Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017
- Автор: Фузилли Джим, Харрис Шарлин
- Год: 2017
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017». Краткое содержание книги:
“Why didn’t you tell the police?” Antonia asked.
“Oh, but I couldn’t! Bent said that if I opened my trap, I’d be arrested too, for aiding and abetting. If he went down, he’d take me with him. Or, if he was put inside and I wasn’t, one of his former associates — one of those who wasn’t an enemy — would come and slit my throat. I believed him! I wouldn’t have put anything past him... I was a mere child when I married him. He said it was advisable for a young girl to have a husband who could protect her in times of trouble... He said we were ‘natural soul mates’... He said I was ‘delicious enough to eat’... Lies, all lies, but he was very persuasive... He said I was his ‘splendid spur’... He was after my money... Well, his nerves got in a really bad state in the end. He couldn’t sleep. He started walking about the house at night. Talking to himself. He said he was surrounded by vipers... He said he was being crushed, the life blood being drained from him... Kept imagining someone was behind him. ... He wouldn’t accept any food or drink prepared by my hands. He thought I was going to poison him.”
“Would you have poisoned him?” Miss Fletcher suddenly asked.
“No! I was too scared of him! He enjoyed devising punishments. Punching — pinching — twisting my arm — making me kneel in a corner — oh, you should have seen him after he realised I’d been on TV — he raised the roof! I’d done it behind his back, you see. The way he raved! Oh, it was terrible. He went mad! Well, it’s all over now and I can’t pretend to be sad or surprised. He was far gone on the road to the devil.” Eden Swann paused. “He’d go straight to hell now. Perhaps he’s there already... He’d come to the end of his rope and found it frayed. That’s the sort of thing I expected him to do anyhow.”
Antonia looked at her. “Do what?”
“Shoot himself, of course.”
“We should call the police, really,” Miss Fletcher said, her eyes on the phone on the dusty hall table.
“It’s out of order,” Eden said. “Don’t know what’s happened to it.”
Payne walked up to the table and pushed it to one side. “It’s been ripped out of the socket, that’s what’s happened. Didn’t you know?” He watched her carefully.
She shrugged her substantial shoulders. “No. I never look under that table. How queer. I didn’t pull that thing out, if that’s what you mean. Bent must have done it. He took away my mobile phone too and hid it somewhere. It all happened after that music producer’s visit — he didn’t want me to communicate with anyone from the outside world! He threatened to lock me in my room! And he threw the box in the bin. I mean the Internet thingie. Total isolation, that’s what he kept repeating. Total isolation! Total isolation!”
“What are we going to do? I haven’t got a mobile,” Miss Fletcher said. “I never got used to them.”
“We left ours in the car,” Antonia said. “It’s a ten-minute walk from here. Hugh — perhaps you could—?”
“Yes, of course, my love,” Payne said, but he made no move.
They exchanged glances. Neither of them really wanted the police to come — not yet — not before they’d found the solution to the conundrum. Antonia knew they were being selfish — childish and irresponsible — they thought they were cleverer than the police. This is not a game, she reminded herself. It was against the law to delay the reporting of a serious crime. In the silence that followed she was aware of Miss Fletcher’s quizzical gaze on her.
Eden Swann was speaking to Major Payne. “You’ll find that two shots have been fired from that gun. I was about to have a bath when I heard the bang, so I came down, though not at once — I am a bit slow. I had to get out of the bath first and then put on my bathrobe. I opened the bathroom door and I called out, but Bent didn’t answer — it was five minutes to twelve, I looked at the clock — then I went down and saw Bent’s body and the blood and the gun lying beside him!”
“What did you do then?”
“Well, I went and I picked the gun up, opened the front door, and fired it into the air.”
“You fired in the air?”
“Yes, to attract attention — an SOS kind of signal, you know. I couldn’t think of anything else. I was dishabille. Changing into a dress would have taken ages — it always does. No phone and no neighbours — no Internet — my voice, sadly, all gone, so it would have been no good standing on the porch yelling for help — and I never learnt to drive! To think that in my singing days I used to have my own chauffeur! We have a car, yes, but only Bent drove.”
“You mean what we heard was the second shot?”
“Well, yes. You’ll probably find the bullet somewhere.” Eden Swann waved vaguely towards the porch.
“Was the front door shut when you came down?” Antonia asked.
“Yes. Shut and locked. It is made of the thickest wood and all the windows are kept shut and latched at all times. That’s Bent’s paranoia for you. That’s why you didn’t hear the first shot, if that’s what you are wondering.”
Silently Major Payne took the gun out of his pocket and checked it — he knew about guns—
“Only one bullet’s been fired,” he said.
“Really? There should have been two! I am sure you are wrong. I am telling the truth! I hate lies!” Eden’s voice rose. “Bent shot himself. He committed suicide.”
“I don’t think he did. It’s not only the gun,” Antonia said. She pointed to the broken coffee cup. “He couldn’t have held his cup and the gun in the same hand. Besides, the nature of the wound suggests that he was shot from a distance of at least five feet. To put it in layman’s terms, the hole in the temple would have been ‘neater,’ the damage to the skull less considerable, had the gun been fired by your husband. Someone shot him.”
Antonia stood looking across the hall. There was a door leading to the kitchen that had been left open. And when she shifted a little to the left, she could see the back door gaping open too. She was able to catch a glimpse of the overgrown garden.
“How do you know so much about gun wounds?” Eden Swann asked.
“I have been doing research. It’s... it’s part of what I do.”
“D’you mean you work in the police forensic department? No, of course you don’t! What do you do?” Suddenly Eden laughed. “Don’t tell me you write detective stories or something?”
“Well—” Antonia was reluctant to admit she did write detective stories.
Eden didn’t seem interested enough to pursue the point — or she had a very short attention span. She said, “My fingerprints are on the gun, but it wasn’t I who killed Bent. It must have been done with a different gun. That’s the likeliest explanation. The killer must have brought two guns.”
“You said the gun belonged to your husband,” Payne said. “You said your husband had several guns.”
“Are you trying to catch me out? I can never tell one gun from another! I assumed it was his gun, that’s all. I may be wrong. Bent used to say I was always wrong. He kept his guns in his study, under lock and key.”
She cut an absurd, pathetic, and a somewhat unnerving figure in her orange bathrobe and frilly bath cap. Payne wished she would go and get dressed.
“He was shot while he was standing here, drinking his coffee,” Antonia said. “His dressing gown doesn’t look disarranged in any way. There are no signs of a struggle. He was taken unawares... The kitchen door is open... Was it open when you came down, do you remember? After you heard the shot?”