The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

“A falling elevator’s a great deal stronger than any human, Mr Dryer,” said Penelope. “If you search the hoistway directly above the fortieth floor, I suspect you’ll find the wire used to commit the crime. With all the excitement due to the murder, I doubt if Mr Stern had a chance to remove it.”

Stern shook his head. His voice quivered as he spoke. “It’s still there. Things happened just like you said. Doesn’t matter that you figured it out. Old bastard’s dead. He tried to rape my daughter, then threatened to blackball me if she went to the police. That’s when I decided to kill him.”

“Tell it to the jury,” said Penelope. “Considering Calhoun’s reputation in Manhattan, you’ll probably get off with five years probation and a contract servicing the elevators in City Hall.”

Norton and Dryer left a few minutes later, Stern between them. Ushering the Inspector to the door, I managed to slip him a handful of Belgian chocolates before he exited.

Back in her office, Penelope was explaining to the three Calhouns how she figured out the crime without examining the scene. Julian was serving coffee and chocolate cake. My boss might be confined to her house, but she knows how to live well.

“Since it was clear no one could have entered the car and killed Mr Calhoun, I eliminated that possibility immediately. The pieces of wood found on the floor were covered with blood, indicating they had fallen before the murder. This meant that something had happened within the elevator when it started moving, something that made the wooden fragments splinter and fall to the carpet. I theorized a noose tightening. All that remained was to check if there were bloodstains from the wire on the outside roof of the elevator. Mr O’Brien confirmed that. The solution was merely an exercise in simple logic.”

“You are a genius,” said Ralston Calhoun.

“The world is filled with mysteries,” said Penelope. She drank no coffee nor ate any chocolate. Caffeine aggravated her agoraphobia. “Many very intelligent people work solving them. My skill lies in making that talent pay.”

Penelope always sounds modest after solving crimes. Especially after she’s just relieved her clients of ten thousand dollars. Now that takes real genius.

THE BURGLAR WHO SMELLED SMOKE by Lynne Wood Block & Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block (b.1938) is one of the most highly respected writers of crime and mystery fiction. He was made a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1994 and several of his stories and novels have won literary awards. His name first appeared with the short story “You Can’t Lose” (Manhunt, February 1958) but over the next two years a lot of material appeared pseudonymously until Death Pulls a Double Cross was published in 1961. His recent books usually feature one of two main characters. There’s the alcoholic ex-policeman, Matt Scudder, who first appeared in, In the Midst of Death (1976) and whose cases include the Edgar Award winning A Dance at the Slaughterhouse (1991) and the tour-de- force When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (1986). And then there’s the bookstore owner and compulsive thief Bernie Rhodenbarr whose books, after the first two, are always recognizable by the title beginning The Burglar Who… The first book, Burglars Can’t Be Choosers (1977), involves an impossible crime. And so does the following, one of the rare Rhodenbarr short stories, written with his wife, Lynne.

***

I was gearing up to poke the bell a second time when the door opened. I’d been expecting Karl Bellermann, and instead I found myself facing a woman with soft blond hair framing an otherwise severe, high-cheekboned face. She looked as if she’d been repeatedly disappointed in life but was damned if she would let it get to her.

I gave my name and she nodded in recognition. “Yes, Mr Rhodenbarr,” she said. “Karl is expecting you. I can’t disturb him now as he’s in the library with his books. If you’ll come into the sitting room I’ll bring you some coffee, and Karl will be with you in -” she consulted her watch “- in just twelve minutes.”

In twelve minutes it would be noon, which was when Karl had told me to arrive. I’d taken a train from New York and a cab from the train station, and good connections had got me there twelve minutes early, and evidently I could damn well cool my heels for all twelve of those minutes.

I was faintly miffed, but I wasn’t much surprised. Karl Bellermann, arguably the country’s leading collector of crime fiction, had taken a cue from one of the genre’s greatest creations, Rex Stout’s incomparable Nero Wolfe. Wolfe, an orchid fancier, spent an inviolate two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon with his plants, and would brook no disturbance at such times. Bellermann, no more flexible in real life than Wolfe was in fiction, scheduled even longer sessions with his books, and would neither greet visitors nor take phone calls while communing with them.

The sitting room where the blond woman led me was nicely appointed, and the chair where she planted me was comfortable enough. The coffee she poured was superb, rich and dark and winey. I picked up the latest issue of Ellery Queen and was halfway through a new Peter Lovesey story and just finishing my second cup of coffee when the door opened and Karl Bellermann strode in.

“Bernie,” he said. “Bernie Rhodenbarr.”

“Karl.”

“So good of you to come. You had no trouble finding us?”

“I took a taxi from the train station. The driver knew the house.”

He laughed. “I’ll bet he did. And I’ll bet I know what he called it. ‘Bellermann’s Folly,’ yes?”

“Well,” I said.

“Please, don’t spare my feelings. That’s what all the local rustics call it. They hold in contempt that which they fail to understand. To their eyes, the architecture is overly ornate, and too much a mixture of styles, at once a Rhenish castle and an alpine chalet. And the library dwarfs the rest of the house, like the tail that wags the dog. Your driver is very likely a man who owns a single book, the Bible given to him for Confirmation and unopened ever since. That a man might choose to devote to his books the greater portion of his house – and, indeed, the greater portion of his life – could not fail to strike him as an instance of remarkable eccentricity.” His eyes twinkled. “Although he might phrase it differently.”

Indeed he had. “The guy’s a nut case,” the driver had reported confidently. “One look at his house and you’ll see for yourself. He’s only eating with one chopstick.”

A few minutes later I sat down to lunch with Karl Bellermann, and there were no chopsticks in evidence. He ate with a fork, and he was every bit as agile with it as the fictional orchid fancier. Our meal consisted of a crown loin of pork with roasted potatoes and braised cauliflower, and Bellermann put away a second helping of everything.

I don’t know where he put it. He was a long lean gentleman in his mid-fifties, with a full head of iron-grey hair and a moustache a little darker than the hair on his head. He’d dressed rather elaborately for a day at home with his books – a tie, a vest, a Donegal tweed jacket – and I didn’t flatter myself that it was on my account. I had a feeling he chose a similar get-up seven days a week, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he put on a black tie every night for dinner.

He carried most of the lunchtime conversation, talking about books he’d read, arguing the relative merits of Hammett and Chandler, musing on the likelihood that female private eyes in fiction had come to out-number their real-life counterparts. I didn’t feel called upon to contribute much, and Mrs Bellermann never uttered a word except to offer dessert (apfelkuchen, lighter than air and sweeter than revenge) and coffee (the mixture as before but a fresh pot of it, and seemingly richer and darker