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:
At last the procession reached a place where the bracken had been scythed and raked away around an ancient oak standing alone some twenty feet off the path. It had a large waist-high hole in its trunk. The monks turned in and gathered in a semicircle about the tree.
Father Boniface produced a pocket watch. “The hour of our blessed founder’s prayer approaches,” he said. “Forgive us if we of his order listen first.” Then he directed the monks, in alphabetical turns, to put their heads in the hollow oak, tapping each on the shoulder when his time was up. So the minutes passed. None heard the expected voice. Pulling his own head out of the tree, Father Boniface shook it sadly and signaled the guests to take their turns. Ganelon went last. The hollow in the tree was silent as a tomb. Then the hour had passed.
The downcast procession returned, more strung-out and stumbling than before. As the lights of the retreat house came in view they discovered that Baron Waldteufel had gone missing somewhere along the way. Arming himself with a candle, Jerome volunteered to go back and try to find him.
When the others reached the millpond they found a monk with his head and shoulders inside a hollow willow near the one in whose roots Shypoke’s body had been entangled. When Father Boniface touched him and said Saint Magnus’s hour had passed, the body slid from the willow and onto the grass. It was Father Sylvanus. The dead priest’s face wore a smile of final contentment.
Ganelon asked, “Does the smile mean he learned Saint Magnus’s prayer?”
“Oh, the prayer is no secret,” said Father Boniface. “No, his joy must mean he heard it spoken in our founder’s very voice. You see, late in life Saint Magnus turned mystical in an attempt to discover the unknowable side of the Almighty, the deus abscondus, the hidden God. He rose from his deathbed and had a disciple help him to a hollow tree nearby, and in a ‘Hello, Central, Get Me Heaven’ kind of thing, he stuck his head inside and shouted: ‘God, Whoever You are, I love You.’”
The monks carried Father Sylvanus’s body into the chapel. The guests returned to the retreat house, except for Ganelon and Khalila. Ganelon followed the body out of respect for his teacher. Khalila came, too, saying, “The Cairo to Cathay people have accepted our terms. I leave for home in the morning. But I’d like a chance to see the famous window by candlelight.”
Half an hour later Ganelon and Khalila left the monks to their vigil over Father Sylvanus’s body. As they came outside they saw Inspector Flanel heading in their direction.
“I hear Baron Waldteufel wandered off and Jerome’s gone back to find him,” said the policeman. “When he does I intend to arrest the baron for murder. He was killing off his rivals for the Persian air force job. He had the motive and the opportunity to siphon off Commissar Ivanov’s gasoline. And I have proof positive he killed Wing Commander Timmons. During my careful examination of the broken glass in Timmons’s room I found this, the baron’s monocle.” Flanel opened his hand triumphantly to reveal the crystal from Timmons’s watch.
Just then Jerome emerged from the forest darkness. He was alone. “I went as far back as the last spot I remembered seeing Waldteufel with the procession. No baron.”
Examining the night, Flanel decided it was too late to start a search. He promised to return in the morning.
Ganelon walked Khalila back to the retreat house. “Flanel’s a very lucky man, being right for so wrong a reason,” he said. “He may make Chief Inspector yet.” Then he added, “We have to ask ourselves, what’s so important about the Persian air force job to make it worth killing two people?”
“Three, counting Shypoke,” said Khalila.
“Shypoke was a mistake all round. The man wanted to eavesdrop on the Anglo-Persian Oil people’s meeting but got the wrong window. The baron thought Shypoke was listening in on his telephone call to England. That’s why he killed him. Know the name Dorian Fong-Smythe?”
When Khalila shook her head, Ganelon told himself she soon would if she came into partnership with him. Then he said, “He’s Waldteufel’s employer. So why’s it so important to Fong-Smythe that the baron gets the Persian job?”
Early the next morning Ganelon and Khalila led Flanel on the route the procession had taken and described the events of the night before. On the way the inspector looked for traces of the baron’s wandering off. They had not expected to get as far as the hollow oak. But that was where they discovered Waldteufel dead next to the tree, the blade of a scythe driven through his body.
Flanel waved them behind him and studied the scene, stroking his chin.
As Ganelon looked at the wooden-handled scythe he suddenly remembered Father Sylvanus’s remark about what the trees had said about the woodman’s axe: “Look, look, part of it is one of us.”
After a bit Flanel said, “Here’s what happened. On the way back to the retreat house the Baron got separated from the procession. In the dark and half blind — for let us not forget, I found his monocle at the crime scene — he was beset by his guilty conscience and panicked. He started to run. As often happens in these cases, he went around in a circle and came back to the hollow oak, plowing headlong into a lower limb. See the mark of a blow to his head. Stunned, he accidentally fell on the scythe a careless monk left behind after clearing the bramble around the tree. Case closed.”
“A wound toward the back of the head is tough to come by running full tilt into a tree limb,” observed Ganelon.
Flanel gave a dismissive laugh. “As he ran he heard one of the owls you spoke of. Wild-eyed, Waldteufel looked back over his shoulder toward the sound. Bang!”
Ganelon and Khalila exchanged glances. Then, promising to send two monks back with the wheelbarrow, they left Flanel hunkered down examining the scene of the crime.
They walked in silence for a long distance, neither wanting to bring up the terrible murder. At last Khalila said, “I can’t imagine Jerome a killer.”
“That scythe sure didn’t walk back there on its own,” said Ganelon. “I saw it at the crash site on our way to the tree. It was right where the monks left it when they emptied their wheelbarrow to load up Ivanov’s body. Look, when the procession started back Jerome got Waldteufel to hang back on some pretext and hit him a good one, leaving him for dead. On the way back Jerome had second thoughts about whether he’d killed him or not. He volunteered to find the baron so he could finish the job, picking up the scythe on the way.”
“Still—” protested Khalila.
“Waldteufel and Jerome spent the entire war trying to kill each other off. Those are things you can set aside in peacetime. But it’s something else when an old enemy kills your best friend.”
Later that morning Ganelon was waiting, suitcase in hand, beside the blue roadster when Khalila came out of the retreat house dressed for travel in a cloche hat and a coat with a fur collar. A monk followed behind carrying her suitcases.
She was surprised to see him. “I thought we’d said our goodbyes,” she said while her baggage was being loaded.
They had. But Ganelon had something he couldn’t ask her until he’d gotten his Hrosco back from Father Boniface. He gave his cockeyed grin. Would she, as a professional courtesy, one private detective to another, give him a lift back to San Sebastiano? “I promise you a good lunch, a tour of our little city, and a business proposition you might find interesting.”
“But what about your big white car?” she asked.
“I’m leaving it here,” said Ganelon. “Tomorrow’s the feast of Saint Fiacre, patron saint of taxi drivers, when the monks do the Blessing of the Automobiles. Afterward Father Carlus will drive the Terrapin into town for me. His assistant will follow in the touring car to make the Imperial Airways pickup. Carlus will go back with him.”