Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

The script began: “On the evening of the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, I, Desmond Wicklow, was attacked by Charles Kincaid. He tried to strangle me but was unable to carry out the murder. He told me subsequently that he had been delegated to kill me by Margo Fletcher. Now he has informed me that she has commissioned another such crime. She has asked him to despatch her partner, Lucy Jellicoe. If anything happens to Miss Jellicoe, talk to Mr. Kincaid. He will confirm this information.”

Margo did not hesitate. She ripped the page from the notebook and tore it into small pieces. “That’s no good,” Wicklow said. “A duplicate copy is among my papers at home. In a sealed envelope addressed to the Chief Constable, Scotland Yard.”

“I don’t ask much,” Margo said. “All I want is not to feel so frustrated all the time.”

“Easily taken care of. Come with me to dinner tonight. You’re a maniac, Margo. But a most attractive one.”

They embraced as she said, “If I were serious about having you or Lucy killed, I’d assign somebody better than poor old Charles.”

“That’s obvious,” Wicklow said. “He’s a butler. They only do it in books.”

The Problem of the Interrupted Seance by Edward D. Hoch

The Dr. Sam Hawthorne series having recently reached the early 1940s (with cases related as recollections of an older Dr. Sam), EQMM, founded in 1941, gets a mention in this one as part of the historical setting. Here, once again, Dr. Sam is confronted with an impossible crime of the “locked room” variety. Mr. Hoch is in his thirty-first year of consecutive contributions to this magazine, and the stories just keep getting stronger.

* * *

Despite a few morale-boosting events like Doolittle’s April bombing of Tokyo and the RAF’s bombing of German cities, during those early months of 1942 the war was going badly (Dr. Sam Hawthorne told his companion when they had settled down with their usual small libations). The Japanese had taken all of the Philippines, Hong Kong, and most of the East Indies. In North Africa, Rommel’s tanks seemed unstoppable.

In Northmont, in the first six months of my marriage to Annabel, the war and everything else seemed far away. Gasoline rationing had begun in seventeen states in mid May, and was sure to spread soon. But the crime rate in Northmont had actually seemed to fall since the December tragedy that had claimed the life of our maid of honor. Sheriff Lens had his own theory about the improved social climate, attributing it to the fact that many of the town’s young punks had enlisted or been drafted. Some of the enlistments had come following the news that one of Northmont’s own was missing in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

His name was Ronald Hale and he’d been a seaman aboard the ill-fated battleship Arizona. Though the attack angered the entire country, the blow was felt hardest in hometowns such as Northmont, and in families such as Ron Hale’s. His mother Kate, a patient of mine, was devastated by the news. It was early June when she came to me for a checkup, the first since her son had been confirmed dead.

“You’ve had a bad time, Kate,” I told her. “How are you sleeping?”

“Not well, Dr. Sam. I think about him all the time, going down with his ship in what he thought was a safe harbor.”

“I can give you something to help you sleep, but the rest is up to you. How is Art taking it?” Art Hale wasn’t a patient of mine but I knew him from the town council, on which he’d served for several years.

“Better than me, now, but he had a terrible time at first. Back in January and February he just went away for days at a time. Our son’s death was confirmed to us in mid April, before the official casualty list was announced on May first. When Art got the news, he went through it all again. I think he was drinking heavily while he was gone, but he never admitted it.” I took her blood pressure, which was higher than normal, and gave my usual words of caution. But I could see her mind was elsewhere. “Can I talk to you about something, Dr. Sam?”

“Anything at all. That’s what I’m here for.” I expected some sort of sexual secret, which wasn’t too unusual in my experience.

Instead she told me, “I’ve been to Boston to see a psychic.”

“What?” My face must have reflected my surprise.

“A woman there contacted me several weeks ago and claimed she could communicate with the dead. I... I really think she might be able to reach Ron.”

“Kate,” I said, not unkindly, “you can’t believe in such things. People like that are just out to get your money.”