Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen
- Автор: Артур Роберт, Брэдбери Рэй Дуглас
- Год: 1962
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Publishing
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen». Краткое содержание книги:
“It’s not merely the chance,” Dennis said. “Think of the complications. Suppose we all take a bottle and gulp it down. One of us gets the poison and dies. You can surely see that the other two would be all mucked up with the police over it.”
“That’s true,” I said. “I’ve anticipated that, and have thought of a way to avoid it. We do not drink the port here. Each of us takes a bottle when we separate. Each drinks the port when he is alone, and the two survivors meet tomorrow afternoon at, say, three o’clock in the cocktail lounge of the Café Picardy. This, to my way of thinking, besides solving the problem of the police, introduces an appealing element of romance, to say nothing of suspense. Who will be the two? Who will meet at the Picardy tomorrow?”
Dennis looked at me bitterly. “I hope to hell it isn’t you and I,” he said bitterly.
“Does that mean you agree to do it?”
“I suppose so. I can see that Sherry is all for it.”
“I am,” Sherry said. “I surely am. Sherm, this last part is absolute genius. Although I was inclined at one time to exaggerate your virtues, I see now that in certain respects I didn’t give you the credit you deserved. In this matter, I can think of only one thing you neglected to do which is rather disappointing.”
“Yes? What’s that?”
“You should have used sherry instead of port.”
“Oh. Sherry for Sherry. I did miss a nice touch there, didn’t I? I’m afraid, however, that it’s too late now to change.”
“Yes. Disappointing as it is, we’ll have to go along with port.”
“Wait a minute,” Dennis said. “Do you know which bottle has the poison?”
“No,” I said. “The bottles are identical, and I messed them around with my eyes closed. At any rate, you and Sherry may choose the bottles you want, and I’ll take the one that’s left. Is that acceptable?”
“It’s perfectly acceptable,” Sherry said, “and I don’t think it was quite nice of you, Dennis, to imply that Sherm might cheat in an affair of honor of this sort. I suggest now that we all have another martini and be compatible.”
We had the martinis compatibly, and afterward I went downtown to a hotel and took a room. In the room, after putting on a pair of pajamas I was willing to be caught dead in, I drank the port and lay down on the bed.
I was sitting at the bar drinking an ambrosia highball when Sherry came in. It was not the cocktail lounge of the Café Picardy by any means, but it was a pleasant place, and there was a talented and pretty girl who sat on a little dais and played pretty tunes on a concert harp. Sherry was certainly astonished to see me, and apparently uncertain whether to be happy or otherwise. Anyhow, she sat on a stool beside me.
“What on earth are you doing here?” she said.
“Hello, Sherry,” I said. “It’s odd that you should use that expression.”
“What expression?”
“On earth.”
“Oh.” She stared at me and frowned and tapped on the bar rapidly with the nail of the index finger of her right hand, which was a sign that she was angry. “Well, never mind being evasive with me, for I understand everything dearly now. Sherm, you so and so, you put poison in two of those little bottles, and then you contrived somehow to have them chosen by you and me, and it was nothing but a damn dirty trick to get me permanently away from Dennis. There is simply no limit to your duplicity.”
“You do me an injustice to accuse me of playing a dirty trick like that,” I said. “It’s true that things were not quite as I said, but I certainly didn’t discriminate against anyone. We all had exactly the same chance.”
“Explain yourself, if you don’t mind.”
“The truth is, I put poison in all three of the bottles.”
“In that case, where’s Dennis?”
“Yes, indeed,” I said “Where is he?”
“I haven’t seen him around anywhere.”
“Neither have I. Nor will we. Not for a long time.”
“You mean he reneged? That after agreeing to participate, he didn’t drink his port at all?”
“That’s it.”
She kept on staring at me, but her index finger kept tapping slower and slower until it shortly stopped altogether, and I thought I could see in her eyes certain signs that we might be entering a heavenly era of madness, delirium, and irresistibility.
“Well,” she said, “I can see that I called the wrong man an old so and so.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “Would you care for an ambrosia highball?”
“I think I would,” she said. “I need it.”
The Best-Friend Murder
Donald E. Westlake
Pity the poor detective. He must detect, and having detected, like all true artists, he dare not be satisfied. Catching someone for a murder is not enough; this someone must also be guilty of the crime.
Detective Abraham Levine of Brooklyn’s Forty-Third Precinct chewed on his pencil and glowered at the report he’d just written. He didn’t like it, he didn’t like it at all. It just didn’t feel right, and the more he thought about it the stronger the feeling became.
Levine was a short and stocky man, baggily-dressed from plain pipe racks. His face was sensitive, topped by salt-and-pepper gray hair chopped short in a military crewcut. At fifty-three, he had twenty-four years of duty on the police force, and was halfway through the heart-attack age range, a fact that had been bothering him for some time now. Every time he was reminded of death, he thought worriedly about the aging heart pumping away inside his chest.
And in his job, the reminders of death came often. Natural death, accidental death, and violent death.
This one was a violent death, and to Levine it felt wrong somewhere. He and his partner, Jack Crawley, had taken the call just after lunch. It was from one of the patrolmen in Prospect Park, a patrolman named Tanner. A man giving his name as Larry Perkins had walked up to Tanner in the park and announced that he had just poisoned his best friend. Tanner went with him, found a dead body in the apartment Perkins had led him to, and called in. Levine and Crawley, having just walked into the station after lunch, were given the call. They turned around and walked back out again.
Crawley drove their car, an unmarked ’56 Chevy, while Levine sat beside him and worried about death. At least this would be one of the neat ones. No knives or bombs or broken beer bottles. Just poison, that was all. The victim would look as though he were sleeping, unless it had been one of those poisons causing muscle spasms before death. But it would still be neater than a knife or a bomb or a broken beer bottle, and the victim wouldn’t look quite so completely dead.
Crawley drove leisurely, without the siren. He was a big man in his forties, somewhat overweight, square-faced and heavy jowled, and he looked meaner than he actually was. The Chevy tooled up Eighth Avenue, the late spring sun shining on its hood. They were headed for an address on Garfield Place, the block between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West. They had to circle the block, because Garfield was a one-way street. That particular block on Garfield Place is a double row of chipped brownstones, the street running down between two rows of high stone stoops, the buildings cut and chopped inside into thousands of apartments, crannies and cubbyholes, niches and box-like caves, where the subway riders sleep at night. The subway to Manhattan is six blocks away, up at Grand Army Plaza, across the way from the main library.
At one p.m. on this Wednesday in late May, the sidewalks were deserted, the buildings had the look of long abandoned dwellings. Only the cars parked along the left side of the street indicated present occupancy.