Gumshoes

Eidolon

The Great Detective keeps his gun over the map of the city with all the little pins stuck into it. The pins have little flags on them with the secret special code he invented that tells him where the file on that crime is in his secret special file cabinets. Every Thursday he takes the gun down and disassembles it, makes sure everything is in perfect working order, that the one bullet is still in the chamber.

Every weekend he goes to the firing range and drills until he can put six bullets through the same hole in the paper target, until he can hit the same pockmark on the concrete wall each and every time, until all of this comes to him as naturally as breathing. The Great Detective knows he will get only one shot, that he can’t afford to miss.

He is alone one night, brooding over the most recent crimes of His Archnemesis, when there is a step in the hallway, one he knows better than his own. There is a hand on the latch — the door opens — the beloved voice calls his name — the Great Detective’s gun cracks, just once, and a body crumples to the floor with the soft easy grace of a dry leaf. The Great Detective stands watch as the borrowed shape of his brother dissolves back into twenty years of grave rot.

By Such Signs Will You Know Him

He fell into the habit of lingering in the café for five or six hours, reading the paper, sipping cup after tiny cup of espresso, working the crosswords and people-watching. The clothes were slightly too tight, slightly too stylish, telling him that he was living in exile, a foreigner in a vast uncertain country. He didn’t notice the language any more, and the cars and the buildings wouldn’t have been so completely out of place in certain parts of Philadelphia, but the clothing always nagged at him. It was so nearly what he was used to; more strangeness would have been easier to overlook.

The people fascinated him. He began to recognize faces, voices, patterns: the old man who bought a coffee and a croissant every afternoon; the students who lingered defiantly over their books and their arguments; the fights that raged in a second-story room every evening; the women who sneaked out in the morning and came prowling back at night. Old habits stamped and filed away the ticking of the machinery of the neighborhood.

So he was unsurprised when the police came one day. Their cars so boxy and funny. There has been a murder, they announced. Does anyone have any information?

Ah, said David Brown, at home in spite of himself, hating himself for it.

Shaggy Dog Contest

“By an odd coincidence,” said Atherington, “everyone chose that night to do away with the Marquis.” He said it ‘mar-kwiss,’ which made Diane wince; Simon sneered at her and mouthed, “He’s right.” Karl, standing behind her at the sideboard, couldn’t suppress a snort of laughter. The Marchioness frowned ferociously at all of them. Atherington continued, undisturbed: “First on the scene was Lady Pokingham with her vial of exotic mineral salts. Sloppy work, Your Ladyship: we found traces in his toothcup. A truly herculean jolt, if the amount left is any indicator.” He clinked his ice cubes at them affably. “Next, I think, was the young Lord Simon, with his subtle syringe. Oh, yes, we found that, old top, kicked underneath the bed and covered with fingerprints. Oddly enough not with anything else. Hoping for an embolism, were you? Well, nevermind. Then came Miss Pokingham and her young man. A nice bit of work with the knives all around – right into the lungs and not a drop of vino spilled on the bedspread. You’re to be congratulated. In another life you might have made a fair pair of surgeons.”

“As though he’d have let us slip out that way,” murmured Diane. “But thank you.”

“All in all, a full night’s work between the lot of you.” He handed his glass to Karl. “Would you mind terribly? Brandy, please. Thank you.”

“Very good, Inspector,” said the Marchioness, tartly. “Very nicely reasoned. But who killed him? We all wanted to, right enough, but who succeeded?”

“I’m afraid we’re out of the running, dearest,” sang Karl, busy with siphon and stopper.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say so, necessarily,” Simon drawled. “You chose the fastest, most reliable method, certainly. The old beast might have survived until you got to him, though not to morning.”

Atherington chuckled. “Alas for your fame. No one killed him, I’m afraid. He was dead before his head hit the pillow. The shrapnel in his lungs had finally worked itself loose. Lady Pokingham’s poison was still waiting in his stomach when we examined him. No, he died a war hero at the last. Terribly glorious, in a way, don’t you think?”

Locked Room Puzzle

”Oh, this ice is cold,” she said. “Here’s your drink, darling.”

That’s odd, thinks Encyclopedia Brown later. Of course the ice was cold.

We dress ourselves up as The Great Detective and His Archnemesis just for the heck of it and go out on the town, His Archnemesis committing the crimes and The Great Detective coming along behind and solving all of them, bang, so easy, how could you not see it, Lestrade? Like so:

Lestrade: Dash it all, The Great Detective –

The Great Detective: [jovially, expansively; he can afford it, Lestrade’s no threat to him] Oh, you’re so formal. Just ‘The Great’ is fine. We’re friends after all, aren’t we?

Lestrade: [doggedly] Dash it all, The Great, after all a man can’t be in two places at once. It’s a physical impossibility.

The Great Detective: Ah, but you’ve overlooked the minor detail of the mud in the chimney corner, which I (with my extensive knowledge of local soil) have Positively Identified as Foreign! So you see the second pair of boots could not have belonged to His Archnemesis. The rest you can figure out for yourself.

Lestrade slaps himself in the forehead, how could he have been so blind, I mean come on!

His Archnemesis: Curses!

The Great Detective delivers a monologue on the importance of brushing your teeth and not committing crimes (in pantomime).

His Archnemesis: No jail can hold me!

Which is unfortunately true.

Sometimes we switch off, and The Great Detective commits the crimes and His Archnemesis solves ‘em. Lestrade, (or is it Inspector Cramer? Lassiter? Well, never mind.) poor dope, never notices the difference, though his hands do twitch near his pistol whenever he sees us. We worry about him, he works so hard. He deserves a vacation. Maybe this time next year.

There was Morning and There was Evening

On the first day she slipped poison into her mother’s food and sat tenderly by the old woman’s bedside as she gasped and choked her way into peaceful death. She cried a little when it was over.

On the second day she caught her brother as he came walking along the bridge and slipped him over the edge. He fell silently, and the green waters below swallowed him whole.

On the third day she took her children for a walk in the woods and lost them. Seven teams worked for months combing the hills and brought them back again, identifiable only by the bracelets they wore, identical like they were. She cried and cried over their bones, wept like a dam spinning turbines.

She saved her husband for last, drawing out his death like an orgasm, edging closer and closer without ever quite slipping over. When he died he was blue as a berry, and the white flowering of her thumbprints stayed on his skin for days.

She counted them to herself as her own life spun down to its close, beginning again when she ended, names clicking through her fingers like rosary beads, structured like prayers.