Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951
- Автор: Кристи Агата, Куин (Квин) Эллери
- Год: 1951
- Язык: английский
- Год: Mercury Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951». Краткое содержание книги:
Fogarty waited until he was sure that she must be asleep, and then he started carefully up the stairs. If she awakened, what matter? He could be looking about for any commonplace reason, and put off her punishment. But he wanted to do it now.
The stairway was visible to the house next door, through a window on the landing, and as he passed it, Fogarty flattened himself against the wall, and crouched down below the line of visibility. No use being seen by some unthinking fool with a wandering eye. Worse if Smudge, the noisy cocker spaniel who belonged next door and never strayed very far from home, were to see him and start his infernal yapping. Fogarty could get along very well without Smudge, too.
He cleared the landing and approached the bedroom door, stealthily. It was slightly open. For all his size and strength, Fogarty could walk as silently as a kitten when he wanted to, thanks to the long training in his lithe, perfectly responsive body. He glided in.
She was asleep. He saw that as he came slowly across the room.
He stood over her for a moment, very near. When he struck, he wanted to strike hard, he wanted it over with as quickly and brutally as possible, without any fuss and feathers, without any outcry.
It is too bad that in that moment there was no pity in Fogarty’s hard eyes. It is too bad that one cannot say that some human warmth or feeling of remorse or some remembrance of love did not flick across his mind and stay him. But there was none. Fogarty was cold with hate as he measured her throat with his eyes. There was the place to strike, there, near the marvelous voice that had driven him to this, the voice that would never be still until now. There was the place where the voice and the breath came together.
“Now!” something inside shrieked to Fogarty, and he reached out and took her in a terrible grip that surprised even himself with its power for death.
Her eyes opened wide, just once, then flickered and flickered as Fogarty kept increasing the awful pressure on her throat. His eyes never left hers. Neither one of them made a sound until he dropped her, and the wind whistled out of his throat, for he had never breathed once while he choked her. He had only felt a wild, exultant joy that dimmed every other sense and thought.
But now, as he turned away, he heard a step downstairs. Then, coming up the stairs! Fogarty crouched close to the bedroom door as he heard Smudge barking next door, excitedly.
They were coming, now, heavy steps near the bedroom door, and Fogarty flung himself out — heard shouts, felt blows rain on his head and shoulders, lashed out in return with all his strength, screaming now in his sickness at being caught, and suddenly a terrible pain shot up through his whole body, as the bedroom door was slammed on his tail.
Fogarty, with the telltale blood on his claws, was caught, caught, caught, but at least the canary, the foolish singer of silly songs, was dead, dead, dead...
English Legend: The Voice of Justice
re-told by Mark Rondy
Here is the fourth in a series of short riddle stories which derive from folklore — from the folk-tales of all ages and nations. The first three, you will recall, had their origin in Chinese, American Indian, and Turkish legend. Now we bring you the tale of an English “witch.”
The author of this series — a Philadelphia schoolteacher — reminds us that two hundred years ago the old English “wise-woman” lived apart from other folk, usually in a dim, cavern-like cottage, with raven and cat, and bottles and bags of curious concoctions. At the weirdest hours she would be glimpsed on marsh or moor, gathering herbs, dung, small animals to brew her healing potions, she said. By means of her acknowledged “second sight” she could foretell dire fate (for those who persecuted her) and marvelous good fortune (for those who professed faith in her lore).
Those benighted “heathens” who feared her usually crossed their breasts and spat when they passed her door — for luck, they said. These misguided souls told tales of the wise-women which curdled the blood and tingled the scalps of their listeners. But wiser folk, though ignorant of coming discoveries in chemistry, psychology, and extra-sensory perception, vaguely realized the truth: it was not the Devil who inspired the English wise-woman — it was her own clever brain, long memory, encyclopedic knowledge, accurate observations, and shrewd intuitions which made her “miracles” possible.
“The Voice of Justice” stems from the devoted labors of a late-19th century collector who saved for posterity the songs, tales, folkways, and folk; say of Yorkshire before the Industrial Revolution. It wasn’t until 1823 that an Act of Parliament abolished the ancient custom of the breast-stake and crossroads-burial for “persons found felo-de-se.” The events of this story could have occurred a generation or two earlier...
The crowd gathered at the pond was silent and still beneath the bright noonday sun. Old Liz hobbled through them to a damp blanketed heap and a moaning, swaying woman near it. Old Liz knelt painfully beside the woman, lifted the blanket. The crowd surged forward to see again the streaming blonde hair and the pale face.
Old Liz pulled the blanket back. She smoothed the sodden clothes, turning up an icy left hand, running gnarled fingers along scratches and welts in the palm, along the bare wet fingers, scratched too on the inner sides. She brought the sprawling legs together, touched the clenched right hand almost in caress, and got to her feet with an agonized wheeze, leaving the dead girl uncovered...
“Here comes Owen Metcalfe!”
The crowd parted again, letting the man stumble through.
“Alice—” he sobbed. “My bonny Alice!...” On his knees beside the blanket, he took the white face between his hands and groaned, “Why did you do it?”
Murmurs of sympathy from the onlookers hushed suddenly. Startled, Metcalfe raised his head, and saw the gleaming knife that had appeared in Old Liz’s hand. But Old Liz merely reached for the long briar branch overhanging the pond. Two cuts of the knife, a sharp wrench, and the branch was in her hands.
She grimaced a bit from the effort, but said no word, just fell to trimming the branch, peeling off its thorns with the bark.
Metcalfe rose, his face full of venom. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
Old Liz cut slivers from the branch with short choppy strokes of the knife. “The stake to bury her with, that’s what I’m making. At the crossroads.” She began whittling one end into a fine long point.
“No!” It was the dead girl’s mother. “She’ll be buried in holy ground!”
Old Liz glanced down, her wrinkled face unsoftened. “Not if she drowned herself...” She straightened, the knife disappearing somewhere into her shapeless brown cloak. “Why did she do it, he wants to know. Why should she drown herself, the bonny lass?”
She looked around at the sombre, expressionless faces. “I’ll tell you why. Him there—” the stake darted out toward Metcalfe like the Devil’s prong — “he bamboozled the lot of you yesterday. Named me a witch, he did, and got you to duck me in this very pond.” She spat. “Toad-venom! Hag-worms! Grave-moss! All lies!... Eighty years old I am. My potions are good potions. Not a soul among you have I harmed, but many’s the one I’ve helped in trouble. I know somewhat about signs and herbs, maybe, but I’m no more a witch than he is a wizard!”