tantaliz (30 page)

The murderer had been in this room. He had got out of it. How he had accomplished this feat had been known only to him and to Gordon Waggoner. Waggoner was now dead. That left the killer in sole possession of the secret which Mannix was determined to uncover.

He could visualize the excitement, six months hence, when his book was published, revealing in fiction form the true story of Waggoner's murder. The publisher's publicity release—the apprehension of the guilty man (Mannix had no intention of having him caught before publication day, if he could prevent it). . . .It was a pleasant daydream and he put it away reluctantly, recognizing the bitter fact that so far the killer's secret was perfectly safe.

No, wait a minute! Waggoner had said the idea had come from a chance conversation. He had even specified the day—Friday, September i. If it were possible to discover with whom Waggoner had talked that day—and if it were possible to reconstruct the conversations—Mannix might still be able to evolve the whole escape method, just as Waggoner had originally.

But was it possible to check back to the people with whom Waggoner had spoken so many weeks before? Mannix's active mind began to gnaw at the problem. Waggoner had been here in the country at the time. Mentally, Mannix listed the men Waggoner might conceivably have chatted with that day: Jody Pine, the rural mail-carrier; Miss Rorick, the postmistress; Miss Bunce, the librarian; Nahum Brown, manager of the gas station which serviced Waggoner's car; Myron Stuart, the bank manager; McCready, the manager of the grocery. Waggoner came in contact with these people about once a week, and had a chatting acquaintance with them. He saw no one else more than once or twice a month, not even Briscoe, his landlord.

Mannix determined to question all the individuals he had mentally listed. Even if they had talked to Waggoner that Friday, it was unlikely they would remember what had been said. But it was worth a try.

Abandoning temporarily the problem of the killer s escape from the sealed room, Mannix next considered his identity.

He had already decided the murderer must be a mystery writer— probably a fellow MWA member. Only another detective-story writer could have had a motive—the new locked-room plot. Though Waggoner had insisted to Mannix that he hadn't mentioned the plot to anyone else, he
must
have let it slip out at the meeting. Someone else had learned of it, had surreptitiously visited Waggoner, killed him, read the manuscript and burned it, then-

No, he must proceed more slowly, more logically.

First,
would
another writer kill for a plot, however brilliant? It was farfetched, but not impossible. A good plot was money in the bank, and there were several members who might go to great lengths to refurbish their waning reputations. Perhaps one, more desperate than anyone realized—

Mannix paused in his thoughts to consider the roster of possible suspects. There were perhaps 250 writers in the MWA—four-fifths of all the mystery writers in America. Of these, at least 150 belonged to the New York chapter, with sizeable groups located in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

At least 80 writers had been present at that September meeting, and most of them, with the exception of a corporal's guard who had traveled from Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington to be present, lived within two hours' drive of Waggoner's cottage. Many lived closer. There were, for instance, Bruno Fischer and Lawrence Treat, both in northern Westchester, no more than an hour away.

Percival Wilde, Hugh Pentecost, Georges Simenon, the Kelley Rooses, George Harmon Coxe—all lived in Connecticut, within easy driving distance. Others were clustered thickly in the Larchmont-Mamaroneck area—the names of John Dickson Carr, Herbert Brean, Clayton Rawson leaped to his mind. There were more, Mannix knew, if he cared to check. But he could not seriously visualize any of them playing the role of a murderer. All were more than competent enough to create their own plots, and at considerably less risk.

Nevertheless, someone—his leaping thoughts reined up sharply at an obstacle he had not previously envisioned. The whole case had the touch one usually found in third-rate melodramas—the boarded windows, the message on the sheet in the typewriter, the severed head on a beer stein.

From whatever angle you approached the case it reeked of the literary touch, as if a writer had at last discarded paper and typewriter and written his work in deeds, not words. But—and this was the obstacle he could not bypass—if a writer had killed Waggoner for his locked-room gimmick, why had he immediately wasted the idea by translating it into actuality?

