Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

Glancing out at the road, Ives asked, “Isn’t that Ersu, the vendor who sold you that shotgun?”

“It looks like him,” Stanton agreed. “I wonder what he’s selling at a fancy wedding.”

Bruno Tranle accompanied his daughter in the bride’s chariot, dressed as some nobleman from a past time. Delight herself was all but unrecognizable in a traditional Turkish bridal gown. Stanton and Ives saw the prized calligraphy displayed amidst floral arrangements on the wide porch of the house, where the wedding would take place. “It is a thing of beauty,” Ives agreed. “I can understand why Delight would want it at her wedding.”

“And why someone would murder to get it.”

After the brief nonreligious ceremony, guests were ushered into a large ballroom for the wedding dinner. They congratulated the bride and groom, but Stanton was more interested in watching the calligraphy on the porch. “You’d better cover the side yard,” he told Ives. “Just in case.”

They could hear music from the ballroom, and Stanton stepped behind one of the large floral displays to be out of sight. They had reached the crucial moment when the thief must act. The door of the house opened, but it was only the bride’s father checking on his valued possession. “I’ll have it removed shortly,” he told Stanton.

“Fine. We have our morning flight to Germany.”

It was ten minutes later when the restaurant manager, Guzine Guler, appeared and began removing the calligraphy from its stand and rolling it into a cylinder. That was when Stanton made his move. “Hold it, there!”

Guler turned, unfazed. “I was asked to remove it for safekeeping,” he explained.

“Is that what you told Prattos when you stabbed him?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You thought he had the calligraphy, but it was only a box of spiders.”

“There’s no evidence against me.”

“Perhaps not for a court of law, but there’s enough to convince me. Ives said the dead man had a cube of Turkish Delight in his pocket.”

“Everyone who dines at the restaurant gets one.”

“But not wrapped in rice paper like the ones in your office. Prattos came to you when he couldn’t find Delight or Wesley Fazzis. You obligingly took him up to her apartment, unlocked the door, and stabbed him to get the painting he didn’t possess. As the building manager you would have had keys to all the apartments and offices. And Delight must have mentioned the valuable calligraphy to you when she was discussing her wedding, perhaps even hinting she was going to steal it from her father.”

“Delight and Fazzis had keys, too.”

“But Delight was downstairs dancing and Fazzis would have known Prattos was delivering spiders.”

Guler muttered an obscenity and started running, still clutching the calligraphy. “Stop him, Ives!” Stanton shouted.

But he was off the porch before she could grab him. He stiff-armed her and kept on running across the lawn.

“You all right?” Stanton asked, helping her to her feet.

“He’s getting away!”

And he was. They took off after him, but he was a fast runner with a sizable lead. He headed through the trees, running toward one of the big gold-dusted cobwebs. Then suddenly he was on the ground, tangled in wire, and they had him.

“The spiders weren’t spinning,” the bridegroom explained later. “We had to construct the webs ourselves out of wire.”

© 2008 by Edward D. Hoch

Cuban Rodolfo Pérez Valero was one of the seven founding members of the International Association of Crime Writers in 1986. He has won the CubanNational Prize for Crime Litera-ture three times and the SemanaNegra Prize for Best Short Storyfor this tale and for three others. He is currently a writer for Univision Network News.

English translation by the author.

The drizzle is just a sticky dirty dust that dulls the outlines of things as the man hurries to the porch, goes straight for the door, and pushes the button. From inside, the muffled sound of the bell strikes him like a long-gone memory that surges in a dream. Silence. A glance at his watch... a hand to his cheek. The faint shadow of his recently shaven beard gives a virile touch to his young face.

Nobody opens. The man rings again and stays still to catch any sound. He looks at the door, he looks at both sides of the street, he looks at his watch. He’s uneasy now. He raises his hand to the bell but a metallic click stops him. The man is aware that the peephole is open and he’s being watched.

“What do you want?”

It’s the cracked voice of an old woman. The man takes the wallet out of his pocket, opens it, and flashes it at the peephole.

“Police. Would you mind opening up?”

A pause. Something tense, uncomfortable, arises between the man and the eye that’s watching him. At last, the peephole is closed, the latches are released, and the door is opened. A woman in that indefinite transition from sixty to seventy years old examines him from head to foot as her hands squeeze a little white handkerchief.

“Are you Maria?”

“Marina,” she corrects him.

“Yes, Marina. That’s it. Can I come in?”

The woman nods. The man steps in. She closes the door and with an outstretched hand invites him to proceed to the next room. She follows behind, offers him a rocking chair, and chooses a place for herself on the sofa. He brings out a cold, studied smile. The woman continues to press the handkerchief in her hands.

“You’ll excuse me for the delay and for asking first,” she begins, “but with that killer around I don’t open to any man I don’t know... Well, you’re a cop...” She stares at the trendy clothes and the hair that’s a bit too long. “But, I mean, you look too young to be a policeman.”

“I just graduated,” he explains, keeping the same smirk, which suddenly flits away from his lips as he bends towards her. “And we have information that the perpetrator of those crimes may be coming here. They’ve sent some cops to the area, and the captain dispatched me to this house.” His voice becomes grave when he adds: “You know that, up to now, the victims have always been old women... elderly, I should say... and generally, they live alone. Do you live alone?” The woman nods. “That’s why the captain sent me here: to protect you.”

The woman fights to put forth an unworried smile: “But how did you get that information — that the man is coming here?”

“He told us himself.” The young man smiles with pride. “You’re a woman, older, you live alone... and you do have some fine possessions, don’t you?”

“Yes... some jewels I kept from when my husband was alive, and a few presents my grandson has given me. But how could that man know such things?”

“Maybe he makes some inquires before choosing his victims. It’s not hard. People talk too much in a neighborhood. You just have to go to the market and listen. It’s amazing the things you hear down there. They talk about everything: themselves, their relatives, neighbors.”

The whisper of the rain creates a strange intimacy between the young man and the old woman. He, now sure of himself, studies her openly. By the order of the house, the woman seems to be a clean person, but her hair could be better cared for and so could the apron that, over the dress, presses her sagging flesh. She evades his cross-examining look and fixes a loose curl before she asks him, “What do you know about the murders?”

The man glances at the ceiling, shrugs, and then decides to give away some unimportant information: the victims stay home alone almost the whole day; they all have a degree of economic security; the killer steals their jewels, money, and other possessions; until now he hasn’t broken in, perhaps he has come through a window, but it’s supposed that the victims themselves have opened their doors to him; he surely takes advantage of some subterfuge to make them let him in.