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

“Made of paper, Señor.”

“I see. That instant must have been the trickiest part of the whole illusion. We might notice that ‘Ali’ was rising, not climbing. But the dense smoke and the thrashing about of the ‘rope’ – caused by slight magnetic variations-entirely deceived us. Then, too, our critical faculties had just been almost paralysed by the miraculous rising of the ‘rope.’ After that we were in a state to see and believe almost anything. I don’t say we would have been fooled a second time, but Dr Marlin only had to make the demonstration once.”

“It certainly fooled me,” I said.

“No more than me, Jimmy. Next the smoke cleared, and in the air above us we saw ‘Ali’ at the top of the rope – not for long, but long enough to take photographs. Then Dr Marlin raised his pistol; but this time, instead of a blank he fired a real bullet, which pierced the dummy. The dummy instantly collapsed, and the shrunken rubber was drawn back inside the loin-cloth where we couldn’t see it as it fell to the ground. Ali had vanished before our eyes! What happened to the paper loin-cloth, Mustapha?”

“I picked it up, Señor, and by sleight-of-hand exchanged it for a real one I had under my robe. I gave the real one to Dr Marlin, who handed it to you.”

The police inspector broke in, “All this is most interesting, Señor Dobbs, but what about the murder?”

“We will come to that in a minute. The plan was that after the demonstration we should find Ali on the island-rematerialized there by magic-or rather by supra-normal powers. Apparently the only boat was still on this side, but there must have been another one hidden. Did it have a silent engine, Mustapha?”

“Yes, Señor, it was a small aluminium canoe with a battery and electric motor. Dr Marlin had it hidden, hung above the water, under the floor of the wharf. Ali was supposed to discard his loincloth, launch the canoe, cross to the island, and then sink the boat to complete the illusion.”

“Now we come to the first death,” my uncle said. “Just what happened, I don’t know. My guess would be that before the demonstration Ali demanded more money than Dr Marlin wished to pay him. Mustapha, do you know about it?”

A look of misery crossed the bearded face. “I didn’t, but I do now. The boy was too ambitious. Dr Marlin told me just before he himself died that Ali demanded half of the entire reward, instead of the ten thousand dollars apiece that we had been promised. He threatened to give the whole thing away to you if Dr Marlin didn’t agree.”

“So that was it,” my uncle said. “No doubt he promised Ali everything, and then killed him before he could try to collect. Dr Marlin must have tampered with the boat.”

“He boasted of it to me!” Mustapha cried angrily. “He opened a seam in the bottom and filled it with a plastic that would dissolve soon after Ali launched the canoe. It must have sunk about halfway across. But Ali was a better swimmer than Dr Marlin thought. He nearly managed to keep up until we came.”

“Surely you suspected something afterwards?” my uncle asked.

“I did, Señor, but I wasn’t sure. So I put the dummy of myself at the window while you two were in the dark-room, and went outside to have it out with Dr Marlin. He was ready for me though, and pulled a gun with a silencer out of his pocket. He told me how Ali had died, and then forced me to the edge of the cliff and tried to push me off-apparently a grief-stricken suicide. But he didn’t know that I had a knife in my sleeve. I threw it and it pierced his heart. Then I lost my head, tossed his gun into the water, and ran back to my room to hide the dummy in the closet. I deeply regret, Señor, that I accused you, but I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”

“Don’t worry, Mustapha,” my uncle said. “The police, no doubt, will recover Dr Marlin’s pistol and raise the canoe from the bay. That evidence will prove your story of self-defence. But it’s fortunate for me that I happened to notice the magnetized watches. I suppose that Dr Marlin never thought of them giving the show away.”

“Yes, he did, Señor; he thought of that as a remote possibility just before he sent the wire to you. We considered hiring someone to steal your watches in California, and having him bribe a jeweller to sell you non-magnetic ones. But Dr Marlin decided that it would take too much time. He was always afraid that someone else would claim the reward.”

“Why,” asked my uncle in surprise, “did he think some rival knew his secret?”

“No, Señor, and, besides, very few mediums would have enough money. But it’s a strange thing – all his life Dr Marlin had been a charlatan and a fraud, but always he believed that some of the other mediums were genuine. All the time he was getting things ready, he was afraid that some yogi from India, with genuine psychic powers, would appear and claim the reward by really demonstrating the Indian Rope Trick.”

Let us bow to the Master. No, not John Dickson Carr. Carr may have set the rules for the impossible crime story and created most of the templates, but Edward Hoch (b. 1930) has now written considerably more stories than Carr and created far more variations on old ideas as well as plenty of new ones. I never cease to be amazed at Hoch’s output. He has now been selling short fiction for over fifty years and has had at least one story, sometimes more, in every issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine since May 1973. He’s steadily creeping towards having written and published one thousand stories, and precious few living writers can say that. Of the eighteen or so new stories that Ed produces each year, three or four of them are impossible crime stories-so he’s probably written around 200 of them by now. Many of his stories fall into one of a number of series, and almost all of his series characters have had to face an impossible crime now and then. One of them, Dr Sam Hawthorne, who narrates his stories to his anonymous guest about cases from his early years in practice, encounters nothing but impossible crimes. So far there have been two collections of Hawthorne’s cases , Diagnosis: Impossible (1996) and More Things Impossible (2006).

I could clearly have filled this book solely with Ed’s baffling mysteries, and certainly felt that only one selection did not do justice to the Imp of the Impossible, especially as Ed has also written the occasional perfect-crime story. So here are two by the Master. The first is a Sam Hawthorne story, followed immediately by a non-series story containing one of Ed’s most creative crimes.

Less than a week after the 1942 election that insured a seventh and final term for Sheriff Lens, the Allied invasion of French North Africa began. It was a joyous time for everyone, a sign that we had launched a major ground offensive at last. (Dr Sam Hawthorne paused to refill the glass of his listener.) It was also a time for war-bond rallies in the cities, when celebrities sometimes came to help raise money for the war effort.

Towns like Northmont ordinarily would not have attracted a war-bond rally on any large scale, but as it turned out we had a local celebrity hardly anyone knew about. The November election brought us a new mayor, Cyril Bensmith, a slender, vigorous man of forty, a bit younger than me. I’d hardly known him before he ran for office, and I didn’t know him much better now. His family had a small farm over near the town line, almost into the adjoining township of Shinn Corners, which probably explains why I hadn’t heard about him or his boyhood chum Rusty Wagner.

Rusty’d been George Snider at the time. He didn’t become Rusty till he moved to New York and landed the villain’s role in a mildly successful Broadway play. From there he went off to Hollywood and became Paramount’s answer to Humphrey Bogart. He was never as big a star as Bogart, but by April of 1943, with the Allies advancing in Tunisia and many of the younger male stars in the service, Rusty Wagner was doing his part by touring the country selling war bonds. Health problems and his age, just turning forty, had kept him out of the army. When Mayor Bensmith heard he’d be at a rally in Boston he invited his old friend to make a side trip to his hometown.