The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

a man alone in an all – glass phone booth, clearly visible and with no one near him, is killed by an ice pick.

a man sitting alone in a room is shot by a bullet fired only once and that was over 200 years ago.

a man enters a cable-car carriage alone and is visible the entire journey but is found dead when he reaches the bottom.

a man vanishes at the top of the Indian rope trick and is found dead miles away.

a dead man continues to receive mail in response to letters apparently written by him after he’d died.

There are plenty more like those. We start the anthology with a crime so impossible that it’s damned near perfect, and end with one that is so perfect that it’s impossible to solve.

As ever the anthology includes several brand new stories never previously published, plus a range of extremely rare stories, many never reprinted since their first appearance in increasingly rare magazines. This time I’ve avoided using any stories by the more obvious authors. Most of the works of John Dickson Carr (whose centenary coincides with the publication of this book), or Jacques Futrelle, for instance, are either in print or may easily be found on the second-hand market. The same applies to the Father Brown stories by G.K. Chesterton, many of which fall into the “impossible mystery” field. Instead I’ve gone for the rare and ingenious.

The task would have been far harder had it not been for Robert Adey’s invaluable reference work Locked Room Murders (second edition, 1991), which I would recommend to all devotees of the baffling and unsolvable. I must also thank Steve Lewis, whose additions to Adey’s compendium also proved invaluable. Generally, in both this volume and my earlier one, I have avoided stories previously included in anthologies. Anthologies of impossible mysteries are rare, so for those interested I would heartily recommend the following: The Art of the Impossible by Jack Adrian and Robert Adey (1990), Death Locked In by Douglas G. Greene and Robert Adey (1987), Tantalizing Locked Room Mysteries by Isaac Asimov, Charles G. Waugh and Martin Greenberg (1982), Whodunit? Houdini? by Otto Penzler (1976) Locked Room Puzzles by Martin Greenberg and Bill Pronzini (1986), and All But Impossible! by Edward D. Hoch (1981).

That’s more than enough to set your brain reeling. So settle down, get your deductive powers honed and see if you can solve the perfectly impossible.

Mike Ashley

February 2006

An Almost Perfect Crime by William F. Smith

We start with one of those utterly baffling mysteries that keeps you guessing right to the end. William Smith (b. 1922) is a long-time fan of crime and mystery fiction, but only got round to selling stories late in his career, having spent over forty years as a high-school teacher of French, German and English. He started by selling brief, clever little poems, called “Detectiverse” to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1980 and then the occasional story, including “Letter Perfect”, which won a story competition in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in 1992. A methodical craftsman, William’s output is small – six stories in all – but each one perfectly formed, as this one demonstrates.

***

“According to six eyewitnesses,” said Captain Jack Parker, handing a manila folder to Detective Sergeant Raymond Stone, “a man named Richard Townsend entered a telephone booth last night, closed the door, and toppled dead a few minutes later with an ice pick in his back. Crazy, huh?”

Stone grunted a monosyllabic affirmative. “Are you sure it’s murder?”

“A blade in the back usually is. Read the report Paul Decker turned in. You know him. Meticulous.”

“Why don’t you keep him on it?” Stone suggested.

“He prefers to stick to the night shift. Decker’s excellent at accumulating details, but he’s not keen on these brain busters. He thought you might be better suited to solve this one. So do I. I’ve notified Curtis and Lissner to report to you.”

Parker returned to his office, leaving Stone to glean the salient facts from the report, which was a typical Decker job, complete with a detailed account of the crime, statements of eyewitnesses, photographs, charts showing the location of the booth, and its exact description and measurements. The works.

Stone marveled at the thoroughness of the report. He skimmed through to familiarize himself with the details. A large number of fingerprints had been found both outside and inside the booth, but only Townsend’s were on the phone itself. Decker had noted that the usual litter – candy wrappers, cigarette butts, soda pop cans, and so on – was outside the booth. Each item found inside was listed separately. There were two crumpled Doublemint gum wrappers, a foot long piece of dirty string, a Dr Pepper bottle cap, a scrap of paper with a grocery list written on it, one Lucky Strike stub, and a two inch piece of shiny black electrical tape that had been found stuck to the glass at the bottom of the booth. Decker had made the notation that the tape probably had been left by the telephone repairman who serviced the booth just prior to Townsend’s using it.

The death weapon was an ice pick with a blade four and three-quarter inches long, set in a round wooden handle a fraction over one half inch in diameter and four and a half inches long. The ice pick was in the folder, and Stone noted that although the handle was newly painted with shiny red enamel, the blade showed signs of years of use. It was an excellent homemade job, perhaps manufactured especially for the murder.

The results of the post mortem were not in yet, but the medical examiner had speculated that death had probably been the result of a puncture wound through the heart. The pick had penetrated just below the left shoulder blade in a manner virtually impossible for it to have been self-inflicted. The photographs showed Townsend twisted in a heap on the floor, the handle of the weapon clearly visible in his back. The fold-in door was completely closed and held in place by the victim’s body. The door had had to be taken off so that Townsend could be removed.

Nothing out of the ordinary had been found on the body, nor was anything conspicuous by its absence. Townsend had carried the normal items a man might be expected to have on his person.

Stone sighed and leaned back. Although the report was a masterpiece of detail, it contained nothing to indicate who had put the ice pick into Townsend’s back or how the deed had been accomplished.

At nine Harvey Curtis and Fred Lissner came in. Stone assigned the detectives to a check on Townsend’s background, personal and business, and told them to report back at noon. Having come to the conclusion that the scene of the crime was the most significant aspect of the investigation so far, Stone decided to visit Lew Hall’s Service Station at the corner of Halliday and Twenty-seventh Streets.

Lew Hall was eager to tell Stone everything he had told the “other cops.”

“This guy drives in about nine last night, tells me to fill it up, and gets change for a dollar to make a phone call. I see him go into the booth and dial.”

Stone noted that the booth, except for its aluminum framework, was all glass, enabling him to see straight through to the concrete block wall beyond.

“While I’m cleaning the windshield, I glance over, see him hang up, and turn to open the door. But before he gets it open, he staggers backwards, then falls on the floor. I get the hell over there quick. Some other customers seen it too and hurry over with me. We see through the glass how he’s slumped over with this dagger or whatever in his back. I don’t know whether he’s dead or not. He could still be breathing, but he doesn’t move none. We try to open the door, only his body wedges it shut. I call the cops. They have to take off the door. The whole thing takes half an hour. By then he’s already dead.”

“You didn’t see anyone else by the booth?”