Амброз Бирс - Flight or Fright - 17 Turbulent Tales

Fane shook his head. “No. But was I right?”

“It is a good hypothesis but needs a laboratory to confirm it. I found tiny particles of aluminium in the mouth, and some plastic. Something certainly exploded with force, sending a tiny steel projectile into the back roof of the mouth with such force that it entered the brain and death was instantaneous, as you initially surmised. Whatever had triggered the projectile disintegrated with the force. Hence there were only small fragments embedded in his mouth and cheeks. There were some when I searched carefully, around the cubicle. Diabolical.”

“This was arranged by someone who knew that friend Gray had a weakness and banked on it. Gray didn’t like to take his inhaler in public and would find a quiet corner. The plan worked out very well and nearly presented an impossible crime, an almost insolvable crime. Initially it appeared that the victim had been shot in the mouth in a locked toilet.”

Hector Ross smiled indulgently at his colleague. “You imply that you already have the solution?”

“Oh yes. Remember the song that we used to sing at school?

Hector Ross nodded. “It’s many a day since I last sang that, laddie. Something by Longfellow, wasn’t it?”

Fane grinned. “It was, indeed. Based on some lines from the Book of Genesis— ‘terra es, terram ibis ’—‘dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return.’ Get Captain Evans here, please.” He made the request to the Chief Steward, Jeff Ryder, who had been waiting attendance on Ross. When he had departed, Fane glanced back to his friend. “There is something to be said for Latin scholarship.”

“I don’t follow, laddie.”

“Our murderer was too fond of the Latin in-jokes he shared with his boss.”

“You mean his secretary?” He glanced at Frank Tilley.

“Tilley claims that he couldn’t even translate memento mori .”

“Remember death?”

Fane regarded his friend in disapproval. “It actually means ‘remember to die’ and a memento mori is usually applied to a human skull or some other object that reminds us of our mortality.”

Captain Evans arrived and looked from Fane to Ross in expectation. “Well, what news?”

“To save any unpleasant scene on the aircraft, Captain, I suggest you radio ahead and have the police waiting to arrest one of your passengers on a charge of murder. No need to make any move until we land. The man can’t go far.”

“Which man?” demanded Evans, his face grim.

“He is listed as Oscar Elgee in the tourist class.”

“How could he—”

“Simple. Elgee was not only Gray’s manservant but I think you’ll find, from the broad hints Mr. Tilley gave me, that he was also his lover. Elgee seems to confirm it by a death note with a Latin phrase in which he emphasized the word homo , meaning ‘man,’ but, we also know it was often used as a slang term in my generation for ‘homosexual.’”

“How would you know that Elgee was capable of understanding puns in Latin?” asked Ross.

“The moment he saw Gray’s body, young Elgee muttered the very words. Terra es, terram ibis— dust you are, to dust you will return.”

“A quarrel between lovers?” asked Ross. “Love to hatred turned—and all that, as Billy Shakespeare succinctly put it?”

Fane nodded. “Gray was giving Elgee the push, both as lover and employee, and so Elgee decided to end his lover’s career in midflight, so to speak. There is a note in his attaché case that Elgee was to be sacked immediately without compensation.”

Tilley, who had been sitting quietly, shook his head vehemently.

“No there isn’t,” he interrupted. “We went through the list. I told you that the initials O. T. E. referred to Otis Elliott. I had faxed that dismissal through before we boarded the plane.”

Fane smiled softly. “‘You have forgotten F. T.”

“But that’s my—”

“You didn’t share your boss’s passion for Latin tags, did you? It was the F. T. that confused me. I should have trusted that a person with Gray’s reputation would not have written F followed by a lower case t if he meant two initials F. T. I missed the point. It was not your initials at all, Mr. Tilley. It was Ft meant as an abbreviation. Specifically, fac , from facere : ‘to do’; and tatum : ‘all things.’ Factotum . And who was Gray’s factotum?”

There was a silence.

“I think we will find that this murder was planned for a week or two at least. Once I began to realize what the mechanism was that killed Gray, all I had to do was look for the person capable of devising that mechanism as well as having motive and opportunity. Hold out your hands, Mr. Tilley.”

Reluctantly the secretary did so.

“You can’t seriously see those hands constructing a delicate mechanism, can you?” Fane said. “No, Elgee, the model maker and handyman, doctored one of Gray’s inhalers so that when it was depressed it would explode with an impact into the mouth, shooting a needle into the brain. Simple but effective. He knew that Gray did not like to be seen using the inhaler in public. The rest was left to chance, and it was a good chance. It almost turned out to be the ultimate impossible crime. It might have worked, had not our victim and his murderer been too fond of their Latin in-jokes.”

Stephen King—that’s me—has written at least two stories about airplane frights. One is called “The Langoliers,” and was made into a TV miniseries. The other, “The Night Flier,” is about a vampire who flies a private airplane instead of turning into a bat. That story was turned into a feature film. This one is brand new.

Craig Dixon was sitting in the living room of a Four Seasons junior suite, eating expensive room service chow and watching a movie on pay-per-view, when the phone rang. His previously calm heartbeat lost its mojo and sped up. Dixon was unattached, the perfect definition of a rolling stone, and only one person knew he was here in this fancy hotel across from Boston Common. He considered not answering, but the man he thought of as the facilitator would only call back, and keep calling until he answered. If he refused to answer, there would be consequences.

This isn’t hell, he thought, the accommodations are too nice, but it’s purgatory. And no prospect of retirement for a long time.

He muted the TV and picked up the phone. He didn’t say hello. What he said was, “This isn’t fair. I just got in from Seattle two days ago. I’m still in recovery mode.”

“Understood and terribly sorry, but this has come up and you’re the only one available.” Sorry came out thorry .

The facilitator had the soothing, put-you-to-sleep voice of an FM disc jockey, spoiled only by an occasional light lisp. Dixon had never seen him, but imagined him as tall and slim, with blue eyes and an ageless, unlined face. In reality he was probably fat, bald, and swarthy, but Dixon felt confident his mental picture would never change, because he never expected to see the facilitator. He had known a number of turbulence experts over his years with the firm—if it was a firm—and none of them had ever seen the man. Certainly none of the experts who worked for him were unlined; even the ones in their twenties and thirties looked middle-aged. It wasn’t the job, where there were sometimes late hours but no heavy lifting. It was what made them capable of doing the job.