Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

I have a few shots to steady my nerves and take the parcel from the briefcase. Originally, I was studying to be a doctor, but financial hardships diverted me to business. Even so, I remained on the fringes and still take great pride in the instruments we manufacture. As I unwrap them, I can see they gleam as if new.

Something strikes the windowpane in the kitchen door, startling me, and I drop a surgical knife with a clatter. The door is locked and I’m not foolish enough to open it. Standing off to one side, I tease back the curtain and put my eye to the glass. A cardinal, bright as a splash of blood, lies broken on my rear stoop. My eyes are drawn in the direction it came from. That’s what they’ve been waiting for.

The two of them are standing close together under a barren maple tree, facing the door. The woman’s eyes are riveted on mine. The child’s face remains an accusing shadow. As if on cue, the woman begins moving across the lawn toward me, her face a mask of rage, flecked with spittle. Somehow, she knows what I intend to do. I can see her mouth working grotesquely, grinding without sound. Her stride is impossibly long and she covers the distance with a nightmarish speed. I can’t take my eyes from her and it’s only an involuntary reaction that makes me fall back, releasing the curtain just as she reaches the door. I see her silhouette on the other side of the material. I expect her face to thrust through the glass! But the glass does not break and the door does not burst open. She remains as she is, a frozen outline on the fabric, radiating hatred. l watch, unable to move, and understand how strong they have become. By the end of the day they will not have to wait for me to sleep to enter this house. No barrier will stop them. Now is my only chance to act! Knowing this, I can turn my back on my guardian and begin to work. I reach for a scalpel.

Suicide is never a pretty sight and this one was particularly gruesome. The detective-lieutenant surveyed the carnage and grimaced. How, he asked himself, could a person open himself from sternum to pelvis? Surely there were easier, less agonizing ways to kill oneself? He would have to wait for the medical examiner’s report, but he felt certain that this old boy had done some digging around while he was at it. What in the world for?

As the wrecked body was being carried out and the scene-of-crime officers began their exhaustive cataloguing, the lieutenant held a scrap of paper up to his eyes. He clasped it with a pair of tweezers and reread its contents. It should have pleased him but it didn’t. On this piece of paper was both the explanation for the suicide and quite probably the solution to a ten-year-old double slaying. In other words, a confession. It must have been written by the eviscerated man, as all the doors were dead-bolted from the inside, but his experience told him that it was in a distinctly feminine hand.

Mother’s Clever Idea

by Celia Fremlin

For something in a lighter vein, we turn to Celia Fremlin, and a tale told tongue-in-cheek...

* * *

I wonder, thought Joanna resignedly as she helped her mother-in-law out of the train, I wonder what Mother will have forgotten this time?

“Two suitcases, a hatbox, your umbrella — oh, and Polly’s cage, I didn’t know you were going to bring her! — is that all, Mother? Are you sure that’s all?”

Both women peered anxiously in through the compartment window. Doors slammed. The train trembled towards departure.

“Well, I can’t see anything...” began Joanna.

“No, I’m sure that’s all, dear.” But Mrs. Trent’s rosy, childlike face framed in grey curls still looked a little worried.

“I think that’s all— Oh!” She clapped her hand to her mouth like a schoolgirl and stared in horror at the departing train.

“There! I knew there was something!”

“Well?” said Joanna patiently.

“My dear — I just lent them to him for a moment — the little boy on the train. He was so sweet, and I was afraid Polly would bite him if he kept on playing with her, and he was getting so tired of doing nothing — such a long journey for a child — I know what it’s like, I remember when Robert was little — he was a bit like Robert, too, the same blue eyes and way of—”

“What did you lend him, Mother?”

“Robert’s binoculars,” said Mrs. Trent in a hollow voice. “You know he always wants them at the seaside. So I looked them out and put them in my case straightaway so that I couldn’t forget — you know what my memory is like — and now...”

“Well, it can’t be helped,” said Joanna. “I expect they’ll be handed in. Robert will have to ring up...”