Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

“Right,” Nick hastily agreed.

“I don’t see how Paul Duncan can be guilty,” Nick proclaimed. Thinking of the impossible murder took his mind off his surroundings. Les’s kitchen in the rented industrial unit lurched its way through every food inspection, surviving more by luck of timing than merit.

“I told you to make that with huss.” Les peered peevishly at Nick’s work.

“For a monkfish kebab?”

“Who’s going to notice? It all gets charred to a cinder on the barbi.”

“All the Berties hated her, but they all stayed.”

“Ah, well, it was a living of some sort, even if Greta and good old Tony kept sixty per cent of it, and went on deluding them that they were building up a fund so that they could finance a launch into the big time. Not nice of Greta. It’s cheating,” Les added virtuously. He removed a chunk of fish from the end of each kebab. “Give ’em room to breathe,” he explained casually.

“No one came up from the rear, but what about from that side room on stage? The owner and his lighting chap were there. Of course, they still had to get the poison onto the stage.”

Les decided to be helpful. “You said it had to have been added between the two guzzling bouts. How about just stretching out from the wings?”

“Someone would have noticed a five-foot arm,” Nick retorted scathingly.

Les expired with a final shot. “Maybe it dropped from the ceiling. Now, could you condescend to earn some of that fortune I pay you?”

Nick did not reply. Les had set off a train of thought. He remembered Sherlock Holmes and the snake gliding down the bellrope; he remembered Dorothy Sayers, and an ingenious contraption; he even remembered poisoned darts…

“You again? Solved it yet?”

“I wondered if you’d checked the wings,” Nick blurted out, none too sure of his ground once faced with Bishop.

An amiable, if sardonic, smile. “Be my guest. Check ’em yourself. Let me know if I’ve missed anything. And let me tell you, Commander Bond, we’ve checked the spotlights and curtains half a dozen times. No cyanide crystals were showered down by guided missile, and no curtain rods left their moorings to deposit any either. Nor did anyone shoot a dart at her and poison the glass as a blind, or paint cyanide onto the piano keys so it would get absorbed into her fingers – but you didn’t think of that one.”

“No,” Nick admitted. “But the hats-”

Bishop smote his forehead. “Of course!” he cried. “Whyever didn’t you mention hats before?”

Nick ploughed doggedly on. “When the Berties stood at the piano nude, the last thing to go was the hats. Suppose the poison was held inside the brim and the murderer simply waved the hat low over the glass, released the poison somehow, then threw the hat offstage where it was switched for an identical unadulterated one.”

“Collusion? The owner will be pleased. You go and practise releasing cyanide crystals from a secret compartment on your head, as you jig up and down starkers. When you’ve succeeded, I’ll take you seriously.”

Nick subsided, crestfallen.

“If you can tell me how Paul Duncan did it – and I’m sure he did – I’ll stick a testimonial to you in the Black Museum,” Bishop said more kindly, “next to your ancestor. Remember, all these weird and wonderful ways you’ve doubtless read about in fiction didn’t have to pass the scrutiny of a couple of hundred screaming women – not to mention Mr Nick Didier’s. However glued they were to the attractions of the Berties’ persons, someone was going to see if poison shot down from the spotlights, just as they’d have noticed if any of the trio went fishing around in their fancy togs for a few cyanide crystals. Paul Duncan claims that he picked up Greta’s glass by accident; if he’s right, how did the poison get into his glass? I may be eating my own words, but perhaps this really is an impossible murder.”

“And I’ll eat my hat if it is,” Nick vowed silently.

If you eliminate the impossible, the improbable must be true, Nick told himself. It was an old-established principle in detective fiction. Only what was the improbable? If it was impossible for anyone on the stage to have carried out the murder, and the wings and ceiling had been ruled out, that left the audience – which had also been ruled out. Anyone walking up to her would have been noticed, and her husband who was closest was devoted to her. Even if that were a sham, Nick would undoubtedly have seen him, even at the critical moment of the strip, since he was tall enough for the full spotlight on the piano to pick him up if he approached his wife, and surely the women next to him and behind him would have noticed if he’d moved, even in the darkness.

So it was back to the Bubbling Berties, who had motive and opportunity, if not means of transporting the poison. Nick stared gloomily at Les’s Baked Alaska, composed more like traditional concrete than traditional meringue and ice-cream. Les’s inadequacies had driven Nick to look up a cookery book last night to see how these dishes should be made. There were critical moments in cooking a Baked Alaska. Extreme heat applied to extreme cold. Alaska was as cold as Antarctica, and cooking the baked version was as risky as spider-catching…

“If this is a wild goose chase, friend Didier, you’ll find you’ve cooked your own,” Bishop had threatened genially. But it wasn’t, and geniality had vanished by the time Bishop called him in again three days later. Bishop glared at him. “Are you expecting me to say I was wrong and you were right?”

“No, sir, I’m not expecting that.”

Bishop eyed him sharply. “And I don’t take to being mocked.” A pause. “What gave you the idea, incidentally?”

“My spider-catcher, sir,” Nick confessed shamefacedly. “It’s a handy gadget with a wire running from the handle; when it’s pulled, the trap at the end opens up. I thought something similar might suit our murderer’s purpose. A walking stick with a wire cut into it, and a removable tip to release the poison, would work very well, if he kept it at shoulder height to avoid the full spotlight on his wife, and chose his moment. I didn’t imagine he would keep the stick afterwards, of course, but I reasoned a blackmailer might make it his business to get hold of it. I doubt if your evidence bagging would go so far as to deprive a disabled man of his stick.”

“We did find it, and it was where you’d said it would be. Tony Hobbs is still denying he killed his wife, but you’ve helped me prove it,” Bishop generously admitted.

“No, I didn’t, sir. I don’t believe Tony did murder his wife. I don’t know whether or not he loved her, but he didn’t like her carrying on with other men, which she enjoyed flaunting. She underestimated his resentment, particularly when he found it was still going on. I think he knew he’d get nowhere by an outright challenge, so he chose this method. Unfortunately his intended victim, prancing around at the back of the stage as the Berties whipped off their thongs, spotted Tony doctoring his glass which was placed as usual behind Greta’s. He probably couldn’t believe his luck, when he cottoned on to what might be happening. If it was innocent, no problem. If it wasn’t, he could choose between denouncing Tony or seizing his own opportunity for a double hit: ridding himself of Greta and milking Tony dry.

“He chose, all right. When he returned to the piano, he picked up Greta’s glass, not his own, to drink from, probably using his left hand, and masking the extra stretch with his right arm from the other two. Then he replaced Greta’s glass behind his own, making sure the others did see him do so, and stole the stick at the first opportunity so that he could blackmail Tony into giving back all the money he’d pinched from them. He needed the stick because he couldn’t come forward later and suddenly claim to remember seeing Tony doctoring the glass, but he could ‘find’ the stick and allow it to ‘jog his memory’. And so it was Paul Duncan deliberately murdered Greta, not the Colonel.”