, of course.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cancelled the rest of the session and sent the men to barracks.”

“Under command of Private Schulte, sir. A fine soldier, I can see that already.”

“I’m sure of it. All right, McWilliams. Let’s have a look in Sergeant Dillard’s vehicle.”

They found it concealed inside the spare tire in Dillard’s Ford. Miller’s missing Missal. The annotations were in a simple code; the Provost Marshal’s men and the CID investigators would have no problem cracking it. Poor innocent Miller, the payroll clerk had made notes to himself in the Missal, notes that gave the key to his carefully maintained records. It was obvious that he never thought anyone would see the contents of the Missal except himself and his God.

Everything was there. The identities of the gamblers, the amounts they owed. The monthly payroll would have got a lot of military men out of debt with whoever held their IOU’s. A lot of military men including Sergeant Dillard and Corporal Miller. And Lieutenant McWilliams.

“You, Lieutenant? That’s hard to believe. You drive that Packard, you wear custom-tailored uniforms, you’re from old money, McWilliams. How could you get in so deep? Why didn’t you just ask your family to bail you out?”

“You wouldn’t understand, Captain. With due respect to your rank, sir, you really wouldn’t understand. I couldn’t go to my family. I had to work this out myself.”

Captain Coughlin moaned, as if he and not Lieutenant McWilliams had been caught. “It was the Army-Navy game that did it, wasn’t it? Loyal to the old school, you went double-or-nothing on everything you owed, and Navy whipped Army again, didn’t they? You poor sap, McWilliams. You poor, poor sap.”

The captain drew in a deep breath. Then he said, “I take it you and Sergeant Dillard and Corporal Miller were all in this together? Who was your bookie, that’s not in Miller’s book. Was it Jackalee Jennings in Columbus? Or somebody in Phoenix City? Big Mike Norris? Larry Sunday? You know, those fellows don’t keep their operations very secret, they’re pals with the sheriffs on both sides of the river. Who was it, son?”

McWilliams looked angry for a moment when he heard Captain Coughlin use that last word. Then he shook his head. “I don’t think I should say anything, Captain. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice I have the right to a civilian attorney and I will ask my family to provide one. That much, I will accept from them.”

“Did you kill him, McWilliams? Tell me that much. Was it you or was it Dillard? Which one of you killed Miller?”

“I’m not going to answer any questions, sir.”

“Dillard is dead now. Very convenient, McWilliams. You can lay it all on his grave. I suppose that’s what your lawyer will do, isn’t it?” He looked up, looked over McWilliams’s cap with its glittering eagle ornament and its polished leather visor. Train wondered what Captain Coughlin saw. He couldn’t guess. Coughlin said, “All right, Lieutenant. Report to the Provost Marshal and tell him to place you under arrest pending investigation.”

Nick Train watched Lieutenant McWilliams salute, execute a smart about face, and march off like a good little soldier.

“Where did they get the poison?” Captain Coughlin asked. He didn’t direct the question to anyone in particular, but Private Train and Private Hirsch were both within earshot.

“Foxglove is common,” Train said, “it grows in every ditch in the State of Georgia.”

“Lot of it in Spain, too,” Hirsch volunteered. “I was there with the Lincolns, you know. Saw plenty of Foxglove.”

Captain Coughlin said, “All right, boys, you go back to your barracks and polish your boots.”

Ellery Queen, or at least the Frederick Dannay half of that writing team, regarded the collection The Curious Mr Tarrant (1935) as containing “the most imaginative detective short stories of our time.” The book, rather oddly, was published first in Britain, and that first edition is regarded as one of the rarest volumes of 20th century detective fiction. It was not until 1977 that it saw its first American edition, and more recently it has been augmented with later stories in The Complete Curious Mr Tarrant (2003). The author, Charles Daly King (1895-1963) was a psychologist who used his understanding of the workings of the mind in creating often quite simple puzzles but which utterly perplex the reader. He completed six novels, all of which were also first published in Britain, featuring police detective Michael Lord and his psychologist assistant Dr Rees Pons. If you like murders on trains, then Obelists en Route (1934) is worth tracking down. The following doesn’t involve a train but it does include one of those puzzles that seems so simple when explained but is otherwise so completely baffling.

The episode of the nail and the requiem was one of the most characteristic of all those in which, over a relatively brief period, I was privileged to watch Trevis Tarrant at work. Characteristic, in that it brought out so well the unusual aptitude of the man to see clearly, to welcome all the facts, no matter how apparently contradictory, and to think his way through to the only possible solution by sheer logic, while everyone else boggled at impossibilities and sought to forget them. From the gruesome beginning that November morning, when he was confronted by the puzzle of the sealed studio, to the equally gruesome denouement that occurred despite his own grave warning twenty-four hours later, his brain clicked successively and infallibly along the rails of reason to the inevitable, true goal.

Tarrant had been good enough to meet us at the boat when Valerie and I had returned from our wedding trip; and a week later I had been delighted with the opportunity of spending the night at his apartment, telling him of the trip and our plans and hearing of his own activities during the interval. After all, he was largely responsible for my having won Valerie when I did; our friendship had grown to intimacy during those few days when the three of us, and Katoh too, had struggled with the thickening horror in Valerie’s modernistic house.

It was that most splendid time of year when the suburban air is tinged with the smoke of leaves, when the country beyond flaunts beauty along the roads, when the high windows of the city look out every evening through violet dusk past myriad twinkling lights at the gorgeous painting of sunset. We had been to a private address at the Metropolitan Museum by a returning Egyptologist; we had come back to the apartment and talked late into the night. Now, at eight-thirty the next morning, we sat at breakfast in Tarrant’s lounge while the steam hissed comfortably in the wall radiators and the brisk, bright sky poured light through the big window beside us.

I remember that we had nearly finished eating and that Tarrant was saying: “Cause and effect rule this world; they may be a mirage but they are a consistent mirage, everywhere, except possibly in subatomic physics, there is a cause for each effect, and that cause can be found,” when the manager came in. He wore a fashionable morning coat and looked quite handsome; he was introduced to me as Mr Gleeb. Apparently he had merely dropped in, as was his custom, to assure himself that all was satisfactory with a valued tenant, but the greetings were scarcely over when the phone rang and Katoh indicated that he was being called His monosyllabic answers gave no indication of the conversation from the other end he finished with “All right; I’ll be up in a minute.”