Ellery Queen's Double Dozen, page 29
“So,” I said, “an hour ago, as I was walking from the hotel toward that roadside place where they serve the charcoal—grilled steaks—”
“The Bluebell Inn. On Long Lane.”
“Yes. As I was walking along, before I reached the end of the main street that has the two traffic lights, a plum-colored Mercedes-Benz, chauffeur-driven, drew up beside me to wait for the light—”
“I know the car.” He nodded. “Naturally. Only thing like it in town. Belongs to the people who own the mill.”
Why didn’t he put a name to the main street, I wondered impatiently, since he was such a glutton for detail? But. . .“Own the mill?” I repeated. “I’ve dealt with it for years but never thought of it as being ‘owned.’ It’s a monster of an operation. Isn’t it a public stock company?”
“Uh-huh. Family held. But he isn’t an executive type. They travel. Rarely here. Some say he’s a nice boss, and some say he’s just a bad businessman and has the sense to know it. . .As I said, so what?”
“So in the back seat of that plum-colored car was Anne.”
The chief took his weight off his elbows. “You,” he said slowly, “are nuts. Most likely, the lady in the back was Mrs. Frauenfeld.”
“It was Anne. The brown hair is silvery now—it can’t be her age, but however false, it looks good. She is very beautiful and very cold-looking.”
He was still looking at me as if I were totally insane. He said, “Thirty-five? Thirty-six?”
“She is thirty-seven now, but she looks older.”
“Mrs. Frauenfeld does give an impression of being—well, beautifully preserved.’ Odd, since she’s pretty young.”
“Frauenfeld?”
“I told you—”
“Frauenfeld. Wait.” I frowned, and then it came. “That was the name of the distant cousin. It was read out in court. That was the name of the distant cousin who inherited. But—it was a woman.”
“His first name is Marion.”
“Ah. Yes, that was it.”
“Something is funny, Mr. Dentelle?”
“Was I smiling? Well, it depends on one’s sense of humor. I was wondering if Anne took that feminine-sounding name into her careful account, and I decided it was not impossible. Be cause I also was remembering that unusual but not very suitable bathing suit. Only thing I ever saw on her that wasn’t under stated. Cost her several months’ clothes, she told me.”
He stared at me for one of his long minutes. Then he said, “You are sure, Mr. Dentelle?”
“Absolutely sure. Older, colder, more beautiful. Same eyes.” He said slowly, “I noticed Mrs. Frauenfeld’s eyes at a charity affair once. She handed me a cup of punch. She was very charming, very gracious. But I wondered if she took dope.”
“I don’t think so. Pinpointed with total determination, that’s all. That may make medical nonsense, but it’s what I always thought.”
He looked at the clock behind me on the wall. He looked at the telephone on his table. Then he looked at me. He said, without expression, “Not a heck of a lot is known about the Frauenfelds. Perhaps because there is no one of their social level in town. There is a rumor—women’s gossip, I’m sure—that she is ‘no better than she should be,’ as my mother would have said. Lives her own life, the ladies suggest. Doesn’t respect her husband. But then he isn’t a strong man. Has a weak chin. Pointy. One thing I do know—he is a mining engineer. Like you.”
“Like me and the man she loved—who was no businessman and would never be rich, who was ‘weak, but somehow suitable.’ Has a pointed chin, huh? Like his wife and cousin?. . .‘Dynasty,’ she said. Maybe she had some idea that to marry the only relative she had would make for a kind of dynasty, and keep the money in the family.”
His hand moved slowly toward the telephone, arrived, and stayed there, motionless. He said, apparently to himself, “Not only her, but him. Accessory. . .So what you’re saying is this: she couldn’t inherit for thirteen years. But if she ‘died,’ her cousin—the man she was in love with—would inherit. So she arranges ‘to be murdered,’ her cousin inherits, she marries him, and has the money right away. . .There are details to check, to confirm—wills, birth certificates, marriage certificates, that part of a body in shreds of the green bathing suit. And”—he looked at me—“slowness, sureness, silence—until we reach certainty. Will you join me in these precautions, Mr. Dentelle?”
