Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012
- Автор: Макдермид Вэл, Манфредо Лу
- Год: 2012
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012». Краткое содержание книги:
“What is this?” the old man asked again, this time of me.
I asked him a question in turn. “Where was Tritt the day the Derivals were killed?”
“It was his free day. I don’t know what he did.”
Harry told him. “He flew to Quebec. The police identified the flight and the alias he used. He killed Kit and Emile.”
“But Burnon—”
“Died in nineteen sixty-one, probably,” I said. “When we came to see you at your apartment, you weren’t surprised by anything we told you. Why was that?”
“We had worked it out for ourselves after speaking with the Le Clares.”
“We?”
“Tritt and I...” Crevier’s voice trailed away to nothing.
I said, “We accidentally played into Tritt’s hand by coming up with our solution. If we hadn’t, he would have found some other way to get you thinking about Burnon. He needed you to be frightened for his plan to work.”
“What plan?”
“His scheme to hold on to a life he couldn’t give up. He didn’t want your exile to end. He didn’t want to be let go or to find himself living in a little village in charge of a staff of one. He couldn’t undo the amnesty your government had offered you. But if he could get you living in fear again, his routine would be safe. So he committed murder to do it.”
10.
The driver of Crevier’s limousine approached, nervously scanning the headstones around us. His employer held him off with a raised hand.
“And for that two young people died?”
Meaning, of course, that it wasn’t enough, that the solution to the mystery didn’t satisfy him. One selfish man’s wishes couldn’t balance scales holding two young lives. I understood his disappointment. I’d filed the same complaint at the same window more than once, for all the good it had ever done me.
When he tired of waiting for an answer, Crevier waved his chauffeur up. Harry went with them, to help with the challenge of moving the old man into the car. I hung back.
I was tempted to pluck a flower from one of the arrangements and toss it onto the gleaming caskets, as I’d seen other mourners do. Instead, I fell into thinking, for the last time, of the sermon from the wedding service. The minister had said then that no one knew what had happened to the lucky couple who had been married at Cana, and it occurred to me now that that wasn’t true. We certainly didn’t know the details of their married life. But we knew how the couple had ended their years or months or weeks or days together. They’d ended them exactly as Kit and Emile had, minus the fancy trappings. They’d died, perhaps together, more likely not. But if death had parted them, it had reunited them eventually. They’d ended up together in some plot of land, like the one near which I stood.
That conclusion might have dragged me into a spiral of despair, as my conclusions often did. But this time was different. The idea that the Derivals had managed to complete a cycle as old as marriage itself made me feel a little better. When Beth came up the hill to lead me away by the hand, I squeezed hers back.
Copyright © 2012 by Terence Faherty
Time for a Change
by Robert Barnard
A Cartier Diamond Dagger Award winner for lifetime achievement, Robert Barnard has a devoted following on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U. S., he has been honored with the Nero Wolfe, Agatha, and Macavity awards, and he is a seven-time nominee for the Edgar (three times for stories in EQMM). Fans will be glad to see that his latest novel, A Mansion and Its Murder (Allison & Busby), became available in paperback this year.
“It’s so damned unfair,” protested Les, sounding as if he were a lawyer, in court, conducting his own case. “They look at your address and put you in the appropriate school for that area. No appeal worth bothering about against the judgment: The kids from a good area get a good school, and the ones from a not-so-nice area get a not-so-nice school.”
“You don’t have to talk to the gallery,” said his father-in-law. “I spent my life teaching in a good school, as you very well know, but if I tried to get my grandchildren there on the strength of it they’d snigger at me. I only wish I could help, but you know that I—”
“We know, Dad,” said Miriam. “We understand.”
Ten years before, her father might have helped his daughter to finance a move to a prosperous area, with well-thought-of schools — his own school, for example, where he had finished up as Deputy Head of English. Now the credit crunch and some crass investments recommended by a friend who knew even less about the stock market than Ernest Craven meant that help to make that longed-for step up the social ladder was out of the question.
“We can’t help finance a move,” said Win, Miriam’s mother, “but we could go in for a swap.”
There was a sudden silence. Miriam was sure this had come spontaneously out, was not something that her parents had thought of before. Nor Les, come to that. If he’d thought of it, they’d have discussed it. Now she saw his blue eyes, underneath the floppy lock of blond hair, were sparkling.
“If only,” he said, hesitatingly, his voice breaking.
“I don’t see that there’s any ‘if only,’” said Win. “We always liked your house, and there’d be much less housework for me than I have in this old barn.”
“We’ll think about it,” said Ernest, sounding as if he was summing up the respective merits of Keats and Shelley at the end of a lesson with 4A. “Come round on Friday. We’ll give you all your teas and we’ll talk it over.”
“I really did think of it as ‘if only,’” said Les on the drive home. “I didn’t think of it as a serious proposition.”
“I know, I know,” said Miriam, “But Dad would have slapped you down if he’d been totally against it. You get on well enough now for him to be perfectly honest with you.”
Yes, Les thought: At least that had been put behind them. Ten years ago, the engagement and the months after it had been punctuated by a typical schoolmaster’s cry: “He’s not good enough for you.” Modified later by: “I don’t mean socially, not class. I mean intellectually. He’ll never get anywhere with a second-rate brain like that.”
Miriam had remained silent, only on one fraught occasion saying that there were many different sorts of brain, and therefore many different sorts of first-rate brains. She battled valiantly for her side of the argument, and eventually Ernest came to see that for once he had to give in. He had been faithful to a silent vow he had made, and had never mentioned Les’s brain since giving them his blessing.
When the younger generation came round for their high teas, Les and Miriam found the matter was virtually settled. They were not a bit surprised: Jumping the gun when a decision was in the offing and making it all on his own was one of Ernest’s ways of keeping in charge. Now he asked the children first, and got an enthusiastic endorsement of the idea that every child should have a bedroom to itself. Ricky added that he knew the boys in the area, and they were rotten at football, something he seemed to see as a plus rather than a minus. Cathy said that her grandparents’ house was like a palace and she was going to study Fine Arts at St. Andrew’s University, where, she clearly thought, some shade of Prince William would inspire her.
Win said she wouldn’t bat an eyelid at the fall in social status — only silly people gave it a second thought, she said. Ernest said that as far as he was concerned, education was in the top three considerations in life, and if he could help his grandchildren get a better life through better and wiser teaching, that would be worth any sacrifice on his and Win’s part.