Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005
- Автор: Dean David, Dempsey Timothy F.
- Год: 2005
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN 1054-8122
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005». Краткое содержание книги:
“So I trumpeted our way back across Europe. That next spring, to our surprise, Mother gave birth to a little cub and died of natural causes a few months later. Father dropped me off to study at the Paris Barber College and headed for Italy with Sister, as we’d named the cub. He searched for two years and never found the nunnery. Then he and Sister returned to Paris, where he died.”
Stevens tapped the map on the table. “Now my father’s dream is mine,” he said. “I barber to royalty until I’ve enough money to continue the search. Then Sister and I will set out for Italy. One day, in a town in some valley or in a village stuck on some mountainside, we will turn a corner and there it will be, Sant’Ursula Maggiore. I will ring the bell at the entrance. A nun will appear and take Sister’s arm and lead her inside. And Sister will understand and go without a backward look. Then my mission will be done and my own life can begin.”
Ganelon stood before his office wall map of Europe and Asia, where pushpins represented the detective agency’s scattered operatives. The one in the Caspian region was the closest at hand. Ganelon had sent him to investigate the activities of a Fong henchman who, Ganelon suspected, meant to kill off the world’s ruling classes by poisoning Russia’s finest caviar. (The henchman’s subsequent arrest would be described in lurid detail in one of Austin Marchpane’s Ganelon adventure stories, The Astrakhan Collar.) Ganelon moved the operative’s pushpin to Kiev. Then he set off to the telegraphic office to instruct the man to follow the pin.
As Ganelon crossed the street, a carriage passed with a bright new crest on the door. He thought he smelled fresh paint and shook his head once more at the times he lived in. Nowadays, two noble families of limited means might club together to buy a carriage with an extra set of doors, paint on their crests, and use the carriage on alternate days. Ganelon snorted. The next thing you knew, tailors would be offering suits with two pairs of pants.
But the crest on the door prompted Ganelon to stop at the College of Arms on his way. The more obscure their lore, the closer monomaniacs kept in touch. Things would go faster in Kiev if the Eminent Slime Dragon Volant contacted his opposite number for the ancient Duchy of Kiev with a request for cooperation.
Baron Bollard wrote out the message to his colleague, the Great Horned Bat of the Near Caves and the Far, and gave it to the detective to send. The Dean of the College of Arms was so obliging that Ganelon knew he would never again be able to call the man by his hereditary title just to make him flinch.
Five days later, Ganelon’s agent was back in San Sebastiano, having met with Baron Bollard’s opposite number. Apparently English royal families had been seeking refuge in Kiev for centuries, beginning with Ethelred the Unready’s children fleeing King Canute and his Danes. Kiev’s Yaroslav the Wise made them so welcome that the heirs of Harold Hawk-in-Hand fled there, too, after the Battle of Hastings. During the Wars of the Roses, Kiev served as a refuge for English royalty. In fact, locally, the Angelic foot was called the Dnieper foot.
The Great Horned Bat of the Near Caves and the Far even provided a grove of family trees establishing Editha’s claim to English royal blood.
Ganelon hurried with all this information to the palace. He found Prince Conrad suffering from the gout — or crystal arthritis, as some called it, because the uric acid in the blood crystallizes and seeks out the joints of the foot. He sat with a downcast expression on his face and his left foot propped on an ottoman.
Ganelon hoped the news from Kiev would cheer him up. “Allow Charlot and Editha to marry,” he concluded, “and you’ll certainly be sitting among kings and queens and presidents and prime ministers.”
Prince Conrad uttered a deep sigh and shook his head. “That’s ancient history,” he said. “My boy proposed to the ballerina. She refused him. Apparently Tancredi blood is not good enough for her.”
To change the subject, the prince nodded toward his propped-up foot. “By the way, I told you once that it hums. Then I told you it crackled like twigs burning. Now, at night, it sounds like someone blowing through a crude musical instrument. Like this.” Prince Conrad made his hands into a hollow ball and blew into it. Then he looked inquiringly at Ganelon.
The detective shook his head. But in fact he did recognize the sound. The prince was imitating the Australian native instrument the didgeridoo. In the same moment, Ganelon remembered reading somewhere that the aborigines down under believed crystals could be used for long-distance communication. At the time, he had scoffed at the idea as absurd. Now he wasn’t sure. Had Prince Conrad’s gouty, six-toed foot become some kind of a wireless telegraphic receiving device?
Ganelon felt an attack of piper’s giddy coming on. He excused himself and hurried home to rub oatmeal and sheep tallow into his temples.
Copyright ©; 2005 by James Powell.
Detectiverse
Anonymous Clyde
Was quiet. Discreet.
The least memorable burglar you ever could meet.
No mug shot exists.
He was never ID’ed.
No fingerprints ever left coppers a lead.
Nondescript. Bland.
Transparent. Reserved.
His comings and goings went quite unobserved.
In fact, if he died
We’re not sure to this day!
But it’s safe to presume that he just... stole away.
— Will Ryan
Soup Noir
by Robin Hathaway
Robin Hathaway is the author of two popular series of mystery novels and the winner of the prestigious Agatha Award for mysteries in the cozy genre. She began her fiction-writing career in 1999 with the first of the Doctor Fenimore mysteries, the fourth of which, The Doctor Dines in Prague, came out in November of 2003. Her latest novel belongs to her “Jo Banks” series. See Satan’s Pony (St. Martin’s Press 9/04).
I searched the aisle signs for Soup. When I found it, I scanned the shelves for the familiar red, white, and gold labels. No-where in sight. Odd. Wait, there they are. But something’s wrong! They’re black, white, and gray. How strange. Why would Campbell’s give up such an attractive, well-known label for such a dull one? I turned to look at the shelves behind me, where the canned vegetables were displayed. Del Monte and Green Giant had also undergone changes. In-stead of green, white, and red, they were gray, white, and black. A panicky feeling came over me. Was I going color-blind? I looked up and down the aisle for something that would reassure me. A little boy came running toward me. He had black hair, pale skin, and wore a gray sweater. I swear I’d seen him when I came in the store and his sweater was light blue. I remembered noticing how it matched his eyes and wondered if his mother had chosen it for that reason. I looked down at my feet — and my stomach lurched. My sandals were a dingy gray. They had been an electric green when I’d put them on this morning! And my toenails — “Cherry Frost” when I’d painted them last night — were now jet black!
I stumbled down the aisle toward the produce department. A clerk in a white coat was spraying water on gray broccoli.
“Excuse me. Could you tell me what color my sandals are?” I was too upset to explain my odd question.
He gave me a quizzical look before glancing down at my feet. “What color were they when you put them on?” he asked with a mischievous grin.