More Tales of the Black Widowers (14 page)

Halsted placed his palm delicately on his high forehead and brushed back at non-existent hair. He said, “You can't be sure, can you? Is there any way you can call him up right now and ask?”

“It would be useless,” protested Deryashkin. “I know. Believe me. When they left, I said to him in Russian, 'Can you imagine the criminality of those hooligans?' and he said, 'What hooligans?' I said, 'Those that are leaving.' And he shrugged and did not look but kept on talking. It was getting cold even for us and we left He knows nothing.”

That's very frustrating,” said Halsted.

“Hell,” said Rubin. “There's nothing to this at all. I don't believe it.”

“You mean I am lying?” said Deryashkin, frowning.

“No,” said Rubin. “I mean it's a misinterpretation. What you heard can't involve murder.”

Deryashkin, still frowning, said, “Do all you gentlemen believe that what I heard can't involve murder?”

Avalon, keeping his eyes on the tablecloth in some embarrassment, said, “I can't really say I am certain that a murder is being planned, but I think we ought to act as though a murder is being planned. If we are wrong we have done nothing worse than make fools of ourselves. If we are right we might save one or more lives. Do the rest of you agree with that?”

There was an uncertain murmur that seemed to be agreement, but Rubin clenched a hostile fist and said, “What the devil do you mean by acting, Jeff? What are we supposed to do?”

Avalon said, “We might go to the police. It might be difficult for Mr. Deryashkin to get a hearing; but if one of us—or more—back him—”

“How would that help?” said Rubin sardonically. “If there were fifty million of us introducing our friend here, the evidence would still boil down to the uncertain memory of one man who recalls a few scraps of conversation and who cannot identify the speakers.”

“In that,” said Deryashkin, “Mr. Rubin is right. Besides, I will not take part. It is your city, your country, and I will not interfere. Nothing could be done in any case, and when the murder takes place it will be too bad, but it cannot be helped.”

“Nothing will happen,” said Rubin.

“No?” said Deryashkin. “How then can you explain what I heard? If all else is ignored, there is yet the word 'murder.' I heard it clearly more than once and it is a word that cannot be mistaken. In the English language there is nothing like 'murder' that I could have taken for that word. And surely if people speak of murder there must be murder in the wind. You are, I think, the only one here, Mr. Rubin, who doubts it.”

There was a soft cough from one end of the table. Henry, who had cleared away the coffee cups, said apologetically, “Not the only one, Mr. Deryashkin. I doubt it too. In fact, I am quite certain that what the young men said was harmless.”

Deryashkin turned in his seat. He looked surprised. He said, “Comrade Waiter, if you—”

Trumbull said hastily, “Henry is a member of the Black Widowers. Henry, how can you be certain?”

Henry said, “If Mr. Deryashkin will kindly consent to answer a few questions, I think we will all be certain.”

Deryashkin nodded his head vigorously and spread out his arms. “Ask! I will answer.”

Henry said, “Mr. Deryashkin, I believe you said that the park was empty and that no one was in sight to help if the young men proved violent. Did I understand correctly? Were the other benches in the park area unoccupied?”

“Those we could see were empty,” said Deryashkin readily. “Today was not a pleasant day for park-sitting.”

“Then why do you suppose the young men came to your bench, the only one which was occupied?”

Deryashkin laughed briefly and said, “No mystery, my friend. The day was cold and our bench was the only one in the sun. It was why we picked it ourselves.”

“But if they were going to discuss murder, surely they would prefer a bench to themselves even if it meant being a little on the cold side.”

“You forget. They thought we were foreigners who could not speak or understand English. The bench was empty in a way.”

Henry shook his head. “That does not make sense. They approached you and asked to sit down before you spoke Russian. They had no reason to think you couldn't understand English at the time they approached.”

Deryashkin said testily, “They might have heard us talking Russian from a distance and checked it out.”

“And sat down almost at once, as soon as you spoke Russian? They didn't test you any further? They didn't ask if you understood English? With murder in the wind, they were satisfied with a small Russian comment from you, guessed they would be safe, and sat down to discuss openly a hideous crime? Surely if they were conspirators they would have stayed as far away from you as possible in the first place, and even if they were irresistibly attracted to the sun, they would have put you through a much more cautious testing process. The logical interpretation of the events, at least to me, would seem to be that whatever they had to discuss was quite harmless, that they wanted a bench in the sun, and that they did not at all care whether they were overheard or not.”

“And the word 'murder'?” said Deryashkin with heavy sarcasm. “That, too, then, must be quite, quite harmless.”

“It is the use of the word 'murder,'“ said Henry, “that convinces me that the entire conversation was harmless, sir. It seems to me, surely, that no one would use the word 'murder' in connection with their own activities; only with those of others. If you yourself are going to murder, you speak of it as 'rubbing him out,' 'taking him for a ride,' 'getting rid of him,' or if you'll excuse the expression, sir, 'liquidating him.' You might even say 'killing him' but surely no one would casually speak of murdering someone. It is too ugly a word; it demands euphemism.”

“Yet they said it, Mr. Waiter,” said Deryashkin. “Talk as you will, you won't argue me out of having heard that word clearly more than once.”

“They did not say what you heard, perhaps.”

“And how is that possible, my friend? Eh?”

Henry said, “Even with the best will in the world and with the most rigid honesty, Mr. Deryashkin, one can make mistakes in interpreting what one hears, especially—please excuse me—if the language is not native to you. For instance, you say the expression 'tie them up' was used. Might it not be said that you heard them say 'bind them' and that you interpreted that as 'tie them up'?”

