The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

those lines might be in the air. That’s why I sent you here to keep an eye on things. And what did you do? You let that jasoos be murdered right under your own eyes.”

“No, sir.”

“No? Are you contradicting me, Ghote? To my face?”

“Sir, answer is simple. Sir, this spy was not strangled here in that dressing-room and his legs cut off. If they had been, sir, I would have smelt blood as soon as I was entering to carry out inspection. But, sir, I was not. I was smelling blood just only later when Vasubhai was calling to me to go in there.”

“Now, what the hell are you saying?”

“Sir, just that the jasoos was strangled and his body put under that tarpaulin before even I was coming here. He must have been murdered by Gulshan Singh at his own place and then brought here so that, when time was ripe, he would be found and Vasubhai would be losing very much of respect with each and every member of his own gang.”

“Inspector, how the hell can you have the face to say that a body that was found by you yourself, with the mutilated stumps of its legs still bleeding, was put here before you were even coming?”

“Sir, quite simple. The fellow was never having any legs.’

He paused a moment in the hope that what he had brought himself to say would penetrate to the Deputy Commissioner in time.

“Sir,” he went on, gulping a little, “that man must have been one of the legless beggars that are everywhere in the city, sir, going here-there on their little wheeled platforms. And only if Vasubhai’s gang members were seeing a legless beggar, would it be plain to them that the hundred per cent nondescript spy put into Gulshan Singh’s gang had been found out, sir. Sir, because of that man having no distinguishing feature except for not having any legs, what was it Vasubhai had to do when he was find his body? Sir, he must at each and every cost make it look as if the body was not that of his jasoos. He must make it look, sir, as if it was the body of a man who was having as many legs as any other person. Then there would be no rumour or gup, sir, about a legless beggar having been murdered. You must be well knowing, sir, what I was remembering: in cases of asphyxia, such as death by strangling, blood clotting is by no means immediate. Sir, you will find, I am thinking, those cut-off layers of flesh in the pockets of Vasubhai’s safari suit, or, if they are now inside his car itself, there may be some blood stains on the inside of the pockets.”

And find the two layers of flesh they did, and some bloodstains. But who took all the credit? The Deputy Commissioner, of course.

THE NEXT BIG THING by Peter T. Garratt

Peter Garratt (b.1949) is a clinical psychologist who has written scores of stories of fantasy and science fiction since his first sale “If the Driver Vanishes… ” (1985). His mystery stories have also appeared in my anthologies Shakespearean Whodunnits and Shakespearean Detectives.

***

“This Morrigan May’s husband is here! I think you’d better see him.” Monique said. She’s the de facto head of our partnership, often said to be the best Clinical Psychologist in the UK, not just the best paid. She’s as good a boss as I’m ever likely to get, but does have a thing about bad publicity. It was Friday, the week’s paperwork was heaped up, and a cancellation had offered a mirage of a chance to shut myself in my office and clear it. But an angry widower arriving with news of a dead client, a possible suicide, couldn’t be kept out by a plastic “Engaged” sign.

Still, I sat hesitated, making sure I remembered all I could. Megan May… Morrigan was her writing name… hadn’t come to see me to talk about suicidal feelings. She’d digressed a lot onto aspects of her unusual career, but didn’t make it sound suicidally bad, and I hadn’t bothered with a full history. I feared my notes had been scrappy, and hoped profoundly that she hadn’t hidden some dark pocket of depression which her husband would know about and expect me to have uncovered and in some way dealt with.

Monique led the way to her consulting room. She likes our suite to look respectable but glamorous, her own image. The carpets are blue and the walls white, with pictures of Phraxos and other Greek islands, including one of Monique, dark-haired and tanned, leading a group at the Phraxos Personal Growth Centre.

I flicked my hair and straightened my tie, then realized that wasn’t necessary. The man in Monique’s room was about thirty-five, with long brown hair in a pony-tail, a short beard like stubble gone just beyond designer, and a battered leather jacket over a black T-shirt with part of a lurid red pattern just visible. Monique said: “Mr May, this is Owen GlenMorgan. He did see your late wife once, but only once.”

I extended my hand and said: “I was very sorry to hear about your wife.” I was trying to sound sympathetic, but as in our one meeting Morrigan May had said nothing suggestive of suicide, I felt as much puzzled and alarmed.

“Edwin May. In theory we were separated but…”

“It was a bolt from the blue?” Monique enquired solicitously.

“I knew those bastards at BattleSpear were putting her under a lot of pressure, but… I wouldn’t even put it past them to… no, mustn’t get paranoid!”

As I was trying to remember who the bastards at BattleSpear were, he blinked back tears, reached into a black shoulderbag marked “WORLD SCIENCE FANTASY CONVENTION -BRIGHTON”, and pulled out a book. “This was her.”

It was a hardback called The Merlinus with a battered dust-jacket. The front showed a boy in Druid garb beside a ruin. He was surrounded by warriors and was trying to face down their leader. Edwin May fumbled out the back flap. It had a full-colour picture of Morrigan. I remembered her more clearly now. Like me, she was Welsh but marooned long-term in London. She had a very distinctive hairstyle, bobbed and dyed red near the roots, then a wide blonde band, with the tips a luminous green, so her head resembled a traffic light switched to “Go”. She wore a little black leatherette top and a lot of silver jewellery. I remembered that in our one interview she had touched on her appearance and its relationship to her career: “I’ve been the Next Big Thing in British SF for ten years now. That’s rather a long time to be next. Image helps. If I look like a mixture of punk, pagan and technogoth I sell a few extra copies. I get far enough past the break-even point to stay in print.”

She had made a little knowing smile at that point, and though there was a slight air of sadness about her… she wore a dark outfit even though it wasn’t revealing or leathery… she had a vibrancy which was brittle but real. I liked working with people like Megan, or Morrigan. She’d become epileptic after an accident, and then for some reason dropped out of an academic career to become a writer. She didn’t explain that in detail, because she hadn’t regretted the decision. Like so many creative people, her life had become a constant struggle to do what she wanted and postpone the day when she’d have to appease her bank manager by looking through Sits Vac for a job selling replacement kitchens. She’d put it off for ten years and had sounded pleased with her progress. It was shocking to think she was dead. I said to Edwin May: “Just exactly what happened?”

“It was a week ago. Friday. A day or two earlier, I suppose. I went round on Friday with Dai… our son… Megan was supposed to have him for the weekend. My sister gets him to school, Megan never could get up in the morning. We went round on Friday and rang and there was no answer. Dai had a key and he said it would be OK to let ourselves in and wait. It was about half four. We went into the flat and I put the kettle on and looked at some letters that had arrived. I didn’t open them at that stage, but I was her agent, still am I suppose, there were a lot of letters on the mat and I was looking for publishers’ logos on… there was something I didn’t like about the flat that day. Not the way she kept it… full of BattleSpear crap… the place stank of