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

“Just moved in,” I told him. “I’m the new tenant in 3C.”

“Penny’s place,” he said in a harsh whisper, as if the name itself was almost too painful to pronounce. “If I could have spared the time and the shoe-leather, I would have danced on the old bastard’s grave. If anyone ever deserved to die, he was the one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mind your own damn business,” he muttered, pushing past me. He stomped down the hall, cutting at the air with the gleaming ebon stick as though he were slashing away at some imaginary foe. He paused at the door of apartment 3A, unlocked it, and disappeared inside, slamming the door behind him with a thunderous crash that echoed through the hallway.

“Well now,” I said to myself. “The suspect shortage is certainly over.” Even death hadn’t lessened the man’s obvious hatred of Penny. And that gleaming ebon-wood walking stick? I could practically see it cannonading through the mail slot to shove the old admiral’s legs right out from under him. But who was this guy? I didn’t even know his name yet. And why did he loathe the recently departed Penny?

I found Tom Banks at his post in the lobby, staring moodily out at the rainswept street. “Mr Winsor,” he turned and smiled at me. “Surely you’re not thinking of going out in that downpour without so much as an umbrella?”

I shook my head. “I just came down to pass the time of day. I wanted to ask you about one of my neighbors, a big, gray-haired man in A? What’s he got against Penny?”

“That would be Mr Campbell.” Banks sighed and shook his head. “He’ll be leaving us at the end of the month. Some recent financial setbacks are forcing him to relocate.”

“Why do I have the feeling that Penny is somehow involved in that?” I prodded him.

“Mr Campbell isn’t too good at hiding his feelings,” the doorman nodded. “I guess there isn’t any harm in telling you about it now. Mr Campbell and his partner own a computer company. A few weeks back, the two of them were planning to take over another firm, a small company that unknowingly held a patent that would give Campbell and his partner a virtual lock on a big, upcoming defense contract. Campbell sold off all his assets at a loss to raise the necessary capital, but before he could put in a bid, a rival firm bought the company right out from under them.”

“How does Penny figure into it?”

“Well,” Banks hesitated, “Mr Campbell can’t prove anything, but he and his partner were discussing the takeover when they walked by Penny’s door. They had a longish wait for the elevator, so they pretty well covered it all. No one else knew about the deal, and with Penny’s reputation for spying on his neighbors, he seemed like the only person who could and would have alerted the rival company.”

“I could see why Campbell would hate him,” I sympathized. “What about you, Tom? How did you get along, with the admiral?”

“It’s my job to get along with all the tenants,” Banks replied with quiet dignity. “But now that he’s gone, I have to admit that Penny was a hard man, the only one I’ve ever met who would go out of his way to make someone else’s life miserable.”

“You sound as though you might be speaking from personal experience,” I said. The sad, regretful tone of his voice gave him away more than any words could.

“It happened a few months back,” Banks said softly. “Like the admiral, I’m a retired navy man myself. Now, I’m not one to ask for favors, but I have a grandson, a fine boy with all the makings of a naval officer. Ever since he was a lad he’s wanted to go to the Academy. He has all the grades, the qualifications. All he needed was a recommendation, a little pull at the top to get him in. I asked Penny if he’d be willing to put in a word for the boy. All it would have taken was one phone call, a few minutes of his time. Well, first he said yes, then no, then yes again. By the time I realized he never intended to do it, it was too late to ask anyone else. It seemed as though he took a kind of perverse pleasure in keeping me dangling like that.”

Although I’d never met Penny I was beginning to hate the man myself. “What happened to your grandson?” I asked Banks.

“He went into the navy as an enlisted man,” Banks said bitterly. “There’s no shame in that,” he added, “but he would have done the Academy proud. He never had his chance, thanks to Penny.”

There wasn’t anything I could say to that. I left Banks staring out at the rain and went back to the apartment. I was beginning to wonder how Admiral Penny had lived as long as he had. If he hadn’t been murdered, he certainly should have been. I’d never come across anyone who was a more suitable candidate for homicide. I was also beginning to regret my own attempt at amateur sleuthing. If Penny had been murdered, his killer almost deserved to get away with it. I say almost because I still intended to solve the crime if I could. Penny had done some pretty horrible things in his life, but none of them as terrible as murder itself.

I spent the rest of the day and all that evening at the easel, finishing up my assignment. While my hand wielded the brush, my mind arranged and rearranged all the bits and pieces I had about Penny and his death. I had started out with no suspects, not even a proper murder. None of this would have come about if it hadn’t been for the postcards and Karen’s insistence that I investigate.

Now I had three suspects. Tana Devin and Campbell were the more obvious ones, but Tom Banks was also a possibility. He seemed quiet and friendly enough on the surface, but who could really tell what was going on inside? As for the murder part of it, my cane-through-the-mail-slot theory eliminated the whole locked room element. It should have put Campbell at the head of my suspect list, but it didn’t. Any one of them could have bought a cane and shoved it through the slot. And after Tana Devin’s description of Penny’s “raspy” breathing, any one of them could have easily ascertained if he was at his post on the other side of the door.

I had suspects, motives, and method. I had everything I needed except for the most important thing: a solution to the crime.

It was still raining when I turned in at midnight. The rumble of thunder and the crack of lightning punctuated my futile attempt to sleep. When I finally did doze off, I had the craziest dream. I was being chased through Gramercy Park by a giant postcard. And it would have caught me, too, if it hadn’t been for the lifesized chessman. He was a white knight who poked a hole through the postcard with his uptilted lance. The postcard fell to the ground, but then the knight started bearing down on me, with his lance aimed straight at my heart.

That’s when I woke up. Not only had I escaped the sinister pursuers of my dream but I’d come up with the solution to the mystery. And it was so simple that I should have seen it right away. I still had some checking to do, though, just to make absolutely certain I was right.

The rain tapered off around six, the last of it disappearing with the dawn of a bright, autumn day. After an early breakfast I went downstairs for another talk with our friendly doorman.

“Who plays chess around here?” I asked after we’d exchanged good morning pleasantries.

The question seemed to take him by surprise. “Well now,” he hesitated. “I play a little chess. Strictly amateur stuff. Drayton, the postman, and I often have a game on Sundays. Then there’s Mr Campbell. He’s won a couple of local championships, and I know he spends a lot of his free time over at the Marshal Chess Club.”

“What about Tana Devin?”

Banks frowned thoughtfully and nodded. “Now that you mention it, I believe she’s a player, too. She once starred in an off-Broadway show called The Chess Match. So she must know at least the rudiments of the game, though I don’t think she has much time for it. Are you looking for a game?”