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

Though she had weapons in her hands Claudia made no effort to kill him. He’d be prepared, would only injure her, consigning her to a lingering death. She had no choice. She set off- a victim of the very men on whom, only last night, she had wished this particular fate.

Behind her, she could hear Max counting aloud. “Sixteen. Seventeen.”

Father Mars. Mighty Jupiter. Can you hear me up on Olympus? Can you help?

“Twenty-two. Twenty-three.”

“ Nobody move , you ’ re surrounded. ”

For a second, Claudia’s heart stopped beating.

“ Drop your weapons , put your hands in the air. ”

Then the breath shot out of her lungs. That was no Olympian deity. That baritone was quite unmistakable, even through the shell he used as his loudspeaker-

As one, fifty archers stepped out from the bushes, their arrowtips aimed at the group. Almost before the daggers and javelins had crashed to the ground, eight men began babbling. Explaining. Exonerating. Bribing.

“You all right?”

Claudia hadn’t realized she had collapsed, until a strong hand pulled her up. Even then, her knees were so weak, the only way to stay upright was with his arm tight round her waist.

“Nothing better than a run in the country,” she said, and it was odd, but her teeth were still chattering.

Orbilio grinned, and brushed the hair from her eyes with his thumb.

“I thought they’d run you out of town,” she said.

“I was expecting some form of trouble,” he replied. “Which is why I brought back-up.” He paused. “It took a little persuading, but eventually one of Max’s heavies told us of Max’s plans for you. Hence the trap we were able to lay overnight.”

Behind him, pleading, protesting, terrified merchants were rounded up – men of substance, yet men of no substance at all – while the bearers tried to explain how they were under duress to obey, that they got drunk to blot out the horror, that if they didn’t participate, they would become the next quarry. For many years afterwards Claudia was able to recall, with bloodcurdling clarity, everyone’s clamouring at once. While not one word of remorse fell from their lips.

“You know this won’t come to trial?” Orbilio said, steadying her with his grip. “Senior politicians and influential businessmen on slave hunts? The scandal would de-stabilize the Empire in no time, Augustus wouldn’t risk it.”

“They’ll get off?” The prospect of these scum swaggering free was almost too much to bear.

“No, no!” Orbilio was certain of that. “It’s suicide for these boys,” he said, leaving unspoken the fact that, in at least two cases, the exit would require a certain assistance.

The soldiers, meanwhile, were being none too gentle with their captives, yet throughout the whole ignominious defeat, one man had said nothing. Outmanned and outnumbered, Max surrendered at once, quietly and without fuss, and stood, hands bound in front of him, as his rich clientele and his poor bullied bearers were kicked in to the cart.

His passive acceptance alone should have alerted them.

“Shit!” shouted the captain of the archers. “After him!”

Sprinting through territory as familiar as his own back terrace, Max hurdled tree roots and obstacles with the grace and ease of a gazelle, heading deeper and deeper into the woods.

“Wait.” Orbilio’s voice was calm. His authority stopped the men in his tracks. “This is his ground, we can’t hope to either catch or outwit him. Soldier!”

A burly archer stepped up. “Sir.”

Orbilio relieved him of his dark yew bow and weighted it in his hands. Carefully, he plucked an arrow from the quiver. Sweet Janus, the white tunic was now barely a dot!

“Marcus,” breathed Claudia. “Leave this to the archer.” So many trees in between, it needed an expert!

“This,” said Orbilio, notching the arrow into his bow, “is for Soni.”

Claudia felt her heart thump. “I’m just as much to blame as you are,” she said. “I know you put him up as a plant, but it was my urging that bought him his grave.”

The bow lifted.

“This,” he repeated, “is personal.”

With a hiss, the arrow departed. Silence descended on the clearing – the men in the cart, the soldiers, Claudia, Marcus – watching as one as the arrow took flight. No-one breathed.

In front of them, the white dot grew smaller. Then, with a cry, Max fell forward. No-one spoke. Not even when Max hauled himself to his knees, then his feet, and then began running again…

The colour drained from Orbilio’s face. “I winged him,” he gasped. “Only winged him.”

The arrow, they could see now, was lodged in his shoulder. Painful. But hardly life-threatening.

Orbilio wiped his hand over his face, as though the gesture might turn back time. Give him one more chance to make good.

Then-“Look!” Claudia pointed. Marcus followed her finger.

In the distance, a huge bristly boar came charging out of the undergrowth, tusks lowered. His furious snorting could be heard in the clearing. As though in slow motion, they watched as he lunged at the figure in white. They watched, too, as Max tried to duck, turn away, but the wily old boar had been there before.

This was the mating season, remember.

He had sows and a territory to protect…

William Brittain ( b.1930 ), now retired but for many years a high school teacher , has been writing mystery stories for over thirty years , starting with “ Joshua ” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1964 ) . He then began a series of delightful tales in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine which explored mysteries in the styles of various authors , starting with “ The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr ” ( December 1965 ), itself a locked-room murder , and covering Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. By then he had published his first story featuring Mr Strang, a high school teacher with a gift for unravelling the unusual. The first was “ Mr Strang Gives a Lecture ” (EQMM, March 1967 ) . By my count there have been over thirty Mr Strang stories since then, several of them impossible crimes , but unaccountably none have been collected into book form. Here ’ s one of the most intriguing.

MONDAY: THE CHALLENGE The 29 students in Mr Strang’s classroom gravely considered the two sentences scrawled across the freshly washed blackboard:

All A ’ s are C ’ s.

All B ’ s are C ’ s.

“The apparent conclusion – that all A’s are B’s – does have a certain allure, a kind of appealing logic.”

Mr Strang blinked myopically, his wrinkled face resembling that of a good-natured troll. Then he whirled, and his chalk drew a large screeching X through both sentences.

“Of course,” he snapped, “it’s also dead wrong. Its error can easily be verified by substituting ‘teenager’ for A, ‘ostrich’ for B, and ‘two-legged’ for C in the original premises. Thus, all teenagers are two-legged, all ostriches are two-legged, and therefore all teenagers are ostriches. I doubt you’d accept that conclusion.”

“I dunno,” guffawed a voice from the rear of the room. “Melvin’s a teenager, and he looks like an ostrich.”

Laughter, in which Mr Strang joined. The student’s comment hadn’t been spiteful, simply an attempt to inject humour into a period of intense mental activity.

Mr Strang’s elective class in Logic and Scientific Method was one of the most popular courses in Aldershot High School. It was also one of the most difficult in which to enroll. Those students finally accepted – invariably seniors – had risen to the top of the academic ranks like cream in fresh milk. With these students, a teacher could pull out all the stops, being not so much an instructor as a participant in a free give-and-take of theories and ideas.