Deryashkin seemed taken aback. He thought about it for a while. He said, “I cannot swear I did not hear them say 'bind them.' Since you mention it, I begin to imagine perhaps I heard it But does it matter? 'Bind them' means 'tie them up.'“

“The meaning is approximately the same, but the words are different. And if it is 'bind them' I know what it is you must have heard if all the scraps you report are put together. Mr. Rubin knows too—better than I do, I believe—though he may not quite realize it at the moment. I think it is his sub-realization that has made him so resistant to the notion of Mr. Deryashkin having overheard an actual conspiracy.”

Rubin sat up in his seat, blinking. “What do I know, Henry?”

Deryashkin said, “You have to explain 'murder.' Nothing counts if you do not explain 'murder.' “

Henry said, “I am not a linguist myself, Mr. Deryashkin, but I once heard it said that it is the vowels of a foreign language that are hardest to learn and that what is called a 'foreign accent' is mostly a mispronunciation of vowels. You might therefore not be able to distinguish a difference in vowels and, even with all the consonants unchanged, what you heard as 'murder' might really have been 'Mordor.'“

And at that Rubin threw up both hands and said, “Oh, my God.”

“Exactly, sir,” said Henry. “Early in the evening, I recall a discussion between yourself and Mr. Gonzalo concerning books that are popular with college students. One of them, surely, was The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien.”

“Tolkien” said Deryashkin, mystified, and stumbling over the word.

Henry said, “He was an English writer of fantasy who died very recently. I am quite sure that college students form Tolkien societies. That would account for the references to 'talking' that you mentioned, Dr. Deryashkin, as part of the conversation of the young men. They were not exhorting each other to keep quiet but were speaking of the Tolkien Society that I imagine one of them wished to join.

“In order to join, it might be that the candidate must first memorize the short poem that is the theme of the entire trilogy. If the young man were indeed reciting the poem, which twice mentions 'the Land of Mordor,' then I believe every scrap of conversation you heard could be accounted for. Mr. Rubin recommended the trilogy to me once and I enjoyed it immensely. I cannot remember the poem word for word, but I suspect Mr. Rubin does.”

“Do I!” said Rubin explosively. He rose to his feet, placed one hand on his chest, threw the other up to the ceiling, and declaimed grandiloquently:

“Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.”

Henry nodded, “You see that it includes not only the word Mr. Deryashkin interpreted as 'murder' but also reference to the 'one ring,' to 'lying in the shadows,' to 'tying them up in the dark.' “

There was silence for a while.

Then Deryashkin said, “You are right. Now that I hear the poem, I must admit that this is what I heard this morning. Quite right. —But how could you know, waiter?”

Henry smiled. “I lack a sense of the dramatic, Mr. Deryashkin. You felt New York to be a jungle, so you heard jungle sounds. For myself, I prefer to suppose college students would sound like college students.”

5
  
Afterword

J. R. R. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973. I was in Toronto at the time attending the 31st World Science Fiction Convention and was deeply moved at the news. —And yet on the very day I learned of his death, I won the Hugo for my science fiction novel The Gods Themselves and I couldn't help being happy.

Having read Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings three times at the time of his death (and I've read it a fourth time since) and having enjoyed it more each time, I felt that the only way I could make up for having been happy on that sad day was to write a story in memory of him. So I wrote “Nothing Like Murder.”

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine decided, however, not to use it. The feeling was that the readers would not be well enough acquainted with Tolkien to be able to appreciate the story. So, after some hesitation, I sent it to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, for which I write a monthly science column.

Rather to my surprise (for the story is neither fantasy nor science fiction), Ed Ferman, the editor of F & SF, accepted it, and it appeared in the October 1974 issue of the magazine. I then waited for angry letters from science fiction fans, but all I got was a number of very pleased comments from readers who were delighted that I was an admirer of Tolkien. So it all worked out well.

To Table of Contents

James Drake was by no means the only smoker among the small membership of the Black Widowers, but he certainly made the greatest single contribution to the pall that commonly hovered over the monthly banquets of that august body.

It was perhaps for that reason that the dour-faced Thomas Trumbull, arriving toward the end of the cocktail hour, as he usually did, and having un-parched himself with a scotch and soda that had been handed him deftly and without delay by the invaluable Henry, hunched his lapel ostentatiously in Drake's direction.

“What's that?” asked Drake, squinting through the smoke of his cigarette.

“Why the hell don't you read it and find out?” said Trumbull with somewhat more than his usual savagery. “If the nicotine has left you any eyesight with which to read, that is.”

Trumbull's lapel bore a button which read: “Thank you for not smoking.”

Drake, having peered at it thoughtfully, puffed a mouthful of smoke in its direction and said, “You're welcome. Always glad to oblige.”

Trumbull said, “By God, I'm a member of the most oppressed minority in the world. The non-smoker has no rights any smoker feels bound to observe. Good Lord, don't I have any claim to a measure of reasonably clean and unpolluted air?”

Emmanuel Rubin drifted toward them. His sparse and straggly beard lifted upward—a sure sign that he was about to pontificate—and his eyes blinked owlishly behind the magnifying thickness of his glasses.

“If you live in New York,” he said, “you inhale, in automobile exhaust, the equivalent of two packs of cigarettes a day, so what's the difference?” And he ostentatiously lit a cigarette.

“All the more reason why I don't want any more on top of the exhaust I breathe,” said Trumbull, scowling.

“Don't tell me,” said Drake in his softly hoarse voice, “that you believe this hogwash that—”