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

She told them her story; and her precautions did indeed seem to have been astonishingly prudent.

She had telephoned in the morning to ask Corinne to meet her on the cliff top “to talk privately about her problem with Robert.” She had gone there (in gym shoes, to leave no discernible footprints), taking a flask of tea just sufficiently drugged to make Corinne fall asleep in the course of their conversation. Thus there would be no struggle — just a quick push (with gloves on to avoid fingerprints) to send the girl rolling down the grassy slope and over the cliff edge. Then — the alibi. Immediately afterwards she hurried as fast as she could to Mrs. Pratt’s cottage, which stood out of sight farther back on the cliffs. Once there, she sat down for the usual cup of tea and gossip — in the course of which she made an opportunity to exclaim: “What’s that? I heard someone cry out!” Mrs. Pratt, of course, heard nothing — but, knowing Mrs. Pratt as she did, Mrs. Trent was shrewd enough to realise that once the news of the tragedy became public, Mrs. Pratt would not only have heard the cry, but would claim to have recognised the voice, and in fact practically to have witnessed the whole thing. And, of course, her friend Mrs. Trent would have been sitting drinking tea with her the whole time, and thus could not possibly be suspected.

Really, it all sounded foolproof.

Except for one thing.

“That’s all bloody fine, Mother!” protested Robert. “But what about me? Half the village must have been listening in on that row we had in the pub, with me obviously trying to break off with her, and her threatening all hell if I dared do any such thing! And then, the next thing they hear, she’s fallen over a cliff! What’s that going to look like for

me, eh?”

“Oh, Robert! Oh, my dear! I never thought...! Oh, what can I do...?”

“You can’t do anything. We’ll just have to— Oh, I don’t know — we’ll just have to— Oh, God...!”

And though the little family talked far into the night, no conclusion could be reached except to let matters take their course. The police would come; they would do their job; and whatever would happen, would happen.

It was a long time before Joanna slept that night; and just as she was dropping off she fancied she heard a tap-tapping sound from the front of the house. Someone tapping on the door? Polly practising, in the silence of the night, the sound of Robert’s typewriter? Too weary to get up and investigate, she drifted at last into an uneasy sleep — from which she was awakened by her mother-in-law, beaming down at her.

“It’s all right!

” Mrs. Trent was saying. “Robert is in the clear! I’ve typed a note as if from him, and dropped it in at that girl’s hotel, saying how sorry he is about the row, and how he loves her deeply and can’t live without her, and will run away with her just as soon as she likes. And I’ve signed it ‘Rob’ — that’s what she used to call him — in that big scrawly writing of his. So you see, when the police find it, they’ll know beyond any doubt that Robert didn’t, after all, want to get rid of her, and so couldn’t possibly have any motive for murdering her! Wasn’t that a clever idea?”

Indeed it was. In fact, there was only one flaw in it. Corinne, naturally, was overjoyed when she found the note, and rushed immediately to the phone.

Mrs. Trent, who took the call, looked stunned for a moment. Then she clapped her hand to her mouth in the familiar gesture.

“There! I knew there was something! She took so long to go to sleep, and then I was in such a rush to get to Mrs. Pratt’s in time for my alibi, that I clean forgot to push the girl over the edge!”

Foregone Collusion

by Dixie J. Whitted

Detectiverse

Barrister Harrington BrewPled “insanity” till he was blue:As usual, it worked,—His client then smirked,

“I’m not crazy enough to pay you!”

Turkey Durkin and the Catfish

by William Beechcroft

William Hallstead is the author of seventeen books, including six suspense novels under the pen name William Beechcroft (the first five published by Dodd, Mead; the latest by Carroll & Graf). A former flight instructor, public relations man, and public television executive, he currently makes his home on Sanibel Island, in Florida. He takes us to an even more tropical spot in this story set in an Amazonian research outpost...

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