Obviously, now, the killer would hardly dare reveal his method of escape by putting it into a book. That would be virtually admitting he was the murderer. Of course he himself hoped to use the idea in a book, but that was different: he had an alibi.

No, the two conclusions were antagonistic: only a mystery writer could be guilty—but no mystery writer would have used Waggoner's locked-room idea as the actual scene of the crime.

Mannix's thoughts revolved fruitlessly, and it was only the opening of the outside door that put a period to them. Startled, he turned. Willy Briscoe was just entering.

"Just come over to make sure I locked up, and seen the light, Mr. Mannix," Willy said apologetically. "Didn't know you was planning to come here tonight."

"I just wanted to get a preliminary impression," Mannix said, annoyed. "But I guess it's time to go now."

"Sure hope you figure it out," Willy told him, nodding his head briskly. "Poor Mr. Waggoner, he might have sat here dead for weeks till I come to collect th' rent, if Jody Pine hadn't had that special-delivery letter to give him."

Mannix stared at him, cigarette frozen in his lips.

"Willy," he said, his tongue strangely thick with tension, "sit down. I'd like to talk to you."

"Sure." Willy Briscoe sat down on an antique ladder-back chair that had been Waggoner's pride. "What about?"

"Willy," Harrison Mannix asked, "you were here at the cottage on September first?"

"Sure, to collect th' rent, like always on the first."

"The rent! Of course. And you talked to Mr. Waggoner? In fact, I think you mentioned an idea for a mystery story to him. Right?"

"You bet I did!" Willy's face flushed, and his lips twisted with the remembered anger. "I been reading his books from th' liberry and I noticed they was always about murders in a room all locked up or nailed shut, or similar. And it come to me I knew a way to get out of a locked-up room he hadn't ever used. So I asked him what th' idea'd be worth to him. He said he'd have to hear it first, so I told him. Right away he said it had been used a dozen times.

"Well, I'd believed him when he said my idea wasn't any good. Then one day I come to fix th' water pump—he'd called up to complain about it—and he was in th' village. But th' door was unlocked. So I come in and see some writin' on his desk and looked at it and there it was—my idea that he'd stole and was usin' in a book!"

The farmer paused, breathing hard, and Mannix felt his heart hammering with excitement So Waggoner had lied! Not a chance conversation, but a suggestion given to him by an amateur! Every mystery writer had plots suggested to him by amateurs—absurd, impossible plots; but this one hadn't been impossible!

"Then what happened, Willy?" His tone was soothing. "Waggoner came home and you quarreled with him. Right?"

"Yes, blast him!" Willy shouted. "Caught me readin' th' story and lit into me. And I lit into him for stealin' my idea after sayin' it wasn't any good."

"So you killed him," Mannix said, half to himself.

"Yep, I killed him!'' Willy said, hands clenching. "He'd said my idea was no good and he lied to me and tried to cheat me, and before I knowed what I was doing I was choking him by the throat And before I could stop, he was dead."

Willy stopped, as if realizing for the first time what he had said. Mannix nodded reassuringly.

"I understand, Willy," he said. "I'd have done the same thing. But after you killed him you nailed this cottage shut from the inside. Was that to fool the police?"

"No." Willy shrugged. "If I'd wanted just to fool them I'd 'a' took Mr. Waggoner's money and messed up th' house—then it'd look like a tramp done it. But he said my idea wasn't any good. And I knew it was. I couldn't write it in a book, like him, but by thunder I could show it was good! And I did! That's why I fixed the cottage up all nailed shut from the inside, like in the idea I give him."

"And cutting off his head was part of the idea?"

"Sure," Willy told him. There's always some crazy stuff like that in a mystery story—you know, a crazy statue from Africa or Egypt or somethin'. So I cut off his head to make it interestin', and wrote on his typewriter, '
My Last Mystery
.' I wanted to stab him with a jeweled dagger too, only I didn't have one."

