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

“A case of man proposes but horse deposes. Oh, I believe you about the first part of your story, Mr Clawson. But both your horses had interests that were nothing to do with your concerns. The female fled, the male followed and had his way with her. In the grip of that force of nature there was nothing whatsoever that either of you could do about it. In short, you were bolted with too.”

In confessing to murder, young Clawson had been a picture of dignity and control. Now he went as red as a schoolboy and hung his head. I went on more gently.

“While your Talisman was having his way, Sir Percy fell off the mare and cracked his head on the plinth.” (Paying, with ghastly appropriateness, a final tribute to Venus, though I didn’t add that at the time.) “When you found he was dead, you panicked. Your own horse-once his appetite was sated – wouldn’t cross the water back again in cold blood even for you. You took the mare and swam her to land, hoping he’d follow, just as you said. I’m right, aren’t I?”

He murmured yes without looking up. I put a hand on his shoulder.

“You mustn’t blame your sister for wanting the horse killed. The moment they told her about him she knew he was yours. She was only trying to protect you. Now, I suggest you start on your way back to Oxford before people are up and about. You can write to her from there.”

Harry led out Talisman and held the stirrup while young Clawson mounted. I said, standing close to the horse’s shoulder:

“Forget it all now. You meant no harm, and nobody will know about it from me.”

We opened the gates for him and stood watching while they rode away across the deserted market square, the rider motionless, the horse looking like something going back into a legend. When they were out of sight Harry went back across the yard and stood looking over the half door at Sir Percy’s cushion-quiet mare.

“Wonder if she took. Could be a good foal with that Arab blood.” I suggested he might make an offer for her to the young widow when he took her fifty guineas back, but knowing Harry, thought it unlikely that the lady would ever see her money again or her husband’s mare at all.

One of the great treasures of the world of baffling mysteries is the work of Vincent Cornier (1898-1976). A journalist, war reporter, and a much-travelled man, Cornier created some of the most bizarre and unusual crime and mystery stories to appear in the magazines from the late 1920s through to the 1960s. In all that time he never once sought to have them collected in book form and, although a few have been anthologized, most are now extremely rare and difficult to find. Cornier created a couple of continuing characters, of which the most popular proved to be Barnabas Hildreth, whose stories ran in Pearson’s Magazine in the mid-1930s. Cornier would announce in advance to the editor what the next story would be about and in each case the editor could not believe the author could pull it off. The following is generally regarded as the most ingenious of them all – the bullet that took over 200 years to find its target.

In the calculation an allowance has to be made for the Gregorian Correction of the calendar in 1752. Then it becomes apparent that the time elapsed between the firing of that bullet and its plunge into Westmacott’s body was exactly two hundred and twenty-two years, two months, one week, five days, twelve hours and forty-seven minutes…

The duelling pistol from which it was shot was fired by Ensign the Honourable Nigel Koffard. He was a young officer in one of Marlborough’s crack squadrons and had but recently homed to England after the decisive bloodiness of Malplaquet. The man whom his shot wounded two hundred odd years after was Mr Henry Leonard Westmacott, a branch-cashier of the London and Southern Counties Bank, Limited.

Nigel Koffard pressed the trigger of that pistol, in the park of Ravenshaw Hall, Derbyshire, at precisely eight o’clock on the radiant morning of August the second, 1710.

Henry Westmacott was sitting by his own hearthside in the drawing-room of The Nook, Bettington Avenue, Thornton Heath, Surrey, when Koffard’s bullet struck him and shattered his right shoulder. He had just settled down – on the dismal and rainy night of October the twenty-third, last year-intending to listen to a concert broadcast from the Queen’s Hall. The ball hit him as the B.B.C. announcer was concluding an apology for the programme being late by saying: “It is now eight forty-seven, and we are taking you straight over-”

Thus was the second time most accurately determined.

All the day long, young Mrs Westmacott had been anxious about their little boy, Brian. He was running a slight temperature.

Hence she no sooner had dinner ended when she needs must go up to the nursery. In the swift way of tummy-troubled baby boys, Brian had contrived to lose his pains. He was sleeping serenely. Except for a slight flush and a dampness in his hair, he was normal.

Pamela Westmacott smiled ruefully as she smoothed his rucked sleeping suit and re-arranged his cot clothes…

The shot, the groan and the stumbling fall among the fireirons all sounded on that instant. With mechanical acumen Mrs Westmacott also noted that some china crashed to ruin in the kitchen, and that the opening chords of the Symphony Orchestra’s performance were lost to a thud and a sudden silence.

She rushed down the stairs to collide with her maid-servant, who had burst with almost equal speed from her domain.

“Oh, ma’am! Wh-what in the name o’ glory’s happened?”

“Hush, Biddy, and stay there! I-I’ll go in myself and see what’s the matter.”

Westmacott had raised himself to his knees and was delicately pawing at his right shoulder.

“Henry! Henry-darling!” Pamela Westmacott was down beside him. “What’s gone wrong?” Then she saw the sodden red horror of his shoulder. “Oh, my poor old boy!… Biddy- phone Doctor Smithers and the police. Tell them to hurry. Say it’s serious: Mr Westmacott has been shot!”

When doctor and police arrived Westmacott had been got to bed. He was fully conscious and calm, despite his excruciating pain. His wife had managed him in a way that won Doctor Smithers’ admiration. Her first-aid had stanched most of the bleeding.

Smithers turned to her with a smile as he unscrewed the nozzle of the syringe with which he had administered an opiate.

“Sensible woman, Mrs Westmacott! You made everything very easy… What’s that?… Dangerous? Oh no, not at all! Direct compound fracture of the scapula socket and a flake chipped off the head of the humerus. Abominably painful, but that’s about all.”

Old Smithers patted her hands and definitely pressed her to the door. “Now run along and leave hubby to me. Go down and satisfy the curiosity of those exceedingly impatient policemen. Above all, don’t-you-worry.”

Pamela Westmacott went in to see Brian before returning to the drawing-room. He had slept through all the hubbub.

The police were certainly impatient. Their cross-examination had foundered poor Biddy. After their dismissal of her she had gone back to the kitchen to blubber among the neglected crockery.

In Mrs Westmacott was discovered harder and less hysterical material. She told them all she knew. Essentially because it tallied so exactly with Biddy’s account, the officers became more and more confounded…

“But are you absolutely sure , Mrs Westmacott, no one came out of this room as you rushed down the stairs? Or slipped out by the front door without your seeing ’em?”

“Oh dear, how many more times must I tell you? No!” Wearily she smoothed her forehead. “Who could have done so?”