“Yes.”
“The state’s attorney,” he said musingly. “Too big for me.” He still held the phone, thinking it out. “Will you come back when we need you, Mr. Dentelle?”
“I’ll wait around.”
He looked dubious. “At least two weeks. Might be much more.”
“I waited on the Riviera for two months.”
He looked at me curiously. “You feel—vengeful?”
Did I? I said slowly, “Less so every minute. At first I felt sorry for the weeks of agony suffered by the young William Dentelle, and then for his years of pain-filled, regret-filled nights. But now I am thinking only of simple justice. I feel that you and I must ride off and see justice done. For Paul’s sake. As I told Anne, he was really a likeable guy, and honest according to his peculiar lights.”
“Um. Well, you know, so was she. And I think you might also experience some thankfulness.”
“For what?”
“Despite the fact that your face might have had a suitable effect on a jury, your parents were unsuitably well-to-do. You lacked motive to kill her, and motive to murder her was one of the qualifications for marriage.”
He watched realization dawn on me, smiled, and then be came businesslike. “Do you, Mr. Dentelle, wish formally to charge that you believe murder was done to one Baron Paul we must get that last name—that murder was done to one Baron Paul Something, in the city of Cannes, France, in the year nine teen hundred and forty-seven?”
“I do.”
He took the phone off the hook.
EDWARD D. HOCH
I’d Know You Anywhere
A powerful story—one of the most powerful Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine has published in some time. . .a memorable story. . .a story that anthologists will be reprinting for years to come. . .a story which marks, we think, a turning point in Mr. Hoch’s writing career. . .
16 November 1942
From the top of the dune there was nothing to be seen in any direction—nothing but the unchanging, ever-changing sameness of the African desert. Contrell wiped the sweat-caked sand from his face and signaled the others to advance. The tank, a sick sad monster wanting only to be left to die, ground slowly into life, throwing twin fountains of sand from the path of its tracks.
“See anything?” Grove asked, coming up behind him. “Nothing. No Germans, no Italians, not even any Arabs.”
Willy Grove unslung the carbine from his shoulder. “They should be here. Our planes spotted them heading this way.”
Contrell grunted. “With old Bertha in the shape she is, we’d be better off not running into them. Six men and a battered old tank against the pride of Rommel’s Afrika Korps.”
“But they’re retreating and we’re not, remember. They just might be all set to surrender.”
“Sure they might,” Contrell agreed uncertainly. He’d known Willy Grove—his full name was an impossible Willoughby McSwing Grove—for only a month, since they’d been thrown together shortly before the North African invasion. His first impression had been of a man like himself, drafted in his early twenties into an impossible war that threatened to envelop them all in blood and flame. But as the weeks passed, another Willy Grove had gradually become evident, one that stood next to him now, peering down into the empty, sand-swept valley before them.
“Damn! Where are they, anyway?”
“You sound like you’re ready for a battle. Hell, if I saw them coming, I think I’d run the other way.” Contrell took out the remains of a battered and almost empty pack of cigarettes. “A sand dune on the Tunisia border is no place for a couple of corporals.”
Grove squatted down on his haunches, resting the carbine lightly against his knee. “You’re right there—about the corporal part, anyway. You know, I been thinking the last few weeks if I get back to the States in one piece I’m going to go to OCS and become an officer.”
“You found yourself a home.”
“Go on, laugh. There’s worse things a guy could do for a living.”
“Sure. He could rob banks. What in hell do army officers do when there’s no war around?”
Willy Grove thought about that. “Don’t you worry. There’s goin’ to be a war around for a good long time, maybe the rest of our lives.”
“Think Hitler will last that long?”
