Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

“Alain, you told me Gilly had many men.”

“But none other at the Grauman’s Chinese, mon ami.”

The cottage was all darkness, the door secured by a series of locks. The windows lacked any protection. One on the down-canyon side had missing shutters and glass and stood out like a point of entry that had been used more than once. I climbed inside first.

“That way and turn to the left,” Alain said, the Maglite lighting the route. “To the master bedroom, to see where Harlow and Bern were and where Alain and Gilly were and—” He stopped and took a heavy breath. “Just go,” he said.

Alain flipped a light switch to crack the darkness in the bedroom. “Oh, dear Lord, there at the bathroom,” he said, reciting the words like a bad actor finding punctuation where none exists. Pointing with the .22.

Walker Wheeler lay naked, dead, belly-down in front of the full-length bathroom mirror, his head resting on a pillow of blood caused by the bullet hole from the .38 firmly gripped in his left hand. The area reeked of a sweet scent I could not put a name to, at odds with the smell of a body in the early stages of decay.

As if reading my mind, Alain said, “Mitsouko, Harlow’s favorite parfum. Homage to Paul Bern. I think, appropriate to the moment.”

“Jesus, Alain. You murdered Walker Wheeler.”

Alain shrugged. “He murdered Gilly. An eye for an eye. In the end, death conquers all. Look over on the bed to see what I see.”

A handwritten note rested on the throw pillows:

Unfortunately this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done Alain De Guerre and to wipe out my abject humiliation.

Alain said, “A suicide note, non? He committed suicide, as anyone with two eyes and a brain can see.”

“A suicide note written how, at the point of your gun? When Gilly was killed, Wheeler had an alibi for the time.”

“And me, also an alibi, Neil. I loved her. That has always been my alibi.”

“For tonight? You have an alibi for tonight? For the dead man on the floor?”

“For why? You read his suicide note. I have hands that are clean hands. As clean as Jean Harlow’s hands were clean. I am here now, not then, not when he put the gun to his head. Soon, I will be gone, and only you the wiser.”

“Only until I tell the police what I know.”

“Oui. Yes. You must tell the police. You should do that after I leave you.”

I said, “Before you go, explain something to me, Alain. Why this elaborate scheme? Why involve me in the first place?”

His laugh carried to the ceiling. “Why else? The drama, mon ami, in what is my last great production, the one I will be most remembered for directing down through the ages. The Alain and Gillian Affair, written by someone I know and trust to tell the story after I’m gone in a way that clouds it in eternal mystery. Questions giving birth to new questions and answers never in agreement. Do that for me, Neil, and it won’t be bad for you either, oui? I promise.”

“You are crazy, aren’t you?”

“Like a fox,” Alain De Guerre said, and turned the .22 on himself.

When I got back home, there was a message from Alain waiting on my answering machine.

The next night, in an hour between midnight and dawn, when the forecourt at Grauman’s Chinese was as still as a graveyard, I traveled across Jean Harlow, up Irene Dunne and the Ritz Brothers, to the stone lion-dog hovering nearby.

I located the out-of-the-way cavity in the lower rear Alain had described and dug in my arm almost to my shoulder, patting around until I found the strongbox he said would be there. It was caked with dust and rust and, once home, I had to jimmy the lock open. Inside the strongbox were a .38 pistol and the note Alain had alluded to, a detailed description of Paul Bern’s murder, handwritten and signed, but not by Paul Bern. Or by Jean Harlow.

Copyright (c); 2005 by Robert S. Levinson.

EQ parodies and pastiches are our theme this month. EQMM reviewer Jon L. Breen summarizes how parodists and pastiche writers have treated EQ in his article on p. 6; and we have new examples of both forms. Mr. Hoch would probably have been Queen’s own choice to continue his work (he was once hired by EQ to write a novel with the Queen byline but not the EQ character). And Jon Breen and Josh Pachter, whose EQ parody appears herein, had parodies published by EQ in EQMM.

It had been many years since Ellery Queen last visited Wrightsville, and his first impression was one of change. He’d come by train the first time, and later had flown up to the tiny Wrightsville Airport north of town. This time he’d driven, because it was a glorious summer’s day and the highways north from New York made it a pleasant journey.

He entered the town from the southeast, driving in on Lincoln Street to the High Village Square. It was really a circle, not a square, with the old Jezreel Monument still standing at its center. Ellery noticed at once that the familiar Bon Ton Department Store was still on the corner, but now occupied the entire block between Lincoln and Washington Streets. He’d booked a room at the Hollis Hotel, overlooking the Square, and ate a late lunch at their Coffee Shoppe just as he had done on the first of his many visits. That was where Police Chief Anselm Newby recognized him.

“It’s Mr. Queen, isn’t it?” Chief Newby asked. He’d been a young, tough, honest cop when he took over after Chief Dakin’s retirement, and had once called Ellery a “New York wiseacre.” He still looked tough and perhaps even more muscular, but now his face was lined and his hair had streaks of gray.

“That’s right, Chief,” Ellery said, rising from his table to shake hands. “It’s been a long time. Good to see you again.”

“You’re not up here on an-other of your crime-solving junkets, are you?”

“No, I just wanted a few days’ rest. Thought I’d see how the town was getting along. Is that a Ferris wheel I see behind the Town Hall?”

The chief nodded. “We have carnival week every August. The kids love it. Keeps me busy, though, looking out for unsavory elements.”

“Any trouble with drugs?”

“No more so than other towns. Nothing bad since that trouble at the Bijou.” [See “The Death of Don Juan,” by Ellery Queen ( Argosy 5/62, collected in Queens Full ).]

Ellery tried to remember what year that had been. Originally a movie house, the Bijou had been closed for a time when a drive-in theater outside of town took away its business, but it eventually reopened with live theater. “Is it still a playhouse?”

“We have a good season of summer theater there. The drive-in closed when the kids didn’t need it for smooching anymore, but there’s a new multiplex out on Route 16 that just opened last year.”

“Maybe I’ll walk down to the theater later and have a look. Anyone else around from the old days?”

“The ones you knew are mostly dead and gone, Mr. Queen. Got a new lady editor at the Wrightsville Record. She’s pretty good.” He started to move on, then asked, “You staying long?”

“Just a few days to unwind. I’m here at the Hollis if you need me.”

“I don’t expect to,” he said a bit sourly, and was gone.

The Bijou Theater was across the Square and a block east on Lower Main Street. The marquee informed Ellery that it was in the midst of a two-week run of the old Shaw play Major Barbara, to be followed by a production of the musical Gypsy. His gaze drifted across the street and he was startled to see that the old Kut-Rate Drug Company had been replaced by a modern CVS drugstore with a large parking lot. And Al Brown’s Ice Cream Parlor had become a Starbucks coffee shop. Perhaps he’d come too late to recapture the charm of the town he remembered. He walked back along the street, past the newspaper office.