Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

In Suite Fifteen, the admiration of the nameless dancer had gradually turned to rage. This was too much! How many times was it now? She had lost count. Bang, snore, bang, snore, bang, snore. She felt like a leaky bicycle tyre. This was being treated like a common prostitute. And at the end, she wouldn’t even get paid, probably. Come the dawn and it would be, “Adieu, ma petite,” and that would be that. Le roi le veut. Well, she’d had enough. What had been an honour had become a tedious hassle. Fortunately, the king was now in a snore phase.

She got up, but before she put her clothes on she peeped out the door. The first things that met her eye were the backs of two stalwart gendarmes bearing something covered with a sheet away on a stretcher. Turning her head, she saw two more gossiping at the other end of the corridor. Police in the hotel! An inconspicuous departure would be quite impossible. She sighed. Better stick it out.

On the bed, the snores lessened in volume. The king stirred.

In Suite Seven, Professor Giuliano contemplated his handiwork. The map the president and the prime minister had worked on lay to his left hand, a red line stretching halfway across the thigh at the top of the leg of Italy, breaking off when their work had been interrupted. The new border between Italy and the defeated Austria. At Professor Giuliano’s right hand was a duplicate map, unused in the negotiations, on which he had drawn a new red line, mostly identical, but which now veered north at a crucial point, to put on the Italian side Merano and a rich area of Alpine villages, woods, and grazing lands. He took the map on his left and the suite’s heavy table lighter over to the grate and set fire to a corner. When he was satisfied it was entirely burned, he went back to the desk and poured himself another glass of champagne. Being born in New York did not mean he was not still a patriotic Italian. He smiled with professorial self-esteem: it was a brilliant stroke, worthy of his father, the Mafia boss.

As the first rays of dawn struck the Avenue Decazes, the phone rang in Suite Twelve. The British prime minister had always impressed on the manager that, should anything of importance arise, he should always be rung. “If I am busy, I simply don’t answer,” he had said. Now he was already dressed and in the sitting room, while his companion completed her morning toilette in the bedroom.

“Mr. Prime Minister?” said the manager. “I thought I should tell you that, thanks to your brilliant suggestion, everything went like a dream.”

“Glad to hear it. All it needed was a touch of statesmanship.”

“The police accepted absolutely my interpretation of the unfortunate event and the man’s disappearance.”

“Of course they did. Less trouble.”

“The man will by now have evaporated, and the case is in effect closed.”

“Splendid.”

“The police have now left the hotel, and you and your charming guest can leave without arousing any impertinent curiosity.”

“Excellent. I think I hear her coming now. Call two taxis, will you?”

The door from the bedroom had indeed opened, and sailing through, dressed for her morning activities, came the lovely woman of a certain age who had shared the prime minister’s night. He gazed at her appreciatively: splendid figure, regal carriage, gorgeous clothes and hat. Odd to think of her as granddaughter of that dumpy little woman. She, like him, would from now be caught up in the great public events of the time. He saw the reddish-brown tip of a hatpin poking through the too-small evening bag: typical of her and her kind always to be prepared for an emergency!

“I’ve just had a call from the manager,” he said. “The emergency’s over. The police have gone.”

“Excellent,” she said. “I have a very full morning of engagements. Civil of him to let you know.”

“Naturally he did,” said Mr. Lloyd-George, swelling to his full adiposity. “I advised him how to go about things.”

“I do love a clever man.”

“And I am the Prime Minister of Great Britain.”

She paused before disappearing through the door.

“And I am Marie of Romania.”

The Sultans of Soul by Doug Allyn

There could hardly be a better chronicler of the world of popular music than Doug Allyn, who has been touring with bands in northern Michigan for more than twenty-five years. This tale of a gumshoe hired to collect unpaid royalties takes us to the heart of the record industry and the early days of the Motown sound...

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