Edward Hoch: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 111, No. 1. Whole No. 677, January 1998

Gruber stared hard at him for a moment, then said, “Are you actually accusing me of using that silly contest to send secret messages? My God, the next thing you’ll be saying is that I’m some sort of Nazi spy!”

“Well, now that you mention it—” Hallam began, then shook his head. “Nope, you’re not a Fifth Columnist, Gruber. Just a cheap crook and a double-crosser and a killer. The cops’ll prove it, too, once I show them all the connections and they start diggin’. You might as well ’fess up now.”

Gruber drew a deep breath and turned to set the papers on a table. When he turned back to face Hallam, there was a little pistol in his hand. A curse in his native tongue came from between his clenched teeth.

“No one will believe you,” he said. “My ties to Ward are too well concealed. You will be taken for a foolish old man so desperate to save his nephew from the electric chair that you have concocted this whole mad story. If I let you walk out of here.”

Hallam seemed as nonchalant as he had been all along, leaning on the console as if nobody was pointing a gun at him. He said, “I reckon you and Ward have been partners for quite a while, runnin’ all sorts of shady deals on folks. Ain’t that right?”

Gruber shrugged. “Ward was a good salesman, a smooth talker. He could travel in circles in which I could not, especially with the war going on. But I provided most of the ideas and capital for our partnership. It was only fair that most of the profits should be mine, too.”

“Even if you had to steal ’em from Ward?”

“You have no proof of any of this.” Again, Gruber took a deep breath, and he lowered the pistol. “Go on, Mr. Hallam. Spread your ridiculous rumors. Harass me all you want. You may damage my reputation and my business for a time, but in the end you will accomplish nothing.”

Hallam shook his head. “Reckon I’ve already accomplished something,” he said. “I’ve broadcast you confessin’ to anybody who’s listenin’ to this radio station of yours.” He lifted his hat and pointed to the switch he had thrown when he started talking. “I’ll bet folks think they just tuned in late to another episode of The Shadow. Damned if I’m goin’ to try to do the fella’s laugh, though.”

Gruber’s eyes widened in horror and rage, and the gun in his hand came up again. Before he could pull the trigger, Hallam flicked the fedora at his face. Gruber flinched, and Hallam followed the hat with a big fist, slamming it into Gruber’s jaw at the same time he batted the gun aside with his other hand. Gruber sailed backward, knocking over a couple of microphones, and sprawled on the floor of the studio in a tangle of mike stands. Hallam picked up the fallen gun and stepped back. He straightened one of the stands and said into the microphone, “Testin’, one-two-three-four. Somebody out there want to call the cops?”

“I heard the whole thing, Lucas!” Beth said excitedly as Hallam came into the house later that night, a grateful Johnny Reeves with him. While Sarah embraced her son, Beth grabbed hold of Hallam’s hand and asked, “Did Gruber try to shoot you?”

“He might have, if I’d given him the chance,” Hallam said. “Figured it’d be better not to.”

“I told you he was a bad guy!”

“You said he was a spy,” Hallam pointed out.

“Well, maybe I was wrong about that. But what I said this morning helped you figure it all out, didn’t it?”

“Reckon it did,” Hallam admitted.

“Then you ought to hire me to help you in the private eye business.”

Hallam tried not to roll his eyes. “That’ll be the day.”

Beth gave him a mock glare. “Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, maybe I’ll be a writer and write mysteries for the radio, since I’m so good at figuring things out. How about that, Lucas? Would you rather me be a writer or a private eye?”

Hallam frowned and didn’t say anything.

He was going to have to think long and hard about that one.

© 1997 by Gwen Moffat

“Landscape is an important component in the work of Gwen Moffat,” said the authors of By a Woman’s Hand. This is no less true in her short stories than in the 20 crime novels she has penned, many featuring Miss Pink, a heroine as formidable as the narrator of this story. Ms. Moffat lives in the English Lake District and travels in the western U.S.

Whether or not you believe in original sin, Darren Jones never stood a chance. It didn’t seem that way at the time. For nearly a year he appeared to hold the whip hand because, terrified of retaliation, Mrs. Tilney didn’t dare protest. It became so bad you started to wonder what she would do if driven beyond endurance.

Thirza Tilney had her hostages to fortune: her cherished cat, and the cabin from which she watched the seabirds that nested on the cliffs below the coast-guard station. She was old, turned seventy, small and frail, and she’d depended on her husband for everything: from changing a light bulb to paying the bills, and for emotional support. Darren had his father for protection, a lumbering bear of a man, who drank. Thirza had had her husband and she’d clung to him like ivy to a wall.

Charles Tilney was a solicitor, and although not an unkind man, he couldn’t always conceal his impatience with his wife. We have our share of eccentrics in this remote corner of Wales: dog breeders, horsey women, lone retirees who’ve been in positions of authority. Charles met a number of these in his practice and Thirza, more a shadow of himself than an individual in her own right, would make a poor showing in contrast.

Charles died: a heart attack in the cabin while he was watching his beloved birds — for it was Charles who was the ornithologist; Thirza maintained she was only a bird-watcher. She went to the cabin because he did, although on the one occasion I was there with the two of them he ignored her — not pointedly, it was just that he was more interested in the birds. But he was alone when he died. Thirza felt guilty about that. Afterwards she continued to go to the cabin. “It’s a comfort,” she told me. “I feel him all around me there.”

I was the only person she confided in, but then I’m a good listener. A hospital matron has to be. I knew my nurses called me a Rottweiler behind my back, but I’ve mellowed in retirement. There’s no longer any need to assert my authority except on rare occasions with impertinent tradesmen or small boys. I never had any trouble with Darren Jones. Thirza, looking for a substitute, would have become as dependent on me as she’d been on Charles, if I’d allowed it, so I was careful. I saw to it that she came to my cottage only on invitation and I didn’t go to the cabin on the cliff at all. I preferred to watch birds from the old coast-guard lookout. In any event, it was bright and airy; I found the cabin claustrophobic.

Charles had built his retreat on a point above a cove, and the structure faced the cliffs below the coast-guard station. The lookout, sited on the opposite point, gave the reciprocal view: the cliffs below the cabin. The cabin was little more than a hide really, with slit openings which were closed by shutters when no one was in occupation. My feeling of claustrophobia started the very first time I went there. Charles was alive then and Thirza had been with us. It was a blustery day with an offshore wind, and the cabin moved alarmingly, straining against the cables that secured it to the bedrock. Charles closed the door when we entered, but after we’d been observing the ranks of auks for a few minutes, through the noise of wind and birds I heard a soft clack! from the direction of the door. I turned.