Mannix swelled with triumph. Waggoner
had
been killed by a mystery writer! An illiterate who could only get "published" by acting out his plot in reality.

"Willy," he said, "the more I think about it, the more I think you were perfectly justified in killing Waggoner. So I won't say anything about it to anybody. And I have a proposition to make to you. I'll buy your idea. If you'll tell me how you got out of this room I'll pay you five hundred dollars."

Willy Briscoe brightened.

"Honest?" he said. "All right, if s a deal. I'll do better'n tell you-I'll show you."

He rose and came forward with outstretched, work-hardened hands. ...

Willy Briscoe stood by the fireplace and surveyed the room. The new front door was nailed tightly shut. The windows remained boarded up just as they had been since Waggoner s death.

Harrison Mannix sat erect in the chair just before the typewriter.

Harrison Mannix's head rested on the beer stein on top of the bookcase ten feet away, wide-open eyes surveying the headless body.

The saw which had effected the separation hung above the fireplace.

In all essential respects the room was exactly as it had been the morning Waggoner's body had been discovered—except, of course, for the change in the cast which now put Harrison Mannix in the leading role.

Satisfied Willy turned out the light and, approaching the stone fireplace, climbed upward, using the rough stones of the fireplace for toe holds.

Just a few feet to the left of the chimney was one of the corners of the room. And in that corner there was now an eighteen-inch gap where the roof failed to meet the walls.

Willy wriggled through the gap and dropped to the ground outside.

Then he turned his attention to the sturdy truck-jack, which was now exerting its power against a six-by-six timber, thrust under the corner of the overhanging roof. A turn at a time in the darkness, and Willy eased off the pressure. The roof settled down until once again it rested, with every appearance of solidity, on the walls. The timber which had lifted it started to fall and Willy caught it dexterously.

"Look at a house with a roof on, it looks like a mighty solid piece of building," he muttered aloud. "Easy to forget a roof has to be put on and what can be put on can be took off—or lifted. If'n a real carpenter had builded this house, might not be so easy. But men Jake run out of big nails the day we framed this end of th' roof. Always meant to put in a few, but never got around to it Lucky, way it's turned out"

He carried the truck-jack to a wheelbarrow, tossed it in, and laid the timber across the barrow. Using a flashlight, he made sure there were no significant marks left in the gravel drive where the jack had stood. Then he trundled the wheelbarrow down the road, back to his barn and to the truck that had been in the process of being repaired for two months now.

"Expect they'll be a good lot of excitement when the time Mr. Mannix paid me for is up and I go over to open up th' cottage," he reflected. "But won't nobody think of me. They'll be too excited over th' mystery." Then another thought occurred to him.

"Likely I'll be takin' forty, fifty dollars a week out'n that cottage, showin' it to summer folks the next ten years," he murmured, smacking his thin hps. "That's better'n writin' for a livin' any dayl"

William March

Law clerk, subpoena server, marine, and corporate vice president, William March (1893-1954) grew up in small sawmill towns of Alabama and Florida. He began writing in 1928 and had his first novel, Company K, published in 1933—though it was written years earlier. Many of his stories are set in small southern towns and are noted for a skillful handling of eccentric and horrible people. By 1954 he seemed to be reaching the full flowering of his powers. There were works such as The Bad Seed, a powerful novel of a psychopathic little girl, and "The Bird House," which suggested an ingenious solution to a real life crime. But then, tragically, he died of pneumonia before being able to capitalize on his newly found fame.

It was near sunset, and they sat in front of the wide, recessed window that overlooked the park, their drinks arranged on tables beside them. Outside, the red-brick building was covered with lush vines of a peculiar brilliance. They thickened the ledges and the ornate, old-fashioned balconies over which they grew, and so outlined the window itself with dense, translucent foliage that the effect of the small park, seen through it, was the effect of green in an easel of brighter green. Marcella Crosby called attention to the window and the park at once. "Look!" she cried out with soft excitement. "It's like a landscape framed in a florist's wreath!"