The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (2 page)

“No Killer Has Wings” © 1960 by Arthur Porges. First published in
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
, January 1961. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Death and the Rope Trick” © 1954 by John Basye Price. First published in
London Mystery Magazine
#21, 1954. Unable to trace the author’s estate.

“Proof of Guilt” © 1973 by Bill Pronzini. First published in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
, December 1973. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Hook” © 2006 by Robert Randisi. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

“Locked in Death” © 2006 by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the authors.

“The Mystery of the Sevenoaks Tunnel” by Max Rittenberg, first published in
The London Magazine
, October 1913. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

“The Poisoned Bowl” © 1939 by Forrest Rosaire. First published in
Clues
, April 1939. No record of copyright renewal or of author’s estate.

“An Almost Perfect Crime” © 1987 by William F. Smith. First published in
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
, April 1987. Reprinted by permission of the author

“The Stuart Sapphire” © 2006 by Peter Tremayne. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent, A.M. Heath & Co.

W
elcome to my second anthology of impossible crimes and seemingly unsolvable mysteries. If you’ve read the first,
The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes
, you’ll have some idea what to expect. There’s a fair amount of the same here – but this time there’s an extra twist. I’ve included some seemingly perfect crimes as well.

Of course the true perfect crime would have been undetectable. There may have been many committed over the centuries, we’d just never know. They might have been regarded as accidents or disappearances or utterly unsolvable.

It’s that unsolvable part where the perfect crime meets the impossible one and where I’ve had some fun in selecting the stories for this anthology. You’ll find some impossible crimes that were far from perfect, and you’ll find a few perfect crimes that weren’t really impossible, but you’ll also find plenty that are both – or as close as you’ll get. It’s not much fun if the police or detectives are completely baffled. The delight in these stories is unravelling the puzzle and trying to work out what on earth happened.

Here are some of the puzzles you’ll encounter:

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

“A
ccording 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.