“Hitler, Stalin, the Japs. It’ll be somebody, don’t you worry.” Contrell took another drag on his cigarette, then suddenly came to sharp attention. There was something moving at the top of one of the dunes, something. . .“Look!”
Grove brought up his binoculars. “Damn! It’s them, all right. The whole stinkin’ German army.”
Contrell dropped his cigarette and went sliding down the dune to tell the others. The officer in charge was a paste-colored captain who rode the dying tank as if it were his grave. He looked down as Contrell spoke and then spoke a sharp order. “We’ll take Bertha up the dune and let them see us. They might think we’ve got lots more and call it quits.”
“Sure. Sir.” And then again, Contrell thought, they just might blast the hell out of you.
By the time the wounded steel monster had been moved into position, the first of the three German tanks was within firing range. Contrell watched the big guns coming to bear on each other—two useless giants able only to destroy. He wondered what the world would be like if guns had the power to rebuild too. But he had little time to think about that or any thing else before the German gun recoiled in a flash of power, followed an instant later by the thud of the sound wave reaching them. A blossom of sand and smoke filled the air to their left as the shell went wide of its mark.
“Hit the ground!” Grove yelled. “They’ve got us zeroed in!”
Old Bertha returned the fire, scoring a lucky near-miss on the nearest tank, but the odds and the firepower were all against her. The German’s second shell hit the left tread, the third slammed into the turret, and Bertha was as good as dead. Some one screamed—Contrell thought it might have been the captain. Grove was stretched out on the sand a dozen feet away. “Damn things are iron coffins,” he said, gasping at the odor of burning flesh.
Contrell started to get up. “Did any of them get out?”
“Not a one. Stay down! They’re coming this way.”
“God!” It was a prayer on Contrell’s lips. “What’ll we do?”
“Just don’t move. I’ll get us out of this somehow.”
Two of the enemy tanks remained in the distance, while the third one—basking in its kill—moved closer. Two German soldiers were riding on its rear, and they hopped down to run ahead. One carried a rifle, the other what looked like a machine pistol to Contrell. He tensed his body for the expected shots, his face nearly buried in the sand.
The German tank commander appeared in the turret and shouted something. The soldier with the machine pistol turned and suddenly Willy Grove was on his feet. His carbine chattered like a machine gun, cutting down the German from behind. With his left hand he hurled a grenade in the direction of the tank, then threw himself at the second German before the man could bring up his rifle.
The grenade exploded near enough to knock the officer out of action, and Contrell moved. He ran in a crouch to the German vehicle, aware that Grove was right behind him. “I got ’em both,” Willy shouted. “Stay down!” He pulled the dying officer from the top of the tank and fired a burst with his carbine into the interior. He clambered up, swinging the .50-caliber machine gun around.
“Hold it!” Contrell shouted. “They’re surrendering!”
They were indeed. The crews of the other two tanks were leaving their vehicles, coming forward across the sand, arms held high.
“Guess they had enough war,” Grove said, training the machine gun on them.
“Haven’t we all?”
Grove waited until the eight men were within a hundred feet, then his finger tightened on the trigger and a burst of sud den bullets sprayed the area. The Germans looked startled, tried to turn and run, and died like that, on their feet.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Contrell shouted, climbing up to Grove’s side. “They were surrendering!”
“Maybe. Maybe not. They might have had grenades hidden under their arms or something. Can’t take chances.”
“Are you nuts or something, Grove?”
“I’m alive, that’s the important thing.” Grove jumped down, hitting the sand with an easy, sure movement. “We tell the right kind of story, boy, and we’ll both end up with medals.”
“You killed them!”
“That’s what you do in war,” Grove said sadly. “You kill them and collect the medals.”
30 November 1950
Korea was a land of hills and ridges, a country poor for farming and impossible for fighting. Captain Contrell had viewed it for the first time with a mixture of resignation and despair, picturing in his mind only the ease with which an entire company of his men could be obliterated without a chance by an army more familiar with the land.
