Агата Кристи: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 53, No. 12, December 2008

The end of the year is the season of surfeit — of candy and turkey, of gifts and fruitcake — so treat yourself to the helping of crime and mayhem in AHMM. With this issue, as by now you’ve noticed, we’re introducing a new trim size for the magazine and a spruced-up interior design. We’ve also made our new(ish) feature “The Lineup” more prominent: See below for details on this month’s authors. What hasn’t changed is the lavish variety of crime fiction we dish up, direct to your mailbox, with each issue.

We’re delighted to share some good news: Two AHMM stories have been nominated for awards. Beverle Graves Myers’s “Brimstone P.I.” (May 2007) is a finalist for the Macavity award for Best Mystery Short Story presented by Mystery Readers International. And Loren D. Estleman’s “Trust Me” (June 2007), featuring Amos Walker, is a finalist for the Shamus award for Best Short Story from the Private Eye Writers of America. Both awards will be announced during Bouchercon, to be held this year in Baltimore. Look for more stories by Ms. Myers and Mr. Estleman in upcoming issues, and good luck to both!

Linda Landrigan, Editor

Husband and wife writing team Ernest B. and Alice A. Brown and their Boston P.I. Valerie Dymond make their third appearance in AHMM this month. They are finishing their first Valerie Dymond novel.

Sherry Decker’s short fiction has appeared in AHMM and also in Cemetery Dance, City Slab, Dark Wisdom, and Space and Time. She is currently finishing her first novel.

R. T. Lawton is a retired federal law enforcement agent. His story, “The Boldholder,” appeared in the May 2008 issue of AHMM.

Chris Rogers is the author of the Dixie Flannigan series (Bantam). Her AHMM story “My Finger’s in the Light Socket and my Head’s in the Oven” appeared in May 1996.

“Pandora’s Demon,” Gilbert M. Stack’s last story for AHMM, appeared in the July/August 2008 issue. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a focus on the Middle Ages.

Western Colorado author James Van Pelt’s novel, Summer of the Apocalypse, was published in 2006 by Fairwoods Press, which will also release a collection of his short fiction, The Radio Magician and Other Stories, in 2009.

I rode up the muddy track through a low ditch until I came to the main doors of Sir Gerald’s home in the village of Alving. It was a barely fortified wooden building — old enough to be recorded in Domesday Book — although it wasn’t found in those pages. The doors were neither great nor large, and with the light rain, no one seemed to have noticed I was coming. Not even the dogs barked or howled.

I banged upon the wood with my clenched fist. “Open in the name of King Henry!”

I had to wait several more moments before a serving girl answered me.

The household knew in general that I was coming. The king had circulated letters patent through all of his shires informing his people that royal justices were being sent to them. What was more, news traveled rapidly across the countryside and these folk had doubtless followed Lord William’s progress toward them. But this serving girl seemed neither to know who I was nor what to do with me.

“Go fetch your master, girl,” I ordered, using French because this was a Norman household. Without waiting for a reply, I stepped past her out of the rain.

The building was really quite small, no more than three or four rooms, and from the lack of numbers in what passed for its hall, I estimated very few inhabitants.

The two men by the hearth rose to their feet, a hound rising with them. “I am Sir Gerald,” the older of the two men announced.

“I am Edgar, in the service of Lord Justice William of Kent,” I informed him. “Lord William will arrive with an entourage of four by the evening meal. He will require lodging and food for his entire party. In the morning he will open the king’s court and dispense justice on your local malefactors. We have much to do and very little time.”

The muscles in Sir Gerald’s cheeks flexed. “I, I thought we would have more warning. This is all terribly new. The king’s demands quite—”

“The king’s demands are the king’s demands,” I interrupted him. “And you have had months to prepare for my lord’s arrival. Come now, Lord William can sleep in your room; his people here in this chamber. Now, have your juries been assembled? Have they investigated the crimes? We have little time, Sir Gerald. Have a servant see to my horse and summon your bailiff so we can begin.”

The man standing beside Sir Gerald stepped forward. He was Norman blond with a broken nose and was roughly ten years younger than the knight. “I am Sir Gerald’s bailiff. You may call me John.”

“Very good then,” I said. “Where then shall we begin, in the village?”

John looked to Sir Gerald, who nodded his consent. “If we must,” he agreed, then led the way back out into the misting rain.

The trail was slippery with mud and I had trouble keeping my footing as we wound our way down to the village green. “We have only one case of any importance,” the bailiff told me. “It’s a murder — a wife and daughter stabbed the husband-father.”

“Did you catch them?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, they didn’t try to run.”

I had to wait for him to pick his way across a particularly sodden piece of ground before he would resume his story. “The neighbors heard him call for help but there was nothing they could do. By the time they arrived he was bleeding out his life from half a dozen wounds.”

“They used a knife?” I asked. It was not the only implement that could be used to stab, but it was the most common one.

“A tiny little thing,” the bailiff agreed. “It’s a woman’s tool, used for cutting vegetables when they’re not cutting men.” He grinned as if he had made a great joke, and I smiled to keep him talking and cooperating.

“Which one did it?” I asked, “the mother or the daughter?”

“They both did,” the bailiff explained. “The mother stabbed him while the daughter held him back.”

It was fairly easy to visualize. The daughter could have pulled at the man from one direction while her mother slipped up beside him with the knife. In my experience, villagers were usually right about these things. They knew their neighbors well and were often intimately familiar with their private business.

“Did he say anything as he died?”

“Garrick? No, he was too far gone. But we really didn’t need him to name his attackers. They were standing right over top of him, covered in his blood.”

“Why did they do it?”

The bailiff shrugged. “Who knows? He wasn’t the best-loved man in Alving, but that isn’t a reason to murder him.”

“And the women?”

“Oh, they were liked well enough, I suppose. Well enough that people have fed them while we held them in gaol.”

The first small buildings loomed ahead and now looked neither sturdy nor welcoming. “And is the gaol in the village?”

“It’s their own house. We lock them in at night. It’s been most inconvenient. We’ve even had to post guards to make certain they stayed there and we didn’t get fined for letting them escape.”

“Well, it will just be a couple more days now,” I soothed the bailiff, “and then we can hang them, and matters here can return to the way they were before this happened.”