Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006
- Автор: Пикард Нэнси, Пронзини Билл
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
She was drowning and she was too disoriented to get her face out of the toilet. Flailing, panicking, she reached up and managed to pull the handle, and the toilet flushed. Water escaped down the drain, giving her a second of succulent air. The bracelet and necklace and earrings chased the water. The jewels were gone. Monica didn’t even notice because the water quickly rose again, burying her face before she even caught a breath. She had just one chance. She reached up and up, trying to grab the toilet handle again, flailing around for the flipper. One more try. One last attempt. She wasn’t going to die in a toilet. She just couldn’t let it end this way.
Copyright © 2006 Eddie Newton
At Willow-Walk-Behind
by James Powell
Shortly after this issue goes to the printer, James Powell will be receiving the Grant Allen Award, reserved for Canadian crime-writing pioneers, at the Wolfe Island Scene of the Crime Festival in Canada’s Thousand Islands. Mr. Powell has had more than 75 stories published in EQMM. A longtime resident of the U.S., he has invented his own sub-genre of the mystery, mixing fantasy, crime, and humor.
On a windy March afternoon in 1929, a piebald day, now cloudy, now sunshine, Ambrose Ganelon III drove his white Terrapin convertible with the top up along the narrow, twisting road that tunneled through the Old Forest, the dense stand of trees covering much of Transporpentine San Sebastiano. His destination was Willow-Walk-Behind, a religious retreat house run by the monks of Saint Magnus.
As the trees hurried by, Ganelon recalled his father saying that when Hannibal’s elephants crossed the Alps people thought they were seeing a forest on the march, a Birnam Wood in search of some southern Dunsinane. And, speaking of trees, he remembered reading somewhere that even the oldest of families seldom outlive three oak trees. Grim food for thought, he being the third of his name to operate the principality’s famous detective agency. True, his archrivals, the descendants of the evil Dr. Ludwig Fong, were in their third generation, too. But they had prospered since the War, particularly the English branch of the family led by Dorian Fong-Smythe, while the private detective business had never been worse.
The sudden slapping of rubber interrupted Ganelon’s gloomy musing. He had a flat. An impatient frown crossed his battered, street fighter’s face as he pulled off the road beside some ancient apple trees. In a clearing behind them stood an orchard of younger trees in full blossom, their trunks wrapped in white cloth like the legs of racehorses. He got out his jack and spare and changed the tire. Then he leaned against the car and lit a cigarette.
Suddenly a cloud crossed the sun and a voice close-by said, “Some say it was this time of the year when Adam and Eve were created.”
Ganelon swung around. An old man was leaning against one of the dotard apple trees. Brown and gnarled, he might have been carved from its wood. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he apologized. Then, glancing back at the apple blossoms, he continued. “Let’s hope Paradise lasted longer than just the time between the flower and the fruit.”
“You said it,” agreed Ganelon.
The old man smiled. “Came to help you with your tire. Can’t move as quickly as I once did. Are you going far?” When Ganelon said Willow-Walk-Behind, the smile vanished. “Be careful in those woods, brother,” said the old man. “Something has gotten into the trees.”
With a smart beep-beep, a low-slung bright blue roadster with an attractive young woman behind the wheel rushed past them. Ganelon watched the driver disappear around a corner. “Maybe it’s only the wind,” he answered absently, his mind still with the pretty lady.
“Something strange, I mean,” insisted the old man.
The retreat house was an ancient stone mill to which substantial additions had been made. The parking area in front was crowded. Ganelon noted the bright blue roadster whose registration number said it was from northwestern France.
Father Boniface, the portly, red-faced retreat master, came out to welcome Ganelon, who was a frequent visitor because his friend and teacher Father Sylvanus lived in a nearby hermitage. “Looks like business is booming,” said the detective.
“Not the religious retreat end of things,” the priest told him. “No, but Prentiss-Jenkins Aviation draws a lot of people who need a place to stay.”
Ganelon recalled that a large area of woods in the neighborhood had recently been cut down to provide a runway and a storage area for the British company, which was buying up surplus fighters and bombers from the War, flying them here, and storing them under canvas for resale.
“Yes, it’s all ‘Come Josephine in My Flying Machine’ around here,” said Father Boniface, who’d been a song plugger and a ballroom dancer — some said he was the original “Willie” in “Waltz Me Around Again, Willie” — until the carnality of the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear drove him to a late religious vocation.
“As if things aren’t hectic enough,” continued the retreat master, “one of our guests wandered off after dinner last night. Probably got himself lost in the woods. We only discovered him missing at breakfast. We’ve had people out looking for him all morning. I’ve called the police. All this on the feast of Saint Magnus, our founder. And a very special Saint Magnus Day, at that.”
Before Ganelon could ask what was special about it, Father Boniface winked and held out his hand. “I’d better put it in our safe,” he said, cocking his head apologetically.
Ganelon had forgotten to leave his Hrosco automatic at home. Now he unstrapped holster and weapon and handed them over. As they disappeared inside Father Boniface’s habit, one corner of the monk’s mouth turned downward and the other up in a perfect replica of Ganelon’s trademark cockeyed smile.
Picking up Ganelon’s suitcase to take it to the detective’s usual room, the priest turned back to say, “When you see Father Sylvanus, ask yourself if perhaps he’s been alone in the woods too long.”
As Father Boniface entered the retreat house, Ganelon’s old friend Captain Alain Jerome came out the same door. Jerome possessed an aviator’s confident air and a dashing moustache. During the War he commanded San Sebastiano’s tiny air force with its cabbage-rose roundel, operating from an airfield just behind the lines where Ganelon’s regiment saw action. Jerome’s unit had taken “Love in the Clouds” as their theme song, a melody dating back to the giraffe craze of the 1840s when Anatole and Natalie were the most popular animals in the San Sebastiano zoo. His pilots even painted giraffe markings on their sturdy little Prentiss-Jenkins Hedgehog IIIs as a kind of ur-camouflage.
The last time Ganelon saw Jerome was three years ago as the man set out on a surveying job for something called the Cairo to Cathay Railroad.
“Your march through Syria, Arabia, Persia, and beyond, you said it sounded like fun. Was it?” asked the detective.
Jerome laughed. “As far as it went. When I reached Teheran I found a telegraph telling me I was let go. My employers had run out of money.
“As luck would have it, Riza Khan, who had been Persia’s Minister of War and had just become the Shah, heard of my arrival and invited me to dinner to discuss the railroad project. I found him a down-to-earth and ambitious leader.