Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

I had not far to go, and there I had the delight of meeting not only with rhubarb powder but with my dear Dorcas.

“Parson Pennywick,” she said in delight. Caleb was used only on informal occasions. “Fancy that. I was here to buy you some rhubarb powder.”

“And I was on the same mission.” We looked at each other, highly pleased. “Shall we attend the inquest together?” I asked.

Dorcas was doubtful about the propriety of this, but I persuaded her, and having taken my rhubarb powder with water, we made our way back to the Lower Walk and along to the Sussex Tavern. I could still hear the strains of music and that, together with my faithful remedy, did much to calm me.

“For what reason,” I asked her, “would Lord Foppington write those verses himself? Did he announce his plan to murder Annie Bright only because of his vanity as a poet?”

“No, Parson,” Dorcas declared sensibly. Her comfortable figure at my side, clad in the familiar caraco jacket, gave me strength. “These society folk know well how to look after themselves, when their skins are at stake.”

“You are right. It would be too dangerous for him or for Mr. Trott to do so.”

We were already at the Sussex Tavern garden and we would shortly reach the room at the rear of the inn where the inquest would be held. And my mind was still in a jumble. And then Dorcas said:

“I’ll take a cup of those waters tomorrow, in memory of Miss Bright.”

I remembered pressing the coin into Annie’s hand. I remembered who had been at my side. Who had sought the excuse to come with me. Whose trade would give him ample opportunity to seize a paper cutting knife. Whose wife was so devoted, he found it hard to get away. Yet he had got away. He said he had been playing cards that evening; he doubtless had the skills to copy Lord Foppington’s hand, and the opportunity to place the poems by the bookshop door, where they were found, thus to take the attention away from himself. Mr. Edwin Thomas, beloved of the ladies. Had he expected Annie Bright to love him too, and when she refused his favours killed her?

I was jubilant. I had the story. I was sure of it. Now I must speak to the coroner and to Sir John himself.

“We will soon have this wheatear pie cooked,” I told Dorcas, thinking to please her by a reference to the dish she is so eager to try at Cuckoo Leas.

“No. You will only eat it, Caleb,” she jested. “’Tis the kitchen where the pie is put together.”

I stared at her. The kitchen? My mind clarified like liquid passed through a jellybag.

Not Mr. Thomas, but Mrs. Thomas. So possessive of her husband that she would be rid of the woman she falsely believed to be his light o’ love. She did not wish her husband to be incriminated and so wrote those verses to deflect attention from him. Under pretence of being ill, she took a paper knife from their store and stabbed her supposed rival. It was she who had cooked this pie, and thought to enjoy the results.

We were at the door of the inquest room now. Before we entered, I took Dorcas’s hand and pressed it to my lips. Jem Smith would owe his life to her — and, of course, to rhubarb.

The Very Bad Man by Mick Herron

One of the most highly praised novelists to appear on the mystery scene over the past few years, Mick Herron is also a frequent contributor to this magazine. His EQMM fans should especially enjoy his latest novel, Smoke and Whispers, hailed by PW in its starred review as a “masterful thriller” and featuring characters he’s brought to EQMM.

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If this were a fairy tale, it would read: A long time ago, in a cottage near the woods, lived a little old man. One day a big bad wolf came out of the woods and ate him up. The end. But it wasn’t long ago, and sixty-three isn’t old. The woods were woods, true, and you wouldn’t want to get lost in them after dark, but they’d not been home to anything fiercer than a badger in aeons. Wolves, anyway — we don’t worry about wolves. We worry about very bad men. As for the cottage, it was a little large to be described as such, and while it was certainly near those woods, it was only a hundred yards from its nearest neighbour, beyond which you were almost into the village. And besides, endings don’t arrive that abruptly. Things continue to happen. Wolves are despatched by woodcutters, and very bad men go to jail. Though sometimes they get out.

So, then: Reasonably recently, a hale and healthy sixty-three-year-old man named Martin Hudson lived alone in a medium-sized house in a rural area, until a very bad man came out of the woods and killed him.