Now, as November ended with the easy victories of autumn turning to the bitter ashes of winter, he had reason to remember those first impressions. The Chinese had entered the war, and every hour fresh reports came from all around the valley of the Chongchon, indicating that their numbers could be counted not in the thousands but in the hundreds of thousands. The word on everyone’s mind, but on no one’s lips, was “retreat.”
“They’ll drive us into the sea, Captain,” one of his sergeants told Contrell.
“Enough of that talk. Get the men together in case we have to pull out fast. Check Hill 314.”
The hills were so numerous and anonymous that they’d been numbered according to their height. They were only places to die, and one looked much like another to the men at the guns.
Some tanks, muddy and caked with frost, rolled through the morning mists, heading back. Contrell stepped in front of the leading vehicle and waved it down. He saw now that it was actually a Boffers twin 40-mm. self-propelled mount, an antiaircraft weapon that was being effectively used as infantry support. From a distance in the mist it had looked like a tank, and for all practical purposes it was one.
“What the hell’s wrong, Captain?” a voice shouted down at him.
“Can you carry some men back with you?”
The officer jumped down, and something in the movement brought back to Contrell a sudden memory of a desert scene eight years earlier. “Willy Grove! I’ll be damned!”
Grove blinked quickly, seeming to focus his eyes, and Contrell saw from the collar insignia that he was now a major.
“Well, Contrell, wasn’t it? Good to see you again.”
“It’s a long way from Africa, Willy.”
“Damn sight colder, I know that. Thought you were getting out after the war.”
“I was out for three weeks and couldn’t stand it. I guess this army life gets to you after a while. How are things up ahead?”
Grove twisted his face into a grimace. “If they were any damned good, you think we’d be heading this way?”
“You’re going back through the Pass?”
“It’s the only route left. I hear the Chinese have got it just about cut off too.”
“Can we ride on top your vehicles?”
Grove gave a short chuckle. “Sure. You can catch the grenades and toss them back.” He patted the .45 at his side as if it were his wallet. “Climb aboard.”
Contrell issued a sharp order to his sergeant and waited until most of his few scattered forces had found handholds on the vehicles. Then he climbed aboard Major Grove’s “tank” himself. Already in the morning’s distance they could hear the in sane bugle calls that usually meant another Chinese advance. “The trap is closing,” he said.
Grove nodded. “It’s like I told you once before. The fighting never stops. Never figured back then that we’d be fighting the Chinese, though.”
“You don’t like fighting Chinese?”
The major shrugged. “lakes no difference. They die just like anyone else. Easier, when they’re high on that stuff they smoke.”
The column rolled into the Pass, the only route that remained open to the south. But almost at once they realized that the hills and wooded stretches on either side of the roads were filled with the waiting enemy. Contrell looked back and saw his sergeant topple over to the ground, cut through the middle by a burst from a hidden machine gun. Ahead of them, a truck load of troops was stalled across the road, afire. Grove lifted himself up for a better view.
“Can we get around them?” Contrell asked, breathing hard. “Around them or through them.”
“They’re South Koreans.”
Those still alive and able to run were scrambling off the burning truck, running toward Grove’s vehicle. “Get off!” Grove shouted. “Keep back!” He reached down and shoved one of the South Koreans over backward, into the roadside dust. When another clambered aboard in his place, Grove carefully took out his .45 pistol and put a bullet through the man’s head.
Contrell watched it all as if he were seeing an old movie unwinding after years of forgotten decay. I’ve been here before, he thought, thinking in the same breath of the medals they’d shared after the North African episode.
“They were South Koreans, Willy,” he said quietly, his mouth close to the major’s ear.
“What the hell do I care? They think I’m running a damned bus service?”
Nothing more was said about it until they’d rumbled south into the midst of the retreating American army. Contrell wondered where it would all stop, the retreat. At the sea, or Tokyo—or California?
