The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

can kill. There was never enough in that vial to kill two people but there was enough to make them both sleep so heavily, helped on by the wine, that they didn’t wake even when their son – and it had to have been him, there was no one else there to do it – pressed a pillow over the face of first one of them and then the other. He was a large, solid child, with weight enough to hold a pillow down and smother someone if they were heavily unconscious, the way his mother and father were. And then he closed their dead eyes, to keep them from staring at him.”

“But why would he go and do it? Kill them, I mean,” protested one of the village men. “It’s not natural.”

“I’d guess he did it for hatred. From everything I’ve heard, there was little love lost between him and them. Today, when he cried out in the carriage, probably from the unexpected pain of the dwale working in him, he was heard but no one thought anything about it but that he’d been struck by his mother or father, and that was too usual to take much heed of. Besides, I’d guess he thought – or maybe someone put it in his head – that if he were orphaned, rid of his parents and no one able to say how they died – he’d be given in ward to Master Hugh Shellaston, who got on with him far better than his parents did.”

“But then why would he kill himself?” Bartel asked.

“I don’t think he did. I think his death was Master Hugh’s doing.”

Master Hugh jerked up straight in his chair, his stare furious at Thomas before he gathered his thoughts and exclaimed, “That’s mad! I was nowhere near any of them when they died. You said yourself my cousin and his bitch-wife were smothered. I was never in the carriage or anywhere near it. And you said the boy drank that poison of his own will and died of it.”

“I said he drank it of his own will and died of it, yes. I didn’t say he meant to die of it. Why bother to hide the vial he’d poisoned his parents with if he was going to kill himself afterwards? He probably thought that what he drank was some light potion that would make him merely sleep and that when he and his dead parents were found he could claim all ignorance of their deaths and simply be weepingly thankful he was spared whatever had killed them. My guess is that you gave him the poppy syrup and dwale, told him the dwale was harmless, maybe even warned him there might be some pain and to keep from being caught he must fight against crying out, which he mostly did. He must have been a brave boy in his way. But he never meant to kill himself. You’re the one who’s guilty of his death. As guilty as if you’d poured the poison down his throat yourself.”

Master Hugh did not give way yet. Instead – with what he probably meant to be the outrage of innocence – he fell back on, “You can’t prove any of this!”

“Not at this moment,” Thomas said coldly. “But I’ll warrant that if question is made among apothecaries and every herbwife anywhere near where you’ve been of late, we’ll learn of rather many requests for poppy syrup and dwale potion from them.”

“No one is going to admit to making him a killing potion,” Mistress Wayn said quietly.

“No, and probably none did. But I daresay several will be found who’ll admit to making a non-killing potion. Dwale is after all good for some poultices. But put several lots together and they’d kill, yes?” Thomas asked at Master Hugh.

Boldly surly, the man tried, “My shit of a cousin had more enemies than me who’d probably like him dead. And how likely is it I’ve been wandering around talking to herbwives and apothecaries? I’ve a life to lead and people who notice where I go and why.”

“We’ll find out if other enemies had chance to give young William the poisons. We’ll see if anyone had as much to gain from their deaths as you do as the only heir. We’ll see who’s been asking for poppy syrup and dwale, and we’ll find, I’ll lay odds, that if not you, then some several of your servants have been, sent here and there without knowing what they were doing.”

With one of his men already looking at him with widening eyes and dawning alarm. Master Hugh suffused a slow, deep red, rose to his feet and looked around the room for a way out.

“The window is shuttered,” Thomas said mildly, “and my man is ordered to stop you going out the door by whatever means are needed. Nor do I think you’ll find anyone here, even your own men, ready to help you.”

That much Master Hugh had already read in the faces around him; and heavily he dropped back into his chair and said, from the heart, “Damn.”

THE SILVER CURTAIN by John Dickson Carr

More than that of any other writer, the name of John Dickson Carr is indelibly linked with the impossible crime story. For a start, he wrote more of them than anyone else (though Edward D. Hoch has overtaken him in the short story stakes), and he explored more variants on the theme than anyone else, in some cases producing definitive texts. I’ve said much about him in my afterword, so I won’t repeat it here. Although his best known detective was Gideon Fell, Carr wrote several books featuring other detectives, in particular Henry Merrivale and Colonel March. The following is one of Colonel March’s mysteries and comes from the collection The Department of Queer Complaints (1940).

***

The croupier’s wrist moved with such fluent ease as to seem boneless. Over the green baize its snaky activity never hesitated, never wavered, never was still. His rake, like an enormous butter- pat, attracted the cards, flicked them up, juggled them, and slid them in a steady stream through the slot of the table.

No voice was raised in the Casino at La Bandelette. There was much casualness; hardly any laughter. The tall red curtains and the padded red floors closed in a sort of idle concentration at a dozen tables. And out of it, at table number six, the croupier’s monotone droned on.

“Six mille. Banco? Six mille. Banco? Banco?”

“Banco,” said the young Englishman across the table. The cards, white and grey, slipped smoothly from the shoe. And the young man lost again.

The croupier hadn’t time to notice much. The people round him, moving in hundreds through the season, were hardly human beings at all. There was a calculating machine inside his head; he heard its clicks, he watched the run of its numbers, and it was all he had time for. Yet so acutely were his senses developed that he could tell almost within a hundred francs how much money the players at his table still retained. The young man opposite was nearly broke.

(Best to be careful. This perhaps means trouble.)

Casually the croupier glanced round his table. There were five players, all English, as was to be expected. There was the fair-haired girl with the elderly man, obviously her father, who had a bald head and looked ill; he breathed behind his hand. There was the very heavy, military-looking man whom someone had addressed as Colonel March. There was the fat, sleek, swarthy young man with the twisty eyebrows (dubious English?), whose complacency had grown with his run of luck and whose wallet stuffed with mille notes lay at this elbow. Finally, there was the young man who lost so much.

The young man got up from his chair.

He had no poker face. The atmosphere about him was so desperately embarrassed that the fair-haired girl spoke.

“Leaving, Mr Winton?” she asked.

“Er – yes,” said Mr Winton. He seemed grateful for that little help thrown into his disquiet. He seized at it; he smiled back at her. “No luck yet. Time to get a drink and offer up prayers for the next session.”

(Look here, thought Jerry Winton, why stand here explaining? It’s not serious.