Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

The 1998 Arthur Ellis Award winner in the best short mystery story category, Scott Mackay also has a flair for science fiction writing and has recently concluded a deal with Penguin-Roc for two new SF novels. When writing mysteries, Mr. Mackay often builds his plots around series detective Barry Gilbert. Occasionally, as in his new tale for us, he produces a nonseries piece that is a reflection on crime and morality.

* * *

Neil Fuller sat in his Greenwich Village studio, a delicate October I light spilling like cream across his latest watercolor, his Kolinksy sable number 12 poised in his hand, a fresh dab of cadmium yellow on his pallet. His brother, Craig, sat in the old recliner across from him, calm, reflective, self-assured, every bit the old Craig he knew and loved, but now different, now changed, now a man who had just exhaled into the studio the brief and baleful soliloquy of his own confession. Now a man with minder on his lips.

“I thought Barbara killed him,” said Neil. “I thought it was all settled.”

He wasn’t used to visitors this early in the morning. Manhattan sulked outside his window.

“Someone has to know the truth,” said Craig. He glanced at Neil’s latest painting. “The marsh looks low,” he said. “Is it?”

Neil stared at his brother, eleven years his junior, a manager, well-schooled in the world of systems, data links, and networks, responsible, respected, career-minded, in a suit with a gold pen in his pocket, a tie clip to match, a signet fraternity ring from his undergraduate years at MIT.

“It hasn’t rained much in the last two years,” said Neil. His face felt red. He had that tightness in his throat again, the discomfort he got whenever his blood rushed too quickly — too much red meat, too many fine potables, a connoisseur’s eye for exotic flans, cakes, and trifles. And now this. His brother’s confession. “The heron’s gone,” he said. “Did I tell you? She’s been gone three years now.”

The air felt thick between them.

“But you have the mallards?” said Craig, nodding at his painting.

“No,” said Neil. “The mallards are mine. That corner needed fussing.”

Why deliver to him, like an old piece of family furniture nobody wanted, this somber revelation? Not Barbara, but his brother, Craig. Bright, sunny Craig, the man with a smile for everyone. Why tell him about the Wiltshire Staysharp deftly piercing Paul’s back?

Craig, looking as if he sensed Neil’s perplexity, risked some explanation. “I couldn’t let him run off with Christine, could I?” he said.

Neil tried to understand, but he couldn’t. He understood the life of the marsh, where the rhythms were gentle, predictable, soothing. He understood the life of his studio, where the north light always stroked a fresh piece of heavy French bond with potential. But he couldn’t understand how the courts could possibly indict Barbara Gatt when his brother now told him he had been the one with the Wiltshire Staysharp in his hand, or how Barbara Gatt, knowing the truth, would so amicably stand trial for a crime she hadn’t committed.

“Was it really four times?” he asked.

“Sorry?”

“The anchorfools say she stabbed him four times.”

“I can’t remember,” said Craig. “I wasn’t counting.”

“Her injury,” he said, remembering the evidence they had against Barbara Gatt. “The gash on her hand. The blood. The footprints.” As if these pitiful tokens might shrink the enormity of Craig’s confession.

Craig shook his head. “Paul was a bull,” he insisted. “I had to stop him.”

Neil felt a beguiling sadness over the death of Paul Gatt. They were, he and Paul, on certain occasions, a pair. Fellow gastronomists. Three hundred pounds apiece. Dressed by the same tailor, with standing reservations at the finest restaurants in Manhattan, a sight to set any waiter’s eye twinkling with the anticipation of a generous gratuity. He would miss Paul’s artistic acumen, how he so easily understood why Neil had devoted himself with such earnestness to the life of the easel. He would miss how Paul could be so magnanimous with his praise when he saw an exacting bit of brushwork, how, with the insight of an expert, he could say why a practiced line of blue or a quick skim of yellow had captured the raison d’être of any particular fish, fowl, or fauna, the epitome of its unseen message, with only a deft stroke or two.

“But you’re not the one in handcuffs,” said Neil. “How does Barbara feel?”

“Barbara loves me.”

As if love, with all its sacrificial impulses, its dangerous, inexplicable, and destructive urges, could excuse everything, even minder.