The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

“I don’t know. Perhaps. It was a piece of paper like it, that’s all I can say.”

The sheet was a tear sheet from a computer printout. It had two short sentences on it.

“You will die before this aircraft lands. Memento, ‘homo’, quia pulvis es et in pulverem revertis.”

Fane sat back with a casual smile. He held out the paper to the secretary.

“You are a Latin scholar, Mister Tilley. How would you translate the phrase given here?”

Tilley frowned.

“What makes you say that I am a Latin scholar?”

“A few moments ago you trotted out a Latin phrase. I presumed that you knew its meaning.”

“My Latin is almost non-existent. Mister Gray was fond of Latin tags and phrases so I tried to keep up by memorizing some of those he used frequently.”

“I see. So you don’t know what this one means?”

Tilley looked at the printed note. He shook his head.

“Memento means remember, doesn’t it?”

“Have you ever heard the phrase memento mori? That would be a more popular version of what is written here.”

Tilley shook his head.

“Remember something, I suppose?”

“Why do you think the Latin word for ‘man’ has quotation marks around it?”

“I don’t know what it means. I do not know Latin.”

“What this says roughly is – Remember, man, that you are dust and to dust you will return. It was obviously written on a computer, a word processor. Do you recognize the type?”

Tilley shook his head.

“It could be any one of hundreds of company standards. I hope you are not implying that I wrote Mister Gray a death threat?”

“How would this have made its way into his attache case?” Fane said, ignoring the comment.

“I presume someone put it there.”

“Who would have such access to it?”

“I suppose that you are still accusing me? I hated him. But not so that I would cut my own throat. He was a bastard but he was the goose who laid the golden egg. There was no point in being rid of him.”

“Just so,” muttered Fane, thoughtfully. His eye caught sight of a note pad in the case and he flicked through its pages while Frank Tilley sat looking on in discomfort. Fane found a list of initials with the head, “immediate dismissal” and that day’s date.

“A list of half-a-dozen people that he was about to sack?” Fane observed.

“I told you that he was going to enjoy a public purge of his executives and mentioned some names to me.”

“The list contains only initials and starts with O.T.E.” He glanced at Tilley with a raised eyebrow. “Oscar Elgee?”

“Hardly,” Tilley replied with a patronising smile. “It means Otis T. Elliott, the general manager of our US database subsidiary.”

“I see. Let’s see if we can identify the others.”

He ran through the other initials to which Tilley added names. The next four were also executives of Gray’s companies. The last initials were written as “Ft”.

“F.T. is underscored three times with the words ‘no pay off!’ written against it. Who’s “F.T.?”

“You know that F.T. are my initials,” Tilley observed quietly. His features were white and suddenly very grave. “I swear that he never said anything to me about sacking me when we discussed those he had on his list. He never mentioned it.”

“Well, was there anyone else in the company that the initials F.T. could apply to?”

Tilley frowned, trying to recall but finally shook his head and gave a resigned shrug.

“No. It could only be me. The bastard! He never told me what he was planning. Some nice little public humiliation, I suppose.”

Hector Ross emerged from the curtained section and motioned Fane to join him.

“I think I can tell you how it was done,” he announced with satisfaction.

Fane grinned at his friend.

“So can I. Tell me if I am wrong. Gray went into the toilet to use his inhaler to relieve an attack of asthma. He placed the inhaler in his mouth, depressed it in the normal way and…”

He ended with a shrug.

Ross looked shocked.

“How did you…?” He glanced over Fane’s shoulder to where Frank Tilley was still sitting, twitching nervously. “Did he confess that he set it up?”

Fane shook his head.

“No. But was I right?”

“It is a good hypothesis but needs a laboratory to confirm it. I found tiny particles of aluminium in the mouth, and some plastic. Something certainly exploded with force, sending a tiny steel projectile into the back roof of the mouth with such force that it entered the brain and death was instantaneous, as you initially surmised. Whatever had triggered the projectile disintegrated with the force. Hence there were only small fragments embedded in his mouth and cheeks. There were some when I searched carefully, around the cubicle. Diabolical.”

“This was arranged by someone who knew that friend Gray had a weakness and banked on it. Gray didn’t like to take his inhaler in public and would find a quiet corner. The plan worked out very well and nearly presented an impossible crime, an almost insolvable crime. Initially it appeared that the victim had been shot in the mouth in a locked toilet.”

Hector Ross smiled indulgently at his colleague.

“You imply that you already have the solution?”

“Oh yes. Remember the song that we used to sing at school?

“Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.”

Hector Ross nodded.

“It’s many a day since I last sang that, laddie. Something by Longfellow, wasn’t it?”

Fane grinned.

“It was, indeed. Based on some lines from the Book of Genesis - ‘terra es, terram ibis – dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return’. Get Captain Evans here, please.” He made the request to the Chief Steward, Jeff Ryder, who had been waiting attendance on Ross. When he had departed, Fane glanced back to his friend. “There is something to be said for Latin scholarship.”

“I don’t follow, laddie.”